Diary Blog, 21 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Saturday quiz

This week I did not do so well: 4/10, same as political journalist John Rentoul. I only knew the answers to questions 2, 4, 9, and 10 (the same ones that John Rentoul got right). I would have got No. 3 —the “Northern tart” question— right too, but I just could not recall it.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/20/sajid-javid-calls-for-patients-to-pay-for-gp-and-ae-visits

LIttle pro-Israel monkey-on-a-stick Sajid Javid wants to charge patients for seeing a GP or visiting A&E departments.

He himself is standing down at the next general election. If it becomes widely known that charging for NHS services is the “Conservative” Party direction of travel, the already-anticipated loss of Conservative Party seats might be historically large, even if the NHS is not performing properly at present.

Jack Monroe

Incredible that parts of the msm are still promoting the “Bootstrap Cook”.

More music

Other tweets seen

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions“, as we know. The proposed rules no doubt aim at giving the American “poor” a better diet instead of the diabetes-2-tending (and generally unhealthy) one that includes white bread and “American cheese” [a particular kind of processed cheese sold to the public as “Kraft slices” etc: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cheese].

The particular type of cheese disapproved of includes what is or was called “Government cheese” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese].

The price, though, is freedom of choice; and the other restrictions, such as “one car per family”, are obviously repressive, though of course in many countries only the wealthier part of the population(s) have even one car. Poverty is relative.

“Bootstrap Cook” has raised only one person out of “poverty”— herself (and quite possibly not even that).

Both true, and that is before you even think about “Bono”, Bob Geldof etc…

As the psychiatrist in one episode of Fawlty Towers remarks, “there’s enough material there for an entire conference“.

More accurately, “it” may be defamatory but, if “true”, is not actionable defamation.

That “@blackwolfski” tweeter is just so typical of those who have a whole fake worldview of “woke”-ism. Akin to wearing a jacket of msm lies: supports “Jack Monroe”, Jacinda Ardern, Labour Party drones etc, and is entirely impervious to any “unapproved” truths. Note the faux-serenity and faux-“concern” of his (fake, “passive-aggressive”) good wishes to tweeter “@scbusiness4”.

Hard to judge to what extent that was so but, if accurate, it sounds like very bad behaviour (to say the least).

Tweeter “@jimellis123” is another very typical “Jack Monroe” supporter-type: the man of 50+ or 60+, retired or unemployed (as it seems), not seemingly poor or “struggling” (except possibly with mental “issues”); socio-politically— narrow-minded. Also, the “passive-aggressive” smugness, as seen in the tweet below:

Presumably meant to be satirical, but quite likely the literal truth.

More tweets

Not completely untrue, certainly.

Interesting vlog

More tweets

The police, as well.

More tweets

Late music

It is, I read, Chinese New Year.

Diary Blog, 20 January 2023

Afternoon music

[painting by Volegov]

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11654785/Moment-homeless-Gipsy-boy-brags-TikTok-videos-home-woman-murdered.html

Britain is now a trash can, full of trash.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-who-decapitated-wife-paraded-28998347.

Types like that are now flooding into Europe, including the UK.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11656145/Nicola-Sturgeons-SNP-plans-ask-children-male-female-transgender-survey.html

This latest lunacy from Scotland is tantamount to a weird brainwashing form of child abuse.

Jacinda Ardern

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11655625/The-BBC-treated-resignation-PM-tragedy-Jacinda-Ardern-way-out.html.

You see rubbish on Twitter about this, all about how New Zealand’s economy is “booming” etc. Well, the statistics lie, and for a very obvious reason: when you shut down a country almost completely for 2 years, the economy nosedives. Any activity at all after that seems, superficially, to be strong growth.

Then there is her approach to Covid. Initially, the world bought into the myth that her government was a top performer in eliminating the disease.

The truth, of course, is that it’s relatively simple to quarantine remote islands. And having introduced a strategy of isolation and hard lockdown at the start of the pandemic, Ardern clung to a zero-Covid policy that was way beyond the edge of reason.

Her government shut down businesses, closed entire towns if a small outbreak of the virus occurred, and forced New Zealand citizens who happened to be abroad when the pandemic struck to apply to enter their own country, with only a tiny number of places available via an online lottery system.

At first, the policy was popular, with Ardern using Facebook Live sessions to communicate with the nation in a crumpled jumper, after putting her daughter to bed, in a manner that struck a chord with the public. Indeed, in the 2020 election, her party polled almost 50 per cent.

Yet, as time went on, opposition to this sometimes cruel policy (for which exemptions were only available for celebrities and the ultra-wealthy) grew, with critics lambasting a sluggish vaccine rollout and pointing out that the only world leader more bloody-minded in holding on to a strategy of eliminating Covid at all costs was communist China’s president Xi Jinping.

The crescendo of division and unrest saw huge demonstrations outside parliament.

[Daily Mail]

Huge demonstrations“…which were not covered at all by the BBC, Sky, ITN, or the “Lugenpresse” System msm outlets of the UK; and what about that bit re. “exemptions were only available for celebrities and the ultra-wealthy“? Peak pseudo-socialist nonsense. As in “the virus is so dangerous that only the ultra-wealthy and —of course— ‘celebrities’ can do whatever they like”…

It reads more like a parody than real government policy, even if it is from a joke state like New Zealand.

Try telling the truth, though, to the msm drones in the UK, let alone the Twitterati mugs. They are closed to the truth, on almost any subject.

Jacinda Ardern was just another Blair-type NWO/ZOG puppet (in fact, she worked for a while as a “SpAd” at Westminster, under Blair.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/03/25/the-new-zealand-attack-and-related-matters/ (re Brenton Tarrant and the Christchurch massacre etc; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings).

Tweets seen

The whole interconnected milieux (msm “journalism”, “fashion”, TV/radio “comedy” and “drama”, in fact TV generally) should be purged, and I do not just mean deprived of its riches and platform.

Perhaps the New Zealanders could institute a “Jacinda Day”, akin to our “Guy Fawkes Day”, in which an effigy of “Jacinda” might be immolated in some way that produces few “emissions”… A kind of “damp squib” fire that produces little light or warmth. Symbolic, you might say…

Far right“? Oh, they mean people not totally brainwashed by NWO/ZOG propaganda:

“BANG!”…

Only (sort–of) joking… but then, Sinn Fein/IRA has become a joke anyway, a kind of —superficially— more militant SNP or Plaid Cymru.

Jack Monroe

Still “grifting”…

The police should be investigating all that. Why should a black woman in Bristol be facing trial on very similar facts yet “Jack Monroe” not only not investigated but even still being promoted by some of the msm?

