Category Archives: historical

Diary Blog, 23 January 2023

Morning music

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

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

On this day a year ago

Tweets seen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More tweets

Ha. Quite.

…and note my blog of yesterday’s date.

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

Early evening music

Late tweets seen

Important results.

Late music

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

Diary Blog, 22 January 2023

Morning music

[Rome: the ruins of the Forum]

On this day a year ago

On the blog five years ago

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

Peter Hitchens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday].

Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack Monroe scandal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More music

More tweets seen

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

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

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

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

Ha. Well put.

More tweets

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

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

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

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

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

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

More tweets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jack Monroe” and cocaine

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

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

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

Having said that, I now see:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Late music

Diary Blog, 21 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Saturday quiz

This week I did not do so well: 4/10, same as political journalist John Rentoul. I only knew the answers to questions 2, 4, 9, and 10 (the same ones that John Rentoul got right). I would have got No. 3 —the “Northern tart” question— right too, but I just could not recall it.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/20/sajid-javid-calls-for-patients-to-pay-for-gp-and-ae-visits

LIttle pro-Israel monkey-on-a-stick Sajid Javid wants to charge patients for seeing a GP or visiting A&E departments.

He himself is standing down at the next general election. If it becomes widely known that charging for NHS services is the “Conservative” Party direction of travel, the already-anticipated loss of Conservative Party seats might be historically large, even if the NHS is not performing properly at present.

Jack Monroe

Incredible that parts of the msm are still promoting the “Bootstrap Cook”.

More music

Other tweets seen

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions“, as we know. The proposed rules no doubt aim at giving the American “poor” a better diet instead of the diabetes-2-tending (and generally unhealthy) one that includes white bread and “American cheese” [a particular kind of processed cheese sold to the public as “Kraft slices” etc: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cheese].

The particular type of cheese disapproved of includes what is or was called “Government cheese” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese].

The price, though, is freedom of choice; and the other restrictions, such as “one car per family”, are obviously repressive, though of course in many countries only the wealthier part of the population(s) have even one car. Poverty is relative.

“Bootstrap Cook” has raised only one person out of “poverty”— herself (and quite possibly not even that).

Both true, and that is before you even think about “Bono”, Bob Geldof etc…

As the psychiatrist in one episode of Fawlty Towers remarks, “there’s enough material there for an entire conference“.

More accurately, “it” may be defamatory but, if “true”, is not actionable defamation.

That “@blackwolfski” tweeter is just so typical of those who have a whole fake worldview of “woke”-ism. Akin to wearing a jacket of msm lies: supports “Jack Monroe”, Jacinda Ardern, Labour Party drones etc, and is entirely impervious to any “unapproved” truths. Note the faux-serenity and faux-“concern” of his (fake, “passive-aggressive”) good wishes to tweeter “@scbusiness4”.

Hard to judge to what extent that was so but, if accurate, it sounds like very bad behaviour (to say the least).

Tweeter “@jimellis123” is another very typical “Jack Monroe” supporter-type: the man of 50+ or 60+, retired or unemployed (as it seems), not seemingly poor or “struggling” (except possibly with mental “issues”); socio-politically— narrow-minded. Also, the “passive-aggressive” smugness, as seen in the tweet below:

Presumably meant to be satirical, but quite likely the literal truth.

More tweets

Not completely untrue, certainly.

Interesting vlog

More tweets

The police, as well.

More tweets

Late music

It is, I read, Chinese New Year.

Diary Blog, 20 January 2023

Afternoon music

[painting by Volegov]

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11654785/Moment-homeless-Gipsy-boy-brags-TikTok-videos-home-woman-murdered.html

Britain is now a trash can, full of trash.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-who-decapitated-wife-paraded-28998347.

Types like that are now flooding into Europe, including the UK.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11656145/Nicola-Sturgeons-SNP-plans-ask-children-male-female-transgender-survey.html

This latest lunacy from Scotland is tantamount to a weird brainwashing form of child abuse.

Jacinda Ardern

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11655625/The-BBC-treated-resignation-PM-tragedy-Jacinda-Ardern-way-out.html.

