Monthly Archives: August 2017

Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

How the Bar of England and Wales Became a Dustbin

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I recognize, in writing about the Bar and having been myself disbarred for political reasons last year, that I shall probably be accused of some species of sour grapes. Not so. My disbarment in late 2016 at the instigation of a pack of Jewish Zionists had no practical effect on me beyond a couple of days of newspaper and Twitter nonsense. I ceased practice at the English Bar in 2008 and last appeared in court (Central London County Court, a three-day construction case) in December 2007. The views I am about to express were mine, in essence, then too.

What is “the Bar”, what is its purpose or role and what prompts me to call it “a dustbin”?

There is no point in going into long history or explanation. It is enough to say that the English Bar grew organically out of British history and society intimately connected with the struggle for free speech against the tyrannical tendency inherent in monarchical rule. I suppose that, today, a figure such as John Hampden is less well known by, e.g. schoolchildren than, say, Nelson Mandela, just as the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, has been eclipsed by the minor figure of Mary Seacole (who set up a tea-room in the Crimean War). “They established brainwashing and called it education.”

At any rate, it can be said that the institution of the Bar, meaning the independent Bar, the Bar independent of the State, grew at least partly out of that struggle for the rights of the individual as against the power of the State. Free speech was part of it, as were the rights of property (set against the mediaeval feudal system of royal and baronial –etc– patronage).

It is this very independence of the Bar which has now largely been destroyed, though remnants remain. The Bar has become entangled with the State. Civil and criminal legal aid, in many ways very useful for society and individual persons (criminal defendants, and those making or defending a civil claim), yet has had the effect of making the Bar dependent on State patronage. The proliferation of quangos requiring chairpersons and/or legal advisers has made many barristers further dependent, financially, on the State, in effect at least. Finally, the adoption of a Zionist-drafted and/or influenced “Code of Conduct”, increasingly draconian in its enforcement and enforced by an increasingly-active regulatory body (the Bar Standards Board) has made many at the Bar afraid of their own shadows.

When I was a student of law, I graduated (aged 30) in 1987. At that time, there was only one place to take the then “Bar Finals course” (a one-year course for most students)– the Inns of Court School of Law, located in Gray’s Inn. That was inconvenient for those whose usual residence was far from London, but it had the merit that barristers emerged from the same institution and often acquainted to some extent with each other. Though there were over a thousand students, many were foreign citizens almost all of whom would return to practise law in their home countries (many eventually to lead those countries politically, or even to found states, as did Gandhi and Jinnah).

During the 1990s, the Bar Finals course, sub nom Bar Vocational Course, was changed to be less academic, more practical. There were benefits to that in terms of the confidence of young barristers, but the drawback was that, bluntly, it became easier to become a barrister.

The Inns of Court School lost its monopoly under the influence of globalism and ensuing legislation, the Bar being regarded as just another “business” offering “legal services” to “consumers”. Soon a multitude of “service providers” (universities, former polytechnics etc) offered “Bar” courses. That remains the case today. A barrister now is simply someone who has acquired two pieces of paper: a “degree” of some sort and a certificate that the requisite Bar course has been completed (and few fail these days…).

The only thing preventing untold thousands more practising at the Bar is the pupillage bottleneck, but many are now allowed to “complete pupillage” in places like government departments, so it is perfectly possible to have substandard barristers (practising in court and advising people) who have a degree from a place which is little more than a degree mill, a Bar qualification which is given to almost all who take the course and a pupillage as an office bod in, say, a provincial government department building.

There has always been a space and vacancy problem at the Bar, both for practising barristers and pupil-barristers: until recent years, barristers were often squashed into inadequate rooms in the Inns, four or more to a room in some chambers. That is less acute now because chambers are able to exist, even in London, outside the Inns. However, that too has led to problems. Sets of barristers were established outside the Inns of Court. Some were good, others less good. One example in the 1990s called itself “Brick Lane Chambers” and was composed largely of Bangladeshis and others unable to work elsewhere. It was given a subsidy by the notorious  Tower Hamlets Council, based on numbers of “legal service providers” available, the idea being to increase “legal service provision” in an area supposedly without much.

I knew a barrister (still in practice today) whose name was fraudulently added to the “Brick Lane Chambers” list in order for those chambers to get extra money from the local council. She was not alone. She complained and her name was taken off the list, but no action was taken by the local council or the Bar itself in respect of a deliberate and egregious fraud. At that time, the Bar had already embarked on its “let’s not annoy the ethnic minorities” journey.

As a Bar student, I proposed (but not officially) a different idea, which would have safeguarded the Bar’s integrity: to found a fifth Inn of Court. That, however, would have involved huge cost, for one thing. It also would have required the clearance of a large site in Central London. Instead, sets of poor barristers started above laundromats and in shopfront premises (others moved from the Inns into far better circumstances).