A typical “Jack Monroe” supporter might be a woman of about 60 years old, not badly-off, pretty ignorant but thinking herself rather educated, and living in some suburban or rural area; a Guardian reader, pro the Kiev regime, pro the facemask nonsense, needless to say “anti-racist” etc. Or a male, or LGBTQXYZ, equivalent, possibly retired, possibly a business owner in a modest way, probably “woke” etc. Certainly not “poor” or “struggling”.

More music

[British officer and soldier, possibly “Auxiliaries”, searching IRA suspect in Ireland, circa 1920; officer using left hand to search, while keeping the suspect covered with his revolver, unseen in the right hand. Note the body on the ground]

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The first part of that is plainly not libellous even on its face.

The second part may or may not be.

How is saying that “Jack Monroe” “makes more money than the Prime Minister” libellous at all, even if not true? Answer: it isn’t.

So she claims to be “still suing” Con MP Lee Anderson. I wonder. So far, according to Lee Anderson, he has not received any pre-action correspondence as required under the Civil Procedure Rules.

An action in defamation must be brought within a year of the triggering cause, but even then is still expected to be brought expeditiously; in lieu of that, there may be costs consequences.

“Jack Monroe” still has, in theory, 3-4 months in which to bring proceedings, but I doubt whether they will be brought or, if brought, would be successful.

Can anyone rely on any statement put out by “Jack Monroe”? I think not.

Late tweets seen

The “Jack Monroe” scandal rolls further on…

My guess is that “Jack Monroe” may even get a solicitor to send a “Letter before Action” to Lee Anderson, which will help her to continue to plead for money im various ways, and keep her in the news, so maybe attracting more mugs to subsidize her. There will, however, be no actual issuance of proceedings against Lee Anderson or Martin Daubney. If I am wrong about that, and proceedings are actually issued, that will eventually turn out to be a very expensive error for the “Bootstrap Cook”.

Actually, she goes lower. Lee Anderson claimed that 30p can feed someone at least for a day or part of a day; “Jack Monroe” claims 11p! Is there a prize for the first idiot or “grifter” who claims to be able to make a 1p lunch?

Exactly right.

Late music

Julie London…what a woman…and what a voice.

Diary Blog, 19 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Owen Jones

1,000 mugs? I mean “patrons“… “Jack Monroe” must be envious. She now has “only” 635 utter mugs still subsidizing her lifestyle.

Seriously, though, who on Earth would send money to Owen Jones?

Apart from anything else, Jones has made several hundred thousand pounds (perhaps even half a million) from his books, owns his own apartment or house, and has all sorts of income streams, but the Patreon one alone has been bringing in between £36,000 and well over £100,000 a year.

Then there is his Guardian column. I do not know how much he gets for that, but I would think at least £50,000 p.a., possibly a very great deal more.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Jones.

The faux-“revolutionary”, and System-licensed neo-“Bolshevik” cosplay.

My own assessment of Owen Jones, published in 2019: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/04/a-brief-word-about-owen-jones/.

Britain, home of the “grifters”, from Owen Jones and “Jack Monroe” through Julia Grace Patterson and many more.

Puzzling, though, nicht wahr? I mean, imagine that you are the sort of deluded mug who sends money to “grifters” like Owen Jones or “Jack Monroe”. What part of “Owen Jones is already making an income of £100,000+ a year” impels you to think “I know what to do with my small disposable income— send Owen Jones (who makes £100,000 a year or more) £10 or £20 a month extra“? I have to admit that I find that mentality utterly incomprehensible. There are so many dim and/or deluded people around.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11650449/Married-father-sexually-assaulted-girl-16-wearing-school-uniform-jailed-six-months.html

“Diversity” blah-blah…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11648377/Law-student-told-sound-like-youre-feeling-bit-sorry-nurse-dying.html

“Our wonderful NHS”…still clapping?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11647941/Science-Museum-removes-trans-inclusive-Boy-Girl-display-featuring-fake-penis-chest-binders.html

Jesus H. Christ.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/19/jacinda-ardern-resigns-as-prime-minister-of-new-zealand

Apparently, Ms. Ardern has somehow acquired, during her years in office, about £25M (no-one seems to know how, or from where), so for her it may make sense to live “the good life” while still relatively young. She represents the transnational conspiracy, not the New Zealand electorate.

Tweets seen

Andrew Neil makes the point, but at the end of the day, a corrupt Kurdish carpetbagger like Zahawi is not really British, nor European, and has no real understanding of our way of life (as it was before the migration-invasion). He is certainly “Wily” and “Oriental”, but no “Gentleman”, in short.

“Jack Monroe”— the show rolls on

I have no more information than is publicly available, but it seems to me that most of the msm, and most of the “celebrity” crowd, are cold-shouldering “Jack Monroe” now, leaving only the pitiful mugs subsidizing her on Patreon. Somewhere between £2,250 and £27,940 per month. My guess is still about £6,000.

Adapting the well-known words of Lady Caroline Lamb about Byron being “mad, bad, and dangerous to know“, “Jack Monroe” has become “mad, bad, sad, and dangerous to know“…

As in a Ponzi scheme, the “Bootstrap Cook” will pay off the most persistent complainants, at least pay them some money, before any small claims are filed; she can use the monies still (incredibly) flowing in from others.

Meanwhile, “Bootstrap Cook” has found a fortuitous deflection-mechanism— tweeting prolifically about the resignation of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, and about how wonderful she supposedly is or was. “Useful idiots” are already tweeting in support. Nothing said about the totally “woke” nonsense that has taken over New Zealand because of Jacinda Ardern and those behind her, and nothing said about the dictatorial “lockdown” policies she spearheaded.

Now she compares herself to any and all abused or supposedly abused women, deflecting from the storm of criticism of her “grifting”.

As for the “rape and death threats“, I have no idea whether Jacinda Ardern received any, or any credible, ones; I have not seen any evidence that “Jack Monroe” has received any at all.

Basically, “Jack Monroe” has spent a number of years taking money from people, tweeting prolifically, doing the odd interview or photo-shoot, drinking heavily and also (allegedly, plausibly) snorting cocaine, going on jaunts here and there, occasionally speaking to audiences for (apparently) up to £15,000 a time, and spending like a drunken sailor.

More tweets

Lisa Nandy, a mixed-race System drone and freeloader, half-Indian and a member of Labour Friends of Israel. Her smug manner reminds me all too clearly of the Blairite Labour MPs of 20 years ago: expenses fraud Hazel Blears and others. Nein danke.

More tweets seen

Incidentally, what does it say about System-drone journalists such as Emily Maitlis that they cannot, apparently, see through the fakery of “Jack Monroe”? What else has escaped them?

Not sure that I agree with tweeter “@NicolaRSpurr” here about “Jack Monroe” being basically decent; the more I see about her the less I think she is at all decent. Quite mad, of course, as well.

