Features

A tale of three Elizabeths

Published

3 years ago

2022/09/18

Thilina Walpola

By Michael Patrick O’Leary

England’s Glory

My mother had the same name as the UK’s latest and current (as I write) prime minister. My mother was Elizabeth Jane King and when she married Jeremiah O’Leary, the Irish labourer who helped to build her parents’ house, number 9, Stanway Road, Coney Hill, Gloucester, she became Elizabeth O’Leary. When Mary Elizabeth Truss married Liverpool accountant Hugh O’Leary she became Elizabeth O’Leary, just like my mother.

During the Second World War my father served in the Pioneer Corps and on June 6, 1944, D-Day, he was on the Normandy beaches burying the dead. My mother worked at the factory of GAC, Brtockworth. This was the Gloster Aircraft Company (spelt that way because it was easier for customers outside the UK) – since 1935 part of Hawker Siddeley Aircraft, Ltd. GAC Gloster received a contract in early 1940 – to design and build Britain’s first jet aircraft. It is interesting to note that Frank Whittle, who invented the jet engine, proposed to Stafford Cripps, Minister of Aircraft Production, that all jet development be nationalised. He pointed out that the company had been funded by private investors who helped develop the engine successfully, only to see production contracts go to other companies. Nationalisation was the only way to repay those debts and ensure a fair deal for everyone, and he was willing to surrender his shares in Power Jets to make this happen. Two airframes were built secretly. Because of the risk of bombing, one of the aircraft was built offsite from Brockworth at Regent Motors Cheltenham. The jet design became the Gloster Meteor, the only jet to be used in combat by the Allied Forces during the Second World War. We used to have a model of the Meteor, made by one of my mother’s workmates, as a doorstop in my childhood home.

Princess Elizabeth and her family earned great praise for staying in London during the Blitz. My mother’s youngest sibling, my Aunty Evelyn, told me that she ran home from school in Coney Hill during an air raid, with German bombs falling all around her. Although on a map Gloucester looks to be well inland, it is, because of the Sharpness Canal, a port and the docks, with their mariners’ chapel, are today a tourist attraction. The aircraft factories would have attracted the attention of the Luftwaffe.

England’s glory

Another of my mother’s sisters, my Aunty Joyce, apparently did sterling work for Anglo-American good will during the war and afterwards worked alongside my Aunty Joan, making England’s Glory matches at the Moreland’s Match Factory, on Bristol Road, Gloucester, near the Berkeley Canal. It was outside this factory that Elizabeth II waved and smiled at me when she paid a visit in 1954, the year that wartime rationing ended.

I was well aware of the Royal Family while living with the King family at number 9, Stanway Road. Over my bed was a picture of George VI with a quotation from his Christmas speech to the Empire in 1939.

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.

And he replied:

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”.

This was from a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins written in 1908 and privately published in 1912. In a book published for Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday it is claimed that it was the young Princess Elizabeth herself, aged 13, who handed the poem to her father.

I remember the death of George VI. I compiled a scrapbook in which I, rather messily, glued pictures of his funeral from the newspapers. I remember more vividly the coronation of Elizabeth II. Like many households in Britain, the King family of Coney Hill acquired a television specifically to watch the coronation. The set was a very different kind of gadget from the huge smart monsters that grace every living room today, spying on their owners. This was not home cinema. The screen was small and encased in a wooden box. When not in use there were doors to shut to protect the screen and at night a cloth was draped over the cabinet in the same way that the budgie’s cage was covered.

I also watched the proceedings in glorious Technicolor at the cinema. Despite June, it was a rainy day for the event but the gloom was lightened by the presence of the monumental (she was six-foot three in her prime) Queen Salote of Tonga. She refused a hood for her carriage and rode through the pouring rain in an open carriage with Sultan Ibrahim IV of Kelantan, endearing herself to spectators. Among the spectators was Noël Coward who was attending a party with a good view of the procession. A guest asked, “who is that little man with Queen Salote?” Coward replied, “he is her lunch.” The minuscule Sultan may have been but an hors d’oeuvre but he had six wives and 27 children.

