Morning music
Battles past
Thought for the Day
I see that the “BBC presenter” story is still rolling. A couple of things strike me about the story and also about the reaction to it.
Firstly, the sheer hysteria. It seems that the girl involved was 17 at the time, assuming that there is any substance to the story. It is one of the oddities of the English law at present (as I understand it— I admit to being not very au fait with it now, having not practised at the Bar since 2008) that the unnamed BBC presenter could actually have had full sexual relations with the girl (or any girl of 17, or indeed 16) without being in peril of the law, yet if he paid for nude photographs of her (even though she may have taken them herself, and willingly) he might actually be at risk of imprisonment: see https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/09/bbc-presenter-accused-of-paying-teenager-for-photos-could-face-jail-term-if-guilty.
To my mind, this makes a mockery of the law. The “photographs” law should surely be in line with the law on sexual relations, and so the age reduced to 16 years.
I am unsure about whether a “photographs” law of that kind was or is necessary at all, or if it is, whether the relevant age should be 16 or lower, as with some provisions of, eg, the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Sexual Offences Act 1956.
The Protection of Children Act 1978, the present “photographs” law, does not (as far as I know) specify an age, but refers only to “children“.
This was never the kind of law I did when at the Bar, so I may be out of my depth on the detail here but, to my mind, that 1978 “photographs” law (which I have never read in full) seems to be on the face of it yet another badly-drafted law of the past half-century. There are several others, including the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and the Communications Act 2003, s. 127. Both of those have been superseded or are about to be superseded by newer laws.
I find it strange that the 1978 “photographs” law was thought to be necessary at all. It was brought in 20 years before the Internet was widely available for public use and, after all, photography itself has been around for about 200 years if you include its earlier modern manifestations such as the daguerrotype. Photographs as such have certainly existed since the 1860s, yet only in 1978 did Parliament consider that such a penal law was desirable, or at all necessary. Very odd.
Leaving all that aside, there seems to be a strange dissonance now— UK and general Western society almost eliminating real childhood and/or childhood “innocence”, and yet going mad if someone, especially anyone famous (such as George Osborne), has sexual relations, even if completely lawfully (in Osborne’s case, that is disputed), with a teenage girl of 16 or 17, or if such a person (as alleged of the unnamed BBC presenter) pays a girl of 16 or 17 for some risque photographs.
Well, there it is. To my mind, this “BBC presenter” story is a bit of a storm in a teacup anyway, looking at the challenges our country and society face at present. There are bigger issues.
The other aspect which I find striking about the “BBC presenter” story is that the unnamed defaulter has such a high level of income that he can, and apparently is willing to, pay out £35,000 for photographs of some girl.
The BBC gets almost all of its money from the outdated tax misleadingly called a “licence fee”. Radio licences, dog licences etc have passed into history, but the BBC licence fee marches on. Not only that, but enforced by criminal sanction. There are many people (mostly women) actually in prison because of having not had a TV licence, and then unable or unwilling to comply with the order of a court: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tv-licence-fee-women-convictions-b1763192.html.
Out of the huge revenues thus raised, the BBC pays its staff well, often very well, and in some cases far too well. Gary Lineker, that loudmouth ignoramus, is paid a million a year to shoot the breeze about football. Alan Shearer, another ex-footballer, gets about half a million. Zoe Ball apparently gets about a million. A number are getting around £400,000. Looking at them, most are, frankly, overpaid.
Why should the public subsidize what is increasingly, “Soviet” TV and radio output, largely unwatchable and unlistenable?
My final thought about this nonsense is that George Osborne must be loving it. The notorious email about his own peccadilloes is now already all but forgotten. I suppose, though, that despite his former, though fairly brief, political prominence, Osborne is now yesterday’s news…just not very interesting to most people.
From the newspapers
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/11/900000-older-people-ae-lack-of-nhs-care-at-home
“It’s deeply worrying that many older people are ending up in hospital due to lack of the right sort of services in the community. No one wants to be in hospital but for older people all too often it can lead to an avoidable deterioration in their health,” said Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director.
