Morning music
Reminiscences: temps perdu, and thoughts about mortality
When one is well over 60, as I now am (68; b. 1956), thoughts may naturally turn to mortality, life and death, and questions larger than the everyday concerns of life. That may be so when one notices that many people one has known in life are now defunct.
Some of the people I have known, or have merely met briefly or peripherally in the past, are still alive; many, however, are not. Some of those who are no longer alive have died from various natural causes (and are too numerous to list), others expired from unnatural causes (such as a Nigerian princess I knew, shot dead in Lagos in the late 1990s) or from causes or reasons unknown (such as the ex-husband of a lady I knew in the 1980s, which ex-husband apparently drowned in the Thames at London). A few, friends of friends rather than people I knew well, sadly died via suicide many years ago.
These thoughts came again to mind yesterday when I noticed information online to the effect that a former American colleague, a major-league American lawyer called Tim Scrantom, died some time ago, in 2021, apparently of a brain tumour. He was diagnosed in April 2021, and died 6 months later.
Tim Scrantom was a couple of months younger than me, a fact which sharpens my reminiscence.
I met Scrantom after a headhunter in New York suggested to him and his two main colleagues, in 2001, that I might suit his niche law firm (based in Charleston, South Carolina). I was telephoned in Turkey, where I was then resident, and we arranged to meet in London at one of my usual haunts, the Churchill Bar at the Hotel Russell in Russell Square.
I drove back to England via Greece, Bulgaria, Romania (the latter two then not EU states, and very ramshackle), Hungary (excellent country), Austria, Germany (calling in at Berchtesgaden), Luxembourg, and Belgium.
The upshot was that Scrantom and I became colleagues, he based mostly at Charleston (the office was at East Bay Street, in the conservation zone of the city), I mostly in London, though we both visited various offshore jurisdictions, once or twice in tandem, as when we went to Liechtenstein one day (well, I did; Scrantom had left his passport at the Mayfair Hotel, and only discovered that fact when we met at Heathrow, prior to flying to Zurich…).
Scrantom was a genial host. He invited my wife and me to dinner in Charleston in August or early September 2001 and, on a later solo visit, I visited his home on Sullivan’s Island, by Charleston, where he lived with his then wife (I believe they divorced later) and young daughter.
Scrantom, though a graduate from American law schools, an attorney in several states, and a professor of law as well, was also a barrister of Gray’s Inn in London. I was a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, though many years later (2016) wrongfully and unlawfully disbarred at the instigation of a pack of malicious and politically-motivated Jew-Zionists.
Scrantom, incidentally, was a modest fellow, very much a “Southern gentleman”, born in Georgia and from a wealthy background. I liked him. I never knew (until yesterday) about some of his earlier adventures, such as sailing around the Bahamas on his yacht, exploring the Himalayas, or visiting edgy places in Cambodia and elsewhere in South-East Asia, though he did tell me that he knew several of the people portrayed in the famous book and film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_the_Garden_of_Good_and_Evil_(film)], the events of which occurred in Savannah, Georgia, where Scrantom’s family members were largely based.
In September 2001, I was with Scrantom in a taxi in the Strand, London, when his wife called to say that New York was under attack. We interrupted our journey (to the Berkeley Square area of Mayfair) to get out at a Dixons store to look at the TV screens.
I well remember him later fuming that Iraq “must have” been behind the attack on the World Trade Center (that was the neo-con and American msm line at the time, of course) and that “Israel has the right idea” (i.e. bomb the hell out…). Well, he was wrong, of course, and we disagreed about that. Like most Americans, and despite his intelligence and education, he was influenced by the pro-Israel propaganda so pervasive in the msm in the USA (though his main colleague, Ron, a hard-driving former USAF officer, was more alive to the menace of Jew-Zionism, and he was, as one might expect, also pro-USA to the hilt).
Scrantom, even when I knew him, was a multimillionaire, and later become a major player in the field of “litigation insurance”, once called “champerty” and historically not lawful in most jurisdictions (including England): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance#England_and_Wales. Now, it is considered more acceptable.
I do not much like the concept (and Jew-Zionists in England use “litigation insurance” to pursue pro-Israel “lawfare”), so maybe it is just as well that our professional connection was mainly severed in 2002, when I decided to return to the ordinary practising Bar in England. I then moved to a large country house in Cornwall, and was based professionally at Exeter.
As already mentioned, I liked Tim (though not his then wife, to be frank; I only met her once), though I should say that he and his two main colleagues had no idea at all about how to run a law firm.
Life is short, something few if any really understand when in their twenties or thirties. We all have to try to accomplish something, not in a careerist sense, but for the future of the Earth, while in any particular incarnation.
