Morning music
Tweets seen
Well worth reposting, even 5+ years on.
“Giles Anthony Fraser (born 27 November 1964)[3] is an English Anglican priest, journalist and broadcaster who has served as Vicar of St Anne’s Church, Kew, since 2022.[4] He is a regular contributor to Thought for the Day and The Guardian and a panellist on The Moral Maze, as well as an assistant editor of UnHerd.
Fraser was born to a Jewish father and a Christian mother and was circumcised according to Jewish tradition.[5]
Fraser…has lectured on moral leadership for the British Army at the Defence Academy at Shrivenham.
On 16 January 2016, Fraser announced his engagement to Lynn Tandler, an Israeli Jew,[23] who is a weaver and academic researcher.[24] They were married on 13 February 2016.[2][non-primary source needed] Their son was born in November of the same year.[25]“
[Wikipedia]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Fraser.
“Both my Jewish children have been circumcised. They are being brought up in a bilingual family – where Hebrew is spoken at home, despite my struggling with it. My two year old chats with his grandmother on the phone most days in broken Hebrew. Both are being regularly taken to Israel. The Rabbi of the schul in Golders Green – where my father’s family (all Jewish) were seat-holders – has been extremely welcoming...”
[Giles Fraser’s blog on UnHerd]. https://unherd.com/2019/07/no-my-marriage-is-not-a-second-holocaust/.
DNA is ingrained. People can change their views, but not their DNA.
The modern “bread and circuses”.
I recall seeing the Australian TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo a few times after my family moved to Sydney in 1967 (I was 10 at the time). The show was on TV from early 1968.
TV shows and films such as Skippy may seem like sentimental rubbish to some people, and to some extent they may be, but there are innumerable examples of the intelligence and capabilities of our animal friends. Some such stories become famous, others are either unknown or are known only to the few people directly involved.
Something of the sort will eventually have to come to the UK.
Interesting. I have been to Famagusta (now in Turkish-ruled Northern Cyprus), but some years ago, in fact many years ago— January 2000. I did not see the ruins of the Varosha resort, though. That is a mile south of the main town, I think.
When I drove to Famagusta (from Kyrenia), the ruins of its ancient heritage were deserted. My then girlfriend and I were alone there. There were not even any people selling postcards or the like. Even the more modern parts of the town were far from busy. That was 24 years ago, though. Things change, of course. I think that there has been quite a lot of development in some areas.
I rather liked Northern Cyprus. Relaxed and, in 2000 at least, with relatively few tourists, and really none once you left Kyrenia (officially, now, Girne). A little cold at night (in January) but warm-ish during the day, usually, and with numerous interesting ancient sites (which one shared with no other people at all) set amid orange groves. I even had a rather bracing swim off a deserted beach, but it was no colder in the water than it is in the UK in summer, and the sun was shining.
I drove one day from Kyrenia right the way down the Karpas Peninsula [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpas_Peninsula] to the eastern end. At that point, you are only 60 miles across the Eastern Mediterranean from Latakia in Syria.
General Election 2024— Clacton
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/08/tories-clacton-voters-nigel-farage-reform
“In a straw poll of veterans, Farage’s campaign message seemed to be getting through.
Jason Stewart was in a green beret and a biker jacket studded with medals; after a long career in the Royal Marines, he “thought it was time to get out after I was blown up twice in one day in Afghanistan”.
He offers a version of an argument heard all day. “The two main parties look both the same to me,” he says. “The Tories don’t care about us. And Labour say they will reopen prosecutions of soldiers who served [in the Troubles] so that’s a no-no. Farage and Reform seem like the only option.”
Up the road, meanwhile, opposite McDonald’s, there was an alternative display of army jeeps and vehicles alongside veterans in fatigues. The display was organised by David Bye and his partner, Linda Hazelton, who run a charity delivering homemade pie and mash to needy veterans around the town. Bye had a one-to-one chat with Farage when he visited and claims he was given certain commitments, which will remain between them.
He grew up here; he remembers earning pocket money as a kid running tourist luggage down busy streets to Butlin’s. It’s been a long decline, he says, since the holiday camp went. “I thought I’d seen it all,” he says. “But the other morning I saw a long queue of blokes on bikes waiting for McDonald’s to open. They were collecting takeaways for people who couldn’t be bothered to make breakfast for their kids.
“I don’t know where you start with some of that,” he suggests. “But I think Nigel gets it.