Ha ha! Peak “Jack Monroe” (?).

As Oscar Wilde put it, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery“…

Ecce the latest “Jack Monroe” fan: “CEO, Interplanetary Expeditions Ltd. | Space technology transfer broker | R&D in advanced space propulsion systems; cooking; flying; music; Republic of Liverpool“. Not sure whether to add “bullshitter” to that list. Maybe, maybe not. In either case, does not seem to be anyone noticeably “poor” or “struggling“.

Jewish behaviour, or merely Jew-Zionist behaviour?

Not so surprising, perhaps, that the daughter of Tony Curtis is rather odd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Lee_Curtis#Personal_life.

I think that “Jack Monroe” has three main goals at present:

1. to deflect all the criticism of her lying and “grifting” by clinging, albeit implausibly, to the Jacinda Ardern resignation and to the wider topic of how women are supposedly trolled on Twitter etc (which seems odd— many of the worst Twitter trolls are women, usually anonymous; at least they think so);

2. to try to retain or regain her reputation with the msm journalists and “celebrities” who made her into a sort-of “celebrity” herself;

3. to keep going her Patreon scam as long as possible (she is making tens of thousands monthly from it).

Actually, I think that, unless some kind of criminal or civil action impacts her, “Jack Monroe” has pretty much had her “15 minutes of fame”. I cannot see what more, new, or interesting, she has to say, really.

The main matter of importance now is to do what we can to ensure that, after whatever is going to happen in the next few years, Europe is rebuilt as a fully European space.

Late music

[Neuschwanstein]

Diary Blog, 18 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11644305/Shopkeeper-stole-6-000-isolated-elderly-customer-jailed-nearly-two-years.html#comments.

“Diversity” (blah, blah)…

As some comments say, the defendant will in fact be out in 10 months, and quite likely earlier. The sentence is not really the “nearly two years” of the Daily Mail‘s “reporting”.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11646993/Recruit-numbers-Armed-Forces-fall-30-amid-warning-supporting-Ukraine-makes-weaker.html

Recruit numbers in the UK’s armed forces fall by 30% amid warning that supporting Ukraine in Russia war makes us weaker.

The figures, which indicate Britain’s Armed forces are shrinking at a rate, have emerged after the head of the Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, warned the country was ‘weaker’ after donating so much equipment to Ukraine.

[Daily Mail].

That is before you factor-in the extra effect of having political nincompoops at the head of affairs, people such as Ben Wallace and, before him, Gavin Williamson: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/02/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-gavin-williamson-story/

While he welcomed the equipment being put to good use to end Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine, General Sir Patrick said it could not be denied that the UK’s combat effectiveness would be compromised. 

The MOD is coming under increasing pressure to reconsider this commitment due to the conflict in Ukraine and the heightened security threat to the UK posed by Russia, Iran and China.”

[Daily Mail].

Take away Zelensky’s ricebowl.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/17/uk-foreign-secretary-defends-weapons-supply-to-ukraine

The UK foreign secretary has justified the supply of Challenger tanks to Ukraine, saying it was designed to bring the war to a quick conclusion and there was a moral imperative to end the war soon due to the casualties and cost.

This war has been dragging on for a long time already. And now is the time to bring it to a conclusion,” James Cleverly told a Washington thinktank…”

[The Guardian]

Talk of “political nincompoops“… Does James Cleverly really believe that any war against Russia can be brought “to a conclusion“, let alone “a quick conclusion“, with Russia, in effect, losing?

I suppose that that sort of view, based on total ignorance, is what you get when your Foreign Secretary is a half-caste with a “degree” in “Hospitality Management”…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11644009/Furious-tenant-58-smashed-Volkswagen-left-parking-space.html

A furious tenant smashed up a car he found left in his parking space, despite not using the bay himself for 12 years

Gavin Glover, 58, has neither a car nor a driving licence, but descended into a fit of ‘parking lot rage’ when the Volkswagen Polo was parked in a space allocated to him as part of his lease on a flat.

[Daily Mail]

There are so many idiots of that sort around, and so many people, also, who “presume too much”.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/17/spare-by-prince-harry-review-magical-thinking-in-montecito-tina-brown

“The Harry Formerly Known as Prince”…

Tweets seen

Emily Maitlis sometimes displays very poor judgment.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Maitlis#Allegations_of_%22lack_of_impartiality%22].

A horrible and corrupt little bastard, completely in the pocket of the Israel lobby and Jewish property speculators. As with Starmer, Jenrick is married to a Jewish lawyer, and his children are being brought up as Jewish.

See also: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/24/robert-jenrick-planning-row-the-key-questions-answered.

Ed Balls is now irrelevant, politically, but people should remember that would-be dictator Yvette Cooper, now in the Shadow Cabinet, was one of the worst expenses cheats and freeloaders in the Westminster monkeyhouse. All that and an Israel-lobby puppet as well…

Fake refugees, in fact.

More music

More tweets

…and, once again, we see that a “Jack Monroe” fan is, again, a lady of a certain age, not (it seems) either “poor” or “struggling”, and (again) willing to tweet loudly without knowing basic facts.

Tweeter “@gillianography”, another typical “Jack Monroe” fan: not “poor“, not “struggling” (and almost certainly a reader of the Guardian), as well as, in her case, (and as she herself says) “neurodivergent nerd“, “brand strategist“, “copywriter“, and supporter of LGBTQXYZ etc.

As blogged previously, not only the “poor” and “struggling” but also the standard “working classes” of yore seem to be entirely absent from the ranks of the “Jack Monroe” supporters, as they sit reading their copies of the Guardian in, as it might be, the Waitrose cafe.

What is the point of…”Jack Monroe”?

There used to be a BBC Radio 4 series called something like What is the Point of…? Ah, here it is…seems to be still running: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lt45k. Various things, from universities to Formula 1, were, perhaps still are, examined with a view to their utility.

I ask, “What is the point of Jack Monroe?” Not as an individual, but as a minor socio-political phenomenon.

The only “point” I can see for “Jack Monroe”, in that sense, is that nearly a decade ago, she raised the fact that many many people were facing hardship unprecedented since, arguende, the 1940s. So far so good. I was still quite favourable to her, or at least neutral, months or years ago: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/09/30/diary-blog-30-september-2022-including-an-assessment-of-jack-monroe-aka-the-bootstrap-cook/.

In the well-known saying, “when the facts change, so do my opinions” [not the exact words of J.M. Keynes].

Leaving aside the “alleged” fraud and/or “grifting”, what is or has “Jack Monroe” really done to either reduce “poverty” (however defined), or to make it more bearable for “the poor” (however defined)? In my view, not much, if anything.