Prof Adam Gordon, the president of the British Geriatrics Society, said the report “makes grim reading [and] rightly identifies that older people are currently being let down by NHS and social care services”.”
[The Guardian]
This has been a scandal (and a massive waste of money) for years, certainly since 2010 and probably long before. No care at home means more demand at hospitals. District nurses were once ubiquitous; now they seem hardly to exist at all. I was told by one, a decade ago, that she was fed up with NHS mismanagement, and so was emigrating to Australia, where she would also be paid far more.
As with so many areas of life in England, Government and Opposition talk a good game, but fail to deliver for the people.
“Nearly 10,000 small-boat migrants who reached Britain in the past four months were last night handed an ‘amnesty’ from the Government’s tough new immigration measures.“
[Daily Mail]
More treachery.
10,000 more deadbeats, criminals, potential terrorists, and/or useless millstones round the neck of the British people.
However bad and (at best) useless Starmer-Labour will be, this “Conservative” Party misgovernment really has failed on every metric. It has to go, and I hope that almost all of its MPs will be dumped by the voters. Then a new fight will begin, against the “Labour” version of the System…
Tweets seen
Migration invasion.
Terrible, particularly in France, the UK, Spain, but also in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium and, oddly, Bulgaria.
Migration-invasion does not only mean small boats crossing the Channel, but also “legal” migration and, often forgotten, “invasion by births”.
Having encountered a couple of Dutch doctors, this does not at all surprise me…
Well, there it is. The Poles are sensible after all…
and “Labour”, under Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and Yvette Cooper, will be saying, in effect, “vote for us…we can make workhouses run more efficiently, and more fairly, and with full implementation of any anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-LGBTQXYZ measures you can imagine“…
…yet System talking heads on TV and radio worry that British people now hate “their” MPs, and are always asking why…
Late tweets
I recommend tweeter @wayotworld.
2%, though? Surely that (((group))) is more like 0.5% of the population?
A horrible woman, and completely out of her depth when Prime Minister. I suspect part-Jewish. She strengthened the bad law of Communications Act 2003, s.127 by introducing a 3-year longstop limitation period in place of the formerly-existing 6-month one, which change has emboldened evil little cabals such as the “Campaign Against Antisemitism”, which use “lawfare” (abuse of our legal and justice systems) to repress British people.
If that is a genuine photograph, it is really telling.
Look at that old Jewess kowtowing.
Maybe, as with Biden, those telephones have reached the end of their normal-functioning life.
Unless NATO forces join in the war (as the Zelensky cabal wants), the Kiev regime has no prospect even of recovering Donetsk and Lugansk regions, let alone Crimea.
If NATO forces were to join in the war, directly, a major conflagration would start across Central and Eastern Europe, maybe even into Western Europe. It might then go nuclear.
“One picture is worth a thousand words“…
Well, I myself have never been a mental patient, but here are a few interesting stories (some featuring “Dr. Dim”):
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Andrew Bridgen really isn’t a very intelligent man and demonstrates it again in that tweet. He is so awful even the present sick joke of the fake Conservative Party thew him out. First of all, there were his offensive (even for a non Jew like me who recognises the fact that Jews whine too much about what they call ‘anti-semitism’ when, in reality, it is often just mild criticism of Zionist extremism and the Zionist state of Israel) remarks about the Holocaust and vaccines and now this.
You CAN have energy security AND actions to reduce global warming and get to ‘net zero’ at the same time BUT that requires a half competent government to be in place and this wretched, useless lot are certainly NOT competent in ANYTHING even immigration control and law and order which USED to be something Tory governments could make a passable case for being quite good at.
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That moronic Tory globalist wanker wasn’t much good even as the Tory group leader on my local council in Brentwood, Essex so what on earth are his qualifications to be a cabinet minister is a mystery.
They COULD stop the boats within a month or so IF the political will was there.
All they need to do is take Britain out of the absurd Council of Europe and therefore the loony-left European Convention of Human Rights, announce a shoot to kill policy for these blatant fraudsters and illegal immigrants and give out lifetime imprisonment sentences for dopy, lefty wankers wno are often overly emotional women who rescue them at sea.
