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The Real Pirates Behind the Films

bruceandholly

Even as a child, I would not have read Harry Potter. It’s just that I was not into wizards and magic spells. But give me Pirates! And that’s something else! It’s also why I watched all of the Pirates of the Caribbean films over the Christmas and New Year period. But did you know that each of those films had their roots in fact? I’ll prove it to you.

As a child I would lay in bed reading Edward Dingle’s ‘Sinbad’s Book of Pirates’, which was written in 1936 and had been given to me as a hand me down.

I’ve never been a pirate and wouldn’t be qualified to write a pirate book. Dingle was qualified because before becoming an author he had spent 22 years at sea and had survived five shipwrecks. In 1893, Dingle joined the salvage schooner Black Pearl to look for sunken treasure. They found the sunken wreck and strong box but we’re unable to move it. Strong gales then blew the ship away. A return voyage was wrecked near St Paul’s Island Australia. The crew survived but the Black Pearl was lost. They survived by eating rabbit, goat and fish before they were rescued. Eventually they did find treasure in another shipwreck. Does his story sound familiar?

Was it a coincidence that the name Black Pearl was used in Walt Disney’s first 2003 ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl’?

For me, the best pirate film was the 2011 ‘On Stranger Tides’ which again featured real historical characters and ships. The lead character in that film was Edward Teach, the famous Blackbeard and his ship, Queen Ann’s Revenge. Teach lived from 1680 to 1718 and operated around the West Indies and Britain’s then North American colonies.The Blackbeard name derived from his awesome appearance.So what about the mermaids?

Did mermaids actually exist? All we know, is that throughout most of human history, sailors believed in them. Mermaids were unlucky Omen. So what is it that I’m trying to say? That everything you write has to have an element of authenticity, Even if it’s fantasy fiction. It’s all about the research. About getting it right.

Postscript: in a moment of madness I went on to the Amazon site and ordered a used copy of Dingle’s 1936 book. It was as I’d remembered it. Almost word for word. And guess what? It is the World’s only surviving copy

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The James Dyson interview

bruceandholly
Photo by Annushka Ahuja on Pexels.com

It seems strange how a 10-minute radio interview can change your opinion of someone. It happened this morning with Nick Robinson’s 10-minute Radio 4 interview with SirJames Dyson. I always enjoy listening to Nick Robinson interviews. Toughness coupled with courtesy. And that rasping voice. I wish I could grow a voice like that.

I had always wondered how someone like Dyson, who was so actively involved with Brexit, could outsource his manufacturing from Malmesbury to southeast Asia. But now I understand.

It’s not just that labour costs are cheaper and supply chains better in Singapore. What really tipped it over the edge for Dyson was the obstructiveness of a British town planning system which refused the expansion of his Malmesbury factory to better cater for worldwide demand. Whilst almost at the same time refusing planning permission for a learning facility near Bath. How typical of the anti-business culture which now seems to permeate everywhere in the UK. From the refusal of North Sea drilling licenses to the over-regulation of our own industries whilst at the same time allowing them to be undercut by imports from overseas. How sad!

You can say what you like about Donald Trump. But at least he’s got his priorities right when it comes to rebuilding America’s industrial base. What about our lot?

Even as we speak, Rolls-Royce are thinking about outsourcing manufacturing to Germany and America because they cannot get the support they need from the UK government. Oh – and ultra high energy costs. And it’s not just Rolls-Royce.

It’s not just the current government. We had 14 years of it with the Conservatives, when Britain’s business interests took second place to their obsession with Brexit. And also about the running down of our public services. What is it about our politicians? Hardly any of them have had a life outside politics.

It’s also why I have been looking at the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in December 2025. Is it really going to make a difference? Only if the planning system is sufficiently resourced to enable planning applications to be pushed through and appeals dealt with quickly when planning permissions are refused. Is that really going to happen? I’m not going to put money on it.

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The Day My Email Account Was Hacked: A Warning to Others

bruceandholly
Photo by CDC on Pexels.com

You and I are just too smart to get scammed. Ain’t that true? Course it is. It’s only elderly people who get scammed. We all watch Scam Intercepters. And we’re wise so those telephone calls from Kolkata telling us that our Amazon accounts have been compromised. Or an email pretending to be from our bank and inviting us to resubmit our bank account details.