Tweets seen
That idiot, a (?) 30-something wannabee or occasional scribbler, tweeted something about me quite a while ago, I think in 2023 or 2024. He seems to be very pro-Jew-Zionist and pro-Israel, and his msm scribblings (it seems as part of teams, not sole bylines) were 6-11 years ago. A few more recent scribblings have been for online outlets (of which few have ever heard). https://muckrack.com/colin-cortbus/articles.
Apparently, that Cortbus person was once a UKIP activist (when a student, about 12-14 years ago).
I notice that that individual has only about 2,500 Twitter/X followers. When a pack of Jews had me expelled from Twitter in 2018, I had 3,000 followers (and that had been artificially lowered); by now I would have had tens of thousands of Twitter followers. Ah well…so much for “free speech” in this country…
Incidentally, I was unaware about that event in Zagreb. Looks as though parts of Europe are waking up.
…but look at that dishonest little Pakistani, Sajid Javid. Wrong once again. Remember his denial of the link between the migration invasion of tens of millions into the UK, and housing shortages?
Make that nearer to 10-15M, though…(plus births).
Starmer-stein is a total idiot. No idea about how to run the UK. Clueless. I predicted it, about 3-4 years ago, on the blog.
Scotland is even worse than England. Some of the idiots up there even claim to welcome being invaded by backward hordes!
The Labour Party in Scotland is actually headed by a Pakistani; so was (how ludicrous can you get?) the Scottish “National” Party, until recently.
As for that rapist, he will be out in 5-6 months. Shocking. The woman victim must be devastated and feel totally unprotected and unavenged.
Economic sanctions rarely work. When I was in Rhodesia in 1977, the roads outside the capital, Salisbury (now Harare) were empty, but that was not because of sanctions (fuel rationing only lasted 1965-1971). New cars were often seen in the city, though none were of British manufacture; French, I think Spanish, or other. Sanctions had limited effect— things such as books, Scotch whisky etc. Nothing really major. Tobacco, oranges, chrome etc were still exported (often under false flags).
Compare Putin to pathetic and dishonest Starmer-stein, or that truly ridiculous “diversity hire”, Lammy.
Not so much “wild geese” as Muscovy ducks…(only joking).
Unsurprising. Why should the peoples of Central and Western Europe (and USA) risk nuclear war for the sake of Zelensky’s brutal, shambolic, and very corrupt cabal? Most Ukrainian men are themselves trying to avoid serving in the Kiev-regime forces.
[“Israeli publication Haaretz reported that the US military used 93 THAAD interceptors in 11 days to defend Israel, revising previous cost estimates from $800 million to about $1.2 billion. With an annual production rate of about 36-48 THAAD interceptors, the US used up nearly two years’ worth of the missiles during the war.“]
Horrible. I hope they suffer for committing such crimes against the natural world. Barbarians.
Strange to think that, when I drove to the end of the almost-empty Karpas Peninsula in Northern Cyprus in early 2000, I was only 60 miles from Latakia in Syria. 60 miles, but a different world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpas_Peninsula.
[“Few people noticed why exactly Israel launched a war against Iran on June 13. Here are three hidden reasons: 1. Just days earlier, the country was rocked by its largest pedophile scandal in history—one involving several high-ranking politicians. 2. Before the war, Iran hacked three terabytes of files from Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, which is known for collecting compromising information on global politicians. 3. Israeli PM Netanyahu risked losing power due to the unpopular proposal to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israeli military“]
I wonder what there is in that about Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Dershowitz, Clinton, Trump etc.
If MOSSAD or AMAN had that stuff, does the SVR now also have it, or some of it? About Trump, for example?
“The Consolation of Philosophy”?
Allison Pearson is a remarkably stupid woman.
I presume that Lewis is hiding out in Israel. He has or had a flat in Eilat, a fact that he concealed from the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal when he was found guilty on several charges in 2018. Indeed, his Counsel told the Tribunal that Lewis should have his fine greatly reduced because Lewis’s only assets were his clothes, a mobility scooter, and a private pension worth £70 a week.
Ecce the supposed “top defamation lawyer”!
See also:
Mark Lewis is little better than a confidence trickster.
Incidentally, Lewis was an abusive husband when married briefly (one year) to the Z-list “celebrity” and, briefly, Sky News newsreader, Caroline Feraday (amusingly, best-known for having been sacked by text message by BBC local radio about 15 years ago).
Not that I care at all about Lewis’s abusive behaviour to his then wife, who now lives in a “nowheresville” in the outer regions of Los Angeles (see my blog posts).
