Well, here we are on the evening of St. George’s Day, scarcely an auspicious day this year, with the compliant rabbit-pleb population begging to be kept in “lockdown” for “as long as it takes”, meaning until Coronavirus is no more. They can then (in a year or so) emerge from their dwellings to contemplate the complete destruction of the UK’s economy and society.
Actually, the above is somewhat hyperbolic. For one thing, at least as far as where I am situated is concerned, there was no visible or audible State-mandated clapathon this evening. Yay! Not a single “locked-down” serf-citizen (in my area) appeared to clap, bang, set off fireworks or virtue-signal. So that’s one dead propaganda campaign (I hope)…
Secondly, people are starting to revolt, gradually, against the wrongheaded and tyrannical “lockdown” nonsense.
It’s a very British revolt. For one thing, very slow! All the same, in a typically Brit “yes, repeat no” way, people are starting to ignore the “lockdown”. There would be a great deal more of this quiet revolt were shops open. As it is, there is nowhere much to go anyway. However, there are still parks, beaches, national parks, lakes (those not yet poisoned by Derbyshire police woodentops) etc.
The msm continues to parrot System propaganda, though. Look, below, at the Daily Mail today, calling people “covidiots” simply because they decided to walk in a park, sunbathe alone in a park or on a beach, drive around for a change of view and air, all activities which do not spread the Chinese virus; neither do any of these people have any chance of getting the virus from their walking, sunbathing or driving.
Not that that stops Twitter’s “me-too” online mob of serfs and virtue-signallers from attacking these innocent people and their harmless behaviours. As for the toytown police that now infest the country, they love lecturing decent citizens doing completely harmless activities.
“Despite government pleas and warnings of strong fines from police for breaching lockdown rules, beaches were packed up and down the country, with covidiots sunbathing and enjoying the high temperatures.” [Daily Mail]
[above: police idiots “move on” a harmless elderly/middleaged couple sitting having a drink from a Thermos flask. Why? Why?]
“In Edinburgh, a couple were moved on by police after they were spotted enjoying some tea on a park bench.” [Daily Mail]. Again, why? It is senseless, quite senseless.
[above: it pleases Daily Mail scribblers Danny Hussain and Jordan King to call this harmless young woman, sunbathing in her sky-blue bikini at Highgate, a “covidiot”… Why? She is not spreading the bloody virus; she is not in danger of infection, and even if she did get it, she is young enough to have, probably, few if any symptoms. Oh, and the Daily Mail “newspaper” scribblers might care to note that sunbathing is not unlawful anyway, whatever little Matt Hancock might like to pretend]
[above: another young woman, alone in the sun on Primrose Hill. Harmless. Why call people like her “covidiots”? So that the Twitterati and other online mobs, ignorant and brainwashed, can chuck virtual rotten tomato at her?]
[above: further misuse of police resources and unnecessary intrusion into the lives of citizens: the motorist was bored and decided to drive around Cornwall. So? Mind your own business, Plod!].
“Devon and Cornwall Police said today they have carried out over 200 stops in the Penzance area alone in the past week. A driver pulled over for going on a 70-mile tour of Cornwall’s roads said ‘No reason for doing it really – I was just bored.’ It is the latest sign of the country getting back to normal life – despite ongoing lockdown rules.” [Daily Mail]
[above: customers crowding together at a large takeaway food outlet in Edinburgh. This is within the “rules” as laid down! It’s all a nonsense!]
[above: the Central Line in East London. All within the “rules”, yet a wonderful incubator for bacteria and also viruses]…
According to the Daily Mail, people can now be fined if “caught” sunbathing in public, but not if exercizing in public, despite the fact that the latter is far more likely to lead to random infection! It’s all just nonsense! That’s assuming that the Daily Mail has the law right, which I doubt (I speak of the law, not whatever little Matt Hancock tries to pretend is the law).
Twitter full tonight of idiots engaged in the State Clapathon. Go away…thankfully, few if any around here. Once again, one sees that Twitter is the home of the natural serfs and virtue-signallers. Most unable to think for themselves.
Not that I do not appreciate the doctors, nurses and other staff in the NHS. Most are great. However, State-encouraged mass signalling is not to be pandered to. It also tends to kill thought (and dissent) about this whole Coronavirus thing and the government policy of putting the population under pointless house arrest.
Also, the NHS is badly-administered, to an almost absurd extent, and that is apart from any funding questions. “Clapping for NHS” tends to says “there are no serious problems in the NHS”. Again, this clapping coercion tends to kill thought and dissent.
An exception, as previously noted, has been Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah on Twitter):
Crises such as the present one are for political leaders or at least pretend leaders to run with, not advisers, however supposedly eminent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Whitty
Advisers such as this Whitty character need to be put back in their box. It is always dangerous to, in effect, give power to such people.
I like this (from @TonyGreyMan)…
Tyranny has arrived. Only the sovereign people can save us now. However, the English being a martial race only await their chieftain to emerge.
I think this is very likely. New data showing actual deaths peaked on April 8th tends to support this, also suggests shutdown probably not responsible for declining death rate,as doesn’t fit with incubation period. https://t.co/oePoWPA6j5
I am sorry this has happened to you but it is becoming a very common experience. When will people wake up and realise this isn’t just a long holiday? They’re stealing our standard of living. And for what? https://t.co/plRik6skWA
Not that most Twitter virtue-signallers care much (yet) about the economy collapsing. Most of that section of the Twitterati are public service people (NHS, police, fire brigade, local council staff, other public sector staff) who assume (wrongly) that their pay, conditions and employment are outside the wider “marketplace”, or they are people not working anyway (either retired or otherwise “economically inactive”). Then there are the BBC and other msm drones, entertainers etc, as well as the online soi-disant “film critics”, “writers” (who have written one or two sunk-without-trace books in the past 5+ years), “journalists” etc (untrained and on tiny online “newspapers”; see also “Mike Stuchbery”), people who talk on BBC local radio once or twice a month etc etc and put themselves forward as “academics”, “historians” etc, on the strength of a pathetic doctorate from some multikulti degree mill.
Finally managed to watch this https://t.co/rphL4qa4Wo astonishing interview with Swedish epidemiologist Johan Giesecke, an expert on viruses if ever there was one. Interviewer Freddie Sayers is perpetually astonished, as this sort of calm sense is virtually unknown in the UK.
Here is what the government's policy is costing: https://t.co/irhpjrgNzR . THus means lost lives, ruined health, wrecked education, poorer public health and housing, for years to come.
When I lived in Little Venice, on and off until 24 years ago, there was a large houseboat, where Branson was said to have lived once. Beyond Blomfield Road.
[above: Branson’s former boat at Little Venice, or one very similar; I think the same]
I was told that that he owned a house right by where that houseboat was berthed.
[above: the Regent’s Canal at Little Venice, not far from where I once lived; also not very far from where the previous photo was taken]
Virgin Australia, and other Branson-founded businesses, are also said to be teetering on the edge of insolvency.
I have no particular animus against Branson. He certainly seems no worse than other big businessmen, and in some ways seems better than others in the public eye. His courage cannot be questioned, after his ballooning exploits, and he is certainly willing to try new things in business. I do not particularly like some of his socio-political attitudes, and he is obviously mainly interested in making as much money as possible; that is, however, scarcely unusual in the business world.
At one time, 1989-1993, I was a fairly regular flyer on Virgin Atlantic, flying from the UK to Newark Airport in New Jersey. Not bad (for an Economy ticket), and more convenient for me than Kennedy Airport (which I also used, when other airlines had cheap tickets), because I then lived in Middlesex County, New Jersey, about half an hour by car from Newark Airport. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex_County,_New_Jersey
I was rather surprised to see that Branson’s enterprises employ as many as 70,000 people all over the world. I do not know how many of those are in the UK.
I do not see why the UK Government should give his airline £500M, even as a loan. Airlines are going to be a drug on the market (almost worthless) for some time into the future. Any loan to Virgin Atlantic would probably be money thrown away. Admittedly, that is true of most of the money now being pumped out by the present government of fools, but why add more? Also, it seems that Branson himself has not paid tax in the UK for 14 years. Not exactly an incentive for a government looking at public reaction.
Coronavirus: an interesting view from Israel
“A similar pattern – rapid increase in infections to a peak in the sixth week, and decline from the eighth week – is common everywhere, regardless of response policies“
That would be more or less forever. I don't think people will put up with that. The government needs to understand that there is a limit on how long it can impose severe restrictions on personal freedom and normal economic activity. https://t.co/bJjRreGiyP
I understand the government cannot admit its mistake or immediately end the throttling of the economy and the stifling of personal liberty. But nor can it drift vaguely onwards, offering no hope of an end. There is a limit to how long people will put up with such things.
Hitchens has come to the same or a similar view to my own: this government of incompetents, advised by complete idiots, is starting to understand what it has done, i.e. pretty much killed, already, the UK’s economy (not to mention civil rights and the proper rule of law) but cannot, politically, simply whine that it got it wrong.
So comes the idea that there has to be an “exit strategy“, rather than the UK just resuming what is left of normal life overnight (by far the best idea). The Government (from its own standpoint) needs to pretend to be authoritative, in charge (and not, well, a bunch of idiotic mediocrities advised by similar ones).
Maybe so. I don't in any way suggest Sweden is a perfect nation. There is no such place. But I think its Covid-19 policy is better suited to a mature, free, law-governed nation than the schemes adopted here by Al Johnson and his committee of mediocrities. https://t.co/dQSNuuCOhy
I can think of several sane reasons for not doing such a thing, one of them being that it will soon be forced on us by the same people who accidentally wrecked the economy and left civil liberty lying unconscious on the ground. https://t.co/11DqwcMenq
I can think of one reason why a citizen (though perhaps not a very good citizen) might wear a surgical mask if required by the cretinous “authorities” of this poor country: it would be an excellent way in which those who commit crimes could stay undetected. I do not say that criminals, from shoplifters to bank robbers, will not still be detected and arrested (though, I hazard, in fewer numbers), but it will be harder for the prosecutors to get convictions in situations where not only have the accused allegedly been wearing masks but also where all other people at the alleged locus or loci were wearing similar masks! Eyewitness and cctv evidence will be almost worthless.
Below, Peter Hitchens teaches a little logic and commonsense to a lady evidently devoid of both:
Where did you read that and on what research was it based and how much protection did it say it gives? Locking yourself in the bathroom for the rest of your life would also stop you spreading the virus, but one must ask what the proportionality of such an action would be. https://t.co/VOZiybfYKu
I can't quite work this into a coherent thought, but Richard Branson pleading for state subsidies, the same Richard Branson who sued the NHS in 2016, right now, as people are being encouraged to donate to the NHS as if it were a charity and not a state health service, is… wild.
Not sure that I agree entirely with the last tweet, above. If Branson were to be allowed financial assistance for his companies in return for stumping up some sum in lieu of taxes previously avoided, it would be analogous to an individual not paying, say, car insurance and then, after an accident, being allowed to pay some money and then be treated as if he had paid previously.
Branson is a union buster. He’s paid no personal income tax to exchequer since moving to the Virgin Islands 14yrs ago. He sued the NHS. Virgin Healthcare paid 0 corporation tax while being handed £2bn worth of NHS & local authority deals. He deserves 0 sympathy. He’s a parasite. https://t.co/zPOY6t9cEs
Very interesting analysis of virus panic by Australian TV commentator Andrew Bolt. Brief, carefully-argued, powerful (and as far as I know, no equivalent in the UK) https://t.co/MjTSoMak3p
Why can't the government admit its mistake and immediately end the throttling of the economy and the stifling of personal liberty? Pride? Stupidity? Please enlighten us @ClarkeMicah
My latest conversation with Mike Graham of TalkRadio on the Covid-19 crisis : the damage to the police from this episode is irrevocable. https://t.co/R1emla9AAr
Yes, if the speaker or interviewee is a dissident (I mean a real dissident, not a faux-“revolutionary” joke like Owen Jones or Ash Sarkar), a radio or TV station faces “sanctions” (i.e. punishment for not self-censoring), or may even be shut down.