Now we come to the regulation of the Bar. The Code of Conduct, once a slim volume, perfectly workable and focussed on trust and integrity, became a thick sheaf of papers packed with the politically-correct shibboleths of the day. It has, in its application, destroyed the independence of mind of the Bar. I refer the reader to my own experience:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/

As to recruits to the Bar, many now are brainwashed into a politically-correct mindset and (bearing in mind the pressure on pupillages and tenancies) few are willing to do anything but condemn those who (like me) are thought to have controversial views. They fail to see that their doormatting to the Jewish-Zionist element will not help most of them much. When I was at school in the 1970s, there were about 5,000 practising barristers; when I was Called to the Bar (1991) there were about 10,000 or so, I believe. Now that figure is something like 18,000! Meanwhile, criminal and other legal aid has been slashed and “solicitor-advocates” appear in court too. The result has been that the prestige of the Bar has plummeted. I do not regret that I no longer practise.

For the public, for society, the result of the Bar’s fall has been that the service available is more limited, poorer and that the independent voice of an independent barrister is muted. Just as, in the journalistic milieu, “journalists” of today (particularly online) are often twenty-somethings with no real training or education, their heads full of politically-correct nonsense, the Bar is now full of “barristers” who are really just barristers on paper, men of straw (women too), without real substance. The “journalists” thus cravenly welcome censorship and the “barristers” are unwilling to be seen as even listening to contrary views, let alone standing up for freedom of expression.

environment, ethnostate, society, Uncategorized, wildlife

The British Countryside under the Future Ethnostate

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A few months ago, someone won about £100 million on one of the lotteries. I have no idea who that was, or whether his (or her) use of the monies won will go beyond the usual and indeed banal new house, new car, holiday in the sun scenario, but that massive win led me to thoughts beyond the determination to buy more tickets myself.

For example, £100M would buy somewhere around 10% of the land area of the Isle of Wight (along with country houses, farmhouses etc). Alternatively, a fairly large part of Scotland could be bought (multi-thousand-acre Highlands or Islands estates now selling for, in some cases anyway, only a few million pounds).

The above thoughts led me in turn to consider how the UK countryside could be changed for the better under a different kind of state. A ban on hunting, certainly; a ban on commercial shooting too. Along with those, there would probably have to be a reordering of rural land ownership. There would be, to start, a cap on the acreage any one individual, company, trust or family could own. This is not the place to get exact about figures, but the maximum land acreage held would obviously have to differ in different parts of the UK: a thousand acres in the Scottish Highlands is not to be equated with the same amount in Surrey.

The subject of farming subsidies has to be addressed. The present situation which (in essence) rewards landowners simply for holding (owning) land is unjust, achieves little and is a waste of public monies. It transfers monies from people in general to those who, in most cases, are already wealthier. It also has poor ecological or environmental results.

George Monbiot, the writer and environmental activist, has raised the issue of the present system of subsidizing hill farmers to own land (on which they usually produce sheep). Withdrawal of subsidy would mean that most such small and relatively poor farmers would go out of business. However, that unfortunate fact should not be the determining factor. The hillsides can be allowed to revert to forest, either by simply leaving the hills to rewild, or in a more controlled way, by selective planting of trees and other plants. This would have several benefits, including upstream flood control.

There may be some scope for limited subsidy on the basis of farmers setting aside areas for nature (this was once part of the UK farming subsidy scheme). There should also be a wildlife grid consisting of strips and blocks of (in many cases) privately-held and maintained wild or rewilded land, organized however by a state commission. The idea of the wildlife grid would be to allow animals and birds to travel easily across the country, free from interference. The grid would interface with areas already given considerable protection, such as the existing national parks.

There may be the opportunity to experiment with less-usual forms of land-holding, such as collectives of “New Age” or other persons, to be given leases by the State (as freeholder) for various terms of years. The average age of a British farmer is now 59. There must be ways found to rejuvenate the personnel in agriculture.

There would be the possibility, under a different governmental philosophy from that now dominant, to encourage production of fruit and vegetables and to discourage the production of meat, particularly under harsh industrialized conditions.

There could be State encouragement of very small scale horticultural production, e.g. by giving tax relief for people giving over part of their house gardens to the growing of fruits and vegetables. It is estimated that, in the UK, agricultural land amounts to some 42 million acres; however, private gardens and small parks amount to about 10 million. In past wartime situations, part of that acreage has been intensively cultivated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

The Soviet Union in the 1970s permitted private plots of up to (in some Soviet republics and toward the end of the Soviet period) about 5 acres, though the usual limit laid down in 1935 was around an acre (2+ acres in “special districts”, particularly in countries like Georgia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot. In the 1970s, the private plots were about 2% of all utilized agricultural land, but produced 40% of the produce of the Soviet Union. Instructive.

Another area where there could and should be huge improvement in the UK is the production of nuts, particularly those suited to the prevailing climatic conditions: chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts. In fact, those upland areas no longer farmed for sheep by subsidized small farmers would be ideal for such trees on the large scale. In Kyrgyzstan, there are natural walnut forests. Why not in the UK too?

