For me, this is not someone who should have any power or influence at all. Sick in body and soul. The same or similar applies to his puppet, Boris-idiot.
Having said that, I have no interest in whether he drove North 250 miles in breach of the “lockdown” nonsense. There should never have been implemented such wide-ranging restrictions.
Now, while the msm obsess about Cummings, attention is on him, and not on the fact that the UK economy is actually collapsing behind the smokescreen put up by “lockdown” and its”furlough” payments (which buy off most popular protest, and will do so until furlough payments end).
So far, with (the surviving) pubs possibly re-opening in July and people able to walk on beaches, in parks, in National Parks etc, there is a semi-holiday feeling. Most people who would otherwise be scrabbling for fairly pitiful Universal Credit money are being paid 80%, in some cases 100% of their previous pay (some are actually better off by reason of not having to pay out for much transport, clothing etc).
However, the iceman cometh. The Autumn and Winter will see a tsunami of company failures (my description, some time ago, but now being echoed, using the same term, by leading businessmen). Unemployment will skyrocket. Then will be the time when social nationalism can get off the ground for the first time since 1939.
Boris-idiot
This must be the first and possibly last time I have agreed with something tweeted by “antifa” cheerleader Mike Stuchbery:
Can't see why all these right-wing lads fervently back Boris. He's got all the traits of what they'd call a beta. At the beck and call of others, no real convictions, all hot air and nothing behind the talk.
— Mike Stuchbery 💀🍷 (@MikeStuchbery_) May 25, 2020
Of course, Stuchbery is talking, I presume, mainly abot the “alt-Right” wastes of space, the like of “Prison Planet” Watson etc.
Some tweets seen
EXCLUSIVE: 'I look for Jeffrey's type and I bring 'em home.' Prince Andrew's cousin tells how Ghislaine Maxwell bragged she recruited girls for Epstein from trailer parks and was intent on eventually marrying him https://t.co/xm9Jaj9cI9pic.twitter.com/Pybfil1gxP
There is nothing to 'deny' @cd208. There is not a scrap of evidence that mass house arrest and the strangling of the economy saved a single life, that I know of. You have some? Please provide. https://t.co/vMskDKhdSQ
Time for today’s “dim SNP tweet of the day”, this time courtesy of tweeter “@amaginnit”
In a normal country, free people are not 'locked down' in the first place, @amaginnit, you serf. 'Lockdown' is a punishment for convicted prisoners who riot in penitentiaries. https://t.co/sGr8fnHNhN
I agree with Hitchens. What until relatively recently were “normal humans” in England have all but disappeared. The numbers taper off as the age drops below about 50.
Anyone younger than 40, so born around 1980, has been brought up and “educated” in a milieu of Jew finance-capitalism, “holocaust” propaganda disguised as school “history”, “multiculturalism” (as something supposedly good), the idea that the State should probably not help people (except fake “refugees”) very much (via social security, social housing etc), but that citizens should or even must obey, not only the exact letter of the law, not even its spirit (however thought of) but even the mere wishes or demands of (increasingly mediocre or even clownish) politicians.
One only has to look at what now is considered “comedy”…or the willingness (indeed eagerness) of many to denounce and/or “report” others (to police, to those running Twitter or other online fora, to employers) for unwillingness to censor themselves and/or comply with every politically-correct demand of the State or the Jew lobby. In fact, the police are among the most contaminated in this regard.
There are exceptions, a relative few of the under-40s, indeed under-25s, who are not, or not so much, brainwashed. It is a minority though, a small minority from what I can gather.
1/2 Is it? If you are so worried about accountability, surely a better target would be our supine plastic Parliament, which has made no attempt to scrutinise this policy, and our supine plastic 'opposition' which has not opposed. @chrisdonnelly12https://t.co/pMecBksXzz
Can't see why @timwilde16. It is essential for our national future that the whole episode is viewed as a mistake rather than a success. If not we will never escape from the facemask fanatics, and we will be in constant danger of a repeat of house arrest & economic strangulation. https://t.co/Q0kCDMzFgj
In fact, at this point I am more interested in what happens next, and particularly what will be happening in 3, 6, or 9 months in society, re. the economy, and in politics, than in arguing about or hearing debate about what Coronavirus is, what causes it to spread, and whether the peak happened before “lockdown” (which seems very likely) or later.
The day started well enough: kefir, boiled pullet eggs, brown seeded toast with Cornish butter, lettuce. It went downhill when I saw a Daily Mail online report about ghastly Amber Rudd.
When Amber Rudd was an active politician and MP [Con, Hastings and Rye 2010-2019], I despised her as a “Conservative” who voted for all the callous and cruel “welfare” spending cuts measures of the David Cameron-Levita government, as well as those continued by the Theresa May government.
Amber Rudd, who may be part-Jew on the paternal side, was totally in the pocket of the Jewish-Zionist lobby as MP:
Theresa May and Amber Rudd added more repressions to the statute book, and started to ban political groups. Indeed, there are a number of mostly young people who are in prison today directly because of the activities of Amber Rudd.
I despised Amber Rudd for all of those activities, too.
Amber Rudd was married to unpleasant scribbler A.A. Gill (now deceased) and then involved with Kwasi Kwarteng MP [Con, Spelthorne], a one-time “African at Eton”, who eventually moved on to marry a (much younger) Amber Rudd lookalike.
In fact, before she became an MP, Amber Rudd was involved with offshore financial manipulations which had a directly fraudulent and/or tax-evading basis:
These offshore and other companies were in fact owned, or partly-owned, by her own family. She was appointed director of one at age 24, having worked for what cannot have been more than a year, possibly two years, for J.P. Morgan in London and New York.
Like the CVs of so many MPs, Rudd’s is rather underwhelming when you look at it. Look at that of, eg, Iain Dunce Duncan Smith…
Those more or less faked CVs fool many, though. The Daily Mail writes this: “For many years, Amber worked as an investment banker before entering politics in 2010.” 1-2 years working for J.P. Morgan, and the rest of her pre-MP years working for her own family’s dodgy financial interests.
Finally, the nightmare of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary ended:
Waking up and discovering Amber Rudd has resigned is a bit like unexpectedly finding it's Christmas morning. Back during the general election, this post got 360,000 readers https://t.co/udXJCZGbXv
After that, realizing that as a Remain partisan she had no political future at the age of 55, she declined to stand again for Hastings and Rye, where she was predicted to lose in 2019 anyway (though another Conservative Party candidate did win, in the end):
Now it seems that Amber Rudd has two “consultancies” (well-paid sinecures, probably), one with Teneo, an organization which once had both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair on its advisory board:
A frankly disgusting woman, in every way. As for her daughter, I had never heard of her until today, but she seems to be yet another fake “journalist” (there are so many today; cf. Mike Stuchbery; cf. Tommy Robinson etc). Her “journalism” (as far as I have seen today via Google) consists of tweeting rubbish, together with scribbling occasional msm articles in a 1990s Sunday Times “Zoe Heller” way, a kind of first-person gossip style, with her family and her own daily life as content.
[since I posted the above, a reader writes, privately: “Unfortunately, the Internet is the perfect breeding ground for underbrained narcissists and exhibitionists like that Rudd daughter…you’re so right, just complete decadence…“]
Note to msm outlets: Do not say “firm” when you mean “company”, and do not say “bankruptcy” (re. UK companies) when you mean “insolvency”, “administration” or “liquidation” (in the UK, companies do not go “bankrupt“, they become “insolvent“)! I am probably wasting my time, though, bearing in mind the kind of “journalists” now scribbling (even the real ones)…
I have to say that I have only used Hertz once (in the Caribbean) and it was terrible: dishonest, rude, unhelpful. I switched to an excellent local family car rental place which was far better, though I was slightly scolded a couple of times by the matriarch in charge for having been seen driving from beaches in my swimming trunks, while sitting on a damp towel (which over time rots the seats, apparently).
Hey, look at that (above)! Anecdotal writing…Maybe I too could call myself a “journalist”! No…fakery like that is just not me…
More importantly, Hertz has 400 outlets, both branches and franchises, in the UK. I do not know how many, on average, work in each one, but maybe 10 in each, which would be 4,000 people’s jobs. Even if the figure is only 2,000, that’s still 2,000 more people on the dole, and maybe 10,000 people (family members etc) affected.
This is not looking good (I mean the whole or overall picture, not just Hertz). It is not mainly “the virus” that is causing this collapse in almost all sectors of the economy, but Government policy, and particularly the “lockdown” nonsense.
In Stalin’s day, and under his rule, the scientists who advised so negligently (such as that Imperial College professor, Ferguson) would have been tried and shot. Well, I do not necessarily advocate that, but that man and his colleagues have pretty much finished the UK as a major trading, touristic and manufacturing power, though the ultimate responsibility rests with the Cabinet of clowns, headed by the chief clown, Boris-idiot.
“Prison Planet” Watson
If you needed any more reason to despise “Prison Planet” Watson, look below:
If there's anyone I love more than Brits, it has to be Jews every time. And it's a close call.
Whether one calls him “controlled opposition” or not, the fact is that someone like Watson is, at least politically, a waste of space. Where does his online ranting lead? Nowhere, though it may be argued that he keeps some people from falling asleep completely. For me, though, Watson is a kind of millennial Littlejohn.
Paul Golding and Tommy Robinson
Speaking of “controlled opposition”, I noticed that Paul Golding of Britain First was given a conditional discharge for failing to comply with Britain’s new poundland KGB police and their “anti-terror” remit.
Now I do not necessarily say that Golding and/or Britain First are consciously “controlled opposition”, but what can one think of a “party” that, after gaining hundreds of members (I believe that they claim or claimed 2,000+) did not (as far as I am aware) contest its “deregistration” as a party by the undemocratic Electoral Commission?
I was interested to read that Tommy Robinson was watching Golding’s trial at Westminster Mags last week. Birds of a feather?
You see, this is my problem about the “alt-Right” and the like: their strategy is not so much opaque as non-existent. Parties that cannot contest elections (because unregistered), movements without structure (eg the former EDL, or the “Football Lads’ Alliance”) and which lead nowhere, and leading personalities who are more like clan chiefs in Lebanon than European political leaders.
Who benefits from all this noise and clamorous nothingness? Britain needs a real social-national movement, even if it gets “deregistered” as a party able to contest elections, banned by the fake democracy in which we live. Elections are not the only fruit.
I saw a film this evening: Enigma. Better than average and better than expected. An absence of the usual Jew-Zionist anti-Hitler stuff (hence no Oscar! Arguably). Refreshing. Faction/fiction; only loosely based on actual events.
As a film, I enjoyed it; well-made, well-acted on the whole. I was interested to read that an Enigma machine seen was a real one owned by the producer, who was none other than Mick Jagger.
Obviously not a documentary-type of fiction or faction. The William and Mary “Bletchley Park” of the film was a far more classic place, architecturally, than the real Bletchley Park, a Victorian-Edwardian mish-mash.
A pretty good film (and it has the advantage of a John Barry score; I love John Barry’s unmistakeable music).
Tweets seen
If there is any noticeable impact of lockdown on the spread of covid-19, then Sweden is lying and must have imposed one. pic.twitter.com/YcCGHWnzPo
Yes @ruthromano. Never underestimate the role of incompetence and stupidity in human history. Not to mention vanity. These people could not organise a cheese and pickle sandwich. Don't flatter them. https://t.co/PhbBNTJkQR
No, it was not their aim @ruthromano. They had ( and have) no idea of what they were doing. They are unfit for the offices they hold. The cultural revolution in politics has driven out almost all persons of mature judgement or experience, replacing them with slick self-seekers. https://t.co/peBeZJ0NHv
“We have become muzzled, mouthless, voiceless, humiliated, regimented prisoners, shuffling about at the command of others, stopping when told to stop, moving when told to move, shouted at by jacks-in-office against whom we have no appeal.
“In many cases, bodies supposed to stand up for us now lecture and browbeat us on behalf of the Government. But I think the worst thing of all has been the naked transformation of the police into a politicised state militia. I have had plenty of criticisms of the police before now, and take none of them back…their performance in this crisis has been deeply shocking and sad. They have acted as the agents of Ministers, openly taking one side in a political controversy, shouting angrily and menacingly at innocent citizens that they must go home and that, if they do not, they are ‘killing people’.“
We are learning, during this induction period, to do what we are told and to become obedient, servile citizens of a new authoritarian State. We are unlearning the old rules of freedom.
All the things we used to take for granted now belong to the State, which can hand them back to us if we are good, and yank them away from us again if we are bad, or if it can think of an excuse.