Fragmentation of the Nation

The NHS was born two years after me. My mother worked for the institution for many years and got me a job as a hospital porter at Gloucester Royal Infirmary in 1969. From 1988 to 1993, I worked as an NHS management consultant and saw at first hand the “reforms” brought in by that nice Kenneth Clark who has the same taste in jazz as me. The changes laid the groundwork for the eventual privatisation of a much-loved and admired institution. Privatisation of nationalised industries was an essential part of the Conservative Thatcherite creed but was taken up with enthusiasm by Labour leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Two of their health secretaries have moved from far left philosophies to lucrative positions in the private health care industry. Alan Milburn used to run a radical left bookshop in Newcastle called Days of Hope which was rechristened by local wags as Haze of Dope. Milburn became an adviser to Bridgepoint Capital, a venture capital firm backing private health companies in Britain and worked 18 days a year advising Cinven, a private equity, which owns 37 private hospitals. In January 2008, it was announced that another Labour Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, had been appointed ‘special consultant’ to the world’s largest chemists, Boots. Hewitt also became a ‘special adviser’ to Cinven.

My father worked for a nationalised industry. It was the South Western Gas Board then. The British Gas Corporation was privatised as a result of the Gas Act 1986, instigated by the government of Margaret Thatcher. This was criticised at the time for replacing one monopoly with another. Today, a consumer might feel nostalgic about the days of benign state monopoly. Today, Centrica owns British Gas. CEO Chris O’Shea gets an annual salary of £775,000 salary but has nobly forgone his £1.1 million bonus. British Gas Energy saw a 44 percent jump in profits to £118 million last year. Its parent company posted a £948 million group profit which goes to shadowy entities like asset management firms Schroders and Abrdn and banks such as Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY Mellon) with no public accountability. Consumers look forward to a grim winter because they cannot afford to pay their energy bills and eat as well.

British Rail was not loved but privatisation was not the answer to its problems. When John Major was prime minister all the obvious privatisations had been done but he wanted one to be remembered for. He proceeded to do to British Rail what he had done to Edwina Curry. I am moderating my language here for a family audience. Who thought it was a good idea to split a national network up into multiple franchises each with their own timetables and pricing and ticketing systems? All the companies are foreign-owned. Instead of taking back control the UK has ransomed its fortune to foreign companies, some of them nationalised state organisations.

Water privatisation always seemed an unacceptable step. Why not enable companies to profit from the air that we breathe? People are being exhorted to save water but the privatised water companies are wasting untold gallons through leaks while paying out dividends to their foreign shareholders. The amount of raw sewage that water companies are pumping into the seas and rivers has increased by no less than 2,553 per cent over the past five years.

Liz Truss continues to pursue the fantasy that further outsourcing and deregulation will solve the horrendous problems that previous outsourcing and deregulation wrought. Providing services through outsourcing ensures a fragmentation which means no one can be blamed for anything.

Here is a little personal vignette which nicely illustrates what a Ponzi scam privatisation and outsourcing is. Recently, we decided to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary by renting an apartment in a Regency house in Bath Spa. We travelled from Paddington by rail. I had the foresight to reserve seats in advance but had not reckoned with GWR (one of the franchises) cutting the train from nine coaches to five without any prior announcement and cancelling all seat reservations. It was bad enough standing in a cramped corridor with unmasked strangers breathing viruses in one’s face, one also had to endure repeated whingeing apologies from the “train manager” who assured us that we could seek recompense. GWR’s response was that they had no responsibility because I had bought my ticket online from Trainline (a Branson company). It was not Trainline who had cut the train to five carriages. Of course, Trainline refuses to compensate me and there is no easy way to get in touch with them. More about customer service next week.

Queen Elizabeth II died soon after meeting her new prime minister, Liz Truss. What kind of country is King Charles III inheriting? How will Liz Truss manage what is left of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth that Elizabeth II held so dear? So far, it looks as though she will carry on supporting the ghastly bunch of spivs that have got us into this mess.England’s Glory matches are now made in Sweden.

All News Advertisement

Features

Acid test emerges for US-EU ties

Published

14 hours ago

2026/01/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday put forward the EU’s viewpoint on current questions in international politics with a clarity, coherence and eloquence that was noteworthy. Essentially, she aimed to leave no one in doubt that a ‘new form of European independence’ had emerged and that European solidarity was at a peak.

