Diary Blog, 7 April 2020

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It will be seen from the above chart that the UK is in 4th place for death from Coronavirus, expressed in proportion to population. Belgium, Spain and Italy, all of which had strict “lockdown” regimes, have fared worse than has the UK. Some countries which have implemented only light regulation, such as Sweden, have fared better than the UK.

There are many variables, based on lifestyles, the way deaths are counted, when the virus really emerged in a particular country etc, so people can argue endlessly over which country has the worst or best record and why. However, it seems clear that whether a country has strict “lockdown”, less strict, or none at all, is almost irrelevant to the spread and effect of the Coronavirus, taken over a couple of months.

It will be seen, also, that Coronavirus has killed (taking the statistics as provided) about 500 people for every million in the UK. One out of every 2,000. That is unfortunate, but is hardly the Black Death (which is said to have killed about 1 out of 3 people across Europe, in other words about 700x the rate of Coronavirus in the UK (so far).

I notice that the political Twitterati have not disappointed me. They always get it wrong. They are on the wrong side of pretty much any argument. They predict every election or referendum inaccurately. In this case, they (most of them) want an extension of the UK “lockdown” nonsense; many want it even more strictly enforced, and with even fewer services and facilities open for business.

You cannot really talk or debate (not that I wish to) with that unthinking and self-righteous Twitter mob. They are the bookburners, the proponents of heresy laws etc.

As things stand, people in the UK are under loose house arrest, en bloc. It seems that some restrictions are going to be eased next week. All the same, and more importantly, the British people cannot do all manner of normal things at present, some of which are very necessary. Examples include accessing dental services, getting hair cut, sending their children to school.

This farce has to end. The cost is enormous. Vast numbers of people (at last count, over —uh-oh, that number again!— six million) were “furloughed” on 80% pay (capped at £2,500 per month). I have to admit that a wry smile may have been seen on my face at the sight of those who, many of them, cheered on Dunce Duncan Smith and others from both main System parties as they marginalized and demonized the poor and especially the not-employed poor, now themselves staring down the barrel of destitution.

Apart from that, the fact is that the “lockdown” is killing people every day in various ways: deferred consultations, cancelled operations etc.

At some point soon, all the “emergency” measures will have to end. Many prefer to stay away from boring jobs for a while, given that they are “furloughed” on 80% of their pay (and when you take off costs such as transport, it might even add up to 100% of net pay in reality). However, this will not be sustainable for much longer.

Having scared the people out of their skins, the government of fools is now preparing to crack the whip to get those same people out of their houses, by reducing the furlough cap to (probably) £2,000 from £2,500, by reducing the amount anyone can get to 60% of pay rather than 80%.

I wonder what the unemployment figure will be by Christmas. 3 million? 5 million?

Latest news (only 1 hour old at time of writing):

Those calling for “lockdown” to continue almost indefinitely, and certainly for months more, have no interest in or understanding of the effects on the UK economy. They seem to think that people can be subsidized indefinitely to stay in their homes while commerce and industry die on the vine.

As usual, the Twitter mob, all but irrelevant to the real course of events, rant at those (in this case) calling for an end to the “lockdown” nonsense, calling them “stupid” etc. Those Twitter drones have evidently not thought through all the implications of a continuing “lockdown”. Apart from which, it occurs to me that the present times are characterized, at least in part, by unthinking selfishness disguised as concern for society.

I favour Basic Income, but that can only work where society (and the economy) is open for business. If not, then the monies expended are merely dead outflows, fuelling inflation eventually.

Notting Hill Carnival

The Notting Hill Carnival has been cancelled, a rare bonus from the Coronavirus situation. The blacks may or may not riot as a consequence in August, when the heat builds and the tom-toms drum incessantly in the darkening (urban) jungle. For the local population, this will come as a blessed relief.

Notting Hill was already being gentrified when the Carnival (the white would-be ethnics drop the “the”) started to become a really major event in the 1970s, having started in 1966. In the 1960s and 1950s, Notting Hill had been known as an “edgy” neighbourhood wedged among other, more expensive, areas (Kensington, Holland Park etc).

I myself was familiar with Notting Hill in the 1980s. I would fairly often visit the wonderful art-nouveau Electric Cinema in Portobello Road, which sometimes showed Soviet films such as Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears; I was trying to improve my Russian at the time.

