All posts by Ian Millard

I have been a voice crying in the wilderness, but I sense now that the people will soon be ready to listen, in the UK and across Europe. Born in the English county of Berkshire and brought up both there and in Sydney, Australia, I have had a varied and sometimes challenging life. I could not list all the jobs I have done, from the most basic labouring and menial work through to advising international enterprises and appearing as a barrister in the courts of England, including the High Court. I have lived and/or worked in numerous countries, including the USA (where I qualified as attorney at the Bar of the State of New York), France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Egypt (and other parts of the Middle East), Turkey and the Caribbean. Many reading this will be aware that in October 2016 I was disbarred (in England), after a Jewish Zionist pressure group made official complaint about me (in 2014) to the Bar Standards Board. The complaint related to 7 tweets (out of, at the time, about 155,000) which I tweeted from my Twitter account (@ianrmillard). I shall write about the Kafkaesque process which led eventually to my disbarment in more detail on the blog, though only to clear the air and to lay out the full facts omitted from the accounts given by the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Independent, Huffington Post, Metro etc. My aim in blogging is to comment on current events and trends; also, even more important, to put forward ideas and policies for a new or better society. I disparage the terms "left" or "left wing", "right", "far right" etc. These are outdated and, in an era in which politics is becoming more nuanced in the UK, Europe and elsewhere, misleading. The same applies to terms such as "Nazi", "neo-Nazi" etc. Speaking for myself, while there was much that was valuable and good in the work of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP and in German "volkisch" politics generally, there is no need to defend everything that every National Socialist did from 1933-1945. The National Socialists were fighting the horrifying Stalinist version of socialism and, also, the debt-oriented finance-capitalism of the "West". That fight was both necessary and honourable. The fight now moves to the needs of the 21st Century. For me, the template for the new society is contained, in outline, in the Threefold Social Order first explained after the First World War by that great genius Rudolf Steiner. I urge all British people to join the struggle for national freedom. There are dark forces, often posing as "good", which must be vanquished.
Brexit, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

The Political Mood is Changing

21 Comments

There has been a see-sawing between the two main System parties for several years. At first, say in 2014-2015, it looked as though Labour was about to go into possibly terminal decline. I have no doubt that, had any of the pro-Israel, pro-EU candidates in the first post-GE 2015 Labour leadership contest (Liz Kendall, Chuka Umunna, Yvette Cooper) won, that would have come to pass. As we know, Corbyn won that contest, and Labour, though it came in second at the 2017 General Election, reduced the Conservative government to minority status. Since then the parties have generally been close together in the opinion polls, with the Conservatives usually slightly higher.

Since the 2017 election, the only difference between the two is that Corbyn has been favoured by fewer as a potential prime minister. Theresa May had the edge but no ringing endorsement (a typical result was Corbyn 25%, Theresa May 35%, Don’t Know 40%). I have not seen a recent poll about the System party leaders, but there have been recent polls vis a vis the upcoming EU election and re. Westminster voting intentions (the next general election might in theory only be in 2022, but there seems to be an acceptance that it might in fact be this year, as I predicted was not unlikely).

Here are recent poll results (questions asked about 3-8 days ago), collated by Britain Elects. The position of Nigel Farage’s pop-up Brexit Party is volatile, but it is plainly one of the two most favoured; UKIP is evidently some way behind all of Brexit Party, Labour and Conservative Party, but the important point is that both Brexit Party and UKIP will take votes mainly from the Conservatives in the EU elections (always assuming that the UK participates) and (if Brexit Party and UKIP put up candidates) in the general election of 2019 (if it happens). There are also local elections coming (2 May 2019) but the beneficiary there will be Labour, UKIP not being able to fight most seats and Brexit Party not standing at all.

It can be seen that YouGov is more bullish on Brexit Party’s chances than is ComRes, and that BP’s ratings vary daily or so even from a single pollster. However, there is some reason to believe that Farage’s new vehicle is riding even higher now (some estimates put its reach at over 30%).

An amateur or perhaps semi-professional psephologist has come up with this seat prediction for the EU election in the UK (based on a YouGov opinion poll):

https://twitter.com/OwenWntr/status/1118497987045613568

Well, that’s for the EU Parliament. What about Westminster? The msm consensus now is what I have been predicting for a couple of years, Labour probably the largest party, but without overall majority. Where does that leave the Conservative Party? Quite possibly up a certain well-known creek without a paddle.

As I said here above, only a few years ago Labour looked like collapsing into becoming a niche party with maybe a 25% popular vote. Now things look very different: Corbyn has bent like the bamboo before the wind as the Jews (and the heavily Jew-influenced msm) have accused him of “anti-Semitism” (the Circuit judge in the Alison Chabloz appeal hearing recently confirmed that “anti-Semitism” is not a crime in England anyway…pass it on…).

The Zionist storm has been ferocious around Corbyn since 2015, but he simply sways with the wind. If I had not read that Corbyn scarcely reads books (one of his ex-wives said that he read not one book during their 4 years together!), I would take Corbyn for an acolyte of Sun-Tzu.

Well, much has happened since Corbyn took over. A membership/support base of about 200,000 has become one of 500,000+, Labour no longer has financial problems, its members and supporters are often young, and its poll ratings are finally improving.

Now it is the Conservative Party that may be facing an existential crisis. We read that only about 5% of Conservative rank and file members want Theresa May to stay as Leader, that donations have completely dried up, that the median age of Conservative Party members is 51 (with many over 80 or even 90), and that the supposed 120,000+ membership number is either only a paper figure or shows huge numbers of completely inactive members who take no part in the party even locally or socially, but are signed up to bank direct debits.

Only 16% of voters under 35 intend to vote Conservative, while the figure for under-25-years is a mere 4%. True, Conservative voters have always been mainly middle-aged and elderly, but not to this extent.

The Conservatives have usually trumped Labour on competence (in public perception, but God knows why…), but that is now faltering. The Conservatives can say that a Corbyn government would be incompetent, but the voters have seen that (as with David Cameron-Levita) the Theresa May Conservative government has been proven so: the NHS deteriorating, the police incapable of stopping the rise in violent crime, the increase in Internet snooping and monitoring of ordinary white British citizens by police, MI5 etc, the numbers being made homeless or literally starved to death thanks to the incompetent “welfare” “reforms” of Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and the jew “lord” Freud etc; then there are the potholed roads, the bursting and inefficient railways, not to mention the millions of unwanted immigrants, often from backward, violent and useless ethnic groups, flooding in almost without restraint. Police stations have been closed and sold, prisons are in a appalling state, people are imprisoned for saying anything against the Jews, but given small fines for bad crimes of violence. Then there are the squeezes, over a decade, on incomes.

The appalling muddle over Brexit has crystallized such feelings about this government’s sheer incompetence.

About half the chairmen of local Conservative parties have said that they will be voting Brexit Party in the EU elections. The Conservative Party is a party which is folding. The leader has no credibility, Cabinet members have neither loyalty nor discipline, its MPs are also without discipline, and it seems that donations have dried up.

“A damning Survation poll of 781 Tory councillors today found 76% want the Prime Minister to resign – with 43% saying she must go immediately” and “One councillor questioned in the study said: “The Conservative Party is dead. It will take a strong leader to dredge it out of the mud.””

[Daily Mirror]

The Daily Mail has a similar story:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6943297/Devastating-poll-shows-40-Tory-councillors-Nigel-Farages-new-party.html

“I am embarrassed to be a member at the moment. This will be a case study of (predictable) incompetence which has made our country and party a laughing stock around the world.” and “I will not vote Conservative nationally again. I have been a lifetime supporter and a Conservative councillor for 33 years.”

[Daily Mail]

It was the early symptom of the membership demographic problem (aka “an ancient membership…”), from 2010, that led to the Conservative Party trying to plug the door-knocking gap by bussing in hordes of young Con activists and/or employees via the disastrous Mark Clarke tour, because many constituency associations had almost literally no-one willing to canvass voters, mostly because, while some constituency associations had 200 or even 300 members, all of them were either infirm or far beyond retirement age.

More generally, it can be seen that there is a move to radical and even revolutionary politics. MSM scribblers are starting to take notice:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6943195/The-political-centre-disappearing-grave-danger-lies-ahead-says-JOHN-GRAY.html

To listen to strong “Brexiteers”, one would imagine that Brexit is the only issue. Poorly-educated and perhaps not very intelligent msm scribblers, such as Susie Boniface, the so-called “Fleet Street Fox” (a Remain partisan), make the same mistake in reverse. Susie Boniface writes that the voters of Newport West, in the recent by-election, voted for a Remain-supporting (Labour) MP despite the fact that the area (not the exact area) voted Leave in 2016. She infers from that that voters have changed their mind on EU membership. No, they simply wanted a MP who (supposedly) believes in public services, decent pay and fair benefits for those that need them. Is it so hard to understand such things? Maybe if you are a London-based scribbler making a few hundred thousand a year and writing to an agenda…

We can see, looking ahead, that people are turning away from the System parties because the needs of the British people are simply not being met on any of the issues raised above. For the moment, those for whom Brexit is all-important have the safety-valves of UKIP and Brexit Party; on other issues, for many, Corbyn-Labour will fill the gap, for a while. In the end, though, only real social nationalism can offer a future for the real British people. 2022 may be the decisive year.

Note on Voting Percentages

The “glorious uncertainty” of British politics (oddly-drawn constituencies, FPTP voting etc) makes popular vote percentages of less importance than would be the case in a system of even passing fairness.

