Morning music
On this day a year ago
Saturday quiz
Another week, and another victory over political journalist John Rentoul. He scored 5/10 this week, which I trumped with 7/10, though two of those (questions 2 and 9) were fairly firm educated guesses. I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, and 7.
Triple Lock
Indeed— paying for cross-Channel migrant-invaders (50,000+ in 2022 alone); useless and often hostile elements, some of which are actively dangerous, such as the 30% to 40% of them who are actually Albanian or Roma Gypsy criminals and not —even on the widest definition— “refugees”.
As for the triple lock on pensions, Indian, and (supposed) “clever boy” and money-juggler, Sunak, seems to believe of the “grey vote” that pensioner voters have no choice but to continue to vote Con as most have done (in overwhelming numbers) up to now. If he and Hunt really think “where can they go?“, they are very mistaken.
As blogged previously, the Conservative total vote is heavily-dependent on the “grey vote”:
The General Election 2019 was unusual inasmuch as the age-weighting was less than has been usual in recent years, mainly because huge numbers of usual Labour voters abstained; some voted Con but more abstained.
In other words, the Con Party is now, in 2022, likely to be even more dependent on those grey votes, meaning the votes of the 60+ age group.
You are talking about 16 million voters, give or take [https://www.statista.com/statistics/281208/population-of-the-england-by-age-group/]. The vast majority of the 60+ age group do vote.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#Voter_demographics]
In 2019, over 47 million people were registered to vote. About two-thirds did vote. In other words, about 32 million.
That means that the 60+ age group comprises nearly half of the actual (actually-voting) electorate. If that half either abstains or votes somewhere other than Con, the Con Party is toast.
This is more or less where the opinion polls now are:
According to Electoral Calculus [https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html], that would give Labour a stonking overall majority of 404 (527 seats), and leave the Conservative Party with only 30 seats (LibDem 17; SNP ~52). It would be ironic, and yet quite possible, were the 30 Con seats left to include both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
The above prediction is based on 23% of the voters (the vast majority aged 60+) staying loyal to the Conservative Party. If only about a quarter of that 23% were to abstain, not even voting elsewhere, the Labour majority would rise to an even more absurd “elected dictatorship” level of 454 (552 seats), and the Conservative Party would be left with a mere 2 seats.
It would be even more deeply ironic were those 2 remaining Con seats to be those of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
Sunak should think carefully before abandoning that Triple Lock. His sword may have two edges.
Tweets seen
Liz Truss is a type of woman found widely not only in UK politics but also in law firms, barristers’ chambers, and commercial companies: someone not hugely intelligent but full of both ambition and unmerited self-confidence, and someone who, while not really any good at her job(s), plays internal or “office” politics to a “T”.
I have met dozens like Liz Truss.
“Conservative” greaseball Fraser Nelson seems to have missed the “elephant in the room”, namely that his wonderful multikulti Britain is also a Britain collapsing culturally, socially, and economically.
Not “Italy” but the expansionist NWO, in reality.
More tweets
The armchair “I stand with Ukraine” and “Slava Ukraini” lot, “useful idiots” for the Kiev-based dictatorship of the Jew Zelensky and the New World Order [NWO], are promoting war, and are also being manipulated.
I wonder what their last thoughts would/will be, if/when Russian nuclear weapons incinerate them, their families and homes etc? Maybe “was it worth it?“
“Reassure“? Ha. So making Europe more of a target?
In days of yore, the old Soviet Union would have deployed Spetsnaz commandos to deal with at least some of such weapons on the ground. Whether Russia now even has such capabilities seems an open question.
That refers to Darya Dugina, Dugin’s daughter, killed by Ukrainian and/or Kiev-regime terrorists a few months ago.
I would term it a “culture“, in the Germanic sense of the word, rather than (as yet) a “civilization“, but in essence that is right.
Worth reading on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaury_de_Riencourt; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_O._Prokofieff; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spiritual-Origins-Eastern-Europe-Mysteries/dp/0904693554.
Late tweets
The rhetoric, at least, is hotting up.