Churchill wanted to use Britain’s remaining stock of World War One POISON GAS to stop a possible Nazi invasion from Nazi German soldiers on our beaches in 1940.
Essentially, this is the same issue of an unwanted foreign invasion and if lethal means were good enough for Boris Johnson’s political hero in 1940 they are good enough in 2023 as well.
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Too right that many of us hate the vile, anti-British vermin who inhabit the House of Treason on the Thames.
A very large proportion should be publically [REDACTED] as in the good, old days either at modern day Marble Arch (former site of Tyburn executions) or in Trafalgar Square.
We could make it an enjoyable day out with hotdogs, popcorn, burgers, coke etc (NO NOT the sort Michael Gove imbibes up his nostrils).
Public executions last happened here in 1868 but, in America, the last one occurred as recently as 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky with the hanging of a black man for rape called Rainey Bethea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainey_Bethea
[REDACTED] ’em High is what I say!
I will excuse from the [REDACTED] penalty a few decent Tory MPs like Sir John Henry Hayes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hayes_(British_politican)
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You are right to be cynical about Labour’s intentions and yes your way of putting it is very apt.
ALL Labour ‘offer’ is yet more PC globalist extremism than the Tories whilst trying to say to the public we will run things a bit better.
There is NO inspiration to be had from Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and ‘Refugees welcome’ dimwit Yvette Cooper.
Rachel Reeves has recently dumped the only real fresh idea the ‘Opposition’ had namely Labour’s plan to create sustainable prosperity by moving towards the ‘green economy’.
What is the point of this 1990’s New Labour Tribute Act?
If you are only planning to be Tory Lite you may as well join the real thing!
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The Tories should just go for broke and implement the kind of anti- crime policies prevalent in that very well-run ‘Tiger Economy’ city-state of Singapore:
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime
Over the last thirteen years or so the Conservative Party has moved far too near the political centre ground. The Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats can play that game so much more ably than the Tories can.
What have the Conservatives got to lose by going for broke in this way? After all, the polling figures for them could hardly get any worse!
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John:
What is letting down the present Government is not its policy “offering” but its acts and failures to act. Its actual governance.
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I would say both. The actual proposed policies are insufficiently ‘Right-wing’ most notably with regard to immigration and to a lesser extent law and order too and then they allow utterly out of touch leftist, globalist judges to render them totally useless anyway.
This simply should not be allowed. In Singapore, quite a few lawyers disagree with that country’s use of hanging and attempt to put barriers in the way of those sentences being put into effect but the Singaporean government won’t allow the justice system there to be abused in this way so they have passed a new law to ensure lawfully imposed death sentences are carried out once appeals have failed so that the administration of justice is protected.
This government should take measures to ensue the Home Office’s policies on these subjects can’t have a coach and horses driven through them by globalist, activist judges and leftwing lawyers.
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If only the Poles had been as level-headed in 1939 when there was a even more desperate need for that to happen then this country and the rest of Europe would be in a far better state than we are now.
Perhaps, a general war in Europe or a world war developing out of it is what the Tories are hoping for. Then they can cancel the forthcoming election in 2024 or 2025 and avoid what looks like a crushing defeat which could see them being utterly finished as a party.
Yet, such a result is still avoidable now if they change their terminally unpopular leader and institute hardline Right-wing measures on crime and, in particular, immigration.
For God’s Sake, how bad do the polls have to get before they unceremoniously dump the unwanted Extra from A Passage To India? Anyone would think the Labour Party and the ever dull Sir Keir Starmer were actually inspirational when they certainly are not!
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John:
Even someone as cynical as I now am cannot believe that the Sunak misgovernment actually wants a war, which would probably go nuclear and utterly destroy the UK.
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One tiny good thing the unelected Indian extra from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum has done was that he supposedly warned senile dementia suffering, virulently anti-British, Irish American bastard Joe Biden that giving Ukraine cluster bombs was not wise.
No doubt though anti-Brit, Joe Biden, treated this warning with contempt even though we are a supposed ‘ally’ in this proxy US war against Russia and we would be far more of a potential target for Russian fury than the USA is if Putin considers this American action the last straw which must be a serious possibility.
