Monthly Archives: April 2020

Alison Chabloz, Alison Chabloz, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, daily blog, diary blog, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

Diary Blog, 8 April 2020

9 Comments

An interesting video, worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1385&v=c4Aps2NPe54&feature=emb_logo

This video is not merely about vaccination (nb. I myself am not an “anti-vaxxer”, by any means), but about large-scale transnational changes taking place around us.

A few basic thoughts I have had over the years about a possible “33-year cycle”

1923: seeds of WW2, as in Italy…the March on Rome (late Oct. 1922) and Mussolini asked to become Prime Minister (October/November 1922); the invasion of Corfu (1923) ; Russian Empire becomes the Soviet Union on 30 December 1922; in Germany, the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923; hyperinflation across Germany (1923, though inflation in Germany had been increasing from 1921).

1956: Suez Crisis, when Israel joined with UK and France against Nasser; this was the start of the Arab/West conflict in the modern era; Khrushchev’s Secret Speech denouncing Stalinism (in which he was himself one of the worst offenders), leading to the Thaw, and eventually (not in a straight line) the total collapse of Sovietism; also, the first big rebellion of the satellites, the 1956 Hungarian Uprising; final end of WW2 rationing in the UK and start of consumerist UK in 1955-56; [and my own birth];

1989: the fall of all kinds of socialism and even social democracy worldwide, inc. effective fall of the Soviet Union (officially 1991), fall of Berlin Wall, Chinese transition to full capitalism behind “Communist” facade; Cuba becomes effectively private enterprise after 1989; also, the NWO/Israeli attack on the powerful states of the Arab world starts in Iraq; in the UK, the end of Thatcher’s rule leads to Labour Party abandonment of “socialism” even in its party constitution;
Also, George Bush snr. proclaims the NWO openly in early 1990;

2022: [personal note: I shall be 66 on 2 September 2022]

It will be noted that these years also link themes: 20thC socialism, the Arab/Muslim v. “West” situation etc.

Our companion animals

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/apr/08/sanity-stability-stress-relief-why-pets-important

A few of today’s tweets

Let’s start with a typical Twitter conformist, tweeting typically —and typically meaninglessly (the police who ride around in jeeps and cruise up and down empty motorways, or fly drones over national parks, are of course not “putting their lives on the line”):

I just noticed that this odd-looking creature has no less than 551,000 Twitter followers. She must be one of the ever-growing mob of “celebrities” and the temporarily famous.

Ah, God bless Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Spraggan  Seems that she is a lesbian singer who nearly won the TV talent contest, X Factor, in 2012. I myself had never heard of her, but that is not her fault; pop singers and talent shows are not my milieu.

So what other tweets are being sent out today?

Sweden has not had a “lockdown” so far, and it looks as if it will not have one. It has also, as far as I know, not had a Swedish equivalent of Britain’s “clap for the NHS” either. Not that most nurses and doctors (etc) in the NHS do not “deserve” a clap (and a decent pay rise) for their valuable work, but for the virtue-signallers of Twitter what seems to matter is the almost enforced “me-too-ism” (cf. Poppy Day and its surrounds).

https://www.thelocal.se/20200228/coronavirus-the-everyday-precautions-to-take-if-youre-in-sweden

Hitchens is of course right here. The economy of the UK, of the EU, of much of the world, cannot in fact be shut down indefinitely without almost everyone in this country starving to death eventually. A “lockdown” must of necessity be temporary. The first question is “how temporary?”

https://twitter.com/RafiBSingh/status/1247644182803558402?s=20

https://twitter.com/PaulThomason1/status/1247452640688181250?s=20

The problem with comparing the Coronavirus situation in the UK to that obtaining in USA, Sweden, Italy, China etc is that

  • every country has different demographics, lifestyles, transport, health services etc;
  • every country is collecting statistics differently (e.g. as to what is a “Coronavirus” death in the first place): to take a reductio ad absurdum example, if someone has flu and Coronavirus, is his/her death from Coronavirus or simply with Coronavirus? What about if someone has Coronavirus, feels unwell and, perhaps even as a result, crashes his/her car and dies?;
  • every country has a different level of testing in place. Some test only those in hospital, some test medical staff, some (e.g. the UK until now at least) test hardly anyone.

The result is that, in looking at “the statistics”, we are comparing apples and oranges.

https://twitter.com/Catholic76/status/1247575479638507520?s=20

Is the UK a “free country” any more?

Silly question (of course it isn’t).

First of all we had all the “race relations”, “community relations” etc laws, then came the crackdown on other freedoms, including Internet freedoms, mostly at the behest of the Jewish lobby. Now the System is experimenting to see how far can it go in restricting quite ordinary daily activity, such as a motorcyclist going for a spin, or a family walking across the Derbyshire moors. The Coronavirus is being used as a fine cover story for a dry run for total System tyranny (though the Coronavirus situation iself is bad enough, of course). The mass media have ceased even to try to question government policy (as was also seen throughout the 2010-2019 “austerity” repression. Same now:

https://twitter.com/meemstd/status/1247799322676056066?s=20

The Underground travellers (who probably have little choice) being blamed, impliedly, for crowding the trains, when, as we have seen, the trains are crowded because people like NHS staff still need to travel, and because that hopeless little Pakistani, Sadiq Khan, reduced the number of trains being run.

Dictatorships and tyrannies have had sycophant newspapers for a couple of hundred years, radio since about 1920, TV stations since (for this purpose) the 1950s. A new element is the online mob, particularly on Twitter; happy to be slaves of the System if they can hate the targeted dissenters.

Idiot Corner…

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/direct-links-between-rise-in-antisemitism-in-germany-and-spread-of-coronavirus-says-commissioner-1.498931

In view of the fact that North West London is a major “hotspot” for Coronavirus, as are parts of Paris and certain urban parts of Israel, it might be more accurate to say that the spread of this virus comes not from “antisemitism” but from a quite different direction…

“Always look on the bright side of Life”…

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/08/jewish-chronicle-and-jewish-news-to-be-liquidated-and-staff-laid-off

It seems that quite a few non-Jews (and even some non-tribal Jews) are not too sad to see the end of at least one Jewish (Zionist) lobby outlet!

https://twitter.com/simonmaginn/status/1247884431622148101?s=20

https://twitter.com/SOCdem55/status/1247887914710601729?s=20

Oh, this is great! Faux-“revolutionary” scribbler (and part-Jew) Owen Jones is crying about the Jewish Chronicle closing down!

I know! Let’s all “clap for the Chronicle”! When the clocks chime 25, tonight…

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/a-brief-word-about-owen-jones/

Ha ha!

Imagine if I hit the Euromillions and put in to the administrators or eventual liquidators the only bid for whatever is left of the Jewish Chronicle! Ha ha! I wonder what I could put on the front page once I become the new proprietor? Something historical?