So we see the possible future take shape: a UK with greater forest cover, with greater wild or rewilded acreage, with many private householders cultivating part of their gardens, perhaps using small greenhouses too. In the rural areas, traditional farming being supplemented by new collectives of cultivators. A wildlife grid to make the natural world safer and more prolific. More small-scale hydropower and solar-power schemes. More vegetable, fruit and nut production, not so much emphasis on meat and dairy produce. Greater linkage via the Internet.

It is clear that, in the countryside as in other areas of national life, change must come.

Alison Chabloz, Alt-Right, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, Carl Benjamin, Colin Robertson, Count Dankula, David Icke, free speech, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, Mark Meechan, Millennial Woes, Nick Griffin, Paul Watson, Prison Planet, Sargon of Akkad, society, Tommy Robinson, Uncategorized

The New UK Crown Prosecution Service Guidelines on “Hate Crime”: Thoughts and Suggestions

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Background

Yesterday, Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, announced updated and expanded “guidelines” on how the Crown Prosecution Service will deal with so-called “hate crime”. These new guidelines have been heavily criticized as, in effect, creating new and tyrannical law, despite the fact that the guidelines are neither primary nor secondary legislation.

In this blog post, I examine only those aspects of relevance to socio-political tweeting etc, meaning in practice those with a racial or religious element.

Part of the concern around the guidelines revolves around Alison Saunders herself. Many regard her as a sinister though incompetent figure, a “graduate” (member) of the pervasive and infiltrative organization (some say “cult”) called Common Purpose. In 2013, when Alison Saunders was CPS chief for the London area, a Freedom of Information request was made as to her connection with Common Purpose. At first, the reply was affirmative, but that was then altered to negative:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/alison_saundersgraduate_of_commohttps://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/alison_saundersgraduate_of_commo

The answer is relevant to the new CPS guidelines because the motto of Common Purpose is “Leading Beyond Authority”. In other words, the citizens of the UK cannot rely any more on law or decent public administration, because organizations such as the CPS, full of “CP” “graduates”, will, it is suspected, manipulate the regulations etc in order to achieve a desired (by them) result.

Definition of “Hate Crime”

It is vital to note that there is no statutory (or accepted Common Law) definition of “hate crime”:

“A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech: hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct which is already criminal under other laws.” [Wikipedia]

Wikipedia continues: “For England, Wales, and Scotland, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 makes hateful behaviour towards a victim based on the victim’s membership (or presumed membership) in a racial group or a religious group an aggravation in sentencing for specified crimes.”

In other words, there must first be a crime as designated by law and only then can that alleged crime (if one of those “specified”, i.e. assault, criminal damage, offences under the Public Order Act 1986, and offences under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997) be treated by the police and CPS as a “hate crime.” The new guidelines reflect that existing position:

“The police and the CPS have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:

“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.”

“There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike.”

It will be noted that there must first be a criminal offence. If there is not, then it matters not at all how “unfriendly”, “prejudiced” etc is the alleged perpetrator.

Further, sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 require a court to consider whether any crime which is not specified by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 is “racially or religiously aggravated.”

Incredibly, while the police and/or CPS will “flag” a case as a “hate crime”, “it is not CPS policy to remove a flag in the absence of sufficient evidence to support a sentence uplift. This in part reflects the commitment to treat hate crime seriously and to support the victim’s perception and also to encourage community confidence in reporting all such offending.”

So a crime which is “flagged” at first as a “hate crime” but for which flagging there is eventually no evidence, will still be treated, in Court, as a “hate crime”, resulting (on conviction) in a far more severe sentence. How can this be regarded as in any way just?

The guidelines now continue:

“If the case passes the evidential stage and it is a case of racial or religious hate crime, or it is motivated by discrimination against the victim’s ethnic or national origin, or religion or belief, it is more likely that a prosecution is required in the public interest.”

This is a hardening of the position taken in the earlier CPS guidance and may mean an increase in the number of prosecutions. However, there is still a requirement for a substantive crime to have been committed and there is still a requirement for sufficient evidence to support prosecution. New crimes have not been created, but the danger is that zealous CPS and –especially– police persons will get the bit between their teeth and start to ignore the basics in their quest to hunt the witches. Anyone who has read the outpourings of the UK police forces online recently will not be reassured as to their objectivity in this respect. There is an unthinking “me-too” political correctness abroad, one which seems impervious to logic, argument, reason or plain commonsense.

Other Aspects Relevant to a Charge

The CPS legal guidance for its staff can be found here:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/racist_and_religious_crime/

The full details can be found via the above link but one key element is that there must be one or more identifiable “victims” of the “crime”. In other words, if there is no identifiable victim, then the matter falls in respect of the “hostility” required under the relevant statutes.

How the CPS regards freedom of expression

“In deciding upon the public interest of charging these offences it is essential that prosecutors keep in mind that in a free, democratic and tolerant society people are able to robustly exchange views, even when these may cause offence. However, the rights of the individual to freedom of expression must be balanced against the duty of the state to act proportionately in the interests of public safety, to prevent disorder and crime, and to protect the rights of others.”

