What the government needs to do is to end the “lockdown”, right now, but also to keep advising people strongly, via the msm, re. washing hands (the only really effective way to prevent getting the virus) and reasonable social distancing (i.e. in particular avoiding crowded places and/or places where there are hot and excited people).
Michael Gove
Michael Gove, the pro-Israel, pro-Jewish lobby careerist MP and now Cabinet minister, is in the news again. It will be recalled that he was an expenses cheat in the 2005-2010 Parliament, to the extent that he was lucky not to be prosecuted for fraud. He is also a (supposedly former) cocaine abuser and drunk, who was also filmed in 2019, in the Chambers of the House of Commons, either dead drunk or drugged.
Gove has a Jewish wife, Sarah Vine, who is a Daily Mail scribbler:
“She is thought to come from a wealthy background and, although it is difficult to find out what her parents did, at the time of her marriage to Gove in 2001, they were resident in Monte Carlo. The wedding was at the beautiful village of Vence in the south of France and the reception was held at a local chateau.” [The Guardian]
Michael Gove is a repulsive, sinister, rancid, rotten, vile, creepy, disloyal individual, this snake like creature slithers onto our screens to reassure us, no integrity, dishonest, if you believe this spiv, go have a chat with yourself, Murdoch taught him well #Ridge#Marr
Is our lazy alcoholic clown PM really about to get his P45? And which of the parade of ghouls might replace him? Gove positively makes my flesh creep so it'll probably be him 😨
It was a tweet about Gove which was one of five tweets (yes, that’s right, only 5 out of 150,000+) that got me disbarred in 2016, at the instigation of a pack of Jews: see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/ , or google “Ian Millard barrister” for a one-sided msm view. Now, my tweet about Gove can be seen to have been obviously true (as were the other 4). At that time, Gove had not yet been exposed as a “cokehead”, just as a fraudster, embezzler, doormat for Jews and Israel, and a backstairs manipulator.
The emerging British toytown police state
Something to look forward to: Bullying police officers stopping people for not wearing facemasks and forcing non-wearers to don them in the street. Shops refusing to admit non-wearers. Non-wearers denied access to pubic transport. For months and months and months.
1/2 We agreed to all these new arrangements by our national passivity when our new status was imposed on us. Neither our institutions, nor most of us, uttered a whisper of opposition. We took the yoke, and have entered a new servile relationship with the state. https://t.co/Elpg3F1iyk
2/2 I think that when we are all *compelled* to don facemasks – in most cases useless against infection, but very useful in dehumanising and humiliating their wearers and imposing an obedient prison-style uniformity – some of us may grasp that we've actually embraced servitude. https://t.co/Elpg3F1iyk
It strikes me that, in most revolutions (in their uncontrolled “street” phase), it is not the intellectuals, not the ideologues, not the “responsible” trade unionists or the faux-revolutionary newspaper scribblers and TV talking heads who are the first to take to the barricades, but the delinquent youths and the —to use the contemporary colloquialism— the “totally pissed-off— who do so. They are the ones who assault the police, hang the HVO secret police (Hungary 1956) , burn down the headquarters of the local Stasi and destroy its files (East Germany/DDR 1989) and who create the conditions for an actual revolution going beyond mere temporary upheaval.
Who are those who are “ignoring the rules” of toytown dystopian Britain in 2020? Not the bloggers, not the journalists (not even the dissident ones), not the pesudo-religious priests, priestesses and other frauds. No, we see that it is the youth, or part of it, plus a hard core of people willing to think for themselves and show themselves unafraid of the state, as well as (whisper it) the blacks and other non-Europeans in the UK (who have no thought for the principles of liberty, but who just want the practical or actual freedom to go to parks, play football on Brighton beach etc).
There is no revolution happening in Britain. Not yet, anyway. However, I notice that the young are the ones mostly ignoring the new repressive law and the police-invented “rules” taken from Government ministers’ mere wishes.
My local online newspaper reports that the police have, inter alia, tried to apprehend 7 youths fishing. My God, fishing! What devilment is this?! In fact, “when the officers arrived, the youths ran off“. Meanwhile, in other evil, police were called to a beach where youths had been reported to be using a jetski. My God, don’t they understand that they could be “spreading Coronavirus“, “literally killing people“, and “destroying the NHS“?
Well, no, actually. Because they are not. This pathetic poundland police state-ism is driving even me up the wall. Fishing in small groups (people who already know each other anyway), or using a jetski on the sea (much as I dislike jetskis) are not behaviours with the slightest chance of spreading this bloody Chinese virus.
In fact, the police were out of luck with the jetski “criminals” too, because it appears that, “by the time officers arrived, the youths and the jetski had gone, but officers found the remains of a barbecue on the beach.” A barbecue? The bastards!
Joking aside, what does it take for “Middle England” (let alone the brainwashed plebs) to defend what little is left of their liberties and civil rights?
Actually, my impression is that the vast bulk of the British people have sold their soul not for fame, money (in any large quantity), or other of the usual inducements. No. Just chuck them a family-pack of loo paper, some dried pasta, and a bottle of booze. That’s them sorted…and goodbye all the fine words about “democracy”, “a society under law” (nb. “law“, not laws“), “freedom”, “civil rights”, “human rights” etc.
I don’t want to hear any more about the (large fake anyway) “wartime spirit”, “Dunkirk spirit”, “Blitz spirit” etc, and how “we” fought “tyranny” (as propaganda had it in WW2 and, germinally, for several years beforehand, as well as since).
We see the 100-y-o ex-officer raising £20M or more for the NHS, and he is quite rightly being honoured. Having said that, why does a National Health Service need to have monies raised for it by ad hoc crowdfunding? The fact is that the NHS has been both underfunded and, at least equally important, maladministered for years, even decades. In the past decade, vast sums have been shaven off NHS budgets and, since 2017, nurses have had their pay frozen.
Will the £20M-£30M raised be properly deployed or applied? Come to that, I wonder whether that 100-year-old ex-officer himself voted Conservative in 2010, 2015, 2017 or 2019??
It's been clear to me since at least September 11 2001 that a lot of people in the modern world do not especially wish to be free. The ready acceptance of the presumption of guilt and the convict-like treatment of air-travellers at first amazed me. Then I realised. They liked it. https://t.co/lnqVZS1CGp
“Yes, the virus has killed a significant number of people, but the expected mass onslaught of deaths has not arrived. The NHS has a huge number of empty beds for the time of year. The mortality figures show a confused picture, not least because it is not clear how the authorities decide who is and who is not recorded as a Covid-19 death.” [Peter Hitchens, in the Daily Mail]
Lol, it's funny though that all the things that conspiracy theorists have been warning about for the last 20 years seems to be coming true, implantable ID chips, cashless society, never ending wars against imagined enemies, constant surveillance, the rise of technochracy etc
1/2 Governments which are good at sweeping, grandiose gestures (such as quarantining millions of healthy people in their homes and shutting down an entire economy) are unsurprisingly bad at the hard detail, such as protecting the old and equipping doctors. https://t.co/WxSAWpGB8X
So far, only a minority of clear-thinking people and sceptics has stood up to the brainwashing around the present attempt to place a significant amount of the world population (focussing here on the UK) under a form of house arrest. Here below are a few tweets from leading dissident, Peter Hitchens:
How to think of the furious, raging attackers on Twitter, unresponsive and intolerant, who try to scare dissenters into conformity: 'People sitting in basements quietly converting fizzy drinks into human lard'. https://t.co/ZqdLKJAQPW
I have been pointing out for ages ( and so has Dr John Lee) that the figures are remarkably vague and do not distinguish between deaths from and deaths with. https://t.co/QJYoo4aVYY
Thanks @grumpyoxford. I've been promoting his work for a month now, and you are right. He devastates the ridiculously high mortality figures on which so much of the panicdemnic was based. https://t.co/s6PNhJZrRb
Most BBC journalists these days are not intellectually equipped to question government with any rigour. They can question failings in delivery (the Soviet media used to do with under Communism) but they cannot question actual policy. It does not occur to them. @mark85767033 https://t.co/XqHKvi5Zw3
In relation to that last of Hitchens’ tweets, how true that is! The BBC is now purely a System/Government/Common Purpose mouthpiece, as demonstrated by some pathetic nonsense on BBC News this morning. A virtual concert in “celebration” of the (not-very-effective) public services, I believe. Some bearded fellow selling rainbow T-shirts (apparently for the NHS) too.
A tweet, and answering tweet, below, too, which both reference Joan Bakewell:
It was dispiriting to see someone who ( as a sixties survivor) I remember as a sharp, irreverent mind becoming a conformist burbler of the official line. I suspect the 1960s cultural revolutionaries now believe they have got what they wanted, and have become the establishment. https://t.co/KNwvZIDOCk
Well, I am only 5 years younger than Peter Hitchens, so I also remember Joan Bakewell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Bakewell , though from the 1970s, not 1960s. As I saw her, a pursed-lipped busybody type, the sort of woman back then who did well at a State grammar school, attended university (in her case, Cambridge), then joined some “Establishment” body such as MI5 or (in her case) the BBC.
Others who did the same (see above) included Jilly Cooper, Diana Rigg, Petula Clark, the theatre director Peter Hall, Kingsley Amis, and even that excellent adventure writer, Hammond Innes (now rather forgotten, but one of the few non-classic fiction writers that I like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_Innes), as well as the once-famous but now equally-forgotten early “celebrity chef”, Robert Carrier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carrier_(chef). Others too. Sadly, I have been unable to locate Joan Bakewell’s equivalent magazine ad. Or that of Hammond Innes, though I did find this, one of his best books, in my opinion:
Also found a few minutes of silent film showing the writer at his East Anglian home:
A satirist in the early 1970s suggested that Sanderson might try out a Russian literary giant of the time: “Very Solzhenitsyn, very Sanderson” (unsurprisingly, that never happened). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
I have to say that Joan Bakewell is so typical of many of the people I have fought all my life, the bien-pensant Hampstead-dwellers (I believe that Joan Bakewell herself lives in nearby Primrose Hill, though I may be mistaken) who think, for example, that the multicultural society is wonderful (because they themselves live in a bubble cossetted by wealth and general privilege), and so on. Plenty like that at the Bar, too.
“I don’t really care about mass immigration, neither do I care about Coronavirus lockdown, because I and all my friends live in big houses with nice gardens in Hampstead and Highgate and Primrose Hill and Blackheath.” Bluntly put, but in essence that is more or less the attitude.
This [below] is what we are not hearing from the hysterical msm, let alone the Government of Fools:
But several countries have not had what you call 'lockdown'. What did the famous 'curve' do there? . https://t.co/nGRfzDFtCl
The “flattening of the curve” of the “pandemic” has occurred in both countries with “lockdown” and those without…
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
1/2 Dr John Lee 'The real point is that there isn’t any direct evidence that what we are doing is actually affecting the peak. It is possible to make arguments that sound reasonable that a lockdown should affect the peak…. https://t.co/GWWJPs8ifv
2/2 Dr John Lee 'And yet other places which are doing different things seem to have similarly shaped graphs. It is only an assumption that the lockdown is having a big effect on the virus spread, but this is not a known scientific fact.'https://t.co/GWWJPspT73
In fact, in terms of propaganda method, the UK state has managed to manage the public easily, in a judo-like way, not using blunt force as the primary way of manipulating behaviour, but combining that with the channelling of the fear of the public (fear of the virus) and the inherent British social conformity.
