Category Archives: Defence

Diary Blog, 23 January 2023

Morning music

[the Great Wall of China— what an incredible achievement]

We are now, apparently, in the Year of the Water Rabbit. I myself was born in the Year of the Fire Monkey [1956].

On this day a year ago

Tweets seen

Quite. What matters is that the people have a health regime that actually works, and which is actually available to people. The NHS is increasingly in a state where it really does not work properly.

That is not going to happen, for several reasons, but mainly because “Jack Monroe” now has only one substantial and regular source of income, i.e. the 635 utter mugs donating to her regularly on Patreon, and thus bringing in tens of thousands of pounds each month.

The propaganda is constant now, now that we are in the period 2022-2055. Look at the idea that people will be paid to turn off heating or electricity. It’s mad. The whole point of having gas or electricity is so as to be able to keep warm, use appliances etc.

…people giving a rentier-parasite maybe half their take-home pay in return for being allowed to occupy some cramped urban hutch. Sick society.

I have been, in the past (pre-2009) self-employed (as a barrister in England), employed offshore (i.e. not having to pay UK income tax), and at other times employed in the UK, paying UK income tax.

The worst of the three possibilities is when someone is employed in the UK, and having to pay UK income tax, especially when having also to pay out to rent a house or apartment, and/or commute, a fortiori when having to lay out money for a long commute by rail, perhaps even —as at times in my own case— for a long-distance First Class season ticket.

Once someone has paid income tax, he or she has those unavoidable chunks taken out: rent, travel costs, costs of suitable clothing, other costs such as lunch money etc. The last may seem small, and not everyone will have to pay for restaurants or whatever, but even a Pret or the like might add up to £5, or more, per working day, say £1,000-£2,000 a year.

No wonder many, especially on modest earnings, decide (if they can) to opt out, throwing themselves on the admittedly rather strained mercies of the State by applying for small State cash benefits, but also having most if not all of their housing costs paid, having Council Tax paid, and not having to pay out for long distance or other travel, nor for formal clothing, for lunches, and for other incidental costs. Also, of course, not having to pay income tax.

For many employed people, once those chunks are taken out of gross pay, there is not a lot left, especially when one considers that those on the lowest income levels do not pay for basic NHS dental work, or prescriptions.

Poor levels of pay in the UK are a disgrace, and poor-paying employers are having their profits underpinned via Universal Credit etc paid to employed but underpaid employees. It’s quite wrong.

In the case of a “poor” pensioner, just retired from, say, a modest or low-level job, that person will be entitled to, from April 2023, about £200 per week State Pension and Pension Guarantee Credit, Housing Benefit (if applicable), Council Tax Benefit, free medical and basic dental, various extras such as Cold Weather Payments, special one-off Treasury giveaways, free bus travel etc; the upshot being that that person might well be far better off (albeit on a low level) than he/she was the year before he/she reached State Pension age.

For younger people, the best option (especially if not paying out for rent) is to get off-grid as far as possible: do work that pays in cash or in kind, or start a small business that pays (eg car repair), use (if you can afford the capital outlay at the start) renewable heat and power via solar, pico-hydro and the like, and keep outgoings small. You do not need the often-useless “advice” of such as “Jack Monroe” to do that. Commonsense does most of the heavy lifting. Cheese rather than smoked salmon, water rather than wine.

True, that kind of “off-grid” lifestyle will not get you a Rolls-Royce, or a Mercedes SUV, or holidays in Barbados; you may have to settle for a £1,000 clapped-out estate-car, and no overseas holidays, but in return you have freedom, and that is worth rubies.

Incidentally, I am not exactly describing myself. For one thing, I am now already 66, and so beyond official “working age” anyway, but in the past have experienced almost every kind of working and non-working scenario.

So much depends on one’s own exact circumstances. For example, take the stringent rationing of the Second World War, as it was in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom. Not everyone was equal.

Those best-off in WW2 Britain were probably not only those with money (who could pay for quite good dinners and lunches in the better hotels) but also and especially those in country houses, who might have had the money and space to stock up on tinned food (as Dennis Wheatley —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Wheatley—had advised in his pre-war newspaper column).

Such people would have had enough land on which to grow fruits and vegetables for themselves, and might well have the possibility to shoot game birds, rabbits, hares, even deer, and also fish for trout, salmon etc. They could also easily raise chickens for eggs, despite the paucity of chickenfeed, while the rest of the population was rationed to 1 egg per week.

Anyone in a country house would quite likely also have a wine cellar, which, if replete with Claret, Burgundy or Champagne —and adapting Sam in Casablanca— “sure takes the sting out of being occupied ” [or rationed].

Today, the same applies, pretty much. Had I a country house today, I would certainly be stocking up on tinned food (which in many cases is OK almost indefinately from the safety point of view, though only at peak quality for 5 years or less). I should also be reserving at least an acre per person for vegetables etc, and would be planting, or maintaining any existing, fruit and nut trees and bushes.

I should also be filling my equally-hypothetical wine cellar. Basic or bland food tastes a lot better with a bottle of Chateau Margaux washing it down…

When my wife and I did have (a lease of) a country house (on the Cornwall/Devon border, about 20 years ago), there existed a large number of plum and apple trees, producing a quantity of fruit quite impressive, bearing in mind that they had not been maintained, pruned etc for decades.

With war again now looming on the horizon, together with social collapse, I would, were it possible, relocate back to the South West of the UK and also, were it possible, buy a country house (and follow my own advice above).

More tweets

Ha. Quite.

…and note my blog of yesterday’s date.

The floor is too low. I think that it should be somewhere around £10M. As to the percentage, probably 1%.

Early evening music

Late tweets seen

Important results.

Late music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veselin_Stoyanov]

Diary Blog, 22 January 2023

Morning music

[Rome: the ruins of the Forum]

On this day a year ago

On the blog five years ago

Though my prediction for the next general election (2019) was wrong (I thought hung Parliament or small-majority Labour win), in my defence I can say that that election did not, in the event, happen until almost 2 years after the blog was posted (blog— January 2018, but General Election— December 2019). I think that the rest of the assessment has held up quite well.

Peter Hitchens

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11661589/PETER-HITCHENS-Sending-Ukraine-tanks-turn-Europe-one-big-radioactive-graveyard.html.

This was the moment at which we began the unstoppable descent into terrible danger which so many of us will bitterly regret in times to come.

I won’t waste time here going over the question of who started the Ukraine war, or even why. Most people don’t want to know and refuse to think about it, or to look up the facts. They defame and abuse anyone who tries to tell them. So to hell with that.

When the Defence Secretary announced that British tanks were going to Ukraine, not one MP raised any doubts or opposed the move. Not one. To read the record of the non-debate is like reading the proceedings of some Communist fake parliament, supine and brain-dead.

The country where political freedom was born has decided not to bother being free any more.

So it is left to me to tell you that it is an act of grave stupidity for the West to supply Ukraine with modern tanks. Unlike everyone else in the media and politics, I am not a military expert. But I know what tanks are for, and it is not defence.

What we have just decided to do is to prolong and deepen the war. Maybe Ukraine’s new tanks will sweep all before them. Maybe they will bog down. Maybe they will try to take Crimea. Maybe they will soon be taking part in a Victory Parade in Red Square. I don’t know. But if they cross into what Russia regards as its own territory, then do not be surprised by anything which happens.

...there is the real possibility that a large chunk of Europe might be turned into a radioactive graveyard and that American conventional retaliation for this (which will be furious and powerful) will take us a stage further into the world of horror, loss, flight, pestilence and poverty which always follows war.”

[Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday].

Exactly.

The Cold War was frozen, formalized, mutual aggression. The world came close to disaster more than once, but the situation was at least stable. That was hard on the peoples of occupied Central and Eastern Europe, caged by the “Big Three” agreements of the WW2 period (Casablanca, Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam), but actually life there was not always and everywhere terrible— just worse (usually, mostly) and —overall— less free than in the (better parts of) Western Europe and North America.

That was better than nuclear war across Europe, the Soviet Union, and the USA.

The gradual collapse of socialism in the 1956-1989 period of 33 years meant that one of the two main pillars of that stasis collapsed, meaning that outside socio-economic and other forces could start to flow into what had been Soviet territory..

Without Soviet power in place, the whole Soviet system fell apart quite quickly. By 1991, the Soviet Union was history. Western goods and ideas flooded Russia and the newly-liberated or created states. Ukraine was, for the first time in history, an independent state (a simplification, but basically correct).

Instead of a genuine attempt to help Russia and other former components of Sovietism transition to a better society, there was a scramble to rule over Russia, and to exploit its people, taken part in not only by Jewish (yes, and other) interests in the West but also by Jews inside Russia, the so-called “oligarchs”. Some, such as Boris Berezovsky, have died (probably murdered, despite living in the UK), others have increased their security and moved permanently to the UK, USA, Israel etc.

I myself saw elements of that scramble, not only when I first visited Moscow in 1993, and not only in my year in Kazakhstan (1996-97) but also in other ways, e.g. by my sitting (1995-1996) on the Committee of the Central Asia and Transcaucasia Law Association [CATLA], a body set up by large law firms with interests in the post-Soviet states, with UK Government assistance.

Also later, when back in London, in the Caribbean, and elsewhere.

On the foreign policy side, the “New World Order” [“NWO”] tried to take over Russia, and nearly did so when Yeltsin was President. What prevented it was a combination of circumstances: Russian pushback fuelled by wounded pride, Putin taking over as President, the collapse of the dotcom bubble in the West, and the focus of the NWO shifting to its other major interest, i.e. destroying the states hostile to Israel; that was after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

The military aid being given has gone from small items of defensive “kit” (in the British military term) to large items of offensive armament, as Hitchens writes. There are few weapons more aggressive in offence than a tank.

I recall being at a CATLA meeting in London in late 1995 or early 1996 when an account was given of a report that day by telephone from Dushanbe, Tadzhikistan, then the epicentre of a civil war. The report had had to be curtailed because the person on the end of the line had suddenly said “I’m going— a tank has just come round the corner.” End of conversation.