Did you really believe that we live in a (mythical) “free country”?
More Coronavirus nonsense exploded…
“The UK has today announced 449 more coronavirus deaths – the fewest for a fortnight – taking Britain’s total death toll to 16,509.
England declared 429 deaths and a further 20 were confirmed across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And 4,676 more people have tested positive for the virus, taking the total number of patients to 124,743.
The day’s death toll is a fall on the 596 fatalities announced yesterday, Sunday, and half as many as the day before that (888). It is the lowest number for a fortnight, since April 6 when 439 victims were confirmed.
Although the statistics are known to drop after a weekend, the sharp fall adds to evidence that the peak of the UK’s epidemic has blown over.” [Daily Mail]
“It comes as a leading expert at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.
Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6’6″) away from others.” [Daily Mail]
Looks like I was right…all the way along, in fact…
The government of fools
As I blogged before, it is clear the pack of mediocrities and idiots now in government are afraid to take the decision to end the toytown police state called UK “lockdown”. They are avoiding having to take responsibility. The same is true of Boris-idiot, who (surely obviously now?) is hiding out at Chequers until the “crisis” he himself has partly manufactured is over or seen to be almost over. He can then reappear as clown “conquering hero”…
Unexpected? Maybe not
Britain was [X] to vote to leave the European Union:
Looks as if people are now unsure (at least more of them than previously) as to whether the EU was a “good thing” for the UK. Hard to say. Presumably, 13% are “Don’t Knows” or similar. On the other hand, in the actual EU Referendum of 2016, while there was just the binary choice to Leave or Remain, 27.8% failed to vote. Were they “Don’t Knows”?
Is anyone listening out there?
UK announces 449 more coronavirus deaths – the fewest for a fortnight as leading expert argues Britain's crisis peaked BEFORE lockdown and claims fatality rate could be as low as 0.1% You don't say https://t.co/w0oMiJmvKD
https://t.co/812hTfz5SX Carl Heneghan at Oxford has called for liberation of the people asap
— Alexei Romanov #NotABot – In a Castle on a Cloud (@AlexeiRomanov13) April 20, 2020
The question as always is whether the result is proportionate to the action. If you wore a goldfish bowl over your head at all times @_rp_77 , I am sure a lot of people would benefit. But is that a good enough reason for you to be made to do so? I think not. https://t.co/GkjaFiSRDp
@notacunnigplan, I’m not a Tory or a contrarian. I disagree with innocent people being treated like convicted prisoners because I was brought up in a free country,not out of ideology or a futile desire to make mischief. I disagree with needless economic ruin because it is stupid. https://t.co/VeZThbbMyX
Urgent question now is not rows over who messed up over the virus in the past. It is that people can't be expected to put up with this level of restriction & this amount of economic damage, indefinitely & without hope of an end. There's a limit. Drift will bring us to that limit.
Very interesting analysis of virus panic by Australian TV commentator Andrew Bolt. Brief, carefully-argued, powerful (and as far as I know, no equivalent in the UK) https://t.co/MjTSoMak3p
People may ask of me, “if you think that the government-mandated lockdown is a poorly-conceived and petty-tyrannical measure, and likely to half-wipe out the UK economy as well, why do you yourself obey it?”
My reply? “I am broadly going along with the lockdown nonsense because:
I find talking with (let alone being lectured by) the police (most of whom are poorly educated and as thick as two short planks) a bore, so I want to minimize the chance of being stopped on the local roads (mainly semi-rural or rural) around here, or on visits to the nearby small local town;
Almost nothing is open anyway, and I am not a partygoer, public (or private) sunbather, team sports enthusiast or general rambler on foot (these days).
On that basis, I may as well only make occasional shopping forays.”
I happened to see the second tweet below, the one showcasing an opinion poll from November 1947:
Nov 1947: “Comparing the present with your situation just before the war, in 1939, which would you choose, if you had to make a choice?” Present 31%, Pre-war 62%, No opinion 7%
You see, here we are 73 years later, and the Jewish lobby with the compliant msm are constantly putting forward the idea that the 1930s were backward, poor, basically terrible, but that “the war” changed all that. In reality, the latter part of the 1930s was a time of general economic and social advance.
Looking mainly at the UK, the second part of the 1930s was a time when, at least in the South and Midlands, there were job opportunities, new towns and roads being constructed, air routes being laid out, both across Europe and, via Imperial Airways etc, worldwide, using safe and comfortable flying boats.
Across the South of England, people were moving into the detached and semi-detached suburban housing still considered desirable property today, 80-90 years later.
More than that. Advanced thinkers were already laying the intellectual foundations for the Welfare State: decent public housing, a National Health Service etc.
Then came the war. It has been said that, under strict WW2 rationing, perhaps as much as a quarter of the UK population was actually better-fed than it had been in the 1930s, an indication of the social inequality rampant before the war. However, in general, the war impoverished the whole nation (how could it not?). Britain suffered under rationing of various types until the mid-1950s! There is no doubt that poverty and indeed inequality would overall have been ameliorated quicker had the war not “frozen” the social situation.
Before 1939, Britain was taking steps to grant independence to the colonies. The White colonies had already achieved Dominion status. The colonies of black Africa and elsewhere might have been given independence later but on a more secure basis, after sufficient Africans (etc) had achieved the stature capable of running advanced societies and economies. Sadly, that never happened.
“The War”, as UK people still call WW2, was disastrous for most of the peoples, animals, birds etc of the world. Environmental degradation today continues apace, a result, ultimately, of the corruption and inefficiency of the “independent” states formed after WW2.
The peoples of the former colonies have suffered wars, civil wars, banditry, rapacious officialdom, you name it. All because of premature decolonization. Not only in the former British Empire, which attained its greatest territorial extent after the First World War, in 1918. About a third of the world was under British control at that time. Also, there were the colonies of the other European states in Africa and elsewhere, those of France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and the former German colonies (South West Africa, Tanganyika).
How much better a world would we now have were those formerly colonized lands still under European rule, or ruled in collaboration with a large enough and cultured enough African elite built up by the colonial powers over time …Look at Rhodesia up to 1979, and then its decrepit successor-state, Zimbabwe…
This is not just a question for the UK. It is a problem, historical and contemporary, for the world.
In Europe, the UK (and France) might have not given the Poles the worthless “guarantees” of 1939, which led the Poles to imagine that Britain and France would actually fight for Poland. Never happened.
Likewise, after the Fall of France in 1940, Britain might have secured an honourable armistice with the German Reich, so saving the peoples of Western and Central Europe from the massive destruction caused, mainly, by the Allied and Soviet forces during, again mainly, 1941-45. It would also have meant no Soviet takeover of the East and most of the Centre of Europe by Stalin’s Soviet Union in the mid-1940s.
We hear much (much too much) of the Jews, who were, prior to WW2, being allowed to emigrate from Germany and its allied or vassal states. Indeed, the Germans were glad to be rid of them. Well, had there been an armistice in 1940, that emigration would have continued: to the USA, Australia, Palestine etc.
Terrorism after WW2 was a product of the terrorists or “guerrillas” during that war, both those trained and funded by the shambolic British organization, SOE, and by the Soviet Union (the “partisans”). Most postwar “terrorism” from 1945 through to recent times can be traced back readily enough to British, American and Soviet sources.
Had “the War” (in the West) never happened, or been stopped in its tracks in 1940, the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed by 1942, there would have been no massive destruction by Soviet forces (or by the UK/USA air fleets) in the Europe of 1941-45, no Cold War, no Berlin Wall, no East-West proxy wars. The Israeli state and the arrogant Arab and Iranian oil states would have all either been strangled at birth, or kept on a tight rein.
In Britain itself, the neglected historian Correlli Barnett [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlli_Barnett] has made the point that, because of Britain’s having been bled dry by the War, it could not do more than one, or at most two, of its three main policy aims after 1945:
keep the Empire;
regenerate UK industry and commerce;
introduce a Welfare state.
In the end, Britain tried to do all three, but could not fully succeed in any, eventually almost abandoning the Empire and its remnants.
If only there had been no “War”, or a war lasting only a year…
Listening to Radio 4 Today Programme, as I write. An elderly lady was called by her GP and more or less forced to agree to forgo treatment if she became unwell by reason of bloody Coronavirus! So much for the NHS! All the rabbits “clapping for the NHS” are zombies as far as I am concerned. Yes, the NHS is a very good idea, yes many of the staff —not all— are also very good, but the NHS is not only underfunded but maladministered, and seems to have the corporate attitude “like it or lump it”.
We (i.e. as a society) have had to accept (though many prefer their illusions) that the NHS is actually not better than the health services available to people in most other European countries…Indeed, it is often nowhere near as good.
What is happening in the UK is that all of our cherished illusions about our own society are being tested to destruction. Bluntly, the NHS is letting people suffering from anything other than Coronavirus die, while prioritizing (some of…) those suffering from the virus, which people however cannot actually be cured or even treated (except by administration of oxygen or air).
Other institutions in the UK have also been found wanting. The police, in particular. We have had Derbyshire police using drones, spying on elderly fell walkers and then “shaming” them on Twitter. We have had the police of various forces, including Devon and Cornwall, setting up road blocks to snoop on whether the journeys of motorists are “necessary”. We have even had one particular “muppet”, the Chief Constable of Northamptonshire, saying that his “officers” (police woodentops) may start to rummage through the shopping trolleys of people leaving supermarkets to “check” whether this or that item bought is “essential”! This is not only the behaviour of a police state, but of one that has lost its mind! A Toytown police state and a poundland KGB.
“In the South West, Chief Superintendent Ian Drummond-Smith, police commander for Cornwall, warned non-residents to stay away from the area.
He said: ‘Our officers will be patrolling this weekend, firstly on the M5 and A30 in an attempt to prevent visitors from entering the force area, and then locally to enforce the restrictions.
‘We will do so in a fair and balanced manner, but travelling down to the West Country is a serious breach of these restrictions and those doing so can expect to receive a fine.‘”
[Daily Mail]
So how long before we need “internal passports”, in the manner of the Soviet Union?
The police are now making up the law, making up their own powers, as they go along. Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court justice, has now remarked about this unlawful arrogation of power by the police.
I was talking a few days ago to a lady of my acquaintance, aged about 90. She likes to drive her little car to a coastal car park, usually (on weekdays) containing about 3 cars, elderly couples sitting in them and gazing at the view, or strolling on the grassy clifftop. Well, now the local council has taped off that car park, and the police have put some kind of stupid “Stay at home, Protect the NHS” bs notice there. Does that in any way stop the spread or supposed spread of the virus? No. So why do it? Petty jobsworth zombie behaviour.
Other long-cherished British illusions have also been cruelly exposed as illusory or exagerrated. One is that the UK is “a society under law”. Courts are either closed or operating as “virtual” courts, in which the justice available is also often “virtual”, meaning more apparent than real. Some district judges (paid magistrates) have been behaving like poundland Judge Jeffreys clones.
Government too. It seems like they too are making it up as they go along. Floundering idiots posing as “statesmen”
There’s a massive scare campaign going on. I myself thought, at first, that Coronavirus was a huge threat to Europe and the world. I have been on a journey (one which most, it seems, have yet to make). I now have a very different view.
Let us look at the deaths from Coronavirus in the UK: so far, about 8,000. That is out of about 70 million inhabitants. In other words, about one person out of every nine thousand, so far.