JewQuarterVienna1913

I could even have a section devoted to historical revision. Alison Chabloz writes nicely…

Maybe Pollard would agree to stay on as Editor (under suitable supervision and control, of course…), if I were to make him an offer he would be unable to refuse…

I just thought of another good aspect to the Jewish Chronicle closing down: Stephen Applebaum, Twitter troll (who secretly, using pseudonyms, trolled quite a few anti-Zionists, mostly women, with equally horrible Stephen Silverman and other “Campaign Against Antisemitism” bastards), will now find it even harder to pose as a soi-disant “film critic”. As far as I know, the Jewish Chronicle has been the only newspaper to print his occasional reviews for years.

(“@grubstreetsteve” is his present personal Twitter account, along with “@rattus2384”).

Ha ha!

ds3

It even looks like Pollard! But if the cap fits, Applebaum too…

Quite a few Jew scribblers —including several connected with the Jewish Chronicle—enjoyed my being disbarred in 2016 (no doubt in ignorance of the fact that I had in any case ceased active Bar practice in 2007-2008). Not all will now lose their jobs, livelihoods, maybe even houses and flats, but some will. As for the rest, their time will come.

Example:

“A sad day“…not for me! Bye!…

Ha ha! Just what I needed on a day like this (a boring day, and me living under a “Conservative” pseudo-communitarian ZOG semi-dictatorship)! A boost like no other! I begin to see, in minor key, why people always said that Saddam Hussein was never so happy as when his enemies were being killed off! Well, some of mine are not being killed off, just losing jobs etc, but in times like these, one must take one’s pleasures where one can.

I still like the idea of winning the Euromillions jackpot and then buying the rump of the Jewish Chronicle! I could staff it with anti-Zionist Jews, the ones the Zionist Jews hate: Gilad Atzmon could do the show business stuff, while the commentator-at-large might be…hm, let’s see…Mira bar Hillel!

Coronavirus view from Israel

“Israeli virologist urges world leaders to calm public, slams ‘unnecessary panic’

‘People think this virus is going to attack them all, and then they’re all going to die,’ says Prof. Jihad Bishara. ‘Not at all. In fact, most of those infected won’t even know it’”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-virologist-urges-world-leaders-to-calm-public-slams-unnecessary-panic/

Well, he sounds as though he knows all about it…

“A leading Israeli virologist on Sunday urged world leaders to calm their citizens about the coronavirus pandemic, saying people were being whipped into unnecessary panic.

Prof. Jihad Bishara, the director of the Infectious Disease Unit at Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital, said that some of the steps being taken in Israel and abroad were very important, but the virus is not airborne, most people who are infected will recover without even knowing they were sick, the at-risk groups are now known, and the global panic is unnecessary and exaggerated.

That’s not the way it is at all. It’s not in the air. Not everyone [who is infected] dies; most of them will get better and won’t even know they were sick, or will have a bit of mucus.”

But in Israel and around the world, “everybody is whipping everybody else up into panic — the leaders, via the media, and the wider public — who then in turn start to stress out the leaders. We’ve entered some kind of vicious cycle.”

He urged the public to internalize that “we’re talking about a virus that is not airborne. Infection is via droplet transmission… Only if you are close to someone who has the virus, and you get the saliva when he sneezes or coughs, can you get ill. And if you don’t then maintain personal hygiene,” primarily by washing hands.

Referring to Italy’s national lockdown, he said that “quarantine is an effective precaution, but there has to be temperate use. You can shut down a whole country, but there are other means.”

At this stage, he said, “we know how the virus behaves, how it spreads, and which groups are in danger. We know now that his virus is primarily dangerous to old people, and to people with a history of chronic disease, and those who are immunocompromised.””

[The Times of Israel]

By the way, if anyone is surprised that I quote an Israeli in my blog, my response is “why not?”

If I want a great performance of Rachmaninov, I might turn to Vladimir Ashkenazi, if I want one of J.S. Bach, I might choose Evgeny Kissin; if Chopin, Emanuel Ax…

So long as “they” do not hold power, all is well. In fact the professor I quoted is, though Israeli, not a Jew, but the principle holds good. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-arabs-in-israel-fight-pandemic-as-first-class-doctors-but-second-class-citizens-1.8681493

The Countess and the Russian Billionaire

Just watched the above-named documentary. The main character was Alexandra Tolstoy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Tolstoy], an adventuress of several sorts, married to but estranged from Sergei Pugachev [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Pugachev], a former “banker” and criminal “businessman”, who is now on the [Russian] wanted list for having allegedly made off with about a billion US dollars’ worth of State assets.

Pugachev is in fact a slightly unusual Russian gangster-businessman, in that he really is Russian (not Jew or whatever). Looks like a “tough guy”, but if the question is whether to bet on a exiled tough guy or the Russian state, I know where my money is going…

Oddly enough, I once met the father of Alexandra Tolstoy, who is the interesting writer Nikolai Tolstoy, a former cavalry officer of the British Army [perhaps so only briefly; Wikipedia says nothing of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Tolstoy]. I was introduced to him in 1981 or 1982 (I think 82) at the Russian Refugees jumble sale at Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road (the sale is or was a Russian New Year tradition going back to the Russian Revolution(s) and Civil War, when many anti-Bolshevik Russians came to the UK penniless).

A friend of mine flew to Switzerland with Nikolai Tolstoy not long before that, in order to help with information for his book, Stalin’s Secret War. That would have been 1980 or 1981.

As for my impression of the lady in the documentary, perhaps I should not say, but after all she did volunteer to be judged by the TV public…Well, to me she seems as thick as two short planks, for one thing. As to why she divorced her first husband and married Pugachev, I think that a good deal of the answer, probably 90% or 80%, was his wealth, at a mere guess. She has dead eyes.

As for her being too bored in France, it is clear that, for her, the world revolves around London, Harrods, Harvey Nicholl’s and her no doubt equally empty-headed friends. Her children too, of course…

Alexandra Tolstoy seems to want us to feel sorry for her, though she could well have simply continued to live in a beautiful belle epoque place on the Cote d’Azur, with her children, and her husband (and his guard force). I have seen too many people really suffering in the UK and elsewhere (including the former Soviet Union) from lack of quite modest funds to feel sorry for a woman who has a “cottage” (actually a quite decent modest house) in middle England, not to mention her parents’ place, a nice house in a pleasant part of Oxfordshire with an outside swimming pool (the pool was not shown in the documentary).

I certainly do not believe that she is in any danger at all from Putin or the Russian state. If she herself felt in danger, she would not now be once again running tours to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and herself visiting those republics.

Pugachev? He may be in more danger. There are warrrants out for him in Russia, and if he sets foot in the UK, a warrant for his committal to prison (for 2 years) for contempt of a High Court order. If the Russians get him, though, he may end up, like his 18th Century namesake, in a cage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Rebellion#Defeat

 

animal welfare, daily blog, Defence, diary blog, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, society, the Great Reset, Uncategorized, wildlife

Diary Blog, 6 April 2020

9 Comments

The world is not without kind people [Russian saying]

Nice story:

Image

“This photo is from Paris Match, 1958. The Algerian donkey was starving to death, so a soldier from the 13th brigade of the French Foreign Legion carried it back to base where it became a regimental mascot named “Bambi””

Coronavirus

“Police across the country are wielding powers they do not have – with vanishingly little public scrutiny”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/05/police-across-country-using-powers-do-not-have-vanishingly/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

“Italy has announced plans for ending its lockdown after the coronavirus-ravaged country today recorded its lowest daily death toll for more than two weeks.  