The Feraday woman joined with Lewis in attacking me viciously on Twitter (about my opposition to the Jewish fake WW2 “reparations” scam); in fact she initiated the attacks, with which Lewis then joined in. Until then (many years ago, about 2012 or so), I had never heard of the bastard, or her.
Mark Lewis was (maybe still is) a “patron” of that evil and squalid organization, the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” or “CAA”, working with its main characters, such as Gideon Falter (a proven liar and, arguably, perjurer) and the Jew-Zionist Israel fanatic, posing as “Head of Investigations and Enforcement”, whom we can call “Slitherman”.
An example below of Lewis’s abusive social media activity, which (after several years) got him into trouble (though not via me— unlike the Jew-Zionist troublemakers, I do not waste time making endless complaints to police etc):
(in fact, in 2018, it was revealed that Lewis constantly abused people on Twitter etc, even a young Jewish boy; Lewis blamed his medications for his abusive behaviour…).
Ecce Allison Pearson’s solicitor (apparently)…
My own Twitter account, as explained, was deleted by Twitter itself in 2018 at the instigation of effectively the same pack of Jews, while Caroline Feraday deleted her original Twitter account a year or two ago, mainly because it was too embarrassing for her in various ways. She has another Twitter/X account now (with only 115 “followers”, despite she herself following 166 Twitter/X accounts).
Caroline Feraday’s now-deleted Twitter account had, at one time, tens of thousands of “followers”, all fake, all bought by her and by “Mark Lewis Lawyer”, who himself bought nearly 80,000 in an attempt to seem important, popular etc. Legal business news outlets even commented, cautiously, about the dishonest fakery of Lewis and his then wife.
Caroline Feraday now works for local public radio station KCLU in Ventura County, California, a subsidized radio station (National Public Radio network) with (putting it jokingly) about half a dozen listeners.
A few years ago, Caroline Feraday was publicly begging on GoFundMe, in an attempt to raise a mere USD $5,000. Sic transit gloria mundi…(and “celebrity”)…
From last month; I missed that one.
“Cor, ‘ee’s well ‘ard!” (when arresting a woman of 83 doing basically nothing; the police are, shall we say, “not so hard” when confronting, if they ever do, predators and scavengers, such as those usually found living in caravans…).
Pathetic.
Ha. Soon “we shall all be (called) terrorists”…
I have seen the odd thing over the years from Rod Liddle with which I have agreed; quite a lot with which I disagreed. Also, my impression (I have never met him) is that he is rather an unpleasant person.
I could suggest something, but would not want some Jew-Zionist troublemaker making yet another contrived complaint to the police “service” about me.
The Israeli Jews are so brave, when firing at unarmed and defenceless civilians…
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Monster Brat Sets Neighbour’s Home on Fire as Revenge, Thinks There’ll Be No Consequences.
Please take this as an important tutorial on how to lie to the police.
https://youtu.be/i-aU8xNRwPg?si=Qos_geXUBhPL4oEE
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I have to ask. Why is Owen Jones suing Allison Pearson? I looked into Allison´s biography on Wikipedia, and there is no mention of it. The only positive aspect of her personality is that she is against the LGBT lobby.
Mark Lewis is not only an obnoxious creature but also incredibly stupid and vulgar. Look at the language he used against that woman (Harriet Yarker) who confronted him on Twitter! As we say in my country: “If there were such a thing as a Nobel Prize for Spitefulness, he would win it”
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Claudius:
I have not at all followed the matter; seems to be an alleged libel, and allegedly published on Twitter/X
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Thank you for the information. The sum of £ 45,000 claimed by that rat Owen Jones seems ludicrous, but I do not know anything about the British legal system; therefore, I have to ask, is it normal to ask for so much money for such a minor offence? I would not dare to call it a crime.
Having said that, my wife reminded me that people tend to ask for a lot of money, knowing that most probably they will not get that, but a lesser sum. I remember reading that settling out of court is encouraged by the courts, “as it can save time for all involved parties.” In this case, “time” means “money”.
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Claudius:
It varies a lot. When I was at the Bar, such claims (in defamation) were usually “unquantified”. When, in 1987, I (as belated law/Bar student, as yet unqualified) was asked to help a Romanian exile called Flegon to sue Solzhenitsyn in libel (Flegon had been accused, not plainly but by innuendo, of having been a KGB agent, in Solzhenitsyn’s memoir The Oak and the Calf), the damages awarded (by a civil jury, an institution that barely exists today in England) came to £10,000, (about £35,000-£40,000 in today’s money), but we had not claimed any specific amount at all. The libellous innuendo was contained in one paragraph, in fact one sentence, of a very long (and very boring) book.