You see rubbish on Twitter about this, all about how New Zealand’s economy is “booming” etc. Well, the statistics lie, and for a very obvious reason: when you shut down a country almost completely for 2 years, the economy nosedives. Any activity at all after that seems, superficially, to be strong growth.

Then there is her approach to Covid. Initially, the world bought into the myth that her government was a top performer in eliminating the disease.

The truth, of course, is that it’s relatively simple to quarantine remote islands. And having introduced a strategy of isolation and hard lockdown at the start of the pandemic, Ardern clung to a zero-Covid policy that was way beyond the edge of reason.

Her government shut down businesses, closed entire towns if a small outbreak of the virus occurred, and forced New Zealand citizens who happened to be abroad when the pandemic struck to apply to enter their own country, with only a tiny number of places available via an online lottery system.

At first, the policy was popular, with Ardern using Facebook Live sessions to communicate with the nation in a crumpled jumper, after putting her daughter to bed, in a manner that struck a chord with the public. Indeed, in the 2020 election, her party polled almost 50 per cent.

Yet, as time went on, opposition to this sometimes cruel policy (for which exemptions were only available for celebrities and the ultra-wealthy) grew, with critics lambasting a sluggish vaccine rollout and pointing out that the only world leader more bloody-minded in holding on to a strategy of eliminating Covid at all costs was communist China’s president Xi Jinping.

The crescendo of division and unrest saw huge demonstrations outside parliament.

[Daily Mail]

Huge demonstrations“…which were not covered at all by the BBC, Sky, ITN, or the “Lugenpresse” System msm outlets of the UK; and what about that bit re. “exemptions were only available for celebrities and the ultra-wealthy“? Peak pseudo-socialist nonsense. As in “the virus is so dangerous that only the ultra-wealthy and —of course— ‘celebrities’ can do whatever they like”…

It reads more like a parody than real government policy, even if it is from a joke state like New Zealand.

Try telling the truth, though, to the msm drones in the UK, let alone the Twitterati mugs. They are closed to the truth, on almost any subject.

Jacinda Ardern was just another Blair-type NWO/ZOG puppet (in fact, she worked for a while as a “SpAd” at Westminster, under Blair.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/03/25/the-new-zealand-attack-and-related-matters/ (re Brenton Tarrant and the Christchurch massacre etc; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings).

Tweets seen

The whole interconnected milieux (msm “journalism”, “fashion”, TV/radio “comedy” and “drama”, in fact TV generally) should be purged, and I do not just mean deprived of its riches and platform.

Perhaps the New Zealanders could institute a “Jacinda Day”, akin to our “Guy Fawkes Day”, in which an effigy of “Jacinda” might be immolated in some way that produces few “emissions”… A kind of “damp squib” fire that produces little light or warmth. Symbolic, you might say…

Far right“? Oh, they mean people not totally brainwashed by NWO/ZOG propaganda:

“BANG!”…

Only (sort–of) joking… but then, Sinn Fein/IRA has become a joke anyway, a kind of —superficially— more militant SNP or Plaid Cymru.

Jack Monroe

Still “grifting”…

The police should be investigating all that. Why should a black woman in Bristol be facing trial on very similar facts yet “Jack Monroe” not only not investigated but even still being promoted by some of the msm?

A typical “Jack Monroe” supporter might be a woman of about 60 years old, not badly-off, pretty ignorant but thinking herself rather educated, and living in some suburban or rural area; a Guardian reader, pro the Kiev regime, pro the facemask nonsense, needless to say “anti-racist” etc. Or a male, or LGBTQXYZ, equivalent, possibly retired, possibly a business owner in a modest way, probably “woke” etc. Certainly not “poor” or “struggling”.

More music

[British officer and soldier, possibly “Auxiliaries”, searching IRA suspect in Ireland, circa 1920; officer using left hand to search, while keeping the suspect covered with his revolver, unseen in the right hand. Note the body on the ground]

More tweets

The first part of that is plainly not libellous even on its face.

The second part may or may not be.

How is saying that “Jack Monroe” “makes more money than the Prime Minister” libellous at all, even if not true? Answer: it isn’t.