Rome recorded another 525 deaths, taking its total to 15,887 – the highest of any country in the world – however, this marked its lowest daily increase since the 427 registered on March 19.

Furthermore, the number of people in intensive care (3,977), fell by 17 since Friday, and the number of cases rose to 128,948 from yesterday’s 124,632, a lower increase than the day before.

It comes amid growing signs that Spain’s strict coronavirus lockdown may be working, as the country records its lowest death toll for a third consecutive day.” [Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8189585/Italy-records-lowest-daily-death-toll-nearly-two-weeks-525-fatalities-24-hours.html

Keir Starmer and the Labour Party

His surname is English, rather than Scottish, it seems:
https://www.houseofnames.com/starmer-family-crest

Keir is now a Scottish first name, Keir Hardie having been, of course, the main founder of the Labour Party:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Hardie

but “Keir” was the surname of Hardie’s mother, which he kept as part of his surname, only later using it as a first name.

Keir Starmer’s parents named him after Keir Hardie:
“Keir Rodney Starmer was born in Southwark, London, on 2 September 1962[5][6] and grew up in the small town of Oxted in Surrey.[7][8][9] He was one of five children of Josephine (née Baker), a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, a toolmaker.[9][10] His mother had Still’s disease.[11][12] His parents were both firm Labour Party supporters, and named him after the first Labour Party MP, Keir Hardie.” [Wikipedia]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Starmer

Note:
“Personal life
Starmer married Victoria Alexander, a solicitor, in 2007. The couple’s son and a daughter are being brought up in the Jewish faith of their mother.[12][61]”
[Wikipedia]

There you have it: Starmer’s wife is Jewish, and his children are therefore half-Jewish (according to ordinary genetics), and simply “Jewish” according to Jewish religious practice, as well as being brought up as culturally Jewish.

So far, Starmer has appointed members of Labour Friends of Israel to Shadow Cabinet: Rachel Reeves and Lisa Nandy. Emily Thornberry is to stay in Shadow Cabinet.

EmilyThornberryIsraelLobby

[above: Emily Thornberry at a Zionist dinner in London, photographed with her husband —a half-Jewish High Court judge— and —in central position— Mark Regev, the Israeli Ambassador]

I think that we can write off the Labour Party now.

Ghetto life in Israel

The Israeli state is considering sealing off “ultra-Orthodox” areas, thus creating quasi-ghetto zones within the Jewish state. Who would have predicted that?!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/calls-to-seal-off-ultra-orthodox-areas-adds-tension-to-israels-virus-response

JewQuarterVienna1913

[above: Orthodox Jews in early 20thC Vienna]

The Guardian article also makes the point that the Orthodox Jewish areas in London may also have been major incubators for Coronavirus. The boroughs of Barnet and Harrow, as well as Brent, are in the top half-dozen Coronavirus “hotspots” not just in London but in the whole of the UK.

Coronavirus— the exit strategy

Or to put it another way, what exit strategy? It is one thing to say to people, “stay inside except for a few closely-defined outings for a few weeks“, and quite another to say “stay inside your homes for several months, and if you dare to come out even to spend an hour walking in a national park, or on the beach, or sunbathing harmlessly in a largely empty park, or driving on an empty motorway, the police will stop you, question you, fine you and may fine you as much as £1,000“…

How long is this “lockdown” going to be sustainable? I see that even the msm outlets are beginning to ask the question now.

If someone has a country estate, or even a sizeable ordinary detached suburban or smaller rural house, perhaps with gardens, a swimming pool, a tennis court, an orangerie, a vegetable garden, “staying home” is not so hard to do. For the majority of the population, stuck in small houses, flats etc, perhaps with children or bored teenagers, this “lockdown” is a house arrest which cannot continue indefinitely. At some point, before long, the Government is going to have to announce a relaxation and then an end, before people start to ignore the restrictions.

Good points by Lewis Goodall of BBC TV Newsnight (ex-Sky News):

Little Matt Hancock and others may threaten more severe restrictions, but without public consent, even the present restrictions cannot be enforced widely. The present conditions are holding because the public has been persuaded or stampeded into compliance. I think that we are just approaching 2 weeks of “lockdown”. Can the UK sustain 2 months? That would be five times as long.

The economic damage is already huge.

Tweets:

Anyone who believes that Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet is anything more than a nominal “Opposition” is very naive. In 2015, the Jewish-Zionist lobby lost control of one of the previously-controlled two main System parties. After nearly 5 years, that lobby now has regained control. The Jews as a group care only that the (sort-of) “anti-Zionist” Corbyn has been removed. Hardly any Jews have voted Labour for many years.

Quite. Unreasoning fear is all around. Shoppers at Waitrose stand about 10 feet apart before they are allowed to have a trolley and enter the store, but inside they shop sometimes only a couple of feet from one another!

Likewise, the usual type of Twitter virtue-signallers continue to tweet on silly hashtags demonizing (of all targets!) people doing completely harmless things, such as walking along largely-empty beaches, almost deserted national park moorlands and forest trails etc, driving or motorbiking on almost-empty roads and motorways to places (or simply around, just to get a change of view and some fresh air).

If I had to say what unites the majority of the “Twitterati”, it would be their love of conformity, their obedience to authority, and their love of the largely-failed “multikulti” society. I suppose that is why Twitter was mainly pro-EU…

Here is a typical example, from someone calling himself “@sychodefender”:

You see the mentality. Any dissent from the “authorized” version of the truth is to be suppressed, and anyone not going along with the official narrative is “murdering” those unfortunate enough to die from Coronavirus. Who then is “murdering” those who, by reason of the “lockdown” (house arrest of the British people), cannot access lifesaving operations or other medical help for many other life-threatening conditions which (unlike Coronavirus) can be treated? Coronavirus can only be managed, via ventilation, not “treated” or “cured”. Who is “murdering” those people? No-one? The Government? Conformist tweeters such as “@sychodefender”/Simon Burgess? The first thing being murdered is the truth; after that, the English language.

and more news

Where do we go from here?

“There’s a real question of whether we will have an economy to come back to at the end of this“.

Quite…

Screwup, James Screwup…

Interesting legal case…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8189913/Ex-MI6-spy-dirty-dossier-Donald-Trump-sued-three-Russian-oligarchs.html

It seems to me that the thing SIS/MI6 is best at is bolstering its own reputation (not by its own successful product or analysis, but via self-serving propaganda or public relations). That, and providing fairly well-paid careers for often rather mediocre members of the Oxbridge-educated middle classes.