The place holds symbolic relevance to Farage. Exactly a decade ago, under his Ukip brand, a meeting here paved the way for that party’s only Westminster election success, for Douglas Carswell. If you were to define the moment that Brexit became a possibility, and then a reality, you might begin there. Nine hundred people showed up, many of whom had not previously taken any interest in national politics. In the course of their populist pitch, Carswell and Farage quoted liberally from a Times newspaper column the previous week written by Matthew Parris.
Looking back at that column a decade on, you can see in it all the faultlines that were exposed and exploited so cynically by Farage and Brexit, the roots of the crisis that threatens to destroy the Conservative party in this election (a humiliation from which Farage, inevitably, hopes to benefit).
Parris, in his waspish style, on a visit to Clacton in 2014, had declared its irrelevance to modern Conservatism: “This is tracksuit-and-trainers Britain, tattoo-parlour Britain, all-our-yesterdays Britain,” he wrote. He asked his party a question which would now get a very different answer: “Is this where the Conservative party wants to be? [Or] do we need to be with the Britain that can admire immigrants and want them with us, that doesn’t want to spend its days buying scratchcards?”
Parris insisted that he was not “arguing that we should be careless of the needs of struggling people and places such as Clacton. But I am arguing – if I am honest – that we should be careless of their opinions.
Farage could not have scripted a better scene for himself than the spectacle of a Tory prime minister leaving the D-day celebrations early. Tragically, as this week is proving, the forces that made his bleak and divisive message relevant in 2014 have not gone away, and in the weeks to come you suspect that Westminster political parties will still ignore Clacton at their peril.”
[The Guardian].
Not once does the full article mention the fact that the person presently posing as PM is “unelected” (at least, unvalidated by a General Election) and a little Indian money-juggler; but there you are…”The Guardian”…
Interesting, though, all the same. I think that Farage has every chance of being elected at Clacton. The only reason that the Conservative Party candidate Giles Watling (MP since 2017, a long-retired actor, and a member of the Garrick Club, who lives at Frinton, the more expensive part of the constituency) got over 70% of the vote in 2019 is because his political stance is akin to that of UKIP/Brexit Party/Reform UK anyway.
Watling came second, behind ex-Conservative Douglas Carswell (for UKIP) both at the 2014 by-election and the 2015 General Election, and only won in 2017 because Carswell stood down. Having said that, Watling did get 36.7% in 2015, only about 8 points behind Carswell.
While the election at Clacton might yet be close, Farage has every chance now. Labour and other parties are spectators at Clacton. Labour’s best was 25.4% (in 2017, when the Cons got over 60%).
Interestingly, that 2017 Labour candidate, Natasha Osben, is now, in 2024, the Green Party candidate. Starmer is really not very popular even within the Labour —or recently Labour— ranks.
Will Labour voters vote tactically? If so, for Reform UK or for the Conservative Party? My money is on Reform UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clacton_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s
Tactical voting
“Alarmingly for Conservative HQ, many polling experts believe the conditions are ripe for a repeat of 1997, when tactical voting benefited Labour and the Lib Dems and cost the Tories dozens of seats, most notably the toppling of Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate. This time, Shapps is among the big beasts who could suffer their own polling night infamy.
Tactical efforts came to little at the last election. Hopes among pro-Remain campaigners of an anti-Brexit tactical vote were dashed as Boris Johnson won an 80-strong majority. But conditions have changed. Peter Kellner, the veteran pollster, wrote in the Observer before the 1997 election that while he detected little “positive enthusiasm” for Labour, an electorate with “a burning desire to end 18 years of Tory rule” made for receptive tactical voting conditions. He believes similar ingredients are present today.
While the net effects of tactical voting are hard to calculate, the Liberal Democrats could gain 10-20 extra seats through anti-Conservative tactical voting, according to an analysis by the Electoral Calculus consultancy. Meanwhile, with the added help of Nigel Farage and Reform UK, the tactical dynamic could push Labour closer in another swathe of previously safe Tory seats.“
[Guardian]
Conservative losses
“Writing in the Observer, Rob Ford, a leading expert on voting intention and trends, says the evidence from polls shows that “an electoral asteroid is streaking through the atmosphere” and is heading for the Tory heartlands. Ford no longer thinks it impossible that the Conservatives could end up with less than 100 seats, so badly is their campaign misfiring and so much trust have they lost over 14 years and the tenures of five prime ministers.