So she claims to be “still suing” Con MP Lee Anderson. I wonder. So far, according to Lee Anderson, he has not received any pre-action correspondence as required under the Civil Procedure Rules.

An action in defamation must be brought within a year of the triggering cause, but even then is still expected to be brought expeditiously; in lieu of that, there may be costs consequences.

“Jack Monroe” still has, in theory, 3-4 months in which to bring proceedings, but I doubt whether they will be brought or, if brought, would be successful.

Can anyone rely on any statement put out by “Jack Monroe”? I think not.

Late tweets seen

The “Jack Monroe” scandal rolls further on…

My guess is that “Jack Monroe” may even get a solicitor to send a “Letter before Action” to Lee Anderson, which will help her to continue to plead for money im various ways, and keep her in the news, so maybe attracting more mugs to subsidize her. There will, however, be no actual issuance of proceedings against Lee Anderson or Martin Daubney. If I am wrong about that, and proceedings are actually issued, that will eventually turn out to be a very expensive error for the “Bootstrap Cook”.

Actually, she goes lower. Lee Anderson claimed that 30p can feed someone at least for a day or part of a day; “Jack Monroe” claims 11p! Is there a prize for the first idiot or “grifter” who claims to be able to make a 1p lunch?

Exactly right.

Late music

Julie London…what a woman…and what a voice.

Diary Blog, 16 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/twins-separated-birth-find-each-28960150?int_source=nba.

Amazing story.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11638389/Half-universities-peddle-woke-agenda-students.html.

UK universities need a chistka (purge).

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/shepherds-bush-pub-assault-james-stephenson-leg-broken-b1052834.html

Another example of how public services in the UK just do not work any more. The victim of a bad assault, a woman, had to lie under blankets outside a pub for 2 hours, waiting for an ambulance that never turned up. Eventually, she had to take an Uber minicab to hospital.

Adding insult to injury, the police, until pressed, did not bother to gather easily-available cctv evidence.

Finally, the defendant (finally caught after the police had been pressured to actually do their job) was let off with a suspended sentence (albeit with a stiff financial penalty by way of compensation for the victim).

There was reasonable mitigation, yes, but the crime was both violent and unpleasant in itself and, also, the victim was left with continuing —and quite possibly permanent— disabilities and pain caused directly or proximately by the actions of the defendant.

If this continues, UK society will become a jungle.

Jack Monroe

Those who follow the “Jack Monroe” saga have noticed that she never, or at least rarely, admits to having bought expensive items for herself out of the monies she has available to her from several sources; she always either “finds” them, remarkably, or buys them for a song (for a tenth or less of the normal price), or is “given” them by friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, or strangers, or has acquired them via “exchange” for unspecified “services“.

As for her having been “in full time work for the best part of 2 decades“, that seems unlikely, but is a question of definition.

“Two decades” brings us back to early 2003. At that time, “Jack Monroe was 14 years old. She left school at 16 (~2005), working in a chip shop and a Starbucks before joining the fire brigade in Essex in 2007 as a call handler. She left in 2011, and was thereafter, for ~18 months, “on the dole”.

“Jack Monroe” worked for her local newspaper in 2012-2013, and also blogged, after which she got a book deal worth, I read, £25,000, with Penguin: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe.

So there we have 7-8 years of intermittent paid work, not quite the 10+ years she claims.

Since 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been (it seems) mostly or completely self-employed, as scribbler, blogger, TV talking head etc. To what extent that counts as “full-time work” is an open question; if yes, then the total is about 17 years; if not, about 7 or so, as said.

As previously noted, Jack Monroe both claims poverty, and so asks for the public to send her money, but also says sometimes that she was in poverty (while on State benefits for 1-2 years), but not now.

Since about 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been in receipt of monies from a number of sources: TV and radio appearances, Press interviews, about £100,000 royalties from her several books (most still in print, I think), deals with ASDA and other supermarkets, and substantial donations (eg from 634 —at time of writing— very misguided people sending her £3.50-£44 each, monthly, via Patreon),

It is claimed by some on Twitter that “Jack Monroe” is “downsizing” (as she puts it) not because she cannot afford the c.£4,000 a month rent and other expenses of her present home but because she is buying a new but possibly smaller home; some say paying the full price in cash. I have no idea whether that be so.