As I recently blogged, 14 British tanks may not be much, but the Zelensky regime is all but demanding that other European states provide 300. Still a small number compared with those in action in 1943 at Kursk (over 8,000 tanks in total); however, in Egypt, Rommel’s initial advance on Alexandria involved about 300 German tanks.

The point is that the war is now getting to the point where, in the absence of a ceasefire or negotiated settlement, the Russians either have to recruit, train and deploy an army vast enough and powerful enough to overwhelm the forces of the Kiev regime in 2023, or go nuclear (whether tactical or even strategic).

The USA and UK (etc) are getting to the point where they might be seen as actual participants in the war.

Leaving the huge forces (mainly American) of NATO aside, there is no way for the Kiev regime to win this. Ukraine is becoming a country without electricity, it has little functioning industry now, 20% of its population has fled to other states, and its population is anyway a fraction of the size of that of Russia.

If the West (NWO/ZOG) does not stop supporting the Kiev regime, we are on and sliding down a slope which might well devastate all of Europe.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk.

Jack Monroe scandal

I shall believe that when she stops taking people’s money, particularly from those who have little to start with, and/or those who are vulnerable (even if they are utter mugs to send “Jack Monroe” anything at all).

Seems that the tweets referred to have been deleted (another habit of the “Bootstrap Cook”).

Another poor and/or financially-struggling “Jack Monroe” fan? Oh, no, wait…a dim-seeming librarian from the University of Bedfordshire (is there such a university? Maybe there is). She has obviously not seen any of the voluminous evidence against her idol.

A good description. Worthy of a social anthropologist, perhaps a bit —in manner— like David Attenborough, but specializing in Essex “grifters”.

Quite funny seeing all these terribly “concerned” and virtue-signalling women (mostly women), who are, unwittingly, simply advertizing their lack of nous.

…so tweets a total loony (another “not quite all there” “Jack Monroe” fanatic).

Yes. I recall “Jack Monroe” doing the same or similar about 4 months ago, around the time when I published my (entirely fair, but far too kind, as it turned out) assessment of her: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/09/30/diary-blog-30-september-2022-including-an-assessment-of-jack-monroe-aka-the-bootstrap-cook/.

There is no incentive for “Jack Monroe” to pause or stop her Patreon “grift”. After months of criticism and evidence presented, there are, as of today, still 635 utter mugs sending her money, between about £2,500 a month and about £30,000 a month (probably about £6,000 pcm). Why would she stop taking it? Certainly not because a few have threatened a small claim in the County Court. Those few can be paid off easily enough.

If other mugs donate via other channels, then “Jack Monroe” can simply say (or not even bother to say) “thank you very much” and keep the cash, using it for her own purposes, as she has done.

More music

More tweets seen

[“Revenge— get down there where you wanted to send me, you unclean spirit!“]

Ha ha! The presumption of the girl there is incredible. Trying to grift a living as an “online influencer” or something, like thousands of others, from “Jack Monroe” and Owen Jones, through Julia Grace Patterson and others of that type, and right down to “who she?” types like the one in that tweet. She should get a job in a bottling plant or something (at least until robots take over completely).

Britain used to be a country that did things, real things, and had people at all levels who, many of them, were solid, even in the House of Commons etc. Now look…

Men (and women) of straw are now around in huge numbers and, if they were just to “disappear”, not only would I not care but in fact would actually applaud their removal.

Ha. Well put.

More tweets

It is truly incredible to see just how gullible so many of these “concerned” women are, the “Jack Monroe” partisans. She has been repeating those behaviours for years— angrily snarling and threatening, then pretending to stomp off from Twitter and/or pretending to have one of a whole host of physical and/or mental conditions, then claiming to have been “bullied” or “forced off Twitter”, after which she returns within a day or two (and counts up her new donations).

Yes, many rather unstable people who somehow imagine that by at least tweeting in support of “Bootstrap Cook”, they are striking a blow against the hated “Tories”. No so. The “Jack Monroe” assertion “I can feed someone on about 61p a day” (literally what she claims, feeding a family of four for £20 a week), plays into the idea that “welfare” (social security) benefits are perfectly adequate, or even too generous.

“Jack Monroe” now knows that, however outlandish her tall tales are, hundreds if not thousands of utter mugs will believe them all, and will think her a kind of saintly warrior against poverty and injustice, no matter what obvious lies she posts.

She has claimed, ludicrously, to have been involved with fighting the fire at Grenfell Tower, to have been in high-level discussions about Government inflation statistics, to have been so poor that she had to unscrew lightbulbs to save on electricity, and that she boiled down soap to make shower gel (!). All surely, plainly, lies, obviously so to any but the totally deluded, yet her often-mentally afflicted fans lap it up, either believing the lies, or believing that they somehow do not matter.

I agree with tweeter “Littlegiteshob”. It is absolutely incredible how stupid and guillible many are.

Look at that “@tomcheater”. Does not know what day it is.

More tweets

The French love massive demonstrations, but such events rarely change anything, not on their own.

When did huge marches in the UK change anything? A million marched against war in Iraq. Result— nothing. A couple of hundred thousand marched against “austerity”. Result— nothing.

So long as “Jack Monroe” has 635 utter mugs sending her a total of anywhere between £2,500 and £30,000 a month, I doubt whether she will feel any pressure to get a job. In any case, it is hard to imagine the kind of job for which she might be qualified, even leaving aside her alleged drug and drink problems, and her peculiar mentality.

Some tweeters are enraged that “Jack Monroe” has (for the umpteenth time) used faked (probably faked, allegedly faked) physical illness or feared illness, and also mental illness including suicide hints, to garner sympathy, deflect from her fraudulent or near-fraudulent “grifting”, and also to collect even more money from naive people on Twitter etc: see below

Why tweeter “@Calderpeople” thinks that “Jack Monroe” has no money any more, I have no idea. After all, the 635 Patreon mugs are still presumably paying up, and the Thrifty Kitchen book is out, though I suspect not selling well; I believe around 400 copies, including Kindle, per week. I may be slightly out, but think that each sale gets the authoress about £1, though possibly less, possibly more. See https://www.societyofauthors.org/Where-We-Stand/buying-choices/How-do-authors-get-paid.

That is on a price of £9.99 for the hardback, the original cover price of £19.99 having been abandoned, in effect.

I do think that the msm has almost dropped “Jack Monroe” now. I notice that, apart from the Independent, the newspapers have not much covered the release of the book; a few fairly low-circulation magazines have.

This, from 2020, made me laugh: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7925127/This-Morning-viewers-slam-food-writer-Jack-Monroes-three-meals-5.html.

I was surprised to see how small she is, even up against the TV people, who are not giants:

Was someone that tiny really trained (for a while), and as she claims, as a firefighter? To me, that seems very doubtful.

“Anthea Rogers” (possibly “Jack Monroe” in disguise) weighs in:

“Jack Monroe” and cocaine

A word about the alleged cocaine abuse by the “Bootstrap Cook”: I find it interesting that (until recently) she was being supported publicly by the Jewish TV cook, Nigella Lawson, and by the (also Jewish) food critic Jay Rayner, as well as by Tom Parker Bowles (food writer, and son of Queen Camilla).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_Lawson; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Rayner; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Parker_Bowles.

I have never seen any suggestion that Jay Rayner is a cocaine abuser, despite his playing jazz piano with his own Rayner Quartet.

Having said that, I now see:

Also, he was expelled from school over cannabis use: see https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/jay-rayner-pilloried-in-public-over-school-suspension-for-drug-use-39222774.html.

As for Nigella Lawson, she has admitted that she has (“in the past”) abused cocaine and other drugs on a number of occasions (read “regularly“?).

Then we have Tom Parker Bowles. God knows what Brigadier Parker-Bowles, his father (who was Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry and Silver-Stick-in-Waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth), thinks of his son’s choice of career. Not that it is inherently bad, and it must be lucrative, but I wonder all the same whether there is parental disappointment.

Tom Parker Bowles has admitted being a cocaine abuser: see https://www.theguardian.com/drugs/Story/0,2763,207412,00.html; and also (“in the past”), a drug supplier or dealer: see https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/6635934.camillas-son-drugs-supplier/.

With these blots on humanity, it is always “occasionally” or “in the past“, nicht wahr?

So all three? Or just two? Still, “two out of three ain’t bad” [Meatloaf].

Interesting co-incidence, though, even in this decadent and degenerate society.

Late music

Diary Blog, 18 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11644305/Shopkeeper-stole-6-000-isolated-elderly-customer-jailed-nearly-two-years.html#comments.

“Diversity” (blah, blah)…

As some comments say, the defendant will in fact be out in 10 months, and quite likely earlier. The sentence is not really the “nearly two years” of the Daily Mail‘s “reporting”.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11646993/Recruit-numbers-Armed-Forces-fall-30-amid-warning-supporting-Ukraine-makes-weaker.html

Recruit numbers in the UK’s armed forces fall by 30% amid warning that supporting Ukraine in Russia war makes us weaker.

The figures, which indicate Britain’s Armed forces are shrinking at a rate, have emerged after the head of the Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, warned the country was ‘weaker’ after donating so much equipment to Ukraine.

[Daily Mail].

That is before you factor-in the extra effect of having political nincompoops at the head of affairs, people such as Ben Wallace and, before him, Gavin Williamson: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/02/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-gavin-williamson-story/

While he welcomed the equipment being put to good use to end Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine, General Sir Patrick said it could not be denied that the UK’s combat effectiveness would be compromised. 

The MOD is coming under increasing pressure to reconsider this commitment due to the conflict in Ukraine and the heightened security threat to the UK posed by Russia, Iran and China.”

[Daily Mail].

Take away Zelensky’s ricebowl.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/17/uk-foreign-secretary-defends-weapons-supply-to-ukraine

The UK foreign secretary has justified the supply of Challenger tanks to Ukraine, saying it was designed to bring the war to a quick conclusion and there was a moral imperative to end the war soon due to the casualties and cost.