As can be seen from the linked charts, below, the Conservatives under Theresa May got a higher popular vote percentage (42.3%) in 2017 than the party had managed since Margaret Thatcher in 1983 (42,4%), yet only 317 MPs (currently 312) as against Mrs. Thatcher’s 376! In 2015, under David Cameron-Levita, the Conservatives got a popular vote of 36.9%, yet ended with 330 MPs!  That’s the British system of voting— ridiculous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_(UK)#UK_general_elections

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_the_United_Kingdom#Current_composition

General Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susie_Boniface#Personal_life

Update, 22 April 2019

recent msm comment:

Note that the percentages shown below relate to the views of Conservative councillors, and not those of rank and file members (or ordinary voters):

Labour has problems as well…; but it is a measure of how angry and frustrated voters are that not even the prospect of Diane Abbott (here seen drinking a canned alcoholic mojito on the Underground/Overground) as Home Secretary is (much) denting Labour’s poll rating now!

Meanwhile…

https://twitter.com/GID_England/status/1115664510306672641

 

https://twitter.com/GID_England/status/1117507705810321408

https://twitter.com/GID_England/status/1118575863073837062

The racially and culturally inferior are allowed to flood into the UK and the rest of Europe, and in the UK are tolerated, given housing, given food money and more if they start breeding. Meanwhile, for the British, life becomes harsher daily:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/21/stephen-smith-liverpool-seriously-ill-emaciated-man-denied-benefits-dwp-dies

animal welfare, environment, free speech, historical, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized, wildlife

Is the World “Running Out of Time”?

7 Comments

Extinction Rebellion, David Attenborough, and the debate

In the past days, the “Extinction Rebellion” troops have brought Central London to a halt. I am interested in the protest, not because of its own puerile idea that it will actually accomplish anything, but for other reasons: interesting how limited the official (police) reaction was at first, before millions of Londoners started to get angry at their daily life being disrupted; interesting how the protests have dovetailed with more Establishment propaganda (and I use the term purely neutrally), such as the David Attenborough film trailed below; interesting too how easily the London streets were “taken over”.

https://twitter.com/BBC/status/1118853372302561280

The BBC has fired both barrels on this. Some of the msm has followed.

My thoughts

I should say immediately and in brief what is my own view of climate change.

I think that there is little doubt that climate change is happening. In particular, the Earth may well be warming. It has both warmed and cooled in the past, both in periods of geological time and in the relatively short time that humans have been on the Earth. In fact, we know from written records and necessary implications that there has been a considerable variation even in the last few hundred years, over the past 1,000 years, over the past 2,000 (etc).

In the times of the Vikings, Greenland was exactly that, albeit briefly, and in the 11th and 12th centuries had farms, homesteads etc, as recent archaeological discoveries have confirmed. The “Mediaeval Warm Period”, c.950-c.1250 AD also meant that vines could be grown successfully in Britain. It is said to have been the warmest period in Europe since the “Roman Warm Period” (c.250 BC to c.400 AD), which of course covers both much of the time of the ancient Greek or Hellenistic Period and then the flowering of both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.

More recently, there was the “Little Ice Age”, which is rather elastic: c.1300 AD to the second half of the 19thC , but within those 550+ years, three colder periods, especially the one starting in 1650, famous for ice fairs on the Thames, skating on ponds in the Low Countries (as shown in Old Master paintings) etc. There is a good representation of the former in the 1947 film Wicked Lady [see Notes below; the Thames ice fair scene starts just before 00:59:05 and ends at about 01:03:05].

It is noteworthy, by the way, that the warmer periods of Europe’s history have been the more prosperous and the more peaceful too, overall, though not without exceptions.

Obviously, human beings cannot tolerate temperatures too cold or too hot. We require temperate or relatively temperate climatic conditions.

Let us say (i.e. assume) that the orthodox scientists are correct and that there is “climate change” amounting to “global warming”. Then we move to causation: what is causing the warming? The scientific establishment has established a dogma which says that human activities, specifically emissions of carbon, are the predominant causes. Dissident scientists etc point to sunspots or other causes.

Let us further say/assume that the more-officially-approved scientists are right and that human activity is the cause of the putative climate change/global warming. What can be done? There consensus breaks down.

The huge new economies of Asia do not want to stop polluting if that means that industrial output slows, because in India that would mean destitution for untold millions, and in China would mean, very likely, economic collapse and political revolution.

In fact, China at least is doing much in terms of reducing “emissions” (assuming that therein lies the problem) but here we come up against the real cause of most of the environmental problems of the world today: too many people, and too many farm animals to feed carnivorous populations, as well as too much energy used to warm or cool those enormous populations, the world population having grown about 20 times larger since the start of our age (the 5th Post-Atlantean Age) around 1400 AD.

I blogged not too long ago about the overall problem facing the world:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/

The obvious answer to the present or upcoming world crisis, which crisis includes, but not exclusively, mass extinction of creatures, “emissions” (assuming that they are of the importance the scientific establishment thinks), spoliation of land and oceans, is a huge reduction of the human population of the Earth. The main question, apart from whether it will happen, is by what method it could (will?) happen.

From the sublime to the ridiculous…

So we come back to “Extinction Rebellion” and their London protest. I am sure that most of them are well-meaning, even if totally and laughably up their own a***s, in the contemporary phrase. Many of these people are all too easy to ridicule. Emma Thompson, with or without her designer non-European adoptee, flew in (no doubt First Class) from LA to protest about people like her flying all over the place for trivial reasons; maybe it is thought OK if you are a millionairess and actress who lives in houses and villas in Hampstead, Bute (Scottish Highlands), Ibiza or France, when not in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air.

The reaction to the poseurs has been vitriolic in places:

https://twitter.com/theusapost21/status/1119227782440071168

https://twitter.com/JackFie26823626/status/1119227297402429446

However, “useful idiots” support the protest (and Emma Thompson), as appears from the tweet of “Geri the Gerbil”, below :

“Geri the Gerbil” seems to assume that the Extinction Rebellion protests will actually accomplish anything re. “climate change”. No, let alone “save the planet”! Obviously they change nothing at all.

Here’s another one (see below) defending Emma Thompson, while urging people to sell their second homes and stop holidaying overseas (mixed message? Emma Thompson has about 4 or 5 luxury homes, including 2 or 3 overseas, and flies frequently, sometimes on private jets…). Maybe the clue is in the “Costa del Sol” part of the tweet by tweeter “Caroline” , i.e. it’s OK for a wealthy and terminally politically correct theatrical like Emma Thompson to fly all over the world, have half a dozen houses in several different countries etc, but woe betide you plebs from having a tiny concrete villa on a Spanish costa and taking an EasyJet there a couple of times a year! Shades of Emily Thornberry’s “White Van Man” gaffe, perhaps.

I might respect Emma Thompson more if she just said “it would be better to have a tenth of the present world population” (I might even agree with that, especially if those left were mainly European) or “international flights and second, third or fourth homes are OK for a few rich people like me, but not for the million…”

Well, I cannot reproduce the full range of idiocy on display here, but here are just a couple of other deluded fools anyway:

https://twitter.com/CoCoAwareness/status/1119224816308051968

And what about this one (below), one Natasha Cox? She loves London being closed down because the atmosphere is lovely, there is no traffic, and there is dancing! She is evidently not an economic scientist! Where does one even start with such people?! Smiling and being well-meaning are both good, but not nearly enough…

Time for serious people to tip-toe away…

What interests me is that the Extinction Rebellion mobs were at first not stopped by the police: some police “officers” even danced with some of the protestors. I wonder what would happen if a few thousand social nationalists took over Central London. Would the police be so easygoing? I think not. Is it a class thing, because so many of the protestors seem to have come from rural or suburban enclaves where some no doubt live in comfort on their trust funds or buy-to-let incomes? The police are now belatedly getting a little tougher:

Another point that interested me, watching some self-righteous fellow on TV news today explaining why this direct action protest was the right method, was his assertion that MPs, society etc had to be forced to do what the protestors would like to see. Whatever one may think of their views (and I am not completely out of sympathy with them —social nationalism has always been quite “green”:

see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/social-nationalism-and-green-politics/ )

the fact is that this protest has a quite strong sub-terroristic edge under the surface “non-violent civil disobedience” stuff. If ten thousand (?) people are willing to shut down Central London “peacefully”, it may be that 1% of them, say 100, might be willing to do some very non-peaceful things. I merely pose the question.

Conclusion

The Extinction Rebellion protests will not change or expedite government policy, will not convince many not already convinced, and might cause others to be even more resistant to the environmental movement, which has some excellent aspects but which is terribly confused.

It is clear that only a mass sweeping away of the world population can accomplish the rescue of the planet and its life.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_expansion#Greenland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6991969/Humans-risk-wiping-ONE-MILLION-natural-species-Earths-life-support-reaches-breaking-point.html

Update, 21 April 2019

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6944245/Climate-change-protesters-millionaire-father-wanted-chop-trees.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed

Alternative “world is getting colder” exposition:

Alison Chabloz, Alison Chabloz, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, free speech, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Uncategorized

Alison Chabloz: The Show Goes On!

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alison

Alison Chabloz at the piano

The background

Many readers will already know the outline of the Alison Chabloz story, of how the singer-songwriter lost her job on a cruise ship after having been stalked, harassed and persecuted by Jew-Zionists who objected to her having woken up to the “holocaust” fakery.

Later, Alison Chabloz was privately prosecuted by the malicious Jew-Zionist lobby group, the “Campaign Against AntiSemitism” or CAA. During the course of that private prosecution, the CAA’s lawyer inadvertently let slip that (as Alison Chabloz and others had already discovered), several leading CAA members had been using false names to stalk, harass and troll non-Jews (mainly women) online. Named in open court were Stephen Silverman of Grays, Essex and one-time “film critic” and house-husband Stephen Applebaum, of Edgware, North London.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) took over the private prosecution and, though expected to drop all charges, continued the prosecution though changing the exact charges (one charge was in fact just dropped).

