Belated Saturday quiz
I forgot about the i paper quiz yesterday. So here it is:
Only 5/10 this week, though I still beat John Rentoul (again); he only scored 4/10. I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, 8, 9, and 10 (could not remember what LED —exactly— means, and I hit the post on the Battle of Bannockburn, knowing that it was Edward I’s successor but not knowing who the hell that was).
Tweets seen
The reference there is to Paul Halloran, the candidate at Batley and Spen of the “Heavy Woollen District Independents” in the 2019 General Election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batley_and_Spen_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s. He scored 12.2%, a very creditable result. I mentioned the fact in my blog post of yesterday about the upcoming Batley and Spen by-election (1 July 2021): https://ianrobertmillard.org/2021/06/04/the-batley-and-spen-by-election-2021/.
It seems that the said Halloran has now joined the no-chance Reclaim Party set up by the actor Laurence Fox, who now stands for free speech (except, it seems, where Jews disapprove or are mentioned). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Fox.
Halloran, Fox, and Reclaim Party have issued a statement: https://mailchi.mp/a466726a0fd3/media-statement-the-reclaim-party-and-paul-halloran?e=d4fb63896d.
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/paul-halloran-wont-standing-batley-20751008
It is clear that Reclaim Party will never amount to anything. As far as the Batley and Spen by-election in July is concerned, the stand-aside will obviously help the Conservative candidate, but what is unknown is by how many votes. Halloran received 12.2% of the vote in 2019, true, but Fox, in the recent London Mayoral Election, only 1.9%.
I suppose that it might be surmised that Halloran, had he stood at Batley, might have garnered 5% of the by-election vote, possibly 10%, and maybe even 15%+, but the fact is that that is pure speculation. We do not know.
What we do know is that the above news is probably a blow for Labour. A few percent might decide this contest.
Chesham and Amersham by-election 2021
The Chesham and Amersham by-election is set down for 17 June 2021. It has been occasioned by the death of the sitting member, Cheryl Gillan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Gillan].
I usually abide by the maxim de mortuis nihil nisi bonum (“[say] nothing but good of the [recent] dead”) but the fact is that the recently-deceased MP was little better than a persistent and outright thief [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Gillan#Expenses] who defrauded the taxpayer out of far more than was explicitly exposed during the 2009 expenses scandal.
As to the constituency, this is rock-solid Conservative Party territory, situated at the suburban and semi-rural Northern joint termini of the Metropolitan Line.
Since the seat was created in 1974, the Conservatives have held it, at first with Ian Gilmour [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gilmour,_Baron_Gilmour_of_Craigmillar] and then with Cheryl Gillan, who “inherited” the seat in 1992.
The lowest ebb of Conservative Party fortunes at Chesham and Amersham was 1997, but even in that year of “Labour landslide” the Conservative vote held up at 50.4%. The high-water mark was the 1992 General Election (63.3%). Even the expenses scandal did not dent Cheryl Gillan’s vote (60.4% in 2010).
Second place in elections at Chesham and Amersham has usually gone to the Liberal Democrats, but UKIP (2015, 13.7%) and Labour (2017, 20.6%) have also featured.
The LibDem vote-share fell to only 9% (and a fourth-place) in the debacle of 2015, but recovered to 13% in 2017, and to 26.3% in 2019.
As for Labour, its low point was 2010 (5.6%), and its high point 2017 (20.6%).
Eight candidates contest the by-election, the other five being Green Party, Reform Party UK, Freedom Alliance, Breakthrough Party, and Rejoin EU.
Green Party got 5.5% at Chesham and Amersham in 2019.
Reform Party UK is the rump of Brexit Party, and scored 1% in the most recent London Assembly elections.
