Morning music
On this day a year ago
On the blog 5 years ago
Overkill
I agree, for once, with Janet Street-Porter. The whole thing has been overdone. Instead of a quiet, dignified series of events, a mass circus in which good taste and real respect has been —partly at least— left behind.
Tweets seen today
At last the Russian high command is starting to think truly tactically, meaning in this case obliquely.
It will be recalled that the Iraqi Army flooded large areas at one time, in the 1980s and later, both when fighting Iran and when fighting the “Allied forces” (USA, mainly).
I made that point a few days ago on the blog, citing the dictum of Clausewitz about how the ratio “moral” or morale vis a vis the “material” is 3:1.
We tend to forget that, though the southeastern part of Ukraine is a war zone, that does not mean that all areas suffer continuous fighting. Far from it. The Ukraine is about 3x the size of the UK, and nearly 5x the size of England. The southeastern parts known as the Donbass or Don Basin (Donetsk and Lugansk regions) are, together, about half the size of England.
From their foreign correspondents
“…the foreign media cover this long period of ceremonial mourning with less servility. Hardly any British media, for example, dared comment on King Charles III’s rude gesture of impatience during the acclamation.“
[Stefanie Bolzen, in Die Welt]
“...a new recession, heralded by galloping inflation – the real thief in the night for working-class people, has caught the government off guard, with a new PM who has everything to prove, having been elected by a small number of Conservative members.”
[Rafael de Miguel, in El Pais]
“The risk is always that the UK ends up not as Global Britain but Little England. This, too, would have been a nightmare for the Queen.”
[Antonello Guerrera, La Repubblica]
Pound sliding, inflation stoking, and recession likely
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62923994
Still think that closing down the economy for almost 2 years (because a virus was supposedly killing one out of every thousand people, mostly aged and/or with serious pre-existing health problems), and while doling out “free” money to individuals and companies via “furlough” payments, grants, “loans” etc, was a good policy? Think again.
A delusionary time, but what happens once the funeral of the late Queen has been held?
The death of the late Queen, and the consequent ritual arrangements and spectacles, is occupying the msm in the UK to an almost (?) unprecedented extent.
It may be that the Diana death hysteria of 1997, about which I have heard, and the Silver Jubilee of 1977, were similar; I cannot say, having been out of the UK when those two events occurred. In 1977, I was in Rhodesia, and in 1997 I was in Kazakhstan.
In fact, I only heard of the Diana incident 2-3 days after it happened, when I attended a regular Monday morning meeting at my office in Almaty, the then capital.
The British Embassy opened a book of condolence, and I was told by one of my Embassy contacts that, out of all the ~70 British residents (in the city) of which the Embassy was aware, I was the only one who had not signed (though not because I was hostile to Diana, but because of simple lack of interest).
My non-signing may have also been noted because, about 10 months previously, I had attended by invitation a royal reception at the Ambassador’s official Residence, where I had met and briefly chatted to Prince Charles, as he then was. Also, because I was at the Embassy quite often, at least a couple of times per week.
I have blogged in the past about how, on my return to London a few weeks later, friends told me about the collective psychosis (?) that had descended (on London at least), with pubs full of blubbing drinkers etc.
I am now thinking ahead to the day, or perhaps two or three days after the funeral of the late Queen (next Monday, 19 September 2022). What then?
We as a nation (insofar as Britain still is a nation) face huge economic problems, as well as ingrained social problems. The cloud of illusion all too obvious this week on TV, in the Press etc will blow away, and the country may come down to Earth with a very hard jolt.
The sentiment around the enormous queues going to see the late Queen’s coffin etc is somewhat illusory. The hundreds of thousands of people shuffling toward Westminster, or lining the Mall, are still only about 1% of the whole UK population. The vast majority, almost all in fact, seem to be English/British, i.e. white, and most (that I have seen in photos, on TV etc), are middle-aged or elderly.
This will all look very different in six months’ time.
Late tweets seen
“It is not the function of the police to patrol our minds“.
Hitchens knows it, I know it, most other people —I hope— know it, but the police themselves do not seem to know it, and neither does the Jew-Zionist lobby (which exercises far too much influence over some police forces), as witness my own experiences: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/; and https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/01/15/diary-blog-15-january-2022-including-an-outline-of-the-failure-of-the-latest-jew-zionist-attempt-to-prosecute-me/.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Hello! For a change: Something fun and light-hearted!