These comments emerge against the backdrop of speculation in some international quarters that the Post-World War Two global political and economic order is unraveling. For example, if there was a general tacit presumption that US- Western European ties in particular were more or less rock-solid, that proposition apparently could no longer be taken for granted.

For instance, while US President Donald Trump is on record that he would bring Greenland under US administrative control even by using force against any opposition, if necessary, the EU Commission President was forthright that the EU stood for Greenland’s continued sovereignty and independence.

In fact at the time of writing, small military contingents from France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands are reportedly already in Greenland’s capital of Nook for what are described as limited reconnaissance operations. Such moves acquire added importance in view of a further comment by von der Leyen to the effect that the EU would be acting ‘in full solidarity with Greenland and Denmark’; the latter being the current governing entity of Greenland.

It is also of note that the EU Commission President went on to say that the ‘EU has an unwavering commitment to UK’s independence.’ The immediate backdrop to this observation was a UK decision to hand over administrative control over the strategically important Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to Mauritius in the face of opposition by the Trump administration. That is, European unity in the face of present controversial moves by the US with regard to Greenland and other matters of contention is an unshakable ‘given’.

It is probably the fact that some prominent EU members, who also hold membership of NATO, are firmly behind the EU in its current stand-offs with the US that is prompting the view that the Post-World War Two order is beginning to unravel. This is, however, a matter for the future. It will be in the interests of the contending quarters concerned and probably the world to ensure that the present tensions do not degenerate into an armed confrontation which would have implications for world peace.

However, it is quite some time since the Post-World War Two order began to face challenges. Observers need to take their minds back to the Balkan crisis and the subsequent US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the immediate Post-Cold War years, for example, to trace the basic historic contours of how the challenges emerged. In the above developments the seeds of global ‘disorder’ were sown.

Such ‘disorder’ was further aggravated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine four years ago. Now it may seem that the world is reaping the proverbial whirlwind. It is relevant to also note that the EU Commission President was on record as pledging to extend material and financial support to Ukraine in its travails.

Currently, the international law and order situation is such that sections of the world cannot be faulted for seeing the Post World War Two international order as relentlessly unraveling, as it were. It will be in the interests of all concerned for negotiated solutions to be found to these global tangles. In fact von der Leyen has committed the EU to finding diplomatic solutions to the issues at hand, including the US-inspired tariff-related squabbles.

Given the apparent helplessness of the UN system, a pre-World War Two situation seems to be unfolding, with those states wielding the most armed might trying to mould international power relations in their favour. In the lead-up to the Second World War, the Hitlerian regime in Germany invaded unopposed one Eastern European country after another as the League of Nations stood idly by. World War Two was the result of the Allied Powers finally jerking themselves out of their complacency and taking on Germany and its allies in a full-blown world war.

However, unlike in the late thirties of the last century, the seeming number one aggressor, which is the US this time around, is not going unchallenged. The EU which has within its fold the foremost of Western democracies has done well to indicate to the US that its power games in Europe are not going unmonitored and unchecked. If the US’ designs to take control of Greenland and Denmark, for instance, are not defeated the world could very well be having on its hands, sooner rather than later, a pre-World War Two type situation.

Ironically, it is the ‘World’s Mightiest Democracy’ which is today allowing itself to be seen as the prime aggressor in the present round of global tensions. In the current confrontations, democratic opinion the world over is obliged to back the EU, since it has emerged as the principal opponent of the US, which is allowing itself to be seen as a fascist power.

Hopefully sane counsel would prevail among the chief antagonists in the present standoff growing, once again, out of uncontainable territorial ambitions. The EU is obliged to lead from the front in resolving the current crisis by diplomatic means since a region-wide armed conflict, for instance, could lead to unbearable ill-consequences for the world.

It does not follow that the UN has no role to play currently. Given the existing power realities within the UN Security Council, the UN cannot be faulted for coming to be seen as helpless in the face of the present tensions. However, it will need to continue with and build on its worldwide development activities since the global South in particular needs them very badly.

