Note: readers of the blog may see some tweets reposted as links rather than embedded tweets. A technical issue that I have been unable to resolve so far.
A few thoughts out of season
Well, here we are on Boxing Day, and a few thoughts came to my mind as I perused the online newspapers and Twitter/X.
The first arose when I saw a tweet from a Jewish individual wishing readers a “Happy Hannukah” (also spelled “Chanukah”).
In the past, not only when I was a child in the 1960s, or a teenager in the 1970s, but also in more recent decades, the public expression of Jewish religion was rather limited. I do not recall having ever seen the word(s) “Hanukkah” or “Chanukah” (except in the odd book) until fairly recently, perhaps 1990s or later. Not in England, where I was mostly brought up; and not in Australia, where I lived from early 1967 to late 1969.
I certainly do not recall this Jewish festival being pushed into the public realm in the UK or even, when I was resident there intermittently in the years 1989-1993, in the New York/New Jersey area.
Now, it is different. 10 Downing Street has had a menorah, the multi-armed candlestick of the Jews, in its window, as well as an Israeli flag projected onto the facade of the building.
We also see the words “Happy Chanukah” projected onto, of all most prominent places, Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.
[Nelson’s Column on Christmas Day 2024]
In fact, menorah representations or sculptures, as well as Hannukah slogans, have suddenly appeared in towns and cities all over the UK (and elsewhere) in recent years.
This is in a sense strange. The actual Jewish population has not altered in size, substantially, for some years. Indeed, there is some evidence that numbers of Jews in the UK have decreased since the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Jews#Demographics.
The Jewish population in the UK is around 250,000-300,000, so far less than 1% of the whole UK population. Perhaps half of one percent. Yet their symbols have, in recent years, proliferated in public positions.
At present, the Jews are celebrating Hannukah, a religious festival of which Wikipedia says:
In other words, it commemorates, at least inter alia, military victory in the Middle East, including the capture of Jerusalem well over two thousand years ago. Put another way, it can be taken to be an expression of Jewish ethnic supremacism (the same is true of many of their festivals).
The contrast with Christmas is stark; Christmas, with its message of peace.
“Originally instituted as a feast “in the manner of Sukkot (Booths)”, it does not come with the corresponding obligations, and is therefore a relatively minor holiday in strictly religious terms. Nevertheless, Hanukkah has attained major cultural significance in North America and elsewhere, especially among secular Jews, due to often occurring around the same time as Christmas during the festive season.[8]“
[Wikipedia]
It is common to see non-Jews in the UK etc, people who are no doubt well-meaning but ignorant, conflating the two festivals, for the simple reason that they occur not infrequently at the same time of year. They are, however, quite different, and actually have no connection with each other.
That Jewish ethnic supremacism can be seen in the tweet below, showing (and approving) Israeli Army personnel lighting a Hannukah menorah in a looted and occupied home in Lebanon.
Seems that projecting political messages onto the buildings of others is a game anyone can play.
Interesting that Reform UK now has a greater number of members than the moribund “Conservative” Party. Of course, Reform is a mass movement, a grassroots movement, albeit one controlled and literally owned by a few people and, mainly, by Nigel Farage, whereas the Conservative Party is merely the rump, or fag-end, of a once ubiquitous grassroots party which (in the 1940s, 1950s, even 1960s) had literally millions of members (as also had Labour).
So 70% of UK people now think immigration is now running at “too high” a level. Only 3% think that immigration is “too low”. I suppose that that tiny 3% minority includes Yvette Cooper, Starmer, and (other) very silly people such as Zoe Gardner (“@ZoeJardiniere”), who seem to live in some alternate reality. However, those pro-migration-invasion crazies are the ones often seen on TV, posing as “experts”. Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan…
I wager that, were only white English people to be counted in that poll, the 70% figure would rise to somewhere around 90%.
“Crossing Gwent Square on a cold, crisp day in Cwmbran, married couple Maxine and David Griffin have more in common with each other than they did a year ago.
In July, the Brexit supporters voted for the Reform UK party in the constituency of Torfaen; it was the first time they had both voted for the same party.
Maxine, 52, who works in a cafe, had previously voted Conservative, while her husband, 55, a postal worker and union representative, had always voted Labour.
Lack of faith in politics is a running theme among the voters the Guardian interviewed; the vast majority said they would not vote for any party.
But of those who would vote, Reform UK supporters were easy to find.
A poll by Survation, commissioned by Reform UK, put the party at 20% in a Senedd election – ahead of the Conservatives at 17%, but behind Labour at 30%.