In my opinion, anyone can say “buy the cheapest food lines from [any supermarket]”, or (such as) “make tuna salad using canned tuna in oil, rather than buying olive oil separately” (I made that tip up myself…maybe I could be “Bootstrap Cook (2)”!).

As for the food produced by “Jack Monroe”, the less said the better, from what I have seen, though some might be acceptable. Many have said, though, that her costings are largely fictional. Again, leaving that aside, does that really help the “poor and struggling”?

Critics (including me) have made the point that to say, “I can feed a family of four for a week on £20” effectively says, by implied —if unintended— subtext, “State benefits are more than adequate“. It may be that four people could live, albeit on the most basic level, on only £20 a week, but food is of course only one expense of that hypothetical family. Heat, communications, water and electricity bills, clothing, transport. Etc.

Looking at how “Jack Monroe” has simply ignored inconvenient facts (such as her £20 shop not including items already purchased and stored), the truth is that she is just not very good at working out anything. Her various food recipes and plans are worthless, really.

As for the (non-existent) “Vimes Boots Index” of inflation, she not only has not produced it but, actually, is not capable of producing it (not with any accuracy, though she may eventually cobble something together in order to fool her hardcore Twitter fans).

Is advice such as “rinse sauce off cheap tinned pasta, replace sauce with something else, then serve” really useful? To anyone? The same goes for “take a tin of sardines, mix it up with rice, or pasta, and curry powder; heat and serve” (my abbreviated versions).

In a Britain where instant fake “celebrity” can make completely ridiculous people famous and wealthy, the “brand” of “Jack Monroe” (as supposed “single mother on State benefits, saving herself and others by clever budgeting and cooking“) gained some resonance around 2012-2013, but now that people know that she has not been “poor” for many years (and possibly never was), the “brand” is surely worthless?

I really cannot now see much point to “Jack Monroe” (the “brand”, that is), and I think that it is telling that, apart from a few idiotic journalists and (possibly) Nigella Lawson, most of the continuing fans of “Jack Monroe” seem to be people with mental problems.

More tweets

Late tweets

NWO/ZOG controls both USA and the EU. The provocative military aid to the Zelensky regime surely proves that.

Late music

Diary Blog, 17 January 2023

Afternoon music

On this day a year ago

Northstowe

All so that developers and bureaucrats can create “boxes for people”, or “hutches” for urban overflow. Horrible.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northstowe; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bloor.

[houses built by Bloor Homes at “Northstowe”. Could the architect —if any—and builders have made them any uglier? They look more like buildings in some decayed area of local council housing. Where is the space for Nature? Who would actually want to live there?]

Until I am convinced otherwise, I remain of the view that there is some secret or semi-secret plan to move the centre of gravity of England from the London area to a belt broadly stretching from Oxford to Cambridge.

I first became interested in this when on the road rather a lot in the years 2002-2007, going to county courts all over the place. I noticed the amount of roadbuilding and road improvement going on in that Oxford-Cambridge belt north of southern England but south of the Midlands.

I later discovered that railway links were also being created or upgraded: see, eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Line [“There are funded plans for the entire line to be re-established by the “mid 2020s”, partly on a new route and under a new name  – East West Rail” —Wikipedia].

Other transport links are also in progress: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway.

There may be a plan, perhaps secret, to create an urbanized belt, or initially a linked series of urbanizations, as a fallback position should London and the southeast suffer damage through war or natural disasters.

Milton Keynes is halfway between Oxford and Cambridge, and has been greatly expanded in recent decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes. I can remember when it was little more than a building site; that was in 1977. I hardly recognized it when staying in the city for a couple of days in 2007 (for a case at Milton Keynes County Court, something that did not exist in 1977 or even, as far as I know, 1987; I first visited the Court in 2002).

Guess who/what is the local councillor (with responsibility for planning the “Northstowe” area)?

[Tumi Hawkins: “LibDem District Councillor for Caldecote Ward, Cabinet Member for Planning at @SouthCambs. Chartered Engineer, Businesswoman. Jazzercise fanatic. Drummer”]

Hawkins?

A personification of the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan; http://adam.curry.com/art/1543753587_mkXBrvrY.html].

I then became a property developer and investor, buying, selling and building/renovating property in Cambridgeshire and South Lincolnshire. I then moved on to ecommerce, developing our own range of dog skin care products selling on our website and on sites like amazon and ebay.” [Councillor Tumi Hawkins].

Take a look at the comments underneath her biography, comments by local people.

She seems to be unwilling to address the issues raised by local (English) people:

Jack Monroe

This is what happens in (other) frauds such as Ponzi schemes. Any “investor” who makes a loud-enough noise is paid back, but most either do not ask for the money taken from them to be repaid, or the repayment demands are not loud enough.

“Jack Monroe” usually does this— either ignores questions and criticism, and tweets irrelevant rubbish, or snarls, threatening critics with Jew lawyers or “flying monkeys” (mentally-disturbed fans), or —in extremis— makes up a story of how she is suffering from an attack of a physical or mental illness. Who knows? She may actually half-believe that the illnesses are real; a psychosomatic reaction.

One refund out of (presently) 635 utter mugs on Patreon, who are each sending “Jack Monroe” between £3.50 and £44 every month, and not forgetting the unknown number previously cheated by “Jack Monroe”, and who are now no longer sending her money; at one time there were 800 “patrons” —incredibly— largely because the Jewish TV cook, Nigella Lawson, helped to promote the whole “Bootstrap Cook” image. Nigella Lawson’s commendation of “Jack Monroe” is still on the front cover of the latest (and ludicrous) “Jack Monroe” book, Thrifty Kitchen.

Other tweets seen

…and the police; and “Jack Monroe” as well…

A face of evil.

Jewish-lobby slush funds (again).

That tweet refers, of course, to Kurdish carpetbagger Nadhim Zahawi.

Yvette Cooper, Wes Streeting, Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner…no wonder they take orders from the Jewish-lobby, aka Israel-lobby. They “need” the money from those slush funds to fuel their lifestyles (the lifestyles they keep hidden from the public gaze)…

Late afternoon music

[Eton College Chapel]

Late tweets seen

My assessment of Owen Jones from 4 years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/04/a-brief-word-about-owen-jones/.

Late music

Diary Blog, 16 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/twins-separated-birth-find-each-28960150?int_source=nba.

Amazing story.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11638389/Half-universities-peddle-woke-agenda-students.html.

UK universities need a chistka (purge).

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/shepherds-bush-pub-assault-james-stephenson-leg-broken-b1052834.html

Another example of how public services in the UK just do not work any more. The victim of a bad assault, a woman, had to lie under blankets outside a pub for 2 hours, waiting for an ambulance that never turned up. Eventually, she had to take an Uber minicab to hospital.