A Kafka-esque series of events ensued, including a malicious complaint made by Stephen Silverman (who carries the sinister title of “Director of Investigations and Enforcement” at the CAA “charity”) and his fellow Jew-Zionist Jonathan Hoffman of Sussex Friends of Israel (Hoffman has since been charged with assault unrelated to the Chabloz case: see Notes, below). An unpleasant old Jewish woman from North London was also involved. Their complaint about Alison Chabloz led to Alison being all but abducted by police in London, transported on the floor of a police van hundreds of miles North, then spending 2 days in police custody before the case was rejected by Derbyshire magistrates. The tactics of a police state, and an incompetent one at that.

The first “judge”, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Emma Arbuthnot, was forced to recuse herself (i.e. stand down from the Chabloz case) after it emerged that her husband, James Arbuthnot, a real stuffed shirt who was an MP before being elevated to the Lords, had been not only a member (as 80% of Conservative MPs are) but Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel. Also, it transpired that the Arbuthnots had been on expenses-paid visits to Israel.

Jonathan Hoffman (see Notes, below), also wrote to the District Judge in the Chabloz case about that case, reminding him that they had been at school together! Perhaps surprisingly, this was not treated as a serious contempt of court.

The CPS prosecution ended with Alison’s conviction, on 14 June 2018, on two counts, under the notorious Communications Act 2003, s.127, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court by District Judge (Criminal) Zani, as well as one count on another charge. He imposed the following penalties:

  • 20 weeks’ imprisonment (on one reading, 12 weeks), suspended for 2 years;
  • a year-long ban on the use of “social media”;
  • financial penalties and imposts (not, technically, a fine) amounting to some £750;
  • 180 hours of “community service” (unpaid slave or serf labour);
  • days of “rehabilitation” (discussion and low-intensity brainwashing)

Since conviction

Alison Chabloz appealed her conviction and sentence to the Crown Court at Southwark. The result was that her appeal was dismissed. At time of writing, she is appealing on point of law to the Divisional Court (an offshoot of the High Court, in effect).

Prior to the hearing of the appeal, Alison Chabloz was unwilling to do the unpaid work part of her sentence at a time when appeal was outstanding. In relation to this,she was taken back to court (in Derbyshire) and was given more hours of unpaid work. She did in fact do a few days of picking up litter in Derbyshire churchyards.

Latest

The latest news is that Alison Chabloz will now not have to do any (more) hours of community service serf-labour!

I imagine that (((the usual suspects))) will be wailing and gnashing their teeth about this latest news! It means that Alison Chabloz is almost home free. True, there is still the conviction itself, but that is being appealed and may even end up in the highest forum of law in England. Likewise, there is still the social media ban, but that ends on 13 June 2019. In fact, the vaguely-worded social media ban has had little effect on Alison, who has been able to sidestep it by blogging on her WordPress blog (see Notes, below).

Overall, the whole process has been a victory for Alison Chabloz, for freedom of expression and for the anti-Zionist cause, and yet another slow, grinding defeat for the malicious snoops and trolls of the “Campaign Against AntiSemitism”.

Aftermath

Active Jew-Zionists, almost all of whom previously crowed about Alison Chabloz having been persecuted, prosecuted and convicted, have been having second thoughts. A few tweets (I have seen others):

Kamm, a lying hypocrite, who lied about me after my 2016 disbarment (procured by Jews), is once again a hypocrite here. True, he has written against the prosecution of Alison Chabloz, but at the same time has said that she should not be permitted to post material on online platforms or in the Press! Wonderful. “Free speech” in principle, but in practice closed off quietly and completely, by the decisions of online and offline platforms. Zionist hypocrisy par excellence.

More from Jews on Twitter

Adam Wagner (despite the surname, a Jew), attacked me when I had a Twitter account, and is a barrister specializing in “human rights” and similar areas. Here (see below), he is being taken to task by Twitter nuisance and bore “@frankiescar”, a Jew Zionist connected with the “Campaign Against AntiSemitism” (CAA). “Frankiescar”, real name Andrew Roberjot, is a kind of legal groupie (though not legally qualified). He turned up in person to gloat when I was before the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal in 2016. He frequently posts (often inaccurate) legal and political points on Twitter, including some silly lies about me, e.g. that “in the early 1980s”, I was considered to be “an eccentric but not particularly able barrister”: in fact, leaving aside what he tweeted about my abilities (though my IQ was once tested at 156 –like Trump! Oh dear!—…) I was in fact only Called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1991.

As a matter of fact, Frankiescar/Roberjot’s tweet does make one important point: that the prosecution of Alison Chabloz and others, and the attempted though failed attempts to prosecute yet others (including me) constitute nothing more or less than a political campaign by the “CAA” Zionists that has nothing much to do with anyone being subjected to “grossly offensive” matter, and everything to do with political repression and the suppression of political, social and historical views and opinions.

scan25

Conclusion

As noted above, the “CAA” may have won the initial battle, but Alison Chabloz has won the war. Effectively no community service, the financial penalty and suspended sentence being appealed, and the social media ban a dead letter. In addition, Alison Chabloz has now become an international figure and figurehead. The Zionists have procured for Alison Chabloz a worldwide audience for her views as well as her songs.

Hail victory!

Notes

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-47230443

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/holocaust-denial-antisemitic-song-auschwitz-alison-chabloz-conviction-upheld-a8777991.html

https://alisonchabloz.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Arbuthnot#Personal_life

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-denier-alison-chabloz-loses-appeal-as-court-upholds-conviction/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6700737/Anti-Semitic-blogger-55-LOSES-bid-overturn-conviction-Holocaust-denial-social-media.html

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/the-campaign-against-antisemitism-caa-takes-a-serious-hit/

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/jonathan-hoffman-ex-zionist-federation-vice-chair-faces-arrest-warrant-after-failing-to-appear-in-1.482146

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/trial-date-set-for-pro-israel-campaigners-accused-of-assault-1.482192

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/antisemitic-post-by-former-national-theatre-chief-probed-by-police/

https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=andrew%20roberjot&src=typd

Update, 21 June 2019

Update, 11 July 2019

Latest:

Alison Chabloz talks from her piano…

https://alisonchabloz.com/2019/07/11/fighting-back-and-winning/

Update, 18 July 2019

Alison Chabloz was recently before Chesterfield Mags’ Court in relation to non-performance of the “community service”, which the magistrate rightly called “the most punitive part of your sentence”. After she refused the suggestion that she be put on curfew and a tag (what nonsense the court system now is!), the magistrate mooted either imprisonment or a fine, but in the end just “suspended” the original sentence in respect of the unpaid work requirement, i.e. chucked it in the bin (where it belongs, along with the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” “Zionists”). Ha ha!

Alison Chabloz, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, David Icke, David Irving, free speech, historical, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Mark Lewis, Reminiscences and Musings, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Letting Off Steam About Libel

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My attention was caught by this news report:

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1118518659830505472

Now many who read my blog will know that I was, in the 1991-2008 period, at various times a practising barrister (in England) and an employed barrister (mostly overseas). Defamation was not one of my specialisms. I would have liked it to have been. It is an interesting and lucrative field, often involving interesting and/or famous people, though certainly not demanding the highest legal skills or intellectual gifts (contrary to the general public belief).

I did a few cases of libel while at the Bar, though all were advisory; none reached a substantive court hearing. I did advise, pro bono (unpaid), and when only a student, on a libel matter the result of which made the front pages of the more serious newspapers: Flegon v. Solzhenitsyn [1987].

Unable (as a mere student) to appear before the judge and civil jury (all defamation cases then had a jury), I nonetheless attended court most days, sometimes all day, wrote (mostly ignored) instructions and good advice for the plaintiff (now dumbed-down to “claimant”), and advised generally on tactics etc (also mostly ignored). I was told by another attendee that once, I having told Flegon’s assistant to give Flegon a note while he, Flegon, was (speaking very loosely) “cross-examining” a witness, I bowed myself out of [High] Court, only for the judge to demand of Flegon, as soon as I had gone, “to see that note that you have just been given”. Apparently, the judge read the note and told Flegon (who was proving a massive pain to the judge in various ways) to “listen to the good advice that you have been given, Mr. Flegon”! My first commendation by the Bench!

The Daily Telegraph said, when Flegon died (16 years later, in 2003):

“His remarkable success at repeatedly getting manuscripts out of the Soviet Union led to the widespread view that he must have had contacts in the KGB; but in 1987 he won £10,000 libel damages in the High Court from Solzhenitsyn over an allegation to that effect in the Russian version of The Oak and Calf. Unable to afford a barrister’s fees, Flegon conducted his case himself, in faltering English.”

Well, returning from the past to the present, we often see people, usually on Twitter, either talking about suing this or that person (often another “tweeter”) or expressing an opinion on defamation cases before the courts.

The average Joe has no idea about legal matters, and yet many opine about the law and practice of defamation, perhaps because it tends to attract msm publicity. For example, the tweet below betrays no hint that the tweeter knows that people have never been allowed to get legal aid for matters of defamation.

Despite having been expelled from Twitter, I read the tweets of others, particularly those whom I consider “persons of interest”. Often, en passant, I see tweets by various idiots either threatening others with legal action or recommending that others sue —often named— other parties in defamation. Few seem to understand either the relevant law (which has changed somewhat in recent years) or the practical aspects.

In the Kezia Dugdale case reported today, the Scottish judge decided that the words written were defamatory, but that the defendant, Ms. Dugdale, had a defence (that of fair comment). By the way, note that that defence has now been replaced, in England and Wales, by a defence of “honest opinion”, but this case was heard in Scotland under Scottish law.