Where the Government itself has fallen down is in the fact that it has painted itself into a corner, and now cannot back down and then re-open or free the economy and society.
There is this idea abroad that there has to be an “exit strategy”. Why not just say “everything will be open as of X-day, the last day of X-month”?
Meanwhile, the economic tidal wave is approaching. Debenhams (23,000 jobs) has gone (officially only 7 stores and 400 jobs so far, but I doubt that the rest will last long) and I see that the ground force for aviation, comprising several large enterprises such as Swissport, are saying that they will lay off their thousands of employees this weekend unless government guarantees are given.
It is clear that once the furlough monies made available by the Government end (now extended until end of June), there will be a crashing wave of redundancies. More than that, there will, even as things stand, be millions of people on State benefits, maybe for the first time unable to pay their rents, mortgage payments, and general living expenses.
So far the population has been supine, scarcely willing to think for itself, let alone protest as its most basic everyday civil rights have been taken away. That may change when people start to suffer directly. We shall see.
Actually, the very lack of protest or individual (or group) rebellion is not just stunning in itself. It shows how it is that British people have been almost quiescent as their country has been swamped by migration-invasion for decades.
This is a British people that gets more excited or angry about the result of a TV talent show, or the plot of a “soap”, or about who screws whom in some “Year of the Sex Olympics” TV “reality” show, than when their own rights, jobs, and future are trashed.
Twitter, thank God, is not the whole society, but look at Twitter and you see the willing slaves begging to be enslaved more; none more so than the “liberal” or “socialist” tweeters, the sort of people who, in the 1960s, 1970s, even 1980s, would have been debating, protesting, rebelling against the infringement of rights, liberties and life-chances. Now? Begging for longer and harsher “lockdown”, demanding more active policing, eager to clap en masse and on command, eager to “celebrate” state services which in fact are only just, or not, functioning.
I notice that a few of the more notorious “usual suspects”, such as Jew-Zionist minor academic Ben Gidley (under one of his surviving aliases, “@BobFromBrockley”) have started to call any people who do not accept the official line(s) put out by the System re. Coronavirus, “denialists”. cf. “holocaust” “denial” (meaning historical revision of WW2 narratives; and the view that all aspects of history can be examined and commented upon freely), climate change “denial” etc.
David Icke tweets
David Icke used to follow my Twitter account before I was expelled from Twitter via Jewish lobby machinations. He only follows a couple of hundred people, so he must have found my tweets interesting. Perhaps he reads my blog.Here are a few of his recent tweets:
[Update, 14 December 2020: David Icke has now been expelled from Twitter —in the Twitter weasel word, “suspended”— as I was (over two years ago)]
Boris-idiot
Many tweets seen asking “where is Boris?” and many answering their own question by saying that he is in hiding until the death-toll reduces. Quite likely, but what did the voters expect when “they voted for” a part-Jew public entertainer as “their” Prime Minister? (I do not forget, though, that only about 4 out of 10 voters did vote for Conservative Party candidates in 2019).
Evening foray
Went out to Waitrose. The usual black-garbed Handmaid’s Tale marshals there, shuffling around outside. No other shoppers waiting, so no need to join a line. I was graciously waved through. Before that, while parked, I saw the local police drive round the car park once. Why? God knows. In case some people were actually talking to each other and needed to be shouted at? Whatever. The police just drove round and out again.
It strikes me that the police have an easy job right now, certainly in rural and quiet coastal areas. Crime down by a third, officially (I suspect far more, half or three-quarters, if we are talking about real crime, not people saying too many truths on the Internet). Many police seem to spend their time at present driving around, checking out (snooping) as to why someone is out of their house arrest etc; or parked, observing.
In the supermarket, bought a scratchcard. A winner again (though only £10). Few shoppers. Bought a few necessary items (kefir, bread, butter, milk, water, cat food), and a load of unnecessary ones (ice-creams on sticks, raw prawns at one-third of usual price, curry paste, lime pickle, poppadoms etc). Did not notice what items were unobtainable (except bleach, again all gone). Plenty of bread, eggs, milk etc including those panic-buy staples of loo paper and kitchen roll (I myself had no need of any); lemons, limes, grapes and other fruit all available in quantity. Reasonably good selection of tomato. Looks as if this area, at least, has shopped itself to a standstill except for the apparently insatiable demand for pasta, rice and bleach.
Turned on the TV, to see that The World at War is again being shown. Interesting to the extent that many people who were in quite high positions in WW2 were still alive and able to be interviewed in 1973 when the series started. Not the top leaders, of course, but (mainly on the British and German sides) the secondary or lower commanders and other personalities: Speer, General Warlimont, Stalin’s interpreter etc.
As before, I was struck by how close the Wehrmacht came to capturing Moscow. As I have blogged before, in 1993 my driver made it from the Khimki memorial (the point of furthest advance in 1941) to close to the Kremlin in 15-20 minutes!
A 1941 German tank would take longer, but even so… (yes, since both 1941 and my first visit in 1993, an IKEA store has appeared there!).
Annoying that, in World at War, Laurence Olivier, doing the voiceover, attempts a kind of faux-Russian pronunciation which is in fact wrong in both Russian and Western usage, eg “Shtalin” for “Stalin”.
Ash Sarkar
Ash Sarkar, who taught briefly at a new university (and now at some institute in the Netherlands, founded by a Dutch Jew), is now seen quite often on TV in the UK as a kind of “licensed Bolshevik”, following her rather silly “I’m literally a communist” outburst on a daytime TV show a couple of years ago. She is 28 today. That fact is “trending” on Twitter.
Ash Sarkar is part of the Novara Media set-up, along with Aaron Bastani.
Here is not the time or place convenient to examine the inanity of being both “communist” and “libertarian” (which is what both of the above claim to be; they also both claim to be “feminist”). To go into the full depths of their political childishness would take too long today. I have blogged about them, en passant, in relation to wider issues:
Neither is here and now the time and place to examine how it is that Anglia Ruskin University had someone whose degree and MA were both in English Literature teaching “Global Politics” for a year. We are talking about someone who defined Communism as “the desire to see the coercive structures of state dismantled, while also having fun“… I wonder what Marx (let alone Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky) would have thought of that!
As said, Ash Sarkar has taken over from Owen Jones the mantle of the “licensed Bolshevik” or “System-approved faux-revolutionary” on the msm in the UK. She appears, despite her “I’m a communist” outburst, on BBC, Sky etc. I wonder whether the System msm would have been so accommodating had someone said “I’m literally a National Socialist”? Or even “social-nationalist”? Of course not. Blackballed at once. So Ash Sarkar fulfils the role of pseudo-revolutionary or radical. The BBC or Sky can then say “look, we’re an open and free mass media outlet. We even have revolutionaries on our shows.” Yes, of course…
The Ash Sarkar trend on Twitter provides yet more evidence of how little Twitter reflects the real political world. I read that Novara Media has grown from having only a few thousand readers in 2015 to hundreds of thousands, on occasion 1 million or more, now.
However, there are 70 million inhabitants of the UK. If you looked only at Twitter, you might imagine that most support a “Novara Media” political position, when in fact Labour as a whole (and there is little organized “socialism” outside Labour) only has the support at present of about 25% of the population, and an Ash Sarkar position some very small proportion of that.
Twitter has expelled most truly dissident personalities (including me, in 2018), mostly at the behest of the organized Jewish lobby. Increasingly, one can almost judge the public mood by seeing what is favoured on Twitter, then reversing it.
Westminster Bridge clapathon for idiots
I blogged about this yesterday. I have to agree with this fellow:
This country is the world leader at empty gestures. Give the key workers proper protection and increase their pay! Nobody cares about the feds doing nee naw nee naw on Westminster Bridge. https://t.co/6zdGASnvxw
(though I wish that some people would stop referring to the British police as “the feds”! Did that come from American TV via the blacks in the UK, somehow? How silly it is…)
The UK as North Korea-lite, complete with emotional blackmail (if you don’t clap, and more importantly if you don’t support “lockdown”, or if you doubt the official narrative, you must be a bad person, almost a murderer…)
The Government of fools
It seems that little Matt Hancock and his fellow-clowns may “instruct” anyone over 70 and also anyone under 70 with health problems as common as high blood pressure to stay “indefinitely” in “lockdown”, i.e. under house arrest! For years, or for the rest of their lives!
I suggest that little Matt Hancock and this government shut up before they really do cause a (typically British, quiet?) revolution in this compliant nation of serfs.
The only reason that I am not going out wherever I please on a daily basis at present is because I have nowhere much to go anyway! If the proposed restrictions (beyond May) are mandated, however, I may have to go out with the specific intention of “flouting” the UK’s toytown police state “laws”.
Meanwhile…
Around 15,000 people a day are still flying into the UK. Their medical condition is not checked on arrival. That's the equivalent of 105,000 passengers a week, including those with serious Covid-19 outbreaks, like the US, China, Spain and Italy.
Below, UK North Korea-lite riot squad goons (“Territorial Support Group” in the Metropolitan Police) getting very agitato at a (Jew) journalist who tried to film an arrest (probably a pointless one):
This is always the problem, in any country, when you give the police too much power. They tend to abuse it and/or treat government preferences as “law”. What the government wants is not law. Look at the sergeant in charge there, in the clip. Shouts out that the journalist “is killing people” by standing outside a park, filming. How bloody stupid can you get?! When will the sergeant call in an air strike?…
This, below, is how the UK Government of Fools runs its toytown “war effort”:
The gov't said it's delivery of free food to vulnerable would be the 'biggest effort to deliver supplies to those in need since World War Two'. They gave the 6,500 people in Wirral just 11 cans of beans, a handful of Kit Kats and a few other items https://t.co/1GSqKKHz1G
I don't think so @dproffitt. Media are already becoming far more critical, over govt incompetence, and over economic damage. And public beginning to realise that the economic damage is real and reaching into their own lives. But it takes time. https://t.co/L07K6u0zZ3
I hadn't observed any polls about the Tory Party. I think a lot of people have forgotten that this *is* a Tory government, judging by the widespread leftist support for its actions. I hope that one day we will grow out of imagining that it is always 1940. It is not. It is 2020. https://t.co/eeSv3uxLTG
Hubris is A Bad Thing, so I shall not claim that Peter Hitchens is [see below] copying my blog remark of yesterday, which compared the government of fools’ “lockdown” with the actions of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. After all, the parallel is rather obvious.
The government, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, has called into being forces it can no longer control. It persuaded public opinion to back a shutdown. It still does.But many ministers fear that with every day of stoppage they are destroying the economy for the foreseeable future.
Fraser Nelson notes: 'What can never be repaired is the long-term damage to children's education, or the lives of those whose cancers might lie undetected in this interregnum.' https://t.co/TEgS2NsthM
Fraser Nelson in Telegraph: 'One fairly obvious alternative to a mandatory lockdown is moving to a Swedish-style system of consent: asking people to be careful, rather than sending the police after them'. https://t.co/TEgS2NsthM
'Fraser Nelson on the fix the government are in : 'Their mission was to prepare for a Wuhan-style Covid onslaught. The onslaught has simply not arrived in the form that was feared' https://t.co/TEgS2NsthM
A few years ago, a pack of Jews, including some public entertainers, got together and, via the Jew-Zionist fake “charity”, the “Campaign Against Antisemitism”, had the satirical singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz barred from the Edinburgh Fringe, part of the Edinburgh Festival. How they laughed! Well, guess what? Most of those singers, monologuers, comedians etc were hoping to appear and make money, or advance their careers, at the Fringe this year. Oh, no, wait. Coronavirus…
Festival cancelled. Fringe cancelled. As Windsor Davies used to say, “oh dear, what a pity, never mind”.
