Morning music
On this day a year ago
Tweets seen
The “panicdemic, together with its absurd “laws”, “rules” and “guidance”, has exposed, brutally, the level of psychopathology in large parts of the population. In various ways. Those who fear, not “the virus”, at root, but everything outside their own circle. The obsessive and pointless mask-wearing is one example. Another is the alacrity seen in those suddenly given petty power to tell others to wear a facemask, wear it differently or better, stay x-feet away from other shoppers (or from the said obsessive), and so on.
“The virus” has also exposed what little real respect most people now have for civil liberties, or even logic. So it was that the people —many, perhaps most, of them— accepted the ludicrous “Rule of Six” made up by the part-Jew, part-Levantine chancer and liar posing as Prime Minister.
Doubt about the official narrative has grown, but only slowly, and it may be that the System overplayed its hand, in that the conspiratorial “SAGE” committee (I used to call it “DUMB”— the “Department Under Matt and Boris”) heralded the “Omicron variant” as something likely to kill hundreds of thousands.
Well, now, only weeks after the latest alarmist predictions of the egregious Professor Ferguson and his cohorts, we see that “Omicron” is killing almost no-one, despite the frenzied testing and consequent announcement of millions of “cases”.
The public is waking up, though seems to have little real anger about having been played for two years. The System has spun it as “the measures taken mean that —if we keep “vaccinating”— we can live with Covid“. That spin or gloss pats on the back SAGE, the No.10 chancer, the government as a whole, and the poor saps otherwise known as The Great British Public…
Thus the Government (weakly opposed by the “we can run workhouses better” fake Opposition) can remove the various restrictions without having to admit to having got it wrong for 2 years, and without having to impliedly admit that the “panicdemic” was also —largely, not entirely— a “scamdemic”, and the measures taken for other reasons.
Southend West by-election
I have already blogged briefly about the upcoming by-election at Southend West, set down for 3 February 2022: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/01/13/diary-blog-13-january-2022/.
Seems that the latest news is that canvassers for the Conservative Party have been met with “a wall of disapproval” never previously encountered. That may mean a very low turnout as people “vote with their feet”. They cannot vote for any credible alternative because they have been denied that option.
The System parties have decided that, as with the Jo Cox assassination, the David Amess incident must be marked by the voters being denied a proper choice at the by-election, leaving standing only the “Conservative” Party candidate and a ragbag of small and/or joke parties and independents.
It will be interesting to see what proportion of the vote will go to Steve Laws (UKIP), who is somewhat known, by reason of his monitoring of, and tweeting about, the cross-Channel migration-invasion. He seems to be the front runner after the “Conservative” woman, though Catherine Blaiklock (English Democrats) may get quite a few votes.
I doubt whether Jayda Fransen (standing as Independent) will do well, but perhaps the Southend West voters will confound me.
Southend is not an area I know. I have been there, though only for an hour or so, and long ago, in 1977 or 1978.
I had returned from a youthful misadventure in Rhodesia, aged 20-21, and had signed up for a temporary job doing various kinds of casual work. One such, for a few days, was travelling around London delivering booze to various places as the driver’s mate, hauling crates around.
I remember that one destination was Pentonville Prison (for the guards), a cavalry barracks in Hounslow (the Sergeant’s Mess), and a bingo hall in some concrete town in Essex (Basildon? I forget now). Also, to what was either the Conservative Club, or the Naval and Military Club, Southend-on-Sea.
I remember that the Club to which we delivered was on a kind of bluff or clifftop overlooking the sea. There was a greensward between the Club and the clifftop. A tree growing there too (a monkeypuzzle tree? Or is that my memory inventing something?).
The sun was just setting over the sea, and that, together with the Union Jack on a flagpole, rendered the scene somehow elegiac. The Evening Hymn and Last Post might have been fitting.
Looking now at Google Maps and Google Earth, I think that that club was “Naval and Military” rather than “Conservative”. The latter seems to have been in a less pleasant setting in the middle of the town, and to have closed permanently a few years ago, a function of the declining membership of the Conservative Party: https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/16385600.southend-conservative-club-close-doors-final-time/.
I remember the day mentioned partly because, having launched a crate of Scotch down a wooden chute to the cellar from the street, it had unfortunately slid down far too fast, and right into the gammy leg of the steward, who let out a few oaths that were certainly blue, and possibly naval, though not necessarily Conservative.
Thanks to the incredible resources now available via Google, Google Earth etc, I have just tracked down the place: Naval and Military Club, 20 Royal Terrace, Southend-on-Sea.
Still going, it seems.
I have just been looking at some photos of Southend. Not terribly pleasant-looking overall. In a way surprising that it is a Conservative Party stronghold.
In fact, that seems not as clearcut as the election results for Southend West and other other local constituency (Rochford and Southend East) would suggest. Quite a high level of poverty, and the Southend local council is a non-Conservative minority-coalition administration, with little more than a third of all councillors Conservatives (20 out of 51).
The well-known anti-poverty campaigner and creator of recipes made on a shoestring, “Jack” Monroe, aka “the Bootstrap Cook”, is from Southend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe.
I notice that the local newspaper report on the closure of the Conservative Club in 2018 reported that Southend “is not safe at night“…
More tweets seen
An ex-Muslim apostate, and Ayn Rand devotee, who took his honeymoon in Israel. This country really has become a total dustbin.