At what point do the 634 mugs still subsidizing her via Patreon start to think why they are still funnelling cash to this very unreliable “grifter” and fantasist, who has recently been in the Guardian laughing about how, when drunk or drugged, she would buy four large pieces of furniture in a few days “for a laugh” or some such.

Is all that is required, for “Jack Monroe” to receive donations from naive mugs, for her to snarl occasionally on Twitter about “cost of living” or “wicked Tories“? Even if they are (and no argument from me on that), how does that either seriously oppose “Conservative” policies or “help the poor“?

“Jack Monroe” has claimed to have been working on a measure of how “the poor” are disproportionately affected by inflation, something she calls (from one of the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett) the “Vimes Boots Index“, but it seems that that might be just another fantasy; in short, another lie.

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

Other tweets seen

A truth unacknowledged by those born with a silver spoon…

(((Simon Harris))) has to live, after all (I suppose) (whoever he is).

May be useful to people; I do not know.

An ethnic minority carpetbagger in Government will be protected, as far as possible. Others, English, less connected, poorer, would face sterner measures. I recall a colleague at the Bar, in 2007, telling me about a Devonian fishing captain that he had defended, and who (along with his few crew) had decided to evade tax on profits of fish caught. The man was apparently a heroin addict. They all pleaded guilty, the crew got off with suspended sentences, but the captain received a sentence of, if I recall aright, two years’ imprisonment. The amount was tens of thousands (perhaps about £20,000), not the millions of the Zahawi case.

Historical revisionism

Ostalgie-musik

[Grenzpolizei DDR (East German border guards). Maybe we in the UK need something similar in order to stem the migration-invasion]

It often seems that the UK now has effectively no border security. Untermenschen from various countries invade our territory without difficulty, and when “intercepted” (ferried to the UK, or met at the beach), taken to a 3* or 4* hotel, thenceforth battening off the British people for the rest of their lives.

The very best that can be expected of 99% of the migrant-invaders is that they will be totally useless; more likely, most of them are criminal and even murderous.

Late tweets seen

No Western news agencies or TV stations seem interested in finding out how the Kiev regime is treating captured Russian soldiers.

Late music

Diary Blog, 13 January 2023

Afternoon music

[Dnieper dam after reconstruction, 1947]

On this day a year ago

“Jack Monroe”

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

Another day, another “Jack Monroe” lie…

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

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

Other tweets seen

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

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

More music

More tweets

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

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

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

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

Archetypes.

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

More seen about “Jack Monroe”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More tweets

Late music

Diary Blog, 12 January 2023, with thoughts about the NHS, and NHS strikes

Afternoon music

[painting by Jack Vettriano]

On this day a year ago

NHS

As blogged previously, I am all in favour of the NHS principle of “free at point of use”, but the fact is that the NHS, as it is (i.e. not in theory), is simply not working. Not working properly, and scarcely working at all.

It may well be that more money is required, but even now the NHS consumes nearly half the governmental budget (I see 44% as the proportion).

It may well be that nurses should be paid more. What about doctors? I see that GPs are mostly paid over £100,000 a year, some over £200,000, and for a service that is now lamentably poor.

As for hospital doctors, though the most junior (in the first year) receive only about £32,000 p.a., that rises rapidly to over £50,000 and, for consultants and surgeons, well over £100,000.

Ambulancemen (paramedics), (and women), get more than nurses, and do (from what I have seen) a very good job indeed.

As said, nurses and paramedics have a case for wanting more pay, but I cannot see it as morally correct for them to strike, leaving patients without care, even with some kind of skeleton service still running.

As for the NHS generally, it plainly needs to be changed to a service that genuinely puts patients first.

In the past decade, I have seen enough (though not as patient) to convince me that the maladministration in the NHS has to be rooted out. I should say that that is the main problem, not the staff as such, and not money as such.