This war has been dragging on for a long time already. And now is the time to bring it to a conclusion,” James Cleverly told a Washington thinktank…”

[The Guardian]

Talk of “political nincompoops“… Does James Cleverly really believe that any war against Russia can be brought “to a conclusion“, let alone “a quick conclusion“, with Russia, in effect, losing?

I suppose that that sort of view, based on total ignorance, is what you get when your Foreign Secretary is a half-caste with a “degree” in “Hospitality Management”…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11644009/Furious-tenant-58-smashed-Volkswagen-left-parking-space.html

A furious tenant smashed up a car he found left in his parking space, despite not using the bay himself for 12 years

Gavin Glover, 58, has neither a car nor a driving licence, but descended into a fit of ‘parking lot rage’ when the Volkswagen Polo was parked in a space allocated to him as part of his lease on a flat.

[Daily Mail]

There are so many idiots of that sort around, and so many people, also, who “presume too much”.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/17/spare-by-prince-harry-review-magical-thinking-in-montecito-tina-brown

“The Harry Formerly Known as Prince”…

Tweets seen

Emily Maitlis sometimes displays very poor judgment.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Maitlis#Allegations_of_%22lack_of_impartiality%22].

A horrible and corrupt little bastard, completely in the pocket of the Israel lobby and Jewish property speculators. As with Starmer, Jenrick is married to a Jewish lawyer, and his children are being brought up as Jewish.

See also: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/24/robert-jenrick-planning-row-the-key-questions-answered.

Ed Balls is now irrelevant, politically, but people should remember that would-be dictator Yvette Cooper, now in the Shadow Cabinet, was one of the worst expenses cheats and freeloaders in the Westminster monkeyhouse. All that and an Israel-lobby puppet as well…

Fake refugees, in fact.

More music

More tweets

…and, once again, we see that a “Jack Monroe” fan is, again, a lady of a certain age, not (it seems) either “poor” or “struggling”, and (again) willing to tweet loudly without knowing basic facts.

Tweeter “@gillianography”, another typical “Jack Monroe” fan: not “poor“, not “struggling” (and almost certainly a reader of the Guardian), as well as, in her case, (and as she herself says) “neurodivergent nerd“, “brand strategist“, “copywriter“, and supporter of LGBTQXYZ etc.

As blogged previously, not only the “poor” and “struggling” but also the standard “working classes” of yore seem to be entirely absent from the ranks of the “Jack Monroe” supporters, as they sit reading their copies of the Guardian in, as it might be, the Waitrose cafe.

What is the point of…”Jack Monroe”?

There used to be a BBC Radio 4 series called something like What is the Point of…? Ah, here it is…seems to be still running: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lt45k. Various things, from universities to Formula 1, were, perhaps still are, examined with a view to their utility.

I ask, “What is the point of Jack Monroe?” Not as an individual, but as a minor socio-political phenomenon.

The only “point” I can see for “Jack Monroe”, in that sense, is that nearly a decade ago, she raised the fact that many many people were facing hardship unprecedented since, arguende, the 1940s. So far so good. I was still quite favourable to her, or at least neutral, months or years ago: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/09/30/diary-blog-30-september-2022-including-an-assessment-of-jack-monroe-aka-the-bootstrap-cook/.

In the well-known saying, “when the facts change, so do my opinions” [not the exact words of J.M. Keynes].

Leaving aside the “alleged” fraud and/or “grifting”, what is or has “Jack Monroe” really done to either reduce “poverty” (however defined), or to make it more bearable for “the poor” (however defined)? In my view, not much, if anything.

In my opinion, anyone can say “buy the cheapest food lines from [any supermarket]”, or (such as) “make tuna salad using canned tuna in oil, rather than buying olive oil separately” (I made that tip up myself…maybe I could be “Bootstrap Cook (2)”!).

As for the food produced by “Jack Monroe”, the less said the better, from what I have seen, though some might be acceptable. Many have said, though, that her costings are largely fictional. Again, leaving that aside, does that really help the “poor and struggling”?

Critics (including me) have made the point that to say, “I can feed a family of four for a week on £20” effectively says, by implied —if unintended— subtext, “State benefits are more than adequate“. It may be that four people could live, albeit on the most basic level, on only £20 a week, but food is of course only one expense of that hypothetical family. Heat, communications, water and electricity bills, clothing, transport. Etc.

Looking at how “Jack Monroe” has simply ignored inconvenient facts (such as her £20 shop not including items already purchased and stored), the truth is that she is just not very good at working out anything. Her various food recipes and plans are worthless, really.

As for the (non-existent) “Vimes Boots Index” of inflation, she not only has not produced it but, actually, is not capable of producing it (not with any accuracy, though she may eventually cobble something together in order to fool her hardcore Twitter fans).

Is advice such as “rinse sauce off cheap tinned pasta, replace sauce with something else, then serve” really useful? To anyone? The same goes for “take a tin of sardines, mix it up with rice, or pasta, and curry powder; heat and serve” (my abbreviated versions).

In a Britain where instant fake “celebrity” can make completely ridiculous people famous and wealthy, the “brand” of “Jack Monroe” (as supposed “single mother on State benefits, saving herself and others by clever budgeting and cooking“) gained some resonance around 2012-2013, but now that people know that she has not been “poor” for many years (and possibly never was), the “brand” is surely worthless?

I really cannot now see much point to “Jack Monroe” (the “brand”, that is), and I think that it is telling that, apart from a few idiotic journalists and (possibly) Nigella Lawson, most of the continuing fans of “Jack Monroe” seem to be people with mental problems.

More tweets

Late tweets

NWO/ZOG controls both USA and the EU. The provocative military aid to the Zelensky regime surely proves that.

Late music

Diary Blog, 14 January 2023

Afternoon music

[The Bund, Shanghai, 1930s]

On this day a year ago

Saturday quiz

Well, this week a modest 6/10. Still enough, however, to beat political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10.

I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, 8, and 10. I should have known question no. 4 too, having been there as a child and I think maybe even having been on that canal.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/10/donkeys-neglected-animal-deserve-their-moment.

Donkeys are beautiful, in their own way. Friendly and humble creatures. Probably my favourite animals, after cats.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/13/andrew-brigden-andrew-tate-online-safety-bill.

Pseudo-liberal scribbler wants less freedom of expression online. Was there ever an era in which so many self-describing “journalists”, “creatives” and, indeed, “radicals”, wanted not more free speech but less?

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaby_Hinsliff.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/13/paul-johnson-obituary.

Sic transit gloria mundi… Paul Johnson, almost if not actually obscure to the public of 2023, was a major political, or socio-political, voice in the 1980s, 1970s, and indeed 1960s. I can recall seeing him on TV in the early 1970s, sternly extolling the potential virtue of having a State-controlled or subsidized newspaper which would be such a newspaper of record that it would only print the unvarnished truth of what had happened in the world. As people say, “good luck with that“… That TV chat was, of course, some years before Johnson turned away from socialism, and embraced Thatcherism.

I heard little of Paul Johnson in the 1990s, and his star faded (in the public eye) to the extent that I was actually surprised, some years ago, to discover that he was still alive.

The type of person who thinks his own views terribly important, to the extent that at least some others in the msm or System politics also think him important for a while, more important than he really is. Still, a prolific author, and certainly someone who influenced the uplands of British thought, though not the views of the man-in-the-street, for several decades.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Johnson_(writer).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11633669/Former-Labour-MP-Simon-Danczuk-frolics-hotel-swimming-pool-28-year-old-Rwandan-fiancee.html.

It could be said that the meaning of the words “Simon Danczuk” is “disgraceful“.

Rassenschande

How much did the freeloading bastard get from the Daily Mail? He was always in the pocket of the Jewish lobby, so I expect that he gets a few crumbs thrown to him.

Incidentally, the bastard is ten years younger than me but looks ten years older. His life and lifestyle have caught up with him.

At least his godawful ex-wife, Karen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Danczuk, is now forced to read about him while sitting on the dole in depressing Manchester. Thank God she failed to follow Danczuk into the Westminster monkeyhouse (which seemed quite likely at one point).

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Danczuk#Parliamentary_career

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632497/Shocking-moment-Bandidos-biker-gang-members-killed-motorcyclist-wearing-rival-colours.html#comments.

On the facts, certainly murder, not manslaughter. The jury must have been idiots. How was that not “intending to kill or to cause really serious injury [the victim then dying as a result]”?

The sentences were also far too lenient.

Tweets seen

Incidentally, I was just watching a 1970s episode of Crown Court, the facts of the case revolving around an overworked and slightly disorganized Accident and Emergency department of an NHS hospital. Plus ca change?

Very true, but of course the hell of it is that Jewish-lobby puppet Starmer’s fake “Labour” will be no better, and quite possibly worse.

Never give “scientists”, academics, or bureaucrats too much influence or power.

I blogged recently about how I refused the “vaccines” for “Covid”, and —despite a now rather unhealthy and sedentary overall lifestyle— am still fine, whereas my two brothers in the UK and Australia, lifelong sports and golf players, were both “vaccinated” and “boosted”, and both (in the same week last year) had to be taken as emergency cases to hospital, having had heart attacks (btw, both now OK after having had heart by-pass operations).

Co-incidence? Karma? Or what? I know what I think.

More music

More tweets

“The Harry Formerly Known as Prince” and “Meghan Mulatta”. What a bad joke it all is.

Paid for by her mug supporters.

Ha ha!

As yet, and as far as I know, the Jew-Zionist self-publicizer and resident of Israel, Mark Lewis, who was her solicitor on a previous occasion years ago, has not come out of his kennel in recent months to defend the “Bootstrap Cook”.

“Jack Monroe” was threatening to sue Con Party MP, Lee Anderson, in May 2022, and all her friends in the newspapers were writing about it, but since then it has transpired that not only has she not taken even the first steps to suing Anderson, but that she launched a crowdfunder in May 2022, and raised money on that basis to sue Anderson (and the commentator Martin Daubney), but has kept those monies for her own use, as far as can be seen.

