Morning music
On this day a year ago
Greta Nut
A commentator on the blog reminded me of the clip below, not seen for a long time:
I still think that the most telling thing about Greta Thunberg is how the decadent mainstream media, politicians etc at least pretend to take this uneducated and afflicted girl (now 19) as some kind of sage, when actually she has nothing to offer. It says something about the world we are in today.
See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/09/29/greta-thunberg-system-approved-wunderkind/.
Latvia
Levits— a half-Jew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egils_Levits.
“Jack” Monroe, the “Bootstrap Cook”; some thoughts about “poverty”
I thought that it was worth reposting those tweets, which refer to the Twitter storm around “Jack” Monroe, aka “Bootstrap Cook” (mentioned in yesterday’s blog).
I have no particular animus against “Bootstrap Cook”, and I should imagine that many find her recipes and other advice very useful [see https://cookingonabootstrap.com/category/recipes-food/], but it is clear that she herself is not (now) in what most people would regard as poverty.
As to my own experiences of “poverty”, I have had some pretty low moments from time to time over the years, for example after I returned to the UK in Spring 1998, after a few months living in Egypt [https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/03/07/when-i-was-not-arrested-in-egypt/].
Was I myself “in poverty” when I returned to London? It certainly seemed so!
Think living in a single room in a flat (provided by a friend of a friend— eventually, and very belatedly, months later, paid for by Housing Benefit). Think living largely off tiny State benefit for 3-4 months (monies also delayed for weeks). Think having to be a little bit “creative” in finding ways to travel around London, and equally “creative” in finding out how to increase supply of food and reading material (mainly books).
Yet only a few years before, I had quite often been paid, as Counsel, £1,000 or more for often quite brief (less than half a day) appearances in the High Court or elsewhere.
Later, living in the former Soviet Union in 1996-97, my home was a kind of large penthouse with a very wide wraparound balcony, I had a former MVD car and driver to ferry me to my office etc, a Rolex Seadweller on my wrist, and I rarely carried less than USD $5,000 on my person.
Incidentally, barristers reading this might sneer at the modesty of those High Court fees (perhaps a tenth or a twentieth of the fees some now get and even back then received), but this was 1993-95, nearly 30 years ago, and I was only just out of pupillage (on-the-job training). Anyway, it seemed good at the time to me.
What those born into wealth usually fail to know, having never experienced it, is how quickly a comfortable lifestyle can disappear, without personal capital or family money as a safety net.
When I was living on pennies —and my wits— in the London of March-June 1998, I often walked past Julie’s restaurant in Notting Hill, a restaurant patronized by film stars and other “celebrities”, and a place which I had previously visited several times, only 2-3 years before, and arriving in a large white Mercedes (a girlfriend’s car).
Maybe 3 years later, in 1998, I would have been unable to buy a coffee in the same restaurant, and I wondered whether those staring out of the windows could perceive somehow just how poor I was (maybe a subjective and resentful thought: after all, the Rolex may have gone, but I was still clad in an Austin Reed overcoat and Dents leather gloves etc).
There is no need for me to say more about that very pinched time in my life. Adolf Hitler had it worse, in the Vienna of 1909-1912. Eventually, my several months of poverty came to an end and then, less than a year after I had returned penniless to London, I was spending time living in a villa in the Caribbean, with a private beach (in effect), though those sometimes pleasant months sadly did not become sybaritic years (though I did spend much of 1999 in and around the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico— several Caribbean islands, and the Gulf Coast of Florida).
I later had more ups and downs, but that is enough for today.
I do not know a great deal in detail about “Jack” Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, but I would guess that she knows a lot about “precarious” life in the Britain of today. Occasional poverty, occasional plenty, but not much security either way.
Many many people in Britain in 2022 are part of that “precariat”. This has political implications. Labour was the party of the industrial “proletariat”, mainly, a class which is now all but non-existent. “Bootstrap Cook”, leaving aside her personal predilections, is in that sense far more typical of the masses than would be the Soviet-style miner, rail worker, or other member of the organized labour force, insofar as such people still exist in the UK.
If there were a credible social-national movement in the UK, the “Bootstrap Cook” would probably not support it, but the “precariat” in general would, especially as inflation, low pay, and low State benefits all start to bite.
More tweets seen
Well, £600 is not a fortune for a watch these days (any of my one-time Rolex Seadwellers would be £10,000-£15,000 in 2022), but I take her point.
…on the other hand, Bootstrap Cook is, after all, from Essex, the home of “bling”…
Meanwhile, though the @norfolkchatter1 Twitter account has disappeared, the storm around the Bootstrap Cook has, if anything, intensified, with many Twit-people (including the terminally “woke”) supporting her, but also with many others either criticizing her or demanding to know exactly how much capital or income she really has at her disposal, and asking whether she is exploiting people who donate to her when they really cannot afford to do so.