The Soviet diplomatic presence was not far away, near Notting Hill Gate (Consulate) and Kensington Palace Gardens (Embassy). The Czech Consulate was also at Notting Hill Gate.

Some of the films were very odd at first sight:

Other films (especially the ones from the Caucasus) seemed almost impenetrable. I remember this one, which I think was shown with Russian subtitles:

I visited the actual Portobello Road Market, specifically, a few times in the 1980s and early 1990s. It sold everything from apples to antiques and expensive fur coats (some valued at thousands of pounds, with provenance doubtful).

As for the Carnival, I did go once, out of curiosity. That would have been mid-1980s. Ghastly. Non-stop drumming “music”, dubious palm wine bought from an African in the street, fried plantains (not unpleasant but very over-priced) and, everywhere, huge numbers of people (by no means all non-whites, though blacks were by far the majority, as I suppose they soon will be in all of London, if they are not already). A hot day, too. I stayed for an hour or so. To return to real London was not easy. All Underground stations in the vicinity were closed because of the crush. I ended up walking all the way home, in the hot sun, to Little Venice, which was blessedly quiet and leafy by comparison with the streets of “Carnival”.

The present-day residents of Notting Hill (where houses now sell for millions) mostly barricade themselves in for a few days, or lock their houses up as securely as they can, and then go away for a few days. I imagine that they must be (secretly?) celebrating the cancellation this year.

Tweets seen

I start with one, the poster of which evidently imagines itself very clever:

Or…just maybe…because Iceland, unlike the UK, is not a multikulti, globalized, overcrowded dustbin of peoples…

Something better:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6197097/PETER-HITCHENS-reveals-REAL-truth-Communist-infiltration-Britain.html

Hitchens of course glosses over the fact that most important Communists in the UK, from the 1920s up to the effective end of the socialist/Communist movement in 1989, were Jews.

satan-maskt

In fact, Hitchens’ own Daily Mail article (an inset of) refers to Karl Marx simply as “German“, and not the more correct “Jew“, presumably because Marx was born in Germany and spoke German as well as other languages. If I had been born in China, would I be Chinese? Of course not (though some of the madder Twitterati would probably and defiantly answer in the affirmative!).

I cannot recall when I last heard a cuckoo. Perhaps in a deeply-wooded part of Surrey, c.1985, aged about 28, when I would go trekking every week for several hours with a well-organized group of elderly persons (all 70+), some of whom, like my parents’ then neighbour, Edward, had been officers of Special Operations Executive (SOE) and/or other organizations during the Second World War.

They would trek on a pre-planned route along rural footpaths (very rural— we never met another soul), wooded, with ferns pressing in at time, and always ending up at the country pub where we had started (and where a ploughman’s lunch and a pint of beer would await). Those old people were resilient! I myself, 50 years their junior (and at the time a student of Taekwando, who also could swim 2 miles or more) always fell asleep on the way home in Edward’s car! That was a tough generation.

More tweets:

I am rather surprised that Hitchens even bothers with Twitter, let alone little twerps such as his “interlocutor” there, “@taggio72″. I myself am banned from Twitter anyway, because a group of Jews organized a campaign of complaints against me in 2018. I do not know whether my 3,000 followers miss my tweets. I followed only about 50 accounts, I believe, and most of those were organizations.

Twitter is basically a waste of time. I do read tweets from a few people (Hitchens being one), but Twitter is basically an echo-chamber and outrage-chamber where the agenda changes almost daily. When you add to that the fact that the more interesting tweeters (like me) have been systematically removed over the last few years, the net result is that Twitter is almost useless, though it is a way of identifying some “enemies of the people”. The bias in Twitter is such that it is almost useless as a way of gauging public opinion. Maybe if you see the Twitter mood, the best idea is to then take the reverse view as being the view of most people.

More tweets

Hitchens is against Powell on various bases, including Powell’s alliance with what is now called “racism” (before about 1989, most people would have used the word “racialist”, though that was not so often heard. The politically-correct mob had not yet quite stormed the citadel (under their paramount chief, Blair).

My own view about Powell is that he was a Conservative, so I am not on the same page as him. When he made his famous or “infamous” speech, I was only 11 and living in Australia.

The ITV News piece below is of course multikulti-biased; still…

The fact is that, overall, Enoch Powell was right. Is the Tiber “foaming with much blood”? Not in the cartoon sense, but look at the violent crime in the large cities, the knife crime, the gangs etc. Look at the direction of travel. It is getting worse.