And there will always be an excuse, a rise in the fictional ‘R’ rate, an ‘emergency’ that can be exaggerated into fear, whether it be a virus, a terror threat or even the new Middle Eastern war that I have long feared is coming.” [Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail]
above: some place of which I have never heard. How good it would feel to kick down that stupid, officious little notice and stamp on it, breaking it into pieces!
Britain 2020, a country in which a mother with a small child in pain cannot get to a dentist, even a private one, and is eventually “advised” by a dentist on the telephone to attempt a dental filling on her child herself!
This is the reality of the “lockdown” nonsense. People are suffering and, yes, in many cases dying, all because a crap government of Friends of Israel expenses cheats and frauds, “advised” by “scientists” who know nothing, have imposed on Britain a toytown police state patrolled by toytown police, its citizens’ opinions policed online and in real life (whatever “real life” now means) by a poundland KGB aided by a Twitter mob completely dominated, like the Government, by the Jew-Zionist element.
“Coach tourism operators have said 40,000 jobs will be put at risk because of the coronavirus lockdown unless their business is reclassified as part of the leisure industry...The warning comes as more than 2,000 jobs were lost after the collapse at the weekend of one of the largest coach tour operators in the UK, Shearings.” [The Guardian]
It was instinctive. Dislike at first sight. Nothing I have learned ever afterwards has done anything to change my mind, @elipticaltrnr https://t.co/cMRevqaT92
Incompetent advice is accepted by incompetent ministers, and rejected by competent ones. Also, Mr Cummings was appointed by Mr Johnson. I agree that with this pair it hard to tell which is the organ grinder, but still… https://t.co/pNWQlheo4w
More worrying @Doose77 is the fact that such behaviour has now become virtuous in the eyes of many. And to think we used to look down on East Germans, who generally informed on their neighbours because of harsh pressure to do so. https://t.co/13IOYnFofN
What is old-fashioned about the detailed regulation of personal life? At what point in our history were we ever so regulated (or spied on and denounced by neighbours)? You want to join the 'Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter' of the Hancock Health Stasi, @Frank3davies? https://t.co/8R8DUs6Kmp
A far greater issue than whether a self-proclaimed benevolent elite keep to the rules they impose on us (they never have, at any point in history) is the fast-approaching death of the economy, and devastation of normal life. Worry about that instead: pic.twitter.com/zZwXUq6Ku9
Meanwhile, the Brits sit & enjoy their brief 80% hush money as freedom is strangled. Excepting the total silence during the bombing of Serbia & Libya on behalf of Islamist cut-throats, we've had no greater shame since the Boer War concentration campshttps://t.co/ogQTz0UoaR
This was never more true than today, when the gains from hundreds of years of struggle and sacrifice for #freedom are being thrown away in exchange for 'protection' from the most absurd & groundless panic on human history. pic.twitter.com/rTwO70xNSW
I seem to remember that, as a child in the early/mid 1960s, almost all my shoes and sandals came from Clark’s. Quite a few, anyway. One place, either Clark’s or the shoe department of a department store, had a radioactive machine into which you inserted a foot to see if the fit was OK. Banned now, of course. Michael Caine, as Harry Palmer, looks into such a machine in Billion Dollar Brain, to see the eggs full of a deadly virus:
Alison Chabloz
[above: Alison Chabloz, persecuted satirical singer-songwriter, at her piano]
Disturbing news in the past day or so, that Alison Chabloz was arrested in a dawn raid by Britain’s poundland KGB (politicized police).
Tweets about this, including her own account of the events of Friday, now that she has been released:
Alison Chabloz, satirical songwriter and persecuted as a supposed denier of you_know_what is again under attack from police state powers.https://t.co/ILyjrJbOAc
An interesting tweet by one Ed West, but why am I still surprised that a “deputy editor” and published author is apparently unaware that “motherlode” (also “mother lode”) is not spelled “motherload”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_lode
I suppose that I should now be used to the ever-sliding standards in this country…
True, I have been writing off the LibDems since the betrayals of 2010, but the trajectory remains downward.
Humpty-Dumpty LibDem was broken in 2010. Votes and seats slid in 2015 and then 2017 (though number of seats increased from 8 to 12 in 2017), though there was an upturn in 2019: over 3.5 million votes (an upturn of over 50%) but a decline in number of seats (from 12 to 11) thanks to the way the FPTP system and the boundaries of seats work in Britain (cf. 2017).
Looking into it a little more, it can be seen that the LibDems benefited a little from being the only 100% Remain party. Next time? I still think that the LibDems will be wiped out. Few of their MPs have a strong local following to set against the party-label vote swings. Also, what is the standout profile of the LibDems now? They have no real identity, it seems to me.
Surprisingly, the LibDem membership numbers are not unhealthy: over 120,000, it seems, which is in the same ballpark as the Conservative Party. However, that alone does not bring electoral success (cf. Labour, with perhaps 600,000 members).
I should expect the LibDems to decline further and perhaps to disappear, at least as an independent party.
Well, there it is. The print newspapers are mortally ill and maybe on their last legs. These screeds of rubbish have been declining in quality as long as I can remember. In the 1970s, the quality level was better by far. The old Daily Telegraph magazine, published on Fridays, contained serious reportage and interesting feature journalism: see
Look at the Telegraph itself now! Uncritical Boris Johnson “Conservative” propaganda, and at an excruciatingly low intellectual level. Ironically, though, it was the Telegraph, in the 2005-2010 Parliament, that broke the MP expenses scandal, one of the most serious stories of the past half-century. It does say something about the UK’s “free Press”, though, that MP expenses were an open secret for years, certainly since 1997 and the corruption Blair brought into UK politics, yet were not investigated until the Telegraph decided to take it all seriously and to print.
In the 1970s, even some of the less-serious or less intellectual newspapers, such as the Sunday Express, sometimes contained interesting first-person accounts and so on.
Look at, say, The Times now! Pathetic and shallow “Conservative” and Zionist propaganda. As for the Sunday Times magazine, more or less what used to be called a “woman’s magazine“, full of ads and with little substance in its content.
I welcome the demise of the print newspapers and their fundamentally Zionist-contaminated agenda.
Completely infested.
They even decided to print one-sided stories about me back in late 2016! (Google “Ian Millard barrister” to see some).
True, those newspapers all have an online presence now, but the Times and most of the Telegraph are behind a paywall and, like the others, have to compete for public attention with other sources of news, some of which are, mirabile dictu, not so (((infested and contaminated))).
Why not @newpaulhearn? The point about Sweden was what it did *not* do – house arrest and economic self-strangulation. One week's mortality figures, taken in isolation, don't make a case for these futile measures. Think rather about this : https://t.co/lBf0wM3xLrhttps://t.co/jV9pazJaMJ
Where I deviate from Hitchens in respect of the above is that the number of “lives blighted” should be at least 36,000, maybe as high as 90,000. Why? Most employees laid off have wives (or husbands), children too. Then there is the knock-on effect on the local retail sector as local purchasing power diminishes. Also, redundancies in the supply chain.
— The Jewish Chronicle (@JewishChron) May 21, 2020
Not exactly surprising. There has been a Jewish coup in Labour, one over 4-5 years. Starmer is its figurehead. He is not a Jew, but is married to a Jewish woman (a lawyer) and their children are being brought up as Jewish…
I thought that the Jewish Chronicle had gone up the chimney. Seems not.
Despite being in the august pages of the Criminal Law Journal, the report, penned by one Laura Bliss of Edge Hill University in Lancashire [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Hill_University] misdescribes (?) Alison Chabloz as “a holocaust revolutionist“! Well, if the cap fits, though “revisionist” was probably the term used in court. Ms. Bliss also mispells Elie Wiesel’s name as “Wiezel”. How about “weasel”?
Sadly, most of the report is behind a paywall.
More tweets seen
Below: looks as though someone has woken up, at least…
— Susan Shepherd #FBPE @midgecat.bsky.social💙💙💙 (@Midgecat) May 21, 2020
My feelings exactly: Boris Johnson, Boris-idiot, completely out of his depth as Prime Minister, a part-Jew public entertainer, is turning the UK into a banana republic. It was already on the way there, but that idiot has made it official
Still, so what if he bunged one of his not-very-interesting-looking girlfriends a hundred grand or so out of public funds? Worse things happen in black Africa…oh, wait…
Nobody is the slightest bit surprised that Boris is not going to be investigated in the Jennifer Arcuri scandal. I am sure all Bullingdon club members pretty much get automatic membership of the same Masonic lodges as senior police & other powerful types get into.
Seems that only 12% of people have really thought this through, while 47% are a panic-stricken mob.
Look at the graph below. Look at “actual impact”…
Nigel Farage
A complete busted flush. The man has the gall to continue whining about illegal migration (migration-invasion) to the UK, while having stabbed in the back his own party (parties, really, meaning both UKIP and Brexit Party) because he wanted to enable the victory of the misnamed “Conservative” Party, and (of as much importance for someone who is plainly another doormat for the Jewish lobby) the defeat of Corbyn’s Labour Party.
I just witnessed the French Navy escorting illegal migrants into British waters, despite the money we are paying them.
They even tried to prevent us from filming the handover, as you can see in the video.
Of course, what he says about the invasion is true, but he carries no weight. It is partly because of his electoral manipulation that the present government has a large majority; thus a thick-as-two-short planks Ugandan Indian, Priti Patel, now sits, uselessly, as Home Secretary, doing nothing to stem the invasion (of which she herself and her parents were part, albeit in the wider sense).
This is what happened when Nigel Farage travelled offshore and witnessed an illegal migrants boat being handed to the British Border Force. @Nigel_Faragehttps://t.co/6TJXwRLUuf
and see here (below) a metropolis-based newspaper drone (columnist, deputy editor), one Sarah Baxter, laughing at concerns around the migration-invasion. Well, why should she worry? £500,000 a year (at a guess)? Large house or penthouse? Good neighbourhood(s)? Second home in the country?
The Sunday Times' @SarahbaxterSTM mocked: “The old @Nigel_Farage immigrant song sounds way off key”. 2 million have watched #Farage's video in 24 hrs. Who is “way off key” now, Sarah? Your paper sells barely a fifth of the audience the film has reached. https://t.co/M3Q0ZwX2xy
This is an organized and/or facilitated invasion of this country, an invasion by persons who have no connection with Britain, and who will be millstones round the neck of the people.
Govt adviser prof Robert Dingwall says the Government's coronavirus warnings have "effectively terrorised" Britons "into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you" even though most those infected will not be hospitalised.https://t.co/lGVEa7nY3x
Extraordinary. Can YouTube confirm and explain this extraordinary action? Internet appears to be a policed despotism rather than the free republic people used to think it was. https://t.co/DeSOEFEDjx
The Expert the Government Ignored : Oxford Epidemiology Professor Sunetra Gupta gives a view very different from Prof Ferguson : https://t.co/gYhlKnsDg9
Professor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford ' Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we’ve observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour.' https://t.co/gYhlKnsDg9
55,000 surplus deaths – many of them the result of #lockdown – in Britain this year. Compare this with the 1968 flu epidemic, which directly killed 80,000 people in the UK.
Had to emerge from my cave to complete my appointed rounds. On the return journey, my less than contented mood was made worse as I went through a more or less suburban area, only to see some rabbits waiting at the end of their short drives or standing in gardens, about to participate in the State-promoted and socially-mandated “clapathon”. Not many, about one house out of about 20, I would say. Mostly very elderly, though there were a few odd children too. The sight of all the rabbits standing waiting, like robots, or serfs populating Potemkin villages, irritated me even more than it usually would.
Tweets seen
Note to govt: It's no use praising yourself for rescuing someone from drowning when you have yourself just pushed them into the sea. Rishi Sunak's magic money furlough payments would not be needed, if he hadn't shut down the economy. https://t.co/bDTaVfPmXH
Do you @john01162565 have *any * evidence that mass house arrest and throttling the economy have saved a single life? If so, tell the government because they don’t have any. https://t.co/BbUqTrxyzp
There are signs that serious size businesses are starting to realise that a #covidcoup by power hungry states & anti-human Deep Green ideologues is not such a good idea after all.
Prepare for the coming recession. Relief from government and the private sector will have its limits.#COVID19
— Marvic Leonen — maroon check (@marvicleonen) May 19, 2020
Let him warn himself. Chancellor Rishi Sunak 'warns' of the pointless economic devastation he and his fellow Cabinet members have themselves caused because they are unfit for their posts, and panicked: https://t.co/ZK17Z6L4dV
The tweeter above is referring to Rishi Sunak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishi_Sunak , the Indian whom Boris-idiot made Chancellor, and who the shallow msm and Twitter mob lauded as a financial (and political) genius a couple of months ago for having introduced the “furlough” scheme, via which the obligations of companies to pay their employees were in effect transferred to the State which then shut down much of the economy.