Coronavirus does not affect all people equally, despite what the government is saying in what amounts to a propaganda campaign. In the 1980s, when AIDS first emerged, the System claimed that it, too, was a threat to “everyone”, when in fact HIV/AIDS was almost entirely confined to a few groups: gays engaging in anal sex, sub-Saharan Africans, persons given contaminated blood, to a lesser extent other blacks and browns. It was thought impolitic to speak the truth, that heterosexual European (white) people, especially persons of Northern European race/ethnicity, were almost certainly not going to get HIV/AIDS no matter what they did in bed or elsewhere (so long as they avoided the groups already mentioned).
At this time of year, in the UK, about 10,000-11,000 people die every week as a norm. Coronavirus has increased that by about 500. In other words the increase, i.e. increase on the norm for this month’s average over the past 5 years, has been —is— about 5%.
The Today Programme had some “expert” on, talking about the “risk” to certain age groups. However, that was the risk of being infected, not the risk of serious illness, let alone death. Most people infected with Coronavirus are unaware of being infected with anything, or have mild symptoms commonly also suffered via other conditions, or have distinct symptoms but recover after a week or two without any medical intervention at all.
At present the risk of being killed in the UK by (or with…) Coronavirus is about 1 in 9,000. For anyone under 70, bar a relative few with particular and serious pre-existing health conditions, the real risk is nearer to 1 in 40,000, if that. For those under 40, the risk of death is vanishingly small. For anyone under 20, we are talking about one chance in a million, or several million. Lightning-strike territory.
Incidentally, the Radio 4 Today Programme bimbo who did its superficial little piece about Oberammergau this morning made a few schoolgirl errors:
While the “Black Death” was a form of Plague, and basically bubonic plague [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death], it was current in the mid-14th Century, peaking around 1347-1351;
the Oberammergau Passion Play dates from an outbreak of plague in Bavaria in 1634 and was not, as such, the “Black Death”. Also,
contrary to what the Today Programme bimbo said (and so thinks), 1634 was not in the “mediaeval” period!
The international Jew lobby forced the people of Oberammergau (I think around 1990) to take out from the Passion Play the bit of the Gospel text where the Jews choose the robber zealot Barabbas to be granted clemency (instead of Jesus Christ), they then crying out to Pontius Pilate, “let His Blood be on us and upon our children!”
[above: Adolf Hitler says hello to a couple of local young children at Oberammergau, in 1934]
“Lockdown”?
Look at this graph:
The West has shut down its economy to try to flatten the curve, but it is arguable what effect this has had on the medical or health situation. The effect on the economic situation, however, is more easily determined. Dire…
As can be seen, the UK will be one of the hardest-hit economies, down by about 27%. Interestingly, Germany is forecast to do even worse. Our time is coming. We’re back!
In fact, even the medical or public health questions are not straightforward:
PLEASE, When studying figures of Covid-19 deaths, PLEASE note words of Deputy CMO Jenny Harries at govT briefing 5th April (11 mins 16 secs) 'for the UK these are Covid ASSOCIATED deaths, they are all sad events, THEY WOULD NOT ALL BE A DEATH AS A *RESULT* OF COVID (my emphases.
@ClarkeMicah There are around 165,000 cancer deaths in the UK every year, that's around 450 every day (2015-2017). Doctors are concerned that early stage cancer diagnosis is failing during lockdown.https://t.co/GbNTMqPWX9
Please always remember. Imperial College, whose work is the basis of UK govt’s destruction of the economy and attack on personal Liberty, are not universally regarded as infallible. pic.twitter.com/xlBx1zauxJ
It's not just me. Even the supine government broadcaster reports that catastrophe is coming( just doesn't put it on the big TV bulletins). What do people think will happen to the NHS under these conditions? https://t.co/VPjUIvs7Rp
No doubt the rabbits and zombies will keep on “clapping for the NHS” as it falls to pieces. Anyone not clapping will be noted and subjected to online “shaming”…
Paranoid? Maybe, but who would have predicted that, in 2020, UK police would be intimidating citizens walking in their own gardens, or in local parks, or stopping people taking a harmless drive or motorbike ride on an early Summer day? Who would have predicted the the police would use loudhailers and/or drones to bully sunbathing girls in parks or on empty beaches, old ladies resting on park benches, middleaged couples walking on deserted moors? Who would have predicted that police would threaten to check people’s shopping to snoop on whether, in the opinion of the police “officer”, the items just bought are “essential”?
You are hereby forbidden to read my columns and books in future, as you plainly haven't understood a word @shmaob49. And please stop being a 'big fan'. I don't want you. I'd so much rather have you as a foe. 'Back to normal'! I wish. What you think of as normal is over for good. https://t.co/AYbcRNd2cF
There is a difference, @lordruncibald, between taking something seriously, as we all do, and assuming that the government's policy of crashing the economy and impoverishing the country( and the NHS) is wise. Do at least try to *appear* to think before you tweet. https://t.co/KBK3HiW6Mf
I have no idea. Difference is that I admit it, and the government(which also has no idea) thinks the best thing to do is to crash the economy for decades to come, and shout at people when they leave their homes. I do wish people grasped what a crashed economy is going to be like. https://t.co/emHl9bbU4z
It is natural, though mistaken, to assume that those “working in the NHS” know better than, say, me about Coronavirus etc. Mistaken because, though not a medic, health specialist or scientist, I have recently at least read things written or said by leading (real) experts in virology, epidemiology etc, which most people, inc. most NHS people, have not. About 2 million UK residents work “in the NHS”. Everything from lawyers and accountants to cleaners and porters, as well as, obviously, doctors and nurses.
Most of those people, though mostly no doubt competent in their own work, know as little –or less– about “Coronavirus” than I do. The few who have a better claim are the tiny handful who are virologists, epidemiologists and genuine experts in allied fields.
I am not going to be shouted down, either by “me-too” conformists, whether they be the usual Twitter mob or others, or by “people who work in the NHS” (unless, as aforesaid, genuine experts— and who in any case hold differing opinions inter se).
Britain in the political near future
I do not have the means to start a new political-social movement, in fact I have fewer means than almost anyone in the UK in financial terms, but it must be done, and soon. Before very long, by the coming winter, the time will be right, the situation ripe. It will spread like a wildfire once started.
Peter Hitchens is ahead of the curve here. He sees that [what we think of as] “normal” is over, probably permanently. Europe (not just the EU) is heading for a massive depression. In 1945 the USA was able to regenerate Europe in economic terms, using the Marshall Plan, but now the USA may well hit the economic buffers as hard as Europe and so be unable to help (and probably unwilling, to boot).
By the way, many people think that the reason that Germany (West Germany) pulled ahead of the UK after WW2, at least after about 1956, is because Germany had Marshall Plan money and the UK did not. This is, in fact, yet another myth of the period. A very convenient myth for many in the UK.
In fact, the UK not only did have Marshall Plan aid but had more of it than Germany. The greatly undervalued historian Corelli Barnett examined that, inter alia, in his works:
Barnett has made the point that Britain post-1945 had a choice:
To maintain its Empire; or
To regenerate its industry and economy generally; or
To create a Welfare State.
Barnett’s view is that the UK had the possibility to do one or perhaps two of those things immediately, but not all three. Britain tried to do all three things simultaneously…
One might cavil that a welfare state could only be maintained by a functioning economy anyway. True, but what is a “functioning” economy ? What is a “welfare state”, indeed? Present-day Cuba has at least the bare bones of a welfare state despite being economically a “basket case”. Wriggle room exists. There are questions of definition.
A few more tweets seen:
They may be in for a shock, in that case @pmcalver. There is *no* part of this country that will be immune from the crisis Rishi Sunak is stoking. No job, no salary, no savings, no pension, in public or private sector, is now safe. Check out 1931. https://t.co/vs3T7DVD6v
My father was a career naval officer, not a conscript, @zxcallum cleverclogs. But I think most of his ship's company would have agreed with him that they were fighting for Britain as a free independent country. Not a place where you need police permission to leave your house. https://t.co/ExtyFtj0bN
Precisely. Man gets chicken pox. Dr says : 'This is incredibly serious. To cure it I must cut off your leg'. Patient 'Well, if you say so, doc'. Dr amputates leg. Patient recovers. Dr claims to have cured chicken pox, demands huge fee. Patient is left with one leg, and bankrupt. https://t.co/OEUvhn1HA2
2/2 @RPBlackburn. Should we have trusted the government (for example) over the blood transfusion scandal, the Iraq and Libyan wars, the handling of the Foot and Mouth outbreak? This serf-like complacency is not just weak. It's irresponsible and lazy. https://t.co/KEZBnExSp6
Public attitudes and government decisions can be simply mad, deluded…
Yes, I am talking about the Coronavirus situation (“crisis”, “scare”, “scam”, “emergency”…you choose).
However, this has happened at various times in human history and not only in relation to “pandemics”. Take the First World War. It is common knowledge (and so probably wrong) to say that WW1 started because, once one empire started to mobilize, the others had to follow suit or be rolled over. Trite. There are elements of truth in that view, to be sure, but when we ask why the war both started and then continued for over 4 years, the answers are absent.
If you read the books of the period, such as the John Buchan stories, Greenmantle etc, you see that there was a panic, an absence of reflection, as well as a moral certainty that the British (or, in their countries, Germans, or Russians) had the moral high ground.
In fact, the First World War need not ever have happened, had people really thought.
Now look at the Coronavirus situation, eg in the UK. No-one knows much about the virus, though scientists are learning now. We know that it is transmitted in water droplets, eg if someone sneezes or even breathes. It is not transmitted in air, as such, so people sunbathing in parks or walking in the Peak District are not going to get it that way, or give it to anyone. Likewise, no-one can transmit the virus by driving around alone or riding a motorcycle. Has that knowledge changed government advice or police actions? Not a jot.
On the other hand, it is known that the UK “lockdown” (same elsewhere) is going to depress the economy and all but kill it for years, decades. Does that change the mind of this government? Not a jot…
So…what has happened is that the well-known bakery shop chain has been given the right to draw on £150 million of public funds over a year. Despite it being merely a retail outlet. Despite it having closed all 2,050 of its shops.
Almost all the 24,900 staff have been placed on “furlough”, meaning that the government (and taxpayers) will be paying 80% of their pre-furlough pay; Greggs is allowed to pay the other 20% of their previous pay level but in most cases will not be doing so.
What about the head of the organization, oneRoger Whiteside? Oh, he’s OK, because he is of course not being “furloughed”… and has decided to take 80% of his usual pay of £1,503,440, i.e. £1,202,752! Coronavirus Britain, 2020…
Stanley Johnson tried to get elected as MP, for the second time, in a new constituency, Teignbridge (Devon), in 2005, but failed (he came in a poor second). Voters described his appearance at a hustings with “Boris” as “a couple of public entertainers”, and unimpressive.
Talking of “unimpressive”, news now of that horrible little pissant, Robert Jenrick:
I suppose that the person most pleased that Boris-idiot is recovering is his fiancee. I am sure that her main concern was and is personal, but it must have occurred to her that, should Boris die (from any cause), she would be left dependent on her own resources, though I believe that her father is wealthy anyway.
In fact, Ms. Symond’s situation is a cautionary tale for other young women who, pregnant or not, are not married to what was once termed their “significant other”. Indeed, “Boris” is still, as I write, married to Marina Wheeler (his second wife), I believe, though divorce proceedings were instituted some time ago.
Had Boris Johnson died from Coronavirus his week, Ms. Symonds would have been entitled to not a penny of his estate, unless Boris has made a will in her favour, or a codicil to an existing valid will. In fact, Ms. Symonds would not even be allowed to stay at Downing Street and would be removed fairly swiftly.
I note the above not because I feel sorry for Ms. Symonds, who has wealthy connections and at least some monies of her own, but to caution others who are in similar non-marital relations (perhaps quasi-marital, so be it) and who are poorer than this lady.