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Claudius:
I know that it is possible to train a cat to use a loo. In the Soviet days, many people in the SU had cats, but cat *litter* was either not produced at all, or in small quantities, so that was the solution, esp. for apartment-dwellers. Cats are very clever creatures…
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Hello there! Something unexpected and curious. Did you know this? Wikipedia does not mention it.
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/how-jewish-is-lord-snowdon-1.3489
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Claudius:
I thought that there might be a connection but did not know it as such.
My parents once met the then-famous Oliver Messel at one of the main London hotels, at a function. Either the Dorchester or the Grosvenor House. That would have been 1957, I think. Messel also had a fantastic and beautiful villa (not the vulgar kind you see today) in or about the Caribbean. I cannot recall exactly where, but either the Bahamas or Barbados. I think on one of the less busy Bahamian islands. It was for sale about 10 years ago, I think.
The Jewish Chronicle report was interesting because, as you may have noticed, Princess Margaret looked exactly like an old Jewess as she aged, *and*, tellingly, Lord Snowdon used to tell her (as their marriage deteriorated) that she looked like “an old Jewess”…
As you may also know, there is a Jewish strain in the Royal Family, possibly via Prince Albert in the 19thC.
As you may *also* know, their son, who was Viscount Linley and is now himself the (2nd) Earl of Snowdon, has a furniture-design and manufacturing business. QED?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Armstrong-Jones,_2nd_Earl_of_Snowdon
ps
Turns out that it was Barbados, not the Bahamas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Messel#Messel_and_the_Caribbean
And reading that Wikipedia entry, looks like my parents met him at the Dorchester.
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Thank you very much for your comments. I found Lord Snowdon’s comments rather unfair because I looked at photos of Princess Margaret and she does not look Jewish, if someone did it it was the Queen in her later years (LOL)
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Claudius:
I have to disagree re. Margaret, who sometimes did look very Semitic, when photographed at least. A bit like Barbra Streisand. Photography can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, in the hands of an expert. The opposite is also true.
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Point taken. Having said that, they must have chosen Princess Margaret most flattering pictures in Google because when I chose “images” most of them were nice (LOL)
PS: Barbara Streisand is horrendous to look at, even Cecil Beaton couldn’t have changed that! (LOL)
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I love the portrait of Liz Truss! 😆😆😆 BTW somebody we know (he used to call himself “Eternal English”) posted on TWITTER. “I don’t know which one is worse; her or Keir Starmer”. Starmer!
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Something of culinary interest… I, and many Argentinians, have a good reason to be pro-British and is called “budìn inglès” (“budín” is the Spanish version of “pudding” and “inglés” means “English”, but here the similarity ends. According to a British website, the classic British pudding tends to be rich, heavy (because of the suet), and fairly moist.
Our cake is rather dry, not heavy, and is baked, not steamed. Is usually 30 cm long, 7.5 cm wide, and 9 cm high. It is full of glazed fruits and nuts. We love it and it is very popular. Here is a picture to give you an idea. Do you have something similar in the UK?
https://elgourmet.com/receta/budin-ingles-de-frutas-2
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Claudius:
Culinary matters are not really my forte, in general, but there are various kinds of puddings, cakes etc here. I would certainly not touch anything containing suet, by the way. Those kind of traditional puddings are, I think, not so popular now.
The cake you showed seems to be closer to Italian pannetone in texture. English fruitcakes tend to be heavy in weight. Traditionally, plum cake was popular (a hundred years ago) and eaten, eg, by Guards officers in mid-morning, together with a glass of port, or even, in olden days, a glass of “blackstrap”, a drink almost forgotten today and which is or was half port, half cognac.
Mixed dried fruit cake is still popular here, though I myself would not usually buy it.
Examples:
https://www.fortnumandmason.com/fortnum-s-fruit-cake-450g
https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/waitrose-christmas-rich-fruit-cake/506216-221587-221588
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Thank you for the mouth-watering photos! I remember that in Australia a cake like the one in Fortnum & Mason was known as “Dark Fruit Cake”, there was a lighter colour version known simply as “Fruit Cake”; they were square and not very moist. Of course, I liked them! I think that, in regards to food, you must be very much like my wife; she does not care for sweets or desserts. The only exception is the ice-cream.
