Morning music
Tweets seen
FPTP voting being the illogical and unfair thing that it is, those figures would result in a similar number of seats (for the English parties) as at GE 2024, according to Electoral Calculus.
If, however, Labour went down to 28% and Reform UK went up to 24%, the latter might have 48 MPs. Also, Labour would be a minority government.
Despite the evident hopeless incompetence of Starmer-Labour, the pseudo-Conservative Party shows no immediate sign of being able to mount a serious challenge.
I wonder what percentage are from the (((usual))) suspects?
I once knew someone whose ex-boyfriend, English and a Cambridge graduate, worked for the World Bank. That young man was sent to live in Yemen (at that time divided into two; I am not sure but think this would have been South Yemen). That would have been in the mid/late 1970s. The young man lived in fairly basic hotel accommodation for the year in which he was collecting and collating economic statistics in Yemen. At the end of the year, those would be the raw material for a report which would become an official World Bank report and the basis for economic help to that Yemeni state.
This was, of course, in pre-Internet days, and the statistics gathered in were all on paper in his hotel room. No copies, and there was no way, in the absence of an office, to relay any but the most basic information to World Bank HQ in Washington D.C.
At the end of the year, that young World Bank employee was ready to depart, carrying with him all the papers and files etc. It was at that point when a water pipe in his room developed a bad leak while he was out. The room was flooded, and most of the material destroyed.
On return to Washington, the young man sat in his office for a couple of weeks, agonizing about what to do. Eventually, a senior colleague came in and asked him what the problem was. He confessed. The senior colleague helped him to cobble together a report that looked plausible, though most of the statistics had to be simply invented.
“World Bank”. Like many things, organizations and people in this world, it sounds terribly impressive. On the surface…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen#Two_states
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank
As to the “young man” in question, I myself met him only once, when he was not that young anymore. Early 1980s. I was about 26, my then girlfriend 33, and the “young man” in this story about 33 or 34, maybe 35. He, on a flying visit, invited us, with a couple of others, also ex-Cambridge alumni (as always, I was the outsider) to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, I think on the Finchley Road, not far from where the other couple lived in Hampstead.
The economist’s American wife was back in the USA. Perhaps he was curious to see his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. It could have been a little awkward, especially in view of the fact that there was an age gap made greater by the others being all rather established in worldly life, whereas I was pretty much “economically inactive”, and spending most of my time on occult, theological, historical, and speculative “alternative” political matters.
In the event, the evening went not badly, despite (maybe because) I was too busy talking to notice that I was pouring hot Chinese tea all over myself; the (other) lady present said that it was very impressive that I did not cry out. Very dry, very Cambridge…
I just looked up the said economist. Now in, at least, his mid-seventies, he has apparently also worked for the U.S. Treasury and on Wall Street, and has taken part at a high level in meetings of the Basel Committee [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Committee_on_Banking_Supervision]. Obviously still based, in the old term, “stateside”.
As always, I find it interesting to see how people’s lives are largely determined, not in every case but in many, by their advantages and disadvantages of birth, family income and capital, early education etc.
The economist’s father, I now see (from Wikipedia), died in 1988 and, as I already knew, was a Labour (later SDP) life peer, who had had a considerable medical, academic, and political career.
In the end, all humans live out an allotted span, and all in the end leave the Earth (until reincarnated).
Temps perdu…
The continuing slide of the UK down a dystopian slope
…or, as Katie Hopkins calls it, “Batshit Bonkers Britain“.
A few examples from today’s newspapers:
“A geography professor at a leading British university has described the study of rocks and the natural world as racist and linked the academic field to ‘white supremacy’.
Kathryn Yusoff, who lectures at the prestigious Queen Mary University of London, said that the geology as a subject was ‘riven by systematic racism’ and influenced heavily by colonialism.
The study of prehistoric life through fossils was also branded as an enabler for racism, with the professor referring to the field of palaeontology as ‘pale-ontology’.”
[Daily Mail]
“I am a transdisciplinary geographer focused on inhuman geographies. I understand the inhuman as a place from which to think about earthly relations and inhumane histories. Theoretically, I engage historical, geophilosophical and black feminist methods to speak to issues of environmental change, empires of geologic practices and the politics of planetary states.
Specifically, I am interested in the role of inhuman epistemologies in race, gender, and subjectivity for more equitable environmental world-building.“
[https://www.qmul.ac.uk/geog/staff/yusoffk.html]
“Professor of Inhuman Geography“? You couldn’t make it up.