The police should be investigating “Jack Monroe” on suspicion of having committed fraud.

Another idea struck me.

“Jack Monroe” lives in Essex, in the Southend area. Her father is a rentier who rents out a number of houses there. He was, I read, once a fairly high-ranking member of the fire brigade there, and also holds an MBE. He may (I do not know) be a freemason, as also are so many responsible officers of the police. Is that a factor in “Jack Monroe” not being (as it at least seems) properly investigated? Again, I cannot say, either way.

Or maybe “Jack Monroe” is just not a “celebrity” any more, and so the non-existent “Essex Police Celebrity VIP Twitter Squad” can no longer give her special attention (as “victim” of the emerging truth)? (Only taking the joke further…).

Incidentally, my own experience of the Essex Police, from six years ago almost to the day: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/ (blog post written six months later).

I, on the other hand, find it odd how so many of the remaining hardcore “Jack Monroe” supporters are zealous supporters also of the present inflated nonsense around “LGBTQXYZ”.

I still remain interested as to why there are, as it certainly seems, no young or even young-ish (say under-30, under-40) “Jack Monroe” supporters, and no ethnic minority supporters either, with the exception of a handful of Greek Cypriots I have noticed on Twitter (she herself is half-Greek Cypriot, her original name having been Melissa Hadjicostas).

I have previously suggested a couple of reasons why no ethnic minority people seem to support the “Bootstrap Cook”, one being that many of them know real poverty only too well to accept her nonsense, and the other being that few of them would look at the food of “Bootstrap Cook” with anything other than contempt.

There may be other reasons.

Unbelievably, there are, as of today, 634 utter mugs still sending between £3.50 and £44 a month each to “Jack Monroe”. No wonder she can spend money like a drunken sailor! The puzzle is why so many apparently crazed virtue-signallers want to enable it.

Those people are too kind…

Perhaps“?! Ha ha!..

Late music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zara_Levina]

Diary Blog, 13 January 2023

Afternoon music

[Dnieper dam after reconstruction, 1947]

On this day a year ago

“Jack Monroe”

In any case, “her lawyer” (if any) has not sent a letter (whether “strong“, not so strong, or apocalyptic and written in Hebrew on stone tablets) to Con Party MP Lee Anderson.

Another day, another “Jack Monroe” lie…

“Jack Monroe” is, or has become, a fraudster, basically (and far worse than I thought when I assessed her on the blog at the end of September 2022). Having said that, the non-practising doctor tweeting in support of her, Julia Grace Patterson, is not much better.

The 631 utter mugs still sending her between £3.50 and £44 a month via Patreon will no doubt continue to collude in their own mugging, though…

Other tweets seen

The flow of migration-invasion would be curbed if either a. the boats were destroyed in the Channel, along with the invaders; or b. the invaders simply disappeared after reaching the UK, never to be heard of again. Either of those measures would deter others from trying to invade.

A general feeling of “end of an era”, as in 1939 and 1914…

More music

More tweets

Can you imagine what the remains of our culture and civilization would look like (and will, unless we take charge soon) if only blacks and mixed-race half-castes were to exist? Think Mogadishu, Haiti, most of Africa, but on a larger urban scale. Just the remains of civilization and greatness, half-reduced to rubble, and the untermenschen crawling over the ruins.

That “Dr Freya Vass” (a teacher of dance, apparently) sounds like a complete loony, like most of the “Jack Monroe” partisans.

The whole long thread about Serebriakova is rather interesting. A feeling of Doctor Zhivago about it.

That’s Napoleon III, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann

Archetypes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes.

More seen about “Jack Monroe”

The tweet went the same way as that “Bootstrap Cook” blog post which claimed that she had been “waved through” the police cordon at Grenfell Tower in West London, and (armed with the “building plans“, no less!) more or less took over the rescue etc.

Remarkable for someone who was not, at the time employed by any fire service, or any other emergency service, and who lived about 60 miles from the fire— in Essex, where (for a year or so) she had answered the telephone at a call centre for the Essex fire brigade.

How could she have had the “building plans” for Grenfell Tower? Simply impossible.

That blog post was a remarkable exercise both in fantasy writing, and in trying to create an entirely false story. Some of her fans actually believed it, incredibly.

It emphasizes the psychological (narcissistic) need “Jack Monroe” has for placing herself centre stage. The big story of the time was the Grenfell Tower fire, but that happened 60 miles from Southend, and there was no nexus at all between it and “Jack Monroe”, so she simply invented a scenario in which she was right at the centre of events— striding purposefully through the police cordon to take charge of the emergency. Ludicrous, but some people believed it.

I agree. While one does not expect the editor of The Grocer, Best magazine, or even the Metro, to be particularly aware or intelligent, what can be the excuse of the editors of the Guardian and the Observer?

As blogged before, though, I would be surprised if the msm kept on, for very much longer, promoting the nonsense of the “Bootstrap Cook”, despite her numerous “personal connections” etc.

More tweets

Late music

Diary Blog, 6 January 2023, including more thoughts about Ukraine, more about “Jack Monroe”, and reminiscences about the actor Bruce Barry

Morning music

[Katyusha rockets, 1940s]

On this day a year ago

Ukraine

https://www.ft.com/content/216fecbc-31be-454b-bec3-9fa253580b15

Germany and the US will send armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine, the White House said, in a move that will deliver a big boost to Kyiv’s offensive capabilities.”

[Financial Times]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/05/germany-tanks-ukraine-russia-war

Joe Biden and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz have agreed to send infantry fighting vehicles to help Ukraine fight Russia, a day after France said it would supply its own armoured vehicles to Kyiv in an attempt to create a breakthrough in the 10-month war.

The joint announcement followed a phone call between Biden and Scholz and amounts to a step change in western military support for Ukraine, which has asked for up to 700 armoured vehicles to help force the Russians out.

Ukraine has repeatedly said it needs 600 to 700 infantry fighting vehicles plus 300 tanks from from the west in order to give its military a chance of breaking through the increasingly fortified Russian positions along the frontline.

Until now, however, the US and Germany have been wary of supplying Ukraine with Nato-standard armour, because they feared it would be interpreted by Russia as escalatory. But the decision to supply western armoured vehicles is significant, even if both countries stopped short of sending tanks.

[The Guardian].

At what point does Russia decide that it has no choice but to use massive force (nuclear or conventional) to raze Kiev and Kharkov to the ground, so that the area of Ukraine east of the Dnieper (about a third to half of Ukraine) can be later rebuilt, and occupied by Russian settlers?

That may sound almost impossible but is actually similar, arguably,to what happened centuries ago when the Cossacks were formed as a group, or connected groups, around the various rivers in southern Russia and Ukraine— Don Cossacks, Zaporozhye Cossacks, Volga Cossacks, Dnieper Cossacks etc.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks

[“the Wild Fields”, where Cossacks lived]

Whatever the possibility of the above, there is no doubt that the supply of armoured vehicles, advanced missile systems, and tanks, to the Kiev regime constitutes considerable escalation.

In fact, one need not go back too far in history to find examples of Russian forces all but razing cities to the ground, then rebuilding them and filling them with the troops and civilians of loyal satraps: see Grozny in the 1990s— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#After_the_wars.

Afterwards, the Russians slowly entered the empty city and on 6 February raised the Russian flag in the centre. Many buildings and even whole areas of the city were systematically destroyed. A month later, it was declared safe to allow the residents to return to their homes, although demolition continued for some time. In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth.”

[Wikipedia]

[Chechen partisan takes cover behind a ruined armoured vehicle, Grozny, 1995]
[Presidential Palace, Grozny, 1996]
[central Grozny by night today]
[panorama of Grozny after dark]
[same area— daytime view]

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%931995); and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999%E2%80%932000); and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny.

The Russian tactic in 1999 was to hold back tanks and armored personnel carriers and subject the entrenched Chechens to an intensive heavy artillery barrage and aerial bombardment before engaging them with relatively small groups of infantry, many with prior training in urban warfare.”

[Wikipedia].

I read, re. Ukraine in 2023, that Russia has huge numbers of troops not “in theatre”, i.e. not (yet) in Ukraine. That may be because those troops are not trained enough yet, it may be because there are logistical problems in supplying them. If Russia can train them and supply them by next Spring or early Summer, then a vast offensive might be possible, to take Kharkov and even Kiev itself, though if the latter it would be a bloody battle, akin to Stalingrad in 1942-43.

In the end, Russia needs to take Kiev, Kharkov and, if possible, Odessa, along with surrounding territory. If it can do that, then it can write off Western Ukraine and its cities (chief of which is Lvov). That would mean continuing conflict with a regime which would be based on Lvov, but there would be little the Zelensky regime or its successor could do, with almost all Ukrainian cities of any size in Russian hands.

At this point, Ukraine is not a functioning state.

The “Jack Monroe” “scamstorm” continues

[https://unherd.com/2023/01/jack-monroe-the-acceptable-face-of-poverty/?=frlh]

Those “FBPE” tweeters are nearly always absolutely stupid, and often rather unpleasant as well.

The idea that “Jack Monroe” has “worked tirelessly” on behalf of anyone other than herself is ludicrous.

Tweeter “@codfather” is the usual “Jack Monroe” partisan: wilfully blind, a certain age (reading between the lines), reasonably affluent (ditto) and certainly not “poor”. Also, vituperative.

In fact, and as I started to understand some time ago, many of the pro-“Bootstrap Cook” tweets are actually from…”Jack Monroe” herself, pretending to be other people. So-called “sock accounts”. Not all, and I think not “@codfather”, but many others.

See also: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/05/cost-of-living-crisis-england-most-deprived-area-birmingham-hodge-hill.