Adding insult to injury, the police, until pressed, did not bother to gather easily-available cctv evidence.

Finally, the defendant (finally caught after the police had been pressured to actually do their job) was let off with a suspended sentence (albeit with a stiff financial penalty by way of compensation for the victim).

There was reasonable mitigation, yes, but the crime was both violent and unpleasant in itself and, also, the victim was left with continuing —and quite possibly permanent— disabilities and pain caused directly or proximately by the actions of the defendant.

If this continues, UK society will become a jungle.

Jack Monroe

Those who follow the “Jack Monroe” saga have noticed that she never, or at least rarely, admits to having bought expensive items for herself out of the monies she has available to her from several sources; she always either “finds” them, remarkably, or buys them for a song (for a tenth or less of the normal price), or is “given” them by friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, or strangers, or has acquired them via “exchange” for unspecified “services“.

As for her having been “in full time work for the best part of 2 decades“, that seems unlikely, but is a question of definition.

“Two decades” brings us back to early 2003. At that time, “Jack Monroe was 14 years old. She left school at 16 (~2005), working in a chip shop and a Starbucks before joining the fire brigade in Essex in 2007 as a call handler. She left in 2011, and was thereafter, for ~18 months, “on the dole”.

“Jack Monroe” worked for her local newspaper in 2012-2013, and also blogged, after which she got a book deal worth, I read, £25,000, with Penguin: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe.

So there we have 7-8 years of intermittent paid work, not quite the 10+ years she claims.

Since 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been (it seems) mostly or completely self-employed, as scribbler, blogger, TV talking head etc. To what extent that counts as “full-time work” is an open question; if yes, then the total is about 17 years; if not, about 7 or so, as said.

As previously noted, Jack Monroe both claims poverty, and so asks for the public to send her money, but also says sometimes that she was in poverty (while on State benefits for 1-2 years), but not now.

Since about 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been in receipt of monies from a number of sources: TV and radio appearances, Press interviews, about £100,000 royalties from her several books (most still in print, I think), deals with ASDA and other supermarkets, and substantial donations (eg from 634 —at time of writing— very misguided people sending her £3.50-£44 each, monthly, via Patreon),

It is claimed by some on Twitter that “Jack Monroe” is “downsizing” (as she puts it) not because she cannot afford the c.£4,000 a month rent and other expenses of her present home but because she is buying a new but possibly smaller home; some say paying the full price in cash. I have no idea whether that be so.

At what point do the 634 mugs still subsidizing her via Patreon start to think why they are still funnelling cash to this very unreliable “grifter” and fantasist, who has recently been in the Guardian laughing about how, when drunk or drugged, she would buy four large pieces of furniture in a few days “for a laugh” or some such.

Is all that is required, for “Jack Monroe” to receive donations from naive mugs, for her to snarl occasionally on Twitter about “cost of living” or “wicked Tories“? Even if they are (and no argument from me on that), how does that either seriously oppose “Conservative” policies or “help the poor“?

“Jack Monroe” has claimed to have been working on a measure of how “the poor” are disproportionately affected by inflation, something she calls (from one of the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett) the “Vimes Boots Index“, but it seems that that might be just another fantasy; in short, another lie.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory.

Other tweets seen

A truth unacknowledged by those born with a silver spoon…

(((Simon Harris))) has to live, after all (I suppose) (whoever he is).

May be useful to people; I do not know.

An ethnic minority carpetbagger in Government will be protected, as far as possible. Others, English, less connected, poorer, would face sterner measures. I recall a colleague at the Bar, in 2007, telling me about a Devonian fishing captain that he had defended, and who (along with his few crew) had decided to evade tax on profits of fish caught. The man was apparently a heroin addict. They all pleaded guilty, the crew got off with suspended sentences, but the captain received a sentence of, if I recall aright, two years’ imprisonment. The amount was tens of thousands (perhaps about £20,000), not the millions of the Zahawi case.

Historical revisionism

Ostalgie-musik

[Grenzpolizei DDR (East German border guards). Maybe we in the UK need something similar in order to stem the migration-invasion]

It often seems that the UK now has effectively no border security. Untermenschen from various countries invade our territory without difficulty, and when “intercepted” (ferried to the UK, or met at the beach), taken to a 3* or 4* hotel, thenceforth battening off the British people for the rest of their lives.

The very best that can be expected of 99% of the migrant-invaders is that they will be totally useless; more likely, most of them are criminal and even murderous.

Late tweets seen

No Western news agencies or TV stations seem interested in finding out how the Kiev regime is treating captured Russian soldiers.

Late music

Diary Blog, 15 January 2023, with some childhood memories

Afternoon music

[Chopin memorial, Lazienki Park, Warsaw, last seen by me in the summer of 1988]

On this day a year ago

Peter Hitchens

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11635997/PETER-HITCHENS-Yes-Drake-did-wicked-things.html

Jack Monroe

It seems to me that the msm, and its “celebrity” endorsers such as Nigella Lawson, have already moved on from “Jack Monroe” but that, at the same time, a hard-core of loony “LGBTQXYZ” types, would-be “socially-progressive” wishful thinkers, naive mugs and/or “fans”, mostly “of a certain age” will continue to tweet in support of her, and that quite a few “mugs” will continue to send her money via Patreon. After all, no less than 634 utter mugs are (as of today) still signed up to send her between £3.50 and £44 each month, despite the disclosures on Twitter, Tattle, and in the msm.

I may be wrong, but I have wondered whether “Anthea Rogers” is in fact “Jack Monroe” herself. Maybe, maybe not.

Once again, a tweeter alleges (by innuendo) that “Jack Monroe” is or was a cocaine abuser. I should not be at all surprised, for several reasons.

Other tweets seen

Import corrupt non-whites to the UK, allow them to become businessmen, MPs, government ministers, and guess what happens? They import, with their selves, their behavioural tendencies.

More “trans” nonsense. Wants to be a Member of Parliament. Impossible? Who knows, now that Eddie Izzard is seeking selection.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.

Harsher than would be my judgment, but they have a point— it shows weakness. In any case, though he often —not always— writes sensibly, Hitchens is “conservative”, perhaps, but not “national” or nationalist: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/

Only social nationalism can save Europe now.

She knows, instinctively.

When I was a child of just 12 (late 1968), higher forces impinging on my consciousness probably saved my life.

It happened like this: my family lived at the time on the Cremorne/Mosman border in Sydney, Australia. We decided to go on holiday to Queensland by car, a long journey even now, but longer then, when there were no motorways, only a seemingly endless highway with one lane on each side. No particular destination, but in the end, we washed up in Bundaberg, after 800 miles of motoring in the family Ford Falcon.