When I was at the Bar, though I did almost no directly family law-related work (and in fact never even studied Family Law at university or Bar school), I did encounter the occasional similar story. I even met one lady, aged 40, who had been in a relationship for 20 years, had two or three children and lived with her quasi-husband in a house bought many years before via a mortgage. A married life in all but name (they did marry a few years later) but, had the husband died before the actual marriage, there would have been some headaches, especially financial, for the lady in question.
Priti Patel
“Downing Street is under growing pressure to explain the continued absence of Priti Patel from the government’s daily coronavirus press conferences.” [Daily Mail]
It is quite obvious why her colleagues do not want Priti Patel there. She is as thick as two short planks and, unlike some others (eg Iain Dunce Duncan Smith), unable to conceal the fact.
Police “muppets”, version 2, 3, 4, whatever…
Coronavirus: Cambridge Police checks no one is in non-essential aisles at supermarket https://t.co/ixe3frfuOs
Now Cambridgeshire Police have had to “clarify” why one of their officers “checked” supermarket aisles to see whether the slaves of finance-capitalism, oh, sorry, no wait….the citizens of the UK’s “free country” had been buying “non-essential” items (which, btw, is not unlawful anyway., not even in the new Coronavirus Police State…). The woodentop even tweeted about it! Dumb police woodentop klaxon…
My thoughts about this latest unpleasant absurdity from our uniformed zookeepers…I mean the police:
Why is a policeman wasting his time on duty “checking” anything lawful on private shop premises?
Why is that police narcissist tweeting about his activities?
Does the woodentop actually know any of the law(s) that he is supposed to be enforcing?
Does the woodentop in question know that he cannot simply make up laws and his own (in this case, non-existent) powers as a police constable?
Why does Cambridgeshire Police employ someone as a constable (I presume constable…God, could he be a sergeant?!) who a. seems devoid of common sense and b. seems to be power-mad?
Cambridgeshire Police say that the “officer” was “over-exuberant” and “has been spoken to”. Really?…So why are you, you police “muppets”, even employing an “over-exuberant” idiot who also seems to have no idea of a. the law, b. the limits of the law, c. the limits of his own powers as a police employee? Has the “muppet” recently come back from a taxpayer-funded “Common Purpose” course where he was told to “lead beyond authority“?
“Common Purpose is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1989 that develops leaders who can cross boundaries. This enables them to solve complex problems both in organizations and in cities.”
I think that a few things will need to happen down the line. First thing? Find a suitable wall…(make that “walls”…there are 85,000 Common Purpose “alumni” worldwide, many of them in the UK).
I’m not a great one for sharing FB screenshots, but the Cambridge Police tweet fits nicely with this post. If I’m doing my weekly food shop and decide to buy some non-essential plant pots and seeds to calm me the fuck down, I don’t see that that’s a disaster. pic.twitter.com/glMenZAtgm
So glad that Cambridge Police are checking that people aren't buying non essentials, that must mean every rape, murder and burglary is solved and you've got fuck all better to do, right fellas?
…and look at this ridiculous police bimbo! [from South Yorkshire Police] [link to video to see said policewoman]
After Cambridge Police searching supermarket aisles for non-essential shoppers this morning, South Yorkshire police have outdone them by threatening people in their front gardens.
Something has gone seriously wrong with the entire police approach here. https://t.co/St3K2bqR73
— Lineal Conker Champion of the World (@NUFC_OurClub) April 10, 2020
INSANE.
First, this ‘policing’ defies minimal expectations of common sense.
Second, the nation is under house arrest – we’re restricted to our homes *including gardens obviously* and this is crystal clear in the regs.@syptweet will you apologise?
Not only does this (more or less) female police “muppet” from South Yorkshire Police argue with and try to bully people standing in their own garden (!) but approaches them, shouting in their faces, behaviour which really might spread Coronavirus…and yet the idiotic policewoman tries to lecture the householders (incorrectly, at that!) about the virus! One of the householders is standing inside the doorway of his own house!
Watch that too [above]. Stunning. Toytown police, this time from Wales. Three police “muppets” harassing a man out walking his dog in a deserted park. The policewoman (who is leading this farce) tries to claim that the man (fully clothed) is “sunbathing” (which he is not, and that that is illegal (it is not).
It does not help that the Home Secretary Pritti Patel has gone AWOL. No leadership for the police nationally although with her record perhaps it’s just as well she is silent because she’s authoritarian & not very bright. But someone needs to lay out police powers clearly now.
It occurs to me (usually after a beer) that this Coronavirus thing is being used as an experiment to see how far the public will wear being told to stay in their little boxes and spin…
Another conspiracy theory
The Chinese government started the Coronavirus pandemic in order that the West would shut down its economy. After shutting down one province for a while, China then re-emerges, to take over much of the crippled world.
I suppose that the flaw in the above theory is that, without Western nations to which to export, China’s own economy will fall flat… In other words, China would be cutting its own throat.
Twisting the theory again though, one recalls that someone (Pat Nixon?) asked Chou-en-Lai what he thought of the French Revolution. Answer: “it is too early to say“. Could Pat Nixon really have asked such a question? The point, though, is that, of all peoples in the world, the Chinese take the long view.
As with most conspiracy theories, one ends up in a wilderness of mirrors…
Q&A session, Daily Telegraph:
“Fly fishing is a solitary pastime. Am I allowed to partake of this as part of my exercise regime? I have to drive half an hour to get to the river but once there, I will not see any other people.”
Daily Telegraph: “No. It is not exercise and you have to drive to get there. The Government has been clear that it does not want people to drive anywhere to spend time outdoors.”
Is there no-one in government, police, or the msm with the nous and courage to stand up and say “THIS IS BULLSHIT! DRIVING SOMEWHERE DOES NOT SPREAD ANY VIRUS. FISHING ALONE DOES NOT SPREAD ANY VIRUS! SUNBATHING ON UNCROWDED LAWNS OR BEACHES DOES NOT SPREAD ANY VIRUS!”? Apparently not. We are no more free now than Soviet citizens were, it seems, and there is no “free Press” or radio or TV worth a plugged nickel. Temporary, of course. Or is it?
As for the police, I do not know what is more irritating, the fact that some police are exposing themselves as petty and power-mad bullies, or the fact that Britain’s police (including their commanders or top brass) seem so utterly stupid and devoid of commonsense.
Latest government bs
They are talking about extending the “lockdown” bs for another three weeks! Maybe even longer! I hope that the zombies and rabbits, all clapping etc, think to blame themselves and also this government of incompetents, when they emerge blinking into the sunlight in May, June or July, for the fact that they have lost their jobs and maybe homes because of the unproven “lockdown” policy. I was not completely against it for a brief period, a week or two, but it is now going to destroy the UK economy, society and any remaining civil rights.
This video is not merely about vaccination (nb. I myself am not an “anti-vaxxer”, by any means), but about large-scale transnational changes taking place around us.
A few basic thoughts I have had over the years about a possible “33-year cycle”
1923: seeds of WW2, as in Italy…the March on Rome (late Oct. 1922) and Mussolini asked to become Prime Minister (October/November 1922); the invasion of Corfu (1923) ; Russian Empire becomes the Soviet Union on 30 December 1922; in Germany, the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923; hyperinflation across Germany (1923, though inflation in Germany had been increasing from 1921).
1956: Suez Crisis, when Israel joined with UK and France against Nasser; this was the start of the Arab/West conflict in the modern era; Khrushchev’s Secret Speech denouncing Stalinism (in which he was himself one of the worst offenders), leading to the Thaw, and eventually (not in a straight line) the total collapse of Sovietism; also, the first big rebellion of the satellites, the 1956 Hungarian Uprising; final end of WW2 rationing in the UK and start of consumerist UK in 1955-56; [and my own birth];
1989: the fall of all kinds of socialism and even social democracy worldwide, inc. effective fall of the Soviet Union (officially 1991), fall of Berlin Wall, Chinese transition to full capitalism behind “Communist” facade; Cuba becomes effectively private enterprise after 1989; also, the NWO/Israeli attack on the powerful states of the Arab world starts in Iraq; in the UK, the end of Thatcher’s rule leads to Labour Party abandonment of “socialism” even in its party constitution;
Also, George Bush snr. proclaims the NWO openly in early 1990;
2022: [personal note: I shall be 66 on 2 September 2022]
It will be noted that these years also link themes: 20thC socialism, the Arab/Muslim v. “West” situation etc.
Let’s start with a typical Twitter conformist, tweeting typically —and typically meaninglessly (the police who ride around in jeeps and cruise up and down empty motorways, or fly drones over national parks, are of course not “putting their lives on the line”):
One third of Britons:
‘All these fucking police, putting THEIR LIVES on the line, trying to save OUR LIVES all the time.
They’ve gone too far!
Let’s all go to the beach and be ravished by this highly infectious, fatal disease. Let’s spread it to our selfless NHS workers too!’ https://t.co/g0RIQSCAnL
I just noticed that this odd-looking creature has no less than 551,000 Twitter followers. She must be one of the ever-growing mob of “celebrities” and the temporarily famous.
Ah, God bless Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Spraggan Seems that she is a lesbian singer who nearly won the TV talent contest, X Factor, in 2012. I myself had never heard of her, but that is not her fault; pop singers and talent shows are not my milieu.
So what other tweets are being sent out today?
“The theory of lockdown, after all, is pretty niche, deeply illiberal — and, until now, untested. It’s not Sweden that’s conducting a mass experiment. It’s everyone else.” Precisely. https://t.co/kSvU6oZgTH
'In Sweden’s ICU census, which is updated every 30 minutes nationwide, admissions to every ICU in the country are flat or declining, and they have been for a week.'https://t.co/kSvU6oZgTH
Sweden has not had a “lockdown” so far, and it looks as if it will not have one. It has also, as far as I know, not had a Swedish equivalent of Britain’s “clap for the NHS” either. Not that most nurses and doctors (etc) in the NHS do not “deserve” a clap (and a decent pay rise) for their valuable work, but for the virtue-signallers of Twitter what seems to matter is the almost enforced “me-too-ism” (cf. Poppy Day and its surrounds).
'The social-isolation advocates frantically grasp at straws to support shutting down the world. It bothers them that there is one country in the world that hasn’t shut down and that hasn’t socially isolated its population.' https://t.co/kSvU6oZgTH
The government had *no* idea what it was committing itself to when it launched this scheme. I cannot see how the economy can survive unlimited spending on this scale. Like throwing new schools and hospitals into the sea. And for what? https://t.co/Y8vzXDUhMT
Hitchens is of course right here. The economy of the UK, of the EU, of much of the world, cannot in fact be shut down indefinitely without almost everyone in this country starving to death eventually. A “lockdown” must of necessity be temporary. The first question is “how temporary?”
The problem with comparing the Coronavirus situation in the UK to that obtaining in USA, Sweden, Italy, China etc is that
every country has different demographics, lifestyles, transport, health services etc;
every country is collecting statistics differently (e.g. as to what is a “Coronavirus” death in the first place): to take a reductio ad absurdum example, if someone has flu and Coronavirus, is his/her death from Coronavirus or simply with Coronavirus? What about if someone has Coronavirus, feels unwell and, perhaps even as a result, crashes his/her car and dies?;
every country has a different level of testing in place. Some test only those in hospital, some test medical staff, some (e.g. the UK until now at least) test hardly anyone.
The result is that, in looking at “the statistics”, we are comparing apples and oranges.