As to Powell himself, one of the true stars of postwar British politics. He was a Conservative, which I am not. He hunted the fox, which I deplore. Still, a real mind amid, even then, the mediocrity. Look at that clip again. Both of the other MPs featured are very slight as compared to Powell.

The first, Paul Uppal, a Sikh, was Conservative Party MP for Powell’s old seat, though only from 2010-2015. Prior to that, supposedly “ran his own business”, the nature of which was not disclosed even on his own website, except that it apparently had no employees other than himself… (#bullshitklaxon…)

As for Ian Austin, MP for Dudley North 2005-2019, he was a press officer in the Labour Party prior to becoming an MP. A total mediocrity, as well as being one of the worst expenses cheats in the Commons and a doormat for the Jewish lobby and Israel.

Austin was finally removed from Parliament in 2019, having stepped down to avoid losing his seat. He was not popular, and caused scandal by apparently wanting the law against pornography featuring bestiality to be repealed. He too has now been given a government sinecure. He is unmarried (I do not know whether he has a pet or companion animal; I hope not!).

Powell, a former Professor of Ancient Greek (Sydney University), who had been born into very modest circumstances in the UK, was multilingual, an academic star student who, after leaving his Sydney academic post, joined the British Army as a private soldier in 1939. He ended the war in 1945 as a brigadier.

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

I imagine that Powell would have been appalled at the MPs now sitting in the Westminster monkeyhouse. As for Twitter, I cannot see him having an account or bothering with the tidal wave of ignorance, though the brevity taught by his mastery of Greek epigrams and proverbs might have assisted him, if he were to have a Twitter account.

I oppose Powell in that he was very pro war with Germany, even before Hitler took power! Also, he did not say much about black and brown immigration into the UK until the late 1960s. To that extent, Hitchens is right. Powell did try to, as people now say, “weaponize” the race issue for his own political benefit. However, that resonated with millions of British people who even then suspected that the System was betraying them.

Why did Powell never really get anywhere politically after 1968? My view is that, as someone who was basically a Conservative and reactionary, he could not see himself as “national revolutionary”, leading a social-national party.

A February 1969 Gallup poll showed Powell the “most admired person” in British public opinion.” [Wikipedia]

Had Powell started his own party, even if Conservative-nationalist, he probably would have won several seats and perhaps attracted a few Conservative Party MPs too. It has to be borne in mind that, in the 1970 General Election, over 97% of the votes went to LibLabCon, just under 90% to Labour and Conservative. Powell probably simply thought that new parties fail…

So it was that, in 1974, Powell abandoned the Conservative Party and joined the Ulster Unionists. Why? Again, my own view is that Powell had in mind the bloc of Irish MPs (I think about 90) that Parnell had once led, in the 19thC, though Powell was not the leader of the UUP (which was also few in number at Westminster, I think about 11 MPs).

It may be that, in the end, Powell over-valued Parliament, Parliamentary procedures etc. It was alien to him to start a new party, despite his surely knowing that he had all the talents necessary to lead one: public profile, public support (up to a point), a fine mind, public speaking skills of a high order, administrative skills etc.

Imagine if Powell had had the initiative to start a new party immediately after the “Rivers of Blood” speech. He could have recruited thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. He might have been able to get a bloc of MPs and, from there, who knows?

As for Hitchens, where I part company with him is that he is a kind of “small-c” conservative or quasi-conservative. The race question is as nothing to him, the Jewish Question is as nothing to him. As a result, he inevitably gets things wrong at times even when, often, he is on the right track.

My blog post about Hitchens, written a year ago:

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

Back to 2020 Britain

https://twitter.com/BaronStrucker/status/1257334245682528256?s=20

Why are they not dealing with that gorilla, even if it requires a taser (or a Glock)? I have no idea what the situation was, though. The black may simply have been sunbathing. God knows.

A tweet about the pathetic Question Time rubbish now fronted, poorly, by ludicrously-overpaid BBC face Fiona Bruce:

https://twitter.com/SocialM85897394/status/1258525416907665408?s=20

People who are “conservative” nationialists can never see that the UK is not being flooded by non-whites by some kind of accident! Question Time, The Pledge etc are not full of ignorant blacks such as Afua Hirsch or “Femi” by “accident“! Au contraire. This is part of the Great Replacement. It is not a “conspiracy theory”. It is real and it is all around you. Just open your eyes.

https://www.westernspring.co.uk/the-coudenhove-kalergi-plan-the-genocide-of-the-peoples-of-europe/

Well, that’s enough for today. I may not like the Chinese attitude to animals, but they can put on a parade!