Incidentally, that alleged act in the Owen Jones case is not a “crime” as such; it is a civil matter, not criminal.
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Even by the usual abysmal low standards of the Met whose standards started to slide in the 1990’s under that PC cretin Paul Congdon, the present Commisioner is an obnoxious moron and effing PRICK of the highest order.
Instead of arresting harmless old grannies who have some humanity and who therefore oppose the ever worsening instances of atrocities commited by the criminal bandit ZioNazi/Zionist state of Israel he should get off his arrogant high horse and do something useful eg police London so that ordinary people feel safe from gang rapists, drug dealers, murderers, violent assaulters, stabbing maniacs ect.
How about increasing the Met’s utterly appalingly low crime clear-up rate which is getting worse by the year with it being very low even for murders?
The Met is officially a ‘failed’ police force and under his crap ‘leadership’ it will not improve.
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John:
As you say. The Metropolitan Police needs to stop pandering to the Jewish/Israel lobby, stop allowing the so-called “Shomrim” to pose as if actual police officers in parts of North London, stop appointing “diversity hire” types to senior (or any) positions, smarten-up many of the rank and file police who look like a disgrace, and start really cracking down on street crime and anti-social behaviour.
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There is plenty of crime to solve in ‘Stab City Upon The Thames’ as sarcastic people name our former capital city.
Just a small illustration of the horrendous crime rate:
https://X.com/CrimeLdn
Dealing with that would be far more productive and use a depleted police force’s time and resources more effectively than harrasing and arresting elderly people of the cloth for opposing the ZioNazi/Zionist state of Israel’s crimes against humanity and increasing levels of brutality against Palestinians.
Thanks Labour, fake Conservatives, disgracefully Lib Dems and Reform UK for kowtowing to the Pro Israel ZioNazi/Zionist Lobby in Parliament last week so the police waste their time and resources arresting old women of the cloth instead of dealing with REAL criminals.
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Vote for the Labour anti-British, useless wankers and thick fake Conservatives and you pay high taxes for unkempt, rather dim thugs with masses of tattoos in uniform (formerly known as the British police) to arrest old grannies for demonstrating against the bandit, ZioNazi/Zionist state of Israel whose supporters in this country give large amounts of money to Labour and fake Conservative. In the meantime, the thugs act as a blatant political police out of somewhere like East Germany/North Korea/Nazi Germany whilst far too many REAL criminals are not apprehended and do not face justice.
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I see that the petty tyrant that is the useless, ugly, expenses cheat, hag Yvette Cooper and her thugs in uniform are now trying to shut-up naughty famous rock star Roger Walters for allegedly showing support for Palestine Action.
ZioNazi/Zionist fruitcake, all round despised loony tune and vile, anti-British traitor Starmer is going to have to build many more prisons to lock-up everyone whose opinions he does not like.
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Ha, Ha! NICE ONE!🤣🤣🤣🤣 Apparently, a new direct action group has been set-up to replace Palestine Action with the same aim of protesting against companies supplying the genocidal war machine of the ZioNazi/Zionist terrorist/bandit state of Israel and the ZioNazi/Zionist puppet government of Israel of Starmer and company and their disgraceful complicity in this.
Supposedly, it it is called Yvette Cooper! 👍🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣👍👍👍👍🤣🤣🤣🤣Well, the ugly, democracy destroying, useless, profoundly anti-British bitch and expenses cheat (along with her equally thieving from the public purse husband, Ed Balls) does leave herself open to sarcasm and ridicule!
The useless cow is going to have to proscribe herself now!🙄
🙄🙄🙄🙄
She was wearing some very expensive looking shoes the other day. She has not thieved YET MORE MONEY from the British taxpayer, has she?🙄🙄🙄🙄
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John:
This becomes daily more absurd. The Jew-Zionist cabals which rule or very strongly influence the Starmer-stein “Labour” (Labour Friends of Israel) government of utter cretins want a number of other organizations banned now, ranging from the more elite part of the Iranian armed forces to people who wave banners in London etc protesting against the utterly sadistic Jewish/Israeli murder-fest in Gaza and the West Bank territories.
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Sadly, the sick joke of the fake Conservative Party ‘led’ by little Kemi Unbungo or whatever her real, quintesentially foreign name is colloborated with Labour evil by voting for the banning of Palestine Action. Is it any wonder why huge numbers of voters do not take that party seriously in anyway at all?
REAL Tory leaders in the past such as Chamberlain and even Mrs Thatcher would have told the Zionist Lobby to get lost.
Where were the Liberal Democrats as well? This was a chance for them to prove they are liberals and back basic civil liberties being undermined/destroyed by the Labour Party who have never been that much in support of basic democratic principles.