But this email was not pretending to be from my bank. Nor was it asking for any financial information. In fact it appeared so routine as to be convincing. It was just one of those occasional emails which we get from our email providers inviting us to update our log in details. And of course I fell for it. Next day i started to get telephone calls from various professional contacts querying emails which they had received from this account and which appeared suspicious. That’s when I knew that my account has been compromised. I logged on to my email account and a warning flashed up alerting me to the fact that emails were being forwarded to another account which had been set up in a similar name. I cancelled the forwarding and then tried to change the password on my account. But that was impossible because the fraudster managed to circumvent the two-stage verification process by deleting my cellphone number and substituting the email address of the account which had already been hacked. How scary is that? So I took my laptop to the computer shop at the end of my road. With the proprietor’s help, I was able to get logged in and change the password. Though as soon as I got home and logged on again, I discovered that the email account had defaulted back to the fraudster’s settings. How were they able to do that? Again, I did not receive any alert to my cellphone

So it was all about damage limitation. Whilst I was still able to log into the email account, I permanently deleted everything which I could and alerted my email contacts to the scam. Then I was locked out of my email account completely. It was now late evening. So there was nothing else to do except to take a tablet and to try to get a few hours sleep. Maybe my subconscious could work on it overnight and come up with a solution. That night I dreamed that a family of squatters had obtained a key to my house and set up home. When I protested, most of them left quietly, except one man, whom I had to wrestle out of my front door. When I woke up yesterday morning, I knew exactly what I had to do. First thing was to log onto the Report Fraud website and make a formal report.

Look! I’m not expecting the Metropolitan Police to initiate a major crime scene investigation. The purpose of my report was to create a documentary record of the fraud which will protect me from liability if anyone tries to fraudulently take out a loan or purchase goods in my name. My next step was to contact the email provider, who helped me to get back into the account and change the password. But again, the change was not permanent as I later had to use the two-step verification process to log in again and change that password and also change the settings. That time it worked. So it is still not as secure as I would want it to be

One of the things I’ve always tried to do is to keep all of my accounts 100% separate from each other. I will never use mobile banking. Or set up my cellphone to make purchases. It’s just not worth the risk.

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The 2025 flu epidemic

bruceandholly

I got my dose of 2025 flu a couple of weeks back. It took me by surprise. Only a month previously I had got my annual flu injection.

Don’t get me wrong. Today’s flu injections a lot more effective than they once were. They actually stop flu instead of causing it. In fact I’d already gone several years without a severe cold or flu.

As a registered asthmatic, I can sense immediately when an infection is about to go down onto my chest. So I don’t wait until it gets worse before booking my doctor’s appointment. I got that appointment within an hour of making my telephone call. In fact there was scarcely a wheeze as the medic checked me over with her stethoscope; checked my blood pressure and gave me a peak flow test. Next morning, I picked up my penicillin from the pharmacy at the end of my road, by which time the congestion was already beginning to kick in and I took the first capsule immediately. 5 days Later I had finished the course but there was still some residual congestion waking me up at night.

Against media advice, I didn’t spend 2 weeks lying in bed. What would have been the point of that? I got up and switched on my computer and did a couple of hours work before the weariness caught up with me. I suppose I’m lucky in being able to work from home in this way.

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The Dangers of Eroding Jury Trials in Justice System

bruceandholly

It always disappoints me how easily intelligent people can be convinced to surrender ancient liberties to the State.

We saw it several years back in the ‘Simon Says’ world of the Covid lockdowns, when everyone had to jump to every Matt Hancock command.

“Put a mask on your face. Now clap your hands. And stand 6 ft apart. Do it when the Simon says and you will never be out.”

We’re seeing it again with David Lammy’s published proposals for the scrapping of jury trials save for the most serious charges of murder, manslaughter, rape and other public interest cases. But what is more worrying for me, from listening to phone-in programs, is the way people are beginning to buy into it. Not just retired police officers and prosecution barristers, who would be expected to support any proposal which would make their job easier because a prosecution would no longer have to explain it’s case and convince a panel of ordinary people. It also seems to rest on the premise that anyone who steals a mobile phone from a supermarket is already guilty and just playing the system by electing jury trial. The proposals also belittle the damage which any conviction involving dishonesty or violence can have on someone who’s trying to hold down a responsible job or career. It’s something which will stay with you for life.

When mention is made of the fact that more than 90% of criminal cases already start and end in the magistrate court, it must also be remembered that almost all of those cases involve guilty pleas, in which the magistrates’ only role is to assess the seriousness of the offence and an mitigating factors before determining sentence. Remember also that, unlike jurors, magistrates are not picked at random from amongst our communities but are people who put themselves forward for selection. They are not like you and I. It attracts a certain type of person.

One thing which I’ve always regretted is the whittling away of public involvement in our justice system, first in civil cases leading to the last defamation jury trials and now extending to judge only criminal trials. I don’t trust them. Nor should you.