Other Thoughts

It is noteworthy that the body of the new guidance neither mentions nor lists the Communications Act 2003, s.127 as among the statutes utilized in the prosecution of “hate crime”. However, under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, ss.145 and 146 (see hereinabove), anyone sentenced for having posted a “grossly offensive” tweet (etc) under the 2003 Act can receive a sentence uplift if the offending tweeting (etc) had a “hate crime” element (the maximum sentence being 6 months’ imprisonment, though the usual sentence is non-custodial).

One cannot analyze these matters without noting that the Zionist special-interest lobby is likely to try to pursue its political ends by abusing the new guidelines. Readers are referred to my own experience of January 2017:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/

Advice for Social Nationalists

I advise a defensive approach. Malicious persons, notably Zionists, try to make provocations by saying offensive things online, eg on Twitter, then (if the interlocutor replies in similar vein), reporting to Twitter, Facebook etc and even to the police. I have found that the easiest way to deal with such nuisances (in the short or medium term) is to block them (on Twitter), which tends to avoid conversations and disputes. It also means that it is much harder for the Zionists to report a tweeter to Twitter. I myself have seen, in the past few years, several Zionists lamenting that “he blocks us, so we cannot [make false accusations].” Yes, it means that the individual tweeter cannot answer back to the lying allegations the Zionists often make, but the solution is simple: just do not care what they may write about you! I don’t…

In other words, just try to avoid having any conversations with malicious Zionists or other nuisances online. Make it hard or impossible for them to make false or malicious reports to Twitter (etc) or the police.

In respect of tweets not specifically addressed to anyone, it is more difficult for those wishing to destroy freedom of expression to report them to Twitter or (a fortiori) to the police, so long as there is no evidence of direct incitement within the meaning of the relevant (1988) Act.

In extreme cases, just protect your tweets. You can also pre-block any obvious Zionists on Twitter (and most of them are indeed very obvious…).

The ultimate and longer-term protection for social nationalists lies in future relocation to “safe zones”, as I suggest on my website: http://ianrmillard.com/social-national-communities, which will then limit the powers of the wider State.

In essence, the new social media guidelines are indeed another nail in the coffin of free speech in the UK, but are unlikely to stop socio-political comment online– which is why the conspiracy –and behind Alison Saunders stand Theresa May, Amber Rudd, secret groups, the whole #NWO and #ZOG farrago– is trying to get the big online platforms signed up to repression.

In the end, the net result of this latest silliness is likely to be a tsunami of pointless and/or malicious complaints to the police.

Update, 29 April 2019

Since I wrote the above blog post, Alison Chabloz has been convicted under Communications Act 2003, s.127, and is appealing (at time of writing, to the Divisional Court). However, the “guidelines” which are the subject of the article above do not seem to have had much practical effect in terms of changing prosecution or sentencing policy.

Update, 21 November 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/20/right-offended-does-not-exist-judge-says-court-hears-police/

Update, 17 January 2021

Much water under the bridge in relation to the Alison Chabloz case(s). To find out more, please use the search function on this blog.

In relation to repression of free speech generally, and as I predicted in the main article above, the ZOG strategy has been, not so much a tightening of laws criminalizing individual free speech, but a campaign of getting the major plaforms of social media to police free speech without any law having to be passed.

Thus we see that Twitter, Facebook, Google etc are simply expelling socio-political dissidents, and so removing both their inherent citizen-rights to free expression and (in the case of the prominent few) their online incomes. We have seen such as Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, David Icke, David Duke etc removed or largely removed from online platforms, the same also happening to less prominent people.

Uncategorized

Thoughts on Trump, Charlottesville, the “Alt-Right” and American Society

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In 2016, before the U.S. Presidential Election, I tweeted often against Hillary Clinton, not because I wanted Donald Trump to win, but precisely because I wanted Hillary to lose. It would indicate a delusionary tendency in the extreme to imagine that my tweets were more than drops in an ocean in terms of influence, but I do not regret having posted them.

I wanted Hillary Clinton to lose because she was obviously completely in the pocket of the Jewish-Zionist lobby, which (in effect) controls the mass media, big-name publishing, Hollywood, television, newspapers, law, most of academia etc in the USA. In particular, Hillary seemed set on confrontation with Russia. Her backers were those behind the “New World Order” [NWO] and its attempts to control the whole world, which cannot happen while Russia retains independent power. The NWO was proclaimed openly by President Bush snr in 1989 and had almost achieved its initial aims in Russia under Yeltsin, when Putin took power and started to pull back.

Donald Trump was plainly not –and I tweeted as much, often– a suitable or fit person to be a head of state or government (and the U.S. President is both). I do not think that I need detail the various reasons why that was and is so. However, the American system for presidential elections is, always (despite minor and write-in candidates) a binary choice. Hillary or Trump. I therefore, by default, preferred Trump, mainly on the basis that he was less likely to confront Russia and so cause a major war in Europe or elsewhere (eg against Iran or Syria). Further, I believed, even when most people did not, that he had at least a good chance of winning and so becoming President.

