Early tweets seen
I have never been to the south of Cyprus. I have been, though long ago now, to Northern Cyprus, at that time (the winter of 1999-2000) not as popular with visitors as it now is. I was able to hire a car and drive all over on empty roads, once right along the Karpat Peninsula, the eastern end of which is only 60 miles from Latakia in Syria.
I went to the Castle of St. Hilarion (a Crusader fortress) and to the ruined castle of Buffavento (a 2+ hour trek up a mountain path); that one, on the very summit of a tree-clad mountain, really deserved its name (“buffeted by the winds”).
I also visited most of the small towns: Kyrenia, Famagusta, Guzelyurt, as well as the capital, Nicosia, then split in two, completely demarcated and guarded, like Berlin before the fall of socialism. I remember going to the “Museum of Barbarism”, a memorial to the young daughters (and Greek Cypriot wife) of a Turkish Cypriot officer of the (British) militia force. They were murdered right there by a sectarian gang led or directed by (I think) Nikos Sampson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikos_Sampson]. You can see the holes in the wall left as the submachinegun rounds struck, including holes in the wall of the bathroom, where one of the victims, a girl of 9 (if I recall aright) had been hiding when she was shot dead.
Sobering. If only our Empire and all other European empires had not been given away… The result of that withdrawal from Empire, even before it fully happened, was chaos across much of the world. In Cyprus, displacement of populations, and division of the island after the invasion by Turkish forces in 1974, which division continues today, though I believe that tourists can now go from one side to the other easily enough.
A land, as I remember, of warm winter sun, just about warm enough for a quick swim in a not very warm Mediterranean, at a completely deserted beach somewhere west of Kyrenia. Not bad for January. A land of both olives and oranges, the latter colourful but unripe on the trees (my then girlfriend picked one to taste it). A land of (also deserted) ancient Greek amphitheatre ruins. I rather liked it. Warm during the day (despite a cool breeze at times), though rather cold at night.
“Boris Johnson is a blatant liar...”. Meanwhile, in other news, a wolf was seen in a forest…
So far, no indication as to whether such manifestations will develop into a real political movement. Similar ones in the past, mostly not. The Hard Hats [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Hat_Riot] of 1970 faded away immediately, and the same has happened elsewhere: the Gilets Jaunes of the very recent French past [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement], and (on the pathetic level) the English Defence League [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Defence_League].
Yes. Well worth reading, though the content is not news to me; nor, I apprehend, to many many others:
“Our Politicians Must have Passed an Examination in Stupidity to obtain their Positions.“
“In 30 years, it will be much easier to say this, but this must be the stupidest era there has ever been in British politics. Oh, yes, some modern politicians can make classical allusions or dance nimbly about when interviewed.
But they do not really know anything, or understand anything. They live entirely in the present. They know little of other countries and less about the past. They idolise Winston Churchill but are in fact ignorant about him or his era, and the huge price in power and wealth which he rightly paid for our survival in 1940. Worse still, they think they are clever.
This has something to do with the way we pick our leaders. I have long suspected that they have to pass an examination in stupidity before being allowed into Westminster. But in fact the selection procedures of the major parties achieve the same thing. They demand servile conformity with the idiotic beliefs which now govern our country. Show the slightest sign of spirit or independent thought, on any topic, and you are out.
So here we are, fresh from six months of determined self-harm and illiterate panic over the virus, on the brink of making it even worse.
Anyone who knew anything about the EU issue said years ago (as I did) that our best way out of Brussels rule was to copy Norway – stay in the Single Market and get rid of all the political and legal baggage.
Zealots, who treasure the delusions that we are still a major power with a thriving economy, derided this. No, they said, we must have a total breach, and then we will soar free, our Victorian greatness restored. Few of them ever grasped what it will mean to leave the Single Market, into which our economy has been totally integrated for decades, and they will shortly have a fascinating lesson in that. The trouble is, the rest of us will have to have that lesson too. And it is hardly surprising that France, which has so long resented our standing in Europe and the World, sees this as an opportunity to take us down a peg or two. But remember, before complaining, that we gave them this chance.” [Peter Hitchens, in the Mail on Sunday].
Some people have asked me whether I “support” Patriotic Alternative. My response: I would not say that I “support” PA directly or wholeheartedly, but they are at least mainly on the right track, in my view. Also, it is good to see young people (including a considerable cadre of intelligent young women) coming to social nationalism, which should not be solely the preserve of middle-aged Kirsch-drinkers like me!
Such closely-representational art is not the only kind of painting which one can esteem, but it is certainly a breath of fresh air after the msm lionization of frauds or scam-artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, whose prominence was bought by Jewish backers such as Saatchi.
So many non-Europeans, in this case half and half, his father having come from Borneo [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wong_(ethnobotanist)] seem to hate us, even if (as in this case) the individual was born in the UK and had every advantage here…
There is a huge hostile bloc of varied type within the UK.
Batten is quite wrong, though, in agreeing to “moderate and appropriate” immigration into the UK. Britain needs no immigration at all. Now, if the British person wants to marry a foreign person, and it is a genuine connection (not a scam), and if that person is not unsuitable for whatever reason, then come here.