But @leamwick the idiocy of the shutdown is not apparent to the Cabinet or the majority of the media, who continue to act as if 'There is No Alternative', the dim watchword of the person who knows very well that there is an alternative – but does not want you to consider it. https://t.co/lLOasXhZfz
First of all we had all the “race relations”, “community relations” etc laws, then came the crackdown on other freedoms, including Internet freedoms, mostly at the behest of the Jewish lobby. Now the System is experimenting to see how far can it go in restricting quite ordinary daily activity, such as a motorcyclist going for a spin, or a family walking across the Derbyshire moors. The Coronavirus is being used as a fine cover story for a dry run for total System tyranny (though the Coronavirus situation iself is bad enough, of course). The mass media have ceased even to try to question government policy (as was also seen throughout the 2010-2019 “austerity” repression. Same now:
The Underground travellers (who probably have little choice) being blamed, impliedly, for crowding the trains, when, as we have seen, the trains are crowded because people like NHS staff still need to travel, and because that hopeless little Pakistani, Sadiq Khan, reduced the number of trains being run.
Dictatorships and tyrannies have had sycophant newspapers for a couple of hundred years, radio since about 1920, TV stations since (for this purpose) the 1950s. A new element is the online mob, particularly on Twitter; happy to be slaves of the System if they can hate the targeted dissenters.
In view of the fact that North West London is a major “hotspot” for Coronavirus, as are parts of Paris and certain urban parts of Israel, it might be more accurate to say that the spread of this virus comes not from “antisemitism” but from a quite different direction…
“Always look on the bright side of Life”…
Karma is a wonderful things folks.Last week the editor of Jewish Chronicle the odious Stephen Pollard was part of a vile co-ordinated attack on me, designed to cause me & family great distress. Today we learn the paper he edits is being liquidated. https://t.co/7WEcRiAGQ4
Only last week @StephenPollard the utterly odious editor of the Jewish Chronicle was part of a vile co-ordinated attack on me clearly designed to do me reputational harm & cause me and my family great distress during a pandemic. This is a seven-day karma. https://t.co/nAXopclKMX
Couldn't happen to two nicer people than Stephen Pollard and Jake Mendel #JewishChronicle Jeremy Corbyn still has his job. Null Point to the haters. https://t.co/rc2eYoCybM
Oi Vey, someone runs out of shekels.. I hope Britain survives the ‘lost’ 🙂 : Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News to be liquidated and staff laid off https://t.co/sD4SEoJmwS
Good riddance to the Jewish Chronicle, a vile publication who has a very nasty editor Stephen Pollard, who also writes for the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Sun, Telegraph et al – in other words another of Murdoch's henchmen
Toxic media deserves to go down the pan, where it belongs
— All tories out-blue/red & yellow (@Tinkerbell32112) April 8, 2020
Breaking: I'm told the Jewish Chronicle – one of the UK's top Jewish news publications – will soon go into liquidation, seeking a buyer to survive the coronavirus crisis.
Imagine if I hit the Euromillions and put in to the administrators or eventual liquidators the only bid for whatever is left of the Jewish Chronicle! Ha ha! I wonder what I could put on the front page once I become the new proprietor? Something historical?
I could even have a section devoted to historical revision. Alison Chabloz writes nicely…
Maybe Pollard would agree to stay on as Editor (under suitable supervision and control, of course…), if I were to make him an offer he would be unable to refuse…
I just thought of another good aspect to the Jewish Chronicle closing down: Stephen Applebaum, Twitter troll (who secretly, using pseudonyms, trolled quite a few anti-Zionists, mostly women, with equally horrible Stephen Silverman and other “Campaign Against Antisemitism” bastards), will now find it even harder to pose as a soi-disant “film critic”. As far as I know, the Jewish Chronicle has been the only newspaper to print his occasional reviews for years.
I have been freelancing for @JewishChron since 1997 and greatly enjoyed the opportunities to write about fascinating people and subject matter. I hope for the sake of the title, its staff & freelancers, a way to help the title survive can be found. For now, though, it's a sad day https://t.co/onRnEfxQ0r
— Stephen Applebaum (@grubstreetsteve) April 8, 2020
(“@grubstreetsteve” is his present personal Twitter account, along with “@rattus2384”).
Ha ha!
It even looks like Pollard! But if the cap fits, Applebaum too…
Quite a few Jew scribblers —including several connected with the Jewish Chronicle—enjoyed my being disbarred in 2016 (no doubt in ignorance of the fact that I had in any case ceased active Bar practice in 2007-2008). Not all will now lose their jobs, livelihoods, maybe even houses and flats, but some will. As for the rest, their time will come.
Ha ha! Just what I needed on a day like this (a boring day, and me living under a “Conservative” pseudo-communitarian ZOG semi-dictatorship)! A boost like no other! I begin to see, in minor key, why people always said that Saddam Hussein was never so happy as when his enemies were being killed off! Well, some of mine are not being killed off, just losing jobs etc, but in times like these, one must take one’s pleasures where one can.
I still like the idea of winning the Euromillions jackpot and then buying the rump of the Jewish Chronicle! I could staff it with anti-Zionist Jews, the ones the Zionist Jews hate: Gilad Atzmon could do the show business stuff, while the commentator-at-large might be…hm, let’s see…Mira bar Hillel!
Coronavirus view from Israel
“Israeli virologist urges world leaders to calm public, slams ‘unnecessary panic’
‘People think this virus is going to attack them all, and then they’re all going to die,’ says Prof. Jihad Bishara. ‘Not at all. In fact, most of those infected won’t even know it’”
“A leading Israeli virologist on Sunday urged world leaders to calm their citizens about the coronavirus pandemic, saying people were being whipped into unnecessary panic.
Prof. Jihad Bishara, the director of the Infectious Disease Unit at Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital, said that some of the steps being taken in Israel and abroad were very important, but the virus is not airborne, most people who are infected will recover without even knowing they were sick, the at-risk groups are now known, and the global panic is unnecessary and exaggerated.
That’s not the way it is at all. It’s not in the air. Not everyone [who is infected] dies; most of them will get better and won’t even know they were sick, or will have a bit of mucus.”
But in Israel and around the world, “everybody is whipping everybody else up into panic — the leaders, via the media, and the wider public — who then in turn start to stress out the leaders. We’ve entered some kind of vicious cycle.”
He urged the public to internalize that “we’re talking about a virus that is not airborne. Infection is via droplet transmission… Only if you are close to someone who has the virus, and you get the saliva when he sneezes or coughs, can you get ill. And if you don’t then maintain personal hygiene,” primarily by washing hands.
Referring to Italy’s national lockdown, he said that “quarantine is an effective precaution, but there has to be temperate use. You can shut down a whole country, but there are other means.”
At this stage, he said, “we know how the virus behaves, how it spreads, and which groups are in danger. We know now that his virus is primarily dangerous to old people, and to people with a history of chronic disease, and those who are immunocompromised.””
[The Times of Israel]
By the way, if anyone is surprised that I quote an Israeli in my blog, my response is “why not?”
If I want a great performance of Rachmaninov, I might turn to Vladimir Ashkenazi, if I want one of J.S. Bach, I might choose Evgeny Kissin; if Chopin, Emanuel Ax…
Just watched the above-named documentary. The main character was Alexandra Tolstoy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Tolstoy], an adventuress of several sorts, married to but estranged from Sergei Pugachev [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Pugachev], a former “banker” and criminal “businessman”, who is now on the [Russian] wanted list for having allegedly made off with about a billion US dollars’ worth of State assets.
Pugachev is in fact a slightly unusual Russian gangster-businessman, in that he really is Russian (not Jew or whatever). Looks like a “tough guy”, but if the question is whether to bet on a exiled tough guy or the Russian state, I know where my money is going…
Oddly enough, I once met the father of Alexandra Tolstoy, who is the interesting writer Nikolai Tolstoy, a former cavalry officer of the British Army [perhaps so only briefly; Wikipedia says nothing of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Tolstoy]. I was introduced to him in 1981 or 1982 (I think 82) at the Russian Refugees jumble sale at Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road (the sale is or was a Russian New Year tradition going back to the Russian Revolution(s) and Civil War, when many anti-Bolshevik Russians came to the UK penniless).
A friend of mine flew to Switzerland with Nikolai Tolstoy not long before that, in order to help with information for his book, Stalin’s Secret War. That would have been 1980 or 1981.
As for my impression of the lady in the documentary, perhaps I should not say, but after all she did volunteer to be judged by the TV public…Well, to me she seems as thick as two short planks, for one thing. As to why she divorced her first husband and married Pugachev, I think that a good deal of the answer, probably 90% or 80%, was his wealth, at a mere guess. She has dead eyes.
As for her being too bored in France, it is clear that, for her, the world revolves around London, Harrods, Harvey Nichol’s and her no doubt equally empty-headed friends. Her children too, of course…
Alexandra Tolstoy seems to want us to feel sorry for her, though she could well have simply continued to live in a beautiful belle epoque place on the Cote d’Azur, with her children, and her husband (and his guard force). I have seen too many people really suffering in the UK and elsewhere (including the former Soviet Union) from lack of quite modest funds to feel sorry for a woman who has a “cottage” (actually a quite decent modest house) in middle England, not to mention her parents’ place, a nice house in a pleasant part of Oxfordshire with an outside swimming pool (the pool was not shown in the documentary).
I certainly do not believe that she is in any danger at all from Putin or the Russian state. If she herself felt in danger, she would not now be once again running tours to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and herself visiting those republics.
Pugachev? He may be in more danger. There are warrrants out for him in Russia, and if he sets foot in the UK, a warrant for his committal to prison (for 2 years) for contempt of a High Court order. If the Russians get him, though, he may end up, like his 18th Century namesake, in a cage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Rebellion#Defeat
The world is not without kind people [Russian saying]
Nice story:
“This photo is from Paris Match, 1958. The Algerian donkey was starving to death, so a soldier from the 13th brigade of the French Foreign Legion carried it back to base where it became a regimental mascot named “Bambi””
Coronavirus
“Police across the country are wielding powers they do not have – with vanishingly little public scrutiny”
“Italy has announced plans for ending its lockdown after the coronavirus-ravaged country today recorded its lowest daily death toll for more than two weeks.
Rome recorded another 525 deaths, taking its total to 15,887 – the highest of any country in the world – however, this marked its lowest daily increase since the 427 registered on March 19.
Furthermore, the number of people in intensive care (3,977), fell by 17 since Friday, and the number of cases rose to 128,948 from yesterday’s 124,632, a lower increase than the day before.
It comes amid growing signs that Spain’s strict coronavirus lockdown may be working, as the country records its lowest death toll for a third consecutive day.” [Daily Mail]
but “Keir” was the surname of Hardie’s mother, which he kept as part of his surname, only later using it as a first name.
Keir Starmer’s parents named him after Keir Hardie:
“Keir Rodney Starmer was born in Southwark, London, on 2 September 1962[5][6] and grew up in the small town of Oxted in Surrey.[7][8][9] He was one of five children of Josephine (née Baker), a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, a toolmaker.[9][10] His mother had Still’s disease.[11][12] His parents were both firm Labour Party supporters, and named him after the first Labour Party MP, Keir Hardie.” [Wikipedia] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Starmer
Note:
“Personal life Starmer married Victoria Alexander, a solicitor, in 2007. The couple’s son and a daughter are being brought up in the Jewish faith of their mother.[12][61]”
[Wikipedia]
There you have it: Starmer’s wife is Jewish, and his children are therefore half-Jewish (according to ordinary genetics), and simply “Jewish” according to Jewish religious practice, as well as being brought up as culturally Jewish.
So far, Starmer has appointed members of Labour Friends of Israel to Shadow Cabinet: Rachel Reeves and Lisa Nandy. Emily Thornberry is to stay in Shadow Cabinet.
[above: Emily Thornberry at a Zionist dinner in London, photographed with her husband —a half-Jewish High Court judge— and —in central position— Mark Regev, the Israeli Ambassador]
I think that we can write off the Labour Party now.
