A Step Too Far By China

Chinese authorities are known for strictly censoring newspapers, film and TV programs and they have now
banned programmes and movies with story lines involving time travel as they 'lack positive thoughts and meaning'.
The guidance, issued by the powerful State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), will deny the Chinese population of some of the best story lines ever to come from the mind of a writer. And Star Trek IV.
Some of the best movies of the 80s had Time Travel as the central theme, namely the Back to the Future trilogy which i watched recently and enjoyed as much on the 100th viewing as i did sat in a cinema in 1985.
Everyones favourite Christmas movie, A Christmas Carol, will be removed from the tv guide as will both the Bill and Ted films which are silly but have Abraham Lincoln telling us to be excellent to each other and that's pretty cool in any language. Also missing will be films such as The Time Traveler's Wife, Planet of the Apes, The Terminator, Peggy Sue got Married, Evil Dead 3 and Hot Tub Time Machine.
One of the most underrated shows on British television, Goodnight Sweetheart, was about a man who travelled between the 1990's and the East end during WW2 and Dr Who skips across the time space continuum as do Time Squad, Tru Calling and the criminally cut short First Edition.
Probably the greatest time travel programme ever featured Dr. Sam Beckett, a physicist who becomes lost in time following a time travel experiment, temporarily taking the places of other people to put right what once went wrong.
To deny the Chinese people the Back to the Future films and Quantum Leap must surely come under some Human Rights treaty and even being spared those awful Star Trek movies doesn't begin to compensate for it.
Get on it Ban Ki-moon.

Why Are All The Nutters Republican?

America has an election in 2012 and their elections always seem more entertaining than our own staid affair.
One reason is the characters that American politics has in the early stages of their elections.
For whatever reason, it seems that the Republicans draw more than their fair share of nutters and fruitcakes like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and the latest fruityloop, Donald Trump.
Palin hasn't said if she will run for the Republican candidacy yet but it is expected she will throw her hat into the ring. Kim Jong Il will be happy, considering her utterances that America will stand by there North Korean allies.
Michelle Bachmann is being called the heir to Palin. She once tried to stop Aladdin being shown in a local school on religious grounds, stating that it endorsed witchcraft and promoted paganism.
At a protest of her proposed ban of same-sex marriage in Minnesota, Bachmann was photographed hiding in bushes, spying on the rally. Bachmann's explanation was that her feet were sore, saying she was wearing high heels and she just couldn't stand anymore although she later acknowledged that she was actually spying on the rally. Perhaps she had heard of a secret Aladdin screening.
She has also said it was an interesting coincidence that swine flu only breaks out under Democratic presidents and claims 'there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas' to defend her position that climate change is a hoax.
A Gallup poll shows Donald Trump is the current favourite out of the current crop of 2012 Republican candidates.
Since announcing his campaign to run as the Republican nominee to take on Obama, the strange haired billionaire has laid out his political thinking with lines such as "I would go in and take the oil' when asked about Libya, On Iraq, he says 'We stay there, and we take the oil. In the old days, when you have a war and you win, that nation's yours.'
Trump won't even shake hands with any ordinary Americans, because 'you catch all sorts of things from them'.
The unfortunate thing is that Obama needs serious opposition, he has been a massive disappointment, but faced with such sheer lunacy on the opposition side, all he has to do is show up and collect the keys for another 4 years.

It's Started

We are only 4 months into the year and already mother nature has shown she is not happy and bared her teeth.
Major earthquakes in Japan, Argentina, New Zealand, Iran and Chile. Floods in Australia, Brazil and Indonesia and swathes of tornadoes sweeping across America this week killing over 200 people.
Earthquakes really are just things that happen and we cannot be blamed for them but floods and tornadoes can simply be put at the doorstep of a reaction to what we have done to our planet.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the ‘dramatic weather patterns are consistent with changes in the climate caused by mankind'.
Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the Met Office, called it 'clear evidence of an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events because of climate change. The odds of such extreme events are rapidly shortening and could become considered the norm by the middle of this century'.
Unbelievably, there are still some people that deny climate change is happening, useful idiots of the companies that want us to believe climate change is a conspiracy theory rather trust the thousands of climate scientists of the IPCC, NASA and the World Meteorological Organization.
What is happening around the world due to global warming should be an alarm call because we have moved on from warning what may happen to it now actually happening.