Now the claimant in that Kezia Dugdale case, a Mr. Campbell, obviously does not understand the law, having tweeted only today that the law or legal system is, in effect, asinine because the judge decided that the words were defamatory and yet had decided against him! Like many many others on Twitter etc, the said Mr. Campbell does not seem to understand that even if words are defamatory on their face or by implication, the defendant might yet have one or more of the available defences.

Time and again on Twitter (I am not on Facebook) I see people, innocent of any useful legal knowledge, claiming that words which are not defamatory anyway are defamatory, or (where the words might be defamatory) ignoring the available defences.

Prominent among the above are Jews on Twitter, who often invoke the name of “Mark Lewis Lawyer” (the Jew-Zionist lawyer who recently fled to Israel after being found guilty of professional misconduct: see Notes, below). In fact, his publicized defamation cases were all (the ones I saw anyway) very simple and straightforward, requiring little real legal expertise. My honest opinion is that he is a copper-bottomed self-publicizing poseur.

Take a look at the above paragraph. It might or might not be considered in part “defamatory” (or it might be considered as a whole or in part a “mere vulgar insult”, which would not be actionable in any event). Also, even if the statements above, or some or one, were to be considered defamatory, I have defences open to me should the supposed “top defamation specialist” reach out from his mobility scooter or wheelchair in Israel to sue me (he has so far not done so in respect of any of the rather many blog posts which I have written about him in the past months). I have the defences of, inter alia, “Truth”, “Honest Opinion”, and “Publication on a matter of public interest” available to me.

There again, the armchair lawyers of Twitter rarely consider other factors, chief amongst which is whether the defendant has any funds. If not, large sums (in some cases, hundreds of thousands of pounds) might be expended in pursuit of a defendant who (like me) would simply declare bankruptcy if faced with a money judgment. Bankruptcy in England is now little more than an inconvenience lasting for a year (in most cases) for someone without capital (whether in cash or real or other property) or income. There are few advantages to being broke (as I now am and, incidentally, as “Mark Lewis Lawyer” now is); one of them, though, is the useful one of being effectively “unsueable”.

There are other factors, but this is a blog post, not a legal treatise.

It is usually the case that the best advice that can be given to a potential litigant in defamation is “don’t”! Three examples:

  • Oscar Wilde. Wilde need not have brought the libel action which eventually led to his disgrace, imprisonment, exile and early death;
  • David Irving. A fine and persecuted (by the Jew lobby) historian, but not a lawyer. Need not have brought the case against Deborah Lipstadt, an American Jew-Zionist academic supported and funded by the worldwide Jewish/Zionist lobby. Insisted on appearing for himself. Said to have lost £2M in costs to the other side, at least on paper. He also, more importantly, had his books removed from large bookshop chains; some were even pulped. Large publishers dropped him;
  • Count Nikolai Tolstoy. The only one of the three whom I have ever met (once). The only one of these three who was the defendant (there was also a co-defendant in his case). He lost, but eventually paid only £57,000 of the £1.5M awarded against him initially; he paid the £57,000 years later and only after the death of the plaintiff, Lord Aldington.

So, Twitter armchair lawyers and the perpetually outraged: don’t put your daughter on the stage, never wear brown in town and stop threatening libel suits against people, even if you can get lawyers you can rely upon…

Notes

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BD,_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA

https://www.dworskibooks.com/index.php?route=information/news&news_id=3

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1430648/Alec-Flegon.html

https://www.scotsman.com/news/kezia-dugdale-this-case-was-never-about-the-definition-of-homophobia-1-4909617

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17580304.kezia-dugdale-releases-statement-after-winning-defamation-case/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#Wilde_v._Queensberry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Libel_suit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Tolstoy#Controversy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-David-Irving/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3ADavid+Irving

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/26/section/3/enacted

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/26/crossheading/defences/enacted

Blog Posts About “Mark Lewis Lawyer”

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/update-re-mark-lewis-lawyer-questions-are-raised/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/22/mark-lewis-lawyer-latest-update/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/self-publicizing-supposed-top-lawyer-mark-lewis-full-transcript-of-disciplinary-hearing-judgment-now-released-by-tribunal/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/19/the-latest-revelations-about-zionist-supposed-top-lawyer-mark-lewis/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/more-details-about-mark-lewis-lawyer-and-his-abusive-social-media-presence/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/mark-lewis-lawyer-disciplinary-case-now-updated-to-11-december-2018/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/11/23/mark-lewis-lawyer-tries-to-have-part-of-the-case-against-him-thrown-out/

 

historical, Reminiscences and Musings, Uncategorized

The Burning of Notre Dame de Paris: is it symbolic?

40 Comments

Notre Dame, which as I write is still ablaze, is of course at the very heart of Paris and, metaphorically, France too. One could point to other buildings in that latter regard, perhaps the Sainte-Chapelle, the Sacre-Coeur, the Cathedral at Rheims, or even that of Chartres, but Notre-Dame symbolizes Paris, or did, until the secular landmark of the Eiffel Tower was constructed.

Like millions of visitors to Paris, I have been inside Notre-Dame a couple of times (as I have the Sainte-Chapelle, and the Sacre-Coeur with its unique atmosphere and where a Mass is continuously performed, 24 hours a day).

Sometimes, the burning of, e.g., a great building, is considered a symbolic event, marking a great change. One thinks of the Burning of Rome, the later Sack of Rome, the destruction of the great ancient Library of Alexandria, the Great Fire of London etc. In more modern times there was the deliberate burning of both the First Goetheanum in Switzerland (see Notes, below) and the Reichstag in Berlin.

Other catastrophic events can be —or be seen as— historically, politically or socially significant. When the Herald of Free Enterprise sank, in 1987, the very name made me wonder whether the era of “Thatcherism” was drawing to a close. It was. On a smaller scale, there was even speculation, at the time of the Marchioness disaster of 1989, as to the sociological meaning of it, if any (because so many well-heeled families in London, it was said, knew or were acquainted with one or more of the 51 people drowned and/or others on board).

Are these events causally connected in some way with the movement of history, or is it that human beings, having perhaps a premonition of coming events, attach meaning to large fires and other disasters? Was the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 somehow connected with the events that hit the British Royal Family in 1992 and in the years after the Queen’s annus horribilis? It was certainly the case that, after hundreds were crushed to death at Khodinka Field while celebrating the crowning of Nikolai II in 1896, the “simple people” thought it a bad omen. Were they wrong?

France is facing an existential crisis still not fully accepted as such by most. The influx of Algerians, Tunisians and black Africans since the 1960s became a flood, a disastrous flood, many years ago.

France and particularly Paris is now under siege from those of non-European descent, some of which may have been born and (semi) educated in France, but who are, except in language (and sometimes even in that way) alien.

An extremely high proportion of the population of France (at least 30%) is now non-European, and that situation is worsening. At the same time, there is a pushback by the (real) French via the Gilets Jaunes movement and via support for Marine le Pen.

“President” Macron, a complete puppet of the Jewish lobby and New World Order, has instituted a “Zionist Occupation Government” in France via his pop-up “party” (facade), En Marche, which consists of random people from nowhere who were recruited almost overnight, thanks to funding from secretive sources.

Macron’s expressed policies are to ruin the French way of life and French society, and to put in its place a globalized bastard-American culture. His secret policies (the policies of those behind Macron) are no doubt worse yet. He has allowed yet more hordes of non-Europeans to flood into France. Paris itself has become a poubelle (dustbin) compared to what it was only a few decades ago.

I hope that some of Notre Dame can be saved. I wonder whether France can be, and what it might take to do it.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacr%C3%A9-C%C5%93ur,_Paris

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Chapelle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetheanum#First_Goetheanum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Herald_of_Free_Enterprise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchioness_disaster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Windsor_Castle_fire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khodynka_Field#Khodynka_Tragedy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Ethnic_groups

Update, 17 April 2019

Jews “have nothing to mourn“, says at least one Jew…

“France is in state of shock, the Christian world is outraged while muslims are rejoicing on social media. Jews have northing [sic] to mourn.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23744

Addendum, 18 April 2019

“Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars” [Novalis]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalis

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Novalis

Update, 20 May 2026

See also:

On Recent Events in France

… in which I examined Macron’s background…

Brexit, Party Politics, Uncategorized

A Few Thoughts About the EU and Local Elections To Be Held in May 2019

38 Comments

The Brexit mess, so spectacularly mishandled by Theresa May and the idiotic careerists around her, may save UKIP from immediate collapse as a party, inasmuch as many British voters will want to punish the Conservative Party one way or the other. There may be in general a “perfect storm” for the Conservative Party, pressured on two fronts by both the Leave and Remain sides.

There will soon be elections for the European Parliament, on 23 May 2019. Recent opinion polling seems to be saying that Labour will have a landslide: initial voting intentions show Labour on 37.8% (up from 24.4% in 2016); Conservatives at 23.1% (unchanged), Brexit Party (Nigel Farage’s new party) 10%, LibDem 8%, UKIP 7.5%, Change UK (the recent Lab/Con defector MPs’ vehicle) around 4%, among others.

One has to be cautious in assuming that the above opinion poll reflects the likely outcome. The same poll seems to indicate that, after discussion, many pro-EU voters prefer Change UK (which would hit Labour and LibDem levels), while anti-EU voters may prefer either UKIP or Brexit Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1112942/european-elections-voting-intentions-uk-conservative-labour-brexit-party

Before the EU elections (in which the UK may not participate at all if the UK leaves the UK before 23 May), there will be local elections, on 2 May 2019. The indications are that, in those elections, Labour may also sweep the poll, with Labour benefiting not only from the “pendulum” or “see-saw” effect of elections in a system using FPTP voting, but also from abstentions by usual Con voters (or by their voting for Brexit Party or UKIP).

As far as the local elections are concerned, Labour starts the campaign with several advantages. The decade of spending cuts has finally impacted even the most true-blue Conservative areas. Labour has a army of local activists, thanks to its membership surge under Corbyn. It also has funds from the same source.