The sheer delusion that many “Jack Monroe” partisans seem to live in has to be read to be believed; look, for example, at the tweet belkow, from (supposedly) a “professor emeritus at Bristol [University]”:

What the professor fails to see is that “Jack Monroe” has only one achievement (two if you include persuading large numbers of msm people that her whole story is true) — making a pretty good living for herself mainly by tweeting personal trivia, and recipes which look as dire as they are deficient in nutrient.

As for “measurement of food price inflation“, the ONS has made clear that their one meeting with her (at her request) had no effect on any of their work, and was not even noted or recorded. The “Vimes Boots Index”, supposedly being “worked on” by “Jack Monroe”, does not even exist, in reality. So what is left is the commonplace observation that the cost of basic foods has risen faster than that of luxury items.

Once again, a “Jack Monroe” supporter turns out to be a “woke”, and comfortably-off virtue-signaller, in this case an academic, or retired academic.

As I have blogged before, I have so far seen not one “Jack Monroe” supporter who is under 30, is “poor”, or who has ever been in circumstances of real financial difficulty.

Interestingly, also, I see not one “Jack Monroe” supporter who is black, brown, or Chinese. As someone who wants the UK and all Europe to be European, that in a sense is not a problem for me, but is still an interesting thing to note.

My take on that is that the ethnic minorities are too down to earth (and many also with too recent an experience of actual poverty) to take “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” seriously. Also, many would not look twice at the kind of swill she seems to produce much of the time.

Other tweets seen

The same is true in most areas. Politically too. Lenin was just one of a small number of marginalized exiles; Hitler was just an individual who was told to take a look at a tiny party, then joined it as member (possibly committee member) no.7.

Acorn—oak etc.

It is an incredible fact that (what is left of) the print newspapers in the UK are still churning out “editorials” or “leaders” which hardly anyone reads and by which even fewer are influenced.

19th Century thinking.

More music

Temps perdu: Bruce Barry

Ha. Back in the early 1980s, I knew a lady, a civil servant, who rented her basement flat near Central London to an actor well-known then in Australia, but obscure in the UK— Bruce Barry. I got to know him slightly.

At some point, maybe in 1984, Bruce auditioned for the part of Crocodile Dundee in the eponymous film. He told my friend, his landlady, that he had been shortlisted. The only other contender was… Paul Hogan. And the rest is history, as they say.

Bruce had spoiled his chance by going to the final meeting with the film people, at the Ritz in London, beautifully dressed (according to the lady I knew) but then enjoying “a liquid lunch“…

Bruce was fussy about food, living off wholefoods, nuts, avocado, and I think the occasional Australian steak, but drank too much. Drink and women were his downfall.

Not a bad fellow, though rather neurotic, and rather intense, in my view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Barry_(actor). Bruce had come to London at the age of ~46 to try to break into musicals. His divorce in Australia had left his wife (or one of them) and teenage sons in the family home, apparently a palatial house with grounds going down to the waters of Sydney Harbour, while Bruce himself was left with little.

In London, his first part was the male lead in The Biograph Girl [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Biograph_Girl], a musical about Lilian Gish [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Gish], which closed after (I now see from Wikipedia) 57 performances (I had thought, until today, after only a couple of weeks). Bruce had described it in hardnosed Australian fashion to my friend, the Civil Service lady, as “a bum show“, i.e. not much good.

I recall seeing Bruce on stage a couple of times, once at the Adelphi, in the Strand, where he was the second male lead in Marilyn! He played Andre de Dienes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_de_Dienes (though I cannot have been paying attention because until today I had thought he played Arthur Miller).

Bruce had very kindly given me two free tickets; I invited my mother, who lived in Surrey, and she enjoyed it. Musicals are not really my thing.

The other time I saw Bruce Barry in performance was at the Australian High Commission in London. I think that it was called An Evening with Bruce Barry, and was very good. I attended with the Civil Service lady, and met the real Australian Cultural Attache, who perhaps unsurprisingly was a very pleasant diplomatic fellow, and not a bit like “Sir Les Patterson” as portrayed by Barry Humphries [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Les_Patterson].

Bruce had a girlfriend, a tall Australian dancer who had been a member of the Bluebell Girls ensemble in Paris. One day, Bruce returned to his flat to find her in flagrante with a third party. The end of the affair.

Bruce toured a bit around England with well-known stars such as Rula Lenska and Elaine Paige. I believe that that was in Evita. One star he disliked intensely, though, was Barbara Windsor. He was, apparently, not alone in that. Several disliked her tie-ups with gangsters etc.

In the end, Bruce Barry, having not quite broken through in the way he had hoped, returned to Australia, remarried, and had parts in quite a few TV shows, including The Flying Doctors [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Doctors], where he played a landowner, I was told (I myself never saw it, though the series was shown in the UK).

The last I heard of Bruce Barry was that his second (or third) wife had divorced him, taken his home off him (as I heard it), and left him to drink and regrets.

I was unaware until today that Bruce had been with Mick Jagger in the film Ned Kelly, in 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly_(1970_film).

Bruce Barry died in 2017, aged 82.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hogan.

More tweets

Said Eritreans should have been executed by firing squad in the main square of Stockholm; it would have been a deterrent to other migrant-invaders (prior to their mass deportation). Sweden is even more mad than the UK.

The “CAA” is a pack of malicious Jew-Zionists, which cabal makes unfounded and untrue complaints to police and others: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/01/15/diary-blog-15-january-2022-including-an-outline-of-the-failure-of-the-latest-jew-zionist-attempt-to-prosecute-me/.

A number of wealthy Jews have recently donated £600,000 to that tiny group of troublemakers.

The Charity Commission should close down both its charitable status and, as far as possible, its fundraising.

In any case, why would “Jack Monroe” even go to the Grenfell Tower fire? She was never in the fire brigade, except as a civilian office bod answering the telephone in Essex (about 50-60 miles from Grenfell Tower) for a year or so, and years before the Grenfell Tower blaze. If she did go to Grenfell Tower (which I doubt), it could only have been as a “rubbernecker”, and the police would certainly not have “waved her through the cordon” as she claimed. She’s a fake, a total fake.

Someone should make a series on con-men, con-women, “grifters” etc. Hour-long episodes, each covering two or three perpetrators, a bit like the very interesting In Suspicious Circumstances presented by Edward Woodward [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Suspicious_Circumstances]. A favourite series, presently being repeated on satellite TV.

Another good one was Great Crimes and Trials [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Crimes_and_Trials]. I used to have all of those on video or DVD.

At a guess, I should say that copies of Thrifty Kitchen will soon be on sale in charity shops for about 20p. At least “the poor” will then be able to read the book, should they be so misguided.

I can only agree.

Ha ha. Just thinking again about the very idea that “the poor” need to be advised (very negligently) that, if they have a can without a ring-pull, and cannot find a can-opener, that they should use a hammer (or mallet?) and large knife! “Jack Monroe” obviously thinks that “the poor” are all completely brainless, and either cannot think of that on their own, or think of how to get an opener (less than £1 in some places).

She might as well “advise” people to invest in a Swiss Army Knife (mine has a can-opener which does work, though it’s hard work). The worst “investment” is to buy her book, in my opinion.

Now send “Jack Monroe” a fiver!

Once the book appears for 10p (at a stretch, 20p) in charity shops, which will be soon, I shall probably buy a copy just to give myself a laugh or two before I chuck it away.

“Jack Monroe” is a total £3-note…a fake.

…and, so far, despite 3-4 months of Twitterstorm and offline criticism, her Jewish lawyer, Mark Lewis, a resident of Israel, and with whose name (by implication) she used to threaten people who called her fraudulent, has not once emerged from his kennel.

Below, another typical “Jack Monroe” supporter:

a. much of her “lived experience” written about has been fantasy or lies; b. her “tips” are mostly worthless, or actually dangerous to health, or are obvious (eg “buy the budget range at the supermarket“); c. her royalties total around £100,000 to date; d. the monies from “fundraising to send thousands of books to foodbanks” seem partly, perhaps largely, to have been diverted into her own pocket; e. then there was the “sue Lee Anderson” crowdfunder scam; and f. the continuing Patreon scam, bringing her maybe £6,000 each month.

In addition to the above, it seems that, last year, “Jack Monroe” did a number of events, and getting, it seems, up to £15,000 each time.

Not exactly “earning a few quid“…

In any case, should a small-time robber get off just because a big-time robber down the road has committed a bigger crime?

Some types of bungalow do have a room upstairs, of course. #MoralHighGround.

Just looking again at the Twitter profiles of those who are the angry supporters of “Jack Monroe”: “professor emeritus” (ie retired academic), “noise consultant“, “retired HR lady“, “small businessman“, “writer“, “writer and photographer“, “part of brilliant Marketing Team“, “Pagan…therapeutic counsellor“, “#ACAB #BLM, Rape/Cop apologists blocked, TERFs blocked“, “novelist“, “High Profile hard left twitterer“, “Mother of Mayhem, Psychology student, Not Jack Monroe, Maybe“, “I’m a doctor but not working clinically” [i.e. another “grifter”], “fandom old, makes various media“, “BSc Psychology. History MA. Labour Party Member. MA Creative Non Fiction“, “Widower, autistic, stroke survivor. Tofu eating, Woke Corbynista“, “Labour & Co-operative MP for Oldham West & Royton | Chair, Co-operative Party | Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs” [n.b. if he cannot see through the “Jack Monroe” nonsense, Jim McMahon is unsuitable as MP and possible government minister], “Academic, political theorist, educationalist, former Pro-Director Education at LSE, HoD Department of Government LSE. ‘Woke Realist’ in a good way. Grandfather“, “Writing, blogging married mum of two boisterous boys..Tweets powered by Diet Coke, Earl Grey and wine“, “Educator/Writer/Student“, “Bristol based Graphic Designer. Gets giddy over lovely paper and buttons“, “*Producer|Cam|Editor *PhD #VR@ExeterDoctoral (yr 3, on hold) *Support Worker (#autism)“, “Nature, landscape, holloways, streams, printmaking. Wild swimmer & pluviophile“, “Founder & M.D of the Rabble Chorus, a lovely crowd of 350 community singers, open to all who fancy a bit of music on the side. Environmental activist, musician“, “Books. Music. Language. Science. Theology. Family. Talk. Think. Opinions my own. Pilot and PhD researcher (human factors and linguistics)“.