Bored Of The Royal Wedding

I'm not much of a Royalist, to my mind if we got rid of them tomorrow nothing would change except we would be a few million pound better off. Maybe we should suggest it to Dave Cameron next time he announces the next round of austerity cuts.
It seems that we cannot turn on our televisions or open a newspaper without Prince William or Kate Middleton peering out at us and from what i am hearing, while the majority of British people are thankful for another bank holiday, they are planning to steer clear of a television on Friday.
The Royals don't have a great track record when it comes to marriages. Of the queens 4 children, 3 of them are divorcee's so all the best to Kate for marrying into that particular family.
The American media seems particularly taken with the whole event which is ironic as they fought so hard to keep the British monarchy away from them. If they are so keen for a bit of pomp and circumstance then they shouldn't have thrown our tea into the Boston harbour all those years ago.
The argument made by Royalists for keeping the monarchy is that they bring in the tourists which is a rubbish argument because the Association of Leading Visitors Attractions doesn't even include Buckingham Palace in the top 20 of most visited places in the UK. That honour goes to the museums, galleries and cathedrals which attracts millions of visitors per site each year while the Queens residence had it's best ever year in 2010 with 413,000 visitors which is only slightly more than the Beaulieu car museum.
The Royals receive £8m annually from the civil list, £14m for the upkeep of their properties and then another £100m from the public purse for security.
St James's Palace says the couple are going to have an austere wedding, which will not weigh too heavily on taxpayers. But the Royals' understanding of the word austere is likely to be somewhat different to yours and mine.
Even the small wedding of Charles and Camilla in 2005 cost £5 million, and estimates put the cost of this Friday's shindig at around £50 million. Top-end estimates have come in closer to £100 million.
The bulk of the wedding cost is going to be met by the Royals but the security bill is falling to us, and with the country on high terror alert and more of the great and the good hitting London than during the average G20 meeting, that bill is going to be fairly hefty. Some put it at as much as somewhere around £50 million.
All the best to Wills and Kate, nothing personal but i can't get excited about a posh couple's wedding day that is costing us millions. Thanks for the day off though.

Hotel California

I do plan, at some point in the future, to write a book. An epic tale that will stand alongside some of the great literary efforts of the past.
The only problem is i have many half ideas that i never work up into full length because i get a flash of inspiration and the last idea is quickly pushed aside.
I did have an idea sparked by the song Hotel California and the final lines 'You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave'.
A hotel, out in the desert that nobody can ever leave? Why that could be a place where famous people go after they fake their own deaths to avoid their suffocating fame, founded by Glen Miller or Buddy Holly and they spend the day entertaining themselves with music and plays and are joined by other famous people like Kurt Cobain, Princess Diana and Tupac and then a reporter stumbles across it and threatens to breaks the story and...but the story got pushed aside for something else and it joins the many others in the past ideas bin.
The Hotel California storyline came back to me when i saw a story concerning president of Uruguay José Mujica.
I don't know what José has been up to because i was far to busy thinking blimey, that's Scotty from Star Trek.
Now we thought James Doohan died in 2005, the story went that his ashes were even blasted into space. But did he really go to the big Starship in the sky?
By the way, if i ever read a story about a hotel full of celebrities that have faked there own deaths and live in the Californian desert in a place run by Glen Miller or Buddy Holly and it isn't my face on the dustcover, i will seek royalties.