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John:
All the System parties in the UK are, if not controlled, then very strongly influenced by the Israel lobby, aka Jewish lobby or Zionist lobby. Yes, a smallish number of Jews do not like the slaughter of women and children in Gaza, but most at least will not criticize it. The Jew-Zionist orgs in the UK claim that 95% of Jews here support not only Israel but its attacks on Gaza, Iran, Lebanon etc.
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Ridiculous and frightening too. I have just bought a Union Flag/Palestine flag (British-Palestinian friendship) badge on Ebay. If I were to take a trip to London and wear it around a place where a lot of ZioNazis/Zionists live such as Golders’ Green I would probably be at risk of being arrested by one of Starmer and Cooper’s brainless stormtrooper thugs in uniform.
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Starmer and Cooper’s repression with the full support of the ever more pathetic fake Conservative Party and most disgracefully of all the Lib Dems is designed to ‘chil’ any degree of support for and solidarity with the Palestinian cause and make voters avert their gazes from the fact the Zionist Lobby and Israeli government through its embassy here is manipulating our politicians.
Hopefully, it will backfire and will not work.
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John:
It will backfire. For one thing, once almost everyone is labelled “terrorist”, the very idea of terrorism (fragile at best) falls.
Also, the very fact that anything at all anti-Israel, or anti the Jew-Zionist cabals is now either labelled “terrorist” or “grossly offensive” tends to awaken the public to the (((menace))).
It is similar when some boy of 15 or even younger is charged with “terrorism” for having a copy of a manual designed to enable the reader to make weapons of various kinds. In reality, few if any of such defendants would actually do anything.
In the 1970s, the police and “security” bods were rather more sensible, and knew the difference between a real terrorist and a schoolboy reading a manual of that sort and/or engaging in political fantasy.
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There is only one real way to deal with troublemaking [REDACTED] fanatics and that is to expel them from this country. We will not send them to their beloved Israhell (the only country they have any real loyalty to) as we do not want to make Palestinians suffer even more than they have done for the last 75 years but to Far Eastern Russia where an autonomous Oblast was set-up for [REDACTED] under Stalin. They should be out of harm’s way there.
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John:
Siberia may have a better future than its history up to now might suggest; I should therefore not like to spoil that future.
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Only the ZioNazi/Zionist pro-Israel fanatics need to be kicked-out. The decent, Ultra-orthodox, mainly anti-Zionist Jews like Rabbi Elhanan Beck of Stamford Hill can stay.
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John:
If you say so (I am unaware of any I particularly want to stay here).
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The Spectator used to be a fairly respected and respectable ‘Right-wing’ Tory publication until it sold out its soul to the demented, persecution and atrocity endorsing fanatics of the ZioNazi/Zionist Pro Israhell Lobby. These people have sadly infected too many institutions/publications/political parties in this country.
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John:
Whether you call it “infiltrated”, “occupied”, or “contaminated”, that is now where we are, and these tiny but very well-funded Jew-Zionist cabals, operating in tandem with the Israeli Embassy (in London) and the Israeli government, are trying to impose their will, in the UK, on over 70 million people, including about 55 million real British people.
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The ZioNazi/Zionist state’s embassy needs to be shut down and its Ambassador expelled. It is an utterly intolerable situation whereby Israeli officials from that base are using it to undermine the independence of our media and to manipulate our politicians. Any self-respecting country would do that but this country has not been such a land for many decades now. Israel would definitely take this course of action if British Embassy officials in Tel Aviv were doing likewise.
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John:
The Israelis and connected “British” Jews know that they have many many MPs in the pocket, either because they are bribed (directly or indirectly) or because they are afraid of harassment from Jews, up to and including the sort of Jewish “lawfare” presently being used against people such as Professor David Miller and that black comedian/entertainer Reginald D. Hunter (etc).
The same is even more true of any people who make a living on TV, radio etc. The (((stranglehold))) is almost complete. Few are willing to speak up.
“Free speech” now being so repressed, I myself am unable to say what I think might be the only way out for this country.
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Is it any wonder the Met and other police ‘forces’ in this country are not respected when they employ too many 4ft and 5ft diminutive women as shown by that ‘well ‘ard’ female police officer arresting the frail, 83 year old woman of the cloth in the Daily Zionist Tory idiot ‘newspaper’ above?
At one time, you had to be a fairly well-educated, usually male person if you wanted to be a police officer. Now, the standards for entry have been significantly eroded to aid ethnics as per usual in this ‘country’ of national suicide. There are too many midget women in police ‘forces’. It is farcical.
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