And so on.

Taken in a line. Just look at them. Not a steel worker, nurse, bus driver, train driver, cleaner, carpenter, plumber or the like among them. The “working class” seems to be absent.

Certainly not absent are the Guardian-readers, small business owners, suburban housewives (who prefer some other designation), well-paid freelancers, retired people (who used to be academics or working in reasonably-paid office jobs etc).

Also well-represented are various species of “Looney Tunes”.

Also absent is anyone likely to be “poor”.

As blogged previously, all her partisans are pseudo-socialists and/or “poverty tourists”, most if not all rather comfortably-off, many either retired or otherwise economically inactive (though not short of money); and quite a few with obvious mental health “issues” and/or problems with rational thinking. Also, various loony “trans” supporters.

Disturbing to see a Labour MP in there too, one Jim McMahon [Lab. and Co-op; Oldham West and Royton].

Oh, well, enough for now.

Late music

Diary Blog, 5 January 2023

Afternoon music

[painting by Volegov]

On this day a year ago

Peter Hitchens

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11599987/PETER-HITCHENS-Wear-mask-want-understand-fear-control-NOT-health.html.

Worth reading.

The “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” storm continues…

I started off, several years ago, thinking that “Jack Monroe” (who changed her name at some point by deed poll from her birth-name of “Melissa Hadjicostas”— she is half-Greek Cypriot) was a generally positive influence, bearing in mind the poverty mainly introduced under the all-misnamed “Conservative”, “Liberal Democrat” and “Labour” System-parties since about 2008.

I became gradually more sceptical over the years. I noted the upswell of criticism of “Jack Monroe” since July or August 2022, so looked at the matter, which perusal resulted in my blog post of 30 September 2022: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/09/30/diary-blog-30-september-2022-including-an-assessment-of-jack-monroe-aka-the-bootstrap-cook/.

In the past months, I have seen more and more material from Twitter and elsewhere about how “Jack Monroe” made up or embellished much of her personal biography, while concealing other parts, such as the fact that her grandfather was wealthy, and that her father is still what many might term a rentier (someone who lives parasitically off rental property); apparently, he owns a number of rental properties in the Southend (Essex) area.

I also discovered how, partly thanks to the tweeted and otherwise-expressed support of half-Jew TV cook and scribbler Nigella Lawson, “Jack Monroe’s” number of Patreon donation/purchase adherents (each sending her between £3.50 to £44 per month) grew from about 200 to about 800, a figure which declined after summer 2022 and has now fallen to 623. Still, multiply 623 by any figure between £3.50 and £44. Every month. Taxfree (possibly). My own guesstimate? About £6,000 per month.

[Update, 7 August 2024: I now understand that Nigella Lawson is a full-Jew, not half-Jew— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_Lawson#Early_life].

I was sceptical about “Jack Monroe” partly because she seemed to be on good terms with the egregious Israel-based Jew-Zionist solicitor, Mark Lewis [see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/11/update-re-mark-lewis-lawyer-questions-are-raised/].

Sure enough, I discovered that, the deeper I looked, the more fakery and near-fraud seemed to attach itself to “Jack Monroe”: the unreliable (to say the least) biography or, as people now say, “backstory”; the endless whining and demanding for money; the various tiny violins being played to get people to give to her (e.g. involving her son, who it now turns out does not even live with her most of the time, e.g. around her possibly-invented medical conditions, mainly mental but also physical). Etc.

I also discovered that genuinely-poor people, some of whom had donated monies to her monthly via Patreon, had been refused refunds after she failed to supply the goods and services offered for various levels of Patreon subsidy.

Then there was the threat to sue MP Lee Anderson [Con, Ashfield] for having openly called her a parasite “living off the backs of the poor“. Which she most clearly is.

No legal action has ensued and, after 8-9 months, never will, now.

That last reminded me of another fraud who quite frequently used to threaten me (and many others) with an action in defamation, and some (including Tommy Robinson) with other legal action— Mike Stuchbery, online “antifa” cheerleader, who begs money from people online while fighting a good (actually risible, and laughably derivative, ideologically) pseudo class war from cafes in Germany.

In fact, Stuchbery and one-time “antifa” comrade Roanna Carleton-Taylor (along with a tame Paki-stani solicitor), got about £12,000 out of ~700 mugs in order to fund a legal action against “Tommy Robinson”. No action was ever taken.

No-one except those three knows what happened to the money, but Stuchbery is still sitting in German cafes, “fighting” the (online) “class war” of his imaginings. See https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/10/23/a-few-words-about-mike-stuchbery/.

Another “comrade” of Stuchbery’s, “Dr.” Louise Raw, recently tried the same gambit, and, in a matter of a week or so, has raised nearly £15,000 in order to, ostensibly, “sue Jeremy Clarkson“. Well, numerous lawyers on Twitter have only just stopped laughing. I wonder what will really happen to the money Louise Raw has bagged?

More tweets seen

Imagine being as deluded and dim as that tweeter, Jan Fuscoe, yet another very comfortably-off “Jack Monroe” fan (she was a scribbler and photographer for Time Out magazine and others, and is currently scribbling for the Daily Telegraph about Sardinian holidays etc).

As if the fact that there are worse fraudsters and tricksters around somehow exculpates the behaviour of “Jack Monroe”! Also, how has “Bootstrap Cook”/”Jack Monroe” ever “helped” “people in poverty” anyway? By appearing on a few TV shows (for money)? By selling poverty-play books for £20 a go?

Jan Fuscoe seems to fit the usual “Jack Monroe fan” profile: middle-aged, rather comfortably-off, and almost certainly rather “woke” as well.

In a word, “Jack Monroe” is shameless, the ideal mock-heroic figure for “woke” Britain…(and always ready, in case of anyone criticizing her, with either a contrived “mental health” or illness defence, or with a snarling “I’ll sue you” counter-attack).

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2023/01/03/diary-blog-3-january-2023-including-more-about-the-jack-monroe-scamstorm/; and https://ianrobertmillard.org/2023/01/01/diary-blog-new-years-day-2023-with-thoughts-about-ukraine-and-more-on-the-continuing-jack-monroe-storm/; and https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/12/06/diary-blog-6-december-2022-with-more-opinion-about-jack-monroe/.

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The migrant-invaders should be eliminated in the Channel, before they ever reach the UK.

I blogged about Roger Scruton only a few days ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/12/29/diary-blog-29-december-2022-including-a-few-thoughts-about-the-philosopher-roger-scruton/.

My one and only visit to the EU Commission, in 1998, was enough— a nest of shambolic corruption.

As groups, both Jews and Muslims are inevitably hostile to European civilization, and to the future of European humanity.

Britain is now flooded with similar trash. Does any rational person believe that a better society can be built, or even the present level maintained, when there is a constant increase in the proportion of backward persons and groups within our borders?

Both main System political parties are promoting migration-invasion.

That idiot tweeter, “Charlotte”, is very typical of the “refugees welcome” and “anti-racist” dimwits around.

Come (back) friendly US bombers, and drop your bombs on…[with apologies to John Betjeman].

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Betjeman].

cf. kosher (kashrut) and halal slaughter…

(ps. I concede that many of our “Western” ways are also cruel, such as factory farming, and the industrialized slaughter of animals and birds etc).

More tweets seen

Is that a “poor person” buying a “Jack Monroe” book for once? No, yet again not someone in obvious financial need (a microbiologist and technician, in fact).

[This is the fundraiser of that lady, one of many genuinely struggling people ripped-off by “Jack Monroe” [https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/heather-booth-3?utm_term=Gde7678Nq].

Late tweets

Late music

Diary Blog, 4 January 2023

Afternoon music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Satie]
[Tangier in the rain]

On this day a year ago

Tweets seen

This savage and unforgiving conflict will probably see huge escalation in 2023, especially in view of the refusal of the Kiev side to negotiate even a ceasefire unless Russian forces withdraw from all areas of mainland Ukraine and Crimea.

The Kiev side probably hopes that Putin will be deposed, and the war thus (?) ended. It may not work out that way, even if Putin does leave the scene.

The “Jack Monroe” Twitterstorm (etc) continues

A not atypical “Jack Monroe” supporter tweets. “Screenwriter and novelist” (unpublished?), and of a certain age. I have yet to see a Twitter pro-“Jack Monroe” defender who is either “young” (under 30) or in any way “poor”.

I have covered the Monty Python-esque “Jack Monroe” “advice” previously, in several blog posts, so do not want to repeat it all today, but the sheer nonsense of it is incredible (e.g. make a dinner for 11p per head; e.g. open cans using a knife and a mallet or hammer; e.g. make a curry by mixing a tin of peaches and one of chickpeas with some curry powder, and heat in a microwave, etc).

The many tweets below are worth considering:

Very modest— I doubt that “Jack Monroe” is pulling in less than £6,000 a month from Patreon alone.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to support, with a one-off £5 or so, a genuinely-poor and struggling couple, that lady (“@frugally-minded”) has a crowdfunder: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/heather-booth-3?utm_term=Gde7678Nq.

Having been “down there” in the pit of actual poverty a few times in my life (thankfully never for longer than a few months at a time), I am well-qualified to advise people how to really survive and even somewhat thrive in such circumstances, but I prefer not to publish openly my very valuable and learned/experienced advice. ‘Nuff said!

I notice that the number of “mugs” sending “Jack Monroe” between £3.50 and £44 each month via Patreon has now fallen to 623, as of time of writing; that’s about 25 fewer than yesterday. 25 mugs woke up (at last).

Stray idea

If you take as a notional starting-point the idea that there are about 40 million people of or over the age of 21 in the UK, and if you consider that the UK has an area of about 92,000 sq. miles, which is about 60 million acres, then that works out at, very roughly, 1.5 acres per person.