A separate unaffiliated poll by Opinium, which was based on Westminster voting intentions, suggested 26% of voters in Wales would vote Reform compared with 24% who would vote Labour…“
[Guardian]
Worth reading, not least because a similar trend may be seen in England as well.
“Final asylum seekers have now left the Bibby Stockholm
Most claims from 400 men on vessel moored in Portland, Dorset have been processed, with majority accepted.
A Home Office team has been processing claims from the 400 men housed on the boat. A significant majority are understood to have been granted asylum and most are expected to leave the area for accommodation elsewhere. About eight were left on the vessel when the final residents departed on Tuesday.
The local council has said that none of the men moved from the vessel will be based in other accommodation in Dorset, with reports saying they are likely to be moved to other areas including Cardiff and Wolverhampton.“
[Guardian]
So there it is. Exactly what I predicted would happen not only in relation to that barge, but also in relation to the invasion as a whole— “processing” (rubberstamping) quietly happening, with about 90% of the “asylum-seekers” allowed to stay in the UK. The rest? Still allowed to stay until removed (which will never happen to the refused individuals, or 90% of them, under System government, as now under Starmer-Labour).
That’s the way Starmer operates— dishonestly, sneakily, and against the interests of the British people. A hateful individual.
In other words, at least 396 of the 400 on that barge will be staying— c.360 because accepted as “genuine” “asylum-seekers”; the other 36 because, though not accepted as genuine even under the UK’s Mickey Mouse immigration laws and rules, they will not be deported. What about the 4 who might be deported (the report implies 8 persons)? Probably willing to go voluntarily, if given a bit of baksheesh and a free ticket.
Incidentally, note in that Guardian report that “a significant majority are understood to have been granted asylum and most are expected to leave the area for accommodation elsewhere“.
So somewhere around 360 or more single men are now going to be given hotel accommodation and, either immediately or before very long, flats or houses that should be going to needy British people. 360 dwelling units.
I don’t want to hear any bs from fake “socialists” about the housing crisis until or unless the same virtue-signallers accept that, without mass immigration, there would be no housing crisis.
Tweets seen
The British Economist counted about 100,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed since the beginning of the SMO . In addition, another 400,000 Ukrainian servicemen were seriously wounded.
The publication reports that more than 0.5% of Ukraine's pre-war male population (18-49 years old)… pic.twitter.com/AiZKHZlnNI
“The British Economist counted about 100,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed since the beginning of the SMO . In addition, another 400,000 Ukrainian servicemen were seriously wounded. The publication reports that more than 0.5% of Ukraine’s pre-war male population (18-49 years old) died, and “about 5% were either killed or too wounded to fight.” These losses, expressed as a percentage of the population, exceed the number of US deaths in Vietnam and Korea combined and are approaching the level of World War II, The Economist notes.“
The "Sarmat" ballistic missile will soon go on combat duty, they say in Moscow pic.twitter.com/WfMflWkXFZ
For several decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (which gave both sides a shock), there were attempts, partly successful, to reduce the risk of nuclear war between East and West. Now, almost exactly 62 years later, that risk not only remains but is increasing almost daily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis.
[1962 CIA estimation of the range of Soviet missiles to be based in Cuba]
Now imagine the reverse: American missiles based in Ukraine, Poland, and other states around Russia.
The present situation is not good, and is worsening. It may only take the events of a single day to destroy most of Europe as we know it; and the events of the same or a second day to destroy large parts of both Russia and North America.
Netanyahu admits defeat to Hezbollah
🟢 The Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the heads of northern settlements, essentially admitted the inability of the Israeli army to defeat Hezbollah.
I seem to remember that, when I was last in Moscow (2007), the rouble was about 20 to the U.S. dollar, maybe 25. OK, so now it is over 100 to the dollar. Only a fifth of the value it held in 2007.
True, but things are not quite as simple as that. Most importantly, most Russian people (like most Americans) either do not travel internationally, or do so only to countries where the local currency is itself weak. I myself recall encountering a Russian family on the Aegean coast of Turkey in 2001. At that time, most tourist Russians went to countries such as Turkey, North Cyprus or, even more popular, the Republic of Cyprus in the south of that island.
Even in 2001, most Russians did not travel beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union. Most, the vast majority, now stay at home.
Likewise, most Russians do not buy any imported goods at all, and so are insulated from price increases caused by the decline in value of the rouble.
Those who are most impacted by the fall in the value of the rouble are the wealthy, very wealthy, “oligarchs” etc. However, many of those people are so wealthy that a fall of 4/5ths of the notional value of their (Russia-based) assets is almost unimportant, they have so much money (as is the case with the oil sheikhs and rulers of the Middle East).