End of the day…

Afterthought: the officially-mandated “clap” nonsense, which has been conspicuous by near-absence around where I live, was briefly in evidence this evening, at 2000 hrs. Some fireworks went off in the distance, then I heard one person loudly clapping, unseen but not far away. Maybe a drunk.

21 thoughts on “Diary Blog, 7 April 2020”

  1. Having a haircut is NOT essential unless you want to be a good-looking corpse in the morgue! Human beings require only food, water and oxygen to live not haircuts.

    Some form of restriction upon normal life is essential at this time as the PRIORITY at this time is the protection of human life, particularly those who are more vulnerable such as old people.

    ‘Normal’ life is OVER for the foreseeable future.

    It is high time this country grew-up and realised that libertarianism is, apart from a few limited areas like most LGBT rights, a very impractical political philosophy that doesn’t fit in well with reality and makes it inherently unworkable just like many aspects of socialism go against the grain of human nature. Mrs Thatcher’s libertarian economic policies done a great deal of damage to our economy in many ways to take just one example.

    Viruses don’t respect ‘personal freedom’.

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    1. While I agree with you re “libertarianism”, M’Lord of Essex, British civil rights predated that American concept by at least a couple of hundred years.

      I also agree that a haircut is not the *most” essential thing, though I am in danger of looking like a member of The Monkees, circa 1968.

      The point is that this “lockdown” nonsense is not stopping the spread of Coronavirus anyway. In fact, the most likely incubators are still operating! I mean Underground, buses etc.

      Also, this regime is chopping the UK economy off at the legs. It may not recover. I mean, at all.

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  2. The lockdown should be EXTENDED to people who have been exempt so far like illegal immigrants, most travellers to this country ie Yank tourists from loony states like Georgia where the governor has even re-opened cinemas!🙄🤡😩etc.

    Only a very limited relaxation of the measures is advisable. The main thrust of them should continue for a little while yet like banning football matches and other events where large numbers of people congregate in public.

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  3. It is good that you mentioned Iceland. Yes, it is an island like us though much further away from the Continent of Europe which the WHO designated the ‘epicentre’ of the epidemic a few weeks ago. That is an advantage over us but as you say the island is not a multi-cult, overly densely populated dustbin like we are and that has also given them a big advantage.

    This is why this country NEEDS a lockdown because Tory libertarian idiots didn’t want to (and STILL don’t want to’ exercise the power of the state and one of the main ways any government does that is border and immigration control.

    So, I’m afraid, these Tory libertarian fanatics should have the good sense to shut-up now in this pandemic because it was their own libertarian political philosophy along with Labour’s usual globalist stupidity that ensured British governments have never taken immigration/border control genuinely seriously.

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  4. Iain Dumbo-Smith is, apparently, one of the prime advocates of ending the lockdown. A normally good rule of thumb is that if he is in favour of something it is usually the wrong thing to do.

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      1. Peter Hitchens has condemned Enoch Powell and called his ‘Rivers if Blood’ speech racialist and accused Enoch of trying to profit from the speech politically to revive a flagging career. Well, I don’t think that was on Enoch’s mind seeing as he must have known he would be demoted and indeed that was the case as the Tory scumbag Edward Heath sacked him immediately from being Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. Of course, Enoch must also have known he would receive a lot of Establishment press criticism as well.

        Peter Hitchens is a strange character. I really can’t place him ideologically-speaking. I usually find I can’t trust people who condemn Enoch Powell for being a ‘racist/racialist’ when, in reality, Enoch was a ‘traditional High Tory’, British patriot and English nationalist.

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  5. Operations can and should go ahead and the government should be constantly reminding everyone but particularly older people who are more scared that they shouldn’t be afraid of calling emergency numbers if they think they have the symptoms of a heat attack or stroke as the NHS CAN cope.

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  6. South Korea has performed well but then they are using mass testing and contact tracing on a large scale. Koreans though are quite used to authoritarian rule since they had a military dictatorship in the 1960’s to the late 1970’s that laid the foundations for the ‘miracle on the Han river’ ie their economic miracle of today.