I still think that my preference (against Hillary) was right, but it is clear that the Trump Presidency is in trouble. The entire mainstream media caucus has been determined to kill off Trump politically (and if necessary, actually) and has been unrelenting since Trump was sworn in.

It is surely unnecessary to provide chapter and verse when I state that the American mass media is under a Jewish-Zionist control almost as complete as that exercized by the CPSU over the Soviet Press, radio and television. One only has to look at who is tweeting on Twitter against Trump, apart from “ordinary citizens”: the tweeters from newspapers, TV networks, magazines etc are almost all Jews. Yes, there are a few exceptions and there are a few prominent Jews who back Trump, but not many. Fundamentally, the Jewish lobby (aka Zionist lobby or Israel lobby) opposes Trump, often violently.

Trump tried to get the Jewish lobby on his side during the election by promising Israel not only support (that’s standard in “Zio” USA) but by pledging to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a no-no for the Palestinians and, indeed, all Arabs. That pledge was soon broken. The Israelis have learned that, for Trump, a pledge is just for Christmas, so to speak.

Now we come to the events at Charlottesville. I think that it has to be accepted that there is in the USA a movement –as many of its adherents tweet openly– to all but expunge the Confederacy from history except as an evil thing which was rightly crushed. This cartoon view of American history suits the street-level American character with its liking for black and white “clarity”, which however can lead to complete confusion, as happened in respect of the war in Yugoslavia and especially Bosnia (because the Americans could not understand a war which had numerous and subtly-interacting participants).

It does not suit the msm to accept that, had the “antifascist” “protesters” not gone to Charlottesville, there would have been no violence. The narrative has grown up (via msm biased or fake news) that the violence was the fault of the “alt-Right” marchers. The death of a protester has embedded that view. Even Trump at first made the mistake of lashing out at the various marching groups. The events at Charlottesville have given the Jewish-Zionist lobby the chance to pressure internet service providers and website hosts to repress a range of organizations, online publications etc hostile to Jewish-Zionist power.

The aftermath of Charlottesville has mirrored the 2016 election in some ways: much noise on Twitter and in the msm, but at the same time (according to polls) quite a lot of support for Trump and also for the “alt-Right”. If one looked only at Twitter, one would get a very inaccurate view of American public attitudes, in my opinion.

Looking wider, what Charlottesville has meant is that the more “nationalist” organizations in the USA seem to have started to understand that they need to work, if not together, then not against each other. Another point of interest to me was the presence at Charlottesville of militia groups which were apparently so well-armed and equipped that the local and State police did not dare to challenge their supremacy. That was great! In Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, the NSDAP formed the SA and SS, which told the police what they were allowed to do! What a contrast with the pathetic British, German etc situation, where the police tell the social-national marchers where and when to march, then accompany them like a man taking his dog for a walk.

The militia at Charlottesville seemed impressive: disciplined, well-armed and equipped, like a parallel police force. An echo of Germany before the Reich…

It may well turn out that Charlottesville will be regarded as a watershed. The social-national people and organizations are going deeper underground and must have taken away from the events a perception that they need to be able to challenge the “antifascist” rabble now, but probably also the forces of the Federal, State and other police etc before too long.

The USA is not Europe and a more pro-capitalist tendency is almost inevitable –even in the ranks of social-nationalists– than is the case in the UK or mainland Europe. However, I have no doubt that the terrible social divisions that exist in the USA and the economic hardships suffered by many of its people will lead to a change of emphasis.

Overall, I feel that the events in the USA are partly negative but largely positive. As for Trump himself, he has become almost irrelevant, like an island around which stormy seas are surging.

MPs, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Fame is Often Fleeting

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[preliminary note: this is a personal rather than a political or social blog post, though it does touch on both of those aspects of life]

It is hardly original to say that fame often tends to be fleeting, but indulge me. I was thinking about this matter recently in the context of hearing about a number of persons and their life-trajectories. In particular, in the past 6-7 years I have observed the meteoric rise of a Jewish Zionist lawyer (solicitor) to fame; he rose to public prominence (after years of provincial obscurity and a slide into near-madness) on the basis of one type of notorious case, only to slowly deflate ever since. That person’s fate, still unfolding (or should that be “unravelling”?) gave rise to other, connected, thoughts.

I was on holiday in Hammamet, Tunisia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammamet] in 1994 when my then girlfriend and I met with a young Englishman and his girlfriend. They were both struggling or at least very junior young journalists, twenty-somethings. The young man explained that they had been in a not very pleasant hotel and so had upgraded to the one in which I was staying, the Phoenicia, one of the best in the resort, all marble and staff wearing white uniforms topped by a fez.

The young journalist said that his name was Jasper Gerard (the girlfriend’s name I forget). We had lunch and the odd drink in the succeeding days and they were in the grounds of the hotel when they noticed someone nearly get killed when his parascending canopy collapsed at altitude. Yes, that was me (I pulled too hard on one side to descend) and apparently Gerard cried out “isn’t that Ian?!” as I appeared to be about to fall, mortally wounded, to the beach. However, I survived with nothing worse than a minor story to tell.