[1960s Ford Falcon, Australian version; my family’s one was white, though]

The 2-3 day trip had not been without incident or interest. As said, no motorways or dual-carriageways in Australia then, once outside Sydney. The highway took us north, past small encampments of Aboriginals in Northern New South Wales, and also past the banana groves of the region.

The traffic was light, at times very light. At one point, our car was told by police to drive quickly through a limited area of bushfire on both sides of the highway.

We overnighted at a motel at Coffs Harbour [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffs_Harbour], then a very sleepy town which is far busier today. Over the border, we passed through the gaudy oceanside town of Surfers’ Paradise, mostly single storey then, but which decades later developed into what is now the Gold Coast [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast,_Queensland].

[Gold Coast highway, c.1965, about three years before I saw it]

The South Coast region was a very popular holiday destination for servicemen returning from World War II. However, inflated prices for real estate and other goods and services led to the nickname of “Gold Coast” from 1950. By the 1960s the Gold Coast’s infrastructure had grown considerably, and the local building industry was able to support the development of high-rise holiday apartments and hotels (the first of which, Kinkabool, was completed in 1959). Surfers Paradise had firmly established itself as the leading destination and the introduction of bikini-clad meter maids in 1965 to feed parking meters by the beach to prevent holidaymakers from getting parking fines was a particularly popular innovation.”

[Queensland State archives]

In fact, I never heard that region called “Gold Coast” then, but only “Surfers’ Paradise” or simply “Surfers’“.

Now, a large city (600,000 pop.) exists there:

[the Gold Coast as it is today]
[Gold Coast panorama, 2015]

We travelled on through long stretches of sugar cane.

The Millard family holiday in fact nearly ended disastrously when, just after the swift near-tropical darkness had fallen, a slow-moving freight train, carrying sugar cane through the night, just missed the car as it crossed the track. The level crossing had neither lights nor barrier, and not even a warning sign.

I say “near-tropical” because this was about 200 miles south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

My family decided, the next day, to go to a camping area by a beach in the then undeveloped Bargarah area, about 8 miles from Bundaberg, Bundaberg being now, in 2023, a much more sizeable and populated place but then, in 1968, known only for sugar, rum, and Bert Hinkler, an aviation pioneer whose statue stood prominently in or near the quiet town centre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Hinkler; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundaberg; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bargara,_Queensland.

[central Bundaberg as it now is; the population is now 70,000]

I wandered around under the coconut palms, having a near-miss when a heavy coconut in its fleshy surround crashed down, missing me by inches. A quiet beach on the Coral Sea, with hardly anyone there except a handful of families in tents and, nearby, a small cafe or snack joint of some kind, right by the beach.

The next morning, I felt unwell, and, oddly, told my parents, really insistently (I remember that), that I needed to go to hospital. What prompted that request I have no idea. Guardian angel? Instinct? The pain was (if I recall) not too bad, just a dull ache most of the time.

Anyway, after initial thoughts from my parents that I just needed rest in the heat of the Queensland summer, my mother reluctantly drove me to Bundaberg, where it was soon established at the General Hospital that I needed an emergency appendectomy. Apparently, had the appendix not been extracted, I might well have died.

I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks (that was more common back then), and was then flown back, with my younger brother, to Sydney via Brisbane (where we transferred to a large Boeing jet).

At that time, Bundaberg’s airfield had only a kind of hut as the “terminal”; and I was one of only a very few passengers on the propeller-driven plane, a Fokker Friendship with about a dozen or so people aboard (it had come from other coastal towns first).

My parents and youngest brother drove back to Sydney later; they probably recalled the holiday very differently to me.

[Bundaberg Airport today. It was redeveloped in 1986, and is now a far cry from the short strip and “terminal” hut of 1968, outside which was a flagpole, its flag lifeless in the near-tropical heat]

Anyway, the incident has always stuck in my mind as exemplifying how the overmind, or “higher forces” (?), can sometimes save people from injury or death.

I have had other such, though non-medical, “saving graces”, including one in Ireland in 1979.

More tweets seen

He is right. “We are where we are”, though…

I heard on the radio yesterday that the UK is getting even deeper into the Ukrainian war by sending the Zelensky regime 12 (it now seems 14) Challenger 2 tanks. Old but certainly serviceable. This gets close to being actually at war with Russia. Madness. I may not much like London and some of the areas around it, but I still would prefer them not to be destroyed by a nuclear attack…

[Challenger 2 main battle tank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2]

The reaction of the Zelensky regime is that it wants 300 tanks! Their ghetto negotiating style would be funny were it less offensive.

Where would the Kiev regime be without Western aid constantly stoking the war? In Lvov, if not Warsaw, probably. This was a failed state even before the war. Now it may have arms and ammunition funnelled to it by the Western powers, but 20% of the population is outside Ukraine now; the country is largely without electrical power; it has few gas supplies; it cannot manufacture; it cannot export much of its continuing agricultural production.

The only answer (saving Russian occupation of Kiev, Odessa and the territories east of the Dnieper) is for there to be a ceasefire on both sides, pending negotiation of at least an armistice and a freezing of the actual hostilities on both sides.

Incidentally, the largest tank battle of WW2 (and in history generally), Kursk, involved a total of over 8,000 tanks, incredibly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk.

Late music

Diary Blog, 14 January 2023

Afternoon music

[The Bund, Shanghai, 1930s]

On this day a year ago

Saturday quiz

Well, this week a modest 6/10. Still enough, however, to beat political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10.

I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, 8, and 10. I should have known question no. 4 too, having been there as a child and I think maybe even having been on that canal.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/10/donkeys-neglected-animal-deserve-their-moment.

Donkeys are beautiful, in their own way. Friendly and humble creatures. Probably my favourite animals, after cats.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/13/andrew-brigden-andrew-tate-online-safety-bill.

Pseudo-liberal scribbler wants less freedom of expression online. Was there ever an era in which so many self-describing “journalists”, “creatives” and, indeed, “radicals”, wanted not more free speech but less?

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaby_Hinsliff.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/13/paul-johnson-obituary.

Sic transit gloria mundi… Paul Johnson, almost if not actually obscure to the public of 2023, was a major political, or socio-political, voice in the 1980s, 1970s, and indeed 1960s. I can recall seeing him on TV in the early 1970s, sternly extolling the potential virtue of having a State-controlled or subsidized newspaper which would be such a newspaper of record that it would only print the unvarnished truth of what had happened in the world. As people say, “good luck with that“… That TV chat was, of course, some years before Johnson turned away from socialism, and embraced Thatcherism.

I heard little of Paul Johnson in the 1990s, and his star faded (in the public eye) to the extent that I was actually surprised, some years ago, to discover that he was still alive.