As said earlier, I may reinstate my old Twitter account, or get a new one, but only for the purpose of promoting my blog.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/10/28/no-one-wants-these-laws-ireland-to-jail-hate-speech-offenders-for-up-to-five-years/. Off topic: Shut it down – the Irish State plans new “hate speech” legislation! 😡
LikeLike
NativeWarrior14:
It is an attempt to promote censorship and repression not only in Ireland but across Europe and beyond.
LikeLike
So much for we ‘eternally evil’ British being the cause of all that country’s woes! Ordinary Irish citizens in the Republic have plenty of internal and increasingly fanatical oppressers to last them at least 800 years or more!🙄🙄🙄
LikeLike
John:
During the long time that Ireland was under English/British rule, the Irish people did not have to look far to find a reason for most of their problems: English rule, English landowners, English rentiers of various kinds, English-imposed laws. Since 1921, and particularly in the last few decades, Ireland has had to grow up a little.
LikeLike
Some of those problems were also due to their own people. You would think they would have grown-up and indeed some have but far too many still haven’t.
They accuse us of suppressing the use of Irish Gaelic but when the whole of Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom the language was far more widely-spoken than it is now even after decades of the 26 counties being a separate state and large amounts of Irish government funds being spent on its official promotion.
LikeLike
John:
the Anglo-American influence is worldwide, with (since about 1923) the American part of that in the leading position. Ireland is as affected as anywhere else.
LikeLike
Hello! Have you the faces of the Untermenschen employed by TWITTER until a couple of days? All of them White-hating Marxists!!! If I was Elon Musk they would have not been sacked but executed! (That’s me, the compassionate guy! LOL)
LikeLike
Claudius:
Their hate is plain to see, in their very faces.
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://www.itv.com/presscentre/epweek44/nazi-hunters-real-walk#. Off topic: more HnH propaganda! 🤔
LikeLike
NativeWarrior14:
The sort of contrived nonsense that also underlay many of the large state trials, or show-trials, exhibited under Stalin in the 1930s.
LikeLike
Frazer Nelson is no real conservative just another utterly vile libertarian globalist anti-British wanker posing as one.
He is the type of eternally annoying Scotsman that made a small part of even usually strongly Unionist me wish they HAD voted to become ‘independent’ in the EU in 2014.
Seriously, what the f*** has happened to Scotland over the last forty odd years? There are too many of his globalist cosmopolitan types up there now and yet traditionally Scotland used to be a pretty ‘Right-wing’ part of the United Kingdom at one time and LESS socially liberal than England. It was WALES that was leftist NOT Scotland.
Can’t we exile him to a remote settlement in the Western Isles or the Shetlands in order to get away from his puerile globalist opinions and annoying voice?
LikeLike
If the alien extra from A Passage To India and the native Englishman, Jeremy Hunt, believe that then yes they are very much mistaken.
They should look at what happened last time the Tories were very unpopular in 1997. Then, the Conservatives lost more seats than they should have done purely because some Tory voters, whilst not ever contemplating voting for that turd, Tony Bliar, sat at home and abstained from voting for anyone on election day 1997.
It isn’t illegal to not vote in this country and large numbers of people regularly do it even in general elections. Only older voters tend not to abstain and think it is morally wrong not to use one’s unequal vote.
LikeLike
John:
You can see what *might* be the result.
Electoral Calculus is not infallible, but if a 23% poll gives the Con Party only 30 Commons seats, and a 17% poll would give them a mere 2 seats, you can see that, at anywhere below 25%, they are near a tipping-point.
I would think that, of the present 23% rating, about 20 points are people in the 60+ age group. If the Con Party goes lower than where it now is—“Goodnight Vienna”.
LikeLike
Indeed. Under our crazy and irrational electoral system there is a tipping point where if your vote share goes low enough you start losing many more seats than a slightly better percentage a few points higher
would bring.
I presume this Electoral Calculus figure doesn’t take into account tactical voting. If that is so they could do even worse on the bare figures.
The by-elections this year indicate that tactical voting against them is back in fashion. In 1997, it was estimated they lost around thirty more seats in that way.