Legitimate questions, arguably, though it is almost axiomatic that the poor (however defined) do donate more generally than the wealthy or not poor (however defined), relative to income. Also, people are assumed to be compos mentis; if they want to donate to someone, that is their choice. There are many worthwhile-seeming appeals around: see, e.g. https://www.gofundme.com/f/judith-thorpe-funeral-children-fund; and https://www.gofundme.com/f/please-if-you-can-help-to-keep-our-boy-safe.
[Incidentally, I do not know anyone involved in either of the two GoFundMe appeals above; I just happened to see them].
“Covid” “panicdemic”
Looks like reality has started, finally, to break through…
Late tweets seen
Sometimes I wonder what, WHAT, would make the mass of British people wake up to the “panicdemic”, the nonsense measures such as facemask-wearing that were part of the scam, or to the “support Ukraine” propaganda or, as in that tweet, the very real dangers of the “Covid” “vaccines”, but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that nothing, nothing at all, will awaken the masses. A “victory” by a football team, or whatever absolute shite is on “reality” (unreality) TV that week, and the real and important issues are forgotten again.
Maybe after the nuclear war with Russia that so many have been brainwashed into (as they imagine) wanting to see, the survivors will see their reality more clearly.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
So the virulently anti-British non Conservative Party’s pet Indian is a terminally thick, wicked, Grade A CUNT!
Who could possibly have guessed that?🙄🙄🙄
That wicked, evil, MASS MURDERING piece of Indian [REDACTED] who was either so fucking thick he instituted a very unwise ‘Eat Out To Help Out” scheme to spread COVID 19 infections and killed THOUSANDS during a worldwide viral pandemic which was something NO OTHER COUNTRY DID or done it deliberately in order to mass murder mostly old British (white) people.
Either way, it shows he is wholly unfit to be even an MP let alone a Cabinet minister or, god forbid, our PM..
I hope he dies for that mass murder. I would prefer that JUSTICE for all those he killed be delivered via an official death sentence handed down by an official of the British state ie a judge but I will take his deserved death any other way [REDACTED] or his drowning in his flashy ‘look at me you common peasants’ new swimming pool.
What an utterly wicked, UNREMORSEFUL, Grade A CUNT he truely is not that he doesn’t have a lot of competition from his fellow libertarian extremist globalist non conservatives.
When is this libertarian extremist creep and cunt going to get the message?
He is NOT wanted either by his own very disreputable and criminally inclined nowdays party and certainly not by any normal, MORAL, public spirited and society orientated member of the electorate or public.
GO, Deeply Fishi CONFIRMED CRIMINAL Rishi and don’t let the door slam on your way out!
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John:
Regret that a couple of expressed sentiments had to be redacted lest PC Plod should once again darken the door of my now very humble home.
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For causing many tens of thousands of what were preventable deaths this wretched, terminally incompetent and just plain thick anti-British government should be put on trial for mass murder and if found guilty and there is, sadly, plenty of evidence for that be despatched by a latter day Albert Pierrepoint via quick, expertly conducted, British-style executions by means of the hangman’s noose.
That would represent true, MORAL, justice for all the heartbreak they have caused.
This country, in its more moral days, used to execute people for single murders. If that was considered to be morally justified then how much more so is it when applied to tens of thousands of cases?
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Why doesn’t this Indian version of Blair and just as much of a Grade A cunt (although saying that, Blair actually got it right on the pandemic so he gets some plus points from me with that) just fuck off to the USA with his wife?
There they can live honestly instead of murdering often very vulnerable Britons and he and she can pay their taxes honestly instead of defunding our Treasury whilst being the Chancellor and holding a US Green Card.🙄🙄🙄🙄
That this cunt and CONFIRMED CRIMINAL was even allowed to be on the MPs ballot let alone put before party members shows the Tory Party in a very, very poor light but then it isn’t the much more moral, REAL conservative party it used to be just a collection of anti-British, libertarian extremist, globalist freaks and common criminals so, in truth, it isn’t surprising they found him and his criminal tendencies to be decent credentials to be a possible PM.🙄🙄🙄🙄
Under Thatcher and pretty much all previous Tory leaders he wouldn’t have even been selected to be an MP let alone have been allowed to remain in a cabinet of hers once his criminal tendencies had been confirmed. She would have shown him the exit at that point and immediately sacked him. Maggie Thatcher took law breaking pretty seriously ie she was even quite firm on ILLEGAL immigrants that Boris The Criminal Buffoon and his useless Home Secretary don’t care about.
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Mrs Thatcher would most probably have dealt with the pandemic better as well because:
1.) For all of her faults, she WAS a leader unlike Boris and therefore the serious nature of the situation would have been communicated better to the public that way.
2.) Despite having what many would say was an excessively libertarian economic stance she was not afraid to be authoritarian at times with respect to how society should be.
3.) She took a dim view of deliberate law breaking so those who willfully and consciously chose to break pandemic restrictions would have been condemned by her, her ministers and she would have instructed the police to come down heavily upon them instead of, more or less, letting them off as happened under libertarian idiot and clown Boris Buffoon.
4.) Despite facing severe economic difficulties when she became PM she INCREASED funding for the police and recruited more officers so more police to enforce the restrictions under her would be a fair assumption to make. Cameron facing economic difficulties slashed officer numbers by 20,000.
