Morning music
The rise of Reform UK in Wales
“Crossing Gwent Square on a cold, crisp day in Cwmbran, married couple Maxine and David Griffin have more in common with each other than they did a year ago.
In July, the Brexit supporters voted for the Reform UK party in the constituency of Torfaen; it was the first time they had both voted for the same party.
Maxine, 52, who works in a cafe, had previously voted Conservative, while her husband, 55, a postal worker and union representative, had always voted Labour.
Lack of faith in politics is a running theme among the voters the Guardian interviewed; the vast majority said they would not vote for any party.
But of those who would vote, Reform UK supporters were easy to find.
A poll by Survation, commissioned by Reform UK, put the party at 20% in a Senedd election – ahead of the Conservatives at 17%, but behind Labour at 30%.
A separate unaffiliated poll by Opinium, which was based on Westminster voting intentions, suggested 26% of voters in Wales would vote Reform compared with 24% who would vote Labour…“
[Guardian]
Worth reading, not least because a similar trend may be seen in England as well.
News from the migration invasion
“Final asylum seekers have now left the Bibby Stockholm
Most claims from 400 men on vessel moored in Portland, Dorset have been processed, with majority accepted.
A Home Office team has been processing claims from the 400 men housed on the boat. A significant majority are understood to have been granted asylum and most are expected to leave the area for accommodation elsewhere. About eight were left on the vessel when the final residents departed on Tuesday.
The local council has said that none of the men moved from the vessel will be based in other accommodation in Dorset, with reports saying they are likely to be moved to other areas including Cardiff and Wolverhampton.“
[Guardian]
So there it is. Exactly what I predicted would happen not only in relation to that barge, but also in relation to the invasion as a whole— “processing” (rubberstamping) quietly happening, with about 90% of the “asylum-seekers” allowed to stay in the UK. The rest? Still allowed to stay until removed (which will never happen to the refused individuals, or 90% of them, under System government, as now under Starmer-Labour).
That’s the way Starmer operates— dishonestly, sneakily, and against the interests of the British people. A hateful individual.
In other words, at least 396 of the 400 on that barge will be staying— c.360 because accepted as “genuine” “asylum-seekers”; the other 36 because, though not accepted as genuine even under the UK’s Mickey Mouse immigration laws and rules, they will not be deported. What about the 4 who might be deported (the report implies 8 persons)? Probably willing to go voluntarily, if given a bit of baksheesh and a free ticket.
Incidentally, note in that Guardian report that “a significant majority are understood to have been granted asylum and most are expected to leave the area for accommodation elsewhere“.
So somewhere around 360 or more single men are now going to be given hotel accommodation and, either immediately or before very long, flats or houses that should be going to needy British people. 360 dwelling units.
I don’t want to hear any bs from fake “socialists” about the housing crisis until or unless the same virtue-signallers accept that, without mass immigration, there would be no housing crisis.
Tweets seen
“The British Economist counted about 100,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed since the beginning of the SMO . In addition, another 400,000 Ukrainian servicemen were seriously wounded. The publication reports that more than 0.5% of Ukraine’s pre-war male population (18-49 years old) died, and “about 5% were either killed or too wounded to fight.” These losses, expressed as a percentage of the population, exceed the number of US deaths in Vietnam and Korea combined and are approaching the level of World War II, The Economist notes.“
For several decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (which gave both sides a shock), there were attempts, partly successful, to reduce the risk of nuclear war between East and West. Now, almost exactly 62 years later, that risk not only remains but is increasing almost daily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis.
Now imagine the reverse: American missiles based in Ukraine, Poland, and other states around Russia.
The present situation is not good, and is worsening. It may only take the events of a single day to destroy most of Europe as we know it; and the events of the same or a second day to destroy large parts of both Russia and North America.
Israel cannot fight on two or three fronts simultaneously.
Imagine that as U.S. President. What were they thinking?
I seem to remember that, when I was last in Moscow (2007), the rouble was about 20 to the U.S. dollar, maybe 25. OK, so now it is over 100 to the dollar. Only a fifth of the value it held in 2007.
True, but things are not quite as simple as that. Most importantly, most Russian people (like most Americans) either do not travel internationally, or do so only to countries where the local currency is itself weak. I myself recall encountering a Russian family on the Aegean coast of Turkey in 2001. At that time, most tourist Russians went to countries such as Turkey, North Cyprus or, even more popular, the Republic of Cyprus in the south of that island.