Let’s think of a few of the less ancient SIS/MI6 failures:

  • the invasion of the Falklands; failure to warn HMG;
  • failure to warn HMG about the likely fall of the Shah of Iran;
  • failure to warn of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe…to name but three very large-scale events.

What about SIS/MI6 successes in the past 50 years? The Gordievsky defection, I suppose, but that is or was “spy game” or “spy wars” stuff, rather than large-scale success in forecasting. The same might be said of the “Viktor Suvorov” defection from the GRU or that of Oleg Lyalin (KGB). Those were, in essence, “walk-ins”, of course, though Gordievsky “walked in” having been cultivated for some time (in Copenhagen).

Of course, it can always be said that “the successes must be kept secret”. Perhaps, but I have little doubt that many failures are also kept secret (aka “covered up”).

At some point, SIS/MI6 must be reorganized to provide useful information to government, especially on the strategic level. That might mean using more open-source material as a percentage of the whole.

Naturally, anyone who —like me— is not a member or former member of such an organization is commenting somewhat in the dark, but it is surely clear that this is not a properly-functioning organization.

Now this…

Good grief!

“The Army is so desperate to fill its ranks that it is signing up recruits with a reading age as young as five. Normally, its rules bar hiring anyone with a reading age below ‘entry level two’ – equivalent to that of a child aged seven to nine.” [Daily Mail]

“Last year, the Army was roundly mocked for recruitment advertisements stating ‘Your country needs you’ to ‘snowflakes, phone zombies, binge gamers, selfie addicts, and me, me, millennials’. Now it appears that some potential recruits would not even have been able to under stand the adverts – even as warfare become increasingly computerised.” [Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8190009/Army-signs-recruits-reading-age-young-FIVE-desperate-bid-boost-troop-numbers.html

Petty police

A police officer uses a megaphone at Southwark Park, to announce sunbathing is not allowed, but exercise is“A police officer uses a megaphone at Southwark Park, to announce sunbathing is not allowed, but exercise is” [Daily Mail].

How absolutely stupid! The Coronavirus is spread via water in air, so is far more likely to be spread via exercise than via sunbathing!

“...there are concerns that public confidence could be lost if those in power with gardens and ample living space tell those who live in crowded conditions they cannot go to the park or exercise outdoors.” [Daily Mail]

This is becoming very silly (which is why 90% of “Twitterati” support the “lockdown” in an extreme way…).

If the Government and police don’t stand down these restrictions pretty soon, there will be disobedience and perhaps actual disorder. At the very least, much of the public will “just say no”, or perhaps more likely “yes repeat no”, i.e, apparent compliance but followed by the opposite as soon as the police or other busybodies go away.

The rest of Europe is already starting to exit “lockdown”…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8191185/Austria-Denmark-plan-lift-lockdown-restrictions-week.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed_desktop_news

The British government is headed by a pack of idiots that have no real idea what they are doing. Look at little Matt Hancock! His only pre-political job was “making tea” (not quite, but he was very junior) for a year at the Bank of England. Now he is a Cabinet minister! It’s mad. The present government is mad or stupid or both.

Has it peaked in the UK too?

“England, Scotland and Wales have declared 434 more deaths caused by the coronavirus today, taking the UK’s total to 5,368. 

England accounted for 403 of the fatalities while Scotland and Wales independently declared 31 more deaths in the past 24 hours.

The statistics are a ray of hope as the daily death count has fallen for the second day in a row and was today the lowest it has been since March 31, when it was 381.

Today’s number is a 30 per cent drop from the 621 fatalities recorded yesterday, and a 39 per cent fall from Saturday, which was the worst day so far with 708.” [Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8191837/England-announces-403-coronavirus-deaths.html

daily blog, Deadhead MPs, diary blog, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, society, Uncategorized

Diary Blog, 5 April 2020

20 Comments

A word to my blog readers. I have a computer problem which may take a few days to fix, so please do not be concerned that I have Coronavirus or whatever. I may be offline for a few days. We shall see.

 Matt Hancock, government “rules” and the law

I blogged a week or two ago to the effect that “little Matt Hancock seems out of his depth” as Health Secretary in the Coronovirus crisis. I think that that statement can now be said to have been justified. Today the little blot was on TV bleating about people “flouting the rules” (about not going out etc).

What struck me about Hancock today was, firstly, the extent to which he uses cliches and hackneyed phrases. “Shoulders to the wheel” etc. His thought-world seems very limited (which does not surprise, though, after his having been seen on TV and in front-line politics for some years; just the level of it).

Secondly, Hancock seems to conflate his or the Government’s “rules” with the law itself. What a minister says or wants is not law in this country. Not yet anyway. We may be travelling down that road, but, as former Law Lord (Supreme Court justice), Jonathan Sumption, said recently, this is or is supposed to be a country under law.

The wishes of government ministers are not law.

I looked at the new Coronavirus Act last week, admittedly not in detail. I saw nothing about sunbathing there. Yet here we are today, and little Matt Hancock, trying to sound all serious and authoritative in the absence of his “Prime Minister”, Boris-idiot, was claiming that sunbathing was “against the rules” and so illegal. That is, as far as I can see, plain wrong.

I see that, in the latest news, the government “rules” have not been changed. They stay the same as they were.

There are several points coming out of this:

  • Matt Hancock seems to be using people sunbathing etc as a distraction technique, distracting people from the realization that this government has not handled well the present Coronavirus crisis;
  • Leaving aside laws and rules and what they may or may not say, there is no real reason why people should not sunbathe, even in urban parks, even within the “social distancing” rules. They cannot infect anyone by so doing.
  • Likewise, driving around in a car does not of itself carry any risk of infection; neither does someone walking in a deserted area; or, indeed, a couple or family group walking or exercizing in an area where there are few or no others.
  • “Rules” about people staying home, only going out to exercize once daily, only going shopping “infrequently” etc, are only enforceable if most people comply, i.e. do not need to be forced. I am not sure that little Matt Hancock, suited thug, understands that.

I saw on BBC TV News today a report about a care home in Dorset. The quite nice-seeming ladies in charge were getting really quite excited and even hysterical about having seen people in cars on the road and other people walking down roads.

For one thing, those people (especially those in cars) were not endangering anyone, but apart from that there is the point that the British people have been placed under a kind of house arrest, and need some fresh air in order not to get “cabin fever” or to go “stir-crazy”. It is all very well for people in large residences or on country estates (such as the Queen) to stay “indoors” (a meaningless term when it means Windsor Castle or Sandringham House), but British people are already among the most “cribbed, cabin’d and confined” in Europe.

As I predicted, even the quite compliant British people are beginning to chafe under the restrictions, all the more so when it is clear that some do not make much sense and/or have been badly-drafted, and when Cabinet ministers (albeit of a joke “government”) seem not to know the difference between rules laid down by ministers (which may have little or no legal effect) and the law itself.

These are not just petty squabbles about whether some bimbo can sunbathe in Regent’s Park, or whether a family can drive to a national park and then go for a (harmless) walk without being shouted at by self-important police constables. This goes to the root of what we mean by “a society under law” and also that much-used word “democracy” and its meaning (and its limits).