Now let us assume that the State took ownership over about 4%-5% of that land, in other words less than a tenth of an acre per person, allotted to any applicant such a plot, and let such people use the land allotted to them in a manner akin to an “allotment” (or, if they want, to do nothing with “their” land, which would help wildlife at least). It might have a huge effect, as well as helping poor people to feed themselves.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden.

The details might need refining, and the concept would need organization, but I think that the basic idea would work.

Incidentally, if any object that the idea involves “expropriation”, I reply that that is so, but it would merely redress a small part of the balance from the time of the “Enclosures” of common land, and/or the “Highland Clearances”. The aim is, however, not backward-looking “revenge” but forward-looking policy.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11597803/Santander-major-bank-UK-hire-graduates-class-degree.html

Santander is changing its degree requirements in an attempt to increase socioeconomic diversity in the workplace.

The bank will no longer require a 2:1 degree for graduates as recruiters try to find the ‘best candidates from a wide range of backgrounds’ – meaning those with third class degrees will now be able to apply.

[Daily Mail].

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11598345/Terrifying-moment-hundreds-men-swarm-girl-17-dressing-immodestly-Iraq.html

These are the type of backward bastards flooding into the UK with the acquiescence and/or connivance of the (((occupied))) “British” Government.

Maybe Santander will offer some of them a job.

More tweets

Ha. Not the only time the egregious and self-publicizing Jewish lawyer, Mark Lewis (now an Israeli resident and citizen), gave what at least some of his clients (as reported on Twitter and in the Press, and seen by me) regarded as duff advice.

I blogged about Mark Lewis, several times, years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/11/update-re-mark-lewis-lawyer-questions-are-raised/

The Anti-national Covid Service. How sick, that untermenschen of his sort taint the work of very many good people in what is left of the NHS.

Twitter, home of the nut

Today’s total nut on Twitter is…”Ninawildflower”

Incredibly, seems that that Twitter account is not a parody-account.

…and any parent who (as that one claims) forces his child to be the only one in his school to wear a facemask is not only stupid but cruel and/or crazy, and should face some kind of intervention by the school or others.

More tweets

That has been my impression. Apart from which, this whole idea that “poor people” —or others— need books of recipes is rather odd in the age of the Internet, when thousands of recipes of all types can be accessed in seconds and without payment.

I see from Twitter that, in face of the continuing and indeed increasing Twitterstorm, “Jack Monroe” has, once more, tried two of her favourite tactics— feigning illness, and withdrawing from Twitter interaction until the hue and cry dies down. She has done that (combination) frequently before, the last time only a few weeks ago. She always returns quite swiftly, ready to ignore the many cries of “will you refund the money you took?“.

Cookery books are bestsellers, quite often, but I wonder how many people (I presume mainly women) buy them but then never actually use them to make things? Not a rhetorical question. I actually do not know.

I do recall seeing, as a child of 10 (in 1967), several massive coffee-table-size books in the kitchen of my aunt-by-marriage, in Mosman, Sydney. I still recall the title of one: Larousse Gastronomique [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larousse_Gastronomique]. A huge and thick hardback book.

I have no idea whether my uncle’s wife ever actually cooked anything. I certainly never saw her make anything there, and that kitchen was as pristine as the rest of her large house on the side of a bay (Middle Harbour). There again, she had a cleaning lady and no less than three Norwegian au pairs (there to “assist” with her two adopted children— a baby and a small child), so perhaps the lack of mess or detritus was not surprising.

There was in fact one time I when I saw the said relative make something; in a holiday beach house at Palm Beach (in the area now called the Northern Beaches, the very northmost part of the Sydney area, but it was not called that then). The food in question was lobster with home-made (I think) mayonnaise, the first time I had eaten either; consumed outside. I do not recall having either lobster or proper mayonnaise again until I was in my twenties.

See also: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Larousse-Gastronomique-Hamlyn/dp/0600620425.

Late tweets

Sunak is actually proud of having participated in the lockdown/shutdown of the “panicdemic”, and proud of having sprayed money around like a drunken sailor!

Meanwhile, sick people are not being adequately helped, migrant-invaders continue to be ferried across the Channel, many are suffering financially very much, and the UK’s environment is being degraded.

Late music

Diary Blog, New Year’s Day 2023, with more thoughts about Ukraine, and re. the continuing “Jack Monroe” storm

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Ukraine

We are constantly fed an NWO/ZOG msm narrative about how “Ukraine” (the Kiev regime) is “defeating Russia”. Is it true?

What would “Ukraine defeating Russia” look like, ultimately? Presumably, in that scenario, all Russian forces would be forced to leave behind not only the pre-2022 borders of Ukraine but also the Crimea, the population of which is at least 85% Russian and only a few percent Ukrainian now (there are also Crimean Tatars and others).

So, in that scenario, Russia would have been driven back into its own unargued territory, and kept there by Ukrainian/Kiev-regime military might. Is there any logic at all to that?

Russia is, of course, famously the largest country in the world, over six and a half million square miles, so about 72 times the size of the whole of the UK, and 29 times the size of Ukraine (even including Crimea and the Donbass). A country which covers one-eighth of the landmass of the entire planet.

Russia has a population of over 144 million (147 million if Crimea is included); Ukraine had 41 million people (excluding Crimea) in 2021, before the Russian invasion or incursion, but about 20% of the population of Ukraine (I suspect the relatively affluent layer) has fled beyond Ukraine, so the real population, at present, is perhaps 30 million.

Russia has, therefore, almost five times the population of Ukraine.

Russia’s economy may not be booming, now that Western (NWO/ZOG) sanctions have hit hard, but it is still functioning. Russia is getting huge amounts from oil and gas (and mineral) sales, and has, of course, no problem with generating electricity. Russia’s domestic agriculture has actually been stimulated by the Western sanctions which prohibit import and export.

Compare that to Ukraine— it has very limited sources of fuel of all kinds, its electricity generating and distribution capacity is being smashed, possibly beyond easy repair, its industry is scarcely operational, and its agriculture is unable to export easily.

Even before the invasion/incursion of 2022, Wikipedia noted that “Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe by nominal GDP per capita.”

The only material advantage that Ukraine has is that the Kiev regime is in receipt of enormous amounts of Western aid: arms, ammunition, military transport, food, clothing, medical supplies, and money.

There is no suggestion that Ukrainian forces can either invade or destroy Russian territory or cities. There can, likewise, be no suggestion that Ukrainian forces will actually topple Putin or the existing Russian Government (unless obliquely— e.g. should a coup d’etat take place).

The most that the Ukrainian forces can do, the peak of their realistic ambition, would be to expel all Russian forces from the pre-2014 Ukrainian borders, and then dig in, in effect.

Russia’s war aims have never been openly or clearly expressed in a manner that makes any sense, but part of them would be the necessity to demilitarize Ukraine, something that is now impossible without Russian control over the bulk of the territory, including Kiev.

Under other circumstances, Russia might now be sitting on the entire eastern half of Ukraine (ie Ukraine east of the Dnieper), but “we are where we are”, in the tiresome phrase.

As I predicted would happen on the blog months ago, Russian forces have recently been trying to think outside the box by applying “oblique warfare”, targeting the electricity production and generating system deep inside Ukraine, using missiles and drones.

While the Kiev-regime forces have supposedly been downing most of the attacking missiles, the ones that are getting through have been smashing the electrical system of Ukraine to pieces. What next? Possibly the railway network.

Russia is said to be mobilizing more troops, possibly with the idea of a mass assault on Kiev next summer.

Unless a peace treaty or armistice can be agreed and executed, the war can only escalate. However, Russia can only “win” this ghastly mess of a war by taking Kiev and toppling the present Kiev regime.

The “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” story rolls on

See also: https://tattle.life/wiki/jack-monroe/. Very eye-opening. One could even call it “devastating”.

Hard to see why anyone not very feeble-minded would send money to “Jack Monroe” after reading that Tattle Life exposé . Surprising, therefore, to see that no fewer than 647 utter mugs are still sending her £3.50-£44 monthly, a total of between £2,265 and £28,468, each and every month. “A nice little earner“, in the estuary argot, even if the actual total amount sent is nearer to —at a guess— maybe £6,000 or £7,000 a month rather than the maximum. Probably taxfree as well.

I have no idea whether the Essex Police, Metropolitan Police, trading standards officers, or fundraising regulators are “on the case” or not. If not, though, why not?

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/dec/31/mikhail-bulgakov-museum-kyiv-calls-to-close

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/30/gerry-adams-docklands-bombing-declassified-documents

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11588913/Rooms-honouring-Sir-Hubert-Parry-elite-Royal-College-Music-renamed.html

The composer of Jerusalem has been effectively ‘cancelled’ by the Royal College of Music (RCM) because his views on race a century ago are unacceptably offensive to today’s woke students, The Mail on Sunday understands.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Parry]

There will be a real race/culture/religion war somewhere down the line.

London. Zoo.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/31/man-stabbed-to-death-in-peckham-rye-park-south-london.

Peckham Rye Park, by Peckham Rye where William Blake supposedly saw an angel in a tree about 200 or so years ago [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peckham_Rye]

I have also been there (in the 1980s). Just as well that Blake and I do not walk around that part of London now; we might get stabbed by some untermensch, almost certainly non-white.

I recall having a beer at the Clock House pub once, in the late 1980s.

[The Clock House pub, Peckham Rye]

Tweets seen

Peter Hitchens’ column is worth publishing in full:

What a twisted society we have become. We stir up wars in other people’s countries and praise ourselves for doing it. 

But there is no political reward for protecting our own people against crime and disorder on their streets and in their homes. It is no longer clear if anyone is governing the country at all, so busy are we putting other nations to rights.

Burglaries go unprevented, uninvestigated and unpunished, in colossal numbers. Our capital city seethes with uncontrolled knife crime and stinks of marijuana.