Ghetto life in Israel
The Israeli state is considering sealing off “ultra-Orthodox” areas, thus creating quasi-ghetto zones within the Jewish state. Who would have predicted that?!
The Guardian article also makes the point that the Orthodox Jewish areas in London may also have been major incubators for Coronavirus. The boroughs of Barnet and Harrow, as well as Brent, are in the top half-dozen Coronavirus “hotspots” not just in London but in the whole of the UK.
Coronavirus— the exit strategy
Or to put it another way, what exit strategy? It is one thing to say to people, “stay inside except for a few closely-defined outings for a few weeks“, and quite another to say “stay inside your homes for several months, and if you dare to come out even to spend an hour walking in a national park, or on the beach, or sunbathing harmlessly in a largely empty park, or driving on an empty motorway, the police will stop you, question you, fine you and may fine you as much as £1,000“…
How long is this “lockdown” going to be sustainable? I see that even the msm outlets are beginning to ask the question now.
If someone has a country estate, or even a sizeable ordinary detached suburban or smaller rural house, perhaps with gardens, a swimming pool, a tennis court, an orangerie, a vegetable garden, “staying home” is not so hard to do. For the majority of the population, stuck in small houses, flats etc, perhaps with children or bored teenagers, this “lockdown” is a house arrest which cannot continue indefinitely. At some point, before long, the Government is going to have to announce a relaxation and then an end, before people start to ignore the restrictions.
Good points by Lewis Goodall of BBC TV Newsnight (ex-Sky News):
One of the most unappealing aspects of the current crisis is the judgmental censoriousness we’re seeing on here and in more everyday life. I went past several parks today. Everyone I saw was enjoying them responsibly. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a big house and garden.
Little Matt Hancock and others may threaten more severe restrictions, but without public consent, even the present restrictions cannot be enforced widely. The present conditions are holding because the public has been persuaded or stampeded into compliance. I think that we are just approaching 2 weeks of “lockdown”. Can the UK sustain 2 months? That would be five times as long.
The economic damage is already huge.
Tweets:
That’s what the German government thought in 1914. But it always catches up on you one way or another. Inflation is the nemesis for spending hubris. https://t.co/Xe4W9PavT1
Generally the government and the media don't put much effort into scaring you about the flu. TV does not show sad scenes in ICUs. Yet many thousands die of flu complications each year. No, I have not said the two are the same, as I will now be falsely accused of doing. https://t.co/UH6oaPgY6u
Yes, @ogilvie_cj, sweetie, because I have seen no evidence that it achieves its stated aim, and plenty (piling up daily) that it is wrecking an already fragile economy. Crashing the economy and stifling liberty won't provide better PPE for medical staff. Rather the opposite. https://t.co/7N5QeYzgUa
1/2 What is the use of a Leader of the Opposition who immediately backs the crassest actions of the government, such as threatening to ban outdoor exercise, supposedly in an attempt to protect national health? https://t.co/bmoLYvb7Lz
Anyone who believes that Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet is anything more than a nominal “Opposition” is very naive. In 2015, the Jewish-Zionist lobby lost control of one of the previously-controlled two main System parties. After nearly 5 years, that lobby now has regained control. The Jews as a group care only that the (sort-of) “anti-Zionist” Corbyn has been removed. Hardly any Jews have voted Labour for many years.
Yup @robinbull1. And do you realise how rare this is among its sufferers,&how much the same could be said of influenza complications, which kill thousands every year without a shutdown of the economy? Disease is bad. Who doubts it? Destroying the economy doesn't stop or cure it. https://t.co/kCM11l7K8A
2/2 Mike Graham @lromg . Speech is still free in this country. It's hardly the job of a radio host to tell people to 'shut up'. I'll wager you haven't the guts to have me on your programme and give me an unfettered, fair chance to make my case. https://t.co/GXGbU9N1yc
What is the significance of recorded cases, @shivmalik, when in fact we have no idea of how many unrecorded cases there have been, and probably never will? The nightly 'infections' figure is virtually meaningless. Many infected will have mild symptoms or none. https://t.co/h78SRpvveC
Lord Sumption https://t.co/NUSIEw3uqi '…as soon as the scientists start talking about a month or even three or six months, we are entering a realm of sinister fantasy in which the cure has taken over as the biggest threat to our society.'
Quite. Unreasoning fear is all around. Shoppers at Waitrose stand about 10 feet apart before they are allowed to have a trolley and enter the store, but inside they shop sometimes only a couple of feet from one another!
Likewise, the usual type of Twitter virtue-signallers continue to tweet on silly hashtags demonizing (of all targets!) people doing completely harmless things, such as walking along largely-empty beaches, almost deserted national park moorlands and forest trails etc, driving or motorbiking on almost-empty roads and motorways to places (or simply around, just to get a change of view and some fresh air).
If I had to say what unites the majority of the “Twitterati”, it would be their love of conformity, their obedience to authority, and their love of the largely-failed “multikulti” society. I suppose that is why Twitter was mainly pro-EU…
Here is a typical example, from someone calling himself “@sychodefender”:
You see the mentality. Any dissent from the “authorized” version of the truth is to be suppressed, and anyone not going along with the official narrative is “murdering” those unfortunate enough to die from Coronavirus. Who then is “murdering” those who, by reason of the “lockdown” (house arrest of the British people), cannot access lifesaving operations or other medical help for many other life-threatening conditions which (unlike Coronavirus) can be treated? Coronavirus can only be managed, via ventilation, not “treated” or “cured”. Who is “murdering” those people? No-one? The Government? Conformist tweeters such as “@sychodefender”/Simon Burgess? The first thing being murdered is the truth; after that, the English language.
and more news
Some hopeful news:
In Northern Italy, 60 volunteers who thought they'd never suffered COVID-19 gave blood. 40 of them tested positive for antibodies to the virus.
We URGENTLY need randomized testing to see how representative this finding is.https://t.co/JGqNX5EtQS
Heartbreaking report on BBC TV news this evening from Italy. People spending the last few coins of their savings, no work, an economy paralysed. Has this extraordinary gamble of a policy been worth it? Is there any evidence it has achieved anything? Yet on it goes.
About that hancock denial.. Times: ‘Treasury pushing for more detail but said it was not a “personal” issue: “There’s a real question of whether we will have an economy to come back to at the end of this. We have got to get clarity on the exit strategy”’https://t.co/AVaiIghfPP
It seems to me that the thing SIS/MI6 is best at is bolstering its own reputation (not by its own successful product or analysis, but via self-serving propaganda or public relations). That, and providing fairly well-paid careers for often rather mediocre members of the Oxbridge-educated middle classes.
Let’s think of a few of the less ancient SIS/MI6 failures:
the invasion of the Falklands; failure to warn HMG;
failure to warn HMG about the likely fall of the Shah of Iran;
failure to warn of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe…to name but three very large-scale events.
What about SIS/MI6 successes in the past 50 years? The Gordievsky defection, I suppose, but that is or was “spy game” or “spy wars” stuff, rather than large-scale success in forecasting. The same might be said of the “Viktor Suvorov” defection from the GRU or that of Oleg Lyalin (KGB). Those were, in essence, “walk-ins”, of course, though Gordievsky “walked in” having been cultivated for some time (in Copenhagen).
Of course, it can always be said that “the successes must be kept secret”. Perhaps, but I have little doubt that many failures are also kept secret (aka “covered up”).
At some point, SIS/MI6 must be reorganized to provide useful information to government, especially on the strategic level. That might mean using more open-source material as a percentage of the whole.
Naturally, anyone who —like me— is not a member or former member of such an organization is commenting somewhat in the dark, but it is surely clear that this is not a properly-functioning organization.
Now this…
Good grief!
“The Army is so desperate to fill its ranks that it is signing up recruits with a reading age as young as five. Normally, its rules bar hiring anyone with a reading age below ‘entry level two’ – equivalent to that of a child aged seven to nine.” [Daily Mail]
“Last year, the Army was roundly mocked for recruitment advertisements stating ‘Your country needs you’ to ‘snowflakes, phone zombies, binge gamers, selfie addicts, and me, me, millennials’. Now it appears that some potential recruits would not even have been able to under stand the adverts – even as warfare become increasingly computerised.” [Daily Mail]
“A police officer uses a megaphone at Southwark Park, to announce sunbathing is not allowed, but exercise is” [Daily Mail].
How absolutely stupid! The Coronavirus is spread via water in air, so is far more likely to be spread via exercise than via sunbathing!
“...there are concerns that public confidence could be lost if those in power with gardens and ample living space tell those who live in crowded conditions they cannot go to the park or exercise outdoors.” [Daily Mail]
This is becoming very silly (which is why 90% of “Twitterati” support the “lockdown” in an extreme way…).
If the Government and police don’t stand down these restrictions pretty soon, there will be disobedience and perhaps actual disorder. At the very least, much of the public will “just say no”, or perhaps more likely “yes repeat no”, i.e, apparent compliance but followed by the opposite as soon as the police or other busybodies go away.
The rest of Europe is already starting to exit “lockdown”…
The British government is headed by a pack of idiots that have no real idea what they are doing. Look at little Matt Hancock! His only pre-political job was “making tea” (not quite, but he was very junior) for a year at the Bank of England. Now he is a Cabinet minister! It’s mad. The present government is mad or stupid or both.
Has it peaked in the UK too?
“England, Scotland and Wales have declared 434 more deaths caused by the coronavirus today, taking the UK’s total to 5,368.
England accounted for 403 of the fatalities while Scotland and Wales independently declared 31 more deaths in the past 24 hours.
The statistics are a ray of hope as the daily death count has fallen for the second day in a row and was today the lowest it has been since March 31, when it was 381.
Today’s number is a 30 per cent drop from the 621 fatalities recorded yesterday, and a 39 per cent fall from Saturday, which was the worst day so far with 708.” [Daily Mail]
I want to step back from the immediacy of this global crisis around Coronavirus, to examine political, social and economic possibilities down the line.
How long will the immediate crisis last in the UK?
If he is correct, this might be over by early Summer.
Professor Levitt points to Wuhan itself, where, amazingly, only 3% of the population became infected; he also mentions the quarantined ship Diamond Princess. Even on that ship, the infected proportion of all those aboard was only 20% by the end of its journey. More people than expected may have natural —full or partial— immunity.
The professor distinguishes Italy on the basis of its communal social life, tradition of physical contact in everyday life and its very high proportion of elderly people.
Vital expert corrective to state-sponsored panic : Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study https://t.co/X9DemF8vL5
The bottom line, as far as the UK is concerned, is that the country may be out of the purely medical emergency by July or even June.
China
As said, global crisis. China is, it seems, emerging from the immediate medical crisis in the Wuhan city and surrounding province, and much of China has not seen large-scale infection. That, however, does not mean that China can return to pre-Coronavirus normal.
China has, since the 1980s, based its economy on exports. If the rest of the world is in recession and stops buying Chinese goods, the Chinese economy falls off a cliff. Is that a serious problem for China or for the West? Both, I suppose.
Even in my own lifetime, i.e. since 1956, the world has seen China go from Soviet ally with typical Soviet-style economic policies, to the misconceived Great Leap Forward and then, in the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution which set China back for decades.
The death of Mao in 1976 was followed by more internecine conflict, personified by the Gang of Four and characterized by the migration of millions of starving peasants to the cities. Even after all of that, and after China started to rise industrially, the attempts of a relatively few students to force the Communist Party to give in to their demand for Western-style democracy led to the late 1980s crackdown.
China, though still socially-backward, has made huge strides economically and technically. If the rest of the world stops buying Chinese goods, that progress may stop. China then will have to either restart large-scale exports or re-orientate its economy to a domestic consumption model. That would be a very hard thing to do.