L’homme qui rire…
The same is true of all those barristers who either applauded my getting disbarred (via an allied pack of Jews) in 2016, or who failed to defend me publicly (not one did defend me, in fact). Coronavirus has now shut all of the courts, or almost all (I believe that some magistrates’ courts are still ploughing their way through their pathetic daily lists of minor crimes). Much of the Bar (despite “virtual hearings” here and there) has had its court work frozen. Not all have paperwork to do.
I sincerely hope that those who attacked me or failed to speak up, not so much for me personally, but for freedom of socio-political expression, suffer stinging blows; and well-deserved.
Unfortunately, many barristers have plenty of capital on which to draw, but many do not. I hope that those who opposed me and especially those who tried to kick me when I was down (via Twitter etc) will take a hit. They will anyway, eventually, one way or another, but now (in the pocket) would be a good start.
A tiny glimmer of commonsense (but not much)
“Driving to the countryside and walking – where more time is spent doing the latter than the former – is among a list of reasonable excuses for Britons leaving their home during the coronavirus lockdown, according to advice issued to police.” [The Guardian]
…yet still no sign that the “authorities” or the police or public understand that, in terms of commonsense, there is nothing wrong in driving around just to get some change of air (with window down, for example). It neither exposes anyone to the virus, nor spreads it (because the virus is only able to move in air, briefly, in droplets of water, as when someone sneezes).
Prison Island UK
So the Government of this country, unlike all others in Europe, at least so far, is suggesting that 10% or 20% of the population is going to have to remain under house arrest for months, maybe years, until a vaccine is found or…when? Until the next Chinese virus is upon us? First thought: tell the Chinese to stop eating bats, rats, pangolins, birds’ nests and all the other disgraceful stuff they eat.
It is not acceptable for a British government to place a substantial minority or indeed majority of the population under house arrest. The only reason that the UK is in a bad position vis a vis this virus is because the Conservative Party governments have been for years cutting to the bone the NHS, care homes, social care in the community, and other relevant areas.
Do we see in Germany, France, Scandinavia etc this panic about shortages of equipment, of staff, of beds, of hospitals? No. Do we see in those other countries officially-approved “clapothons” to “celebrate” the health service? No. Do we see individuals having to (or deciding to) collect funds for the health service via crowdfunding, because that service is underfunded? No.
Well, I drove out on a couple of connected errands, both (I regret) within the new toytown police-state “rules”; two errands, one drive, as the Chinese might put it. My first afternoon drive for weeks.
My impressions: more cars than when the “lockdown” was first imposed, though fewer than when the UK lived what was then called “normal” life. No obvious police presence, though I hear through local sources that the police have been quite active in the wider local area in the (presumably) late evenings, i.e. after the supermarkets and convenience stores shut (mostly 2000 hrs). They have apparently been stopping cars, checking people out etc.
The little village shop a couple of miles away is now operating a “1 out 1 in” system, with only 2-3 people in toto allowed in at any time. I was able to buy some artisan trout pate and trout pate with horseradish, and a couple of bunches of local asparagus, as well as a few Lotto tickets.
It strikes me that “social distancing” is having a quite powerful psychological effect on people, a mental or emotional distancing too. Fewer smiles, a feeling around of wariness. What is really behind all this? As with the mass sacrifice of cattle during the Foot and Mouth emergency, there seems to be at least one hidden agenda.
China
I am coming to the provisonal view that the world as a whole is going to have to treat China as a deadly enemy. I am not happy about that tentative judgment, but I cannot see an alternative, the way things are. We must see things as they are, not as they might be in a more perfect world…
From global menace to scare story? What’s really behind all this?
The latest news is that the 4,000-bed “Nightingale Hospital” in the London Docklands, which opened very recently and which started admitting patients only a week ago, treated only 19 patients over the Easter holiday.
It now seems that the other Nightingale hospitals of the same sort, converted quickly in various cities to deal with the expected huge numbers of gravely-unwell Coronavirus cases, will not even be needed. At least one will not even officially open.
I thought (and still think) that it was wonderful how, with political will, sufficient funds, dedicated workers and sufficient staff ready to move in, even the first such hospital could be created in days, or a week. Presumably there were contingency plans (if so, that is also to be commended).
However, it throws into the light whether the other Government actions, particularly the “lockdown”, should ever have been imposed, or so stringently imposed.
It is clear now that, after Government panic action, little reaction from the almost inoperative Opposition, and cheerleading from an ignorant and supine mass media, massive damage has been done to the UK economy. That must result in huge unemployment, low pay, high tax etc once the Coronavirus emergency and scare is but a memory.
Let us be clear: this virus is a serious and sometimes deadly public health threat, but even now that it has plainly reached and passed its peak, the death toll total is “only” about 12,000 or so. Yes, that is terrible for the relatives of the deceased, but is only about 1 person in every 6,000 of the population, overall.
The town nearest to me has, including its semi-rural offshoots, about 15,000 inhabitants. Statistically, there might be expected 2-3 Coronavirus deaths so far in that town. In fact, I have seen none at all reported. That may be because this virus is hitting harder in certain crowded urban areas such as London, Birmingham etc. There are huge swathes of Britain where, were it not for the extreme “lockdown”, the Coronavirus would be something only encountered in the Press or in TV news reports.
Back in the mid-1970s, when hitching a lift, I got chatting to the car driver, who had recently moved to England from Belfast, about the situation in Northern Ireland. He surprised me by saying that, in the half-dozen years since “the Troubles” had started, he had only heard one bomb explode, and that had been somewhere in the distance, far from his office in central Belfast. In fact, there are people who lived in Northern Ireland right the way through the 25-30 years of the Troubles who never encountered any political violence, terrorism, Army reaction etc.
The newspapers and TV are a poor method via which to understand anything. However, even the msm has started to move on from “Coronavirus will kill everyone” to “Lockdown— is it time to lift the 24/7 curfew?”
In a perverse sort of way, it’s quite funny, inasmuch as employers have for years been making their workers use their own time for unpaid work, losing lunchtimes, evenings etc, even weekends and holidays. Well, now look. The parasites are going to lose their companies and hardly anyone is working at all now (or buying anything except food, drink, cleaning stuff and loo paper). Sadly, the employees will also suffer, via lack of a job…
Likewise, for years we have been hearing that children desperately need every single hour of teaching, so as not to “fall behind”. That despite the incredible drop in standards of education since the 1970s (take a look at “A” Level papers from the 1950s, 1960s etc). Parents have been fined for “taking their children out of school” to go on holiday etc. Now look: no school at all, for months. In fact, if the “lockdown” lasts until June, which is possible, the pupils may not return to school until September or even October. State school holidays are shorter than those in the Independent sector of course. I cannot quite recall when I, as a teenager, went on Summer holiday. I think in mid-June. It was long ago now, half a century!
I am not sure that “back to normal” quite matches the public mood, but the “lockdown” must end now. Except that it will not, because the Government has painted itself into a corner. It has ramped up this “emergency time” stuff, had all these new temporary hospitals fitted out, told everybody (inaccurately) that “everybody is at risk” (not true in terms of actually dying from the virus, with rare exceptions).
So now the Government can hardly say “OK, everyone, if we don’t end lockdown, the economy will crash and not recover for decades if ever, so see you all at work tomorrow”, even if that might be more honest.
The Government will have to, speaking politically, announce only gradual resumption of national life, a life wherein people are not domestic animals penned in by Toytown police and a poundland KGB but (supposedly) free citizens, able to walk, sunbathe, drive to national parks and even —strange idea– chat while shopping. All that could be done overnight (that’s what I would do), but will not be, all so that the Government and its advisers do not look stupid. And the price will be paid by companies, employees, the self-employed and anyone suffering from anything requiring surgery or other treatment unrelated to the virus.
The Conservative Party may calculate: “where can the voters go?” and of course they are right, if that is what they think. Labour under Keir Starmer is even more of a joke than it was under Corbyn, and in any case a general election is probably 4+ years away. There is, as yet, no social-national true alternative party.
The Government virus propaganda has made the public scared of its own shadow. The public cannot, politically, or in terms of mass psychology, now simply be told, “OK, folks, we got it wrong” or “Sorry, people, we went a bit over the top, didn’t we?“, or “Back to normal life as of midnight tonight, people” (“and sorry we treated you like mugs!“…). No, no…It will be a trying-to-play-the-statesman Raab or Hancock, gravely suggesting that he is balancing all factors weightily, like Solomon or a Renaissance king.
In fact, it occurs to me that the Government itself may be stoking fears of an “iceberg” of unrecorded Coronavirus deaths in care homes as a way of saying to the public “the danger is still huge— do as you are told (by us)”…(aka “Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives”).
I suppose that it is marginally better than “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!”…
I blogged yesterday and the day before that the Cabinet is like “a headless chicken” without its part-Jew “Prime Minister” clown and public entertainer: “There are growing complaints that the Cabinet is rudderless, with decisions being effectively put on ice until Boris Johnson completes his recovery from coronavirus.” [Daily Mail].
Give that man a cee-gar…
After Coronavirus?
“After the grim Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) figures yesterday – as well as dire IMF forecasts that the global economy is facing its deepest recession for 90 years – Mr Sunak told a Downing Street briefing that people must brace for ‘hardship’.” [Daily Mail]
“And he warned colleagues the Government risks causing permanent damage to the economy if the lockdown goes on too long.” [Daily Mail]
and look at this “muppet”!
“In a sign of tensions, one Cabinet minister told The Daily Telegraph: ‘We should begin to release the things that can be released, so primary schools and non-essential shops could reopen…Suggesting that pensioners will have to sacrifice their freedom to let the country get back to normal, the minister added: ‘It looks like elderly and vulnerable people are going to be self-isolating for six months rather than three.’” [Daily Mail]
They want “elderly” (70+?) people to stay locked in for 6 months? Until nearly Christmas? Ha ha! That is just not on. Unacceptable. Unenforceable. I have already been told by a couple of people of that age that they will ignore any such attempts to put them under house arrest for months.
ps. if by “elderly”, that “Conservative” idiot means anyone 60+, rather than 70+, I (aged 63) will take great pleasure in both breaking the illegitimate “law” and encouraging others to break it, inter alia.
5G and Coronavirus
I have no view on any link between 5G and Coronavirus but thought the brief article below interesting:
“[A]MailOnline reader revealed her elderly dementia-stricken mother was discharged to a care home, without checking with her.
Her mother, of Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire, was stuck in hospital because health officials had yet to find a care package for her.
She told MailOnline: ‘Due to the COVID-19 outbreak most care homes in Hereford with places refused to take her so she was there a while.
‘The hospital were getting really annoyed [!] because they wanted her out as soon as possible and the bed freed up.
‘On Sunday (April 12) they discharged her to a care home in Worcestershire without consulting me or checking the home could meet her complex needs.’
The woman – who wanted to remain anonymous – added: ‘She arrived with a DNR, which said do not transfer back to hospital if she contracts COVID-19.