Likewise, if Britain needs a particular and truly highly-qualified scientist, then yes, come, even with immediate family, and help us advance to the future.
One person, a few dozen, even a few hundred (especially if of European descent), but not thousands, let alone millions, of non-Europeans.
Batten was briefly leader of UKIP. You can see why UKIP failed. Not because of Batten, as such, but because people like Batten always want to be “moderate”, “respectable”, “lawful” etc. No go. It does not work.
Still, Batten was one of the better UKIP people, albeit no intellectual.
Sounds like the Franco-British dispute could go nuclear; not literally, but with tit-for-tat reprisals, eg on UK citizens living (as I once did) in France. I foresee a collapse in French property prices in Brittany, Normandy, maybe elsewhere, once British purchasers dry up.
Already, since 2016, there has been little interest. In fact, when I was last in Brittany, sometime in 2015 (I think), I was told that British people were finding it hard to sell property, especially inland from the coastal towns such as Roscoff. Example: a house and bar with B&B rooms (maybe half a dozen or so bedrooms in all, including owners’ accommodation), about 15 miles inland, in a quiet hamlet, unsold despite having been on the market for only around £70,000; on the market for 5+ years. I spent a couple of days there myself, the only guest.
The above academic termite, enemy of free speech, enemy of the British people, has obviously never read my blog! I suppose that my voice is not “loud” enough! Hardly surprising when I have been expelled from Twitter and am not able to publish my views on any msm platform…
So take the bitch at her word— fire her.
John le Carre (David Cornwell)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carr%C3%A9]
The writer John le Carre has died. I regret now that I was not able to hear him speak in the early 1980s at the GB-USSR Association, a now-defunct para-diplomatic body funded by the Foreign Office, and of which I was a member. I was told that it was the best talk anyone could remember having been given there.
Late tweets
I wonder whether, with the likely increase in home working (for adults), and also unemployment (for various reasons), and also now that we have the Internet, many TV channels (some of which could be repurposed) etc, the school, as an institution, needs to survive at all.
In the Soviet Union, most boxes of chocolates contained individual chocolates of several different shapes, but were identical inside; the filling was the same for all. Apply to UK System political parties…
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
So Boris is a blatant liar? Do bears defecate in the woods? Anyone with half a functioning braincell realised long ago that Boris is wholly unsuitable to be PM and is so practiced at lying he has turned it into a veritable art form! I don’t know what is worse out of The Clown TM being that way inclined or a British electorate that in too many cases has failed to see the buffoon’s true nature!🙄😡🤬😞☹️
Apparently, Boris put on his ‘charm act’ at the recent dinner between him and Ursula Von der Leyen. Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t too impressed with his oafish, ex public schoolboy antics! He berated the French as ‘difficult’ and said both we British and you Germans should know this and tried to open one on one talks between him and Macron and Merkel thus bypassing Barnier. He should have known this isn’t possible because the EU have appointed Barnier as their Chief Negotiator and that the EU acts in the negotiations as a united entity and has done so since DAY ONE FOUR PLUS YEARS AGO!🙄🙄🙄
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Quite, m’Lord of Essex.
Only an overconfident entitled featherbedded buffoon of the Boris-idiot type would think that he could bypass the chief EU negotiator and sow dissension between France and Germany to the UK’s (supposed) advantage.
After all, a major reason for the setting-up of the Iron and Steel Community that became EEC, EC and then EU, was to solidify the links between France and Germany, which had been quite strong pre-1945, even during the Occupation, which was largely accepted by the French—if unwillingly— and those links have been getting stronger ever since.
Apart from that, the EU has one EU position, I mean negotiating position. Yes, fishing in the Channel and beyond means more to France than to, say, Luxembourg, or to Germany for that matter, but 99% of the EU position is fixed, and any change will be agreed intra-EU, not via parallel talks between one EU state and the UK.
Boris-idiot is an embarrassment on an international scale. His being Prime Minister diminishes every UK citizen.
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He certainly does diminish us all. Those 90 year old and 100 year old Tory members with senile dementia that voted for him to be their ‘leader’ have so much to answer for.🤬🙄🤬😡😞☹️
But the real blame lies with those idiots who don’t follow the news and voted Tory in December last year to ‘get Brexit done’ when even the most cursory examination of the facts would show that Brexit wasn’t going to be ‘done’ any time soon and that the deal on offer was a horrendous and dangerous one for the unity of this country.
Still, we shouldn’t expect anything better of morons that ‘read’ The Scum, should we?
I am proud to say I didn’t vote for Boris and his incompetent band of globalist, PC, open borders supporting, United Kingdom destroying cretins last December. I haven’t therefore endorsed his wretched ‘oven ready’ (more like a severely burnt Christmas Turkey!) ‘deal’ nor his utterly incompetent handling of Covid-19 and the horrendous 60,000 plus deaths these compete arseholes in government have caused.🤬😡😞☹️🙄
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To be fair to Boris, he isn’t the first to try this tactic of trying to bypass Barnier. Teresa May did it too and was soon sent on her merry way so he should have known it wouldn’t work and will never do so.