I kept in touch with Jasper. I invited him, not long after, to dinner at Lincoln’s Inn (of which I was then a member). He attended not with the Tunisia holiday girlfriend but with a pleasant, very quiet young lady who (judging by more recent Press photos) was probably his later wife. A week or two later, in the English way, he invited me to dinner at his club, a members-only but non-traditional place in Mayfair called Green Street. The sort of place full of young or youngish people who were probably pop stars whom I would probably not have recognized even by name. At dinner, the next table was occupied by a lady and her two guests. She was, Gerard whispered, the journalist Marie Colvin, already noted but who became rather famous later on, after she lost an eye and took to wearing a dashing eye-patch. She was killed in Homs, Syria, in 2012, making Gerard’s dinner comment to the effect that connections had helped her into her job seem in retrospect even more envious than it did at the time.

After that, I did not see Jasper Gerard for nearly three years, during which time he had become the head of the Diary column in The Times. After I finished a year working in Kazakhstan, I called him and suggested a drink. He suggested lunch at El Vino, not the original wine bar but the branch at the foot of Ludgate Hill. He failed to turn up and when I called to ask whether a problem had arisen, did not even apologize but got some underling to say that “something had come up”. That was discourteous, but personal loyalty is important to me, so I agreed to a second lunch date. This time, Gerard did turn up, but the pleasant, rather hesitant young man had become a blase, vain fellow obviously very much spoiled by his career uplift and hugely full of himself. He scarcely bothered to talk, obviously found me not famous enough to waste even the lunch break on, then did not offer to pay, or even to pay half the bill, but waited until I did before saying “do you mind if I take the cash and pay, so that I can claim it back”! With such a brazen attitude, it is not surprising that the bastard later tried to be elected as an MP!

I did not meet with Jasper Gerard after that, though I noticed that he was later to be found in the Sunday Times as chief interviewer. He lasted for some years before being removed. He then became restaurant critic in The Observer for a year or two, until 2008. He was even mentioned (once) in celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s memoirs.

Gerard fell into obscurity after that, though he came second in the Maidstone and The Weald constituency in the 2015 General Election, standing as a LibDem (well, after all, the LibDems are now the last resort of the scoundrel!).

The last I heard of Jasper Gerard, in 2016, he had become the Head of Press for the LibDems. Whether he still is, I have no idea.; and his last tweet to the public was in 2015…

The above is just one reminiscence about, mainly, one person. I suppose that the moral of my brief story is that some people really cannot handle fame or even minor celebrity, and that obscurity often beckons.

 

Update, 29 December 2020

I saw that there were recently a few hits on this rather obscure blog post, so am updating it.

The Maidstone and the Weald election results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidstone_and_The_Weald_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s.

Jasper Gerard’s 2015 vote share of 24.1%, though far below that of the 36% attained by the LibDem in 2010, was still better than that garnered by the LibDems of 2017 and 2019 (16.4% in both cases). Gerard was the last LibDem to get a second place at Maidstone and the Weald; Labour has come second since 2015: 22.1% in 2017, 18.3% in 2019.

As for Gerard himself, it turns out that his full surname is Gerard-Sharp, and that his sister is also a journalist, with a Twitter account: [https://twitter.com/LisaGerardSharp] and a personal website [https://www.lisagerardsharp.com/].

“In the soup for playing down the Lord Rennard scandal (‘It’s hardly Jimmy Savile’) Liberal Democrat candidate Jasper Gerard stands accused of playing down his poshness. Colleagues at Durham University remember him as Jasper Gerard-Sharp. Once he secured the post of head of the university’s Lib Dem society he morphed into plain Jasper Sharp. But by the time he arrived at The Times as a trainee journalist, he reverted to Jasper Gerard. Keep up at the back!” [Daily Mail, in 2013] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2285672/Is-boastful-Vince-Cable-ready-new-challenge.html

Professionally, and politically, Jasper Gerard —or Gerard-Sharp— now seems to have vanished without trace. He may have retired early; he would now be 53, must have been extremely well-paid when he was Chief Interviewer for the Sunday Times, and there may well be some family money, despite his grammar school secondary education.

Update, 18 March 2021

I noticed that there were several hits on this old article today.

I recall seeing an interview in the Sunday Times, in 2003, written by then-Chief Interviewer Jasper Gerard. It was with, and the article about, the wife of Kevin Maxwell, the part-Jew son of MOSSAD chief European agent, millionaire Jew fraudster and later food-for-fish, “Robert Maxwell”. At the time, the Maxwells were trying to sell their expansive country house on the Thames, somewhere near Wallingford.

That is a nice part of the world, one I knew well as a child and teenager in the early/mid 1960s and in the 1970s. I remember, reading the interview, thinking “there is a horrible brash Jewish or part-Jew family living in luxury on the banks of the Thames near Wallingford, and I am scraping a modest living from the law…“. The fact that Kevin Maxwell was living off the proceeds of crime, such as the frauds perpetrated by his despicable father, made the feeling all the stronger.