LikeLike
John:
In fact, on that Electoral Calculus site, you can tick a box to make a guess as to the effect of tactical voting.
On the wider question, it could go either way, either a swing back to equilibrium, or the other way, and so the end, effectively, of the Con Party.
That’s assuming that World War III is not about to start…
LikeLike
Liz Truss would, in all probability, be re-elected as her seat, South West Norfolk, is the eleventh safest Tory seat in the country where she has a plus 25,000 majority and a truely stonking vote share of 69%.
As for our wholly undemocratically imposed colonial governor he might be just on the borderline of losing as I think his seat of Richmond, North Yorkshire, is just outside the top 40 seats.
LikeLike
John:
As blogged recently, it would be somewhere between a Greek tragedy and a Greek comedy were Liz Truss to end up as “The Last Conservative MP”…a worthy title for a play, perhaps.
LikeLike
It would. Well, looking at the bright side in that situation would be she can be party leader again and have something to claim for herself instead of being known in for having beaten George Canning’s very long standing record!😂😂😂
Unfortunately, for her party they would be decimated just like their Canadian counterparts were in 1993 and ended-up after an election there with just two MPs.
LikeLike
Liz Truss’s seat would be one of the few Tory seats left along with mine. Here, in Brentwood and Ongar, the Tory numerical majority over Labour is 29,065 and 29,100 odd over the Liberal Democrats. The percentage majority is 55%.
The Tories have only a slightly smaller percentage vote share of 68%. It is their TENTH safest seat.
LikeLike
So that drunk idiot, Ben Wallace, has actually ordered an action which Mr Putin may view as an actual act of war against his country?
Does anyone fancy a nuclear or conventional attack upon Britain?
Changing the words to that eternal Mariah Carey Christmas jingle from ‘All I Want For Christmas is you’ to ‘All I want for Christmas is for Britain to be nuked or conventionally attacked’ is just not on.
Shame the globalist Tory wankers were not as bellicose at defending Britain’s BORDERS as they are getting Britain into conflict with Russia.🙄🙄🙄😠😠😠😠🙄🙄🙄🙄
LikeLike
John:
Is it admitted or proven that UK personnel destroyed the pipeline?
LikeLike
Globalist libertarian extremist greaseball TRAITORS like Mr Nelson really ought be made subject to the death penalty or a mandatory sentence of 99 years imprisonment which is the longest prison sentence available in Alaska and Alabama.
Treason must never be allowed to prosper. Sadly, it is in this blighted land with the disastrous results becoming increasingly evident.
Sensible, Right-wing countries like South Korea, Japan and Singapore can still deal out hangings for traitors as we used to be able to do until Labour unwisely abolished the capital sentence for this offence in 1998.😠😠😠😠😥😥😥😥
LikeLike
Perhaps, instead of sending Mr Nelson to a remote settlement on the Scottish Gaelic-speaking Western Isles, the Shetlands or dumping him on the even more remote Rockall we should make use of the British overseas dependent territories of St Helena or Ascension Island, build a maximum security British version of Alcatraz and confine him to such an institution for lifetime imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) or the ‘silent death penalty’ as it is known in the US.
LikeLike
John:
You may have missed your vocation…
LikeLike
Why is there no openly gay, lesbian or bisexual ministers in Cabinet, Mr Nelson?
Come to think of it, where is the one-legged transvestite in a wheelchair?
Don’t the Tories view these people as the equal of Indians then?
PC Bingo only works if ALL PC minorities are included. You really can’t be half-hearted about this and have a hierarchy of PC as then some people feel left out.🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
LikeLike
I have no idea but it it was proven to be the case than I would not blame Putin for being very annoyed, viewing it as an act of war or almost as good as and wanting to take action against us in retaliation for it.
It is about time Ben Wallace laid off that stash of Scottish whiskey he drinks to excess and stops fantasizing about “kicking Putin’s backside as my old regiment did during the Crimean War”.🙄
If he has the chance to he will engage us in a REAL war with Russia most sensible people here have no wish whatever to be involved with.