A few (including me, Hitchens etc) saw through this scheme as a disastrous and ultimately pointless waste of resources which, combined with the shutdown (“lockdown”) would destroy the UK economy.
The msm and Twitter mob thought otherwise. “Rishi Sunak for PM!” was the cry. What a brilliant man, to throw away £8 billion (maybe £11 billion) a month “supporting [workers, families] etc”… Surely such a man must eventually become Prime Minister?
Well, I doubt it (even leaving aside his origins). The “furlough” plan in fact did not simply keep employees financially warm until “lockdown” ends, at which time, in Sunak’s own mis-chosen words, the economy will “bounce back” in a V-shaped “recovery”.
At the time, I blogged that, because this virus “crisis” (made much worse by governmental panic in the UK, EU and elsewhere) has led to economic slowdown, crucially to collapse in demand internationally, the result will be, certainly in the UK, not a “V-shaped recovery” but an “L-shaped non-recovery”.
Sunak may have ridden high in public opinion for a couple of months, but I do not see him prospering politically after at least many wake up to what is really happening. Any fool can throw golden sesterces to the plebs from his imperial chariot. For a while…
Sunak alone is not to blame for the “lockdown” and so not to blame for the coming recession (which may even become a depression), but he is to blame for being part of a Cabinet of fools that shut down the economy for months unnecessarily, and for both introducing and now extending a misconceived “pay workers £2,500 a month not to work and not to complain or protest” scheme.
Also, for going along with his foolish and incompetent Government’s strategy of scaring the British people (and other UK inhabitants) out of their collective skin, so that many are now too frightened (or anyway simply unwilling) to return to what was normal life.
The reason behind the extension to October (without even any reduction) in the “furlough” payments, is plainly political, to prevent or make far less likely any protest or worse from the “furloughed” employees.
However, the real state of the pre-Coronavirus UK economy, now that the froth of low-paid McJobs (“gig economy,” fake “self-employment”, zero hours contracts, and other poorly-paid exploitation disguised by, formerly, Working Tax Credits etc, and now by Universal Credit payments) has been swept into the bin, is becoming plain to see. Desolate.
As for that sacred cow of British people, house prices, the values are dropping like a stone, as I predicted. Already we see that buyers are demanding discounts of up to 20%. Before long, that will be 50% or more. Lending is unlikely to be easily-available from now on, and there will be fewer people buying. and with lower capital available, whether their own or via mortgage monies. People will still want or have to move house, but will have less money with which to do so. Result— lower house prices at all levels.
Time for the “dim SNP tweet of the day”, this time from a tweeter who refers to the Union between Scotland and England (1707):
EH. HOLD ON.
England's worst recession since over 300 years?
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
— David Taylor 🏴 (@taylordauthor) May 20, 2020
I am more inclined to go back about 375 years, to the age of Cromwell, and England’s only real revolutionary situation.
Collapsing economy
Already, 4.2 million people are on Universal Credit, with millions more forecast as 2020 continues:
Companies are shedding workers by the hundred, by the thousand, now. Some companies are giving up the ghost entirely, such as the once-famous Antler suitcases (est. 1914), which went yesterday, with the closure of 18 stores and the sacking of the entire workforce of 200 staff. Other companies laid off thousands on the same day.
Today, we see that Rolls-Royce in Derby will lay off 9,000 workers across the world, and most of the losses will be in Derby itself.
When the “lockdown” nonsense —and with it the “furlough” scheme— ends, in the Autumn, supposedly, there will be company collapses on a scale not seen since the 1930s, very likely.
Northern Ireland
Boris Johnson may be Boris-idiot, but he can certainly pull the wool over the eyes of many. A con-man.
Theresa May, zooming in from Sonning, asks Michael Gove whether the PM's Brexit deal will force Northern Ireland to follow EU law until at least 2024. He answers: um, yes. pic.twitter.com/8fNBBSnldt
This hysterical Gov't must never be allowed to get away with the damage it has caused. They have broken the country in 2 months.https://t.co/1nYln33qDH
So children aged 1-14 years old have a 1 in 5.3 million chance of dying from Coronavirus in the UK. Puts the hysterical teachers’ unions in their place…Having said that, it seems pointless to open up the schools for the few weeks left until the start of Summer holidays.
There is much in what you say. But as 9,000 jobs and livelihoods, hopes and homes, are destroyed at Rolls-Royce – real people raising real families through real work – who really gives a dam about the reputations of a few over-promoted Tory MPs? https://t.co/u9LVKqYfGYhttps://t.co/h04cn86IwF
Depends how you look at it. We've got Priti Patel on LBC being interviewed by Ferrari using language of Nick Griffin/NF re refugees. I can see him listening on radio & thinking 'my job is done'
On other hand we've got Patel allowing in 100s++ child refugees in as per Dubbs prog
— WokeAndSnigglingAlot🥤 (@Nikhedonia11) May 20, 2020
That tweeter, “@CabinetOfClowns” also tweeted this (below):
Pretty shocking interview on LBC. Priti Patel is now using same language as Nick Griffin re refugees
She's got a lot to say about Islamic extremism, but totally silent on right wing extremism, which has now overtaken Islamic extremism. Maybe doesn't want to upset Tory voters!
— WokeAndSnigglingAlot🥤 (@Nikhedonia11) May 20, 2020
What “right wing terrorism” can she mean? The odd disturbed individual who wants to drive his car at a mosque? Young people who own Swastika cookie-cutters and cushions? Someone who got 2.5 years in prison for putting up a few stickers on lamp-posts? A few people in a pub talking about bumping off a MP?
In reality, there is no “right wing” (I am supposing that that tweeter means “social nationalist”, or just “nationalist”) “terrorism” in the UK. Am I wrong? So where is it? Where?
Just a few of the hundreds of police – NONE wearing masks or social distancing – in central London today for the trial of #PaulGolding.
Clearly, the cops know the 'virus threat' is social control hype. Unlike the economic, social & health catastrophe of their #lockdown farce. pic.twitter.com/DBoMXazbko
#NigelFarage tries to cover his unspeakable cowardice in refusing to speak out against the Covid1984 lockdown crime by messing around in boats. THIS crisis outweighs all others.
"If my eye don't deceive me, there's something going wrong around here". Just how comfortable are all the "revolutionary" left with being on the same ethnocidal page as the global corporations? pic.twitter.com/hw8Q9hsuZD
The coming few years could finally see social nationalism emerge victorious in the UK, but that can only happen if there is a co-ordinated movement led by a “vanguard” party. One does not now exist. The small groups which do exist have little or no credibility.
Looking down the road, we can now see that economic collapse in a decadent society opens the way for us. It is only two years now until 2022, the most significant year since 1989 (on the 33-year cycle). 2022-1989-1956 (the year of my own birth)-1923.
For me personally, 2022 will probably be the last marker-year in the 33-year cycle that I see in my present incarnation, because in 2022 I shall reach the age of 66.
Israel is a country with many interesting aspects in terms of water supply, agriculture and horticulture, urban planning, afforestation etc.
I should certainly find it interesting to visit Israel, because I find artificially-contrived societies interesting in general (Singapore and North Korea being two others which do not seem natural), but I doubt that it would be long before I became the victim of a traffic accident, a scuba accident, or whatever. You get the idea…
16 months later, I believe that the article is even more relevant, now that Coronavirus/Covid-19 has concentrated minds (and leaving aside the fact that the Chinese virus is overblown and also being used by the System to bluff people into becoming members of police states across Europe and beyond).
I was just reading again about “Doggerland”, which is not a gonzo-literature novel about some of the leisure activities of a sub-set of the English pleb-dom, but a large territory that once existed between the area now designated as “UK”, and those of present-day “Denmark”, “Germany”, “Netherlands” etc.
[By Francis Lima – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49850020] It can be seen that, at its greatest extent, what is now called “Doggerland” (a term invented only in the 1990s), together with similar areas in the Atlantic off (mainly) the present-day coasts of the UK and Ireland (the ancient land of Lyonesse, of Arthurian legend), was larger in extent than the present-day UK.
Consideration of these matters gives perspective.
Videos about the above matters:
and while looking at those Doggerland videos, I also saw this one (below)
Fascinating, though possibly not a good idea even if do-able.. How about starting with something smaller, such as the Irish Sea? (only, sort-of, joking…).
In fact, large-scale projects are not always a poor idea. One which has interested many is that of creating a canal from the Mediterranean to the Qattara Depression in the Western Desert of Egypt, then using gravity to move seawater the 40 miles to the Depression.
The Qattara Depression is on average 200 ft (60m) below sea level, though the lowest part is 440 ft (134m) below sea level. No-one lives there, though the very isolated oasis of Qara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qara_Oasis lies near the Western edge of the Depression, some 47 miles (75km) North-East of the nearest larger oasis, Siwa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siwa_Oasis
I myself stayed in Siwa for a month, in early 1998, out of three months spent in Egypt (on that trip).
Siwa is 189 miles (305km) from the Mediterranean Sea coast. British or American people tend to think of an oasis as being a small lake with a fringe of palm trees, but Siwa is, at greatest extent, 50 miles long and 12 miles wide, and has a total population of some 30,000 (though when you are there —admittedly I was there over 20 years ago— the place does not seem in any way heavily populated, rather the reverse). It has about 350 freshwater springs (the water of which is exported to Alexandria and Cairo in plastic bottles), 300,000 date palms, 70,000 olive trees (and some fruit trees, too).
Reverting to Qattara, the Depression is 190 miles (300km) long by 84 miles (135km) wide. Area: 7,570 square miles, about the same as mainland Wales.
A project to flood the Depression would be hugely beneficial. Fish would flood in with the water, it would change the regional climate for the better, and it would enable hydropower as well.
It may be that, by using hydropower and solar power, new eco-cities or towns, even horticultural areas, could be created and maintained, supplied with fresh water via desalination.
In Iran, not long before the Islamic Revolution unseated the Shah , there was a government programme to replace sand dunes and semi-desert with forest. Of course, the backward mullahs did not continue with it. I read about the project in the National Geographic. Brilliant.
First, the sand dunes were coated with a very thin layer of crude oil, sprayed from tanked vehicles. Secondly, seeds of the tamarisk tree (salt-resistant and heat-resistant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarix were spread over the oil layer.
The thin oil layer prevented the seeds from being blown away by wind, and anchored the tiny shoots when germinated. The climate had enough moisture for their survival. The tiny growing shoots and trees (within a few years about 4 feet high) were protected from goats and their owners, if any, by fences and a ranger force.
Once the trees were mature (some of the 60 types of tamarisk grow as high as 60ft/18m), the idea was that the climate and ecology would be markedly improved.
Under the Shah, there was to have been a roll-out across Iran. It never happened. Sad.
There have been and still are many large-scale projects of great value, both engineering projects and more obviously “environmental” ones. Most founder on the rocks of politics and/or finance.
I suppose that what passes for a strategy in Labour is to wait until Boris-idiot messes things up even more than he has already done, then hope that, in Britain’s absurd and unfair (and basically binary) First Past The Post political-electoral system, the voters will simply cool towards the Conservative Party and thus elect Labour by default. Not much of a strategy, really…
Tweets seen
Well, alas, Mr Madman, this is rather what the govt did with care homes, incompetently failing to protect the most vulnerable in the country, while pretending that everyone was in equal danger and engaging in a wild, flailing policy of house arrest and economic strangulation. https://t.co/LxeNbkqzut
I don't doubt that it *can* regulate everything @craigglasgow2. I have visited the PRC, the GDR and the DPRK and lived in the USSR . The question is whether it *should* do so. https://t.co/nY7E61PqQL
Not myself a ‘libertarian’ but I am aware of the great range of responses and can find no congruence between any policy and any outcome. The virus arrives, follows its bell-curve and tails off. Errors such as failure to isolate care homes are significant. But shutdowns etc? Nope https://t.co/utpSkX1q87
Little children forced to go without ANY human contact even if in distress. Is this callous idiocy: cruel incompetence, or deliberate psyops intended to make people surrender to ID vaccination & #Covid1984 tyranny? Either way these bastards should be ….https://t.co/8yyAO3wwJE
Guardian turns blind eye to inconvenient truth: 20% of hospital (and carehome) patients have Covid_19. Normal deaths 12,000/week = 1,700/day. 20% = 340 deaths/day WITH coronavirus = not one extra death = #COVID1984 power grab hoax.#lockdownrebellionhttps://t.co/oEoJhBQtJN
“Fewer than 24 people are catching coronavirus each day in London, new modelling suggests, with forecasts predicting the virus could be wiped out in the capital within a fortnight.