The Conservatives have few local activists now and most are beyond retirement age. The party looks tired. The Brexit mess can only be laid at the door of Theresa May and her Cabinet. The Cons will be lucky to avoid a wipeout in the areas voting for local councillors on 2 May.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/11/conservative-mps-may-boycott-european-election-campaign

There are also strategic factors. The Conservative Party claims 124,000 members, which seems high (average 200 members per constituency). Most are elderly. Few are active. The median age for Conservative voters has also risen, to 52. Recent polling has shown that only 16% of voters under 35 support the Cons, and only 4% of those under 25 do so.

In respect of the local elections, I see them as a straight fight between Labour and Conservative, overall. Labour is obviously in a good position in every respect.

In respect of the EU elections (in England and Wales), Labour may start in pole position, but there is a long way to go. Pro-EU voters may vote Labour, LibDem, Change UK or even Conservative. Anti-EU voters may vote Brexit Party, UKIP, or possibly either Lab or Con. Hard to say. Many voters may just try to hit out at the Conservatives any way they can. The obvious way to hit at the Conservative Party government is to vote Labour, assuming that hitting out trumps Brexit issues.

I can see that, while the Jewish/Zionist attack on Corbyn-Labour has made a dent in Lab’s popularity over 3-4 years, the voters are now tired of the whole Labour “anti-Semitism” whining, not least because Labour is now suspending members who speak out against the Zionist prominence in the UK. People have real issues with which to contend. It is a mistake to think that Twitter is the same as the UK public, especially now that Twitter has purged so many dissident voices (including mine). Jews and their “useful idiots” have colonized Twitter, to an extent.

The Leave/Brexit vote will be split between UKIP and Brexit Party, weakening both. All the same, these EU elections are all about (in the UK) protest voting.

Whichever way one looks at it, Labour looks like doing very well at the local elections and fairly well at the EU elections.

Update, 14 April 2019

Some msm outlets are now predicting a solid Labour win in the expected General Election too

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6919951/Jeremy-Corbyn-win-general-election-Conservatives-face-losing-60-seats-Brexit.html

Update, April 15 2019

Despite having no policies beyond the UK leaving (really leaving) the EU, Brexit Party is already running at anywhere up to 15% in opinion polling for the EU elections of 23 May 2019.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6921149/Nigel-Farages-Brexit-Party-set-drain-Tory-candidates-EU-elections-month.html

It is reported that up to 56% of those who voted Leave in the 2016 EU Referendum will vote either Brexit Party or UKIP in any General Election held this year. It is unclear whether Brexit Party would contest a general election, but if not, its votes would presumably go to UKIP. So about 50% of about 52% = about 26% of votes. That might not be enough to win any seats (certainly not, if split two ways), but it would cripple the Conservatives.

Update, 17 April 2019

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-theresa-may-european-parliament-elections-a8873056.html

Update, 18 April 2019

Update, 18 April 2019

Brexit Party, thanks to star turn Farage, is now at almost 30% in polling re. the EU elections. UKIP cannot seem to get much beyond 8%-9%. Still, that does mean that the Cons, in particular, will crash. They are polling now below 15% re. EU elections.

As far as the UK local elections are concerned, Brexit Party is taken out of the equation (contesting no seats) and UKIP is not contesting very many seats. That must favour Labour.

Update 21 April 2019

From the Daily Mail:

“If there is any overall winner from the meltdown in British politics, it will be Jeremy Corbyn – leader of what has become by any normal standards an extremist party.

As a historian of political ideas and movements, I have studied the rise and fall of parties and ideologies in Britain and Europe. 

Today we are witnessing a meltdown in British politics with no historical precedent. Both main parties are shedding their traditional supporters at an astonishing rate.

According to a ComRes poll published last week, not much more than half (53 per cent) of 2017 Conservative voters intend to vote Conservative at the next General Election.”

[John Gray, Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6943195/The-political-centre-disappearing-grave-danger-lies-ahead-says-JOHN-GRAY.html

Update, 24 April 2019

The mad jamboree which passes for UK democracy in 2019 continues apace. Ann Widdecombe, one of the worst Home Secretaries ever, is going to be a Brexit Party candidate (for the EU Parliament seat of South West England). She says that she will still vote Conservative in the local elections. Having just looked up her details, it seems that she is 71. I thought that she was at least 80.

The tweet below captures the mood:

At least Ann Widdecombe is an animal-lover, especially cat-lover…

Update, 27 April 2019

Britain Elects organization has just today tweeted as below:

As can be seen, and with less than 28 days to go before polling (assuming that the UK takes part in the EU elections), Brexit Party is neck and neck with Labour and has the momentum. The Conservatives are rapidly becoming also-rans as far as the EU elections are concerned. It looks as though those voters who want to cast an anti-EU/Leave/Brexit vote are going with Brexit Party, leaving UKIP to flounder around near the bottom of the poll. All or almost all UKIP votes are going to Brexit Party. Most Eurosceptic former Conservative voters are also going to Brexit Party. This is going to be interesting.

Meanwhile, in less than 5 days, there are the local elections. There, the results may also be dramatic, but not to the same extent: Brexit Party not standing, UKIP not standing for most council seats (and at present has only 101 councillors out of a possible 20,712); only about a third of council seats being contested this year. Also, in many parts of the South of England, there is little “democratic choice”, with most candidates posted being Conservative, the Labour and LibDem parties not contesting all seats.

Update, 1 May 2019

8,804 local council and other seats are in contest tomorrow, 2 May 2019. The Conservatives are contesting 96% of those seats. Labour will be contesting the majority of them. The LibDems are contesting some. UKIP have 18 candidates standing. Brexit Party is not contesting these elections:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_local_elections

As far as the EU elections of 23 May are concerned, the latest polls show an irresistible rise for Brexit Party, which is running somewhere around 33% now; the corollary is UKIP on only about 4%, not helped by the bizarre behaviour of UKIP’s MEP candidate “Sargon of Akkad” (Carl Benjamin), the “alt-Right” vlogger standing for the South West England constituency.

Meanwhile…

This is incredible! I am not a “supporter” of Farage or “Brexit Party”, but this is the sort of reception that few get! Reminiscent of the Fuhrer (though without the depth or substance, of course). Brexit Party is on a roll! Only three weeks to go before the moment of truth (EU elections).

Update, 11 May 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/11/poll-surge-for-farage-panic-conservatives-and-labour

Brexit, free speech, MPs, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

Brexit. It Is Now A War— The British People Against The System

16 Comments

The British people were told that they and they alone would decide by referendum whether to stay in or leave the EU. Remain or Leave. No nonsense about “the Irish backstop”, no nonsense about “deals” with the EU, no ever-more complex rejigging of the UK-EU relationship, no second vote years after the Referendum (i.e. no “people’s vote”, to be held in 2019, 2020 or even later), no asking to remain in the EU for weeks, months, years after the set departure date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqAk4iGcARw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAn9Dw_srPA

Yes, the relationship between the EU and the UK is complex, but sometimes, with Gordian Knots, you just have to cut the knot. You can tie new knots later.

As I predicted at the time, Remain would immediately launch a kind of quite long term damage-limitation operation, building on the Operation Fear pre-referendum propaganda. The fear propaganda had a number of aspects:

  • No-one would be allowed to travel from the UK to EU states;
  • Before the UK was in the EU, no-one from the UK was allowed to travel to France, Germany, Italy etc without a visa;
  • No UK people could live or work in, eg, France, Spain, Italy, Germany before 1973;
  • Anyone voting Leave hates Europe and Europeans;
  • A vote for Leave is a vote for hate;
  • A Leave win would reduce most British people to poverty;

This propaganda was fuelled by even more than usually inept and wrong forecasts by hugely well-paid and hugely overvalued “erudite idiots” such as the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, a globalist Bilderberg participant of probably part-Jewish origins (see Notes, below). Ex-Goldman Sachs and carrying Canadian, British and Irish (and other?) passports, Carney and others claimed that Brexit would immediately shrink the UK economy. In reality, such forecasts did that, by causing fear and uncertainty.

Many young people, meaning loosely anyone under 30 but especially the 16-24 age group, badly let down by their pathetically poor education, really seemed to believe the above bullet-points. They really believed that a Leave result would mean that they would not even be able to visit EU countries without onerous visa requirements. In fact, listening to them (bleat) on BBC radio, one realized that many seriously believed that, if the UK left the EU, they would not be allowed entry to EU countries at all! Yes, those who believed that were/are stupid, ignorant and poorly-educated, but the immediate blame must be placed on the Remain propagandists.

There were reports in the msm and on social media about pathetic teenage girls bleating and crying because “their whole future” had been “destroyed” (by older Leave voters)! Now they would never be international models, pan-EU entrepreneurs etc! In reality, of course, 99% of the young Remain whiners never were going to get well-paid or indeed any jobs “in Europe” (as they always mis-designate the EU). The few who might, always could (I myself once had a girlfriend who, in her 1960s youth, had been on the cover of the French edition of Vogue).

The Remain fightback started immediately. Project Fear was kept going, along with new lines: “the Referendum was not really valid because it was so close” was one. Another was “turnout was only 72%, so the Leave vote was really only about 37%”…

As Leave supporters countered, what if we applied that to General Elections? Or by-elections? We have just had a by-election at Newport West. I blogged about it and later added the result details:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/the-newport-west-by-election/

In that by-election, Labour won, with a vote share of 39.6% of votes cast. However, turnout was only 37.6%. In other words, nearly two-thirds of eligible voters, many no doubt disgusted by the charade of “democracy” being played out, refused to or at least did not vote. Should we say that the result is invalid, because Labour was only voted for by about 15% of the eligible electorate?…

The same is true of the vast majority of constituencies where MPs have been “elected” despite having received less than 50% of the votes. Some MPs were “elected” on votes of 30%, the result of 3-way or 4-way splits. In view of the often low turnout in elections, that means that many MPs were voted for by only a fifth or even a tenth of the eligible voters!