Even in 2001, most Russians did not travel beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union. Most, the vast majority, now stay at home.
Likewise, most Russians do not buy any imported goods at all, and so are insulated from price increases caused by the decline in value of the rouble.
Those who are most impacted by the fall in the value of the rouble are the wealthy, very wealthy, “oligarchs” etc. However, many of those people are so wealthy that a fall of 4/5ths of the notional value of their (Russia-based) assets is almost unimportant, they have so much money (as is the case with the oil sheikhs and rulers of the Middle East).
On the macro level, the fall in value means that Russian products and produce are price-competitive internationally. In any case, Russia is now doing much, perhaps most, of its trade with the “BRICS” states, not with the EU or North America etc. Sanctions, of course, apply to much of Russia’s pre-2022 trade with the West.
Pro-Kiev regime tweeters on Twitter/X are crowing at the weakness of the rouble, but the noise simply amplifies their own ignorance.
I appeared as Counsel there once (actually a 3-day trial), in early 1994, when it was still Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court. The courtrooms then were very pleasant pre-WW1 panelled rooms, not at all like the —as I now see— fairly bland UK Supreme Court one.
It was my first (and one of few) Crown Court criminal trials, a “section 18” GBH with intent, which carries a maximum life sentence. My defendant, had he been convicted, would have been sentenced, probably, to 5 or 6 years in those days, he having thrown hot oil over the “victim”, then stabbed him twice with a chef’s knife. Happily for him, he was acquitted on self-defence, a result I had thought was a 50-50 possibility, though the defendant himself was sure that he would be going down, and for several years.
I remember it well, not least because a friend at the Bar (who already had a good criminal practice) later remarked, on being told by me that I had done my first full Crown Court trial, resulting in acquittal, “oh, so you got him off?!“, to which I replied, modestly, “well, he got off…“, to which his rejoinder was “no, don’t put yourself down.” Kind words. Actually, I think I did OK, in a rather green sort of way…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex_Guildhall
Parliamentary petition
It continues to run: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700143.
Now on 2.8M signatures. It will have no direct effect, and Starmer may well even weasel out of a debate but, from the wider political point of view, it underlines the unpopularity of this ridiculous and nasty “Labour” government.
Late tweets seen
No need to be “mystified“. There is a transnational conspiracy to import blacks and browns into Europe, especially, arguably, into the UK. The idea was formulated by an evildoer called Coudenhove-Kalergi, and the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan has as its aim the extermination of white Europeans, and their replacement by a mixed white/black/brown population, to be ruled over by Jewish and part-Jewish persons: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi.
Wikipedia may call the belief that the Plan exists, “debunked“, but you have to bear in mind that the Jewish/Zionist/Israel lobby has a whole programme going to vandalize Wikipedia. The malicious so-called “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”] even advertized on its website a few years ago for volunteers with Wikipedia accounts to “edit” (vandalize, change for socio-political reasons) Wikipedia.
Look at the UK Prime Ministers of recent years. “Boris” Johnson, part-European, part-Jew, part Circassian Turk. Theresa May, part-Jewish. David Cameron-Levita, mixed European and Jewish. Look at the recent Conservative Party leadership election. Main candidates who were part-Jewish (Tugendhat), African (Kemi Badenoch), probably European/British but married to a Jewish spouse (Jenrick), mixed European/African (Cleverly). All members of Conservative Friends of Israel.
Indeed, look at Starmer: European (Brit) but married to a Jewish woman; all his Cabinet are members of Labour Friends of Israel.
As to the TV ads promoting mixed-race families etc, I wrote about that on the blog years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/12/10/tv-ads-and-soaps-are-the-propaganda-preferred-by-the-system-in-the-uk/.
The fact is that TV ads of that sort are basically socio-political propaganda; the selling of products is, in reality, secondary. Some companies as good as admit the fact. Look at the recent Jaguar car ad.
Another point is that such ads are not aimed at people of my age (68), or those of 50, 40, or even 30. They are aimed at younger people, and indeed at children, whose critical faculties are unformed, and who, seeing such ads, will come to see (or so the propagandists believe) racial-mixing, and production of mixed-race children, as normal.
“They” bring destruction everywhere.
The human cost of war, perhaps, but is this really a “war”? More like the sadistic crushing of a civilian population by a huge and mechanized machine of destruction. The Gazan civilians are almost defenceless.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 