‘My mother has worked all her life and paid into the NHS they do not have the right to sign her death warrant because she’s old and has dementia.” [Daily Mail]
Big news from the USA and UK retail sector
J.C. Penney is probably going to go down. Meanwhile, in the UK, a study shows that half of the big non-food retailers have cash reserves sufficient for only 6 months. After that, gone.
That leaves until October before a tidal wave hits British high streets and shopping parks.
Local government
I suppose that I should no longer be capable of surprise that local and central government in this country is so incredibly stupid…; local councils have closed dumps/recycling centres. Result? Fly-tipping. Well, I mean, who on Earth could have predicted that? Anyone not an incompetent local penpusher…
In fact, “gypsies” (meaning Irish “traveller” tinker-types) do most of this. The stupid “lockdown” must be lucrative for them.
Well, fame at last! I am mentioned by name in the notorious Labour Party report on “antisemitism”, it seems. In fact, I am number three on the list of Labour Party members who were “investigated” for “antisemitism”!
Adolf Hitler always said that, despite what was (and is) often claimed, the Jews are a very stupid people at root.
“Exhibit A”: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member, supporter of, nor even voter for the Labour Party (or any System party). It seems that there is an “Ian Millard” who does or did belong to the Labour Party, and that some Jew (I presume) attributed one of my tweets from 2016 to that “Labour Party Ian Millard”. It then took Labour 217 days to discover that they had
sent a Notice of Investigation [NOI] to that other Ian Millard (who “dindu nuttin”); and that
that other Ian Millard had not posted the “offending” tweet [for, dear reader, it was I]…
Comedy gold! With that level of incompetence, Labour and its Jewish secret rulers and influencers should try running the UK again. Why not? It’s as good as finished now anyway!
Coronavirus speculation
Is this part of a great conspiracy to kill off most of the world population, maybe only a first, experimental phase or attempt? I would have dismissed such a theory out of hand a few months ago, maybe even 1-2 months ago. Now? Not sure.
There are sadnesses in life on Earth, which only music can express…
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme drone pushing the “lockdown saves lives” rubbish, when in fact, taken overall, far more will die because of “lockdown”. They will die of everything except Coronavirus.
Looks as if the UK government (ZOG regime) is intent on keeping the “Coronavirus crisis” going as long as possible. In fact, the regime may well be quite content that, in care homes and private homes, the very elderly and unwell are dying “quietly”, out of the public eye. It solves for the regime the care crisis that it itself has created via spending cuts since 2010.
Conspiracy theory? I think not (ask Dominic Cummings and his “weirdos and misfits”).
#r4today Tory Cabinet Minister Therese Coffey coming up. She has the welfare brief! No seriously – she’s in charge of our welfare! pic.twitter.com/X1seg7yF8h
Therese Coffey is parroting lines not answering the questions & not showing any empathy for residents or workers. This is simply not good enough. #CareHomeCrisis#COVID2019https://t.co/bNPoyNpnHv
— Simon Gosden. Esq. #fbpe 3.5% 🇪🇺🐟🇬🇧🏴☠️🦠💙 (@g_gosden) April 14, 2020
Therese Coffey “entirely happy” with the Govt’s response to the c19 crisis. #BBCBreakfast UK deaths now 167 per million of population (excluding those who have died outside hospital) Germany deaths now 38 per million.
But the Tories are happy with that. 🤬
— NE man lost at sea 🇪🇺🇬🇧🏴 (@nemanlostatsea) April 14, 2020
This government of fools (illegitimate ZOG regime) is lost without its part-Jew public entertainer, Boris-idiot (who apparently has now been tested for Coronavirus and shows no sign of it, oddly, despite his supposedly having been almost dying from it for two weeks; surely he would show “antibodies”? Perhaps either I, or the commentator, more likely, need to understand better the situation, the virus, the testing procedure or the language used.
Looks like I was right to blog about Therese Coffey as a “deadhead MP”!
— Mirror Breaking News (@MirrorBreaking_) April 14, 2020
Either Sky News or the useless “Office of Budget Responsibility” is looking for pie in the sky (Sky?). The near-collapse of the UK economy is already happening in reality, and the Government is now unlikely to finish this nonsense of “lockdown” any time soon, mainly because the Cabinet is now, in the absence of the part-Jew public entertainer Boris-idiot, posing as Prime Minister, akin to a headless chicken.
As for a swift “bouncing back”, where does that idea originate? In the Conservative Party propaganda department? Half of the world is still not functioning economically. By Autumn, the Coronavirus crisis/scare/whatever will be over, presumably, but in Europe (still our main trading area, despite Brexit) demand will be at rock-bottom. The same will be true of the USA/North America, our second most important area.
Domestic demand will be very weak too, in a situation where millions will be unemployed and where the “self-employed” (5 million people) will often be making little money. Pay generally is likely to be low. So from where does the “bounce-back” come?
Perhaps what is meant is that there will be a huge fall in activity, but then followed by an increase on that low figure.
NEW OBR will publish noon today illustrative scenarios on pandemic hit to UK GDP/deficit… we reported last week internally Gov looking at bigger end of Q2 hit ranging from independent forecasts of -7.5% to -24% GDP -average -14% -no precedent since 1921 https://t.co/ClDw86Z444
Lack of PPE is a symptom of general permanent failings in an NHS which (whisper it ) is often well short of perfect. Testing is a diversion. https://t.co/YG2qrUOEPT
Causation is easily demonstrated with seat-belts. Also, you cannot, if you examine all countries' experience of covid-19 outbreaks, identify any consistent correlation between *any* state action and the level of deaths, let alone causation. @veritasherehttps://t.co/k6jNo2m9qr
How have I moved them? Why should I do so? My argument has remained the same from the start. The government's actions are damaging, threaten lives, freedom and prosperity and are not proportionate to the problem.This is still the case. @raulmurryhttps://t.co/q8FxoMgFWd
People want to believe what they're told @jwdlewis. Fear's a great unifier, and tends to make those who are afraid more trusting towards, and reliant upon, power. Govt and much of the media released this force and now, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, they can't control it. https://t.co/mdMRAOlwLc
A kind word about me on Twitter. Rare, now that Twitter has been ethnically and politically “cleansed” by the Jew-Zionist element and its malicious and concerted campaign of “complaints” and “reports”…
(the tweeters below are discussing the self-publicizing solicitor, now an Israeli citizen, and who calls himself “Mark Lewis Lawyer”)
Oh yes, especially after the disciplinary action against him, well detailed in Ian Millard's blog. I am probably not of the correct ethnic category to expect his help.
Incidentally, I still see people tweeting the 2016 report about me in the Independent. The report was one-sided but at least partly-accurate. I disliked as much, or more, the accompanying headless photograph, presented as if me, but which was of some other barrister.
I do not smoke, have never been a cigarette smoker, and had far better shoes than the barrister in that Independent photo! The Independent also seemed ignorant of the fact that “to practise law” is written thus, and not “to practice law”, which is only the correct usage in the USA. A small but telling point, symptomatic of the crashing standards in the terminally-sick UK Press (Lugenpresse; Judenpresse…).
My blog
I had a pleasing spike in blog hits yesterday: 435 views from 286 individual visitors. Far above the usual range.
The madness gets madder (something I keep thinking impossible, and then am proven wrong…)
I do not blame “Bootstrap Cook”, aka Jack Monroe, for using the unpleasant “Mark Lewis Lawyer” in her libel case against the commentator, Katie Hopkins, and it worked out for the Bootstrap Cook, though as a one-time practising barrister I can say with absolute certainty that a precocious child could have won that case against Katie Hopkins, who was evidently either badly-advised or not advised (I do not know whether she was “her own lawyer”, which is usually a mistake).
I have to say that, of the few of her recipes seen by me via her Twitter profile, I have not been enthusiastic about many, but I admit that I have never actually made (or tasted) any of them (they may well be pleasant in actuality). However, I think that this person is performing a public service.
We see in Britain how many people are living on peanuts (sometimes literally), the result of Britain’s economic and social decline combined with —mostly— Conservative Party government policies which have made tough times worse for so many, while the wealthy and very wealthy have thrived in the past 10-20 years especially. Anything that helps people both to survive, and survive without unnecessary pain, must be good.
Many people in the UK cook little, and eat far too many takeways etc, which may be not only unhealthy if taken in excess, but relatively expensive if indulged in frequently. That becomes even more true for those on very low incomes. Often one sees TV reports about people living on pennies getting Chinese takeaways, Indian curry, or fish and chips, and spending their little money on that. Fish and chips ?£5-£10 per head, an Indian or Chinese even more; the Indian place, in a nearby town, and that I use occasionally for takeaway (it’s also a restaurant), is very good but works out at about £15 a head.
I do not forget that sometimes people living in a poor way need something that just briefly seems to make life worth living, even if it is not the most healthy option. George Orwell wrote about that in one of his essays.
I am not merely opining de haut en bas here. I have been down there a few times… especially in — and for several months— 1998, when I had to learn to live in London on plain rice, one piece of fruit per day, bits and pieces (I even ate fruit abandoned by traders at street markets and left in empty boxes by the stalls!).
I had to be “creative” with the Underground (I expect that their technology would defeat me these days) and otherwise had to walk everywhere, trudging morosely past places formerly frequented as a customer, such as Julie’s restaurant in Holland Park, Raoul’s cafe in Little Venice (where I had formerly breakfasted daily in the early/mid 1990s) and other places barred to me by lack of cash such as the once-lovely River Room at the Savoy Hotel (I believe much changed since those days), where I always ate and drank the same thing: “Atlantic Platter” of fish and shellfish, washed down by pretty much the best Chablis I ever had.
[above: The River Room at the Savoy. Actually not looking completely different to how it was c.1994, if memory serves, but the tables are ugly square things now; they used to have beautiful big round tables, even for two people; also, there is a less opulent look somehow, the tables now without full heavy white tablecloths]
Silver lining: I lost rather a lot of weight on my enforced diet with enforced exercise; in fact everyone told me how well I was looking!
“Shocking footage shows a man brandishing a stick after being confronted by a furious local after he ignored the coronavirus lockdown to go camping in Wales. The video was posted on social media after the camper was confronted by a group of locals who asked him to leave the site at Llyn Cowlyd near Trefriw on Saturday.”
“The daughter of the 60-year-old in the footage told North Wales Live : “My dad was with the owner of the land and all they did was ask them to leave and said that the police were on their way.”
“Then the man threatened to hit my dad in the head with the stick. She added: “When the police arrived, the campers said they were from Hull. The officers were mortified.”
“”They were fined and they traced the number plate to make sure they returned home.”
Her dad added: “It was unbelievable that they travelled all the way from Hull to the top of a mountain to camp when the whole country is on lockdown and the government clearly has instructed everyone to stay home unless necessary.” [Daily Mirror]
Well, for me the lunacy is on the part of those locals. What possible harm in terms of spreading the virus can two people do, camping on a remote mountain? It seems that they left a mess. Well, fine them for that.
It just shows how quickly the masses have internalized the “we are slaves of the State and will do what the government says (even if very silly)” propaganda, given strength by the virus-“fear” aspect…Actually, what is borderline frightening is how easily supposedly rational individuals (as a mass) can be manipulated and controlled.
As for the locals, the story put me in mind, perhaps unfairly, of this:
The shutdown of the economy
Was just looking at the latest companies to actually go into administration. They are unlikely ever to return to active trading. Oasis, Warehouse and Debenhams. About 25,000 employees, currently on furlough, have nowhere to go when the stupid “lockdown” finishes. Their furlough money ends in June.