People who could not be bothered to vote either way in 2016 must accept the result. Leave.

We should recall that every single referendum region in England, except London, voted Leave, most by very nearly 60%-40%. In fact, in the UK only London, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Remain.

If you were to take out Scotland, Northern Ireland, London, Gibraltar and all non-white voters, Leave would have won, in England, by something like 75%-25%.

If there were to be another EU/Brexit referendum any time soon, Leave might in fact win all over again:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1110603/Brexit-news-BBC-UK-Diane-Abbott-Theresa-May-Labour-Party-European-Union

The point is that a promise was made to the British people and has been broken. Now we see that

  • The “Conservative” government has badly mishandled the 2-3 years of negotiation with the EU (was that deliberate? was that sabotage?);
  • An attempt has been made to have a “Brexit In Name Only” via a so-called “deal” which would be actually worse than just staying in the EU officially;
  • attempt(s) are made to revoke Article 50 and so to stay in the EU;
  • requests for extensions of time for departure (why?);
  • a House of Commons “legal coup d’etat” has been made, passing a law to all but outlaw Brexit, and passed by one vote, that of African convict Fiona Onasanya MP, who was recently released from prison and soon will not even be an MP! The Commons coup was arranged between Oliver Letwin MP, a Jew and former Rothschilds employee, and pro-Zionist would-be dictator Yvette Cooper MP.

In fact, the Rothschilds connection is interesting, because puppet President of France, Macron, a complete agent of Zionism, NWO and ZOG, also worked for Rothschilds.

Conclusions

  • There is effectively no or almost no real democracy in the UK now. People are waking up to that via the Brexit saga;
  • There is no political party, let alone one which is powerful and/or credible, which speaks for the British people;
  • Most MPs are useless, not even mediocre, and/or are just freeloading traitors; they are also, most of them, direct enemies of the British people. Many belong to secret groups of cosmopolitan manipulators.  Many are pro-Zionist and/or have Jewish-Zionist connections, spouses, sponsors etc.

There must be a new and better society and a better system of government.

Notes

https://web.archive.org/web/20130726214724/http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants2012.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney

https://www.hebrewsurnames.com/KEMPER

http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/chronicle/AL_CHRON_1957_3.pdf [see p.38]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum#Result

Update, 12 April 2019: a few thoughts about the near-future EU and local elections

The Brexit mess, so spectacularly mishandled by Theresa May and the idiotic careerists around her, may save UKIP from immediate collapse as a party, inasmuch as many British voters will want to punish the Conservative Party one way or the other. There may be a “perfect storm” for the Conservative Party, pressured on two fronts by both the Leave and Remain sides.

There will soon be elections for the European Parliament, on 23 May 2019. Recent opinion polling seems to be saying that Labour will have a landslide: initial voting intentions show Labour on 37.8% (up from 24.4% in 2016); Conservatives at 23.1% (unchanged), Brexit Party (Nigel Farage’s new party) 10%, LibDem 8%, UKIP 7.5%, Change UK (the recent Lab/Con defector MPs’ vehicle) around 4%, among others.

One has to be cautious in assuming that the above opinion poll reflects the likely outcome. The same poll seems to indicate that, after discussion, many pro-EU voters prefer Change UK (which would hit Labour and LibDem levels), while anti-EU voters may prefer either UKIP or Brexit Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1112942/european-elections-voting-intentions-uk-conservative-labour-brexit-party

Before the EU elections (in which the UK may not participate at all if the UK leaves the UK before 23 May), there will be local elections, on 2 May 2019. The indications are that, in those elections, Labour may also sweep the poll, with Labour benefiting not only from the “pendulum” or “see-saw” effect of elections in a system using FPTP voting, but also from abstentions by usual Con voters (or by their voting for Brexit Party or UKIP).

As far as the local elections are concerned, Labour starts the campaign with several advantages. The decade of spending cuts has finally impacted even the most true-blue Conservative areas. Labour has a army of local activists, thanks to its membership surge under Corbyn. It also has funds from the same source.

The Conservatives have few local activists now and most are beyond retirement age. The party looks tired. The Brexit mess can only be laid at the door of Theresa May and her Cabinet. The Cons will be lucky to avoid a wipeout in the areas voting on 2 May.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/11/conservative-mps-may-boycott-european-election-campaign

There are also strategic factors. The Conservative Party claims 124,000 members, which seems high (average 200 members per constituency). Most are elderly. Few are active. The median age for Conservative voters has also risen, to 52. Recent polling has shown that only 16% of voters under 35 support the Cons, and only 4% of those under 25 do so.

 

 

Brexit, environment, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized, wildlife

A Look at Some UK Political and Social Realities

7 Comments

Illusion is something that many prefer to reality, as this cartoon indicates:

CeZuS7OUsAEF2Lj

“They want not only their daily bread but also their daily illusion.” [Adolf Hitler, talking about many Germans during the decadent Weimar Republic of 1918-1933]

The Green Party

This blog article was prompted by a tweet that I happened to see, tweeted by one Jonathan Bartley, the “co-leader” of the Green Party.

The Green Party is so large and important now that it has to have not one but two “co-leaders”. Well, jesting aside, there must be some other reason (almost certainly something very very silly) that necessitates two leaders, the other “co-leader” being one Sian Berry.

Bartley seems to have come from an affluent background. He graduated from the LSE aged 23, thereafter floating around Westminster as researcher etc until he founded the think-tank, Ekklesia. He does not seem to have done (or have needed to do) any other work of much substance between the founding of Ekklesia in 2002 and being elected as Green Party co-leader in 2016.

Deputy Leader is 34-year-old Amelia Womack, who was elected to her party position aged 29, having never been elected to any public position (not even as local councillor); neither has she ever had a paid job of any kind, it seems. She is a candidate in the upcoming Newport West by-election:

see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/the-newport-west-by-election/

Now the facts are (i.e. the reality is) that the Green Party of England and Wales, founded 1990, has 1 MP (out of 650), 1 member of the House of Lords (out of 781), 3 MEPs (out of 64 English/Welsh seats), 2 London Assembly members (out of 25), and 178 local councillors (out of 19,023).

The Green Party is polling at somewhere around 5% nationally (it has been as low as 2% in recent years), and only has its one MP by reason of the unusual demographics and the (in 2010, when Caroline Lucas was first elected) 4-way voting split in the constituency of Brighton Pavilion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_Pavilion_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

In other words, the Green Party is like a tame rat on a wheel. Lots of activity and noise, but nothing really achieved. It’s not that I am opposed to all Green Party policies. I like some of its environmental policies, its support for Basic Income, its concern for animal welfare etc. There has, after all, always been connection between what are now called “green” ideals and social-nationalism. I have even blogged about it:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/social-nationalism-and-green-politics/

Where I cannot accompany the Green Party is in its apparent belief that open borders are good, mass immigration of inferior peoples into Europe is good, or that the EU is mostly very good for the UK.

ClVU6MSWgAAmfK6

I agree with the Greens when they say that FPTP voting is unfair on them (as on, in the past, UKIP, the BNP and the National Front, among others). Even 5% of votes should give the Greens around 30 MPs, whereas they may soon struggle to retain their one (though Caroline Lucas is a known TV face and probably will stay for a while). However, to say that UK political life is unfair is really just a pathetic bleat even if true (which it is).

At some point, reality will have to dawn on the Green Party members (surprisingly, nearly 40,000 of them). Or maybe not. I think that many Green Party members probably like their nursery politics game, which they must know in their hearts can never lead to serious results; but it makes them feel good and virtuous.

The Green Party is not about to get MPs elected or sweep the country in any way. The Green Party will simply continue as it is, a virtue-signalling pressure group pretending to be a political party. However, relatively few British people will vote for a party that supports both mass immigration and UK membership of the EU; neither will voters give credence to a party which has no one clear leader and which seems to be a refuge (even in its top-most ranks) for perpetual students and/or virtue-signalling and hugely self-deluded persons.

The Nationalist Milieu

It is often said that the plethora of food programmes on TV are a kind of “food porn” for people who rarely if ever cook. Well, the so-called “far right” (I myself never use terms such as “Left”, “Right” etc) or nationalist political tendency is rather like that: the Zionists, their “useful idiot” “antifa” offshoots, the msm too, and of course the System apparatchiki such as police, all like to say that there is a huge “danger” from “far right extremism” etc. If only! In reality, what exists at present is a mixture of hobby politics, “I’m the leader!” (of 2.5 people) parties, and politically-tinged 1970s football hooligan groups, together with System politics under nationalist camouflage (as with UKIP).

People of my vintage (b.1956), will recall (the now notorious) Gary Glitter singing “I’m the leader!” in 1973, a psychology characteristic of both “I’m the Leader!” parties and, usually, “hobby parties” (though every successful political party has to have a credible leader).

The English Democrats

I am starting with the English Democrats because they seem to me to epitomize the “hobby politics” sort of party. They claim(ed) to have over 2,000 members (2015), though I daresay that even that was a gross overestimation. I personally only ever heard of one member by name (my mother-in-law’s former neighbour), and he was a very strange man, a retired pilot aged about 70 (c.80, now). I would not be surprised if that man were fairly typical of the English Democrats’ members.

The English Democrats were founded in 2002. Their best electoral result was in the Mayoral race at Doncaster in 2009, which they won. They would also have won in 2013, had the Mayor not resigned from the English Democrats not long before the election. He still stood but as Independent and lost to Labour by only 590 votes, the EDs having put up their own candidate, who received 4,615 votes.