    I doubt whether many Britons would be comfortable with an app having to be downloaded onto your mobile tracing your movements and enabling another mobile user to know you were infected.

    lLibertarian Tories and others here would moan about the loss of privacy and personal freedom. Also, as South Korea makes a very large percentage of the world’s mobiles, many of them including older people own them. I think I am correct in stating about 90% plus of Koreans have a mobile phone whereas here it isn’t quite as much.

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    1. A more targeted and sophisticated approach to this viral epidemic can be taken if you have the resources to do that as South Korea has and a governmental willlingness to infringe upon people’s privacy and civil liberties. I doubt whether that is the case here hence more blanket responses like our lockdown on Britons and not illegal immigrants or international travellers.

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    2. I myself do not possess a mobile telephone, M’Lord of Essex, though I had one when I was a practising barrister. I bought my first one in 1992, I think. It was a Motorola and about the weight of a half-brick. I have little need of one these days.

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  7. So a more targeted and sophisticated response to this epidemic is going to be difficult in this country hence the use of a more blunt lockdown.

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  8. You are quite a big fan of Hitler and National Socialism. If Hitler were the dictator of Germany today and was facing how to deal with this pandemic he would not have had qualms about using the power of the German state to combat it and would have disregarded civil liberties and ‘personal freedom’ concerns’.

    After all, wasn’t one of the German National Socialist German Workers’ Party slogans, ‘The Common Good before The Private Good’?

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    1. M’Lord of Essex:
      True, but you are assuming, first of all, that “lockdown” is effective. Evidence from around the world suggests not.

      Secondly, even if there is some *minimal* advantage from “lockdown”, the disadvantages (including a collapsing economy and large numbers of *non*-Coronavirus deaths) far outweight that small advantage.

      Thirdly, I doubt that it would ever occur to Hitler to put the entire nation under house arrest.

      Fourthly, we should not be so quick to think of the Reich as a tyrany. Dictatorship, yes, and avowedly so, but for the most part the Reich did operate under rules and laws, even though they *could* be over-ridden by the will of Adolf Hitler.

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  9. Hitler would not have needed to put Germans under house arrest because he would have been very confident they would abide by government guidelines about ‘social distancing’ and taking responsibility for their own health and that of vulnerable, elderly Germans.

    THIS is the problem with relaxing the lockdown. I’m afraid over the course of the last few decades far too many Britons have not been used to discipline being exerted over them by those in authority like the police , state schools ie our epidemic of bullying. We have become a soft and flabby society in this respect.

    A disciplined society follows orders implicitly from government whereas a society not used to it doesn’t.

    We saw the problem the government has earlier before the lockdown came into effect when too many openly flouted the advice hence the government felt an advisory position was inadequate and enforcement of social distancing would have to be the course of action.

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  10. This more natural following of governmental authority and advice by Germans today is perhaps one reason Germany is dealing with this crisis more successfully.

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  11. Relaxing the lockdown too much or too early might send out the wrong signals to people and then they will openly flout government guidelines. We want to defeat this virus not give it a breather before we have to slam the brakes on again.

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    1. Well, M’Lord of Essex, that assumes again that “lockdown” is effective. The evidence indicates otherwise. Spain and Italy have had, per population, far worse outcomes than the UK despite having stricter “lockdowns”, while Sweden has had a better outcome than the UK, though it has no “lockdown”.

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      1. Wigger:
        Thank you. That news about the 180 migrants (invaders) allowed to land in Italy shows that the conspiracy is driving ahead with what is effectively white genocide. I notice that the TV ads with mixed-race couples have become even more blatant recently. The makers, and the government are all the destroyers of Europe.

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  12. The blue-tick (tic?) twatterati are obviously a residue whose continued presence is tolerated just to promote the apparat’s desired agenda through standard modality of creating the impression that a majority of voices favour a particular viewpoint. As with Youtube following its bannings and demonetisations, the platform has no plausible pretention to a “diversity” of views.

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    1. Wigger:
      As you say. First they came for the “terrorists”, then for anyone dissenting (me, Alison Chabloz, others), now they take on even those with millions of followers. David Icke looks like he will be taken down at some point. “They” (((they))) have decided so.

      The method takes down the dissident accounts (Twitter, YouTube etc) and also the donation or payment options, leaving the dissident without means and, eventually, any platform. “They” are behind it, but the “useful idiots” of “antifa” etc are left to cheer on what will eventually be their own removal.

      I noticed that Twitter has only made a profit in one or two quarters out of about 60. Yet it keeps going…

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