The type of person who thinks his own views terribly important, to the extent that at least some others in the msm or System politics also think him important for a while, more important than he really is. Still, a prolific author, and certainly someone who influenced the uplands of British thought, though not the views of the man-in-the-street, for several decades.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Johnson_(writer).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11633669/Former-Labour-MP-Simon-Danczuk-frolics-hotel-swimming-pool-28-year-old-Rwandan-fiancee.html.

It could be said that the meaning of the words “Simon Danczuk” is “disgraceful“.

Rassenschande

How much did the freeloading bastard get from the Daily Mail? He was always in the pocket of the Jewish lobby, so I expect that he gets a few crumbs thrown to him.

Incidentally, the bastard is ten years younger than me but looks ten years older. His life and lifestyle have caught up with him.

At least his godawful ex-wife, Karen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Danczuk, is now forced to read about him while sitting on the dole in depressing Manchester. Thank God she failed to follow Danczuk into the Westminster monkeyhouse (which seemed quite likely at one point).

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Danczuk#Parliamentary_career

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632497/Shocking-moment-Bandidos-biker-gang-members-killed-motorcyclist-wearing-rival-colours.html#comments.

On the facts, certainly murder, not manslaughter. The jury must have been idiots. How was that not “intending to kill or to cause really serious injury [the victim then dying as a result]”?

The sentences were also far too lenient.

Tweets seen

Incidentally, I was just watching a 1970s episode of Crown Court, the facts of the case revolving around an overworked and slightly disorganized Accident and Emergency department of an NHS hospital. Plus ca change?

Very true, but of course the hell of it is that Jewish-lobby puppet Starmer’s fake “Labour” will be no better, and quite possibly worse.

Never give “scientists”, academics, or bureaucrats too much influence or power.

I blogged recently about how I refused the “vaccines” for “Covid”, and —despite a now rather unhealthy and sedentary overall lifestyle— am still fine, whereas my two brothers in the UK and Australia, lifelong sports and golf players, were both “vaccinated” and “boosted”, and both (in the same week last year) had to be taken as emergency cases to hospital, having had heart attacks (btw, both now OK after having had heart by-pass operations).

Co-incidence? Karma? Or what? I know what I think.

More music

More tweets

“The Harry Formerly Known as Prince” and “Meghan Mulatta”. What a bad joke it all is.

Paid for by her mug supporters.

Ha ha!

As yet, and as far as I know, the Jew-Zionist self-publicizer and resident of Israel, Mark Lewis, who was her solicitor on a previous occasion years ago, has not come out of his kennel in recent months to defend the “Bootstrap Cook”.

“Jack Monroe” was threatening to sue Con Party MP, Lee Anderson, in May 2022, and all her friends in the newspapers were writing about it, but since then it has transpired that not only has she not taken even the first steps to suing Anderson, but that she launched a crowdfunder in May 2022, and raised money on that basis to sue Anderson (and the commentator Martin Daubney), but has kept those monies for her own use, as far as can be seen.

The police should be investigating “Jack Monroe” on suspicion of having committed fraud.

Another idea struck me.

“Jack Monroe” lives in Essex, in the Southend area. Her father is a rentier who rents out a number of houses there. He was, I read, once a fairly high-ranking member of the fire brigade there, and also holds an MBE. He may (I do not know) be a freemason, as also are so many responsible officers of the police. Is that a factor in “Jack Monroe” not being (as it at least seems) properly investigated? Again, I cannot say, either way.

Or maybe “Jack Monroe” is just not a “celebrity” any more, and so the non-existent “Essex Police Celebrity VIP Twitter Squad” can no longer give her special attention (as “victim” of the emerging truth)? (Only taking the joke further…).

Incidentally, my own experience of the Essex Police, from six years ago almost to the day: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/ (blog post written six months later).

I, on the other hand, find it odd how so many of the remaining hardcore “Jack Monroe” supporters are zealous supporters also of the present inflated nonsense around “LGBTQXYZ”.

I still remain interested as to why there are, as it certainly seems, no young or even young-ish (say under-30, under-40) “Jack Monroe” supporters, and no ethnic minority supporters either, with the exception of a handful of Greek Cypriots I have noticed on Twitter (she herself is half-Greek Cypriot, her original name having been Melissa Hadjicostas).

I have previously suggested a couple of reasons why no ethnic minority people seem to support the “Bootstrap Cook”, one being that many of them know real poverty only too well to accept her nonsense, and the other being that few of them would look at the food of “Bootstrap Cook” with anything other than contempt.

There may be other reasons.

Unbelievably, there are, as of today, 634 utter mugs still sending between £3.50 and £44 a month each to “Jack Monroe”. No wonder she can spend money like a drunken sailor! The puzzle is why so many apparently crazed virtue-signallers want to enable it.

Those people are too kind…

Perhaps“?! Ha ha!..

Late music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zara_Levina]

Diary Blog, 13 January 2023

Afternoon music

[Dnieper dam after reconstruction, 1947]

On this day a year ago

“Jack Monroe”

In any case, “her lawyer” (if any) has not sent a letter (whether “strong“, not so strong, or apocalyptic and written in Hebrew on stone tablets) to Con Party MP Lee Anderson.

Another day, another “Jack Monroe” lie…

“Jack Monroe” is, or has become, a fraudster, basically (and far worse than I thought when I assessed her on the blog at the end of September 2022). Having said that, the non-practising doctor tweeting in support of her, Julia Grace Patterson, is not much better.

The 631 utter mugs still sending her between £3.50 and £44 a month via Patreon will no doubt continue to collude in their own mugging, though…

Other tweets seen

The flow of migration-invasion would be curbed if either a. the boats were destroyed in the Channel, along with the invaders; or b. the invaders simply disappeared after reaching the UK, never to be heard of again. Either of those measures would deter others from trying to invade.

A general feeling of “end of an era”, as in 1939 and 1914…

More music

More tweets

Can you imagine what the remains of our culture and civilization would look like (and will, unless we take charge soon) if only blacks and mixed-race half-castes were to exist? Think Mogadishu, Haiti, most of Africa, but on a larger urban scale. Just the remains of civilization and greatness, half-reduced to rubble, and the untermenschen crawling over the ruins.

That “Dr Freya Vass” (a teacher of dance, apparently) sounds like a complete loony, like most of the “Jack Monroe” partisans.

The whole long thread about Serebriakova is rather interesting. A feeling of Doctor Zhivago about it.

That’s Napoleon III, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann

Archetypes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes.

More seen about “Jack Monroe”

The tweet went the same way as that “Bootstrap Cook” blog post which claimed that she had been “waved through” the police cordon at Grenfell Tower in West London, and (armed with the “building plans“, no less!) more or less took over the rescue etc.