If China becomes unstable, almost anything could happen. Pressure from the huge Chinese populations on the thinly-populated Far East of Siberia (former Soviet Far East) would become unstoppable. Even now, there has been a gradual and permitted infiltration into Russian Siberia by Chinese farmers, businessmen etc.
On the international stage, China is now somewhere between a regional player and a superpower. Its navy has not far short of 900 large ships (the UK equivalent is about 20), for example.
Russia and USA
Putin’s Russia is famously dependent on hydrocarbon sales. If the world slips into recession, demand for oil and gas reduces. At the same time, the price of oil and gas is already at a low level. Russia’s economy will buckle. That will lead to domestic retrenchment and political instability. The likely outcome is a more aggressive stance in terms of foreign policy. In recent years,the Russian military machine has, like that of China, been significantly upgraded.
The Soviet Union was often derided by foreign diplomats as “Upper Volta with rockets” [for younger readers, Upper Volta was the “state” now known as Burkina Faso]. The point was often taken to be “the Soviet Union is like Upper Volta”, a bit of a joke in other words, whereas the point often missed was “with rockets“. The Soviet Union had the capacity to obliterate most if not all of Western Europe and, indeed, most if not all of the USA. All the military targets and urban centres of importance, for sure. That still applies.
We often think that it matters that the USA has 2x, 5x (or whatever) the nuclear-destructive power of Russia. In fact, in real terms, all that matters is that Russia can land quite a number of missiles on the USA should it see the necessity. Yes, an equal and probably greater number would hit and hit harder the lands of Russia, launched from US bases or submarines, but that fact would not help the unfortunates of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, LA, Houston, Chicago etc.
From the nuclear deterrence point of view, the only important distinction is between states capable of launching an effective targeted long-range (another important distinction) nuclear missile and those without such capability. That is why the USA is desperately trying to stop or at least delay the missile programmes of Iran and North Korea.
Military men tend to think in military terms. In that sense, a few nuclear missiles landing on various cities in North America may not be seen as strategically determinative, whereas in the real world of human society, let us say in the USA, a missile landing on New York City, one on Washington DC and one on Los Angeles collapses the society, pretty much.
We saw what happened during Hurricane Katrina. The USA was unable to deal with a situation in part of one city. Could the USA deal with the destruction of its hundred most important towns and cities? I think not.
UK
As I write, the UK is approaching its most testing time for about 80 years. The Government has mandated the closure of effectively the whole of the economy apart from supermarkets and other parts of the food sector.
At the same time, the Government has decided to support the pay of “furloughed” employees, up to 80% of what had been their pay (I presume net pay), at least for now, and up to a maximum of £2,500 a month. The scheme will last for 3 months, so until the end of June, but may be and probably will be extended. Other support (loans and tax breaks) is targeted at businesses themselves.
The self-employed are so far left out in the cold, though it seems clear that the Government will offer something to them. Whether that help reaches even to the £2,500 per month cap applicable to employees on PAYE is unclear. Probably not.
In any event, it seems that no-one, whether PAYE or self-employed, will get anything at all until sometime in April.
Coronavirus: Around 7.5m UK people have no savings to fall back on. The earliest help for employees will arrive at the end of April; little for the self-employed. Food, rent, rates, gas, electricity, water bills won't wait. Govt policy being made on the hoof, lacking detail.
They could relatively easily institute a UBI scheme. No assessments needed just issue the money! Radical times require radical solutions! https://t.co/H9NUrnvLhC
Who are these self employed people making more money out of lockdown? I suppose a few who play the stock market exploiting crashes. Anyone else? My feed is 100 % people who have lost all /most of their business. https://t.co/xeOSnIFyFj
“Austerity” is dead. The emergency package rolled out by Rishi Sunak proves beyond all doubt that what the critics of the “austerity” nonsense said was correct: that “austerity” was a purely political choice by the Conservative Party, and particularly by the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne. The whole scam has been exploded by the opening of financial floodgates by Rishi Sunak. The Universal Credit minimum is going to be £20 a week more, thus increasing cash income of many by about 30% at a stroke.
The huge economic stimulus now made available should have been tried back in 2010 or 2012. Countries that stimulated their economies rode out the downturn far better than Britain did under the idiotic Cameron-Osborne “austerity” policies.
Has Sunak’s giveaway been motivated mainly by a fear that simply to let the economy collapse would be to invite public disorder? Is that why Sunak arbitrarily (?) put the Universal Credit minimum weekly stipend up to £95? A kind of Danegeld?
What has happened is that the real economy has now been put into deep freeze for a period the duration of which is unknown but may last for several months. Economic activity is all but zero outside the food sector (and to some extent within it, eg the restaurant and takeaway industries). At the same time, the revenues of both central and local government have been hit by the dropoff in tax revenues: income tax, VAT, business rates etc.
The unspoken reality is that government revenue reservoirs are now not being replenished by the taxes and imposts paid during normal times by those persons and enterprises active in the economy. The governmental apparat and everything done by government is now running purely from “borrowing”, though at historically-very-low interest rates. Bar that, the State is running on empty.
The shutdown of almost everything will wipe out a huge number of businesses in the UK. In fact, that was already happening even before the Coronavirus situation, which then made the situation far worse: Laura Ashley, Primark, Toys R Us, HMV, House of Fraser, Mothercare, Wrightbus, Thomas Cook, Debenhams, to name only the best known. Most of those I have known since childhood. Many others have also become insolvent, such as Jamie’s Italian (restaurants) and Patisserie Valerie. Incidentally, it might be thought that a company such as Patisserie Valerie employed relatively few people. It depends what you mean by “relatively few”, though (900 in the case of Patisserie Valerie).
We see now that the entire “High Street” economy is closed. Much of it will not reopen. The same may be true of much of the rest of the economy.
I think that we can see now why the “emergency measures” in the Coronavirus Bill or Act are drafted to last for (so far) 2 years, not for a few months. We also see why that Bill contains “national security” clauses. The System is afraid.
I wonder how many small or even larger businesses will “furlough” their employees? Many will simply lay them off permanently or sack them. Not every big businessman is as disgusting as Tim Martin of Wetherspoon’s pubs, but many, and especially the smaller businesses, will simply become, in short order, unviable and so insolvent.
In my view, the correct answer would have been to offer former employees, the “self-employed” and others a Basic Income, but not to guarantee 80% of the income of furloughed employees and certainly not to throw money at businesses. Better to give what money there is to give at
individuals, via Basic Income;
real infrastructure projects on a vast scale (once the medical emergency has passed).
New businesses would then start, fuelled by the money the population would have via Basic Income.
Politically?
Discontent will grow if this situation is not resolved within weeks or, at most, a couple of months. We already see both ex-employees and insolvent “self-employed” (many of whom are not in business but simply doing what would once have been an employed job but now on a “self-employed” basis) crying because they are being asked to live on £95 (cash income) per week. Many of these were Conservative Party voters in 2019, 2017, even 2015 and 2010. They thought that the unemployed and disabled did not “deserve” even £95 per week (or even £75…). Well, “what goes around comes around”.
Basic Income is the right thing for the UK, and I note that that horrible bastard Iain Dunce Duncan Smith opposes it on the basis (the incorrect basis) that it acts as “a disincentive to work”. So says a part-Jap freeloader who has never done a day’s work in his miserable life!
One can see that confidence in the Conservatives is low, but confidence in Labour is even lower! This must open the ground for social nationalism soon.
There must emerge a proper social-national movement. The time is, even now, not yet right, but it may well be by the end of this year.
Er, yes. It is afrightening read, though surprisingly quiet on the Babylonian effects of the death of money, espcially in Berlin. I have litle doubt that the German money catastrophe, by demoralising the former middle classes, brought Nazism intio being. https://t.co/qbMlhdXYGS
The new emergency legislation being put forward has a life of, at present, 2 years, until 2022, despite the assertion by Boris-idiot that the Coronavirus crisis might last only for 3 months more, i.e. until June 2020. Already, local elections have been deferred for a year. It may be that NWO/ZOG dictatorship is planned, not only in the UK, but across Europe. I would not rule out civil or social war by 2022.
#StopHoarding
Twitter is doing what it does best, namely allowing people to tweet well-meaning and totally ineffective pleas. In this case, under hashtag #StopHoarding, to those who imagine that they need 500 loo rolls and a mountain of pasta and bottled water.
As I have blogged on previous days, there is (possibly reasonable) bulk-buying and there is (wholly unreasonable) panic-buying. Yesterday, at 1900 hrs, I visited the little village shop about 2 miles from me, and which I have noted in previous posts. It shuts at 1930. I bought almost the last loaf of bread, a bunch of bananas, some locally-produced asparagus and a few lottery tickets.
I wanted to see whether Waitrose in the nearest town was offering much, and mistakenly thought that it closed at 2100 on Thursday. Turned out that it closes at 2000 on Thursdays, so I arrived with only 10 minutes to get anything I wanted. That being so, I was unable to see whether shoppers had stripped the shelves bare again. I did notice that there was not a single egg left, not even the more expensive ones from rare breed chickens, with sky-blue shells. I myself bought only (again) almost the last loaf of bread and a reduced-price (99p reduced from £2-75) North African vegetable and cous-cous salad thing (which turned out to be quite tasty).
I think that this panic-buying can be halted by supermarkets only allowing one item or pack of anything per shopper. Inconvenient, yes, and some would then go to half a dozen places to evade the rule, but most would not and it would restore equilibrium.
Free speech
Well done, @HullLive [http://hull-live.co.uk], and well done “Will Wright of Hull”, whoever you are. The truth is rarely seen in the newspapers in the UK.
Socialism, National Socialism, “National Communism” and Social Nationalism
“Socialism” has almost as many meanings as “democracy”. We still see people with pedestrian understanding writing or tweeting about how “socialism” is and can only be something akin to the Marxist-Leninist setup of the period before the great change(s) since 1989. Those people say that German “National Socialism” was not “real” socialism. Yet German National Socialism gave the German people a great deal more in every way, both economic and cultural, than did either Weimar Republic social democracy or post-1945 Soviet-style DDR (East German) socialism.
Of course, socialism in the Soviet Union had various faces at various times, from Civil War times (1918-21) when militarization of the workforce was the norm (“War Communism”) to the New Economic Policy of the 1920s under which a controlled form of capitalism and private enterprise was permitted, to the harsh centralized system of Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s, a less severe version in the 1950s to 1980s, and then the fall of the various forms of socialism, all over the world, from 1989.
Hitler took a broad view of the term “socialism”, regarding it as meaning, broadly, “the common weal”. He was not hidebound by artificial or arbitrary “definitions” of what socialism means. For him, what mattered were results. So long as the German people were well-fed, housed, educated, organized etc, he was content.
For me, policy matters, as do results. Artificial theory matters less. I was, at one time, in the mid-1970s, accused of not being so much a National Socialist as a “National Communist”, in other words accused of over-valuing the role of the State. I demur. However, the State does have its rightful place (as seen in the Threefold Social Order concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_threefolding).
We in the UK have seen in the past decade what happens when the role of the State is cast aside or into the background. Now, with the Coronavirus crisis, we see that the State, in its weakened condition, is unable to properly fulfil its role of guardian of the people (“…for the welfare of the people is the highest law“— Cicero).
What is now required is what might be called “social nationalism”, not old-style State socialism but a system whereby the State, in its proper place, protects and serves the people and, as part of that, regulates but does not actually run economic enterprises and markets. “Nationalism”? All that that means is that the political organization is rooted in our basically “Aryan” European culture, history and way of life.