Few people would want the UK to have an American-style health service, though it also has merits, which I saw when my first wife (an employee of the U.S. Federal Government) needed urgent surgery— and had it within a day or so of being admitted to hospital, and she was admitted the same day that she experienced pain bad enough to seek help. In the UK, that surgery would probably have taken weeks if not months to organize.

Likewise, I recall that my first wife was advised, on another occasion, to get a scan, and was given a choice of five hospitals within a 20-mile radius of home. The same year (1990 or 1991), King’s College Hospital in South London, a major UK teaching hospital, had to have a public appeal to buy a scanning machine, and that appeal ran for several years.

Again, the wife of a friend of mine in New Jersey was paralyzed after a woman driving a car in a supermarket parking lot (at only 5-10 mph) drove into her bicycle. Thanks to being heavily insured, my friend’s wife was able to stay at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center, where the Superman actor, Christopher Reeve, spent time a few years later [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Reeve#Hospitalization]. An excellent “facility”, as Americans say, and in heavily-wooded and peaceful grounds.

Still, the American system, under which about 40%-50% of the population are uninsured or under-insured, is unjust, and not what we in the UK would like to see.

There are, however, alternatives. The French system, for example (which I have also seen a little) seems to be far better than the NHS and, to take just example, has done away with “wards”— patients almost all have their own rooms, or shared rooms, and have done for about 40 years.

A friend in Brittany when I myself lived there (pre-2010) suffered from a heart condition and had already been treated by the NHS. On seeing the French specialist for the first time (taken the 50-mile journey to Brest and 50 miles back by taxi, at State expense, incidentally, rather than having had to drive himself), he was asked what medication he was presently prescribed, and replied. The French consultant raised his eyebrows and said “I think that we can do a little better than that“…

We are often unaware to what extent the NHS rations healthcare; the more advanced techniques and drugs available elsewhere are often not available on the NHS.

What we need is to keep the “free at point of use” principle, but ring-fence an “NHS tax” from income tax, so that those monies are usable solely for and by the NHS, not diverted to “aid” for the Jew Zelensky’s dictatorship, not diverted to other projects or services etc.

Also necessary (to some extent), along with better administration, is attitudinal change in some staff.

Tweets seen

I recall seeing that idiot in the hat shouting through a megaphone, in Whitehall, when I was last in London: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/06/30/diary-blog-30-june-2022-including-impressions-of-a-trip-to-dystopian-london/.

If they really received the full ration (call me a cynic…).

What use is SIS/MI6 when it has neither the will nor the capability to bump off Shamima Begum and her sort? Especially when it also failed, inter alia, to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, failed to predict the Falklands invasion, failed to predict the fall of socialism (inc. the Soviet Union) etc.

It’s “FERBER“, not “FABER“…(get it right…).

American. Don’t know if lawful in the UK. If lawful, should not be.

Some suggestion that the Ferber website was hacked some time ago. May or may not be true.

The wildlife emergency in the UK must become a government priority.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11627311/NHS-offers-remote-GP-job-85-hour-amid-claim-doctors-want-patients.html

The NHS has been accused of ‘wanting less and less’ to do with patients after it advertised a series of remote-only GP roles for £85 an hour.

The work from home job offers general practitioners a three-month contract with the chance ‘to provide online digital consultations’ via video or phone calls to patients, with pay of just under £3,000 a week or almost £13,000 a month.

It comes amid mounting evidence that ‘telemedicine’, while convenient for doctors, can be ‘disastrous’ for some patients.”

[Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11626977/NHS-emergency-care-crisis-laid-bare-999-response-times-worst-ever.html

More tweets

“Jack Monroe”

Probably because the virtue-signalling Guardian readers, while pleased to have a copy of one or two “Jack Monroe” books prominently displayed on a kitchen bookshelf, are certainly not going to actually make, let alone eat, her swill.

I shall look forward to that. All the online “grifters” should be rooted out. Ausrotten!

More tweets

Late tweets

Seems to be a genuine and worthwhile cause: https://www.gofundme.com/f/depher-cost-of-living-support-uk?qid=a6d81c76d0fb2349f78e7a06652165a6

Late music

[Scottish Highlands: a 19thC baronial-style lodge]

Diary Blog, 11 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11620213/Accomplished-fraudster-paid-1-3m-pretending-doctor-NHS-22-years.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11620389/Moment-woman-forced-defend-kick-man-away-lunges-double-decker-bus.html

London. Zoo.