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John:
In the words of Roosevelt, the UK is the USA’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, and as such would be a —perhaps *the*— premier target for Russian attack in the first phase of a strategic nuclear war.
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The BBC should be given a year or two to comprehensively reform itself or be shut down. Having a public service broadcaster is still a worthy idea but the BBC clearly despises this country and its native people unlike, for example,
Japan’s NHK and unlike the BBC in 1940.
People should not be required to pay a high licence fee for the internal cancer that is the modern BBC.
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That failed asylum seeker who murdered that poor old lady in such a brutal, inhumane and utterly callous way should have been executed by a long drop hanging as he would have been jn a decent, civilised and well run country like Singapore but then again he should not have been in this country in the first place in order to commit such a heinous crime.
If only we could vote for a party similar to Germany’s excellent national-conservative/nationalist Alternative For Germany (Afd) or France’s Rassemblement National (RN) or National Rally of Marine Le Pen.
Instead, we get loony-left Labour and all talk and no action globalist libertarian, anti-British, fake ‘Tory’.
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Hello Ian: A bit late today… BTW, something odd has happened today in your blog. ALL the tweets from “BigKat1983” (I believe 4) failed to appear after the page was fully loaded.
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Claudius:
Thank you. I believe that the tweeter “BigKat1983” (@royston 1983) was “suspended”/expelled by Twitter after pressure from the Jew-Zionist lobby. It must have happened today, not long after I republished those few tweets.
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I have always had quite a few questions in my mind about Teresa May’s real ethnic origins ever since she first came to prominence in our politics at the Barking By-election in 1994.
Yes, she doesn’t REALLY look like an English lady even of her fairly advanced years.
I hope the gentleman sitting behind her (Sir John Henry Hayes ) spoke in the debate and put her globalist, open borders supporting nonsense to rights.
He should be Home Secretary or, at least, a junior Home Office minister as he is one of the very few ‘traditional ‘ Tories left in the House of Commons.
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SO EFFING WHAT if these boat people are allegedly going to be consigned to slavery.
Frankly, I don’t care. The vast majority of them are blatant economic migrants and illegal immigrants who we are NOT responsible for and we have NO obligation to house and feed etc.
Infact, even the loony-left and biased BBC alluded to the truth about these people in a very recent article on their website. They interviewed boat people illegally entering Europe from The Gambia. That country, to my knowledge, is one of of the very few ex British colonies in Africa that isn’t too badly run eg it even has a fairly developed tourist industry with quite a few British tourists visiting it for Winter holidays.
They are, of course, poor as a country but the people there don’t suffer from persecution from the authorities. These boat people from there knew all about our Premiership footballers and could easily recite who their favourite players were. It was clear from the way they were talking that they considered Europe to be a promised land of milk and honey and were attempting dangerous crossings to gain economic opportunities their country wasn’t able to provide.
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John:
I have been to Gambia, though (for once) I was a typical winter tourist and did not venture far beyond my coastal hotel, in fact only once going to another place down the coast for a Lebanese dinner at a restaurant. That was in 2002, too, so hardly current. It gave the impression to me of being relatively relaxed compared to some countries I have seen. Poor, of course, like much of Africa.
The motivation for most of the migrant invaders is of course economic. Few are really fleeing war or persecution, and have traversed several, often many, countries before reaching the UK.
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Of course, a good way to stop this constant, unending ‘Camp of The Saints’ scenario that Europe as a whole and badly run by evil, terminally anti-British Tories Britain suffers from is for we and the French to ask the UN if we could impose our control over our former colonies in Africa and run them again.
Simply put, too many of these countries are very badly governed by the Africans themselves as many people here and in France warned was a likely consequence of ‘freedom’ being given to them.
Then we could govern them competently as we used to do and they would prefer to stay at home where they belong.
Europe and Britain is for Europeans.
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Most countries in Europe with few exceptions eg Croatia and Iceland have had far too much immigration since that disastrous cataclysm 1939-1945 and it now needs to stop. Otherwise, our great Continent with its rich and varied cultural inheritance won’t survive.