If cases continue to decrease at the current rate, the virus will be virtually eliminated in the capital by the end of the month, raising questions about whether the strict lockdown measures would need to continue.” [Daily Telegraph]
After leaving their traps, they no doubt go home to stand outside their homes, virtue-signalling by clapping like drunken seals “for the NHS”.
Government subsidy for the self-employed
“A government scheme to support self-employed workers signed up 440,000 people on its first day at a cost of £1.3bn, according to the Treasury.
The self-employment income support scheme (SEISS) provides workers whose finances have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic with a cash grant of 80% of their average monthly trading profits up to a cap of £2,500, backdated to cover the last three months.
Launched this week, more than two weeks ahead of schedule, the scheme is expected to support up to 3.5 million of the UK’s 5.2 million self-employed people.” [Guardian]
What strikes me first is how “autres temps autres mœurs“…
In the past decade particularly, we have seen the way in which the Conservative Party governments (aided in 2010-2015 by their LibDem enablers) stigmatized the poor, and particularly the poor who are also unemployed and/or disabled, and living on mostly very modest State benefit monies.
Many people who are now gratefully in receipt of the “furlough” payments for furloughed employees, and those who are applying for what amounts to the new State benefit for the (supposedly) “self-employed”, will have voted “Conservative” in the past 10 years. Amazing how attitudes change with circumstances…
While the new “benefits” are modest (the maximum claimable is £2,500 per month), they are still more than almost all unemployed and disabled can claim (even if Housing Benefit etc is included in the latter categories’ monies).
It reminds me of the attitudes of the farmers, who like to pretend that they are self-standing independent people running agricultural businesses, yet who “accept” farm subsidies and grants at (under the system as it now is, which may change) around £150 an acre merely for owning or renting land, fundamentally. A farmer with 200 acres (the overall average), will get 200 x £150, so about £30,000 a year. Not huge, but still pretty good for doing effectively nothing (a simplification, but one cannot get into more here)! That sum will be payable whether the farm makes £100,000 profit, £10,000 profit, nothing, or a loss.
The farmers do not see themselves as being “on benefits”, of course! You only have to listen to BBC Radio 4 Farming Today to hear the convoluted arguments and language they and the NFU farmers’ lobby employ to justify their subsidies (“providing a service“, “doing environmental work“, “growing the food the nation/world needs“, “ensuring Britain’s food security” etc…). Anything but “we want the State to pay us for owning land“, though occasionally you do hear “without the farm payments, half the farmers in England will go out of business“. And your point is?… The coal mines, steel works etc used to say the same.
Is it April the First?
There are now so many red flag warnings that Western society has gone mad that it is hard to select from the hundreds, thousands, of examples. What about this?!
One of the few good things about the Coronavirus situation is that, up until now, it has pushed Greta Nut off the news agenda. Now, those behind her have managed to inveigle her back on, despite her lack of any knowledge or qualification.
Economic ruination?
“Almost half of UK businesses are within six months of running out of cash, despite the lifeline provided by the government’s furlough scheme, according to the latest official snapshot of how firms are faring.
In its fortnightly survey on the economic impact of Covid-19, the Office for National Statistics found 44% of firms that responded said their reserves would last for less than six months.”
“About 27% said they had cash that would last beyond six months.” [The Guardian]
So only a quarter of UK enterprises have cash reserves sufficient to last them beyond November of this year? Sobering.
“When the government put the economy into lockdown in March a third (33%) of those surveyed said they thought it would take six months or more for the country to bounce back to its pre-crisis state, but that figure has risen to 46%.” [The Guardian]
The “furlough” and other recent Government schemes are expensive in themselves (at least £8 billion per month, and now more, with the “self-employed” subsidy), but a debt of that sort (meaning eventually perhaps £100 billion) is at a level that can be handled, given that the UK can at present borrow at long-term rock-bottom interest rates
The economist Jonathan Portes was making that point only this morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme. If I heard correctly, he thought that it worked out at £30 per person per year (interest or interest + capital repayment? I have seen £100 per year as a combined figure). In any event, not catastrophic. A long-term national debt burden.
What would be catastrophic would be a general economic collapse. Were that to happen, the pound sterling would fall like a stone (despite the similar problems in other countries, particularly EU countries). That in turn would make imports prohibitively expensive. Britain imports (including raw materials) about 80% of its food.
In addition, a general economic collapse would cause enormous unemployment, in that genuine employment would be hit, and so would the basically fake (short-term, “gig economy”, part-time, zero-hours) employment and (equally fake, really) “self-employment” of millions.
Still, as Lenin put it, “worse will mean better…” meaning that, for us now, and in 2021-22, there might be, for the first time in my present lifetime, a realistic chance for social nationalism in the UK.
White genocide
The tweeter below sees, in the Daily Mail‘s cropping of a photo, “white racism” but I see something else— the cover-up around “the Great Replacement” of whites by non-whites in Europe.
Compare the #DailyMail front cover photo and the stock photo they used – and notice anything about the people they cropped out? pic.twitter.com/8dG38mU0vD
When I was a child, in the early and mid 1960s (I was in Australia 1967-69), Britain was an almost-entirely white country (despite the lies put out to the masses by shows such as Grantchester, Endeavour, various other popular TV shows). Certainly you never saw many, if any, blacks or browns etc in most of the country or even in Central London (there were enclaves in ports such as Liverpool and Cardiff). In fact, the only black person I believe I ever saw in England was the consultant (ear, nose, throat) from somewhere in the Caribbean, whom I saw when aged about 6, maybe 7, at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.
Now, the BBC and the msm generally have stolen British (and other European) history, right back to the Middle Ages, and even to Roman Britain and earlier!
The Conservatives have slipped back to 51% popularity. What, I wonder, would David Cameron-Levita or Theresa May not have given for such a level of support? However, it is merely popularity by default, given that Labour support continues to bump along the bottom, a function of irrelevance.
You wanted me to wear a face mask? Here it is, even though the WHO says 'If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19.'https://t.co/xC6QBEr5Cmpic.twitter.com/tDaByf9Dh4
Indeed @mrpjdonovan. People who got married in the 1970s are so embarrassed by how they looked that they often do not display their wedding photos. Yet at the time they thought it all quite reasonable. https://t.co/Zx42iySX6d
Hard to argue against the above Hitchens comment, looking at the present government of fools.
“There is no correlation between fatalities and lockdown stringency. The most stringent lockdowns – as in China, Italy, Spain, New Zealand and Britain – have yielded both high and low deaths per million. Hi-tech has apparently “worked” in South Korea, but so has no-tech in Sweden. Sweden’s 319 deaths per million is far ahead of locked-down Norway’s 40 and Denmark’s 91, but it’s well behind locked-down UK’s 465 and Spain’s 569.” [The Guardian]
“Britain’s last experience of protracted national disruption, Jim Callaghan’s Labour government continued to lead the Conservatives in some polls. But as the crisis dragged on, and seemed increasingly beyond Callaghan’s control, the government’s ratings collapsed and never fully recovered.
If that happens to Johnson, the disconnect between his popularity and his political abilities will stop being a mystery that columns like this try to solve. His long hold over voters and the media, ever since he won the mayoralty in usually Labour-supporting London 12 years ago, will be seen as a bit of a con – like an enticing but dodgy company that eventually went bust.”
All well and good, but if the public get fed up (enough) with Boris-idiot and his government of fools, to where do they turn? Britain, or at least England, has a basically binary system. When the “other party” is flat on its back, defeated, irrelevant, as Labour now is, will the electorate turn to it? Doubtful, especially with someone like Keir Starmer as leader and MPs such as Rachel Reeves around him. You never know, and the System loves the pointless ping-pong on Con-Lab politics, but Labour has no real base any more, in any sense; unless you say that Labour’s base is now the affluent but virtue-signalling London multikulti types, and the Twitterati, together with the ethnic minorities (except Jews) and public service people. The old Labour of the steel mills, the coal mines, the transport unions, the (now near-irrelevant) TUC, has disappeared.
Again, this should be, in theory, the time when social nationalism rises up to destroy the evil ones, but there is no such party, no such movement. Yet.
astonished that the PM said there would be no checks and now it’s clear there will be checks https://t.co/XYQqvNfKv4
— Friend of Deep State 🐋 (@PickardJE) May 13, 2020
Why would you be surprised that a psychopathic liar and part-Jew public entertainer (merely posing as “Prime Minister”) would…lie? It’s what he does.
Well, who would have thought it, #BorisJohnson has #Lied about something else. Now border checks on goods moving over the Irish sea. Add that to a long, long list……. probably longer that can be comfortably fitted on the side of a bus. OR…… What is Dom trying to deflect?
Customs in the Irish Sea will lead rapidly to a united Ireland. Which might well lead to Scotland separating from the UK. Johnston’s lies might have significant historic impact. https://t.co/jeMRMgeVNj
— David Miller T.O. (@iamdavidmiller) May 14, 2020
…particularly when, only yesterday, the UK Supreme Court quashed the convictions of Gerry Adams. Do we see where this is going? I think that we do.
Indeed, it now seems that Boris-idiot secretly agreed to the “border in the Irish Sea” as long ago as October 2019!
The “Communist” campaign of subversion that started as an adjunct to Soviet Intelligence and was noted by such as Golitsyn (albeit over-valued by him, and to some extent distorted), became so-called “Cultural Marxism”, infecting society from the 1960s. It was particularly powerful in infecting students across Europe, North America, Australasia (and, to a lesser extent, South Africa).
Those students became prime ministers, Cabinet ministers, judges, heads of TV stations, radio current affairs programmes, as well as journalists and talking heads etc. A few names from the UK? Tony Blair, Cherie Blair, Alistair Darling, Jack Dromey, Jack Straw, and many many others. Few if any were “Soviet agents” (as far as I know, not even ghastly Jack Dromey, later a Blairite “Labour” MP, who attended the 1970s mercenaries’ “trial” in Angola as a kind of “socialist” vulture, sub nom “observer”).
Few of those then-young people were even pro-Soviet, not least because “Cultural Marxism” broke free from its conspiratorial Soviet origins as the Soviet Union started to slowly decay and eventually collapse.
It could be said that what is called, inter alia, “Cultural Marxism”, is now just another NWO cultural current. It has little or nothing to do with any form of “socialism”, that’s for sure.
Where Golitsyn went wrong was in assuming that the “headwaters” of “Cultural Marxism” lay in Sovietism, when in fact they lay on higher ground, in the groups that developed (and named) the “New World Order” or NWO. Those same groups were those who fostered the Soviet Union under Lenin in the first place.
In other words, the former secret operatives who helped to collapse Soviet and Eastern European socialism (in the Soviet Union, Romania, Poland etc) were not communists disguising themselves as something else, but a metamorphosis of communists or socialists turning into something else, while still coming under the overall and yet covert control of the NWO powers on the grand scale.
Russia is not in control of the play as it is acted out; neither is the USA, as such. The NWO is pulling the strings, often through “Zionist Occupation Governments” [“ZOG”].
The aim is to form a one-world regime, composed mainly of raceless, cultureless serfs, ruled over by ZOG and, beyond ZOG, the NWO powers. Below the ruling levels, a mass of untermenschen is promoted by the “governments” and the contaminated msm, drowning out the true voices of Europe’s future.
Tweets seen
Seems that some Americans have never heard of “tax” and, in particular, “income tax”. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet is very dry in its humour…
If only there were some public fund billionaires could pay into along with everyone else that helps fund our infrastructure, hospitals, and public systems all at once.
It could even be a modest % of what they earn every year. We could have an agency collect it and everything https://t.co/g0vI45xnYG
Unfortunately, while in principle it is far more efficient for tax monies to go into one fund, or what in the UK are usually termed “central funds”, in practice this has flaws and drawbacks. It tends to mean that governments decide to use some of the tax monies gathered for all sorts of misconceived projects and grandiose ideas, while the foundations of society are ill-funded. It also means that those who pay tax (one way or another, and to some extent, everyone) lose any feeling of connection between what they pay in tax and what they see being funded and/or underfunded.
It might well be worth the loss of a certain amount of notional fiscal efficiency to both tie and be seen to tie tax monies raised to specific expenditures. For example, “Road Tax”, or “Vehicle Tax” is raised from motorists and others on the misleading basis (apart from it being compulsory) that the monies raised will pay for roads. Well, some may go to that, but probably less than is raised. The rest? To “central funds”.