It disturbs me that so many people want to, not help the nation in this time of crisis, as such, but to conform to authority, however pointless such conformity is.

As usual the “Twitterati” are out in force, imagining that their words carry weight. Here below, a nurse tweets something which carries genuine weight, based on her experience of her own recent days on duty, but a typical “Twitterite” sees fit to put in his meaningless comment, attacking people who want to sunbathe (something completely harmless and which infects no-one with this virus). What makes his “contribution” even more silly is that his Twitter profile says that “The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.”

The lack of self-awareness, though stunning, is in fact typical of the Twitterati. (His profile also says “À bas la charogne stalinienne” meaning “Down with Stalinist carrion“!).

https://twitter.com/andrewspoooner/status/1246863714818625536?s=20

Here’s another “me-too” conformist:

Is there any evidence at all that sunbathing in a park spreads “Coronavirus”? If so, I myself have not heard or seen it. Of course, I am saying that on the basis that people are not too close together when sunbathing, walking, or pretending that they are free citizens etc.

Perhaps I should add that not only have I myself not been “sunbathing in a park” today, but have in fact spent the entire day at my now-humble home, mostly sleeping.

The Queen

Saw the first few minutes of the TV broadcast by the Queen. I am sure that she means well, but the fact is that her intervention means little to most people. In a sense, it shows how out of touch Westminster and the msm are, that they think that Her Majesty’s broadcast will bolster the “lockdown”. It may, to a very slight degree, but not much.

Age discrimination

Now that I myself am 63, I do not think that I can be described, plausibly, as discriminating against people of a certain age. The fact is that, while exceptions exist, this virus does kill, mainly, aged people. The older you are, the smaller the chance that you will avoid symptoms, severe symptoms, or death from the virus. The “young”, and particularly the under-30s, in general, face little risk from Coronavirus in terms of serious illness or death.

Poundland KGB and Toytown police

Saw a tweet from the police about how they stopped a lone motorcyclist on the otherwise deserted M27. Why did they? He was neither spreading Coronavirus nor in danger from being infected.

At the same time, I saw a tweet showing Richmond-on-Thames packed with strolling crowds! Perhaps those people were being either selfish or foolish, but the police cannot stop those crowds, unless they were to unleash the riot squad (which I believe is called the Territorial Support Group…very English!) on them.

In the end, policing of a quasi-democratic society can only be done by consent. So far, the people, as a whole, have complied, willingly or reluctantly, with the “house arrest” rules and law (as said earlier, different things…), but that willing compliance will not last forever; it will not last, in my view, beyond the end of May and it may not last beyond the end of April. There may be mass defiance, there may be political pressure too. No doubt suited thug Hancock would like to be able to tell people what to do, but his real power is limited, not by the British Constitution, not by whatever is actually in the Coronavirus Act, but by what the British people, as a group, will tolerate.

Tweet by well-known Jewish “human rights” barrister:

Labour’s new leader

Keir Starmer says that he wants to “tear anti-semitism out by the roots”. He is an enemy of the British people. He has now appointed Lisa Nandy, Rachel Reeves etc to the Shadow Cabinet. All members of Labour Friends of Israel.

“They” want their pound of flesh…

Palm Sunday

This is what some Jewess in Israel thought appropriate to tweet today, Palm Sunday:

[the above was retweeted by the ghastly “Mark Lewis Lawyer”, by the way].

(in case anyone is interested, though, I do not believe that Jews use the blood of Christian babies in their cuisine!).

Some other tweets seen today

Hitchens is making a good point. This government’s action is destroying, to a large extent, our economy (just wait…), an action which may kill far greater numbers than Coronavirus, in the medium term. Come to think of it, the past ten years have seen the Conservative Party as a whole, and some more directly (Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, Esther McVey, the jew “lord” Freud etc) kill tens of thousands via the unnecessary and deliberate “austerity” policies, particularly the equally unnecessary and incompetent DWP “reforms”.

Lest my republishing some of his tweets leads some readers to the incorrect view that I am uncritical of Peter Hitchens, I post again my assessment of him from last year:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/

Scare stories

You see time and again msm (i.e. Jewish) stories of how terrible were some aspects of the Third Reich (made worse by the exaggerations). More rarely —by far— some of the terrible aspects of the Soviet Union under Stalin are noted. Scarcely at all are the atrocities of the United States shown on TV etc. No, I am not talking only about those committed overseas, such as the perversities of Abu Ghraib and Bagram (etc), but of those committed in the USA itself and against US citizens.

I happened to see a few minutes of one of those paranormal investigation shows, but what struck me was the locus, a place called Moundsville, West Virginia, which was apparently one of the most violent and oppressive prisons in the USA, now shut down. One detail alone: prisoners were frequently lashed with a thick leather strap soaked in vinegar or sometimes salt water. Many died. The “land of freedom”…?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Penitentiary

Some music to make life better…

TorchSwastika

daily blog, diary blog, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, society, The Great Reset, the Great Reset, Uncategorized

Diary Blog, 4 April 2020

7 Comments

Coronavirus:

“Nightingale emergency coronavirus hospital may not be needed as urgently as expected”

“London’s intensive care units were expected to be overflowing at this point but are only three-quarters full”

“But while the emergency capacity had been expected to be required as soon as last Wednesday, the first patients are now likely to arrive early next week – a tentative sign that the coronavirus outbreak in the capital may not be as bad as expected.” [The Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/nightingale-emergency-coronavirus-hospital-london

Maybe I was right in my guess that the virus crisis is both less serious than at first thought and perhaps also already at or even past its peak, though the Government evidently thinks not and is talking about 1,000 Coronavirus deaths daily by Easter (14 April).

Ah…

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-uk-lockdown-could-be-relaxed-in-weeks-says-top-govt-adviser-11968358

The truth is that, the longer this “lockdown” goes on, the worse will be the economic damage and the less likely it will be that the police will be able to enforce what amounts to —for quite understandable reasons— the house arrest of most of the population.

As I have blogged previously, the “lockdown” is mostly holding, so far, because most people have accepted that it is necessary. As soon as people start to doubt that necessity, and so stop fearing that they and their own families might both get the virus and need hospital treatment for it (or even die from the virus, though that is happening to only about one person in every 20,000 or 30,000), that will be the end of the “lockdown”, because the police simply do not have the numbers to stop people en masse from doing anything.

Labour Party leadership election and deputy leadership election

A few tweets seen today:

To my mind, the problem Labour has is not really one of personalities or personality, but of inherent purpose. Labour came into being to represent a class of people —the industrial working class— and, later, the working classes generally, that had been frozen out of the political process.

That “working class”, or “proletariat”, to use Marxist terminology, no longer exists in any large quantity, though faux-revolutionary “thinkers” (scribblers) such as Owen Jones try to turn the urban and suburban “precariat” and/or “lumpenproletariat” into a kind of 21stC “proletariat”; and so the flat-capped, booted steel workers or miners of the past are replaced by “chavscum” people wearing pseudo-sports clothing and footwear and driving hatchback cars (probably uninsured). It doesn’t work.