It is high time ‘Fortress Europa’ was built and Britain does its part to bring it about for our interests and those of of our fellow Europeans.
That, by the way, is the REAL ‘pro European’ poltical position Remainers/Rejoiners should adopt.
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That photo of Zelensky on its own being, apparently, ignored by the people was great. My wife said it reminded her of a TV ad about a person having BO, perhaps that was the reason Zelensky was on his own! (LOL)
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Claudius:
Ha. I had assumed that Zelensky at least changed his war-leader-in-a-bunker outfit occasionally, even if only for an identical set of clothing.
As Senora Claudius said, it is reminiscent of a TV ad of some sort.
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Hello! Yes, the ad was from “Lifebuoy Soap”; it still can be seen in YT; it is from the 1960s.
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The Tories are very stupid and arrogant to believe as they appear to do that those voters most inclined to vote for them ‘have nowhere else to go’. They do actually. They can vote for Reform UK or they can abstain. Failing to vote is not illegal in this country and increasingly more and more people are willing to do just that and see no shame in doing it.
For a party so fanatically supportive of the archaic fraud of First Past The Post you would think they would understand how it can operate. Technically-speaking, Labour could win the next election without gaining any new votes from last time if the Tory vote fell sufficiently seeing as Labour are second in most Tory held seats.
As we have seen from opinion polls over the last few months Tory core support is lower than many people have previously assumed eg it has plummeted to as low as 14 % in some of them.
The war criminal Bliar was of the opinion Labour’ s traditional voters had ‘nowhere else to go’ but they did and actual Labour votes declined significantly from 1997 to 2010.
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John:
As you say, many former Con Party voters will either abstain or vote LibDem; some will vote Labour, though perhaps not many. I should think that the impact will not hit the huge entrenched majorities of Southern England very hard. Where it *will* hit is in the all-important marginal seats. A protest vote of even 5%, going to Reform or elsewhere, added to a considerable abstention “vote”, will topple dozens, perhaps hundreds of MPs.
I have no idea whether Labour will score an apparent “landslide” or not, but it is clear that it will be Labour’s election to lose. The opinion polls are relentlessly poor for Con Party, and the last YouGov poll, from 5 days ago, had Cons on 22%. Pretty much Con Party’s hard-core vote— Southern English, homeowners (without mortgage), not poor or “struggling”, retired and/or 65+ y-o.
You can see the way the MP rats are leaving the sinking ship now. By 2024, there could be as many as 100 current Con Party MPs not standing for re-election. They can see the writing on the wall.
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If they score below 31% of the national vote they will get a lower score than even John Major managed in 1997 which was the previous record and the lowest since 1832. Major just about avoided losing enough seats to beat the previous low point of 1906 in seat terms.
From looking at the polls over the last few months that must be a distinct possibility. If they get 25% or even lower then the archaic, profoundly undemocratic crap electoral system of FPTP will punish them with its ‘tipping point’ and they will start to lose many, many seats albeit it by low margins of hundred votes or less.
FPTP can be a very cruel mistress and act as an irrational lottery.
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Very few of those boat people will contemplate voting Tory should they become British citizens.
Why import a potential electorate that will be overwhelmingly hostile to you? The Tory Party isn’t called ‘Britain’s Stupid Party’ for nothing, is it?
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John:
More widely, why import untold hundreds of thousands or even millions who mostly know no English, have no discernible skills of any kind, are at best uncaring and at worst openly hostile to us, and who (in many cases) are basically criminal in inclination?
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Indeed unless those in charge of a country hate it and its native people so much they wish to destroy it which evidently is the case with Tory and Labour anti-British scum.
The [REDACTED] penalty via public [REDACTED] in Trafalgar Square or the [REDACTED] chamber as Arizona wishes to reintroduce is the only just response to these foul creatures.
The punishment for the deliberate genocide of what was one of the world’s greatest nations if not its greatest must fit the crime hence the necessity for the ultimate one of [REDACTED].
Set out to destroy a nation with deliberate intent and calculated malice and patriots will destroy you in response.
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