Other polling experts say that such is the geographical spread of the Tory vote, and the brutal nature of the first past the post system, that once their vote drops into the low 20% region, the number of seats could fall into double digits – and could go as low as 20.“
[Observer/Guardian]
I have speculated for quite a while that the Con vote might go low enough nationwide to leave the Cons with as few as 50 MPs. Perhaps I was right (I sometimes am…).
More tweets
Quite right.
Entitled self-seeking political hog Emily Thornberry, who only became “Labour” in the first place after her highly-paid UN-working father deserted her and her mother, abandoning his wife and daughter, and resulting in their having to relocate to a council house. She is motivated by malice and early spite and/or envy.
Emily Thornberry and her husband (a retired High Court judge) are buy-to-let parasites, incidentally; I believe that I read that they own, or used to own, at least 8 buy-to-let properties. Pro-Israel, too.
The Conservative Party now deserves to be not only removed from government, and preferably entirely wiped out, but do not imagine that fake “Labour” will be much if at all better. Look at its leaders and major influencers: Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall. All members of Labour Friends of Israel. All self-seeking moneygrubbers too.
David Lammy, that ignorant creature, as well.
That thick creature might be Foreign Secretary soon. Poor Britain…
Another Labour Friends of Israel member.
Emily Thornberry slightly reminds me of Mrs Mossberg, a fat, short and jolly Jewish primary school teacher, usually —in my memory— dressed in a long dark-brown mink coat; I knew her circa 1962, when about 5 or 6 years old and a pupil at Caversham Primary School near Reading. Mrs Mossberg, though, was far more pleasant than Emily Thornberry seems to be.
In retrospect, I wonder why Mrs Mossberg ever bothered to be a teacher, which I doubt paid much. She lived not far from my family, a few roads away, in a large detached house. The main reception room, which I saw at least once, seemed enormous to the 5-y-o me, and it had a large grand piano in it. Maybe she just enjoyed teaching.
The last tweeter says that Emily Thornberry owns 4 properties; I thought I read 8 somewhere.
“Elite“, though, seems the wrong word to describe that bunch of clowns.
Reminiscent of the last recruits of the Volkssturm in 1945…
In fact, the Volkssturm recruits above look both younger and healthier than those Kiev-regime “volunteers” or pressganged recruits.
Well, I cannot read Hebrew, and there is no translation, so I have no idea what the untermensch may have written in relation to his vandalism of that family’s house.
From what little one hears or reads, some of the chiefs or former chiefs of Israeli Intelligence (MOSSAD, Shin Beth, Aman etc) are also not optimistic about Israel’s long-term or even medium-term survival.
https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/the-tory-elite-class-is-completely
GE 2024 latest
“Conservatives face election wipeout with Labour set to gain a 416 majority that could see Rishi Sunak LOSING his seat and the Tories being left with just 39 MPs, shock Mail on Sunday poll reveals.”
[Daily Mail]
If that turns out to be correct on 4 July 2024, I will have been proven correct, and the “experts” and “specialists” (who have been saying 100-200 Con MPs left post-GE 2024) would be wrong (again)…
Also true, arguably. About the same, I should say.
More tweets seen
The first tweet confirms what I have been blogging re. Clacton. It is between Reform UK (Farage) and the Cons (Giles Watling). Labour has no chance at all, but Labour voters in Clacton can be the kingmakers. Their votes can swing it, either for Reform or for the Cons.
Even if the second tweet is accurate, and it may not be, voters can still give the Cons a mighty and historic kick by voting Reform UK and thus preventing the Conservative Party from thriving, or even surviving.
The very fact that such a grassroots campaign is even necessary shows how sick society has become.
Refers to Robert Largan, the Israel-puppet and Jewish-lobby puppet who is desperately trying to keep his Commons seat at High Peak (Derbyshire), with its good pay and better expenses and perks, but he really has no chance. Make him get a real job.
High Peak voters should vote either Reform UK or Labour to get rid of Largan.
Talking point
Late tweets
Richard Holden, who strikes me as a rather unpleasant little opportunist, even by the standards of the Westminster monkeyhouse. Conservative Party candidate at Basildon and Billericay. I hope that the voters there vote Reform or Labour. Keep him out.
God. Myerson again. When is the Judicial Standards Investigations Office at least going to stop this obsessive from sitting in judgment over others? The Bar Standards Board might like to take a look too.
…and few indeed of the British public are aware of the fact that the declaration of war by Britain on the German Reich in 1939 was not only totally unnecessary but led to immense unnecessary bloodshed and misery, and to negative consequences from which the world is still suffering.
About Macron: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/09/on-recent-events-in-france/.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 