More tweets recently seen
Struck by change of tone on major TV news bulletins this evening. ITV leading on unemployment threat, BBC lead critical on care homes (as was C4, and second lead the huge problems facing economy.
My feelings about China are torn: I hate the way the Chinese as a group abuse the natural world and especially the animals. In some ways they are very backward as a people. Also, the sheer numbers are an existential danger not only to Europe but to the whole planet. On the other hand, who could fail to be impressed by a display such as this?
Re. our medical and scientific progress, look at this news item from 1918, prior to the arrival in New York of the worldwide “Spanish Flu”, which eventually killed millions.
“Soap and water” (and “fresh air”). Progress? What progress?
China
Conspiracy theories aside, we should not let China off the hook as far as this ghastly virus event and siruation is concerned. For years, decades, China has been destroying the wildlife of the planet, and brutally mistreating animals in China itself. The Coronavirus “COVID-19” is said to have started in a “seafood market” in Wuhan where not only were live animals (including dogs and cats) on sale, but where some were whipped or otherwise deliberately subjected to painful treatment before being killed. Some were (and in other parts of China are) being boiled alive.
Whatever else China is guilty of in relation to #COVID19 these wet markets where cats and dogs are butchered alive are grotesque. The fact that it’s business as usual there should make us all think very hard about how we indirectly support such barbarism. pic.twitter.com/yUFlEurXRu
China may be impressive in some ways, both in terms of its history and its technological and allied activity today, but in other ways it is very very backward. The Coronavirus situation is the fault of China. Now it appears that the Chinese official response in Wuhan may have saved the Chinese from suffering more, but misled the West as to the peril faced by reason of the virus.
In both world wars, there were consequences, rightly or wrongly, for the losing side. Reparations were demanded. Are there to be no consequences for a China which has plunged the rest of the world into turmoil?
This virus allegedly started in China but China with more than a billion population has less than 3500 recorded deaths whilst the US has more than 20k, UK close to 10k, Italy near 20k, Spain near 17k and France near 15k.
What makes the difference with the Chinese people?
The above graph shows deaths, not all confirmed cases, but is interesting in that the surveys done in previous years re. personal hygiene in various countries showed that the least hygienic countries of Europe in terms of handwashing etc were…wait for it…Italy, then Spain, then France and Netherlands…
Washing hands frequently with soap and water really is by far the best way to protect yourself from Coronavirus, in fact almost the only way, followed by avoidance of places where crowds of people are hot, excited and active.
Light relief
Watched an episode of the property show Place in the Sun, filmed several years ago in and around Lucca, in Tuscany. What made me shake head is that there were the potential buyers, a couple from Rotherham (South Yorkshire), eager to buy a holiday home and perhaps a place to which (in about 10-20 years) they might retire, but they had obviously not really thought through the matter..
The potential buyers had visited Lucca a number of times, but there was no indication that they spoke Italian, beyond the usual cafe phrases. It is one thing to visit a country, quite another to live there and perhaps be fully domiciled there. A visit to the USA will probably be pleasant and untaxing; living there is something else entirely, despite the (supposedly) common language. The same is true of many parts of the world.
Alok Sharma, Business Secretary, is the latest unfortunate member of the Cabinet to be put into the stocks to have rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at him. Twitter and even the msm have not been kind to him.
An Indian, born in Agra (where the Taj Mahal is situated), Sharma was educated partly at the same school as me: https://www.rbcs.org.uk/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Blue_Coat_School, but about a decade after I was there (there were no Indians there when I was a pupil, though I was slightly acquainted with two half-Indian brothers who attended and who in fact lived not very far from me).
Looks as if Sharma, like other Cabinet ministers in this joke of a government, is basically nbg (no bloody good)…
The natives are getting restless
It can be seen that, after three weeks of the mishandled “lockdown”, and despite general compliance, people are getting pretty fed up with it. They are being kept in line mainly by the constant propaganda, much of it untrue, or only partly true:
“anyone can get it” (true, but most people either do not get it, or are completely asymptomatic, and so unaware that they have been infected);
also, only a tiny handful under 20 or even 40 are both getting it and require medical attention for it;
only those over 60 are likely to require medical attention (there are, of course, always exceptions to every general rule);
only those over 70 who get it are likely to require hospitalization;
most people who are aware that they have the Coronavirus are mildly affected, mildly in that they require no medical attention and just a couple of weeks of rest (though of course it is unpleasant for them all the same);
the relative few (perhaps 1 person in every few hundred of the population) who do require medical attention in hospital are usually in and out of hospital in about 2 weeks;
so far, about 1 person out of every 8,000 of the general population has died with (though not necessarily of) Coronavirus.
The risible police activity around the “lockdown” has only slightly reinforced the main propaganda message, the puerile “Save lives/Save the NHS” stuff. In countries with still-properly-functioning public health systems (Germany, France etc) they do not use such kneejerk propaganda campaigns, but just do (and have the means to do) the job.
Luckily for the government, most of the population prefer not to think for themselves. If they did, they would realize that most people, and certainly those under 30, are at little risk of anything serious anyway. The “lockdown” would then not so much lock down as break down.
British housing conditions
“Fears are growing that coronavirus could be ripping through some of the poorest and most overcrowded parts of Britain’s cities as new research suggests cramped living conditions might be accelerating the spread of the virus” [The Guardian]
— Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (@GMIAU) April 9, 2020
Britain had about 50 or 55 million people living in it when I was born (1956). Now it is about 70 million. Far too many even in strict numerical terms, and an increasing proportion of the population is black, brown, other non-European, or of mixed race. What future does that give the white people of the UK (or the non-whites, in fact)?
[above: a non-European family living in one room in London. No good for them, no good for Britain’s future. The man delivers pizzas. Britain must move to a high-education, high-skillset national model. What use is it having a man delivering pizzas, his non-working wife looking after three —so far— children, the family dependent largely on State benefits?]
Economics
It had to happen: the time has come when I can agree on something with Matthew Parris:
Covid-19's most serious effect '…will not be the actual virus(which, if we ever calm down, will be seen to have been damaging but less than catastrophic) but our decision to trash our economies…' – Matthew Parris, The Times of London, 11th April. https://t.co/AgE54b3iKW
Peter Hitchens has been one of the few to think, so far:
I am sorry for your loss. But there is a missing part of your argument. How precisely do these government measures protect life? What evidence exists that they do so? (none). Yet there is much evidence that economic decline (such as we now face) damages health and costs lives. https://t.co/ZZhlSrOcDU
Unfortunately, much of the public is basically unthinking. They are so brainwashed that they imagine that the “lockdown” is “saving lives, protecting the NHS” etc (which if true, is only marginally so), and that “everyone” must “Clap for the NHS”, North Korea-style. Actually, where I live, no-one seems to be clapping on command, though a couple of weeks ago, i.e. the first time the clapping was “ordered”, I did see one firework (a large rocket).
I am sorry for your loss. But there is a missing part of your argument. How precisely do these government measures protect life? What evidence exists that they do so? (none). Yet there is much evidence that economic decline (such as we now face) damages health and costs lives. https://t.co/ZZhlSrOcDU
This https://t.co/UuObYHeoH4 should be worrying anyone seriously concerned with the health and lives of the people. This is not an argument of life against money or convenience, but of life against life.
When one examines the economic damage done by “lockdown”, one is in the world of conjecture. However, only a few oddities have dared assert that “lockdown” (even so far) has not had a negative economic effect (if it did not have such an effect, we might as well keep most of the population on holiday most of the year!).
So let us say that the UK “lockdown” is ended in June, which seems to be the most likely time.
The “furlough” money paid to laid off workers will end in June, or at the end of June, as matters stand.
The UK private economic sector will be on its knees. Manufacturing will be at a low level. Many factories will not see activity again. The same is true of much of the existing retail sector. The employees in those areas of the economy will be made redundant in their millions.
Many msm/System talking heads and scribblers are opining that the economy will somehow “bounce back” in the Summer or Autumn. How would that work? Demand will remain low, both domestically and outside the UK, because few individual consumers will have both money to spend and the confidence to spend or invest.
There are about 5 million self-employed or freelance people in the UK now. Few are still working. After “lockdown” finishes, there may be only a slow uptick.
I foresee a very slow restart of economic life. In fact, if (when) government largesse (“furlough” money, business loans etc) ends, the economy may go into freefall, quite possible the pound’s exchange rate too. Millions will be officially unemployed or requiring “Universal Credit”.
There will possibly be a kind of 1930s-style “National Government”, either declared as such or de facto. It will become obvious that there is no real (approved) Opposition. Why else would the quasi-dictatorial Coronavirus Act be expressed as going to last for up to 2 years? During that time, Boris-idiot has the option of simply deferring elections! As far as general elections are concerned, that changes nothing, because the misnamed “Conservatives” have until 2024 anyway, but perhaps that Act will be renewed or “reincarnated”. Who knows…
Soon will be the right time to launch either a social-national party or a movement which may or may not contest the rigged System elections (my view is that “all roads lead to Rome”, so one should not dismiss a partly-electoral route out of hand).
Anything will become possible, in a UK where millions are unemployed, where businesses are failing right, left and centre, and where both Government and official Opposition are seen as complicit.
Something other than Coronavirus (from the days before viruses were weapons of war and/or politically causative…)
One of the better films of its type, bearing in mind the inevitable ideological bias in all such films.
[below, a quite interesting film about the German advance on Moscow in late 1941. Some footage that I had not seen. When I was driven past the place of furthest advance, about 14 miles NW of Moscow, in 1993, my young driver, Pasha, made it to (close to) the Kremlin in little more than 15 minutes. How close German forces came to taking Moscow in 1941! History would have been changed beyond recognition, as would the world we know today].
Martin Bell, the war reporter and one-term Independent MP for Tatton [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bell], in a memoir, wrote that the 1998 Act of Parliament which required registration of parties contesting UK elections, which Act preceded the 2000 Act which established the Electoral Commission, was “profoundly undemocratic”.
The problem is not that a party will not be registered, but that later (meaning if the “wrong sort of party” finds electoral success), the Electoral Commission or other bodies will “find” cause to interfere with its campaigns and staff. The BNP, UKIP and now the Labour Party (via the “Equality and Human Rights Commission”) have all been targets.
“Democracy” in the UK is very limited once you dig beneath the surface. The funny thing is that the quasi-“socialist” types that used to be rather rebellious and anti-Establishment decades ago have given way to System slaves (slaves even in their own minds), begging the System to crack down on “fascists” and “Nazis” (i.e. people with whom they disagree politically).
All roads lead to Rome. A political party is good, but may only be part of a multi-headed movement.
MSM sycophancy
One example, arguably the most egregious, of the sycophantic scribblers in the contemporary popular prints: Dan Hodges, faux-proletarian, who lives with his family and mother, the famous actress and one-time Labour MP, Glenda Jackson, in a large house in not very proleterian Blackheath.
At one time, Hodges was supposedly a Labour Party (Blair-Labour) member and supporter. Now he writes for the Mail on Sunday and his sycophancy would not be out of place in Stalin’s Russia. His mother, a woman of principle, must be spinning (or whatever)!