The “precariat”, lower-paid people, unemployed etc on minimum wage and/or State benefits mostly take no direct interest in politics and do not join political parties, certainly not System ones. They probably do not even vote, most of them. The days when fully-unionized mass meetings of “workers” all voted and moved as one, as in 1926, or even 1980, are gone. Finished. History.

We should not forget that, in 2019, only about 67% of those (even) registered to vote, voted. A third and possibly more of the potential electorate turned their collective back on the whole process.

I have said this before, but few in the msm want to accept that the “old parties” (to use a Mosley-ite term) or System parties are all on their last legs. The misnamed “Conservatives” are riding high (54% in the polls this week) purely because Labour and the LibDems look even less credible.

Actually, it’s quite funny that, on Twitter, the Labour Party activists’ echo-chamber of choice, people are earnestly debating which doormat for the Jewish lobby would make the best “leader” or deputy, when Labour is around 26% in the opinion polls.

Labour will get the votes of, in broad-brush terms, most public service people, most NHS employees, most of the blacks and browns that bother to vote, most of those dependent on State benefits that bother to vote. Fine, but all of those add up to only about 25%-30% of the electorate. What was Labour’s vote-share in 2019? 32.2%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_breakdown_of_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election

Britain’s FPTP voting system and oddly-delineated constituency boundaries provide built-in uncertainty, but Labour needs to get more than 35% to be in with a chance of forming even a minority government. Its problem there is that the white people of the UK are voting with their feet, not so much toward the Conservatives as away from Labour (as I have predicted for months and even years). In Scotland to the SNP, in England to Conservative Party (to some extent) and to protest and alternative parties such as UKIP in 2015, Brexit Party in 2019 (except that its own leader stabbed it and its members in the back), and in both countries to apathy and non-voting:

GeneralElection2019

Coronavirus levels off in mainland Europe

“Fall in daily deaths in Spain”

“Spain’s death toll from the coronavirus rose to 11,744 on Saturday from 10,935 the previous day, the health ministry said.

However, it marks the second straight day in which the number of new deaths has fallen.” [The Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/04/coronavirus-lives-news-china-prepares-to-mourn-martyrs-as-us-urges-everyone-to-wear-face-masks

The Coronavirus wave seems to have peaked all across Europe as well as in China.

“German cases slightly decrease prompting ‘very cautious hope'” [The Guardian]

“Germany’s confirmed coronavirus cases have risen by 6,082 in the past 24 hours, a slight decrease from the day before, according to data from the government’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
The reported reduction, which were down from 6,174 new cases a day earlier, could be a sign that the rate of infection is beginning to level off.” [Guardian]

A few thoughts

Coronavirus is being presented in the same way that AIDS was about 30 or so years ago, i.e. “anyone can get it” etc; technically correct but in practice not correct, because almost all cases (of HIV/AIDS) involved gay sex and/or sub-Saharan Africans, or contaminated blood supplies.

Just as, decades ago, no-one in the msm or NHS wanted to say that persons of European race engaging in (only) heterosexual sex with others of European race were very unlikely to become infected with HIV, now the rare cases of children and young persons dying of Coronavirus are being presented to the public as if everyone has an almost-equal chance of dying from this virus, which is just not true.

It is of a piece with the fake communitarianism seen in certain organizations: the police, the NHS, the Labour Party. The Labour leadership drones always come out with phrases that are all but meaningless, such as “our communities”.

Henry Kissinger

“A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8187313/Henry-Kissinger-warns-coronavirus-spell-economic-doom-generations.html

So speaks the New World Order’s trumpeter.

Labour Party leadership

Keir Starmer won with over 50% of the vote in the first ballot. A complete rubber-stamp for the Jewish lobby. Expect Labour to get nowhere.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8187181/Keir-Starmer-vows-stamp-anti-Semitism-poison-new-Labour-leader.html

Campaign Against AntiSemitism, Conservative Friends of Israel, daily blog, diary blog, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

Diary Blog, 3 April 2020

13 Comments

“No proof coronavirus can be spread while shopping, says leading German virologist”

“Initial findings suggest virus may be less easily transmitted than thought.” [Daily Telegraph]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/no-proof-coronavirus-can-spread-shopping-says-leading-german/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget

“Prof Streeck said the virus had not even been found on door knobs or animal fur. He told German TV that there had been ‘no proven infections while shopping or at the hairdressers’.“

“‘We know it’s not a smear infection that is transmitted by touching objects, but that close dancing and exuberant celebrations have led to infections.’”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8182767/Scientist-casts-doubt-coronavirus-spread.html

Oh, so the ridiculous “social distancing” nonsense in the UK supermarkets and elsewhere, complete with petty authoritarians calling out “[Please] stand behind the yellow line!” (with or without a “Sir” on the end) may not even be necessary?

Also, it now seems that you cannot get or are very unlikely to get this virus by touching objects, even if the virus is on the surfaces.

Social gatherings

There is at least some evidence that Coronavirus spreads most readily in social gatherings where people are hot, excited, closely-packed: an apres-ski bar in Austria, a Berlin “club”, a football game, Jews celebrating their tribal festival called Purim, people at carnivals in Germany, the attendees at Cabinet meetings in London.

I myself shall continue to wash hands frequently with soap and water, and I shall continue to avoid others as far as possible, which is surely only sensible, but my sense is that, in the UK, this crisis, as a purely medical crisis, has peaked or is close to peak, whatever the government and msm may be saying. If I am wrong in that, I am wrong, but I have a strong intuition about it.

An important little piece of news. In the group tested, 74% of those who showed no symptoms of Coronavirus tested positive, meaning that they had or had had the virus.

This is what I am coming to believe has happened in the UK: huge numbers are or have been infected but have shown few, if any, symptoms. That, in turn, might mean that our economy and society has been almost shut down unnecessarily, but we cannot know for sure. One could say “better safe than sorry”, but for how long?

Meanwhile

“Parents of teenagers who flout coronavirus lockdown rules should be fined, police told”

“Government polling, not released to public, identifies teenagers as ‘problem’ group when it comes to compliance, Telegraph learns.” [Daily Telegraph]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/parents-teenagers-flout-coronavirus-lockdown-rules-should-fined/

Did it really come as a surprise to “the authorities” that teenagers might rebel against a rule purporting to put them into house arrest from March until June or July or for longer? Three months, four months or longer. That was never likely to fly. In fact, I doubt whether older people will continue to comply for very long, particularly when they realize (as many will and some already do) that this virus, though certainly a serious public health threat, is not the Black Death or the Plague.

