The amount of space at the disposal of newspapers, and the want of something to talk about and write about, produced that mild autumnal effect known as the silly season, which sets in when there is a lull in politics, and a dearth of news.

When I read of witty persons, I could not figure them but like the little shock. (translating the German Spitz)

As for the IRP, Secretary of State Grant Shapps continues to peddle snake oil, smoke and mirrors. His reaction to near-universal IRP condemnation from politicians, local and national media, and all but a few rail specialists was to dismiss the lot of us (in the condescending and patronising tone we have now come to expect) as critics and naysayers.

The annihilation campaigns proved failures and the Chinese Communists escaped to begin their epic Long March, a trek of a year's duration (1934-35) to the northwest to Yen-an (Yan'an) north of Sian. En route, at Tsunyi (Zunyi), out of contact with Moscow, they elected Mao Tse-tung as their leader and accepted his Sinified version of Marxism, Mao Tse-tung Thought, as their ideology. The remnants of the party, on arrival in Yen-an, lived in caves, licked their wounds, and set about builidng a party and army structure based on Mao's view that the leading revolutionary class in China was the peasantry.