The UN needs to strive in the latter directions more than ever before since multi-billionaires are now in the seats of power in the principle state of the global North, the US. As the charity Oxfam has pointed out, such financially all-powerful persons and allied institutions are multiplying virtually incalculably. It follows from these realities that the poor of the world would suffer continuous neglect. The UN would need to redouble its efforts to help these needy sections before widespread poverty leads to hemispheric discontent.

Features

Brighten up your skin …

Published

14 hours ago

2026/01/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

Hi! This week I’ve come up with tips to brighten up your skin.

* Turmeric and Yoghurt Face Pack:

You will need 01 teaspoon of turmeric powder and 02 tablespoons of fresh yoghurt.

Mix the turmeric and yoghurt into a smooth paste and apply evenly on clean skin. Leave it for 15–20 minutes and then rinse with lukewarm water

Benefits:

Reduces pigmentation, brightens dull skin and fights acne-causing bacteria.

* Lemon and Honey Glow Pack:

Mix 01teaspoon lemon juice and 01 tablespoon honey and apply it gently to the face. Leave for 10–15 minutes and then wash off with cool water.

Benefits:

Lightens dark spots, improves skin tone and deeply moisturises. By the way, use only 01–02 times a week and avoid sun exposure after use.

* Aloe Vera Gel Treatment:

All you need is fresh aloe vera gel which you can extract from an aloe leaf. Apply a thin layer, before bedtime, leave it overnight, and then wash face in the morning.

Benefits:

Repairs damaged skin, lightens pigmentation and adds natural glow.

* Rice Flour and Milk Scrub:

You will need 01 tablespoon rice flour and 02 tablespoons fresh milk.

Mix the rice flour and milk into a thick paste and then massage gently in circular motions. Leave for 10 minutes and then rinse with water.

Benefits:

Removes dead skin cells, improves complexion, and smoothens skin.

* Tomato Pulp Mask:

Apply the tomato pulp directly, leave for 15 minutes, and then rinse with cool water

Benefits:

Controls excess oil, reduces tan, and brightens skin naturally.

Features

Shooting for the stars …

Published

14 hours ago

2026/01/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

That’s precisely what 25-year-old Hansana Balasuriya has in mind – shooting for the stars – when she was selected to represent Sri Lanka on the international stage at Miss Intercontinental 2025, in Sahl Hasheesh, Egypt.

The grand finale is next Thursday, 29th January, and Hansana is all geared up to make her presence felt in a big way.

Her journey is a testament to her fearless spirit and multifaceted talents … yes, her life is a whirlwind of passion, purpose, and pageantry.

Raised in a family of water babies (Director of The Deep End and Glory Swim Shop), Hansana’s love affair with swimming began in childhood and then she branched out to master the “art of 8 limbs” as a Muay Thai fighter, nailed Karate and Kickboxing (3-time black belt holder), and even threw herself into athletics (literally!), especially throwing events, and netball, as well.

A proud Bishop’s College alumna, Hansana’s leadership skills also shone bright as Senior Choir Leader.

She earned a BA (Hons) in Business Administration from Esoft Metropolitan University, and then the world became her playground.

Before long, modelling and pageantry also came into her scene.

She says she took to part-time modelling, as a hobby, and that led to pageants, grabbing 2nd Runner-up titles at Miss Nature Queen and Miss World Sri Lanka 2025.

When she’s not ruling the stage, or pool, Hansana’s belting tunes with Soul Sounds, Sri Lanka’s largest female ensemble.

What’s more, her artistry extends to drawing, and she loves hitting the open road for long drives, she says.

This water warrior is also on a mission – as Founder of Wave of Safety,

Hansana happens to be the youngest Executive Committee Member of the Sri Lanka Aquatic Sports Union (SLASU) and, as founder of Wave of Safety, she’s spreading water safety awareness and saving lives.

Today is Hansana’s ninth day in Egypt and the itinerary for today, says National Director for Sri Lanka, Brian Kerkoven, is ‘Jeep Safari and Sunset at the Desert.’

And … the all-important day at Miss Intercontinental 2025 is next Thursday, 29th January.

Well, good luck to Hansana.