On the macro level, the fall in value means that Russian products and produce are price-competitive internationally. In any case, Russia is now doing much, perhaps most, of its trade with the “BRICS” states, not with the EU or North America etc. Sanctions, of course, apply to much of Russia’s pre-2022 trade with the West.
Pro-Kiev regime tweeters on Twitter/X are crowing at the weakness of the rouble, but the noise simply amplifies their own ignorance.
"Inheritance tax relief" introduced in 1984 turned "owning agricultural land into having a licence to avoid inheritance tax.. It led to a "four-fold increase in the price of agricultural land" #PMQspic.twitter.com/cUyIoXfuAq
Pictured here is small polytechnic moot court-tier Courtroom Two of Blair's 'YouKay Supreme Court'. It is particularly naff in context because it is housed inside one of London's greatest under-appreciated buildings, the Edwardian Middlesex Guildhall of JS Gibson. https://t.co/tPHTVQuvzApic.twitter.com/55RzIPIbY0
I appeared as Counsel there once (actually a 3-day trial), in early 1994, when it was still Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court. The courtrooms then were very pleasant pre-WW1 panelled rooms, not at all like the —as I now see— fairly bland UK Supreme Court one.
It was my first (and one of few) Crown Court criminal trials, a “section 18” GBH with intent, which carries a maximum life sentence. My defendant, had he been convicted, would have been sentenced, probably, to 5 or 6 years in those days, he having thrown hot oil over the “victim”, then stabbed him twice with a chef’s knife. Happily for him, he was acquitted on self-defence, a result I had thought was a 50-50 possibility, though the defendant himself was sure that he would be going down, and for several years.
I remember it well, not least because a friend at the Bar (who already had a good criminal practice) later remarked, on being told by me that I had done my first full Crown Court trial, resulting in acquittal, “oh, so you got him off?!“, to which I replied, modestly, “well, he got off…“, to which his rejoinder was “no, don’t put yourself down.” Kind words. Actually, I think I did OK, in a rather green sort of way…
[Middlesex Guildhall, Parliament Square, seat of UK Supreme Court]
Now on 2.8M signatures. It will have no direct effect, and Starmer may well even weasel out of a debate but, from the wider political point of view, it underlines the unpopularity of this ridiculous and nasty “Labour” government.
Late tweets seen
Yes this mystified me. This is not true representation. What are they trying to achieve? Result, inaccurate marketing, sceptical of the product. In fact I often boycott products whose advertising fails to deliver accurate representation.
No need to be “mystified“. There is a transnational conspiracy to import blacks and browns into Europe, especially, arguably, into the UK. The idea was formulated by an evildoer called Coudenhove-Kalergi, and the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan has as its aim the extermination of white Europeans, and their replacement by a mixed white/black/brown population, to be ruled over by Jewish and part-Jewish persons: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi.
Wikipedia may call the belief that the Plan exists, “debunked“, but you have to bear in mind that the Jewish/Zionist/Israel lobby has a whole programme going to vandalize Wikipedia. The malicious so-called “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”] even advertized on its website a few years ago for volunteers with Wikipedia accounts to “edit” (vandalize, change for socio-political reasons) Wikipedia.
Look at the UK Prime Ministers of recent years. “Boris” Johnson, part-European, part-Jew, part Circassian Turk. Theresa May, part-Jewish. David Cameron-Levita, mixed European and Jewish. Look at the recent Conservative Party leadership election. Main candidates who were part-Jewish (Tugendhat), African (Kemi Badenoch), probably European/British but married to a Jewish spouse (Jenrick), mixed European/African (Cleverly). All members of Conservative Friends of Israel.
Indeed, look at Starmer: European (Brit) but married to a Jewish woman; all his Cabinet are members of Labour Friends of Israel.
The fact is that TV ads of that sort are basically socio-political propaganda; the selling of products is, in reality, secondary. Some companies as good as admit the fact. Look at the recent Jaguar car ad.
Another point is that such ads are not aimed at people of my age (68), or those of 50, 40, or even 30. They are aimed at younger people, and indeed at children, whose critical faculties are unformed, and who, seeing such ads, will come to see (or so the propagandists believe) racial-mixing, and production of mixed-race children, as normal.
🇷🇺 Russia considers itself free to use weapons against Western military facilities – Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN
"We believe we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities in those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our… pic.twitter.com/sDWEVu44PF
The human cost of war, perhaps, but is this really a “war”? More like the sadistic crushing of a civilian population by a huge and mechanized machine of destruction. The Gazan civilians are almost defenceless.