Cheerful news

Only now just realized that one smug and unpleasant individual, who used to post rather nasty tweets about me years ago, around 2013 and 2014, died a few years ago. Not quite sure how many that makes.

#TenGreenBottles.

Tweets seen

Ha ha! Now that really is funny. I think that, out of all the absurd tales made up by (mostly) Jews about the Second World War and the so-called “holocaust” farrago, that is pretty much the best yet.

Your friendly local medical centre is becoming just another “grift”, taking large amounts of money but providing little support.

It’s quite funny, in a bitter way— decades, even centuries, of Irish nationalism have come to exactly nothing, and now even the pathetic Sinn Fein/IRA rump has caved in. Ireland is ruled by globalist puppets (including a half-Indian gay doctor as “Taoiseach”), and is being flooded by blacks and browns.

Should have gone to Specsavers…

Like most System politicians, that one deserves a good kicking.

Very few of that 1M+ believe “Jack Monroe”, or give her any credence.

As a former quasi-celebrity who has had her “15 minutes of fame”, she is pretty much dead in the water, but so long as 631 utter mugs keep sending her money each and every month (between £3.50 and £44 each), she will probably not be too worried that most people have woken up to her nonsense.

More tweets

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.

You mean the Indian money-juggler posing as Prime Minister?

I have blogged more than once about this. The “Bootstrap Cook” has not launched legal action, and will not. The money she “grifted” from mugs wanting to help her sue Con Party MP, Lee Anderson (and also “alt-lite” commentator Martin Daubney) has been kept by her and my belief (unless I see convincing evidence otherwise) is that she has stolen it.

I also believe that the police should be taking an interest in “Jack Monroe” and her whole range of activities.

Less subtle thieves than “Jack Monroe”

Look at the Tesco employee in that clip! He would not notice if a tank crashed through the wall. What a deadhead!

I wonder how long it has been since the thieves landed on the Sussex beaches in their rubber boat?

Any comment from the “refugees welcome” dimwits?

Afternoon music

More tweets

The MPs are just puppets of an international conspiracy; same with the msm. The Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan; http://adam.curry.com/art/1543753587_mkXBrvrY.html.

A typical facemask idiot.

More from the newspapers

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/two-15-year-old-thugs-28928822.

The “justice” system is routinely failing victims. This was not a mere peccadillo by silly teenagers, but a vicious and unprovoked attack.

I am generally against corporal punishment, but a good flogging would have been in order in such a case.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/harrowing-cctv-shows-accused-killer-28929885

Comment unnecessary (?)

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ex-mp-jared-omara-denies-28928813

(See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/07/24/deadhead-mps-the-jared-omara-story/).

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-tory-mp-andrew-bridgen-28926820

The System punishes anyone prominent who questions the “vaccine(s)” (or the so-called “holocaust” farrago)…

More tweets

Good grief! I actually agree with unpleasant Jew, Giles Coren, today.

Late tweets

Little Matt Hancock will be looking for a lucrative sinecure after he leaves the Commons. The Jew-Zionist lobby sorted similar positions out for, inter alia, Ruth Smeeth, Mary Creagh, Tom Watson, Michael Dugher etc, after they left politics. Hancock is “showing willing”, in other words.

“They”…(((They)))…

Late music

[Mosley, 1930s]

Diary Blog, 8 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Jack Monroe

There does not seem much else to say, but the backwash from the storm continues.

“Jack Monroe” herself has gone for the main chance, meaning a general “I’m sort-of sorry but will not/cannot refund anyone“, combined with a plea consisting of “I’m not really guilty of anything, because I am sort-of mentally-disturbed, ex-alcoholic, maybe ex-cocaine abuser, with a huge number of physical and mental problems (self-diagnosed autistic, ADHD, arthritic etc), as well as sort-of lesbian, sort-of ‘trans’, sort-of single mother, as well as a ‘shopaholic’, and anyway have spent all the money I took from people [cheated out of well-meaning mugs]”.

