Morning music
Battles past
Saturday quiz
Well, this week, victory for me over political journalist John Rentoul; he got 5/10, but I trumped that with 8/10. I did not know the answers to questions 5 and 9.
Julian Assange
Tweets seen
The Kiev-regime police state.
Few are now volunteering for the Kiev-regime army. A death sentence if the recruit is sent (often with little training) to the front. The regime is using press-gangs to force men into the army. Maybe 350,000 have been killed or wounded in the past 17 months, mostly in the past year. Something like 750 a day, on average.
As for dissidents, arrested, mistreated, some even shot. “Ukraine” (Kiev-regime Ukraine) is not the free, principled place the propaganda portrays, but a corrupt, shambolic police-state where dissent is treason.
More tweets
That latter tweeter is right. Parris, when not in London, does live in such a cottage (in Derbyshire). I see now from Wikipedia that he also has a place in Spain.
Parris himself has really never had a job as such, unless you include his unsuccessful two years as trainee diplomat and his likewise disastrous stint as correspondence secretary to Mrs. Thatcher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Parris.
Having said that, Parris often writes uncomfortable truths, but I think not in this case, perhaps because he has never had the experience of doing a “real” job in the real world.
Likewise, as the tweeter below points out, PIP (the successor-benefit to the now-disappearing Disability Living Allowance or DLA) , is not an out-of-work benefit, and is thus disregarded from income for benefit purposes.
Parris thus follows in the footsteps of many scribblers, TV talking heads, and radio presenters, as well as MPs, who talk about State benefits and/or pensions out of ignorance, not knowing the most basic facts.
A one-time, and briefly, “rising star” of the Conservative Party.
Some people are just incredibly fortunate in life. I mean, look at Houchen: born 1986, was a student until about 2008 or 2009, when he became (I think, not sure) a solicitor. He may have worked as a solicitor for a couple of years (again, not sure about that), and his political career to date has consisted of being a local councillor for 5-6 years (2011-2017), then Mayor of Tees Valley (2017-2023 and continuing), and now (thanks to “Boris” Johnson) a member of the House of Lords.
Incidentally, when Houchen was elected in 2017, I tipped him on this blog as someone to watch, having heard him on the radio. I was right, but in more than one way…
So now, in personal financial terms, Houchen is riding high— £65,000+ as Mayor of Tees Valley, plus expenses —not a fortune but better than poke in eye with sharp stick— and £350 a day plus extra expenses whenever he turns up (even for half a hour) at the Lords, on any sitting day. So well over £100,000 a year, perhaps, plus generous expenses. Not bad for someone still only 36, and who has only just about (for ~2 years) done any real/non-political job (as a local solicitor in his native region).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Houchen,_Baron_Houchen_of_High_Leven; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Houchen,_Baron_Houchen_of_High_Leven#Controversies.
Whether there was actual corruption involved in the Redcar Steelworks affair (scandal), I do not know. Questions have certainly been raised. £45M has gone missing.
More tweets
Import into the UK (or the rest of Europe) the various races and groups of Asia, Africa etc, and you import with them their political ethics (or lack of), their moneygrubbing, and the rest of it. Don’t be so surprised, and do not imagine that a few years at Winchester or Eton, or Oxford University, will make much difference.
I also think that new houses ought to have some kind of built in rainwater storage, to be used for gardens or, in extremis, washing and cooking. When I was working and living on a small Caribbean island about 24 years ago, my villa (like most of any size there) was built around a water tank. No mains water where I lived.
All water for bathroom and kitchen came from the tank, and it never ran out (despite rain being rare outside the hurricane season). Drinking water one had to buy. I usually bought filtered and cleaned (via ultraviolet light) Miami tapwater, costing (1999 prices) USD $5 or $6 per U.S. gallon. Sounds expensive (maybe $9 or $10 in 2023 money) but it would last me several days.
Late tweets seen
While of course prisoners have to be restrained from carrying out vigilante justice, equally naturally they are often disgusted at being forced to live around persons as evil as that. His crimes and, even more so, planned crimes, were appalling.
Justice is, as St. Thomas Aquinas noted, “immanent”— ingrained in human beings; inherent. Even the “lawless” have their own code of laws or rules, usually.
“The blue areas are 50% of the areas that, according to US Secretary of State Anthony Blenkin, the “Ukrainian Army” has liberated!! The most advanced military equipment that was available to the member countries of the alliance was destroyed and lost in this blue area. The equipment that some inside western country claimed that when it reaches the battlefield, not only Crimea but also Moscow and Saint Petersburg will be captured.”
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
The tweet of “Sprinter” about the Ukrainian diplomats not returning to their country is pretty stupid because Zelensky will stop their wages if they do not show up in Kiev.
