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Saturday quiz

Well, this week my 6/10 trumped political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10. I did not know the answers to questions 3, 5, 6, and 8.

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“Accurate… I spent 9 months in East Africa. It’s very hard to pinpoint exactly why it’s such a mess.

They have an infantile mentality and absolutely no commercial sense.

I once went about 10 miles down the road, in the middle of nowhere on the way to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and every 50 meters there was someone selling watermelon. I said to the driver, “Everyone is selling exactly the same product. Why don’t they try making watermelon juice or something different to stand out?” He replied, “But why would we do that? We like melon!”

That attitude was everywhere. In fact, I would sometimes meet Westerners who would say, “Isn’t it amazing how they’ve kept this piece of junk car going for 30 years?” And I’d reply, “It’s more amazing that we have automated car factories with robots.” They literally only focus on the immediate need. “Car not go today, car fixed with string and tape.“

The only two factors preventing Britain and other European countries from retaking direct control of Africa, of all of Africa, are 1. socio-political will and 2. the fact that the (((globalists))) find it more convenient to exploit Africa’s resources via corrupt tiny “elites” in each fake African “state” (and to hell with the environment, the forests, the wildlife, and the African people themselves).

The fact is that European rule would benefit all, not least the ordinary Africans.

Incidentally, it would be a great deal easier than many imagine for Europe to reconquer Africa militarily. Only the two factors already noted make it at all hard.

Illiterate travel

I have just read this, https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/sarajevo-guide-balkans-bosnia-and-herzegovina-b1176081.html, a travel piece in what I still call the Evening Standard, and written by well-known columnist Suzanne Moore. Not hugely interesting anyway, but then absurdly badly-written. An essay by a 10-year-old, at best. Or is the sub-editing to blame? Maybe someone pushed a few of the wrong buttons. Extraordinary. Read it and see.

I have read other pieces by Suzanne Moore which were written properly, so maybe it was the fault of the Standard.

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Pretty accurate summing-up of “Starmer-ism”, in my opinion, “Blairism without the good bits“, though I do not recall many good bits then either, speaking personally.

As far as assisted dying is concerned, I see it as a generally well-meaning attempt to be kind, which however, put into policy and law, is the start of a slide to, eventually, somewhere down the line, killing people for convenience or money.

HS2 was a vanity project that never should have been approved. As far as I know, though, the other rail projects are or were useful.

She seems to have difficulty identifying the “J” problem…

Again, look at the “usual suspects”…

The “fake history” of the 1970s

That’s because you, “Steve Zodiac”, are apparently telling your grandchildren a load of old hooey…

I have blogged in the past about how very many people (including, weirdly, many who were at least in their teens then, and so actually of an age to remember) say, and even perhaps believe, that the 1970s in the UK were some kind of dark age in which the electricity was off most of the time, in which bodies were left unburied by reason of industrial action, in which trains and buses rarely ran, in which rubbish piled up in the towns and cities, in which there was a “three day week” when offices and factories were closed for four days each week, and in which life was generally miserable (for example, food was terrible, they say).

The above-noted fabled dystopia was, we are told, the result of overreaching trade union power and Labour misgovernment.

Where to start?

First of all, the party in power for the first 4 years of the 1970s was the Conservative Party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_Kingdom_general_election, and of course Mrs Thatcher won again for the Conservatives in 1979: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_United_Kingdom_general_election.

In other words, out of the 10 years, Labour was in power for about 6 years. Labour government was in place from the early 1960s until mid-1970, then from early 1974 until mid-1979.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_1974_United_Kingdom_general_election; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_1974_United_Kingdom_general_election.

One interesting fact is that, in the 1966 General Election, the “two main parties” (Lab/Con) got exactly 98% of Commons seats on just under 90% of the popular vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_United_Kingdom_general_election#Results.

Compare to 2024: 81.8% of seats based on 57.4% of the popular vote.

In 1966, the winning party (Labour) got 48% of the popular vote, the losing Conservatives 41.9%.

In 2024, Labour got 33.7%, and the losing Conservatives only 23.7%.

The electoral system has become not just unfair but also illogical and ridiculous. It no longer reflects reality.

Reverting to the general situation in the 1970s, the much-talked-about “Three Day Week” only affected, directly, commercial operations (which were banned from using electricity on the other four days). The Three Day Week only lasted for two months. Out of 10 years (120 months).

I saw the Three Day Week firsthand. I was working, aged just 18, as supposed assistant manager in a very small commercial intelligence outfit based in the Strand (London). The office only had 5 people including me, though we did have a network of mostly ad-hoc agents all over the southern and eastern parts of England (anywhere south or southwest of The Wash). Much of the work was in Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Essex. The agents were often retired Army officers who, on being contacted, would —eagerly— say something such as “right-oh, old boy. I’ll fire up the Rover and get onto it.”

I must do a blog post sometime about it.

There were, in the early 1970s, strikes by coal miners etc, resulting in a few brief power cuts (“outages”, as the Americans say), but they lasted for a few hours a day, for a few days. Out of 10 years, again.

In the “Winter of Discontent” (1978-79), there were, for a few weeks, situations in some towns and cities whereby rubbish piled up, yes; that much of the “fable” is true, but only for a brief time. As for the “bodies left unburied“, that only applied in Liverpool and Manchester and only for 14 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent#Gravediggers’_strike.

In fact, though the 1970s had its problems political, social, economic, Britain still had possibilities. The population was still almost entirely white Northern European, new ideas and projects were around or developing (the Milton Keynes conurbation, the Open University, new express trains, cross-Channel hovercraft etc), and the absurd and damaging house-price madness, though it had started, was still in its early stages.

Britain still had a functioning Army, Navy, Air Force (etc), and a police force that mainly did its expected job and was not usually the sort of poundshop Stasi we now see, snooping on or “monitoring” the expression of views and opinions.

Incidentally, the food was OK back then on the whole. Slightly less cosmopolitan, yes, but in the South of England at least, foreign foods such as hummus, taramasalata, olives, Indian, Chinese, etc were ubiquitous. In fact, some food was better and more available back then.

What I find worrying is not only that people who were not there, or were small children, are convinced that England in 1970-1979 was a dark and gloomy place; more that people who were there seem to have substituted, for what actually happened, a kind of folk-tale.

As for Jewish-lobby puppet Robert Largan, who was parachuted into the constituency of High Peak (Derbyshire) and served as MP from GE 2019 to GE 2024, he was only born in 1987.

If people cannot recall accurately the 1970s, how much less accurate must be the “memories”, often publicized, of the 1930s and 1940s.

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