I suppose that the hard-core “Jack Monroe” fans will buy all or some of that, and that the 600+ utter mugs funding her lifestyle via the Patreon website will very likely continue to do that, even as she openly mocks them.

Damage to the septum?

Tweeter “@cashandcarrots” is another one who seems to believe that “Jack Monroe” has done things that “help the poorest and most disadvantaged in society” rather than nothing except help herself (literally).

What? What exactly has she done, when you strip away the virtue-signalling on social media and in the msm? Nothing.

“@cashandcarrots””Michelle” really cannot accept that she and others have been conned by a cunning and manipulative woman entirely out for herself. Even has to pretend that one of the staunchest critics of “Jack Monroe”, “@TruthSignalUK” is somehow part of a [non-existent] “trolling” conspiracy (why would he be, though?).

“@WivFunnyFarm” has evidently bought the “I’m unwellexculpa.

That Bleasdale person tweets all sorts of rubbish. His tweet about the “Bootstrap Cook” is a good example of entirely false logic, i.e. presenting a false choice.

Relentless advocacy for people on the breadline“? Not really. She mostly tweets and sends other online messages about herself, mixed with a bit of typical Twitter “I hate the Tories” stuff (I feel similarly about the “Conservatives”, to put it simplistically; but I also “hate” the “Labour” hypocrites). “Jack Monroe” also constantly messages or tweets with a subtext of “please send me money“.

I wonder whether the loonies and mugs sending money regularly to “Jack Monroe” will ever wake up to the fact that she despises them and mocks them?

As for the “Bootstrap Cook” herself, what are her talents? Not cooking, that’s for sure, looking at the swill that seems to be the bulk of her cuisine.

There is nothing wrong with being well-meaning, as tweeter “@PaulOnBooks” seems to be, but that has to go in tandem with an objective outlook. We are enjoined to be “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves“. Both.

Good advice is never, or only very rarely, to trust a medical doctor who is primarily a socio-political activist.

More “Jack Monroe” lies, it appears.

“Jack Monroe” has a number, perhaps a large number, of Twitter “sock accounts”, many of which tweet “supportive” messages to her main account. Her level of dishonesty is incredible.

Whatever her problems are, they never get in the way of taking people for as much money as possible.

More music

The heavy brigade

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11610889/A-quarter-Britains-soldiers-classed-dangerously-overweight-past-five-years.html

More tweets seen

[“Don’t damage my necklace, Wills!”]

Whatever one may think of Peron and his wives, the fact is that political leadership is only one factor, albeit perhaps the most important, in whether a country is rich or poor (either overall as a country and notionally per capita, or in terms of how much that wealth is actually spread among the population).

Argentina was once a very wealthy country, certainly. Uruguay too. In fact, right up to the 1950s, Uruguay was one of the most prosperous countries in the world. A number of factors changed that.

There again, between 1918 and 1939, Estonia, Latvia and Czechoslovakia were very prosperous, and the citizens were, per head, much better off than the average of those in, say, the UK, France, or most other states. That changed mainly though not solely because of political changes and invasions, notably the Second World War and Soviet invasion (1940, and later 1944, in the case of the Pribaltika states; 1945 in the case of Czechoslovakia), Germany having also effectively occupied them during most of the war years.

Cuba was, economically, once a vibrant economy, albeit suffused with corruption and inequality. Castro’s socialist regime killed the economy. His decision to replace mixed farming with, mostly, a sugar monoculture (in the 1960s) worked up to a point, so long as the Soviet Union paid over the odds for sugar (and whatever else Cuba could export) but resulted in total collapse when the hidden subsidy was removed in the early 1990s.

Likewise, Cuba’s socialist experiment resulted in an end to development in the residential housing sector. Today, Havana and much of Cuba is falling to pieces, and people try to grow their own food if they can.

Some people say that the Cuban system is good re. medicine and education. “Education” in the basic sense perhaps, though obviously rigid in terms of what can and cannot be taught. As to medicine, perhaps so, again in a basic way, though.