Police and Crime Commissioner elections have been their second best (highest vote-share just over 15%). In local elections, they have reached over 10% here and there, with their leader, Robin Tilbrook, receiving 18.2% of the vote in an election for the Epping Forest District Council. In Westminster elections, all results have been below —far below— 1% (in 2017, about a tenth of 1% in each of the seven seats contested).

The English Democrats have few policies, and those so bland that they could be espoused by several other parties, including System ones. Even the “English Parliament” idea has been mooted by System MPs occasionally.

“[Robin Tilbrook’s] party agitates for anyone living in England. His notion of Englishness is akin to American notions of “Americanness” – that you can be from any ethnic background and still wrap yourself in the flag.” [from an American newspaper interview]. So someone straight off the boat from God knows where is “English”, so long as living in England, according to that idiot! Even his professed “Euroscepticism” is very muted (and is based on the disproportionate amount of EU funding going to non-English parts of the UK).

The English Democrats are the “hobby politics” party par excellence. Mr. Tilbrook will never be blacklisted by the msm, nor targeted seriously by “antifa” or the Jewish lobby. He will never be interrogated by the police. He has in fact been invited onto TV occasionally and given a polite hearing, e.g. on BBC Daily Politics. He is even a Freeman of the City of London (awarded 2011)! Members of the EDs can write letters to the Daily Telegraph and talk at the bar of their golf clubs without let or hindrance. A waste of time worthy of P.G. Wodehouse.

For Britain Movement

I have blogged about “For Britain” previously. This party, though partly on the right track in terms of policy, is basically a one-trick pony. “You can have any colour so long as it is black!” [Henry Ford, re. the Model T car]; with “For Britain”, you can have any policy so long as it is anti-Islamism. Not that I oppose that view, but it is not enough.

For Britain is not exactly a “hobby politics” party, but it is really just a one-man or one-woman band, closely aligned with the policy-free beer-bottle throwers of the English Defence League and their one-time leader, the person usually known as Tommy Robinson.

The leader of For Britain, Irish lesbian former secretary Anne-Marie Waters (“Maria” originally), certainly has some followers, and For Britain has some members, as witness the local election campaign poster linked below, but how many is unclear. Probably fewer than 100. Quite possibly only about 50.

https://gab.com/forBritainMovement/posts/cmZhcTB0NWp1VnlVdlF1SUhEdE4yUT09

“The party fielded fifteen candidates in the 2018 local elections, none being elected.[11] The party came last in almost all the seats it contested.[12] In June 2018, the party expelled one of its local election candidates after Hope Not Hate linked him to the proscribed neo-Nazi group National Action and the white nationalist group Generation Identity“

[Wikipedia]

So “For Britain” (which says, pathetically, to the Jew-Zionist lobby, “look, we’re pro-Israel!” in the forlorn hope that the Jews will not hate it), sacked someone at least active enough to get up from his chair and stand as a candidate, simply because the unpleasant “Hope Not Hate” crowd fingered him!

As for Anne-Marie Waters, she herself stood in the Lewisham East by-election of 2018, receiving 266 votes (1.2% of votes cast; 7th place, behind Labour, LibDem, Con, Green, Women’s Equality and UKIP, but just ahead of Christian People, Monster Raving Loony, and 5 other minor candidates). “For Britain” is no good even as a protest vote in a by-election!

Sometimes, I wonder whether this or that group, party or movement or “leader” is not a put-up-job by the enemy, but in reality the likelihood is that these people are just deluded, indulging in near-pointless political activity. Having said that, it suits “Hope Not Hate” and the other manipulators of “antifa” idiots to have something to point at and say, “Look! Nazis/neo-Nazis/Fascists!” (etc).

Who, who would join something as one-dimensional, as limited, as “For Britain”? God knows. Not many have joined, anyway.

UKIP

Well, here we are at last out of the “hobby politics” and “I’m the Leader” areas, though plenty of UKIP members are hobby politicos. UKIP, though, is the real thing: a functioning political party, conservative-nationalist, and which at one time had two or three MPs (albeit temporary cast-offs), still has 7 MEPs (out of a possible 73), as well as 1 member of the House of Lords, 3 Welsh Assembly members (out of a possible 60) and 101 local councillors (out of a possible 20,712).

UKIP might have broken through to a measure of power in 2015 but did not, and now never will. It peaked in 2014. A succession of poor leaders (the present one is slightly better than those that followed Farage) crippled already-failing UKIP, whose membership, at one time reaching 50,000, is now somewhere below 23,000. UKIP has always been semi-tolerated by the System (inc. the Jew-Zionist lobby) and has now gone over to a basically one-trick-pony policy position which is not far from the offerings of Tommy Robinson, Anne-Marie Waters and the whole effectively pro-Jew and pro-Israel “alt-Right”/”alt-Lite” crowd (the British ones of prominence have in fact recently joined UKIP: “Prison Planet” Watson, “Count Dankula” Meechan, “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin. All wastes of space).

To join or support UKIP now, except perhaps as a way of protesting pointlessly in an election, is just silly. It could not get one MP in 27 years (leaving aside the Conservative few who defected briefly), not even in 2015 when it was voted for by 1 out of every 8 voters! The voting system is rigged and flawed, and that suits the System parties very well.

UKIP’s vote in 2015 (nearly 4 million votes) fell to less than a seventh of that in 2017.

UKIP too is in the realm of political unreality, at least as far as elections are concerned.

How to go toward a realistic political viewpoint

The short to medium term future is uncertain and likely to bring revolutionary change to the world. I recently blogged about this:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/

As far as UK politics is concerned, it is clear that the major urban areas are no-go zones for nationalist parties, at least in respect of getting MPs elected. They can only be viewed as recruitment pools at present.

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/white-flight-in-a-small-country/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/27/what-can-be-done-to-create-a-social-national-movement-in-the-uk/

To pretend that a movement or party can be founded, then play the game of System politics, is otiose. UKIP tried that —and was semi-System anyway— yet failed utterly in any attempt to gain power (though I concede that UKIP did obliquely achieve the holding of and result of the 2016 EU Referendum, which result however is now being cynically betrayed by cosmopolitan conspirators such as the Jew Letwin and the virtue-signalling hypocrite Yvette Cooper… even as I write).

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/has-parliamentary-democracy-as-we-have-known-it-until-now-had-its-day-in-the-uk/

The fast-breeding ethnic minorities, including mixed-race elements, are collectively only a few decades away from becoming the majority in the UK. In some cities and towns, they are already the majority. That fact alone makes ordinary democratic politics a no-win situation for social-nationalism.

A social-national movement must be built from the ground up, and on a basis of reality, even if that reality looks, at present, like the sheerest fantasy.

Notes

https://www.greenparty.org.uk/people/deputy-leader-amelia-womack.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Womack

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/the-newport-west-by-election/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_England_and_Wales

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekklesia_(think_tank)

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/the-newport-west-by-election/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_Pavilion_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/social-nationalism-and-green-politics/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Democrats

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Tilbrook

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_of_Doncaster#2013

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Britain_Movement

https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/09/19/britain-magnet-racists-nazis/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewisham_East_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/what-about-the-ukip-revival/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/has-parliamentary-democracy-as-we-have-known-it-until-now-had-its-day-in-the-uk/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-39257452

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/whatever-happened-english-democrats

Update, 5 April 2019

Foolish people are now saying that the result of the Newport by-election (held yesterday, 4 April 2019) was a “very good result” for UKIP

In fact, UKIP came third, exactly where it was in the previous two general election contests at Newport West, and while its 8.6% of votes looks good vis-a-vis 2017 (2.5%), UKIP got 15.2% in 2015:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

This was just a by-election protest vote and a pretty muted one.

The Greens came 6th, with 924 votes (3.9%).

As for “For Britain Movement”, its candidate came last out of the 11 candidates, getting 159 votes (0.7%). This party is wasting the time of its few members.

Update, 9 April 2019

The EDs are claiming that the UK is already out of the EU and have launched a judicial review application to “prove” the same. Rarely has wish so directly confronted political reality.

https://twitter.com/endtimes23/status/1115235740743548928

Update, 12 April 2019; a few thoughts about the near-future EU and local elections

The Brexit mess, so spectacularly mishandled by Theresa May and the idiotic careerists around her, may save UKIP from immediate collapse as a party, inasmuch as many British voters will want to punish the Conservative Party one way or the other. There may be a “perfect storm” for the Conservative Party, pressured on two fronts by both the Leave and Remain sides.

There will soon be elections for the European Parliament, on 23 May 2019. Recent opinion polling seems to be saying that Labour will have a landslide: initial voting intentions show Labour on 37.8% (up from 24.4% in 2016); Conservatives at 23.1% (unchanged), Brexit Party (Nigel Farage’s new party) 10%, LibDem 8%, UKIP 7.5%, Change UK (the recent Lab/Con defector MPs’ vehicle) around 4%, among others.

One has to be cautious in assuming that the above opinion poll reflects the likely outcome. The same poll seems to indicate that, after discussion, many pro-EU voters prefer Change UK (which would hit Labour and LibDem levels), while anti-EU voters may prefer either UKIP or Brexit Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1112942/european-elections-voting-intentions-uk-conservative-labour-brexit-party

Before the EU elections (in which the UK may not participate at all if the UK leaves the UK before 23 May), there will be local elections, on 2 May 2019. The indications are that, in those elections, Labour may also sweep the poll, with Labour benefiting not only from the “pendulum” or “see-saw” effect of elections in a system using FPTP voting, but also from abstentions by usual Con voters (or by their voting for Brexit Party or UKIP).

As far as the local elections are concerned, Labour starts the campaign with several advantages. The decade of spending cuts has finally impacted even the most true-blue Conservative areas. Labour has a army of local activists, thanks to its membership surge under Corbyn. It also has funds from the same source.