LikeLike
Claudius:
Pay being stopped falls into insignificance if you think that the Kiev regime will arrest you on your return, as of course also happened not infrequently in the days of the Soviet Union.
It may just be that they see no future for themselves and their families in Ukraine.
LikeLike
So the unelected extra from A Passage To India is doing what comes naturally to too many Indians ie corruption on a massive scale.
Well, I knew those Indian genes would assert themselves somehow AT OUR COST. Who could have seen this coming?🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Get him out NOW! If the CON Party allows him to be leader at the next election they will be crushed and might well go down to such a bad defeat recovery will be a distant dream. The current polls are looking ominous in this regard.
If you can’t beat Sir Kid Starver as the Left have now christened the Labour leader in the personal ratings for PM then you may as well give up now. Starmer is the most dull and non inspirational leader Labour has ever had yet the extra from A Passage To India still can’t beat him.
GET RID! He has already had the best part of a year to turn the polls around and completely failed to do so.
LikeLike
John:
If (as seems) the Con Party really do stick with Sunak the Indian money-juggler for another year, they are sunk. I believe the last possible date for the next GE is in December 2024, though I did also hear first week in January 2025. I would expect sometime in Summer of 2024.
The Con Party is desperate now, even reviving the old 2010 “benefits claimants caused the financial crash” nonsense. Of course, Starmer-Labour has that covered (by saying it will be even tougher on the poor/disabled/unemployed).
There is only one reason (apart from not wanting a Starmer-Labour government) to vote Con now, i.e. if you are a wealthy or ultra-wealthy person and want to be (more) sure of not being taxed more heavily. So that latter is about 5% of the population.
LikeLike
Yes, their electoral appeal has diminished rapidly to a hard-core of the rich and very, very wealthy.
That is what having a succession of overly liberal and globalist leaders and dumping virtually any traces of traditional social conservatism overboard over the last 13 years was always going to do.
The Tory Party isn’t trusted on any issue now apart from defence.
These polling figures make for some grim reading if you are a Tory MP with anything less than a huge majority:
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/three-four-think-britain-becoming-worse-place-live
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-opinion-polls
LikeLike
Re your point above about corruption and lack of ethics in non-European politicians. This doesn’t necessarily apply to all of them or to the same extent. If we had an ethnic Jap as PM he or she would probably be non-corrupt but then Britain never imports quality foreigners only trash from places like India.
Indians and Pakistanis specialise in corruption as we are now seeing.
LikeLike
John:
As you say, not all Asians (indeed, not all Indians and Pakistanis) are corrupt etc, just as not *all* Jews display the usual negative characteristics all too typical of the group. One must, though, judge these things on the generality, not on the exceptional.
LikeLike
Look at that profoundly evil, grinning smirk from the war criminal Bliar above. I knew he was a ‘wrong ‘un’ as soon as he became Labour leader in 1994.
I only wish more Brits had realised in time but, sadly, they didn’t.
Bliar is 70 years old but that isn’t too much of an advanced age for him not be executed for war crimes, despicably lying our troops into a war and his promotion of genocidal open borders.
LikeLike
The Times is an evil, trashy, globalist rag addicted to neo-liberal globalist economics which is to blame for many of Britain’s economic difficulties and is owned by that profoundly ignorant, evil, Aussie POS, Rupert Murdoch, who, with any luck will expire soon.
It is any wonder then it blames the unemployed, the sick and disabled for our economic weaknesses?
It used to be a respectable newspaper once and was known as Britain’s ‘newspaper of record’. Not any more!
LikeLike
John:
For idiots, the buck stops, not at the top, but with those at the bottom of the society economically, or in power terms. That must be nonsense.
LikeLike
That photo of Sprinter’s with the title US Democracy. Looking at it, you can understand why Der Fuhrer had such a disdainful view of the United States, can’t you? And the US wasn’t as bad as it is now when Hitler was Germany’s leader.
LikeLike
John:
The USA has slid hugely even compared to the 1960s, let alone 1950s. The racial demography is one important factor, though not the only one.
LikeLike
There are always exceptions to the general rule but collective groups do normally have characteristics in common.
I saw an interesting article in the Spectator basically saying this in regard to dog breeds. The writer was saying he would never allow his children to be in the presence of an American Bully breed dog by themselves due to the breed’s characteristics. That breed has been responsible for a sharp increase in dog bite fatalities in this country.
So, you ARE allowed to say in a publication that does have a fairly decent circulation that different dog breeds have genetic factors to account for their different character traits but woe betide anyone that suggests that this can be true of differing human types as well.
LikeLike
John:
The truth has become a rather undesirable commodity in the UK.
LikeLike