Rejoin EU managed to get a vote of 1.1% in the 2021 London Mayoral election. Its by-election candidate is Brendan Donnelly [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Donnelly_(politician)], a one-time employee at the Foreign Office, who became a Conservative Party MEP in 1994, then left the Conservative Party, stood again in 1999 under the banner of the short-lived “Pro-Euro Conservative Party” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-Euro_Conservative_Party], failed to be re-elected, and thereafter became a serial and unsuccessful pro-EU election candidate under several flags.
Freedom Alliance is a reaction to the toytown police state created by the 2020 Coronavirus events, and is based in Huddersfield [https://freedomalliance.co.uk/], though its Chesham and Amersham by-election candidate is a former Green Party councillor who lives in High Wycombe [https://freedomalliance.co.uk/england-candidates/].
As for Breakthrough Party, it describes itself as “a democratic socialist party, led by the younger generations...” [https://breakthroughparty.org.uk/]; https://www.thecanary.co/feature/2021/04/18/a-new-political-party-wants-a-breakthrough-for-young-people/. Its by-election candidate is Carla Gregory, aged 31, a charity worker: https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/chesham-and-amersham-by-election-mum-of-two-standing-for-new-breakthrough-party-to-be-voice-of-unheard-3241528.
The main interest in the by-election will be that of seeing how low Labour will sink.
The Normandy Landings
Today is the 77th anniversary of the Normandy Landings, the biggest invasion by sea in history, and the determinative turning-point of the Second World War on the Western Front: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings
Tweets seen
Well, Hitchens is sometimes worth noting, but I have to say that when I had a Twitter account (a pack of Jew-Zionists had me expelled in 2018), Hitchens blocked me mainly if not entirely because he saw that I knew more than him. My later assessment of him: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/.
Not new, of course. I wrote the following blog post over two years ago, and about a Daily Telegraph article itself written in 2012: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/02/04/white-flight-in-a-small-country/.
NWO. ZOG. The Great Reset. It’s happening right in front of our eyes, yet the majority, perhaps the vast majority, are unaware, or think it is just something to do with a virus that has killed about one in a thousand British people (and even fewer worldwide)…
Fabricant, of course, is a Jew, and was at one time an employee or agent of SIS.
British foreign aid cuts
There is a case for foreign aid. It rests, in its purest form, on charity or compassion, just like social welfare, free medical care etc in the UK domestic context. In less obviously pure form, foreign aid can be regarded as an incident of “soft power” and diplomacy.
Having said that, much foreign aid is misapplied, wasted, or stolen. I could give examples from my own overseas experience.
On BBC TV News, I saw today some woman talking (from her own rather comfortable-looking home) about the recent decision to further cut foreign aid. She was one of the directors of the long-established charity, Save the Children, which —subject to correction— I think was founded in or at the end of the First World War.
Some reading this may recall that, after the Jo Cox assassination in 2016, it came to light that the husband of that MP, the (I always thought, seeing him on TV etc) rather thuggish Brendan Cox, was exposed as a sex pest and quasi-rapist. Well, what interested me more was the fact that (if I recall aright), as something like third in command of Save the Children, Brendan Cox was being paid something like £200,000 pa. Not bad for someone with a very underwhelming academic and other background. Worse, the actual head of Save the Children was getting over £300,000 (in fact, from memory, it was nearly £400,000).
Not that I think that the head of a large organization, even a charitable one, should not be paid decently or even well, bearing in mind the skills required and responsibility held, but all the same it sits unpleasantly to see people donating pennies, or hard-scrabbled pounds, while the fat cats at the top of the tree get hundreds of thousands of pounds (and expenses) every year.
The world of international aid charities is a rotten borough. I once met a woman who was getting very well paid indeed (the equivalent of maybe £100,000 a year in today’s money), for about 2-3 days a week working for DFID as a “consultant”; she had some academic job as well. She told me that she had even been offered more money, about double, working for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] in Rome. Her job title? [would be] “expert in food poverty”!
There’s something unclean about all that. Carpetbagging hypocrisy.