LikeLike
John:
The “Support Ukraine” nonsense has of course taken a prime position in mass media etc, and people who had never heard of the place a few years ago now express willingness to declare war on Russia because of it all! Madness.
LikeLike
Yes, a real sign of mental illness if ever there was. As you say, very few ordinary people and even quite a few of our politicians couldn’t locate Ukraine on a map until February let alone have any real knowledge of its history etc.
Before February of this year, the situation was rather akin to April 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and people then woke-up one day to find out that had happened but they had absolutely no idea the Falklands were situated in the deep South Atlantic Ocean and not off Scotland somewhere.
LikeLike
According to The Guardian it looks like the axe in public spending cuts will fall, amongst other areas, upon the police.
A policeman’s lot is already an unhappy one under the so-called ‘party of law and order’ (with its new confirmed CRIMINAL PM) and now they intend to cut spending AGAIN thereby no doubt closing down yet more police stations (even in loyal and staunch Tory areas like mine which they have already done) and sacking police officers.
Hands OFF the police, Tories! You have done enough damage to them over the last twelve years of your misgovernance.
Even with economic difficulties, the police should be protected from cuts. Mrs Thatcher faced similar trying economic circumstances yet one of her first actions when she won in 1979 was to increase police spending, give them a pay rise and recruit more of them.
LikeLike
John:
As previously said, my own experiences with the police in the past decade do not give me much confidence in them. Having said that, they are a necessary evil in any complex society.
LikeLike
People of all age groups need decently-led, well-motivated, well paid, police forces which are effective at fighting crime but the old need them in particular as they are so often the victims of crime.
As the Tories have such a diabolical record on law and order over the last twelve years and have failed totally to ensure police forces deal with real criminals rather than ensure they are good at persecuting people who say non PC things online the old should remove their support from them.
If they did, the Tory poll ratings would as you say be truely dire.
LikeLike
Far from cutting spending on the police, they should be comprehensively reformed and then have a great deal more money spent upon them. There is a big need to recruit many more police officers and build more police stations so as to have an increased police presence in local communities. The best deterrent to potential criminals is their fear of being caught.
Our present ratio of police officers per 100,000 people isn’t very good and is only average for Europe and needs to markedly improve to how it is in Germany let alone where it is best eg Spain, Greece.
LikeLike
I wonder if these polls don’t budge a great deal and sites like Electoral Calculus keep publishing predictions of massive Labour landslides and utterly dire seat numbers for them Tory MP will then start warming to the idea of fair votes ie Proportional Representation?
Apparently, Tory councillors in the extra from the Jewel In The Crown’s backyard of Richmond, North Yorkshire voted in the last week with the exception of their leader there to endorse the principle of PR.
PR might be the only way they will have a decent number of seats if things continue as they are!🙄🙄🙄
http://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk
LikeLike
John:
Labour support for PR will wane now that it looks as if Labour will win a large majority under FPTP next time round.
LikeLike
Yes, it will. If the Tories get utterly crushed by the system next time as their Canadian counterparts were in 1993 that would be deserved in some ways because the Tories are fanatical opponents of a fair voting system but, on the other hand, the country still needs to have a viable Opposition party that has decent numbers of MPs.
If Labour win by such a huge amount they should offer to change the system in the interests of basic democratic values but since when has Labour ever been democratic or acted like decent, public-spirited gentlemen?
It just goes to show how stupid our present system is that these kind of results are predictions that could very well come about. If Labour get more than 50% of the national vote that SHOULD entitle them to form a single party government which WILL have truely EARNT that right but they should NOT have about a twenty percent or so ‘winner’s bonus’ and have 70% plus of the seats and diminish Tory seat numbers to the point that party is effectively unable to form a viable Opposition and fail to hold Labour to account for their actions in government.
LikeLike
John:
If/when Labour win the next general election (I am presuming it will be sometime in late 2024), they will be an elected dictatorship (as under Blair) if they have a Commons majority as large or larger than the present Con one. They will have no incentive to propose PR, and will not even suggest it.
LikeLike