Get Trudeau, and those behind him, OUT!
Nadhim Zahawi, another enemy of the British people.
…but the death rate will be far higher in the next few years, because the NHS has almost stopped treating people with non-Covid conditions, particularly those whose pathologies are at earlier stages.
Still clapping??
BBC “News”
This morning, watched, for the first time in a while, a whole half-hour of BBC TV news. Of the 30 minutes, about 20 mins was given over to the idiot posing as Prime Minister, and as to whether he broke his own ludicrous “Covid” “rules” or “laws”. Then we had 5 minutes about Ukraine and the possibility of invasion by Russian forces. A strange disproportion, to my mind: 20 mins about the idiot at Downing Street, and his cake and wine, but only 5 mins about the possibility (I would think probability) of (more) war in Ukraine.
The remaining 5 mins was mostly the weather report and forecast, the most accurate part of the whole broadcast.
The bit about Ukraine was mostly devoted to someone called James Nixey, an expert from the Chatham House think tank formerly (and surely better-) called the Royal Institute of International Affairs [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House].
I have little quarrel with what the said Nixey had to say, though it did not tell me anything that I did not already know (but then the news broadcasts are supposedly for the population as a whole).
I noticed that Nixey had on the bookshelves behind him (at his home, apparently, at Pangbourne) a couple of books which I myself have; I saw one about George Blake. https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-people/james-nixey; https://uk.linkedin.com/in/james-nixey-3621a710.
Early afternoon music
Sarah Moulds prosecuted
More NHS news
Still clapping??
Not that I do not think that there are not many very good people in the NHS, but the whole juggernaut has gone astray.
More tweets
If true, it is one of the (very few) things “Boris” has done of which I approve wholeheartedly. Why lie about it? I would rather those innocent animals be rescued than many of the Afghans, some of whom hate us or despise us, and none of whom will ever be anything but a nuisance to us (at best). If “Madame Boris” (Carrie Johnson) got him to do it, well, never mind. It is the sort of thing a “first lady” should do— exercise compassionate influence.
Personal sanctions may be inconvenient to Putin (and those close to him) but they will not change his intent for a second. What is happening now around Ukraine is not the impetuous policy-on-the-hoof of the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and Nicholas Sarkozy, when they stupidly decided to help the Libyan rebels in 2012. This is a long-considered and carefully worked-out plan by Putin, the Russian General Staff or Stavka, and the intelligence services, especially the GRU.
Putin and others see the Ukraine situation in the light of the 1100 years of conjoined close connection between Russia and Ukraine more than the 30 years of shambolic Ukrainian independence. They see it as a matter of territorial integrity (of the Slavonic heartlands), and also as a matter of existential national survival; they want a dead stop to NATO installing advanced weapons in Ukraine (and Poland, and the Baltic states).
What now? I myself would expect, as blogged recently, there to be an invasion at least of the Eastern part of Ukraine, and probably Kiev area too. I would expect the Spetsnaz forces of the Stavka, perhaps partly undercover, to create chaos in Kiev and some other key cities and non-urban locations first, before tanks roll in. and before the skies are full of descending parachutes.
I doubt that Russian forces plan to occupy anywhere much west of the Dnieper. Putin would rather install a pro-Russian Ukrainian government in Kiev, which would at least try to control the western part of Ukraine, while allowing the eastern part to exercise (pro-Russian) near-autonomy.
Worth reading
More tweets seen
Russia gains little or nothing by delay. Every day that passes now makes a potential invasion or “incursion” slightly more difficult for Russian forces.
The Soviet Union always had awesome capabilities for swift mass deployment of forces (eg in Afghanistan), especially by air, and Russia’s newly-upgraded forces still have that, as far as I can see. The main reason that Russia did not simply invade a week or more ago was probably that Putin needed to “condition” the European states and the USA to the idea of Russian incursion, so as to obviate a sudden “Cuban Missile Crisis” situation developing.
Now, Putin can be sure that all that the NATO core states (really just USA and UK) will do is to impose blah-blah “sanctions” on Russia and its leaders. No attempt at direct military parrying. Biden has said as much. As for “Boris”, he is just a spectator, really.
Putin would probably prefer to “win without war”, in the famous phrase of Sun-Tzu, but it seems doubtful that the Kiev government will give him what he wants (though the Kiev leaders do seem to be disenchanted with the USA’s lukewarm support, so there is a slight possibility).
As said previously, I doubt that Russian forces would invade, or need to invade, more than a few miles west of Kiev. Mostly in the eastern part of the country, where there are several million ethnic-Russian civilians living.
Also, Russia will try to work psychologically on the Ukrainian population, mainly in Kiev and east of the Dnieper. Anxiety, maybe panic etc. If unexpected sabotage etc takes place, the countdown has begun.
I would expect the storm to break, if it does, within a week or so of today.
Worth reading
Worth watching
Late tweets seen
https://twitter.com/AQuantumCat1/status/1486458322890936322?s=20
Seems plausible, anyway…
Crazy old bitches. At best, very neurotic.
Several members of the misnamed “SAGE” committee (cabal) are very similar.
Hm…just what “they” accuse some German doctors of having done in the 1930s….Surely our wonderful system could not have done that?…
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 