More tweets
Alison Chabloz
The latest news (as yet unconfirmed) about the persecuted satirist and singer is that her appeal against conviction and sentence will take place on 13 August 2021. As said, this is as yet unconfirmed. The appeal had been set down for the two days of 3-4 June 2021, but was adjourned at the request of the Crown. It may be that the appeal will now be more narrowly focussed, i.e. focussed on strictly legal arguments, and that that is why it seems now to be set down for only one day.
In the past, little happened in the courts in August, but that was then.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/15167127/newgrange-ireland-older-than-pyramids/
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Watcher:
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https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/15167127/newgrange-ireland-older-than-pyramids/ off topic: white history
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You are too dismissive of Lib Dem chances in by-elections! Yes, in many constituencies nowadays they will get a derisory vote and not just at general elections but that IS NOT the case in certain seats of which Chesham and Amersham can be counted amongst their number.
The Liberal Democrats have a possibility of winning there in a by-election just as they do at general elections in seats like Wimbledon, Eastbourne (scene of a famous by-election win when they were at a similar low ebb in national opinion polls), South Cambridgeshire, South East Cambridgeshire, Winchester, Mole Valley, Woking, Guildford, Hitchen and Harpenden etc
There are about 92 seats where they came second at the last general election and some of them have a fairly substantial Lib Dem vote share in them and a local government base of councillors.
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The Liberal Democrats have nearly always since the seat was created in 1974 came second in the constituency and the difference between third placed Labour and them was not a marginal amount in 2019.
They are the undeniable clear challenger to the Tories in the seat at this by-election.
The Tory vote share at the general election of 2019 is, of course, an impressive one at 55% but it is not so mightily high as to be off the scale of lunacy as it is in my seat of Brentwood and Ongar where it was a ridiculous 67% or so.
As you said, one point in the CON Party’s favour is that their vote in the seat has NEVER dipped below 50% – the point at which tactical voting can longer work against them – and it didn’t do so even in their landslide defeat of 1997 whereas in other usual Tory strongholds like mine it did with a percentage vote share of 45%.
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To win, the Liberal Democrats will need a direct swing from the CONS as well as reducing that Labour and Green vote to very low levels which in Labour’s case should be very achievable at the moment.
It won’t be at all easy to win the seat especially when the CON Party is doing well in the national polls but it IS just about possible.
The swing required is a large one of 14.5% though not a stupendously off the scale one as in my seat of Brentwood and Ongar ie 27%)
An interesting point to note is that this seat had a large pro-REMAIN vote in the EU referendum and this was in contrast to many strong Tory-held seats.
The seat has a large number of affluent professionals who work in jobs in the City of London etc and this is the type of demographic that is starting to vote Lib Dem in larger numbers in places where they did quite well at the last election like Woking, Guildford, South West Surrey etc.
I am not entirely discounting the possibility of a seemingly unlikely upset being on the cards!
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There are some distinct local issues at play too and you should never ignore these playing a part in by-election campaigns eg that White Elephant called HS2 and Boris The Buffoon’s reckless ‘reforms’ to the planning laws.
Will the people of Chesham and Amersham take the chance to send a message to the government over the very real possibility of Boris and his goon squad wrecking the Green Belt and to press for more extensive mitigation of the environmental damage HS2 will cause?
Keep the ‘Midsomer Murders’ area of Chesham and Amersham beautiful by not giving victory to another Tory time server!😀
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As you say, m’Lord of Essex. In fact, while the deceased MP, Cheryl Gillan was effectively an embezzler, she did have a couple of points in her favour, being anti-HS2 and pro-animal welfare (I believe).
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And quite right too! She was very privileged to be able to represent such a beautiful constituency set in the heart of the supposedly PROTECTED Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) so it is good to learn she was against that rather silly new train set which will, in all likelihood, be very out of date as soon as it is completed. If it continues then seats like Chesham and Amersham need to have more extensive mitigation measures put into place for the environment through which it will pass.
Old Amersham in particular is a lovely place as are other villages such as The Lee where an episode of Midsummer Murders was filmed.