Little Britain can never accept it but Johnson and his gov.s handling of this crisis is nothing short of scandalous. Your deluded sycophantic drivel is obscene and an insult to the thousands that have died and the healthcare workers who continue to put their lives at risk
I personally doubt that this “we are at war”, “Boris is the second Churchill” (second time as farce?), White Cliffs of the NHS stuff is really believed or followed by most people, despite the frankly pathetic (though no doubt well-meaning on the part of many) “Clap for the NHS” Schauspielen.
Coronavirus deaths in the UK have peaked
Daily equivalent changes this week, compared with one week earlier, for new UK hospital deaths:
Mon 15% Tue 10% Wed 8% Thu 6% Fri 5% Sat 4% Sun 3%
This is not in fact because of, or even mainly because of, the “lockdown”, however. The government seems to be intent on pretending that it is, though. Fine, but now would be the time to end the “lockdown”, either completely —at once— or in stages over, say, two weeks. The fact that this incompetent government seems intent on keeping the “lockdown” going for weeks more, maybe even to the end of June, is incredible. Massive commercial and industrial damage all over the UK and more deaths from causes other than Coronavirus.
London may recover before too long (economically) because of the financial services industry and (after a while) tourism, but the rest of Britain? The “left behind” areas and regions? The North? I think not.
Every week longer that passes under the lockdown nonsense now puts the UK deeper into a hole which it may struggle to exit.
Tweets
Well, @beedeelight how would we know? AS far as I know there is no evidence of any connection between crashing the economy and reduced Covid-19 deaths. In the absence of such evidence, we're left with a coincidence. But guess what the govt will say? https://t.co/66uriqQieU
Well, @mr_xyz that would be an argument for hosing an electrical fire with water, which would be disastrous. Surely intelligence is the principal weapon in any government's locker. Wild spectacular flailing may impress the ignorant, but it is not necessarily effective. https://t.co/ALps4ryNpt
Interesting and informative, but the government and msm will turn a Nelsonian eye on it, and hope that most members of the public do not see it (or understand it, simple though it be)…
More tweets
'We have now suffered three weeks of the most severe disruption our society has ever suffered, outside of wartime, with hardly any assessment of the side-effects on public health, let alone the economy.' Here is expert good sense from Prof John Lee: https://t.co/EDbYoehnST
'In the UK it is not even necessary to have a positive Covid-19 test to implicate it in the cause of death on the death certificate.' How many watching govt's nightly sermons grasp this? Prof John Lee provides cool analysis to those ready to think: https://t.co/EDbYoehnST
Because they panicked. You have to grasp that our political class is neither experienced, nor knowledgeable, nor wise. It seeks mainly to be popular. It is therefore very susceptible to media pressure and crowd thinking. https://t.co/0GnE9dqbmD
That last tweet is important, because it makes the points that matter about UK MPs (most of them, in fact almost all) and ministers, including Cabinet ministers. In Britain and especially in England, the holding of an office does tend to confer often unmerited respect. So we see “Cokehead” Gove and even little Matt Hancock treated with risible deference by the msm.
The most absurd msm sycophancy also lands at the feet of Boris-idiot, at least now that he is not going to snuff it from Coronavirus. He has not just had an unpleasant infection from which he has recovered (thanks in part to nurses whose pay he voted to freeze only a couple of years ago), but is a great war leader who has won a “battle for Britain” (at least in the tiny minds of Sun, Mail on Sunday and Daily Telegraph scribblers).
Most MPs in the UK now struggle, not for greatness, not for great intelligence, erudition, charisma or empathy, but for mediocrity. Many fail to make it even that high. That is why I decided to start my Deadhead MPs series on this blog.
“The scientist whose calculations about the potentially devastating impact of the coronavirus directly led to the countrywide lockdown has been criticised in the past for flawed research.”
“Professor Neil Ferguson, of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London, produced a paper predicting that Britain was on course to lose 250,000 people during the coronavirus epidemic unless stringent measures were taken. His research is said to have convinced Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors to introduce the lockdown.”
“However, it has now emerged that Ferguson has been criticised in the past for making predictions based on allegedly faulty assumptions which nevertheless shaped government strategies and impacted the UK economy…”
[Daily Telegraph]
Swedish scientists are sceptical about the Imperial College research that predicted 250,000 deaths in the UK:
I have no idea why Chris Packham used to block me when I had a Twitter account (maybe afraid of the Jew lobby that eventually had me expelled), but I wish him well in blocking this disgusting and pointless HS2 project, which is just corporate vandalism.
As in respect of so many things in the UK, I have to say that British people are very patient, almost superhumanly so. Little sabotage, no violence, no “action directe”…
Meanwhile, more from Derbyshire’s poundland KGB plods…
If only Derbyshire Police were as efficient in dealing with actual real crime as they are in stopping the harmless pleasure of the local people who pay for their jobs, or in acting like a poundland KGB (as with the way in which they have repeatedly treated the satirical singer-singwriter Alison Chabloz).
“Local resident Alex John Desmond wrote on Facebook: “This is a joke, the way this force is acting is not representative of policing by consent which is the way the UK is meant to be governed. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You have taken something beautiful and damaged it.” [Daily Mirror]
“Hate to point out the obvious, but UK has not embarked on the testing campaign because it would rapidly become apparent that we do not have the capacity. That would then lead to awkward questions about the wisdom of running down a country’s health service.
Far better to divert with Dunkirk, mass volunteer campaigns and hand clapping nonsense. Meanwhile our loved ones that work in the NHS are being sent like lambs to the slaughter without protective gear.” [Guardian reader’s comment]
Note how the Conservative Party vote in Scotland is unchanged in both parts of the poll. The SNP’s yet-again increased and unchallenged supremacy is by default: the Conservatives cannot increase their Scottish vote at a time when their decade-long neglect of the NHS has been highlighted by Coronavirus; at the same time, the terminal decline of Labour and the LibDems continues, as it does South of Hadrian’s Wall.
I refuse to believe that (as I privately predicted would happen) the recent acquittal of Alex Salmond on sex crime charges was not a purely political act of loyalty by SNP partisans.
Yesterday, UK “COVID-19” deaths were fewer than in the day before, 20% fewer. I notice that BBC TV News had that as “deaths increase by 209 from the day before”, which is true as regards the total but gives a completely false impression.
In Italy too, the daily total is falling, in their case for the second consecutive day.
It looks as though the virus situation is plateauing across Europe, including the UK. We shall have to see what happens in the next week, but there again, as has been remarked upon, someone who dies with Coronavirus (and may have other serious conditions) is being marked down as having died from Coronavirus. The fact is that rather few people die from this virus alone.
“In the next few days and weeks, we must continue to look critically and dispassionately at the Covid-19 evidence as it comes in. Above all else, we must keep an open mind — and look for what is, not for what we fear might be.” [John Lee, former NHS consultant in pathology, and professor in pathology, in the Spectator]
The fact is that, arguably for the best of reasons, the people of the UK have been put into house arrest for an indefinite period. I do not think that it can last for very long. It will last so long as people feel both afraid of the virus and willing to do what they are told is “the right thing”. The police cannot enforce these dictatorial restrictions by their own power, but only so long as people, or the people, tolerate them.
An Expert writes : Yet more intelligent, informed scepticism about the coronavirus panicdemic, for the panic-merchants to find a way to ignore: How deadly is the coronavirus? It's still far from clear https://t.co/tDMjmWlIBv via @spectator
When I saw that initial Peter Hitchens article, I was sceptical, thinking that strict temporary measures were probably necessary to deal with the Coronavirus crisis. Now I have modified my view about both what is happening (while still recognizing the very serious nature of the virus situation) and especially about the repressive laws and overarching “enabling” legislation.
I predicted this https://t.co/b20e0vlba5 on Monday. Some people made a joke about it because they thought I wasn't being serious. Well, I was. This is what life is like when the state is above your head.
The Daily Mail report below shows how the police are starting, once again (as with social media “crimes”), to get above themselves, zealously going well beyond the law and their own granted powers to hunt down people whom they decide should be lectured, spied upon or questioned. They also leave behind ordinary commonsense.
Police officers spying on lone dog-walkers in the remote and deserted parts of the Peak District and other national parks; senior police acting as poundland generals, setting up roadblocks, getting their robots to question motorists about where they are going and “is your journey really necessary?” And so on.
In Derbyshire, police are using drones to spy on solitary dog walkers in the Peak District National Park, people walking miles from anyone else! The very same force that, in the Alison Chabloz case, revealed itself to be a comic opera Keystone Cops outfit and poundland KGB. Incidentally, Derbyshire Police has long had one of the worst records in dealing with actual, real crime; you know, real crime, such as burglary, assault, GBH etc, not “someone said something about Jews on social media”, not “someone walked a dog in a remote part of the Peak District but we got her using our poundland KGB drone”.
Common-sense is lacking. A couple in a car or a man on a motorbike are not going to infect anyone, neither are they going to be infected, not while driving and riding. Of course, the same applies to a girl on a motorcycle…
Always ride safely, of course…
Cede your liberty to the state, @madz_grant and it takes everything, even the freedom to walk alone on the high hills. https://t.co/f9gmeCguQp
There are, as Hitchens and Delingpole say, a huge number of people who cannot wait to see the British people subjected to strict controls at all times. They also cannot wait to see people punished. Many of these “useful idiots” are those who identify with some kind of multikulti pseudo-socialism and spend most of their lives virtue-signalling on Twitter.
Why shouldn’t someone drive from a town to a deserted part of the country and walk a dog or just walk, with or without someone from the same dwelling? The danger of infection (from or to) is much greater in an urban or suburban setting where more people are likely to be encountered.
There are a few brave voices being raised in defence of reasonable freedoms. I do not much like what I have seen on TV and in print of James Delingpole, but this is a courageous and surely correct article:
So Gordon Brown, formerly a major UK political face of the international finance-capitalist conspiracy (or, if you prefer, “consensus”), has come out of hiding to call openly for a one-world dictatorship…It took him a while, but he has now done it.
Give that man a cee-gar!
As soon as the soap opera of Harry and the Royal Mulatta began to unravel, I predicted that they would end up living somewhere like Bel Air or Beverly Hills, with Harry as that stock comic character of American TV, a kind of house-husband, run ragged by his petulant “younger wife” (in fact she is 4 years older than Harry). Royal Married with Children… Well, that has now come to pass: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2020/03/27/prince-harry-meghan-move-california/
Statistical anomaly
It seems that Jews in the UK have been hard hit by Coronavirus and that 5% of all deaths in the UK have occurred within the Jewish element. I am not a statistician, of course, but this seems to me very high, bearing in mind that Jews are supposedly only about 0.3% of the entire UK-resident population. That means that Jews are not only being hit harder (as far as actual deaths are concerned) than non-Jews, but nearly 20 times as much.
I suppose that one has to take into account the fact that London, which is now such a dustbin of peoples, is the epicentre or “hotspot” for Coronavirus in the UK. I read that North West London, the most Jewish part of London, is the hotspot within the hotspot. In fact, the borough of Barnet is said to be the most infected of all.
That in itself does not quite explain why. Is it because Jews travel on business more than most non-Jews (e.g. English people)? I have no idea. Not every Jew is a diamond dealer or finance industry operative, flitting from London to Antwerp to Zurich and on to Moscow or Kiev.
Unemployment: the DWP system cannot cope
Half a million people have just registered as unemployed in the UK, in one week! The DWP system was unable to cope before Coronavirus “lockdown”. Now? Look at what that idiotic creature, Therese Coffey, is saying!