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Claudius:
It is true that sweet things are not my favourite foods, but I do like some, though only occasionally: halva, baklava, Swiss chocolate (cold weather only), and (also in cold weather) coffee-and-walnut cake or (in opulent times) Sachertorte.
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With regard to Russia-Ukraine. I was chatting with a guy on wednesday night, who spent 35 years in the RAF. He said it’s no surprise to him that the Russians are having such a hard time. According to him, the stories you hear about the Russian army being very poorly trained, terribly paid, ill-disciplined drunks, are true. In fact he said it’s actually worse. He once saw a Russian MIG 29 pilot down an entire bottle of vodka in one, before taking off in his aircraft. Most of the Russian military’s equipment is still old junk from the Soviet days. Those new tanks, APCs etc you see at the Moscow Victory Day Parades are very few in number (and probably nowhere near as good as they claim). Just like in Soviet times, where they would fly the same squadron of bombers round in a circle, to make it look like there were far more of them.
With regard to the Royal hysteria, i saw this from Australian television. https://youtu.be/WpoVY3yTtIU
And i don’t know if you were already aware, Alex Belfield was jailed today. People i follow on Twitter think he’s a free speech advocate, but the things he was doing were actually quite sinister. Stalking/threatening people, and their children etc over a long period of time. He also rinsed many of his YouTube followers (some elderly/vulnerable) out of hundreds of grand, by pretending to be “one of them”. In reality he’s just a BBC lovey-dovey weirdo, who couldn’t handle it when they got rid of him, so “reinvented” himself as a supposed right-winger, playing on people’s anti “leftie” BBC feelings to make money. Some of his cheerleaders should have known better, but the vulnerable ones i feel terrible for. I’ve always suspected he may be a (((you know what))) as well, and possibly a homosexual.
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SaxonEngland:
Looks like Putin and those with real power in his circle are coming to a point where they either have to give up the Donbass and Crimea (which is politically and possibly literally suicidal), or declare full-scale war and mass mobilization (which might cause upheaval), or use even more destructive power and weaponry (possibly even tactical nuclear weapons) on the main concentrations of Zelensky’s power, which would be in and around the cities of Kiev and Lvov, among others.
That last option might bring NATO directly into the fight, though.
No good options.
As for Alex Belfield, I had been alerted to his existence a few years ago, I think. 2-3 years ago, by a commentator on this blog, as far as I can remember. I had never heard of him, and even now know little of him beyond what was on today’s news releases on the BBC etc.
I do not know why he pursued his targets or victims. His actions seem to have gone way beyond “free speech” even as I would define that. Actually, his behaviour (as read about today) reminded me of the way in which the lower levels of the Jew-Zionist lobby have pursued me and others over the years. I don’t see any of them getting arrested, though.
I have no idea where he stands ideologically.
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Hello, “SaxonEngland” I am very well aware of Alex Belfield’s career on YT. I have to say I liked him at the beginning, although I found some of his attitudes or expressions a bit childish and vulgar. However, since he attacked (with very good reason) the hateful BBC and all the obnoxious lefties, making fun of them he seemed a nice bloke.
However, when my wife and I found that he received 100.000s of pounds which were supposed to pay for the legal fees of his legal team; a team which turned out to be inexistent, he became a despicable crook. Deep down I do not care if he is a homosexual although it is very possible. On the other hand I do believe he is a neurotic narcissist (typical of most TV personalities)
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Look at this stupid, arrogant, brainless tart!!! 🤬🤬🤬
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Claudius:
Liz Truss is indeed (what you said)…
and look at that brainless audience, all applauding the near-certainty of their own homes, neighbourhoods, and cities becoming irradiated wastelands, in which they and their families will die a lingering and painful death, if not killed immediately…
I thought that the idea of “Boris” idiot launching a nuclear attack on Russia (which has about 100x the nuclear weapons of the UK) was ludicrous, but LIZ TRUSS?! Are we in a book by Kafka?
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You are right! Yes! I forgot to mention the moronic audience! Bloody fools celebrating their own demise! Unbelievable!
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