The Conservatives have few local activists now and most are beyond retirement age. The party looks tired. The Brexit mess can only be laid at the door of Theresa May and her Cabinet. The Cons will be lucky to avoid a wipeout in the areas voting on 2 May.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/11/conservative-mps-may-boycott-european-election-campaign

There are also strategic factors. The Conservative Party claims 124,000 members, which seems high (average 200 members per constituency). Most are elderly. Few are active. The median age for Conservative voters has also risen, to 52. Recent polling has shown that only 16% of voters under 35 support the Cons, and only 4% of those under 25 do so.

Returning to UKIP etc, the Brexit Party will obviously have the effect of splitting the Leave/Brexit hard core.

Update, 17 April 2019

The “For Britain” “Movement” (can 50 people be a “movement”?) has posted on GAB that they are not “far right” (whatever that means) and in some ways are no more “extreme” than Margaret Thatcher and not even really “socially conservative”. Oh dear…pretty pathetic.

https://gab.com/forBritainMovement/posts/NUk1Q1haVXY3RVRCcFV2ZzZPbTR4UT09

I don’t know why I am even wasting 10 minutes of my ever-shorter lifespan examining this fake “movement” with its 50 members, especially after its recent (latest) electoral debacle at the Newport West by-election (last-placed out of 11 candidates; 159 votes, which represented 0.7% of votes cast).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Newport_West_by-election#Result

Still, it confirms what I wrote in the original blog post, I suppose…

Update, 10 May 2019

Harold Wilson was right: “a week is a long time in British politics”. In the five weeks since the above article was written, at least two matters of importance have occurred

  • the local elections trashed the Conservatives (who lost over 1,300 seats), but Labour more or less stood still (losing 82 councillors), which was interpreted as failure by many;
  • Brexit Party burst into life and now has 100,000 members (by any other name).
historical, immigration, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

Mass Hysteria

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I was just reading the blog of some Mancunian of whom I was unaware until today. I found his blog interesting despite his (to my mind, rather silly) pro-EU and (evident from his Twitter output) pro-immigration views.

His blog tells of how he and his family were immune from the mass hysteria all around after the death of Princess Diana. I found that interesting, partly because it echoes what I heard from people who were in London when it happened, in 1997 (the actual death was on 31 August 1997). I heard tales of pubs full of blubbing drinkers (days after the actual death), people who did not smile or even look normal in the streets, crowds treating Harrods department store (owned by Mohammed Fayed, the father of the last of Diana’s known lovers, Dodi Fayed) as if it were a shrine, taking flowers there etc.

In fact, I had seen the evidence of that last, because I had been to Harrods to buy a raincoat. I myself was not in England at the time of what I call the Diana Death Hysteria. I was then living in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Only about 70 English/British people lived in Almaty in 1997 (I know that because I had quite close contact with the small British Embassy and in fact visited the Embassy fairly frequently).

I did not have satellite TV and was unaware of the fact that Diana had died until 2 days later, when a colleague told me about it on Monday morning (the death having occurred on the weekend). I was later told that I was pretty much the only British person who had not gone to the Embassy to sign a book of condolence opened by the staff there.

On my return to London a few weeks later, I needed to buy a raincoat (it scarcely ever rains heavily in Almaty), so headed to Harrods in a taxi. When we approached the store, I noticed what seemed to be piles of trash outside Harrods, piled against crowd barriers. I asked the driver what that rubbish was doing there (to me it was reminiscent of the scenes seen during the 1979 “Winter of Discontent”, when rubbish went uncollected) but the driver replied, “that isn’t rubbish, Sir, it’s flower tributes for Princess Diana”. Well…

The phenomenon of mass hysteria or collective grief and/or jubilation has tended to pass me by. I also missed the mass celebrations for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 because, again, I was at the time overseas and incommunicado (in Rhodesia). Those who experienced either or both have found it hard to explain what exactly happened to (other) people (I can only assume that my own connections and associates are a hard-bitten lot!).

I am no psychologist (or psychiatrist) but have some tentative theories, revolving around emotional triggers in the population. I have wondered whether such mass emotionalism could be harnessed for the public good in future. In the past, a usually more restrained type of emotionalism bound the British people together. In the 20th Century, that involved devices such as the Union flag, shared “experiences” (even if in reality never actually experienced by many of those emotionally affected), such as the two World Wars, the Poppy Day commemorations, noted historical events and people (such as Nelson, Trafalgar, Wellington and Waterloo, Richard the Lionheart, Florence Nightingale, Robin Hood), music such as “For those in peril on the sea“, the National Anthem, “There’ll Always Be An England” etc. A patriotic and historical pastiche, certainly, neither comprehensive nor even particularly accurate in parts, but true enough and simple enough to bind a people together.

Today, the UK population is so fragmented in terms of race, ethnicity, language, age, (what passes for) “ideology”, culture, even sexual orientation or display, that it is hard to imagine them coming together in collective grief (false or otherwise) or jubilation today. I suppose that some would point to football or cricket games, the Olympics etc, but these are minority interests, despite the large number interested.

If one talks to people, or watches the often incredibly ignorant TV quiz contestants, it is realized that many (and by no means always the “blacks and browns”) know next to nothing of British history, literature, music, or even basic geography. Their world is not even a post-1945 one, but a post-2000 one of X-Factor persons, “soaps”, “celebrities” of whom I at least have never heard, music which is either banal or simply noise.

It may be that the Diana mood of 1997 was an elegiac lament for a Britain —or more accurately an England— which was on the point of disappearing (and now has disappeared).

The blog post which I have been reading:

https://heterocephalusgabler.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/this-is-hysterical/

Almaty when I lived there

 

Music

MPs, Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

Someone I Met Recently

3 Comments

A couple of days ago, I needed to buy a new mouse for my laptop computer and also to ask advice on a technical issue. I decided to go to a PC World outlet about 15 miles from where I now live. The PC World store was outside a small town on the coast of Southern England. I was there by 0900 hrs, its opening time. A routine matter, of course, but I felt that I should blog, briefly, about it because it confirmed some of what I have been saying online for years.

There was only one other customer in the large hangar-like store at nine in the morning. I was greeted on going to the service desk by a youngish blonde woman who looked rather fed up. I feared that she would be surly or unhelpful. I could not have been more wrong.

The woman, who was not as young as she looked (she turned out to have a daughter aged 16; well, the police now also look young to me…) dealt with my technical question in a matter of seconds (completely correctly, it later transpired). She also directed me to the part of of the store which displayed “mice”. I chose one, brought it back and, the store now being empty, was told that I could pay for it there at the enquiries desk rather than going to a check-out. I did that.

It might be asked at this point why I am bothering to write about this? Well, I ended up having a chat with the blonde woman employee who had been so useful and helpful, and what she said was very concerning. I don’t know why she confided in me, whom she had only just met, except that people often do. They seem to divine that I can keep a secret, for one thing, though that does not apply in this case. I think that people also know that I want to help if I can.

The blonde woman worked full-time in the PC World store, but lived in a housing association property and received Housing Benefit to pay for the rent or part of the rent. That alone confirmed some of my expressed views over the years. Here she was, in a full-time job, and moreover one which actually required some skill and knowledge, which job she was doing really competently too (as I myself saw), yet was unable to pay her modest rent (after all, this was a housing association property) out of her pay!

Now this is just plain wrong. Here we have a large chain, part of a group (Dixons Carphone, formerly Dixons Group) which, in the financial year 2017-2018, made (pre-tax) profits of £382 million, yet is not paying its staff enough so that they can even pay their domestic rent! Instead, PC World relies on the State to stump up monies (Housing Benefit and also, perhaps, Working Tax Credit— I did not talk to the woman in such detail).

In other words, the profits of the employer are being bolstered by the State, meaning taxpayers (and including, at least via National Insurance and VAT etc, the employee herself in this case).

Previous visits to PC World had been far less satisfactory. That woman had made the difference, yet was struggling to survive. When will British businesses realize that they are only as good as their employees, at all levels?

There is something wrong about a system or society in which the pay received by an employee for full-time work is not enough to allow her even to pay her rent.

Further, I was told that, because the Housing Benefit was delayed by a few days, routinely, the woman had fallen into arrears and, though the arrears were always only in existence for a few days, the Housing Association had taken her to court at least once and, as a result, she had had to pay £100-something in court costs and also a financial impost of about the same to the Housing Association! This surely must be seen as unfair and unjust.

The woman also told me that her daughter was autistic (I do not know, of course, to what extent) and had been getting Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in respect of that. Recently, the daughter had reached the age of 16. As a result, she had been forced off DLA and forced to undertake a “test” for “Personal Independence Payment” or PIP [off-piste, someone must one day do a sketch on the vulgar cheesy names for such things: “Personal Independence Payment”, “Jobseeker’s Allowance”, “Job Centre” etc].

The daughter had, subsequently, been awarded nothing. So suddenly, this girl, long diagnosed as autistic, had now, despite the diagnosis and her previously accepted status, been cut off from State funds by reason only of a change in policy by government (Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and the jew “lord” Freud, Esther McVey, not to mention David Gauke and Chris Grayling etc).

I went away from that encounter at PC World thinking about how unjust and in fact how simply inefficient the system in the UK is, in that instead of a person being able to work and provide for herself and her daughter and/or get help from the State in a simple manner, she (a useful member of society at that) was being made anxious and being forced to jump through hoops in order to survive.

The present system is not efficient, is callous and unfair and is a complicated maze. Hopeless. Parliament is hopeless. “Democracy” (as we know it) is hopeless. The MPs and “peers” are hopeless. Business is not pulling its weight. The people are not only not being helped but are being impeded unnecessarily by the overall system in which they live and work.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_World_(retailer)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44286924