“I’m not political, just in case anyone cares. I realize that can be unfashionable these days, but I’m too old to believe politics can change anything when such a huge majority of people in my country are so spiritually sick and/or dead inside. Not to mention our sellout/traitor political classes, nearly all of whom are being blackmailed or brainwashed. I generally sympathize more with conservative views culturally, left-libertarian views on the warfare state, and old-school labor-left views economically. But I’m at the point where I feel like whatever time I have remaining on this earth is best spent on other issues.”
Yvette Cooper thinks the way to stop the boats is to collaborate with France on law enforcement. This has already been tried and failed. The answer is far simpler – stop the incentives. Stop the hotels. Stop the benefits. Stop rubber-stamping asylum applications. https://t.co/U7TYqSV9iUpic.twitter.com/gPlfMIoNXZ
Yvette Cooper, an expenses cheat, fraudster, Labour Friends of Israel member, and traitress.
The ONLY way of stopping the boats is to make it clear illegal migrants who break our laws will not be allowed to stay. This means leaving ECHR, reforming Human Rights Act, detain & deport & have active deterrent. NOT Labour scrapping deterrent, expanding hotels & giving asylum
None of the System parties have any intention of “stopping the boats”, let alone stopping the million or more migrant-invaders (every year) coming in as “legal” migrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan.
Amusing. Something similar once happened on a Caribbean island where I lived, though it all blew up a couple of months before I arrived; I was told about it by a colleague.
Apparently, the defaulter was a pilot, a native of another island. He flew for a regional airline. He crashed his plane on one island or another (I do not recall what I was told, exactly; I think maybe St. Lucia) and he was killed, along with about 30 passengers and crew. Cannabis and cocaine were said to have been found in his body.
After his death, his wife was sorting through his belongings (not where she lived) and found the video tapes (this was about 25 or 26 years ago).
It turned out that the deceased pilot had, er, had literally dozens of prominent women on the island where I later lived. His wife made sure that copies of the tape were sent to several people. Soon, everyone had seen or heard of those tapes.
As my colleague later told me, these were women one met on a daily basis, such as the tall, sunglasses-wearing, woman police sergeant who conducted my driving test (I did not usually drive myself around until I arrived on that island and had no choice).
Other women involved were almost all of those who worked at the small airport on the island (as immigration officials, canteen staff, cleaners etc), the local schoolteachers, wives of the officiants at several of the (many) local churches etc. Apparently, bananas (literal bananas) featured in some of the tapes.
It all caused an enormous upheaval on an island where people tended to know everyone.
Reverting to Equatorial Guinea, I have never been there, and have only met a couple of people who have. Having said that, when I was a mere 18 years of age, in 1975, I had the idea of invading the island. A couple of boys my own age were my co-planners in that mad idea, which of course never went anywhere.
I had a large pilot’s map of the island (bought from Stanford’s in Covent Garden) and the nearby/not nearby bit of Africa where the larger part of the country (the former Spanish colony of Spanish Guinea, independent since 1968) was located. The island of Fernando Po (now, Bioko) was where the capital, Santa Isabel (now, Malabo) was. The island is about 3x the size of the Isle of Wight, and the whole country is slightly larger than Wales.
I twice met the (now long-deceased) Conservative MP, Harold Soref, in connection with my doomed plan, once at the Carlton Club and once at the original St. James’ Club in Piccadilly. He was rather dismissive (perhaps unsurprisingly). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Soref. Maybe he was just keeping an eye open for SIS/MI6.
At that time, oil had not been discovered in Equatorial Guinea (that happened only in 1995), and few people had even heard of the place. I was unaware at the time that novelist Frederick Forsyth had already published, in 1974, the novel The Dogs of War, all about an invasion of Equatorial Guinea (disguised in the book as the republic of Zangaro).
Truth/fiction etc…
[Malabo (former Santa Isabel), Equatorial Guinea]
Late tweets
And a new party Chairman who was totally cool with selling British media to Abu Dhabi
Interesting, so soon after the mis-named “Labour landslide” of GE 2024.
Israeli military analyst "Yossi Yehoshua": Our army is not advancing in southern Lebanon 🇱🇧 and is almost standing in one line. pic.twitter.com/rj2j5AsJ3t
What an absurd “democracy”: most voters totally ignorant about the world generally, many voting on the basis that a candidate is a woman, or a non-white, or for some other silly reason (e.g. because the singer Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris); and then, of course, there is the over-arching control exercised by Israeli agents and the American Jewish lobby.
Ian Robert Millard 