Christmas brings news of terrible ultra-violent crimes in supposedly peaceful suburban areas. Migrants stride boldly ashore in unknown numbers. We pay heavy taxes for pitiful services, cratered roads and a health system that is the envy of nobody.

Yet, nothing happens about all this. The surest way to gain praise in politics is to make simple-minded statements about a crisis abroad and demand that we send bombs and shells to some strife-torn state, or actually bomb it ourselves.

The idea that such things are often complicated and dangerous, and may do harm, has faded from view. When Prime Minister Anthony Eden dragged us into his disastrous attack on Egypt in 1956, the entire country was bitterly divided. And rightly so. The archives, when they were opened, showed that the adventure was based on lies, futile and doomed.

When the USA sank up to its waist in the bloody mud of Vietnam in the 1960s, the whole world was at odds. Once again, now that the truth is revealed, we know that thousands of brave men died, and many more thousands of innocent civilians were killed, because of a mistake.

But since the Blair revolution of 1997, pious, allegedly virtuous foreign crusades have come back into fashion. Criticising them gets you into trouble. There is only one permitted view. Few go back to find out how things actually went.

The Kosovo episode, for instance, did not bring paradise to that part of the world. Nor did the Iraq invasion. I know most people now pretend to have been against it at the time but as one who actually was against it at the time, I can assure you that they are mistaken. It had wide support. The same goes for the daft adventures in Afghanistan and Libya.

In fact, the last three did so much harm that it will never be measured. Together they began the era of mass migration from the Middle East and Africa to Western Europe. This is probably the biggest event in human history since the First World War, and perhaps bigger.

How can we do all this stamping about in foreign countries when we are so bad at governing our own and also not very strong? Our country doesn’t work properly. You can’t even see a doctor. The police are equally invisible. Our Army is as tiny as our debts are huge. Our grandest new warship, the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, has broken down. Even when it works, we have to borrow aircraft from the Americans to fly off it.

None of this will be properly discussed at the rapidly approaching General Election and nobody will stand in that poll who prefers reforming Britain to foreign policy fantasy abroad. Why do we put up with it?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11588573/PETER-HITCHENS-stir-trouble-foreign-countries-run-own.html

My rhetorical answer to Hitchens’ rhetorical question? This:

“The British/English people do not rebel against all of the above, not yet anyway, because they are bombarded with propaganda brainwashing 24/7, because few have either the independence of thought, or the (real) education, to stand against the tide, and because the “plebs” think that all that matters, or that the main matter of importance, is whether the “England” sports teams (which are now largely black or brown anyway) win some meaningless game, match, or tournament somewhere or other in the world.”

That, and because those in political life, those of great wealth, those in the mainstream media, who should all be protecting the people, are exactly those who, from malice, evil, or just sheer inability and lack of basic competence (as with “Boris”-idiot, Liz Truss, Woollyhead Trussbanger —Kwasi Kwarteng— etc), are encouraging migration-invasion of this country, are letting standards and services slide, and are preventing —by ever more repressive laws— even obviously justified criticism from being made. They are, in effect, signed up to the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.”

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

http://adam.curry.com/art/1543753587_mkXBrvrY.html

[the odd link immediately above now seems to be the only one for the interesting Western Spring article].

Incidentally, I see that the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday is now, yet again, refusing to allow its readers to comment on Hitchens’ column, no doubt afraid that the readers will leave comments hostile to mass immigration, migration-invasion, “intervention” in foreign wars or countries, or even (could it be?) comments hostile to the Zelensky Jew-Zionist regime in Kiev…

More tweets seen

More music

[Warwick Castle]

More tweets

Ha ha! Brilliant! Goed gedaan!

Interesting. I only saw that tweet today.

There are also other areas of society where there is a need for equity and justice.

Undeclared social nationalists in the right places, e.g. within the legal or “justice” system, could do a lot of good.

Late music

Diary Blog, 30 December 2022

Morning music

[aerial shot of ruined Warsaw, 1940s]

On this day a year ago

A cautionary tale about electric cars

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11583677/Why-Britains-electric-dream-driving-distraction-One-motorist-reveals-how.html

Amusing to see affluent idiots like that porcine woman journalist (I remember seeing her commentating on TV years ago— she was constantly pumping out pseudo-“Conservative” and/or “austerity” propaganda during the David Cameron-Levita years) suffering a little by reason of her own virtue-signalling and/or lack of thought or preparation. England has too many of such silver-spoon scribblers. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Mills_(journalist).

The readers’ comments appended to that Daily Mail story are telling.

Another idiot

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11584095/Man-stashed-17-700-chimney-cash-burned-ashes-wife-lit-fire.html

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11584103/More-misery-motorists-spending-filling-car-wrecking-potholes-roads-slashed.html

£400M slashed from road repair budget” yet billions wasted on the regime of the Jew Zelensky, and so also on prolonging the war in Ukraine. Mad, but also stupid— our roads need repair. It is not a minor matter, but one that affects tens of millions of British people.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/dec/03/why-inheritance-is-the-dirty-secret-of-the-middle-classes-harder-to-talk-about-than-sex

Very true. I raised the issue repeatedly when I had a Twitter account (before the Jew-Zionist lobby conspired to have me expelled in 2018); I believe I have blogged about it as well.

In socialist Poland in the 1980s, which I visited a few times, the population was divided, not only by those pro or anti the socialist government, but also, and in more immediately-practical ways, by those who had access to hard currency (mainly U.S. dollars, but also Deutschmarks etc) as against those who did not. Even a few dollars regularly made the difference between having the means to live semi-decently, as against having to struggle.

That’s the divide in the UK now, but with inheritance as the touchstone.

Ukraine

As can be seen from that map, the front is now essentially frozen, indeed literally, despite recent relatively minor advances by the forces of the Kiev regime.

What is more important is not shown on the map.

20% of the pre-2022 population of Ukraine is now living beyond the pre-2022 borders— in eastern, western and central Europe, and in Russia itself.

Ukraine now has a mainly non-functioning electricity-generating and distribution network.

Gas supplies, formerly supplied from Russia, have been halted.

Industry is mostly not in operation.

Agriculture, though continuing, cannot export most of its production.

The Kiev regime only fights on because it has become a complete NATO (NWO/ZOG) proxy, fuelled by shipments of arms, ammunition, petrol/diesel, medical supplies, clothing, other equipment and, of course, money, in vast amounts.

On the Russian side, the problems are different: indifferent military leadership, apparently-poor officership at all levels, low morale among troops, and apparent uncertainty within the high political leadership. Above all, no clear and expressed strategy in relation to ultimate war aims and how to achieve them.

In terms of presenting itself to the peoples of the West via public relations or propaganda, the Kiev regime has “played a blinder” from the start, meaning early 2022; the Russian effort in public relations has been wooden and ineffective by comparison.

NHS

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64038636

A care agency boss has described the NHS as “a joke” after a disabled man was forced to wait for 48 hours in A&E.

One of David Williams’ clients, who has severe epilepsy, had been taken to the Grange Hospital near Cwmbran, Torfaen, complaining of chest pain.

Mr Williams said he had to wait in a chair with no food for 36 hours.

Aneurin Bevan health board said delayed hospital discharges and winter viruses had led to longer waits at A&E.

Mr Williams, the responsible individual and director of Prestige Care Agency Services, said the NHS was a “failed system”.”

[BBC Wales]

I don’t think it was any fault of the hospital, I think it’s a fault with the system.”

He added: “There’s a fear of destroying the myth that the NHS is fantastic and the best in the world… I think it needs a fundamental shake up.”

It does.

Tweets seen

The “safety first” mob have totally taken over, but not today or yesterday; years ago. Example: the hysterical tightening of laws by both Major and Blair, with the aim of all but removing firearm weapons from members of the public. Why? Because (in the whole of history in the UK) there were TWO gun massacres (Hungerford 1987, and Dunblane 1996), though in fact since the “gun laws” were tightened (and almost all privately-held handguns confiscated) there has been another such “spree killing”— in Cumbria in 2010.

1. “Dr” Louise Raw is far from being the brightest tool in the box, despite her supposed doctorate (said to be a Ph.D. based on one particular strike in London in 1888); 2. it raises the Twitter profile of Ms. Raw (and to her that is apparently important); 3. under GoFundMe rules, she can use any monies donated any way she wants, for political or even personal purposes, and the donor mugs will have no say in that.

Incidentally, Meghan Mulatta is not “black” but a half-caste (or “mixed race”, if you prefer). You don’t have to take it from me— look at the words of the Mulatta herself:

She identifies as mixed race, often answering questions about her background with “My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I’m half black and half white.””

[Meghan Markle, Elle magazine interview, cited in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan,_Duchess_of_Sussex#Early_life_and_education].

Late tweets

At times over the past months, since I really began to look at her activity, I have thought that “Jack Monroe”, “Bootstrap Cook”, tries to “push the envelope” of outright fantasy/lies out of pure devilment, as if to say “I wonder how far I can go before those mugs twig?“, as with her Grenfell Tower “firefighter” fantasy (she did once, long before Grenfell, answer the telephones in some fire call centre, but in Essex, not London); then there was her “I am so poor that I have to boil soap to make shower gel” etc, followed by the implied subtext, “please send me —and my disabled child— money“.

Incredibly, as of time of writing, no less than 647 utter mugs are sending the “Bootstrap Cook” between £3.50 and £44 each and every month via the Patreon website. Thousands of pounds each month. In fact, 647 is an increase of 4 since yesterday; amazing when you know how “Jack Monroe” has been forensically exposed for months on Twitter.

Reading a few tweets, one realizes how dim many of the “Jack Monroe” supporters are. Interesting demographically, though. Few young people, and few of any age who are —in any sense— “poor”.

Christmas University Challenge

Once again a match between two teams of alumni (Balliol v. Hull). I thought semi-final, but I now see on Twitter that it was the final.

The winning team, Balliol, was this time no worse than me, though I should say no better. Overall, I think that I still got more than both teams together. I did OK, I think, if I myself say so; after all, there are 8 of them playing.

Late music