“National Insurance” is another and similar example.
I am sure that people would more readily accept taxation if they knew that X% was going to go to the NHS directly, perhaps by taking X% off income tax and having a new “NHS Tax” at X% (or whatever).
The above proposal would also make more rational the election-time arguments about money, taxes, and services.
There is a limit to how far funding of NHS, roads etc can or should be localized, however. There is always the danger that poorer areas will be hugely impoverished if dependent only on a local tax base. However, a degree of localism is, in my view, good. It enables people to relate easier to what needs funding and to the sources of funding.
Why get rid of the one channel that’s dedicated to culture, art, history etc? Quality educational programming is so important and should be funded just as much (if not more) then entertainment. What a shame..
…and to “balance” all the sensible opinions (with which I agree), let’s have the obligatory dim SNP tweet of the day:
I don’t watch BBC, ITV, SKY……..all foreign media to us in Scotland!
— KizzieWiz@KizzieWiz..ALBA Party (@KizzieWiz) May 14, 2020
Ah, yes, UK/English TV is “foreign” to a dim SNP partisan. Funny how these Scottish “nationalists” have (certainly Sturgeon’s SNP leadership have) no objection to the Jewish/Zionist lobby, no objection to mass immigration of non-Europeans into the UK (or even Scotland itself), no objection to Scotland being ruled or partly-ruled by the EU, NATO, the USA/NWO, “international” banks and financial institutions etc…Fake “nationalism”.
Lord Reith laid down his famous dictum for the BBC: “Inform, educate, and entertain“, presumably in that order. That dictum has been watered down to the extent that the BBC usually now fails to inform, or deliberately misinforms; it scarcely “educates” at all, even on BBC2, though it does —to some extent— on apparently-doomed BBC Four. As for “entertain”, it still tries to do that, mostly unsuccessfully, as far as I am concerned. Lowest common denominator.
The fact that opinionated football idiot Gary Lineker is (as I read) paid nearly £2 million a year makes the BBC worse than a mere absurdity.
The BBC pays millions to unpleasant “comedians” who trash everything worthwhile: Jo Brand, Jimmy Carr, David Baddiel; and many others.
The BBC is a negative force in national life now, in every respect. This latest insult to those of its viewers (and “licence”-payers) who have a mentality above gutter-level proves that it should now be shut down. It is not true “public service broadcasting” now, is an expensive anachronism and also a nest of anti-British propaganda.
Tweets by Peter Hitchens re. “the current situation”
Am I, @mwqa_limited? Have to read the Coronavirus Act? Did you note that it was passed without a vote? Do you not see that opposition to the government has been marginalised? How do you think freedom dies in a formerly free country? https://t.co/HV8DBOvURx
Excellent from @Sherelle_E_J Sherelle Jacobs @Telegraph: https://t.co/tMXOC7WcfT 'BBC has …pumped out No10's basic pro-lockdown propaganda message without question,genuinely convinced that they're holding the Government to account by spinning news items about a "No10 shambles".
I also very much doubt it it sweetie. That’s why I use my freedom to mock the powerful while I still can. @mwqa_limited I sense free speech hasn’t long to go. https://t.co/7god0jUEXu
Seems very likely that Covid-19 was present in Western Europe at least as early as December 2019 (one such case has been identified with certainty in France) and has since been quietly following the normal bell curve of such things, regardless of state panics. https://t.co/6RTupUvoCi
“A team of international researchers say mouthwash could destroy the outermost layer or ‘envelope’ of the virus, preventing its replication in the mouth and throat.” [Daily Mail]
“Spending time in the fresh air and sunshine can reduce someone’s risk of catching the coronavirus, a scientific adviser to the Government has said…Professor Alan Penn, a member of SAGE, the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, reassured that those who flock to the parks that the risk of catching the virus outside is lower…He said: ‘The science suggests that being outside in sunlight, with good ventilation, are both highly protective against transmission of the virus.’ Other scientists say they ‘totally agree’ with Professor Penn and advocate spending more time outdoors, where the virus is less likely to survive.”
So much for the “Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives” nonsense-propaganda that has been pumped out by idiots to idiots for months now…
I wonder how many virtue-signalling serfs will be out “clapping for the NHS” this evening? Where I live, not many; I have only ever seen one or two clapping. We now know that in fact NHS staff face little if any more risk from Coronavirus than do the general population. The risky jobs seem to be those done by care staff, taxi drivers and, oddest of all, security guards.
Evening foray
Needed a few things from Waitrose. Far more traffic on the roads than seen for maybe 6-8 weeks. In Waitrose itself, still the ludicrous “social distancing”, which seems to have been ingrained in many; a couple of people jumped clear as I, carrier of the Plague (as it might be) approached. One vacant-looking woman was wearing a —clearly home-made– facemask.
In fact, there were few shoppers and no obvious shortage of any goods. One “interesting” event occurred. I was there just before closing, and got stuck behind a woman buying a mountain of shopping while also having an extended conversation about trivia with the cashier. While standing waiting for my turn to be dealt with, an announcement over the PA system: “Waitrose closes at 8 pm, at which time all staff will stop what they are doing and clap for our carers”! In other words, what started as a genuine and spontaneous gesture in a few places has become a socially-mandated, Government-promoted and corporately-enforced and compelled act.
As a matter of fact, I left the Waitrose building a minute before 2000 hrs, and was still in the car park when the designated clap-time arrived. I noticed that only the black-clad Waitrose marshals, two of them (I call them Handmaid’s Tale militia) actually stood outside the main doors and clapped for 10 seconds or so. I also heard a police or ambulance siren, which was probably not co-incidental.
En route back to Schloss Millard a minute or two later, I saw one family of 5 standing outside a house, having presumably clapped. I later heard that some idiot let off some fireworks somewhere in the area.
Das ist’s. Time to dispense with the “clapathon”, I think.
Any fatality from cancer, coronavirus or any illness is tragic, but we've become so obsessed with the fight against Coronavirus we've neglected these other patients.
This simply has to change or it will cost countless more lives.
— Professor Karol Sikora (@ProfKarolSikora) May 14, 2020
Lionel Shriver excellent here. Yet the Spectator still teeters on the edge of full-scale resistance. Where are you @douglaskmurray? If this isn't the madness of crowds, what is? . https://t.co/5CW12fxPU3 via @spectator
Something else worth noting is that below, about “social distancing” being “here to stay” (or so says thick Ugandan Asian Priti Patel, the inept would-be spy for Israel who is now, laughably, a Cabinet minister for the second time)…
Entirely believable, alas @sallycopper. As I have said, unless the government can be made to admit its policy was wrong, we are stuck with this forever. https://t.co/VXEUAOT0aD
But our teenage government are qualified to act? If you dismiss my qualification to comment, why do you accept this talentless, scared Cabinet’s qualifications to ruin the country? They are expert in nothing. https://t.co/nG1FvU1Tyg
Again, this by Hitchens hits the nail on the head. Why oh why do people simply accept without question what deadheads like Boris-idiot and little Matt Hancock say? I put it down to centuries-ingrained English or British deference, a class-based behaviour, though in fact “Boris” is a part-Jew, part-Turk, of very peculiar origins, and basically acting a part, the “upper-class” “Englishman”, neither of which he is. The training in privilege received at Eton, then at Oxford, helped. As for the rest of the present Cabinet, they are mostly Jews or part-Jews, Indians etc, and the few English ones of a “beggar on horseback” type, such as Hancock.
Sadly, a certain confident manner and a Standard English accent (perceived as “posh” by the plebs) gets many mediocre types rather far, not least many MPs. People really should look at the real levels of intelligence, education and other qualities of “our” MPs. Very poor, for the most part.
I am not ‘obsessed’ with it, the people who want to impose these futile muzzles on others are the obsessives. I simply point out that there is no good evidence for their use outside a few very narrow circs, and that the muzzles are a further humiliation of a cowed population. https://t.co/XIVzy5SMpU
I have to say that, though I am far from agreeing on everything with Peter Hitchens, he must have the patience of a saint, the endurance of a Trojan, and the hide of a rhinoceros to put up with the Twitter mob as he does. I admit that I myself would simply not have the patience. I can only assume that Hitchens perceives what he does on Twitter as a duty of some kind laid upon him.
Summed up in 60 seconds. We will not escape from these Maoist panic rules until the government (and much of the media) admit that throttling the economy and mass house arrest were a wild, disproportionate error. https://t.co/dNzjtt9lkS
And these muzzles are also no use . The WHO itself says https://t.co/xC6QBEr5Cm 'If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19.' https://t.co/B2eMJGi5ss
ONS figures, up to 1st May 2020 = 3911 deaths for people up to age 64. Approximately 57 deaths per million for working-age people. Are we really locking down a country with those statistics? The elderly and vulnerable can choose to isolate themselves. https://t.co/Ey6102epggpic.twitter.com/7uDnW6SPU8
One aspect that made me laugh from the start of the Coronavirus “pandemic” (which is now, in the UK, not even an epidemic) is that all or almost all the pseudo-socialist mob on Twitter have been in favour of ever-more restriction of liberty, ever-more rules and ever-stricter “lockdown”. It is one of their psychological flaws. The need or perceived need to be told what to do.
One saw it in the Brexit situation, that idea that the UK’s civil liberties etc (free speech being the greatest), fought and struggled for over hundreds of years by British people could now only be maintained by a pack of tired Eurotrash politicians and bureaucrats in places like Brussels and Berlin and Strasbourg. In fact, the wish not to be free was palpable in the Remain camp.
Indeed, would anyone think himself “free” in an EU where to question any of the often absurd details of the “holocaust” fable is actually a criminal offence?!
We have seen, all through this “crisis” or scare, that the Labour Party official Opposition has been pathetic, just supporting the Government! Really really pathetic. I think I understand why Keir Starmer is doing it. He really, at heart, would like to see Labour as part of a fake “National Government”, thus giving Labour some reflected credibility as part of that Government. “Boris”, though, thanks to his unmerited and unexpected 80-seat Commons majority, does not need Labour. The result is that Labour is a total irrelevance.
Likewise the TUC. I remember from my teenage years the TUC as a vast, monolithic, almost Soviet bloc of unions, powerful and of national importance whether one supported or opposed their actions. Today on, I think, Sky News, up pops Frances O’Grady, its General Secretary, and all she can do, really, is bleat a little. A waste of space. The TUC still has 5.6 million members (Wikipedia; another source says only 3.69M), but that is only about 1 in 5 employees; if you include the self-employed, probably 1 in 6. Like Labour, near-irrelevant.
The Jew Shapps
The “Cabinet minister”, Jew Grant Shapps, on TV news this morning, posing in front of a small bookcase prominently featuring two Union Jacks. Surely, in view of his Zionist ideology and one-time position as head of the youth wing of Bnai Brith UK, Israeli flags would have been more fitting?
BREAKING: UK’s highest court @UKSupremeCourt rules that Gerry Adams was imprisoned illegally by British government when was interned without trial in early 1970s. The Supreme Court has quashed his two convictions for trying to escape from the Maze Prison @rtenews @RTENewsNow
Already on its knees because of unreformed libel law & rapacious lawyers, the press will be terrified now to print the truth about Adams and many of his IRA chums. Yet Gerry Adams was among those directing an organisation dedicated to mass murder. https://t.co/P5RAN5Syg5
I should be used to it by now but it still astonishes me that Gerry Adams has the gall to complain about violations of due process, given the IRA's record of torture, murder and disappearance. What due process did Jean McConville get? Robert Nairac? Tim Parry? https://t.co/482TXgyZib
— Niall Gooch 👍🇻🇦🏴🚅🏏✒ (@niall_gooch) May 13, 2020
In 1984 I was present when Gerry Adams and two other senior members of The PIRA arrived from Belfast for an Army Council meeting in Monaghan Town…I was there…I seen and I listened…Why dont you get John the piss artist to issue legal proceedings over that…Comfort Letter! https://t.co/O3zASsIsYY
— The Irish Observer (@theirishobserve) May 13, 2020
We live in a society where the likes of Gerry Adams have their supposed “rights” fastidiously upheld by a “Supreme Court”, but also a society in which Jez Turner was convicted and actually sent to prison merely for saying that Jews should be deported from the UK (as has happened several times in history), and a society in which Alison Chabloz was prosecuted and sentenced merely for singing satirical songs about proven “holocaust” fakes!