Well, the wheel of life has certainly turned for Ghislaine Maxwell, “Captain Bob’s” daughter, currently resident in a 9 foot by six foot cell in a US Federal prison.

Hey! I have an idea! Jasper Gerard should go interview the declining Ghislaine before she gets bumped like Epstein, or does herself in. He could write a good (well, adequate…) article about the contrast between her present circumstances and those days long ago with her brother and family by the sweet Thames…If, that is, anyone would now publish him.

Notes

https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/08/11/the-jew-epstein-and-prince-andrew-the-british-royal-family-has-another-scandal-maybe-its-time-to-just-get-rid-of-them/

Grey Cardigan: So where has Jasper Gerard gone?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/living-maxwell-house-mtz0crcfv7q

Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, Uncategorized

Encounter with Two Labour Ladies

9 Comments

I thought to blog about an encounter, on Twitter, with two ladies of seemingly similar views, both basically pro-Corbyn Labour Party supporters.

I happened to see that a Jew-Zionist lawyer and prolific tweeter was arguing with and, as the ladies tweeted (not inaccurately), “bullying” them because they opposed Israel. I myself block the Jew in question but started to talk to both ladies.

I could see that they had become aware of abusive tweets by one or two Jewish Zionist persons, notably minor academic Ben Gidley, who works at Birkbeck and Goldsmiths colleges of London University when not tweeting malicious pro-Zionism and supposed “antifascism” and who, while having his more “respectable” academic-oriented account, @bengidley, also runs @bobfrombrockley and did run the Zionist troll account @inthesoupagain (which was permanently suspended by Twitter for its abusive character). @inthesoupagain has in fact been resurrected as @antinazisunited, in which the same garbage pumped out by “Soup” is poorly-camouflaged behind tweets about US politics and other subjects. Other Zionist accounts are now connected with these, among them @gnasherjew (which “monitors” and denounces anti-Zionist Labour members).

At that stage, it seemed clear that both ladies were unaware of my own socio-political views (even in the cartoon form in which they are usually characterized by the Zionist element).

So it was that our Twitter conversation developed. Both ladies seemed well-meaning, wanting a better Britain in a better world etc. Not unlike some of my own views in many ways. They were becoming aware of the Zionist cabal on Twitter and of its methods (trolling those opposed to Zionist control).  They opposed Israel, possibly as much or more than I do myself. However, the amiable atmosphere was clouded when the discussion turned to Jews as distinct from Zionists.

Now the Zionists usually claim that up to 97% of Jews in the UK support Israel. The devil here is in the detail. What does “support” mean in this context? General sympathy? Allegiance right or wrong? Donating money? Serving in the Israeli army? More?

In the instant case, the Jew (and Zionist) lawyer wanted effectively all Jews to be regarded as Zionists. An attack on Zionists and their behaviour was therefore “anti-Semitic”. The two Labour ladies demurred.

As for myself, though I accept that there are some Jews who are ambivalent toward or even hostile toward Israel and/or Zionist activity in the UK or elsewhere, for me this is a sterile argument. I oppose Israel while recognizing that it is no worse as a society than most if not all of the states and peoples around it. I oppose Israel because it is the centre, or a major hub at least, of a world-wide web or network. My interests lie mainly in the UK, Europe generally and in the Russophone world.

My conversation with these two ladies started to take on the character of a debate akin to the debate which once existed between the mediaeval Scholastic school of philosophers (mostly priests and monks of the Roman Catholic Church and whose views devolved largely from Aristotle) and their Platonic-oriented peers. In other words, the Group as against the Individual. Which is the more important or determinative? The two ladies would only recognize individuals, individuals who may, for instance, be Jews, but who were not to be in any way labelled or analyzed by reference to their membership of the (race, culture, religion) group of Jews generally.

My own view is that I recognize the group first, but accept that an individual may not be a typical member of that group. So a Jew can have views and behaviours which deviate from the group of Jews (or Zionist Jews) generally. In other words, I think that I give weight to both the group identity and the individual identity.

While the two Labour ladies could not agree with me completely on the above points (and, while not wishing to characterize either of them as “thick”, they did seem to struggle with the discussion and indeed with logic at times), the conversation was still on a calm level until they realized (from reading about my politically-motivated disbarment, to which I myself had directed them) that my political views are social-national, not System or near-System “Labourist”.

In other words, the two ladies’ early and continuing brainwashing (by “holocaust” propaganda, other System programming at school, on TV, in the msm generally) kicked in. They became outraged (or, more accurately, were becoming or about to become outraged) that my views were slightly or rather out of their normal ballpark.

At that point, not wishing to engage in a fruitless discussion of the Third Reich or National Socialism with people whose views on the subject(s) came from The World At War (at best) or other (even more biased) Jewish/Zionist outpourings, I decided to politely mute these ladies before they became angry or hysterical.

