1/10 So have I ever told you about my great grandad Frederick "Fred" Woolfenden? He was born near Oldham in 1901. I don't know much about his early life, but I know when he met my great gran he was a boxer, streetfighter and one of those fairground fighters who you take on for ££

2/10 My great gran, who herself was a game old bird, described him as a proper tough bast*rd, Anyway, as if being punched in the beak for a living wasn't enough. He and my gran decided to move to Fleetwood and Fred decided to try his luck at sea.
3/10 For most of his time at sea he was either a fireman or deckhand on "coal burners" fishing Iceland & the North Atlantic. An immensely tough job and life. When the second world war started in 1939 being a fisherman was a reserved occupation.
4/10 They continued fishing despite the risk of mines and U-boats. In Sept of 1939 Fred was part of the crew of the "Arlita" (FD188) fishing near St Kilda. All of a sudden this bugger popped up.
5/10 The sub rounded up two other trawlers put all the crews on one and sank the other two. Fred made it through the war, despite another submarine incident and continued to go to sea. In 1947 he was part of the crew of the trawler Dhoon.
6/10 I've always though that the name "Dhoon" was very spooky. The Dhoon got itself in trouble in a storm off the Westfjords of Iceland. The boat crashed into rocks at the summit of sheer cliffs.
7/10 Things on the Dhoon got so desperate that the crew lashed their arms to the guard rails of the trawler as not to get washed overboard. Unfortunately where Fred, the skipper and mate lashed themselves to, got blown away by waves and wind. Fred was never seen again.
8/10 But the tale does not end there. There were still 12 crew onboard battling for their lives. Their salvation came in the form of a group of Icelandic farmers for whom the word "brave" does not even begin to describe them.
9/10 In a gale force storm these rescuers using ropes and scaling the cliffs rescued the rest of the crew. I personally know people who would not be here if it wasn't for the actions of those farmers.
10/10 There is a memorial to the rescue and every so often the farmers that live in the area light three candles there (Not four candles 😂) and one of them is for Fred. So cheers @thisisiceland and here's to you Great grandad Fred! @UKinIceland

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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.


I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
Funny, before the election I recall lefties muttering the caravan must have been a Trump setup because it made the open borders crowd look so bad. Why would the pro-migrant crowd engineer a crisis that played into Trump's hands? THIS is why. THESE are the "optics" they wanted.


This media manipulation effort was inspired by the success of the "kids in cages" freakout, a 100% Stalinist propaganda drive that required people to forget about Obama putting migrant children in cells. It worked, so now they want pics of Trump "gassing children on the border."

There's a heavy air of Pallywood around the whole thing as well. If the Palestinians can stage huge theatrical performances of victimhood with the willing cooperation of Western media, why shouldn't the migrant caravan organizers expect the same?

It's business as usual for Anarchy, Inc. - the worldwide shredding of national sovereignty to increase the power of transnational organizations and left-wing ideology. Many in the media are true believers. Others just cannot resist the narrative of "change" and "social justice."

The product sold by Anarchy, Inc. is victimhood. It always boils down to the same formula: once the existing order can be painted as oppressors and children as their victims, chaos wins and order loses. Look at the lefties shrieking in unison about "Trump gassing children" today.