[above: the satirical singer-songwriter, Alison Chabloz, at the piano]
Corbyn
I’ve joined 145 UK MPs and peers in demanding action over the Israeli government’s illegal plan to annexe large areas of occupied Palestinian territory.
Annexation would be an act of aggression – and the UK government should make clear now that would lead to sanctions. https://t.co/A5I9mZ7wvk
Not that Corbyn is “wrong” in this, but he has just spent 5 years supporting the mainstay of the Israeli/Zionist state, i.e. the “holocaust” narrative! Also, decrying anything supposedly “anti-Semitic”. In other words, he is against Zionism in the Middle East, but —in effect— supportive of it in Europe, North America and Australasia!
Ah, well, Corbyn is back in his comfort zone, bleating about matters far away, which he has no power to influence or change…
For more than six weeks I have been abused and smeared as someone who cares more about money than life, because I have warned that the smashing of the economy by the government was a major threat to the NHS. Now the govt admits it. Apologies welcome: https://t.co/i0LZCAU5Qh
'We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.'https://t.co/LGS6BRnqkx
Actually, the “facemask” nonsense is the ideal excuse for anyone asked in court, “and why were you walking around covering your face?” The criminal defence barrister has a new tool to put in his box, along with “it was someone who looked like the defendant”, “his fingerprints were there because he had been there previously, and legitimately…” and (after conviction) “the defendant has had an unhappy life to date…”
I acknowledge it. @vidur_kapur I am glad Prof Ferguson has defenders, but I am not one of them . My own opinion of Imperial was greatly influenced by the Foot and Mouth outbreak. I saw the results of their advice. Farmers weeping as their healthy beasts were killed and burned. https://t.co/KklzCg11e1
I am sure that laughter is the best weapon against this comic-opera despotism of Dear Leader Kim Jong Son and his dreaded Health Commissar Mat Hang Kok. https://t.co/WldDjseWlq
@l1ttkeherbert . I love your use of ‘virtually’ to mean ‘not’ . As in , not Japan, not Taiwan, not Sweden. So not all. There is *no* congruence between shutdowns and reduced deaths. Absorb this, and you can start thinking, which I recommend. https://t.co/ThkKVyB3y3
NZ did not ‘nail’ anything. It had very few cases because it is so remote. No connection has been shown between its shutdown and the continued low instance of Covid-19 there. Why are people so *gullible*? Taiwan and Japan have no shutdown and few deaths. https://t.co/7XTHSAWKWG
Neither I nor anyone else has presented me as an expert @bedlingtonjamie. I am a journalist, disseminating the work of actual experts, largely denied a platform by flaccid or one-sided media. Why do you never attack the lack of expertise in the * government*? https://t.co/B0sbRiZKnX
Well, Boris Johnson’s shambolic amateur-night Churchill impression of yesterday has not exactly gone down a storm. I think that the infamous casting director who first rejected Richard Whiteley’s application had the right injunction: “Himoff!”
Even that peculiar little “Misbegot”, Philip Schofield, is doing a Peter Finch “Network” reprise!
Oh shit man, we're through the looking glass now. It's defcon one. Even Schofield's gone renegade. https://t.co/Wkj8l1jyUv
In fact, the usually supine msm talking heads such as Schofield seem to be getting back a heady whiff of journalistic (or whatever) independence. Look at Piers Morgan, here tearing a strip off one of the barrow-boy “Conservative” MPs, former market gardener Andrew Bridgen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bridgen#Early_life_and_career]:
This is really powerful from Piers Morgan. A grasp of the facts, and the bravery to articulate them, that most political editors and politics correspondents wholly lack. pic.twitter.com/gqFJyJfSUG
Reading some of the readers’ comments in, eg the Daily Mail, the public mood is now becoming unforgiving toward Boris-idiot and his Cabinet of fools. And that is before the furlough money tap is shut off…
Even the msm journalists are scathing toward “Boris” now. The only one I saw who is not critical was the ancient reactionary joke scribbler, Janet Daley, in the Telegraph.
I forecast after the 2019 election that, with Labour an irrelevance, any opposition to the “Boris” government of fools would come from within the Conservative Party itself. So it is proving to be.
The public too are now, too late, awakening to the horror of the full uselessness of “Boris” Johnson. Yet he can only be (lawfully) removed by his own MPs, and they are very unlikely to do that at this stage.
Tweets seen, etc
10% safe capacity. How long do you think the queues will be? Has Johnson EVER seen Oxford Circus Tube at 5pm on a weekday? When operating at 100%?. When they have to close it for safety? https://t.co/hiIulSMu1D
In one part of his mind, “Boris”-idiot knows that the Underground is the best incubator that the Chinese virus could ever find. Another part of “Boris”, however, imagines that all those workers that have to resume (or continue to) work in London can just hail a taxi! Or perhaps bicycle, or stroll, to their work, as do Oxford students en route to lectures and tutorials.
“Boris” should be told that London workers of all kinds do not all live in the purlieus of the Palace of Westminster, or bicycle from Mayfair or Belgravia. Some come in from as far away as Didcot, Diss, Margate and the Isle of Wight! Not to mention North Finchley, Epping, Morden and Ealing
And the commute from, Surrey, Kent, middlesex, Essex, Sussex, and beyond? That's a bloody long way to cycle or walk? Absolute dotards, the lot of them.
It seems as if the reputation of Imperial College (whose advice triggered the Kim Jong Son Panic Policy, is not rising among other epidemiologists. https://t.co/q9UEgw616I
The tweet below caught my attention mainly because it is typical of the times: semi-literate, yet the tweeter is apparently a writer who has written or broadcast for BBC, Sky News, Guardian,New York Times etc…
You can pay a nany to come to your house daily, but your sister can’t watch your kd while you’re at work.Really saying the quiet part loud in terms of class.
— The Poisonous Euros Atmosphere Fan (@DawnHFoster) May 11, 2020
For some reason, proponents of the Panic Policy *really* don't like this story (barely covered in the UK) which shows large numbers of people getting Covid-19 after obediently staying at home: https://t.co/lBf0wM3xLr
I suspect the pressure for obligatory futile muzzles in public places and on pubic transport will come from the unions. Once again, reason and fact will be bulldozed by emotion and panic. https://t.co/30gMtr5a7J
As I have blogged before, forcing the public to wear absurd facemasks or scarves round the mouth or face will not only not do much (if anything) to stop the Chinese virus, but will be the biggest boon the shoplifters and other criminals have had for years. Eyewitness and cctv evidence will become almost useless, and people will look rather alike in many cases, so facilitating petty (and perhaps also serious) crime.
Yes, it is interesting that the government has so far paid no attention to this crucial work by Prof Carl Heneghan and colleagues at Oxford, still preferring the work of Imperial College. https://t.co/2pM3dJiZwS
Poor you. I grew up in a country where Oppositions *opposed* – Gaitskell & Bevan at Suez, most notably. This isn't a war. There's no threat of invasion. It's a plain dereliction of duty for opposition to coalesce with the government. Such coalitions are coalitions against liberty https://t.co/OvTZRQzPaw
Good for you @jazznbits ( though the scientific justification for the seven foot rule in the open air is thin to say the least). But I frequently encounter people (often wearing futile cloth muzzles) who are unsmiling and plainly scared. https://t.co/JSLR86JfYm
You miss my point @oneukba. The BBC, in almost all its coverage, accepts that the policy of throttling the economy and mass house arrest is right and justified. Like the Labour (non) 'Opposition', It criticises the government only for its operation and delivery of this policy. https://t.co/J5rvQwFZZw
So to Waitrose. The police, even in this quiet corner (with apologies to Gogol’s Dead Souls) seem to have become much more active. A police jeep saw me and, though ahead of me just before I turned from one road to another, circled around by another route so that the police were behind me after a minute or two. Being rather intuitive, I had guessed from the start that that is what he or they would do, but (having a clear licence and the car insured and MOT-compliant), I could not be bothered to outwit them. In the end, the police followed me all the way to Waitrose in the nearby town, but did not bother to stop me after I turned into the store car park. Still, a sign of the times…
As to Waitrose itself, no obvious shortage of anything and, as on my previous visit, few shoppers, though this time none wearing those pathetic masks or wound-round scarves.
Recent tweets seen
Why are otherwise sensible people in the chattering classes defending the absurd Dear Leader Kim Jon Song? I'm not 'pretending to be baffled'. I'm furious and contemptuous at this simultaneously pathetic and nasty announcement of the continuation of a failed, wrong policy. https://t.co/A2QnBXE94X
Lord Sumption excoriates Dear Leader Kim Jong Son's absurd continued assault on our liberty 'The worst interference in our personal liberty in our history' .From 38 minutes in this BBC Sounds recording of the PM programme 11/5/2020. https://t.co/lC6zoldCSW
"Attempts to prove correlation between lockdown and a reduction in deaths continue to be thwarted by data showing no such correlation." pic.twitter.com/0NgkPbPRYz
I noticed that in someone, in either January or February (I forget which) for several days, and I believe that I myself may have caught this virus in early February but shown no symptoms at the time (despite being 63). I suppose that I shall never know.
No, I haven't heard, and it is a good point. Lord Sumption pointed out that police obeying instructions of Ministers, rather than enforcing law, was the essence of a police state. Whole use of Public Health Act 1984 is highly questionable anyway. https://t.co/yNYx4Z2kBK
Most striking bit of Dear Leader Kim Jong Son's document 'Our Plan to Rebuild the Country After We Completely Messed it Up' is (Section 7, Annex B): 'You are very unlikely to be infected if you walk past another person in the street.' Now they tell us. https://t.co/Pwtbfy6Ff2
Why? It is not necessary once the absurd “lockdown” is lifted. The scheme costs £8 billion per month, almost as much as the entire NHS with its 2 million employees, which costs £11 billion a month.
It is suggested that the scheme might continue until September instead of end of June. Another £24 billion, almost as much as the wrongheaded HS2 project (in its entirety)! In fact, I would support the furlough extension if that meant that HS2 would be scrapped, but I doubt that ministers will do that. It would be too elegantly simple.
As for the idea floated around Westminster that employees might return part-time, and that the furlough payments be reduced accordingly, that idea would seem to have no logic at all behind it.
Kay Burley
I rarely bother with TV news these days. A kind of Soviet-style government mouthpiece, whatever the channel designation. However, I did see a few minutes of Sky News this [Tuesday] morning. Kay Burley interviewing Angela Rayner.
I do not have much time for Angela Rayner, but Kay Burley’s behaviour was extraordinary to those of us brought up to think that news presenters should be or at least seem “impartial”. To my mind, Kay Burley showed herself completely pro-Conservative Party, pro-Government. I am not talking about giving Angela Rayner a hard time as interviewee but Kay Burley simply shouting out her own opinions and refusing to leave open the possibility that the Government might have acted incompetently. In other words, she did not so much ask questions as demand that her view be accepted.
I have often seen Kay Burley cross the line into partisan territory. She was very hostile to Corbyn from 2015 to 2019, and totally in the pocket of the Jewish lobby; at least that was my strong impression. However, I always discounted the claims of Corbyn supporters that Kay Burley was biased in favour of the Conservative Party as such. No longer a question. She is.
Angela Rayner did try to remonstrate, mildly, with Kay Burley, about the latter’s behaviour in the interview, but to little effect. Indeed, Kay Burley hit back! This is what happens when fairly mediocre, not highly educated people, get jobs as news anchors, get paid a million a year or whatever, and then forget that they are only reporters or news facilitators, not active players. John Humphrys was another example.
Sanity breaks out here and there…
“Coronavirus is not at epidemic levels in Britain, experts at Oxford University have said, with new figures showing that only a tiny proportion of the population is currently infected.
The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that just 0.24 per cent of adults – approximately 136,000 people – have the virus. Separate surveillance by the Royal College of GPs indicates it may be even less.
Figures released last week showed just 0.037 per cent of people have the virus…” [Daily Telegraph]
Ghastly old Jewess Edwina Currie has apparently been on daytime TV, supporting the Government’s “policy” on “lockdown” etc. Poor Government!
Dear English friends you have my deepest sympathy Edwina Currie on #GMB said to Piers you can have a member of your family from a different household in your house as long as they are cleaning. The weird and bizarre messages from the Tories is getting weirder by the day
— THE BLACK SALTIRE#FBSI (@80_mcswan) May 12, 2020
Did Edwina Currie honestly just tell @piersmorgan he can see his son if he hires him as a cleaner basically? This Government and their representatives are absolute jokes 😂😂🤦♀️
Edwina Currie, like many Jews, especially women, “smiles”, or goes through the motions of what human beings do when they smile, when there is no actual reason to smile. I have never discovered why “they” do that. Like a nervous tic rather than any expression of humour or warmth.