All the same, I found the experience interesting. Their brainwashing or indoctrination may have prevented them from straying too far from what had been pumped into them at an early age (and I doubt that a latter-day “supporter” of Stalin would have outraged them…), but they at least were able to see that there is, on Twitter and elsewhere, a Jewish-Zionist cabal which is, inter alia, determined to trash anti-Zionist Corbyn. They and a million like them are not really ideologically awake, but it’s a start.

[the graphic is rather American, but still pretty good]

CponI2UUEAArtdyUpdate or Postscriptum

One of the “Labour Ladies” blocked me as soon as she understood (or, more accurately, misunderstood) my socio-political views. The other did not but left it for a day or so before tweeting the usual uneducated nonsense about how “Nazis” were (she apparently believes) “dying out”, that I should “rethink” my views and “love everybody”. I do not think that I need do more now than to close her curtains and tiptoe away…(actually, I politely replied and included a few suitable photographs with quotations to make my point; I was then blocked). Both ladies remain merely muted by me.

As for the dispute between the ladies and the Zionist, it seems that that rumbles on and may continue so to do.

Update, 11 April 2019

 

Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

The Academic Dead-End

12 Comments

No doubt there will be many who might say that I am unqualified to write about academia. My post-graduate qualifications, after all, are or were of a basically vocational nature (the Bar of England and Wales; the Bar of the State of New York). Further, I have never taught any subject at any level. However, it really is time that “time is called” on the dummy intellectuality being passed off as scholarship in the tertiary educational sector.

I do not intend to give specific examples, glaring though many are, of what I have called “dummy intellectuality” in academia. Anyone interested can find it easily for himself, by looking at the list of publications by university faculty members, or at their social media outpourings. I am of course confining my comment mainly to what are often termed the softer areas of study, such as sociology, literature and linguistics, “migration” (yes, this too is now an academic “discipline”!) and the like.

In the past, in the 19th century and most of the 20th, non-scientific academic works could usually be understood perfectly well by the ordinary educated person. That is no longer the case. A whole farrago of nonsense has been imported into academic life, involving narrow jargon, ever-narrower fields of study, cliques of “experts” in the foregoing and careers built on these insubstantial foundations.

I suppose that the pseudo-intellectual egg from which the above-noted chick was hatched was probably the area of the study of Marx, Lenin and Engels, firstly in the Soviet Union, then in the socialist world more generally, which then seeped out into the universities and other tertiary institutions of the Western world. Marxism was itself once called a result of “Jewish Talmudic theorizing and argument” and in the dummy intellectuality now rife in the universities of the UK and elsewhere, there is certainly a powerful Jewish element.

Read any papers by academics in fields such as sociology, “gender studies”, “migration studies” etc and you will see that the language employed is so specialized that it amounts to an exclusionary jargon.

One of the effects of the narrowing of language into jargon is that only those indoctrinated into the jargon can discuss the subjects concerned; others are not to be included in the discussion because they are not “educated” (in the narrow sense) enough to do so. Only the “specialists” (the Jewish or sometimes non-Jewish “experts”) can say anything, it is thought. This way of thinking has also contaminated areas such as economics, which are thought of as “harder” or more scientific than, say, sociology.

Thus it is that, before the financial crash usually dated as 2007-2008, the “experts” were mostly sure that such a crash would not happen. Afterwards, the “experts” split into at least two camps (pro”austerity” being the main one in the UK). These “experts” made predictions, got jobs paying hundreds of thousands of pounds in the Bank of England, the City of London financial district, in the BBC and elsewhere. The fact that most of them got their predictions wrong most of the time  (and still do) means little, because they cannot be challenged by non-experts on their own terms. The average critic does not even have a common language with the average “expert”. The fact that some kind of Mystic Meg or the spin of a coin is as accurate as the “experts” is thought irrelevant.

Likewise, it is hard to challenge the idea, put forward (in nuanced form, so be it) by a few well-known academics and then trumpeted (in simplistic forms) by a horde of “me-too” politically-correct imbeciles and one-world plotters, that the Romans were non-European or even sometimes “blacks”. Who are you, ordinary educated citizen, to challenge “the experts”? Yes, all Roman art, currency, literature, shows a European (Aryan) heritage, but what of that? That has no weight, because Professor Somebody of SuchAndSuch University has suggested that a few non-Europeans served (perhaps) as legionaries for short periods in Britain. From that tentative suggestion by an academic, not only do the “me-too” politically-correct hordes draw sweeping and wrong conclusions as to Roman Britain, but (even more wrongly) go further, to say that modern British people have African or other non-European ancestry. This despite the scientific evidence that does exist:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0719_050719_britishgene.html

Returning to our main theme, it is clear that academia must be reclaimed from the “experts” in that narrow sense, from those who are only talking to each other and (((of course))) making a good living doing so.

Whole subjects may have to be either done away with or subjected to a purge. True academics must be able to exist again (they still do, in fact, alongside the jargonists) and thus be able to inform the non-academic population properly as to both their own subjects and public policy. Clarity is king.