Remarkable for someone who was not, at the time employed by any fire service, or any other emergency service, and who lived about 60 miles from the fire— in Essex, where (for a year or so) she had answered the telephone at a call centre for the Essex fire brigade.

How could she have had the “building plans” for Grenfell Tower? Simply impossible.

That blog post was a remarkable exercise both in fantasy writing, and in trying to create an entirely false story. Some of her fans actually believed it, incredibly.

It emphasizes the psychological (narcissistic) need “Jack Monroe” has for placing herself centre stage. The big story of the time was the Grenfell Tower fire, but that happened 60 miles from Southend, and there was no nexus at all between it and “Jack Monroe”, so she simply invented a scenario in which she was right at the centre of events— striding purposefully through the police cordon to take charge of the emergency. Ludicrous, but some people believed it.

I agree. While one does not expect the editor of The Grocer, Best magazine, or even the Metro, to be particularly aware or intelligent, what can be the excuse of the editors of the Guardian and the Observer?

As blogged before, though, I would be surprised if the msm kept on, for very much longer, promoting the nonsense of the “Bootstrap Cook”, despite her numerous “personal connections” etc.

More tweets

Late music

Diary Blog, 12 January 2023, with thoughts about the NHS, and NHS strikes

Afternoon music

[painting by Jack Vettriano]

On this day a year ago

NHS

As blogged previously, I am all in favour of the NHS principle of “free at point of use”, but the fact is that the NHS, as it is (i.e. not in theory), is simply not working. Not working properly, and scarcely working at all.

It may well be that more money is required, but even now the NHS consumes nearly half the governmental budget (I see 44% as the proportion).

It may well be that nurses should be paid more. What about doctors? I see that GPs are mostly paid over £100,000 a year, some over £200,000, and for a service that is now lamentably poor.

As for hospital doctors, though the most junior (in the first year) receive only about £32,000 p.a., that rises rapidly to over £50,000 and, for consultants and surgeons, well over £100,000.

Ambulancemen (paramedics), (and women), get more than nurses, and do (from what I have seen) a very good job indeed.

As said, nurses and paramedics have a case for wanting more pay, but I cannot see it as morally correct for them to strike, leaving patients without care, even with some kind of skeleton service still running.

As for the NHS generally, it plainly needs to be changed to a service that genuinely puts patients first.

In the past decade, I have seen enough (though not as patient) to convince me that the maladministration in the NHS has to be rooted out. I should say that that is the main problem, not the staff as such, and not money as such.

Few people would want the UK to have an American-style health service, though it also has merits, which I saw when my first wife (an employee of the U.S. Federal Government) needed urgent surgery— and had it within a day or so of being admitted to hospital, and she was admitted the same day that she experienced pain bad enough to seek help. In the UK, that surgery would probably have taken weeks if not months to organize.

Likewise, I recall that my first wife was advised, on another occasion, to get a scan, and was given a choice of five hospitals within a 20-mile radius of home. The same year (1990 or 1991), King’s College Hospital in South London, a major UK teaching hospital, had to have a public appeal to buy a scanning machine, and that appeal ran for several years.

Again, the wife of a friend of mine in New Jersey was paralyzed after a woman driving a car in a supermarket parking lot (at only 5-10 mph) drove into her bicycle. Thanks to being heavily insured, my friend’s wife was able to stay at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center, where the Superman actor, Christopher Reeve, spent time a few years later [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Reeve#Hospitalization]. An excellent “facility”, as Americans say, and in heavily-wooded and peaceful grounds.

Still, the American system, under which about 40%-50% of the population are uninsured or under-insured, is unjust, and not what we in the UK would like to see.

There are, however, alternatives. The French system, for example (which I have also seen a little) seems to be far better than the NHS and, to take just example, has done away with “wards”— patients almost all have their own rooms, or shared rooms, and have done for about 40 years.

A friend in Brittany when I myself lived there (pre-2010) suffered from a heart condition and had already been treated by the NHS. On seeing the French specialist for the first time (taken the 50-mile journey to Brest and 50 miles back by taxi, at State expense, incidentally, rather than having had to drive himself), he was asked what medication he was presently prescribed, and replied. The French consultant raised his eyebrows and said “I think that we can do a little better than that“…

We are often unaware to what extent the NHS rations healthcare; the more advanced techniques and drugs available elsewhere are often not available on the NHS.

What we need is to keep the “free at point of use” principle, but ring-fence an “NHS tax” from income tax, so that those monies are usable solely for and by the NHS, not diverted to “aid” for the Jew Zelensky’s dictatorship, not diverted to other projects or services etc.

Also necessary (to some extent), along with better administration, is attitudinal change in some staff.

Tweets seen

I recall seeing that idiot in the hat shouting through a megaphone, in Whitehall, when I was last in London: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/06/30/diary-blog-30-june-2022-including-impressions-of-a-trip-to-dystopian-london/.

If they really received the full ration (call me a cynic…).

What use is SIS/MI6 when it has neither the will nor the capability to bump off Shamima Begum and her sort? Especially when it also failed, inter alia, to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, failed to predict the Falklands invasion, failed to predict the fall of socialism (inc. the Soviet Union) etc.

It’s “FERBER“, not “FABER“…(get it right…).

American. Don’t know if lawful in the UK. If lawful, should not be.

Some suggestion that the Ferber website was hacked some time ago. May or may not be true.

The wildlife emergency in the UK must become a government priority.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11627311/NHS-offers-remote-GP-job-85-hour-amid-claim-doctors-want-patients.html

The NHS has been accused of ‘wanting less and less’ to do with patients after it advertised a series of remote-only GP roles for £85 an hour.

The work from home job offers general practitioners a three-month contract with the chance ‘to provide online digital consultations’ via video or phone calls to patients, with pay of just under £3,000 a week or almost £13,000 a month.

It comes amid mounting evidence that ‘telemedicine’, while convenient for doctors, can be ‘disastrous’ for some patients.”

[Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11626977/NHS-emergency-care-crisis-laid-bare-999-response-times-worst-ever.html

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“Jack Monroe”

Probably because the virtue-signalling Guardian readers, while pleased to have a copy of one or two “Jack Monroe” books prominently displayed on a kitchen bookshelf, are certainly not going to actually make, let alone eat, her swill.

I shall look forward to that. All the online “grifters” should be rooted out. Ausrotten!

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Late tweets

Seems to be a genuine and worthwhile cause: https://www.gofundme.com/f/depher-cost-of-living-support-uk?qid=a6d81c76d0fb2349f78e7a06652165a6

Late music

[Scottish Highlands: a 19thC baronial-style lodge]