Basic Income
A group of 500 academics have signed an open letter to Govt: "It is time for Govts to enact emergency universal basic income, ensuring that everyone in their jurisdiction has enough money to buy the food & other essentials they need to survive.” #UBIhttps://t.co/LjrOLx9pm8
So little Matt Hancock, clearly out of his depth, has been told to “recall” retired doctors and nurses. My thoughts:
the Government has no power to order such recall, only to request it;
retired NHS staff are almost all over 60, many over 70, and so are far more likely to fall victim to Coronavirus and to be seriously affected if they do contract it;
the above is obviously far more likely to happen in the often not very hygienic conditions of a UK NHS hospital.
Worth reading, certainly, but of course the Jew scribbler never once mentions the racial divisions or aspects.
Stuttgart view
A snapshot of Stuttgart life under Coronavirus, from “antifa” cheerleader Mike Stuchbery, who was all but run out of the UK on a rail in 2018.
Message getting through in Stuttgart. Far less seniors out, only folks heading to the supermarket. Saw less than five joggers. We may be okay. This path is usually crowded by those running. pic.twitter.com/C5aBoo48YE
Stuchbery, “writer”, “journalist”, “historian” (all self-descriptions) and one-time schoolteacher, apparently does not know the difference between “less” and “fewer”.
A midnight ramble through Casablanca and beyond
[above: La Marseillaise trumps Der Wacht am Rhein in Casablanca]
Some bulk-buying may not be so stupid in the present situation, but some is very silly and is clearly “panic-buying”, such as the old woman of whom I read, “caught” in an Aldi store trying to buy no less than 80 cans of tomatoes! Enough for months, surely? (She was only allowed 4 cans in the end).
I saw this in the Daily Mail online:
Sainsbury’s in Hertford, at opening time. The photo shows what is happening: hordes of old people (and a few “Vicky Pollard” “chavscum” mothers) lining up to imitate a cloud of locusts. Some stores are prioritizing the elderly, but that may be a misconceived idea.
Where I live, in a generally affluent part of Hampshire, the elderly (who are the majority of the population) are the ones who are bulk-buying almost everything. The local Waitrose is stripped bare within minutes. I spoke to a lady who had been there in mid-morning and already all loo paper, pasta, pasta sauce, tuna, bread, flour and cleaning products had gone; and that happens every single day, it seems. Affluent —or at least not poor— pensioners (many in large houses, with several fridges and freezers) are stocking up for Armageddon.
I went yesterday evening to a village shop and sub-post office. The village has no other shop, just a church, a pub-restaurant and a car dealer. The little shop is a grocery outlet which also sells booze and local produce (prepared crab, smoked trout and salmon, as well as pheasant and other game; local asparagus, local honey).
On an unrelated aspect, it seems to me that small shops and little post offices like that, in villages or areas without other shops, should not have to pay business rates, council tax or even other taxes (eg on profits), for good social reasons. A place like that is more than just a food, drink and postage stamps outlet. It is a community hub.
The owner told me that affluent old people had bought all the bread that morning and did so every morning, and were probably freezing it. This is an area where people, often in sizeable houses, and with comfortable incomes, have 2, 3, or 4 large fridges and freezers.
The joke is that those are exactly the people most likely to spout the “we won the war” stuff, about Britain being a “nation” (which it scarcely is now), “all pulling together”. They all vote Conservative and would deny that they are featherbedded in various ways.
It is not that I dislike the elderly, as such. After all, at 63 I am well on the way myself, and anyone under 40 is likely to regard me as quite “old” (though few who meet me realize that I am that old). However, it seems to me that there is a dual process going on:
an increasingly aged and ageing population; but also
a creeping infantilization, which affects all ages.
Enemies of the people
I have just invented and instituted a new tradition on my blog pages, namely the “enemies of the people” section, to consist of tweets exposing enemies of Britain and Europe generally in the enemies’ own tweets.
I have decided to launch my new section by featuring two-in-one: a Jewish woman called “Dr Miranda Kaufmann”, as well as an apparently similarly inimical organization called “Octopus Publishing” (which may not be all bad; judgment reserved):
— Dr. Miranda Kaufmann (@MirandaKaufmann) March 19, 2020
“Infection” is the buzzword of the day. The fields of academia and publishing in the UK are both infected and infested; both need a purge.
One law for the rich…
BREAKING: Gatwick Airport is axing 200 jobs, stopping night flights and bosses have agreed to take a 20% pay cut as a result of the #coronavirus outbreak.
So “bosses” (whatever that means— in Sun-speak, it can just mean a middle-manager) are taking a pay cut, but the “workers” are being “axed”…
Have these people never heard of 1789, 1848, 1917, 1933 etc?
“Justice”?
Pakistani woman and four others attacked a schoolgirl (was she English? Probably), punching her, ripping out hair, then later intimidating her on Facebook. Found guilty on overwhelming evidence but still denying her guilt. Result? Non-custodial sentence. Quelle surprise. Sentencing judge ludicrously says that “the offence was so serious that he could have sent Mahmood to prison, but decided to spare [her]” because the w** woman is mother of four children and is carer for her mother. And (unsaid) the British people pay for all six of the bastards…and probably others in the family/clan…
“We have, of course, been here before, 10 years ago when the banks were bailed out with few conditions being attached to the money that flowed their way. As a result, they were able to use a chunk of it to keep their top tier employees in the style to which they had become accustomed while branch staff were losing their jobs.” [The Independent]
Guy Fawkes and Iain Dunce Duncan Smith
We still celebrate the end of the Fawkes plot by burning an effigy on a bonfire, the effigy being, even after over 400 years, called “the Guy”. What about Dunce Duncan Smith? Ideas on a postcard…
What are the Jews up to?
“Israel’s secretive Mossad intelligence agency launched a covert international operation this week to fly in up to 100,000 coronavirus testing kits…The local broadcaster Channel 12, which first reported the operation, said Mossad had intended to bring in about 4 million kits from several countries. About 530 cases have been confirmed in Israel, which has taken stringent measures to contain the spread, including shutting down all schools, cafes and malls. On Wednesday evening, it barred all tourists and visitors from entering the country.” [The Guardian]
same with every other corner shop around london. hand sanitizer, for a 75ml bottle, she said “£9.99” and toilet rolls for 9 rolls “£7.99” they’re all a joke 😡
I don't know, just asking. Is there much choice in London now?
— Mark Weightman 🇬🇧🇨🇾 #NoTyranny (@MarkWeightman) March 19, 2020
It’s happening in Portsmouth. They’ve even put an extra £4 on cigarettes. People need to stop using these shops, even when this crisis is over. Show them who’s boss. It’s us, the customers.
Though I examine particularly closely any claims made by a Jew, the information is interesting. There may be something in it.
It will be recalled that South Africa was said, in the 1980s, to be working on biological weapons which would only affect black Africans. South Africa was also far advanced in an atomic weapons programme, in collaboration with the Israelis working out of their nuclear centre at Dimona, in the Negev Desert of southern Israel.
It would not be beyond the realm of the possible were the Israelis to have collaborated with South Africa on biological warfare as well.
Now we see claims by the Israelis themselves that
Israeli scientists were working on a vaccine for Coronavirus even before the Wuhan outbreak; they attribute the co-incidence to “luck”.
On the wider point, it may be that this outbreak is in the nature of an experiment, and that at some later point a virus equally or more infectious but far more deadly will be released, with the aim of reducing the Earth’s population to 10% or 20% of what it presently is.
[note: the above paragraph is speculation only and should not be taken to be my settled view].
Rishi Sunak and the UK economic stimulus package
The bailout of the banks a decade ago was disastrous, inter alia because banks are merely a useful parasite upon the real economy. The bailout impoverished many individuals via the so-called “austerity” programme. It also gave preference to the banks over businesses in the real economy.
This latest “bailout for business” is also misconceived, because it supports businesses as such but not the most important basis for business, individual consumers.
What Sunak should do (but will not, because it —superficially— is in opposition to Conservative Party attitudes) is to establish a Basic Income for all citizens (citizens, not any migrant-invader straight off the boat (rubber boat).
That would boost and secure the retail sector and other sectors, and would enable people to pay rent etc.
I was at the nearest supermarket (Waitrose) at 1930 yesterday, half an hour before closing time. More shoppers than usual at that time, though not crowded. The main doors wide open to promote fresh air inflow (and virus outflow?). More staff than usual at that hour. The shelves looked as if an invading horde had looted the store. Whole shelves completely picked bare: no loo paper, pasta, pasta sauce, shower gel or bread (instead of the usual hundreds of loaves of about 30 different kinds, only one pack of “ancient grains” muffins left (I bought that) and two specialist Jewish loaves (from Cohen’s Bakery).
So it seems that the bulk-buying and/or panic-buying continues. I can only assume that people are buying bread to freeze it, anticipating…what? Civil war? Disordered chaos? One would normally scoff, but I have a lingering feeling that those panicking, preparing or “prepping” may not be so silly after all…
Half-truths
Try isolating in one room of a hostel, B&B or Women’s Refuge.
Even in a flat it’s different- can’t just pop out in the garden for some Vitamin D & air.
Everything hits the least wealthy/most vulnerable worse & of course, it’s usually Capitalism that made them vulnerable https://t.co/1FDY6UdO77
“Dr” Louise Raw (and another) making true points about poor housing and social conditions, while shoving in a silly point about “capitalism”. Has she never heard of, for example, Soviet housing conditions? Or maybe she calls that “State capitalism”, in the Trotskyist way? I do not know.
I wonder whether the people will come out onto the streets. Not now, though. However, down the line, it has to be a real possibility if large numbers of renters are evicted at the same time; and if people lose their jobs and are cast into the pit created by Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, the Jew “lord” Freud, Esther McVey, David Gauke, all those evil swine. I rule out nothing for later this year, for 2021, for 2022.
Maybe that is why the “emergency legislation” being nodded through Parliament this week will contain enhanced so-called “anti-terror” powers for police, MI5 etc…
Tweets seen today
Say that about this. We need to close schools. They ate always open to those students who need to be looked after during school hours. pic.twitter.com/yunqdQryce
German POWs(yes they were still here!) from Ely’s 2 POW camps worked side by side with the British Army, reinforcing defences and rescuing people from rooves!
As I have blogged several times, Twitter is such a waste of time that I have even considered the possibility that it is being promoted precisely so that discontented people can imagine that they are engaging in socio-political activism by spending their days just tweeting. At any rate, that is what actually does happen. There are huge numbers of people on Twitter. Most are not political. Those that are think that they make a difference by being on Twitter. I doubt it.
I had 3,000 followers on Twitter when expelled, but was following only about 50, mostly organizations. You see some Twitter accounts with thousands or even tens of thousands of “followers” but then you notice that those accounts are themselves following a similar number of accounts!
Twitter is an interesting and potentially useful source of news and other information, but politically is largely a waste of time.
There is also the point that Twitter now “suspends” or suspends permanently (i.e. expels) many of the most interesting tweeters. This usually happens because of organized campaigns by either Zionist Jews or “antifa” idiots. In fact, those cabals revel in their pointless “activism”, as they did when I lost my Twitter account (which was not so important to me because I had “red-pilled” re. Twitter) but to those who denounced me would have been tragic, had it happened to them!
In fact, it did happen to some of them. Some, who had trolled me for years, are now gone, having been expelled. I notice that others have actually died; yet others are declining fast from chronic medical conditions…
Basic Income (again)
Some of the System politicians are thinking along the same lines as me:
Now Ian Blackford for SNP calling for temporary universal basic income
Coronavirus : Denmark’s government told private companies that it would cover 75% of employees’ salaries, if they promised not to cut staff. Putting money directly into people's pockets is a far better policy than the random policies pursued by the UK.https://t.co/wXVO2q14Js
The West has shut down its economy to try to flatten the curve, but it is arguable what effect this has had on the medical or health situation. The effect on the economic situation, however, is more easily determined. Dire…
“A police officer uses a megaphone at Southwark Park, to announce sunbathing is not allowed, but exercise is” [Daily Mail].
Ian Robert Millard 