As to Edwina Currie specifically, I remember well her overnight destruction of the UK egg market in 1988. My memory is not at all taxed. I remember that incident because I heard about it in specific circumstances that make it easy to recall. It was late at night and in December 1988, and I was at the Hotel Grand (now the Mercure Grand Warszawa) in Warsaw.
I had just that evening arrived by train from Bielsko-Biala in the south of Poland. Outside, the snow lay heavy on the ground.
I turned on my radio and found the BBC World Service (which at the time was still worth listening to). The news from the UK had two main items: there had been a terrible train crash at Clapham, South London, with much loss of life; also, Edwina Currie, the government junior minister responsible for, inter alia, the egg industry, had said (wrongly) that most eggs in the UK were contaminated by salmonella. As a direct result of Edwina Currie’s mistake, 4 million hens were slaughtered.
University expansion and general dilution of educational standards. ‘Academic’ ’ really doesn’t mean all that much by itself any more. Like ‘A-level’ and ‘degree’ and ‘Master’s’ . https://t.co/ik0aUOif48
“Ain’t that the truth?!” [above]. Now, every Tom, Dick and Sharon has a “degree” from some place or other, quite many have a “Master’s”, involving a 1-year course, which no-one ever fails; in fact at Oxford and Cambridge you get a “Master’s” degree merely on payment of a small sum, with no course requirement, work, or dissertation required!
I am not making that up. In fact, I recall that my then girlfriend, in the 1980s, was sent a letter from Cambridge University warning her that if she wanted to be able to put “M.A.” after her name, she would have to pay (I think) £35, because the time limit was approaching (as I seem to recall). She had graduated around 1971. The limit must have been 10 or 15 years, if there was a limit. Maybe the University just wanted the money.
As for “academics”, “academia” in the wider sense is now full of fakes and simplistic ideologues such as the woman lecturer (I think from Southampton University), whose tweets I saw on Twitter recently, to the effect that books written by “Nazis” should be burned. These are among the gravediggers of European civilization. They must be stopped.
There are numerous “doctors” of this or that (esp. on Twitter) who actually use the title, despite not being medical doctors, academics in any formerly-accepted sense, or persons in either holy orders or scientific institutes. Infra dig, but that is what Britain today is like: just a bad joke.
We could get our sense of proportion back @petergreig6, and stop scaring ourselves needlessly into poverty, serfdom and ill health. https://t.co/sQgeMZ9pUy
Despite official figures (quite possibly inflated) showing that 30,000 or so people have died “of” (with) Coronavirus, i.e. about one person out of every 2,000 in the UK, and that only about 4 people (if that) out of every 10,000 are presently infected, the public panic has scarcely abated. Fear has been spread (by the Government, the Opposition, the NHS lobby, the msm etc), and it is now proving hard to rein back on that.
Oh , it is *so* simple, isn’t it @mriggorz. But in NY survey, 66% of new Covid-19 hospital cases had *stayed at home* . And there is now evidence that virus was present in W.Europe in December 2019, so was already widespread long before shutdown. No evidence that shutdown works. https://t.co/eOkW1opziy
1/4 Lord Sumption: https://t.co/CfxRH6J706 'According to the Office of National Statistics 91% of the [Covid-19] deaths have been of people with serious underlying conditions. 88% have been of people over 65…'
2/4 Lord Sumption https://t.co/CfxRH6J706 '…The number of deaths of people under 50 is so tiny that the ONS isn't even able to show it on their colourful charts. It is people who are fit and under 65 who are being asked to sacrifice not just their liberty…
3/4 Lord Sumption https://t.co/CfxRH6J706 '…but their jobs, their businesses and all the ordinary collective activities that make life worth living for something that hardly affects them at all….Its obvious that the NHS capacity has caught up…
4/4 Lord Sumption : https://t.co/CfxRH6J706 'The threat was always grossly overstated …that's why we heard nothing last night from the PM about "saving the NHS" and the phrase has been dropped from their slogan'. 'The worst interference with personal liberty in our history'
For not above the 5 millionth time @avrammeitner, there is not a 🕷️speck🕷️ of evidence for the government's claim to have stopped the spread of the virus by throttling the economy and introducing mass house arrest. Why do you 💥presume💥 this propaganda is true? https://t.co/D8zESLw05P
This is key, but it is actually alarming that so many people, including those with “degrees” and recognized professional qualifications cannot see it. I had smoked salmon for breakfast this morning, and the weather became less cloudy. I do not imagine that the weather became less cloudy because I had smoked salmon for breakfast. It would have happened whether I had smoked salmon, devilled kidneys or raspberry pop-up tarts. cf. “lockdown” and Coronavirus.
How would it affect it @scepticalape? The govt can act ( or can fail to act) to protect care homes, quite independently of ceasing to deprive people of the freedom to live and work normally. The Utopian gesture is the enemy of the practical and effective. https://t.co/EsqfpMwfwo
Tripe @asbrexit I have merely pointed out that the shutdown of the economy and the stifling of personal liberty are deeply damaging and absurdly disproportionate responses to an overstated danger, and that there is no evidence they have done any good. https://t.co/hMUlsc0Rlx
Sunak has extended the “furlough” scheme until October. A remarkable decision, and I think the wrong one. The right decision would have been to open up the economy completely or almost completely from this week or certainly by the end of the month.
What has now been done is to say to at least 7 million employees and self-employeds, “stay on holiday until the Autumn” on what amounts —for many of them— on full pay, once the costs of simply being employed are taken away (eg transport to and from work).
Yes, others are “working from home”, either actually or notionally, while yet others are, whether as “key workers” or not, still working normally. However, a quarter of the total workforce are now as good as economically inactive until October or even November. The economic fallout will be massive, as will be the upfront costs of “furloughing” all those people: £8 BN x 7 months = £56 billion.
As Lord King, the former Governor of the Bank of England said today, the economy will not be damaged as much by the furlough programme costs (if only because the cost of State borrowings is very low at present and can be spread over long future periods) as it will be by the fact that a quarter of the workforce is not doing anything productive, and because companies on the edge before the “virus” struck are now insolvent but kept in suspended animation by “furlough” monies to employees, loans to companies from the State, and rent holidays (and/or suspension of rent default proceedings in the courts).
The furlough payments will keep up demand to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent, in that payments are capped at £2,500 per month.
The effect on the currency is as yet unknown. Other European (and yet other) countries have similar schemes, so there may well be relativity, but eventually the pound sterling must fall vis a vis most other currencies, thus fuelling inflation in the UK.
I have seen inflation of that type. It has political effects. I am not talking about the utterly mad hyperinflation of Germany in 1923 but a lesser, yet still fast, inflation. When I first went to Poland in 1988, the taxi drivers had a little sticker by the meter. You paid a multiple of what the meter said. When I was there in Summer 1988 (for a couple of months), the stickers read “x2” and then “x4”. When I returned, a few months later, the stickers read “x8”, then “x12”. The following year, the year when the whole Soviet and Eastern European socialist system started to collapse visibly, the stickers read “x40” and then, I think, “x200″…
For a foreigner (what some Germans of the post-WW2 occupation of Berlin called, in a mix of English and Russian, a “valuta vulture” , “valuta” being the Russian for “foreign currency”), the collapse of the Polish zloty in the late 1980s had selfish positive effects: I for example could take a taxi to whatever passed for a good hotel (when I was first in Poland, I was not staying in hotels), have a breakfast, get a taxi onward, and pay (including tips) about £1 or £2 for breakfast and taxis combined. That was not much even in 1988.
Anything produced in Poland could be bought for pennies in English or American currency. For example, I bought a few Polish vinyl records of symphonic music for about 10p or 20p each.
The drawback was that very little was for sale anyway. The usual local shops were not well-stocked. Anything imported had to be bought at hard-currency-only “PEWEX” (pron. “Pevex”) shops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex
Where did people get their dollars to spend at PEWEX? Mostly from the Polish diaspora, particularly the long-established Polish communities in the USA. Remittances to famly members.
One of Lenin’s probably apocryphal statements was “to destroy a country, first destroy its currency“. The fact is true, even if the attribution is not. Currency is a major factor of any state. States that do not have their own currency are joke states (eg Zimbabwe 2009-2019). States where the currency is very weak tend to be weak states (Weimar Germany in the early 1920s, Poland in the 1980s).
In Poland, the collapse of the zloty was not the cause of the collapse of the socialist system, but accompanied it, as did other trends, and the currency collapse was at least one cause of the collapse of “Polish” socialism.
The pound in 2020 or 2022 may not quite go the whole way of the Polish zloty of the 1980s, but “never say never”…
1/2 'In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die." https://t.co/hfzHdSV958
2/3 Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four…. https://t.co/hfzHdSV958
3/3 'And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!' https://t.co/hfzHdSV958
What the government of fools has done, in effect, is declare a national holiday on full pay for millions of people. For a further 4 months. At the same time, the most egregious restrictions of the “lockdown” nonsense are to be relaxed (before the mob ignore them anyway…), so allowing all those people “furloughed” some freedom to enjoy their unexpected weeks and months of leisure.
Yesterday evening, went out to Waitrose. First outing for 4 days. Roads fairly quiet but not empty. It was after 1900 hrs, though.
At Waitrose, the car park almost empty, though a source told me that a Tesco supermarket, in another and more populated area 21 miles away, had been packed earlier in the day. Different factors though: that other area is quite suburbanized, is on a major “A” road, the time of day was earlier, and of course Tesco is more popular than Waitrose anyway, being slightly cheaper.
At Waitrose, the Handmaid’s Tale militia (Waitrose “marshals”) were few, in fact I saw only three loitering outside or cleaning shopping trolleys. There have been as many as half a dozen in recent weeks. There was no line to get into the store; in fact there were almost no customers at all.
Inside, disappointed to see no last-minute offers at 10% or 5% of the usual price (I can be rather a scavenger), but for once no shortages. All the usual suspects were available: bread, dry pasta, rice, pasta sauce, even bleach. I think that the shopping public has decided that the “panic buy” emergency is at an end and so there is no need to join the throng. In any case, in my area, many people must be sitting on mountains of loo paper, kitchen roll, pasta and rice.
Still, there is still a background panicked atmosphere around. I saw one silly woman wearing a thick scarf very loosely wound round her mouth and neck. Very unlikely to make any difference whatsoever to getting or not getting the Chinese virus. Even more ludicrously, I saw another and even more silly woman driving out of the car park, alone in her car and wearing a face mask! So…she is afraid that she might transmit “the virus” to…herself? Or is she afraid that, somehow, the air that comes into the car might harbour “the virus”? Which is impossible.
Tweets seen
Some recent tweets by Peter Hitchens, who is worth reading because he is one of the few who has stood up against the Government-sponsored “virus” panic (etc) which has recently swept “the nation” (which latter does not exist any more, but let’s leave that aside).
The disturbing fact is that the police in many formerly free countries now actively side with a political viewpoint, and failure to hold that viewpoint can swiftly bring you into conflict with a body established to uphold *law* not the govt of the day. This is a huge loss., https://t.co/Mqgl3ouPOT
My view is that so-called 'lockdown' (in fact a US prison term which should not be applied to free countries) has so far had no discernible effect on the pattern of the disease, if you examine all the affected countries. https://t.co/4KqCKwunXN
The unmistakable sound of one mind shutting @hyperglobalist. What a dreary life you must lead cut off from the ideas you fear. Tombs is a good writer, though in my view his ‘That Sweet Enemy’ written with his French wife Isabelle, is better. https://t.co/wg63pXP2tj
On April 5 at govt briefing Dr Jenny Harries, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, confirmed that many deaths with Covid are not necessarily from Covid. She said: ‘These are Covid-associated deaths, they are all sad events, they would not all be a death as a result of Covid.’ https://t.co/UAGhuyLWfk
I know the difference between hard science, objective testable, falsifiable, experimental and predictive, and pseudo-science, which is none of these things but pretends to have the same status. Which is why it describes its guesswork as 'stochastic'. Big words baffle. https://t.co/HqNFNleQil
Heresy! An affront to our Dear Leader Kim Jong Al our All-Wise Helmsman ! But this article: https://t.co/pyWshJGJuY is also a calm, well-reasoned and researched corrective to much that has bene said about the Covid outbreak. Please read, but only if you are intelligent.
“Covid-19 is no more than a nasty, but basically normal, viral respiratory infection, though you’ll be regarded rather as a mullah regards a blasphemer if you say so. Why is this?