It is a nice area so wanton Tory environmental vandals need to be sent a strong message of ‘hands off our nice Tory area’ and build your new homes in a town with your new found but probably in the fullness of time fair weather friends like Hartlepool!🙄🙄🙄
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Apparently, a lot of people in the seat have good words to say about her and this isn’t confined to Tories. She was supposed to have been a good local MP who was conscientious about dealing with her constituency duties.
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M’Lord of Essex:
I believe that Cheryl Gillan was a supporter of higher animal welfare. I certainly commend her for that (assuming that it was so). She was just, shall we say, very interested in money, like all too many MPs…
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A remarkably posh looking election leaflet for a ‘party’ that has no political philosophy whatsoever and is merely yet another of these one man and his dog ‘parties’/vehicles for personal advancement like Nigel Farage’s Tory Party in exile formerly called the Brexit ‘Party’
These wastes of space are the reason why countries like Germany which has an eminently fair Proportional Representation electoral system have a threshold so you can’t earn PR seats without getting at least 5% of the national vote or winning three directly-elected constituency FPTP seats.
Basically, they institute these thresholds so these joker ‘parties’ don’t have the potential to enter parliament and bugger it up and make stable and effective governments hard to form.
Frankly, what is the Reclaim ‘Party’ or the Brexit/Reform ‘Party’ actually FOR?🙄🙄🙄🙄
I see that Richard Tice’s ‘Reform UK ‘Party’ has decided not to stand in Batley and Spen because, AS EVER, they want the Tory candidate to win!🙄🙄🙄
I almost pity the poor mug who has decided to stand for them in Chesham and Amersham! Why stand for a ‘party’ that withdraws its candidates virtually all the time to help its true love ie the Tories?🙄🙄🙄🙄
Give it up, Richard Tice, you libertarian Brexiteer ‘Tory’ nutcase!
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As to who will win in Batley and Spen that is difficult to say. Without knowing the seat intimately it looks as if the fake Conservative/Clown Party has a good chance of yet another current government by-election win.
However, there are a lot of candidates (one of the highest ever) for the electorate to put their X against and not all of them are complete jokes like the Reclaim ‘Party’ ie the SDP, UKIP, For Britain, Workers Party so the vote could be pretty fractured.
The Tory vote in the seat actually FELL in the general election of 2019 which no doubt happened in only a few seats and then mainly in Scotland.
That their vote declined in what was a good election for them indicates the seat is trending away from them due, mainly, to the ethnic population growing.
Surely, this highly unusual trend of an incumbent government that has been in power for ten years plus and breaking promises ie on controlling immigration and then winning seats off the main opposition party is going to end soon?
I have a feeling that whoever wins it will win on a low vote share which may even beat the most recent example that happened in the Peterborough By-Election of 2019 where the Labour candidate squeezed home on a share of 30.9%.
Perhaps, the turnout will be very low too especially as it will be held in the height of Summer? I am not expecting that it will fall as low as the post war record of just 18.2% set in the Manchester Central By-Election of 2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/_2021_Batley_and_Spen_by-election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_by-election_records
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Peterborough_by-election
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That victory by the Labour candidate at the Peterborough By-Election in 2019 of 30.9% came very near to beating the all time lowest winning share in a by- election set at the Sheffield Attercfifle By-Election in 1909 where it was just 27.5%!
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The Green Party has withdrawn its candidate from the by-election so that might help Labour though not to a huge extent. Still, every vote matters and I suspect the winner will win by under 1,000 votes and it might be considerably under that.
I don’t think George Galloway will do hugely well not least because he isn’t as popular with Muslims as he used to be as we are not currently engaged in a war with a Muslim country. However, the pro-Israel stance of Keir Starmer no doubt annoys quite a few of them so he will get a couple of percentage points from those voters.
I think I can fairly confidently predict that it won’t be a runaway victory for anyone.