The question is whether the supposed advantages of such a system are enough to compensate, both for the poor economy largely the result of that system and also for the harshness of the system politically and in terms of civil rights.

Russia before 1914 was arguably the fastest-growing economy in the world. War (lost war) and then civil war and political upheavals, followed by the socialist system —especially under Stalin from about 1928— weakened, and also distorted the economy. Collectivization, prioritization of heavy industry etc.

I recall reading the memoirs of the self-publicizing Jew Armand Hammer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer]; Hammer— Witness to History. He operated businesses in agreement with the Soviet Government during the 1920s, including a concession to produce pencils.

Hammer discovered that the best pencils were produced in Bavaria. He imported to Moscow both machines and German technicians.

On returning to the Soviet Union in the 1970s or 1980s (I forget; 1970s, I think), Hammer was taken to the pencil factory, still operating. He discovered that nothing had changed: the machines were still working, a few of the original workers, now in their sixties, were still there; even his own old desk was standing unchanged in the same place.

An example of the lack of dynamic change in a socialist system.

Having said that, that same system put the first satellite into space, and created some products and programmes not seen even in the finance-capitalist West. Priorities? As Goering said in the 1930s, “Guns before butter“. That is, of course, a political choice.

Political direction is the single most important factor governing the prosperity of a country, but there are others. Where would the oil states of the Middle East be without demand for oil (and gas)? Back riding camels, almost certainly.

In their case, they have money in vast amounts despite their political and religious backwardness. There again, Europeans (and Americans, who are basically European in origin) discovered the oil and gas, extracted it, knew how to refine it, and also exported it to European and other markets. The Arabs only profited because they were there, and because they were on the cusp of the two contending Cold War cultures, neither part of the Soviet world nor the Western world.

Perhaps the best way to put it is that political leadership can assist an economy but cannot create it, whereas the wrong political direction can certainly ruin an economy, especially if that direction is too rigid. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_threefolding.

More tweets

Damning…

[https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/author/andylynes]

Peak Twitter? Some “IT bod” from darkest Northamptonshire, one James Drury, tries to trash food blogger Andy Lynes, who is, inter alia, a Masterchef semi-finalist…

Ha. Very good.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/08/meet-the-people-who-took-an-evening-class-and-changed-their-life.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/08/tory-right-warns-sunak-calm-before-storm-small-boats-brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/08/what-the-love-of-cats-taught-me-about-myself

More tweets

So “Jack Monroe” cannot, by her own admission (or claim) “manage money”, she cannot cook (as far as I can see), certainly not to any kind of professional standard, and she has cheated hundreds, probably thousands, of people out of money that many can ill-afford to lose, yet the msm is still promoting her! As someone who can advise “the poor”, at that! Why?

If someone like Al Capone can pull themselves up out of difficult times…why would anyone attack that?

Some people really do not know what day it is…

Incidentally, if any reader is interested in seeing how my opinion of “Jack Monroe” has hardened in the past 3-4 months, take a look at my blog assessment posted on 30 September 2022: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/09/30/diary-blog-30-september-2022-including-an-assessment-of-jack-monroe-aka-the-bootstrap-cook/.

If the facts change, so does my opinion“.

More tweets

…and I mistrust anyone who is referred to as “a national treasure“…

Late music

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

Morning music

[Katyusha rockets, 1940s]

On this day a year ago

Ukraine

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

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

[Financial Times]

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

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

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

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

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

[The Guardian].

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

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

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

[“the Wild Fields”, where Cossacks lived]

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

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

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

[Wikipedia]

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

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

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

[Wikipedia].

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

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

At this point, Ukraine is not a functioning state.

The “Jack Monroe” “scamstorm” continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other tweets seen

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

Acorn—oak etc.

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

19th Century thinking.

More music

Temps perdu: Bruce Barry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce Barry died in 2017, aged 82.

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

More tweets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can only agree.

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

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

Now send “Jack Monroe” a fiver!

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

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

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

Below, another typical “Jack Monroe” supporter:

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

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

Not exactly “earning a few quid“…

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

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

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

And so on.

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

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

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

Also absent is anyone likely to be “poor”.

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

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

Oh, well, enough for now.

Late music