DWP Boss Issues Hostile Coronavirus Statement
Thérèse Coffey warns welfare claimants they face a sanction if they aren't prompt in informing the DWP of isolation.
She then tells self employed people to claim UC despite it requiring a jobcentre visit.https://t.co/821MmGSt9X
In fact, that tweeter is wrong. The global death total at time of writing is about 24,000, not 2,800. The principle remains, though.
Self-awareness takes a back seat…
All those tweeting delight that @BorisJohnson has #Coronavirus are not just very unpleasant but stupid as that signifies that many others will be infected regardless of political affiliation.
The thing is @rmayemsinger that Trump’s over confidence/arrogance make him susceptible to #Covid19. If infected at his age his survival chances are very low. No doubt he will call it a “Fake Virus” and a “nasty” infection but that is not a cure.
“The director of the human rights organisation Liberty has called the government’s new Coronavirus Act the biggest attack on British people’s freedoms in a generation.” [The Guardian]
“Among various measures, the act, which passed on Wednesday, gives police powers to detain people and forcibly test people they suspect may be infectious, removes protections for those detained under the mental health act, and weakens judicial oversight of surveillance.”
“Already on Thursday, the Guardian reported how police in North Yorkshire were proposing to set up road blocks to restrict people’s movements, while Derbyshire police used a drone to shame people who had driven to remote parts of the peak district during the lockdown.”
“In a statement marking the passage of the new law, Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, said:
This new law is without doubt the biggest restriction on our individual and collective freedoms in a generation. What people may not realise is the extent of its powers, and how long they can be in place for.
It gives the authorities new powers to detain any one of us that they believe could be infected with the coronavirus.
It also removes vital safeguards in care standards, leaving many people who are already at risk, such as disabled people, at further risk, not only of poor care but also of potentially inhumane treatment.
While change is necessary, and some of the measures outlined in this legislation are entirely sensible, others are overbearing and, if left unchecked, could create more problems than they solve.
The breadth of this legislation is also extraordinary. It runs to more than 300 pages and includes some spectacular restrictions, including powers to rearrange or cancel elections.
We’ll beat this virus, but these measures must be a last resort in that battle and these powers must be removed as soon as possible. We cannot and must not sacrifice all of our hard-won rights and freedoms.”
“The Met Police today fined a bakery boss £80 for criminal damage after she put temporary lines outside her shop to keep her customers safe from coronavirus….The officer told the flabbergasted woman that she had graffitied the pavement and if police failed to punish crimes like these there would be ‘anarchy’, adding: ‘I can’t help the law. We’re going to be ticketing soon to stop people congregating – is that wrong too?’.” [Daily Mail]
No wonder that the more elite police used to call their uniformed colleagues “wooden-tops”!
“It came as police forces across the country are facing accusations of overzealousness as they use sweeping new powers to crack down on people flouting the coronavirus lockdown, using road blocks, drones and helicopters to enforce it.” [Daily Mail]
“Critics say the unprecedented powers handed to officers by ministers will see the country ‘sliding into dystopia.'”
“As the row intensified today, Leading QC Matthew Ryder said there was an ‘overwhelming consensus from lawyers that police trying to restrict people to ’emergency travel only’ is unlawful.‘”
“Former MPs also claim police are ‘showing an astounding lack of judgement’ and needed to exercise ‘common sense and respect’ and use their powers elsewhere.“
“But chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Martin Hewitt, doubled down on the measures, telling the BBC: ‘This is a national emergency, not a national holiday.’“
[Daily Mail]
Well, there it is. Police go mad, but are backed by senior national police officers who plainly lack both real intelligence and common-sense. If the police were told by the “weirdos and misfits” now at the heart of “democratic” government to herd us all into some UK GULAG system, they would do it. No question.
The fact is that the police are in danger of becoming an irrelevance, not very good at preventing or dealing with ordinary crime (their main job), better at investigating the odd egregious murder or ultra-high-value robbery, but preferring to act as, indeed, a poundland KGB, censoring and interfering with such matters as social media posts (often completely lawful even under the present repressive legal regime), or “enforcing” (and in fact going well beyond) the rules now laid down by an illegitimate ZOG political regime headed by a clown.
In fact, read this:
“Appearing on BBC Breakfast today, Superintendent Steve Pont from Derbyshire Police hit back at allegations he was ‘shaming’ dog walkers, claiming people were ‘looking for excuses and loopholes as to why they don’t need to stay at home when everyone else does.’ Supt Pont said his force was, ‘here to apply the law the government makes.’ “
[Daily Mail, about BBC TV Breakfast]
There we have the problem in a nutshell. A relatively senior officer of the police says that people were “looking for excuses and loopholes as to why they don’t need to stay at home when everyone else does.“, when in fact people, even under the absurd new law, do not have to stay at home. They are entitled to take daily exercise alone or with co-habitees, they are not prohibited from driving to that place of permitted exercise, they are not prohibited from driving a car or motorbike there or, arguably, anywhere so long as they do not get out and socialize. They are also permitted to shop for food, drink, medicine etc and are not prohibited from driving to shop.
Superintendent Plod, I mean Pont, of Derbyshire Police, has just decided to remake the new law in his own mind as “everyone has to stay at home unless the police permit”. No. No. No.
These social measures, now nodded into law overnight by 650 “democratically elected” idiots, cannot work unless the public supports them and plays ball. The police, by their panic-stricken bullying, risk being ignored if they keep pushing like this. The police should remind themselves that, if everyone ignores them, they are all but powerless.
People —or at least 99% of people— are willing to take reasonable measures to self-isolate, only shop or exercize with care once daily, socially distance, not socialize etc, but the hectoring and basically silly attitude of the police risks alienation of that public.
What after Coronavirus?
Coronavirus will not last longer than (maybe) June in the UK. By that time, either people will have had it (and recovered, in most cases) or infection will not be happening (because the virus lasts for only 1-4 weeks in people: those infected either do not show symptoms, or suffer from them, or die, within a few weeks of being infected); the virus only lasts for hours, days or, exceptionally, weeks on surfaces. The crisis should therefore be over by early Summer. Its damage to our politics, economy (especially) and law will then become apparent.
I need to blog separately about this.
Evening foray
No evening (or daytime) expedition to shops today. In fact, I have been the ideal “UK Coronavirus” citizen, sleeping half the day away and spending most of the rest of the time on the Internet, connected to the wide world.
I noticed that there was a beautiful crescent Moon, completely on its side like a Grail symbol. A planet (Venus?) was very clear too. Must have something to do with the clearer air across the world.
Final thought
Coronavirus will be effectively over by June or July this year, i.e. 3-4 months. The new government powers last until 2022 and the first vote to dispense with them will be only in September 2020. Will the System find an excuse to renew the powers?
He didn’t even sack them which would have afforded them some rights, he has laid them off on no pay when he could have used the government furlough scheme. Horrible man
Sorry to hear that the Adelphi Hotel has fallen on hard times. I stayed there for a few days, ungazetted, when an ad-hoc Soviet ballet company (mainly Bolshoi dancers, if I remember aright) was in Liverpool. That would have been in about 1985 or 1986. My then girlfriend’s small suite had a sitting room with a kind of curtained-off bedroom. An entrance hall led to the sitting room and also to a spacious bathroom.
The prima ballerina, whose name I forget, was unhappily married and thought to be mentally unstable. She had, I was told, a magnificent suite. For her own protection, both in view of her emotional state and because protesting Jews supporting “refuseniki” (Soviet Jews supposedly wanting to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union— most ended up in California) might alarm her, a KGB man slept across her doorway all night, every night, in the manner of Russia’s ancient history.
In fact, that dancer was at risk— she later tried to commit suicide in Sardinia, by slitting her wrists in her bath. Her husband was constantly unfaithful, apparently. Also, she was about 40. Not good for a dancer, though the famous ones have often overcome age to retain public affection: Maya Plisetskaya, Margot Fonteyn etc.
In fact, those dancers (the couple) were living a golden or velvet life in Moscow. His and hers Mercedes cars, dacha, luxury apartment etc. A lifestyle most people (whether in Moscow or the UK) never experience. Still, money cannot, as such, buy happiness. It’s just a dull grind when money is short…
The Adelphi was, I thought, a good hotel at that time (now about 35 years ago). A quartet played classical pieces live in the opulent and huge foyer. Among those listening was the then Chief Constable of Merseyside. The hotel was a landmark in Liverpool.
The Labour Party is now weaker than it has ever been, in my view. Weaker even than it was under that unpleasant little hypocrite Michael Foot.
Labour under Corbyn, though weak, was stronger than it now is. Now Labour is going to —eventually— elect a new leader, which could be Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey or Lisa Nandy. All have kow-towed to the Jew lobby, all have otherwise similar policies, though Rebecca Long-Bailey is the most radical of the three. Starmer looks likely to be the choice, because he frightens few horses; as against that, he is as dull as ditchwater.
Labour’s problem can be said to reside in the fact that, outside the Labour Party membership, few people even care which of the three becomes Labour leader.
Labour, for which 10 million voters voted in 2019, is scarcely in the exact position of UKIP after 2015, when UKIP gradually became a joke, an irrelevance and then eventually just a nothing. Having said that, there is a parallel. Labour now has no power to speak of in the Commons, because the Conservative Party majority of 80 can steamroller through almost anything.
Beyond that, there is the point that the Coronavirus rescue package of Rishi Sunak, whatever its deficiencies and flaws, has pretty much shot Labour’s fox on “austerity” etc. All Labour can say is “we would have done more and better…(if we were in power, which we are not, and will not be for years, if ever…)”.
Not a very impressive position. The msm continue to give Labour MPs a platform, as required by OFCOM rules etc, but in reality, Labour has become something close to an irrelevance. In fact, it has been reduced to supporting the Government’s positions in the present crisis.
It is clear that Iain Dunce Duncan Smith’s shambolic “welfare” “reforms” are not only completely stupid but cannot work administratively. Why is this surprising? After all, Dunce only got to Lieutenant in his 6 years of being an Army officer. He never had any responsible civilian job either. How could such a person really conceive a workable social security reform, even if “IDS” were a better person morally than he in fact is?
However, the collapse of the Universal Credit system and other DWP areas, under the weight of the Coronavirus burden, will not help Labour. In fact, any “opposition” will more likely come from within the Conservative Party itself.
I detect no real chance for Labour at present, nor for quite a while into the future. If ever.
Evening foray
I had not intended to make a ratissage on the supermarkets this evening, but in the end I did, mainly to get bread, a couple of food items and some cat treats. I went to the nearest one, a Waitrose outlet a mile or two away. I arrived about 1930, half an hour before closing time. Few customers, but an innovation: outside the wide-open doors, two security men, young and dressed entirely in black. Woollen hats, padded jackets, scarfs wound around neck, covering the lower face. Armbands. Exactly like the militia in the TV series, The Handmaid’s Tale. They lacked only the weapons. They are, it seems, Waitrose “marshals”.
Inside, bought 2 scratchcards (both modest winners, as it turned out), but at first my cash was refused. All part of the new hygiene regime. Card only.