A Message For Atheists

A few years ago i was at a funeral of a friend and was consoling her understandably very upset young daughter at the wake afterwards.
'Is mummy up in heaven with Jesus?' she asked me and i didn't hesitate in answering yes she was and she was with her grandad and grandma and they would all be looking down very proud of her and saying how pretty she looked.
She told me how she had been praying and i explained to her that her although her mum probably wouldn't be able to answer her, she could hear her and to pray every night and tell her what she had been doing that day.
This short exchange turned out to be quite a turning point for me because i'm an atheist and had no conscience previously to telling people God didn't exist and arguing my point.
It took a 7 year old girl to open my eyes to the fact that even if i don't believe it, what i was doing was trying to deny comfort to anyone who has lost someone and i felt lousy about all those years i had dismissed other people's ideas as deluded.
If it comforts someone that their partner, son, daughter or even their pet is in heaven, who am i to try and take that away from them. It doesn't harm me or anyone else in any way so let them believe what they like if it helps them through life's toughest ordeal.
I now cringe when i hear other atheists arguing against a God as i used to argue, my mind goes back to poor Amy and how my mind told me to tell her one thing and my heart another even if i never believed it myself and how my heart was always going to win that argument and nobody should have been ruthless enough to tell her anything different.
I thought of that moment today when a 7 year old Japanese girl, obviously confused about her faith, asked the Pope during the live Good Friday question and answer session why did God let so many children die in the Japan Tsunami.
"I also have the same questions: Why is it this way?' he answered, 'Why do you have to suffer so much while others live in ease?" And we do not have the answers but we know that Jesus suffered as you do, an innocent."
That isn't really much of an answer to give the confused child but i was actually quite glad that she asked it to a religious person and got a sort-of answer rather than the type of atheist i used to be who may have given her a different answer altogether.
Religion becomes a problem when it becomes a tool in the hands of the powerful, not the people we meet everyday just trying to get along as best they can the same as us and we should remember that and consider the reasons behind a persons faith the next time we feel like picking up the atheist gauntlet.

Why I learned To Love Charlie Chaplin

It would be Charlie Chaplin's 122nd birthday today. When i was young they would show his films on the television along with Harold Lloyd and other silent films and i was never very impressed, Laurel and Hardy hitting each other with ladders or Abbot and Costello being chased by a werewolf were much funnier.
It wasn't until i got older and found out what Charlie Chaplin stood for that i watched his films in an admirable light.
To many Charlie Chaplin was a comedy actor but when you find out he was a Communist, you see his films as he intended them as well aimed shots against poverty and inequality. Ironic as it was that at at his height he was the second largest earner in America, $13,000 a week from the Mutual Film Corporation.
Once he got to write and produce his own films, the common theme was always the poor guy handing it to the wealthy and powerful. This slipped under the radar as possibly Communist, as did his friendship with William Z. Foster, who would go on to become general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States of America.
It wasn't until he gave a speech in San Francisco which he addressed the audience as comrades several times and his powerful speech from The Dictator where Chaplin raged against world governments was reprinted in leaflets by the Communist Party that the FBI began taking a closer look at the Chaplin file.
Joe McCarthy's Un-American Committee and the Immigration and Naturalization Service interviewed him about his Communist links and while he was on a ship travelling to England to promote a film, he received a telegram informing him that his re-entry visa had been rescinded due to 'being a member of the Communist Party, with grave moral charges and with making statements that would indicate a leering, sneering attitude toward a country whose hospitality has enriched him.'
When you know all this and hear the Great Dictator speech where he has lines such as: 'In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone' and 'Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security', you realise that far from just being that man with a Hitler moustache who fell over a lot, he was subliminally showing pro-Communist messages to millions of Americans in the most anti-Communist country in the World and got paid $13,000 a week to do it.
Got to love that and now, if you didn't know of Chaplin's Communist leanings, and you have stumbled across this post and have read it down to here, you can never watch a Chaplin film ever again without his pro-Communist messages hitting you squarely between the eyes at every turn. What a stinker.

Gagarin, Armstrong & Laika

It's a shame that what Yuri Gagarin achieved will forever be equated with the Cold War and the Soviets and Americans ideological tussle rather than as one of our greatest achievements.
On the news channel RT (Russia Today) they were describing Gagarin's double of being the first human in space and the first human to orbit the earth as the most important achievement in the space race. As they would being proud Russians.
Over on CNN, it was acknowledged as a great achievement but they argued that the Apollo 11 mission and Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon as the pinnacle of the space race. As they would being rightly proud Americans.
Neil Armstrong is undoubtedly the more famous and his actions more symbolic but without Gagarin, Armstrong wouldn't have been stepping off that lander and into the history books.
Yuri’s space flight ensured that President John F Kennedy pushed the USA’s space ambitions up the list of priorities and there probably wouldn’t have been a man on the Moon just nine years later. Gagarin’s achievement could be said to have changed the course of world history.
Gagarin's could be the most important for mankind, he paved the way for every astronaut that followed, but Armstrong's the more significant because it showed man can leave our own planet, stand on other bodies in the solar system and return safely.
Unfortunately, once the moon was landed upon the space program cooled and the next giant step of a man on Mars, never materialised and due to financial constraints, is unlikely to be revived in our lifetime.
So instead of regressing back to the days of the Cold War we should celebrate both the Soviet and Americans feats, both as hugely important as each other and spare a sad thought for little Laika too who beat them both out of the Earths atmosphere.