After all: it is precisely because its symptoms seemed so similar to viral pneumonia that the initial outbreak in Wuhan was missed until the numbers built, and it is now clear that we have been missing Covid-19 cases diagnosed as pneumonia in Europe at least as far back as December, probably earlier. In the vernacular: it looks as though it was bubbling away for ages before we noticed.”
and
“There are really only two particularly unusual things about the Covid-19 epidemic: the timing of its arrival and the lockdown some countries declared. And if we ask “Covid, where is thy sting?”, it is lockdown that will sting: in the UK, the death-toll of people not turning up to hospital with cardiac issues (admissions are down 50% across the country) is now unmissable in the weekly non-Covid excess death figures published by the ONS, now running over 3,000 per week just for England and Wales. The downstream toll from missed cancer diagnoses (referrals are down 67%, as stressed by Professor Sikora) is heartbreak yet to come.
This is to say nothing of the toll on education, liberty and the economy. We’ve given up everything we should hold dear for a virus that just turned up three months later than similar viruses normally do.”
Some of the comments appended to that blog post are also of interest:
“It’s also a consequence of the media being increasingly dominated by young people, who thus have no sense of historical perspective. We see it in the climate change debate – weather events that are bog standard in any sort of medium to long term time span are immediately termed ‘unprecedented!’ by the media, whose attention span (and personal experience) hardly goes back more than a decade or so. Thus the idea that something that happened in the 1990s could be relevant to what is happening today would be laughed at.” [from above blog post comments section]
“Life today driven by demands of the minority of vocal pathetic snowflakes’ demands for “no-risk”. Just look at the headline today about the Unions not wanting to go back to work until they ‘feel safe’. This is the language of infants.” [from above blog post comments section]
“Three points. Lockdown started AFTER peak infection and peak hospital admissions. Continuing infections/deaths occuring despite weeks of lockdown because hot spots of infection unaffected by general population, they are in hospitals and care homes. Sweden, Japan, S Korea, Taiwan had no lockdown, considerably less deaths than UK. Lockdown has had minimal effect on the normal bell curve of infection/deaths.” [[from above blog post comments section]
A “free country”?
Just as plans harden for a court challenge to Kim Jong Al's shutdown (see https://t.co/OCFvptAai1 A former govt law adviser says Human Rights laws should be suspended to prevent such challenge: https://t.co/F0PFubdewR Free country or what?
Meanwhile, away from the toytown police state imposed on the British people, and in the real world:
“Five boats carrying 82 migrants were intercepted in the English Channel on Saturday as people smuggling gangs stepped up their operations during the good weather conditions.”
“It means a total of 227 people have been brought from Calais to the south coast of England in 13 small boats within just two days.”
It is clear that some countries which have had little or no “lockdown” have done much better than the UK in dealing with the Chinese virus, and have at least tried to save their economies from ruination; others, on far more strict “lockdown”, such as Italy and Spain, have done worse than the UK (per capita) and now face economic meltdown.
I blogged from the start that (as the UK Government said before crazed advisers caused it to go mad) the only known way to safeguard yourself from getting this virus is to keep thoroughly washing hands with soap and water (or gel, if in transit). The other “measures taken” have been driven by public relations rather than any scientific facts. I mean the “2-metre social distancing”, the facemasks, the “stay home” mantra. As to those three aspects, it may be that a tiny number of people have been protected by such measures, but at what cost?!
Meanwhile, the London Underground has stayed open, though (you couldn’t make it up!) with reduced numbers of carriages, thus making the conditions even more friendly to “the virus” (and other viruses and bacteria). And let’s not forget the influxes into the UK: air passengers allowed in freely, and migrant-invaders “caught” in the Channel or on beaches, then directed to free shelter, food and cash, and allowed to mingle freely with the unwilling host population.
As for “Protect the NHS”, well the sacred cow has been protected, but at the cost of thousands of lives: those often elderly people bundled up and shunted off back home (to often-inadequate home care), sent back to residential care homes where they and other residents have been dying in droves, while the “clap for NHS” rabbits have been virtue-signalling on cue every week (though not as many ever did it as the propaganda would suggest, and the display has almost died out now; where I live, it was always only a tiny minority doing it).
Then there are the uncounted thousands who have died and will die because “lockdown” has delayed or cancelled consultations, treatment, surgical operations etc.
One may laugh at Boris-idiot and his “government of fools”, but these opportunists are killing people, by their half-measures but also by their over-reaction and by their sheer ineptitude and negligence.
I do not think that “lockdown” is very useful, and in any case I think that the Chinese virus is far more widespread than at first thought. It probably started to infect people in the UK in January or even last December. Neither do I think that the “social distancing” measures are hugely useful. What I do think useful are closures of crowded nightclubs, pubs, busy cafes, sports venues, pop concerts and (which was never done) closure of public transport in crowded cities like London. Places where people are jammed together and may breathe over each other.
My bottom line? Whatever the truth of any of the above, either way, the fact is that “lockdown” (especially) has huge economic effects, despite and even to some extent because of the ameliorating measures put in place by Rishi Sunak.
The Government has scared people silly, unnecessarily. Now, the public is only gradually getting used to the idea of not being under a kind of house arrest, only gradually getting used to the idea of going back to their —in many cases, boring— jobs. The 80%-of-pay furlough payments (capped at £2,500 per month) add up to 100% of pay for those making under £36,000 a year and who pay for transport to and from their usual work.
Apart from the niggling restrictions, the civil rights aspects and the sheer boredom, the “lockdown” has, thanks to furlough payments, not been too bad for many. However, the Government simply cannot indefinitely bribe much of the public not to work, not at that level.
For me, that is the bottom line, beyond all of the medical, scientific and other arguments around “lockdown”: it simply cannot be maintained endlessly, because it cannot be paid for.
Many have accepted “lockdown”, as a temporary measure, because they are not suffering financially. Indeed, that is what the furlough payments (etc) were designed to do. Furlough alone is costing £8 billion per month. By way of comparison, the NHS, with 2 million employees, costs £11 billion per month to run.
I doubt that the Government will authorize furlough payments after the end of June. Maybe until the end of July. Not later. Then those furloughed will either return to work or, in many cases, go onto the”Universal Credit” dole.
We do not know yet the full economic cost of the Government’s imposition of a toytown police state. Everything has been frozen: redundancies, sackings, domestic property evictions, commercial property legal actions for recovery of rent; and so on. We do know that the “ruthless entrepreneurs” and “hardnosed private enterprise” chancers, like Branson, have all been demanding, or begging for, money from Government. Many will beg without satisfaction.
Airlines (and so airports) may be uneconomic for months, for years. Ground support companies as well. Retailers may soon be failing by the hundred, by the thousand, not only from “lockdown” itself but because people will have less money to spend and may prefer to spend what they do have safely, via the Internet. Fancy a holiday in Spain or Italy? I doubt it. Not for a year or so, anyway. Ferry companies will also struggle. The list continues.
Quelle surprise…
“Nine in 10 people do not want the lockdown to ease immediately – with 50 per cent happy to stay off work if they are getting paid or receiving government subsidies.
As Boris Johnson prepares to unveil his ‘exit strategy’, a poll found just 4 per cent believe the draconian restrictions should start to be lifted now, and another 7 per cent were not sure.” [Daily Mail]
So half the workforce are “happy” to stay off work so long as they are still getting paid? Well, there’s a shock (not).
The Daily Mail graphic is interesting, if accurate:
So hardly any of the public (4%) want an end to the “lockdown” nonsense immediately (well, it’s not the first time I have stood as part of a small but worthy minority), more than a quarter think that the end of this month would be best, but a fifth think that the end of June would be best (!), while nearly a quarter prefer the end of July or even later!
I doubt whether many presently content to sit at home indefinitely, or at least for another month, so long as they still get paid, are aware of the probably lasting damage that this is doing to the UK economically. They will only notice it when it hits home in terms of no job, no home, no future for their children etc. By then, the virus may be in the past, but the negative effects of “lockdown” will be very much around.
Boris-idiot’s speech
Sitting in my car earlier, I heard a Radio 4 broadcast of a 10-minute speech by the person currently posing as Prime Minister. I should say that it was somewhere between mediocre and poor. A half-hearted attempt to reprise Churchill in 1940 fell very flat. Johnson called Coronavirus “the most vicious threat to the UK I have seen in my lifetime”. So it seems that the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War passed “Boris” by?
Johnson seemed overwhelmed. This was not the easy prime minister stuff he wanted to do. He gave the impression of being not quite big enough for the role. His speech was pedestrian, forced, unconvincing. An overgrown schoolboy pretending and posing and whistling into a cold wind.
As for Johnson’s movement on “lockdown”, too little by far. He also went through a list of matters which only served to underline his incompetence and that of his Cabinet.
What Johnson does not seem to understand is that people are not waiting for his permission to do things such as drive places, walk through parks or national parks, or on beaches. Or maybe he does understand that he, the Government and the toytown police are losing control. His remedy? To make “lockdown” easier before people just ignore it.
Oh well, at least that stupid “Stay at home; Protect the NHS; Save lives” slogan is now dumped. Dump the weekly “clapathon” too!
Van der Valk
Another episode of the new Van der Valk. Slick compared to the mid-1970s original, a more developed storyline (in 2 hours compared to the original one hour), but somehow slightly missing the heavy Dutch atmosphere of the original 1970s stories.
I did not know that the series continued after the 1970s. As to that Dutch atmosphere, both productions were/are British, though filmed on location. I myself was first in Amsterdam in 1975, and made subsequent visits in the 1980s.
One aspect that seemed to be unnecessary in the new production was the introduction of a young black detective in a semi-comic role. Out of place.
Overall, I should award the new production 4 out of 5 stars. It is well done for the most part, though it suffers from the same problem as the first Van der Valk, namely the characterization of the title character. Somehow insubstantial or vacant. What makes him tick? Compare Van der Valk to Inspector Morse, Lewis, Endeavour, Wallander etc. Point made, I think.
Tweets seen
Seems that I am not the only one appalled by how out of his depth Boris Johnson seemed today:
So in a nutshell. Step one: Make the impression of easing lockdown Step two: Give impossibly vague guidance on who can go to work Step three: Increase fines Step four: Use the vague guidance loopholes to rake it in Step five: oh and yes, every death a tragedy etc #BorisHasFailed
and to date there are 117,000 more tweets in the same vein.
So what? Now include Belgium and Ireland, the Netherlands, and Japan and Taiwan. Any serious analysis does not focus narrowly on a few countries. And it finds there is *no* pattern which links the severity of the shutdown and the number of deaths. https://t.co/u1rxNGlDsE
Define 'hysteria' @jlflanner. I'm not ordering people to stay in their homes,like Wee Willie Winkie, or sending out the police to arrest sunbathers, or spending £2.4 billion a day I haven't got, paying people to do nothing,on the basis of guesswork. I'm the one saying it's silly. https://t.co/0JHeYyEphe
Let me say it one more time. Many countries which have not shut down have had low numbers of deaths. There is no pattern which suggests that oppressive measures save lives. https://t.co/YnVqDgQaVx
I think the Churchillian pretence has never looked so thin. The Kim Jong Son statement was simultaneously boring and outrageous, then made ridiculous by clunky Blue Peter graphics. Like watching John Major declare war on Monaco. https://t.co/44cMGgvAoF
1/2 Watching Dear Leader Kim Jong Son's address to the people of the Democratic People's Republic of England, I noted this was the first time any head of government in this country had ever concerned himself with when and how I go to work, how I travel, who I meet.
2/2 All this absurd Maoist interference with private and personal matters was founded on a claim, unsupported by evidence, that he was somehow able to protect me from a virus. This is a classic distillation of fear into power….
3/2 As I watched this Maoist performance, it was amusing to think that only a few weeks ago this man and his party machine (now also flooding the country with fairy gold) were trying to persuade me that Jeremy Corbyn was a Marxist threat to freedom and the economy. Well, I never
Oh dear @kundesteria, how determinedly you miss the point. You actually *want* to believe that Big Brother can protect you from a virus, don't you? What all the evidence shows is that He can't. At some point you have to grow up and be an adult in a world of risk. https://t.co/W3E25SGO8U
And you *believed* that @hollinssquare? You gave power and freedom to the state and expected to get it back? What *do* they teach them in these schools? https://t.co/wKcdf3YYAz
[By Francis Lima – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, 
By AlwaysUnite – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, 
[above: tamarisk tree in the Negev Desert, Israel. CC BY-SA 3.0, 
[above: the satirical singer-songwriter, Alison Chabloz, at the piano]
Ian Robert Millard 