“Transdisciplinary” maybe; I think “trans” something else, too.
Enemies of European culture and civilization riddle our universities, the legal professions, politics etc.
There is a limit to what I can express on the blog. Suffice to say that Britain (and all Europe) will not free itself from this sort of nonsense via “debate” (which that sort expressly do not want anyway). ‘Nuff said.
“A record number of asylum seekers have managed to secure their stay in the UK by claiming to be gay, official figures have revealed.
The figure almost trebled last year from 762 in 2022 to 2133 in 2023, of people who could demonstrate that returning to their homeland would be inhumane because of their sexuality.
Under the European Convention of Human Rights people who may be persecuted because of their sexual orientation can claim asylum in the UK.
Eight countries saw 100 per cent of claims were successful. These were people from Afghanistan, El Salvador, Syria, Eritrea, Myanmar (Burma), Libya, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Yemen.
While Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria saw the largest number of successful applicants.“
[Daily Mail].
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14091637/Trans-men-lesbians-IVF-priority-NHS.html
“Family campaigners have criticised as ‘grossly discriminatory’ plans to give trans men and lesbians access to NHS-funded IVF two years ahead of heterosexual couples.
Under the controversial proposals, trans men – those born as women who now identify as men – will be automatically assumed to be unable to conceive, as will lesbians and single women.“
[Daily Mail]
Need one even comment?
Still clapping?
“Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of hypocrisy after it was revealed the UK sent an incredible 470 delegates to the UN climate change summit in Azerbaijan.
Britain’s huge delegation to the COP29 talks has left a massive carbon footprint – despite Labour‘s zealous drive towards Net Zero – and cost taxpayers millions.
The staggering environmental and financial cost comes despite the summit being deemed ‘no longer fit for purpose’, with leaders of some of the biggest polluting countries, including US President Joe Biden and China‘s President Xi, shunning talks.“
[Daily Mail]
Apart from anything else, without oil production the Azeris would be dirt-poor, as indeed they were before the discovery of oil over a century ago. Are they likely to go along with the “stop oil” nonsense? I doubt it.
More from the newspapers
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14090921/Britains-aircraft-carriers-sunk-war-games.html
“Britain’s recently built multi-billion pound aircraft carriers may already be out of date, with military sources revealing that the carries [sic] get sunk ‘in most war games’.
At present, the Royal Navy boasts two £6.2 billion aircraft carriers, the HMS Queen Elizabeth and the HMS Prince of Wales, which were only commissioned into service in 2017 and 2019 respectively.
However, given the constant advancements in weapon technology, the ships may now be too susceptible to modern missiles to prove effective in wartime operation.“
[Daily Mail]
As predicted years ago by both accredited “military/naval experts” and, inter alia, me (on this blog).
…and the Harehills (Leeds) riots were not “Romanian”, either.
Never confuse real Romanians with Roma Gypsies, which are (mostly) a kind of criminal underclass who live in Romania (and also now in the UK, thanks to our traitor politicians), may have Romanian passports, but are not Romanian an sich.
Romanians are, understandably, offended by being constantly conflated, usually by ignorant UK newspaper scribblers and TV talking heads, with the Roma Gypsies.
So Farage has now not only vehemently supported Israel and the UK Jewish/Zionist lobby, but also seems to be saying that Muslims in the UK should not be alienated politically either. The man is, as often said, a snake-oil salesman but, having said that, I would not rule out the chance of him becoming a Cabinet minister in some kind of coalition government after 2029.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1837402567803826567
See also my very popular article on the connection between mental illness and, on the one hand, self-describing “Leftism” and “antifa” and, on the other hand, Jewish and non-Jewish Zionism: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/07/18/theyre-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha/.
Good.
That is what the Jewish state has done to Gaza in just over one year.
Quasi-legal thought
It occurs to me that, should anyone in the UK be accused of any indictable offence (meaning, simply put, one in which guilt will be determined by a jury rather than a single magistrate —or lay bench— as is the case with non-indictable offences), and if that alleged offence involves alleged hostility to Jews, or the Jews in general, the said defendant might be able to count on popular disgust at what the Jewish state of Israel is doing in Gaza to sway the jury. Just “a thought out of season”…
“Map of the Ukraine: a massive strike by the Russian Armed Forces on objects Ukraine using missiles and kamikaze drones.”
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 