There IS Something Out There

Anyone who has been watching the excellent 'Wonders of the Universe' would have heard Professor Brian Cox explain how our own galaxy contains billions of stars, and there are billions of other galaxies swirling around.
That's an extraordinary amount of planets orbiting those billions and billions of stars and potential homes of other forms of life.
I have always maintained the odds of their not being other life out there on other planets must be minuscule, it happened here so why not on any of those billions and billions of other solar systems?
Stories of little green men visiting us and inserting probes in unspeakable places has always generated rolling eyes and sniggering and probably the most debated extra-terrestrial event happened in 1947 when either a UFO or a weather balloon crash-landed on a farm near Roswell Air Base.
A press release put out by the Military Authorities at the time stated that they had recovered a UFO only for it to then be retracted 24 hours later.
Lieutenant Walter Haut, who was the PR man at the base in 1947, and who issued both the press releases after the crash, died and left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death which explained that the weather balloon claim was a cover story, and described seeing not just the crashed craft, but alien bodies.
Local undertaker Glenn Dennis has claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.
Now documents released by the FBI make the story even more intriguing.
One document dated 22 March 1950, special agent Guy Hottel, head of the FBI's Washington field office, wrote to Hoover with information on three "so-called flying saucers" that had crash-landed in New Mexico.
According to the memo above (click to enlarge), an air force investigator stated that three flying saucers had been recovered in the area, along with the bodies of the alien crews. The memo goes on to add: "Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots."
More Marvin the Martian than Ming the Merciless i agree but there seems to be something out there visiting us.
I just hope they left the probes at home.

Apologising For The British Empire

There are not many countries in the World who have not, at some point in their history, been a bit evil and had a slash and a hack at the population of some other country. Usually in order to take land or take the other countries resources. When a particular country takes over enough countries, it has itself an empire and as far back as the Assyrians in 2000 BC. there have been empire builders.
Britain at its peak, controlled the largest empire that the world had ever known, stretching all over the globe from North America to Australia and from Canada to the southern tip of Africa. These huge landmasses, their people and their natural resources were controlled and dominated by Britain.
Now some people will argue, and they do, that the British Empire was a force for good, dragging otherwise backward nations into the modern era and giving the world a unifying language and that is not really in dispute.
The truth behind the highly polished image is the ugly reality that the British Empire invaded, oppressed and oversaw countless atrocities and to agree with our Prime Minister, we are to blame for many of the current conflicts of the Worlds trouble spots.
Critics argue that there is nothing to be guilty about ignoring the recent exposure of a 50-year British government cover-up of official documents detailing the brutalisation, starvation, torture and castration of thousands of Kenyans in the 1950's and ignoring the coincidence that many of the world's conflicts are in former British colonies from Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq, Kurdistan, Yemen and Somalia to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Cyprus so you have to be wearing the most thickest of blinkers to dispute what Cameron said in Islamabad.
Of course, Britain's is only one of the colonial empires whose destructive inheritance can be felt across the world but the failure in modern Britain to recognise the empire for the murderous exploitation that it was is to excuse our disgraceful past behaviour while condemning others that did, or attempted to do, the same.
Histories most reviled imperialists were the Nazis and while we were probably not as bad as the Nazis, the British empire has done far greater and lasting damage than the Nazis by the very virtue of our being around for so much longer.
One does not need much of an imagination to realise the damage the British empire wreaked, glancing at the British Empire map and looking at where the problems are today should be obvious, but it amazes and saddens me that some people on my island are still of the opinion that Britain did these countries a big favour by ruling over them.
Should we apologise for our imperial legacy? Yes but saying sorry just doesn't seem enough somehow.