As I predicted from the start, the British people, while willing to be corralled a bit for the general good in a situation replete with scaremongering, would not sit still under this absurd and contrived Toytown police state forever or for very long.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/number-people-leaving-house-has-risen-latest-survey-shows-amid/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

Toytown police and the poundland KGB

Once again, Britain’s increasingly absurd police are trying to enforce rules that do not exist or have no legal force, using powers that they do not have:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8179655/Britains-conviction-breaching-lockdown-ILLEGAL.html

“‘The police seem to have applied powers they don’t have. Whatever the investigation, the prosecution has to be right under the act’.”

“‘There’s a mixing up here of the Coronavirus Act & the Emergency Regulations. It looks like the police, prosecution & magistrates did the same thing resulting in a wrongful prosecution & conviction’.” [Daily Mail]

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is closing all bars for two weeks. It seems that 75% of Coronavirus cases in HK have been linked to bars. A further indication that excited, hot social situations are where this virus becomes particularly actively transmittable.

The Press is waving, but I am laughing

I hate the “British” Press and, yes, that does include weekly publications such as The Spectator. They are all completely infested by the Jewish-Zionist element. Some have a few sparks of light amid the darkness, but they are all basically on the wrong side. If they disappear because of the Coronavirus (or rather the extreme measures taken by the Boris-idiot government), then I am content. I particularly want the “journalists” and other scribblers to suffer, from the fake or would-be “intellectuals” (which, I suppose, would include idiots such as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Zoe Williams) to the bottom of barrel ignoramus types such as Carole Malone and Susie Boniface (aka “the Fleet Street Fox”). Particularly damned are those who wrote about me after my disbarment (procured by a pack of malicious Jews in 2016). Down with all of them.

CSrYbsNU8AATLhJ

ds3

Labour: Corbyn’s last day

Thoughts:

Good point.

Here’s another good point, this time from leading commentator John Rentoul:

That is a point worth holding onto. For social-nationalists. In the right circumstances, almost anyone, with any “extreme” policy offering, can attain to political power, whether via “ballot box” or ammunition box.

Lenin thought that 1905 was “the” Revolution in Russia. He was wrong. He also thought, at first, that the February 1917 Revolution in Petrograd was not the Revolution for which he had waited all his life. Wrong again, Lenin had to hurry across Europe to join in, only arriving in April 1917. He then fomented a coup d’etat in October 1917 (Julian calendar).

Hitler’s NSDAP only got 2.6% of the national vote in Germany in 1928. Then the Great Depression happened. By 1932, the NSDAP vote was 33%, enough to give the NSDAP a seat in government. The following year, 1933, that vote went up to 44% and Hitler was proclaimed Chancellor.

bb-5bc29c0a06772

The effective stoppage of the world economy might cause a shock big enough to unseat, not only a government here and there, but the whole accepted basis for governments across the world.

As for the Labour Party, the three contenders are all pretty much of a muchness. All have kow-towed to the Jew lobby, for one thing. Rebecca Long-Bailey is more radical than the other two, but at the end of the day, she also signed her name —not in her own blood, so be it— to what the Jew lobby wanted. Das ist’s!

One tweet seen:

https://twitter.com/scottjunglist1/status/1245666447923298304?s=20

and the Jewish lobby is still looking for at least one pound of flesh…

In fact, Labour is still declining in the polls. I think that the last one I saw had Labour on about 26% or 27%. Many will say, “it could not go lower”. No? Look at Scottish Labour.

Britain needs a credible new movement, a social-national one.

What is really behind the Coronavirus “lockdowns” worldwide?

I do not ask, as do those labelled “conspiracy theorists”, what is behind the virus itself. For the moment, I take the narrative as broadcast, that the virus somehow developed out of a barbaric seafood and live animal market in Wuhan, China. No, what I ask is: why the global “lockdown”? Is there some plan behind it? If so, what? A new New World Order, based on popular fear of pandemic? Seems unlikely, despite the quasi-dictatorial measures being put in place worldwide. There must be an additional factor which has not yet happened.

Another tweet seen today

This tweet combines Corbyn and Coronavirus in a criticism of Jewish lobby puppet MP Jess Phillips:

In fact, it is clear that the relatively mild ordeal of Jess Phillips is a widespread phenomenon. The television pictures of the gravely unwell etc tend to distract us from the big picture: most Coronavirus sufferers in fact suffer briefly (indeed often not at all), never need hospital treatment and may be unaware that they have been infected and then either not affected, and/or in any case recovered within days.

Another tweet seen

Tax-dodging Jew Philip Green, whose wife, the beneficial majority owner of Arcadia, is domiciled in Monaco, asks British taxpayers to prop up his retail empire, which was collapsing even before Coronavirus existed.

381E798600000578-0-image-a-4_1473452058034

[above: arrogant tax-dodging Jew, Philip Green, a few years ago, pouring Champagne over some “hoes” on one of his mega-yachts in the Mediterranean]

greenjews [above: saying hello to someone, possibly his daughter, in pre-Coronavirus days…His wife is the creature dressed in blue in the photos]

Other reaction:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8183763/Sell-one-yachts-Outrage-billionaire-Sir-Philip-Green-asks-taxpayer-help.html

The Queen

It seems that the Queen will make a rare television broadcast on Sunday 5 April 2020. Could it be that she will abdicate in favour of Charles? I have always assumed that she would carry on until Fate took a hand, but maybe not. On the other hand, it may be all about the Coronavirus situation throughout the Commonwealth.

Jud Süss, a film well worth seeing

Jud Süss, [ The Jew Süss] made in 1940, is a costume drama based closely on a true story from the 18thC in Germany, before the various kingdoms and principalities had been unified into one German state. It tells the story of how a Jew managed, via manipulation of money, to take over the State, before he eventually faced justice.

You will never see Jud Süss on any TV channel. Banned. Even YouTube has now taken it down (as it has most “anti-Jew”, National Socialist and social-national films, songs, photos etc). Make the most of it [see below] while you can…

https://mk.christogenea.org/video/jud-suss

Jud Suss

Final music for today

Late news

“Nightingale emergency coronavirus hospital may not be needed as urgently as expected”

“London’s intensive care units were expected to be overflowing at this point but are only three-quarters full”

“But while the emergency capacity had been expected to be required as soon as last Wednesday, the first patients are now likely to arrive early next week – a tentative sign that the coronavirus outbreak in the capital may not be as bad as expected.” [The Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/nightingale-emergency-coronavirus-hospital-london

Maybe I was right in my guess that the virus crisis is both less serious than at first thought and, also, already at or past its peak.

 

daily blog, diary blog, society, Uncategorized

Diary Blog, 2 April 2020

15 Comments

Sign of the times

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thugs-smash-up-hero-doctors-21792310

Police “too busy” to look through videos from just one named building to find the criminals, who must have been caught on camera! I bet that if a Jew complained that he was insulted there, the police would find the time, magically…The police really are usually a waste of space now. They are unwilling to help the public or to detect and solve crimes, most of the time, but prefer to act as a poundland KGB and thought-control force.