5.) Margaret Thatcher was a scientist by trade – a REAL job as opposed to Boris Idiot’s one of being a common, disreputable journalist on the Daily Telegraph libertarian loony rag so it is highly likely she would have listened to the scientists carefully and had few qualms in following their scientific advice QUICKLY.
6.) She was quite SOCIALLY authoritarian in some ways ie she supported the return of hanging murderers so she had a MORAL stance in supporting that as the morally justified retribution of the state and society for the crime of murder and because she though it acted as a deterrent.
She advocated capital punishment not because she was an evil old cow as her leftwing detractors said but PRECISELY BECAUSE she valued the ‘sanctity of human life’ and therefore wanted to punish murderers and prevent future murders from happening.
Valuing human life by advocating hanging as she did would very probably have meant she would have implemented the measures the scientists advised her to take QUICKLY and not releasing the country from them too soon as happened under Boris in the Spring/Summer of 2020.
She would have been shocked at the potential loss of lives in the pandemic that the scientists were warning her about valuing as she did the argument of ‘the sanctity of human life’ re capital punishment.
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John:
As you know, I do not accept that any of “the measures taken” were of any (certainly no substantial) use whatever in combatting a virus which, in the end, actually killed not even 1 in every 1,000 people in the UK.
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Can you put up my previous comments on this especially about that vile Indian cunt, Rishi, and his repulsive comments today about the matter?
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John:
I regret that, things being what they are in the UK, certain comments have to be redacted in part.
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Well, as you know I profoundly disagree with your assessment of what was the worst worldwide viral pandemic in a hundred years and, in fact, one with one of the largest worldwide death rates as Wikipedia reports.
Also, no one has to take my opinion on the matter seriously as I am not a qualified doctor or specialist in any way on pandemics but I would say the British Medical Association (BMA) does agree that the restrictions prevented more deaths as a simple Google search to the contents of their website in this matter will indicate.
Doing nothing at all was NOT a credible option and most decent and moral people with a real respect for the ‘sanctity of human life’ will agree. Of course, libertarian extremists are deeply selfish, amoral, anti-social people by definition so they don’t agree hence their opposition to the temporary restrictions on normal civil liberties. Wanting no restrictions in the midst of a worldwide viral pandemic with the cost being the loss of other people’s lives is fundamentally immoral and deeply repulsive.
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Yes, I understand that. You have put up the main substance of my comments so I thank you for that.
It shows how profoundly sick Britain is under the Tories that they were reluctant to restrict civil liberties and keep them going on a temporary basis for a serious reason ie saving lives during a worldwide viral pandemic but are very eager to restrict or even abolish them when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of thought on the internet and in public.🙄🙄🙄
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Yes, electric cars do not have zero environmental cost in either manufacturing them or their running. The use of rare minerals like cobalt in their batteries using child labour in places like the People’s Democratic Republic of the Congo is a concern but on, on average, electric cars are better for the environment than cars with internal combustion engine.
New battery technologies are being developed which will reduce or even eliminate the need to use minerals such as cobalt and make electric vehicles more environmentally friendly to manufacture and to run.
The Japanese auto giant, Toyota, plans to put into production electric cars using solid state batteries in 2025.
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John:
Electric cars and trucks need electricity. From where will such enormous amounts of electricity come? How will it be generated?
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These new battery technologies will extend the range and make cars using them need to be recharged less frequently therefore using less electricity from the grid and saving energy in that way.
Battery technology is on the verge of big breakthroughs and that is just as well as we nowdays use so many consumer products with batteries in them even some which which were not products a few years ago such as mobile phones, tablet computers, smart watchs etc.
The current technology used in most products today was commercialized by Sony as long ago as 1991.
Unfortunately, inventing new battery technologies requires the investment of huge sums of money and it is a very complicated science.
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Hello Ian: I found this interesting and, I think, a very good article from March 2002 in the archives of John Tyndall’s online magazine “Spearhead”. I am sure you know everything about the destruction of the British legal educational system, but perhaps there are some unknown details in it.
Do you something about Peter Strudwick? I couldn’t find any information about him, I only know he was a member of the Conservative party for many years and then joined the BNP.
http://www.spearhead.co.uk/0203-ps.html
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Claudius:
Thank you.
The name Peter Strudwick *does* ring a bell somewhere in the back of my mind, but I cannot say anything about him.
I just saw this, a typically-biased Guardian piece:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/apr/27/hugh-muir-diary
That Guardian nonsense mentions
“The British National party often complains that it doesn’t get a fair press – though some might think it gets exactly what it deserves – but it certainly could not complain about last week’s effort from the Brentwood Gazette’s website, about the launch of its local branch. “Proud nationalists … buoyant supporters packed into a patriotic pub … there was much applause and hand shaking as the money came flooding in, uniting the room in the campaign to bring about radical change,” the article gushes. Among the enticing delights, apparently, was a speech lasting more than an hour by one Peter Strudwick, former Conservative leader of Westminster council, expatiating on ideologies of the future.”
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