Revoking Obama's Peace Prize

When President Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, many of us questioned whether or not he deserved this honour. After all, he hadn’t done anything to be worthy of it and most thought that he was handed it for what he promised rather than what he had achieved and relief that George W Bush had left the scene.
Fast forward to 2011, and looking at what Obama has achieved, we have to questioning whether the prize should now be snatched back.
It is hard to justify his continual hanging on to the peace prize when he is Commander in Chief of the country presently involved in three separate conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.
If the award was given for the promise of peace, what has Obama done to vindicate the committee’s faith in him? Since 2009 we have seen him escalate the fighting in Afghanistan, moved it into Pakistan, the war in Iraq continues to bubble away in the background, has sent his jets to bomb Libya, ordered drone strikes in Yemen, Guantanamo Bay is still open for business and has allowed Israel free rein to destroy any hope of Middle East peace talks.
Even the most avid Obama supporter would be pushed to acknowledge the list resembles peace by any stretch of the imagination.
The left, particularly the anti-war groups that rightly hounded his predecessor, seem unable or unwilling to criticise Obama out of some delusional affinity for the American President and relief that Obama isn't the mad Texan.
The anti-war left needs to get it's act together because while we have been patting ourselves on the backs for hounding George W Bush over his wars, the man who presented himself as the peace candidate when campaigning for office has been merrily escalating Bush's existing wars and inciting new ones.
Not the man of peace we were expecting and such an undeserving recipient of the Peace Prize that the Nobel Foundation would be fully justified in asking for it back.

Cameron Hypocrisy

I do wonder sometimes if David Cameron's public relations people ever actually listen to what he says and sit there shaking their heads asking each other what can they do about the posh berk.
David 'all-in-this-together' Cameron, the man cutting money from schools, health, armed forces etc has stood up in Pakistan and told them 'Too many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all and that's not fair".
Someone remind me to order a new hypocrisy meter because mine has just exploded.
How i longed for a Pakistan journalist stand up and say but if we tax the rich in Pakistan won't they just move abroad or does this argument only apply when making excuses for the British bankers obscene wages?
He said that the British people would need convincing that every penny of the £650m aid designed to help recruit 9,000 extra teachers and put 4 million children into education was going to the right places.
Last time i checked I was British person and I ask why are we financially supporting a country that can afford nuclear weapons and a space programme?
I would also like to ask Dave when we being forced to painfully tighten our belts with slashing cuts, wage freezes and a benefit overhaul, how can we afford to offer up hundreds of millions of our money to Pakistan, bail out of Ireland and start a war in Libya?

Japan's Plan To Dump Radiation In Sea

What with everything else that has been going on around the globe, wars and such, the Japanese nuclear catastrophe has been pushed down the news agenda. The reactor is still leaking and contaminating the surrounding area and beyond, U.S. authorities detected trace amounts of radioactive material on the West Coast last week.
Now The Japanese government has said they plan to dump 11,500 tons of radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant at sea as a 'safety measure'.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company says the water to be discharged into the sea is only weakly radioactive so that's okay then, it's only weakly radioactive.
Surely Japan can't just dump radioactive material into the sea?
We all should have a say in whether they can dump this waste in the sea, how do we know it is only weakly radioactive and what does weakly radioactive mean?
There have been so many mixed messages from this catastrophe, how do we know we can trust them because they haven't been all that forthcoming so far and how do we know what affect this amount of waste will have? Where are Greenpeace because i will be interested in what they have to say about this plan. Does radiation even get diluted once in water or will it just spread the risk around other countries coastlines? What about the food chain?
I feel for the victims of this disaster, but surely dumping 11,500 tonnes of radiation into the sea is just madness and yet another example of why the sooner we rid ourselves of nuclear, the better.

Who Are The Libyan Rebels?