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You may well be right, m’Lord of Essex. I did note that the Green Party “whip” has been withdrawn from that rugby player.
As I said in my dedicated by-election blog, my head is saying “a Conservative Party win but only just”, whereas my instinct is different, also concluding that the Con Party will win, but by a very large margin (not because many like “Boris”-idiot and his retinue of clowns, but because Labour is pretty much falling to pieces now).
Batley and Spen is symptomatic of much of the country in that most people, I aver, could find no party or candidate standing who is fully acceptable to them. I would certainly be in that position. Would I vote for Jayda Fransen or Maria Waters? I think not! Anyone who votes for Kim Leadbetter is an idiot, though.
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Anyone who votes for the Tory is also a moron as well seeing as they will be endorsing a fraudulent party that claims to be conservative yet has BROKEN ALL of its promises to control immigration since 2010 when Cameron claimed he wanted to get it down to, “the low tens of thousands” when the very opposite of that supposed aim has happened and Boris-Moron-Idiot has completely smashed any notion of real border controls with his utterly disgraceful decision to allow the entry of up to FIVE MILLION HK Chinese to come to this country despite the fact the place ceased to be a British colony nearly a QUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO and that this stupidity will NOT change the attitude of the Chinese government one iota. This action is also going back on previous Tory promises in the 1990’s about HK immigration.
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On a side note, Anne Marie Waters’s party has quite a good name for a political party but I am surprised the Electoral Commission allowed it since it implies by its very name that all other parties are against Britain.
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M’Lord of Essex:
I recall that, in the mid-1970s, there was a short-lived social-national party (with few members) called the National Democratic Freedom Movement. Apropos of nothing very much. Names are important, though.
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There are also other reasons to not vote Tory such as their ineffectiveness at tackling crime not that this is surprising since they have brutally sacked so many officers over the last ten years of their misrule (Priti Useless only wants to recruit new officers to replace those sacked NOT to actually increase numbers to higher levels than pre 2010) and the so-called ‘party of law and order and the police’ haven’t reversed Labour’s putting into effect of the quasi-Marxist nonsense of the McPherson Report that has done so much damage to the institution and contributed immeasurably to the fact that the police are increasingly not that bothered at combating real crimes but are more concerned with people not being PC..
Also, anyone who votes Tory at the moment is doing a basically immoral act because to do that means you have endorsed their mishandling of the pandemic with its many thousands of unnecessary deaths.
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That the so-called ‘party of immigration control’ (if only!) didn’t institute ultra-tough travel restrictions to this country FROM THE VERY START of this worldwide viral pandemic in MARCH 2020 as Shinzo Abe did with his country of Japan shows their disgusting contempt for ordinary Britons and in particular those most susceptible to dying or falling very ill with this virus and their lax attitude to REAL immigration control more generally.🤬😡😞☹️
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The Yorkshire Party might do quite well and be the repository for the traditional ‘protest vote’ that is typical at a by-election.
Unlike some of the parties standing they are at least a semi-serious one and do have a real cause ie campaigning for a regional parliament/assembly for Yorkshire. That idea is better than an English Parliament which would replicate Westminster and wouldn’t bring power closer to people. An English Parliament within the UK would be a serious risk to the UK continuing as it would be governing such a large percentage of the UK’s population and wealth . A UK containing a devolved all-England English Parliament would not be stable and how long would such a parliament tolerate being dictated to by Westminster on ‘reserved’ issues? Not long I suspect! Those calling for this constitutional arrangement are effectively arguing for an independent England.
The Yorkshire Party seem to be building-up quite a head of steam in Yorkshire. I think they will get votes mainly from disenchanted Lib Dems and Labour voters.
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M’Lord of Essex:
Leaving aside the wider questions, I think that both localism and regionalism have some resonance at present, which may partly be because the big world is becoming more threatening, and also because we see the sheer incompetence and maladministration prevalent in both national and transnational governments and alliances (from the UK Govt. and the EU and NATO to the Commonwealth and UN.
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