All this goes to show is that the Tories STILL don’t know how the EU works! They haven’t learnt a thing in this regard since our application to join in the early 1970’s!🙄🤬😡
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I fear that you may be correct, m’Lord of Essex. To misuse the illiterate QAnon slogan, the EU is “where we go one, we go all…”
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They have negotiated so poorly it isn’t even funny.🤬😡😞☹️ David Davies stupidly agreed to the EU’s sequencing of the negotiations then we wonder how we have ended-up with either a terrible deal which, dangerously, treats NI as a semi-detached part of the UK in the orbit of Brussels or a no deal that will be economically disastrous and is also dangerous for the continued survival of the United Kingdom with regard to Scotland in particular.
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I think that, once the likely post-Brexit chaos really bites, together with the inevitable consequences of the “lockdown”/shutdown “strategy” (yes, I know that you and I disagree re. its necessity…), and then add in to that the weakness of the pound caused by both the Rishi Sunak “spray money around” policy and the withdrawal of foreign industries from this country, and you will see inflation roar ahead.
Britain is not a very big manfacturer now, so the weakness of the pound will not help us much economically, but it will make our food, and other imports, more expensive.
Scotland may well see an increase in “nationalism” (faux-nationalism, SNP-nationalism, so be it), and that may well lead to the SNP *holding*, unilaterally, a referendum. If Westminster says “no”, what then? Arrest Sturgeon etc, as the Spaniards did to the Catalan leaders? That really might lead to an armed uprising (no joke).
I myself am sanguine as to Scottish fake “independence”, because it would mean (as I have blogged in the past) Labour’s collapse in England. There may be few Labour MPs left in Scotland (I think only one now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MPs_for_constituencies_in_Scotland_(2019%E2%80%93present) but Labour in England and Wales can at present assume that in future they could rely on the SNP to shore up a minority Labour government at Westminster. Once Scotland becomes “independent”, Labour loses not only 1 MP from Scotland, but all the others that might support a minority Lab govt (47 SNP, 6 Scottish LibDems).
That, in turn, would remove any reason for ppl in England and Wales to vote Labour, and might stimulate real social nationalism in England and Wales.
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They can only hold yet another referendum on fake ‘independence’ within the EU as the Scottish Numpty Party (SNP) wants IF Westminster agrees and as the last one’s result in 2014 was meant to have lasted for a generation that time has not yet arrived.
Holding an unofficial one would be totally illegal since the constitution and specifically the Act of Union of 1707 is reserved to Westminster.
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Thr SNP don’t seem to understand that Holyrood is not a federal parliament but a *devolved* one thus it is a parliament *OF* Westminster and has no inherent powers of its own. Those powers it does exercise are *lent* to it by Westminster. It was created by statute via the Scotland Act 1998 and its powers can be unilaterally increased, lessened or withdrawn including abolished entirely at any time by Westminster.
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You may be correct constitutionally and so legally, m’Lord of Essex, but all power comes ultimately from the people. If (to select one figure) 60% of Scots want to withdraw from the UK, it becomes difficult to say no to them. So far, the figure seems to fluctuate between 40% and 55%. If 60% want it and for a period, not just as a brief episode in the opinion polls, then to refuse it invites rebellion, possibly on a Northern Irish level. The better course might then be to concede “Independence”, but to try to control Scottish events and politics covertly in future.
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Some Scots want to get rid of Holyrood so as to stop it being a platform for the SNP’s ‘politics of grudge and grievance’: https://www.abolishholyrood.org
In some ways that is a shame because Holyrood is, in stark contrast to the undemocratic, archaic, joke of Westminster, elected by a reasonably fair and democratic voting system of the Additional Member System (AMS) of Proportional Representation though there is room for improvement in several respects ie an ‘open’ instead of a ‘closed’ list for the regional MSPs.
Sadly though the Scots haven’t taken advantage of the system and elected the same old failures of the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and the SNP.
http://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk
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Under “Independence”, the newly-“independent” Scottish state would soon find itself very poor, but you cannot have it all…
There would have to be a hard border if Scotland applied to join the EU. The first such border since 1707, and then some (I mean a much harder border than existed pre-1707)
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Yes, there would have to be a hard border not least because we in England would need to be protected from an increase in illegal migration from our North caused by the loony globalist policies of an ‘independent’ SNP administration in Edinburgh.
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No doubt being in Hampshire that pretty village is very ‘true blue’ in its voting habits and is a part of a very safe Tory seat at Westminster. When are Tory voters going to learn the Conservative Party only wants to preserve the wealth of the ultra-rich NOT our country and its native people? The Tories have systematically dumped all real notions of social conservatism and are now just as much in favour of globalist liberalism and open borders as the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru are.
It looks like the village is in the South Downs National Park! Sacrilege! 😡🤬☹️😞Do NOT vote for the fake CONServative Party!
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No, m’Lord of Essex.Further north: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Stacey
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