I was curious to see whether the shelves were still being stripped bare. Most bread had gone, though there were a few of the less popular (and more expensive) types available: stoneground rye, sourdough etc. Eggs were very plentiful. Flour seemed to be unavailable. Pasta available, though only the slightly more expensive Italian-made stuff in blue and yellow packing; little of the cheaper “Essential Waitrose” pasta. Pasta sauces mostly gone, though the more expensive Lloyd Grossman jars were there (over £2 compared to £1 for the cheapest Waitrose own-brand line). I bought one jar. Puttanesca. Everything else seemed to be available for those wanting it, even loo paper (only the more expensive brands, though). I found the cat treats. No shortage.
I noticed that fruit, vegetables and everything else that I looked at in passing seemed to be in supply.
My conclusion from that and my drive around yesterday: the supermarkets are gradually getting on top of the bulk-buying/panic-buying wave. People are still doing it, but less so. There must be some people around here sitting on mountains of dried pasta, pasta sauce jars, bread and loo paper. I also noticed that people are obviously not buying the pasta to eat immediately, because there was plenty of fresh pasta for sale.
Anyway, that’s my story…
On the way back, a car would not wait for me at a junction and drove off at speed. A few minutes later, I saw a blue light in my rear-view mirror (when I was learning to drive, belatedly, at age 42, the instructor said that one of my faults as a driver was that I looked in the rear-view mirror more than I looked out of the windshield!). Anyway, I turned off to avoid any contact. Only a few seconds later, the police flashed past down the deserted rural A-road. Were they after that other driver? Was he a suspected Coronavirus “non-essential” driver? Had he been heard humming an Alison Chabloz song about “holocaust” fakery? We shall never know…
Watched a topical film on ITV2: Contagion, about an infectious virus that starts with bats in China, and then gets into the food chain, finally being transmitted person to person until millions are killed all over the world. Wait, wasn’t that the TV news? Oh, no, it was “just a film”…More seriously, I was slightly surprised that an alarming (though well-made) film like that was broadcast at a time like this.
I want to step back from the immediacy of this global crisis around Coronavirus, to examine political, social and economic possibilities down the line.
How long will the immediate crisis last in the UK?
If he is correct, this might be over by early Summer.
Professor Levitt points to Wuhan itself, where, amazingly, only 3% of the population became infected; he also mentions the quarantined ship Diamond Princess. Even on that ship, the infected proportion of all those aboard was only 20% by the end of its journey. More people than expected may have natural —full or partial— immunity.
The professor distinguishes Italy on the basis of its communal social life, tradition of physical contact in everyday life and its very high proportion of elderly people.
Vital expert corrective to state-sponsored panic : Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study https://t.co/X9DemF8vL5
The bottom line, as far as the UK is concerned, is that the country may be out of the purely medical emergency by July or even June.
China
As said, global crisis. China is, it seems, emerging from the immediate medical crisis in the Wuhan city and surrounding province, and much of China has not seen large-scale infection. That, however, does not mean that China can return to pre-Coronavirus normal.
China has, since the 1980s, based its economy on exports. If the rest of the world is in recession and stops buying Chinese goods, the Chinese economy falls off a cliff. Is that a serious problem for China or for the West? Both, I suppose.
Even in my own lifetime, i.e. since 1956, the world has seen China go from Soviet ally with typical Soviet-style economic policies, to the misconceived Great Leap Forward and then, in the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution which set China back for decades.
The death of Mao in 1976 was followed by more internecine conflict, personified by the Gang of Four and characterized by the migration of millions of starving peasants to the cities. Even after all of that, and after China started to rise industrially, the attempts of a relatively few students to force the Communist Party to give in to their demand for Western-style democracy led to the late 1980s crackdown.
China, though still socially-backward, has made huge strides economically and technically. If the rest of the world stops buying Chinese goods, that progress may stop. China then will have to either restart large-scale exports or re-orientate its economy to a domestic consumption model. That would be a very hard thing to do.
If China becomes unstable, almost anything could happen. Pressure from the huge Chinese populations on the thinly-populated Far East of Siberia (former Soviet Far East) would become unstoppable. Even now, there has been a gradual and permitted infiltration into Russian Siberia by Chinese farmers, businessmen etc.
On the international stage, China is now somewhere between a regional player and a superpower. Its navy has not far short of 900 large ships (the UK equivalent is about 20), for example.
Russia and USA
Putin’s Russia is famously dependent on hydrocarbon sales. If the world slips into recession, demand for oil and gas reduces. At the same time, the price of oil and gas is already at a low level. Russia’s economy will buckle. That will lead to domestic retrenchment and political instability. The likely outcome is a more aggressive stance in terms of foreign policy. In recent years,the Russian military machine has, like that of China, been significantly upgraded.
The Soviet Union was often derided by foreign diplomats as “Upper Volta with rockets” [for younger readers, Upper Volta was the “state” now known as Burkina Faso]. The point was often taken to be “the Soviet Union is like Upper Volta”, a bit of a joke in other words, whereas the point often missed was “with rockets“. The Soviet Union had the capacity to obliterate most if not all of Western Europe and, indeed, most if not all of the USA. All the military targets and urban centres of importance, for sure. That still applies.
We often think that it matters that the USA has 2x, 5x (or whatever) the nuclear-destructive power of Russia. In fact, in real terms, all that matters is that Russia can land quite a number of missiles on the USA should it see the necessity. Yes, an equal and probably greater number would hit and hit harder the lands of Russia, launched from US bases or submarines, but that fact would not help the unfortunates of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, LA, Houston, Chicago etc.
From the nuclear deterrence point of view, the only important distinction is between states capable of launching an effective targeted long-range (another important distinction) nuclear missile and those without such capability. That is why the USA is desperately trying to stop or at least delay the missile programmes of Iran and North Korea.
Military men tend to think in military terms. In that sense, a few nuclear missiles landing on various cities in North America may not be seen as strategically determinative, whereas in the real world of human society, let us say in the USA, a missile landing on New York City, one on Washington DC and one on Los Angeles collapses the society, pretty much.
We saw what happened during Hurricane Katrina. The USA was unable to deal with a situation in part of one city. Could the USA deal with the destruction of its hundred most important towns and cities? I think not.
UK
As I write, the UK is approaching its most testing time for about 80 years. The Government has mandated the closure of effectively the whole of the economy apart from supermarkets and other parts of the food sector.
At the same time, the Government has decided to support the pay of “furloughed” employees, up to 80% of what had been their pay (I presume net pay), at least for now, and up to a maximum of £2,500 a month. The scheme will last for 3 months, so until the end of June, but may be and probably will be extended. Other support (loans and tax breaks) is targeted at businesses themselves.
The self-employed are so far left out in the cold, though it seems clear that the Government will offer something to them. Whether that help reaches even to the £2,500 per month cap applicable to employees on PAYE is unclear. Probably not.
In any event, it seems that no-one, whether PAYE or self-employed, will get anything at all until sometime in April.
Coronavirus: Around 7.5m UK people have no savings to fall back on. The earliest help for employees will arrive at the end of April; little for the self-employed. Food, rent, rates, gas, electricity, water bills won't wait. Govt policy being made on the hoof, lacking detail.
They could relatively easily institute a UBI scheme. No assessments needed just issue the money! Radical times require radical solutions! https://t.co/H9NUrnvLhC
Who are these self employed people making more money out of lockdown? I suppose a few who play the stock market exploiting crashes. Anyone else? My feed is 100 % people who have lost all /most of their business. https://t.co/xeOSnIFyFj
“Austerity” is dead. The emergency package rolled out by Rishi Sunak proves beyond all doubt that what the critics of the “austerity” nonsense said was correct: that “austerity” was a purely political choice by the Conservative Party, and particularly by the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne. The whole scam has been exploded by the opening of financial floodgates by Rishi Sunak. The Universal Credit minimum is going to be £20 a week more, thus increasing cash income of many by about 30% at a stroke.
The huge economic stimulus now made available should have been tried back in 2010 or 2012. Countries that stimulated their economies rode out the downturn far better than Britain did under the idiotic Cameron-Osborne “austerity” policies.
Has Sunak’s giveaway been motivated mainly by a fear that simply to let the economy collapse would be to invite public disorder? Is that why Sunak arbitrarily (?) put the Universal Credit minimum weekly stipend up to £95? A kind of Danegeld?
What has happened is that the real economy has now been put into deep freeze for a period the duration of which is unknown but may last for several months. Economic activity is all but zero outside the food sector (and to some extent within it, eg the restaurant and takeaway industries). At the same time, the revenues of both central and local government have been hit by the dropoff in tax revenues: income tax, VAT, business rates etc.
The unspoken reality is that government revenue reservoirs are now not being replenished by the taxes and imposts paid during normal times by those persons and enterprises active in the economy. The governmental apparat and everything done by government is now running purely from “borrowing”, though at historically-very-low interest rates. Bar that, the State is running on empty.
The shutdown of almost everything will wipe out a huge number of businesses in the UK. In fact, that was already happening even before the Coronavirus situation, which then made the situation far worse: Laura Ashley, Primark, Toys R Us, HMV, House of Fraser, Mothercare, Wrightbus, Thomas Cook, Debenhams, to name only the best known. Most of those I have known since childhood. Many others have also become insolvent, such as Jamie’s Italian (restaurants) and Patisserie Valerie. Incidentally, it might be thought that a company such as Patisserie Valerie employed relatively few people. It depends what you mean by “relatively few”, though (900 in the case of Patisserie Valerie).
We see now that the entire “High Street” economy is closed. Much of it will not reopen. The same may be true of much of the rest of the economy.
I think that we can see now why the “emergency measures” in the Coronavirus Bill or Act are drafted to last for (so far) 2 years, not for a few months. We also see why that Bill contains “national security” clauses. The System is afraid.
I wonder how many small or even larger businesses will “furlough” their employees? Many will simply lay them off permanently or sack them. Not every big businessman is as disgusting as Tim Martin of Wetherspoon’s pubs, but many, and especially the smaller businesses, will simply become, in short order, unviable and so insolvent.
In my view, the correct answer would have been to offer former employees, the “self-employed” and others a Basic Income, but not to guarantee 80% of the income of furloughed employees and certainly not to throw money at businesses. Better to give what money there is to give at
individuals, via Basic Income;
real infrastructure projects on a vast scale (once the medical emergency has passed).
New businesses would then start, fuelled by the money the population would have via Basic Income.
Politically?
Discontent will grow if this situation is not resolved within weeks or, at most, a couple of months. We already see both ex-employees and insolvent “self-employed” (many of whom are not in business but simply doing what would once have been an employed job but now on a “self-employed” basis) crying because they are being asked to live on £95 (cash income) per week. Many of these were Conservative Party voters in 2019, 2017, even 2015 and 2010. They thought that the unemployed and disabled did not “deserve” even £95 per week (or even £75…). Well, “what goes around comes around”.
Basic Income is the right thing for the UK, and I note that that horrible bastard Iain Dunce Duncan Smith opposes it on the basis (the incorrect basis) that it acts as “a disincentive to work”. So says a part-Jap freeloader who has never done a day’s work in his miserable life!
One can see that confidence in the Conservatives is low, but confidence in Labour is even lower! This must open the ground for social nationalism soon.
There must emerge a proper social-national movement. The time is, even now, not yet right, but it may well be by the end of this year.
Er, yes. It is afrightening read, though surprisingly quiet on the Babylonian effects of the death of money, espcially in Berlin. I have litle doubt that the German money catastrophe, by demoralising the former middle classes, brought Nazism intio being. https://t.co/qbMlhdXYGS
Ian Robert Millard 