The fighting in Libya seems to have reached a bit of a stalemate between the pro-Gaddafi and rebel camps and the alliance between the Brits, French and Americans seem to be shaky at best and now news that the United States has began withdrawing its jets, ships and submarines from the operation to secure the no-fly zone over Libya.
The French and Brits seem quite gung-ho to carry on the missions and extending the UN Resolution to include attacking Gaddafi's troops, even arming the rebels, but Obama has been cautious from the start.
We hear a lot about the rebels actions, the media have even been calling them 'pro-democracy' on a few occasions, but finding out exactly what they stand for and what they will do with power once they achieve it has been less reported.
President Obama has admitted that 'Among all the people who are opposed to Qaddafi, there might not be elements that are friendly to the United States and our interests and that's why I think it's important for us not to jump in with both feet with all of them'.
When Obama says not friendly to the United States, could he mean Al Queada?
A Canadian intelligence report by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre stated in 2009: 'several Islamist insurgent groups were based in eastern Libya and mosques in Benghazi were urging followers to fight in Iraq'.
U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, said there were 'flickers of al-Qaeda in the Libyan opposition'.
Former CIA officer Bruce Riedel said: "There is no question that al Qaeda's Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition. It has always been Qaddafi's biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.'
A Wikileaks document dated 6/2/2008 reveals that 'a large number of suicide bombers (invariably described as "martyrs") and foreign fighters in Iraq hailed from Derna (East Libya), a fact in which the town takes great pride'. On the fighters return 'they had spearheaded campaigns against many aspects of daily life, such as smoking cigarettes, which they deemed "un-Islamic'.
The Daily Beast quotes an Al Queada commander as saying "This rebellion is the fresh breeze they've been waiting years for. They realize that if they don't use this opportunity, it could be the end of their chances to turn Libya toward a real Islamic state, as Afghanistan once was'.
Obama is right to want to pull back because we seem to be rushing to replace a bad regime with one that the evidence is pointing towards will be full of men who were fighting alongside Al Queada in Iraq a few months ago, is run by religious fundamentalists and have little sympathy for the West or democracy.
A long, hard look at the facts is needed before we continue backing or even worse, arming, these rebels.

Roll Up, Roll Up

About a month ago my husband asked me what i wanted for my birthday. I did the usual thing and shrugged and mumbled something about just getting me anything but i left a few hints laying around because the one thing i have always wanted was my own aircraft carrier. Nothing fancy, just as long as it had space for a few jets and the radar worked so we didn't get lost on those weekend trips around the Isle of Wight.
Turned out i got perfume and a jacket and my dream fades away for another year and to make it even more galling, the Ark Royal is up for sale on the MOD website where they sell off unwanted stock from the military.
Maybe a 10,000 ton ship was being a bit optimistic but also up for sale are 3 Type 42 Destroyers, HMS Exeter, HMS Southampton and HMS Nottingham although it might mean clearing out the garage to fit one of them in.
Due to the parking restrictions, i would have settled for a plane and how often do T5 Lightning Jets come up for sale. Admittedly the engine in the one for sale has been removed and it's in Skegness and it is buyer collects but still, a fighter jet would have been nice.
Oh well, there is always Christmas and at the rate the Government is selling off anything that isn't nailed down, i may well be turning up at 2012 New Years parties in a Challenger Tank.

HMS What?

Quiet down class and turn your history books to page 116, World warships.
I don't want any repeat of the disorder we had in the last lesson when we found out the American navy has a warship called USS Ponce. Yes Jilly, i agree it is a funny name and no Danny, i'm sure it wasn't named after the lead singer from the Scissor Sisters.
So for today's lesson, i would like to concentrate on some other ships without the juvenile snickering thank you very much.
As you can see on page 116, we have real ships from the Royal Navy flower class. From left to right we have HMS Begonia, HMS Bluebell, HMS Buttercup, HMS Candytuft, HMS Cowslip, HMS Honeysuckle, HMS Lavender, HMS Marigold, HMS Pansy, HMS Petunia, HMS Pink, HMS Primrose, HMS Rhododendron and HMS Snowdrop.
I'm sure i don't know if Prince Andrew served on HMS Pansy Karen but we can check later.
On the next page we have one of the flagships of the Titan Shipping Co who name their ships after planets. Hence Titan Uranus. Yes, i'm sure it is full of seaman Danny.
Okay, the last ship i would like to look at is the insect class gunboat, HMS Cockchafer...oh i give up.