Coronavirus

There are tentative signs that the crisis has already peaked in Europe and much of Asia. In Italy, the death toll has reduced for the 7th consecutive day, and Sweden (which is not even in “lockdown”) is no worse off than the UK (which is). In the UK itself, the death toll is still increasing but that comes after a few days of decline and after the goalposts were moved by changing the statistical criteria. In Denmark, the government has said that it will be reviewing whether to ease restrictions after Easter, i.e. by mid-April.

Whatever is happening in the Americas, we in Europe can hope that this, or most of this, will be over by June.

The evidence is sketchy either way, but it seems logical to me (and always has), as a lay person, that if the virus can only live on or in people for 3-4 weeks at maximum, and if it can only live on inanimate surfaces for between seconds and a month (and usually for less than a few hours), then the virus as a social crisis is going to be over within a couple of months. By then, a vast number of people will have been infected, most will either have shown no symptoms or very mild symptoms, a lesser number will show symptoms not requiring medical care, a few will require such care, and a tiny minority will die. Whatever happens to those infected, it is all over, one way or the other, within a month.

In all cases, the virus will have done whatever it will have done within a few weeks or so. Even bearing in mind that new and uninfected people could still be infected, the main links of infection will not exist after May, it seems. That is, about 8 weeks or so from now.

In any case, if the present shutdown of the UK economy continues beyond May, the damage will probably be irreparable.

To what extent is the “lockdown” in the UK helping? It must be helping, but to what extent? We do not know. Sweden’s stats are broadly similar to the UK’s on Coronavirus infections (and better on deaths), but there they have no general “lockdown”. It is logical to assume that the UK “lockdown” is helping slow the rate of infections. However, the main safeguarding measure is that understood from the start: washing hands efficiently and frequently with soap and water.

Differences within Europe

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8180439/UK-declares-569-coronavirus-deaths.html

The NHS is a very fine institution. In principle. In practice, it is patchy. The surgical and some other aspects are excellent, but the administration is more suited to some backward country in Africa or pre-1989 Eastern Europe. Shambolic. A bad joke. Coronavirus has cruelly exposed all of this.

In Germany, Scandinavia, even France, we see their health services dealing with the situation. In the UK, we see political squabbles and nonsense, shambolic NHS mismanagement, combined with fake “community” involvement like something out of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “Clap-in for the NHS”, and now “Second Clap-in for the NHS”. A kind of almost-forced “community involvement” for a country where the most important thing is virtue-signalling; and like other kinds of virtue-signalling, it accomplishes nothing.

The last thing that I would want would be for the NHS to become like the rapacious money-obsessed American healthcare model, but the NHS does need reform, as well as more money. In fact, part of the problem with healthcare in the UK is that we are given this false choice of “either British NHS or American get-what-you-pay-for healthcare”. That is not the choice. There is a variety of different healthcare models in the world, a variety of funding solutions.

Britain has been hampered in choosing and implementing a better healthcare system for several reasons:

  • the NHS as a “sacred cow” that cannot be changed (or criticized);
  • botched “reforms” by inane and often anti-NHS politicians;
  • the huge inertia in a system that employs over 2 million people;
  • entrenched group interests of the various blocs of healthcare professionals;
  • very poor and often hugely overpaid administrative layers.

Anecdote: I knew a retired British couple when I lived in France. The husband and wife both had serious health problems, in the case of the husband mainly heart-related. At first, he used to return to the UK for treatment, thinking, as English people do, that the NHS was bound to be better. When he finally decided to access the French system, it was revelatory. The equivalent of a “consultant” asked him (in English) what medicines he had been prescribed for his condition. He replied. The French consultant was visibly underwhelmed and said “well, I think that we can do better than that.”

The wife of that couple had a cancer condition. She was also far better taken care of in France than in Britain (or so I was told).

Another aspect to the above anecdote. The couple described lived in Finistere-Nord in Brittany. The treatment took place in the city of Brest, an hour’s drive away. The couple had cars, but preferred not to drive too far, partly because of their health problems. The French healthcare system paid for both of them to get to and from the hospital in Brest by commercial taxi! This is in fact quite normal there. In fact, a friend of mine found that it was hard to book a taxi in Finistere for ordinary reasons because most are booked-up by such hospital journeys.

Government aid to private economic enterprises

We are told that large enterprises which are now facing collapse must be given hundreds of millions of pounds each to keep them standing. Virgin Atlantic, BA etc. This is unsustainable, for more than a couple of months anyway. I am not sure that it is even desirable. The support should be given to individuals, not companies. The companies may go down. New companies will emerge, when trading conditions improve. Throwing money at what in many cases are already failing capitalist enterprises is the worst thing that government could do.

Economic growth comes from demand. Demand comes from the bottom, from the millions and tens of millions in the country. Their demand for goods and services fuels the birth and growth of new companies supplying those goods and services. It is wrongheaded to support existing, often poorly-run, companies. In effect, by doing that, government is subsidizing shareholders at the expense of other citizens. This was the conceptual error behind the bank bail-out of 2007-2008, which has suppressed the real economy for the past decade. Money, on a vast scale given to rapacious and incompetent banks run by incompetent and rapacious managements and owned by greedy shareholders. No understanding that banks are just “useful parasites” upon the real economy.

Even government, with its huge reach based on huge borrowing, cannot subsidize the whole economy —not for long—in a situation where the real economy is mostly not functioning. The various “lockdown” restrictions will have to be eased quite soon if mortal injury is not to be done. That may in fact already have happened.

Coronavirus in China and Europe: going, going, gone?

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=22&v=Xe_yBevHjFg&feature=emb_logo

My take

  • Washing hands frequently with soap and water is the best protection. The countries of Europe with the worst personal hygiene (Italy and Spain) have been by far the worst-hit by Coronavirus (why not Greece too? God knows…).
  • In China, and across Europe, the Coronavirus infection rate and death rate are both stabilizing or, in most places, falling.
  • Social isolation was a good policy to try for a week or so and it has probably greatly helped but in a secondary way. The handwashing is far and away the most important.
  • “Social distancing”, while obviously useful, is not of much importance.
  • Most people either do not get the virus at all, or show no symptoms, or mild symptoms only.
  • Only a few (in the UK about 1 in every 3,000 people) will need to be hospitalized.
  • Very few people indeed —speaking relatively— will die from Coronavirus (in the UK, so far, about 2,900, out of maybe 70 million people, which is about 25 people out of every million or 1 person out of every 40,000).

Evening outing

Went out to Waitrose. Marginally busier than it was 2 days ago on Tuesday (also at 1930). A few poor souls like me lining up, ten feet apart, waiting to be approved by the three or four Handmaid’s Tale militia (Waitrose marshals) loitering outside, then given a trolley and permission to enter the sacred precincts of the store.

Inside, the absurd thing was that the same people religiously “distancing” outside were shopping within a couple of feet of each other at times! Shaking head territory…

Most items available. Pasta (dried pasta) cleared out (again), but plenty of sauce in jars. Rice rather depleted too, though available. Loo paper shelves full of product. Eggs available. Milk too. Bread too. No chickens, and no lemons. Are the locals all making lemon chicken? Ignorabimus (we shall never know).