Category Archives: Reminiscences and Musings

Diary Blog, 12 January 2023, with thoughts about the NHS, and NHS strikes

Afternoon music

[painting by Jack Vettriano]

On this day a year ago

NHS

As blogged previously, I am all in favour of the NHS principle of “free at point of use”, but the fact is that the NHS, as it is (i.e. not in theory), is simply not working. Not working properly, and scarcely working at all.

It may well be that more money is required, but even now the NHS consumes nearly half the governmental budget (I see 44% as the proportion).

It may well be that nurses should be paid more. What about doctors? I see that GPs are mostly paid over £100,000 a year, some over £200,000, and for a service that is now lamentably poor.

As for hospital doctors, though the most junior (in the first year) receive only about £32,000 p.a., that rises rapidly to over £50,000 and, for consultants and surgeons, well over £100,000.

Ambulancemen (paramedics), (and women), get more than nurses, and do (from what I have seen) a very good job indeed.

As said, nurses and paramedics have a case for wanting more pay, but I cannot see it as morally correct for them to strike, leaving patients without care, even with some kind of skeleton service still running.

As for the NHS generally, it plainly needs to be changed to a service that genuinely puts patients first.

In the past decade, I have seen enough (though not as patient) to convince me that the maladministration in the NHS has to be rooted out. I should say that that is the main problem, not the staff as such, and not money as such.

Few people would want the UK to have an American-style health service, though it also has merits, which I saw when my first wife (an employee of the U.S. Federal Government) needed urgent surgery— and had it within a day or so of being admitted to hospital, and she was admitted the same day that she experienced pain bad enough to seek help. In the UK, that surgery would probably have taken weeks if not months to organize.

Likewise, I recall that my first wife was advised, on another occasion, to get a scan, and was given a choice of five hospitals within a 20-mile radius of home. The same year (1990 or 1991), King’s College Hospital in South London, a major UK teaching hospital, had to have a public appeal to buy a scanning machine, and that appeal ran for several years.

Again, the wife of a friend of mine in New Jersey was paralyzed after a woman driving a car in a supermarket parking lot (at only 5-10 mph) drove into her bicycle. Thanks to being heavily insured, my friend’s wife was able to stay at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center, where the Superman actor, Christopher Reeve, spent time a few years later [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Reeve#Hospitalization]. An excellent “facility”, as Americans say, and in heavily-wooded and peaceful grounds.

Still, the American system, under which about 40%-50% of the population are uninsured or under-insured, is unjust, and not what we in the UK would like to see.

There are, however, alternatives. The French system, for example (which I have also seen a little) seems to be far better than the NHS and, to take just example, has done away with “wards”— patients almost all have their own rooms, or shared rooms, and have done for about 40 years.

A friend in Brittany when I myself lived there (pre-2010) suffered from a heart condition and had already been treated by the NHS. On seeing the French specialist for the first time (taken the 50-mile journey to Brest and 50 miles back by taxi, at State expense, incidentally, rather than having had to drive himself), he was asked what medication he was presently prescribed, and replied. The French consultant raised his eyebrows and said “I think that we can do a little better than that“…

We are often unaware to what extent the NHS rations healthcare; the more advanced techniques and drugs available elsewhere are often not available on the NHS.

What we need is to keep the “free at point of use” principle, but ring-fence an “NHS tax” from income tax, so that those monies are usable solely for and by the NHS, not diverted to “aid” for the Jew Zelensky’s dictatorship, not diverted to other projects or services etc.

Also necessary (to some extent), along with better administration, is attitudinal change in some staff.

Tweets seen

I recall seeing that idiot in the hat shouting through a megaphone, in Whitehall, when I was last in London: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/06/30/diary-blog-30-june-2022-including-impressions-of-a-trip-to-dystopian-london/.

If they really received the full ration (call me a cynic…).

What use is SIS/MI6 when it has neither the will nor the capability to bump off Shamima Begum and her sort? Especially when it also failed, inter alia, to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, failed to predict the Falklands invasion, failed to predict the fall of socialism (inc. the Soviet Union) etc.

It’s “FERBER“, not “FABER“…(get it right…).

American. Don’t know if lawful in the UK. If lawful, should not be.

Some suggestion that the Ferber website was hacked some time ago. May or may not be true.

The wildlife emergency in the UK must become a government priority.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11627311/NHS-offers-remote-GP-job-85-hour-amid-claim-doctors-want-patients.html

The NHS has been accused of ‘wanting less and less’ to do with patients after it advertised a series of remote-only GP roles for £85 an hour.

The work from home job offers general practitioners a three-month contract with the chance ‘to provide online digital consultations’ via video or phone calls to patients, with pay of just under £3,000 a week or almost £13,000 a month.

It comes amid mounting evidence that ‘telemedicine’, while convenient for doctors, can be ‘disastrous’ for some patients.”

[Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11626977/NHS-emergency-care-crisis-laid-bare-999-response-times-worst-ever.html

More tweets

“Jack Monroe”

Probably because the virtue-signalling Guardian readers, while pleased to have a copy of one or two “Jack Monroe” books prominently displayed on a kitchen bookshelf, are certainly not going to actually make, let alone eat, her swill.

I shall look forward to that. All the online “grifters” should be rooted out. Ausrotten!

More tweets

Late tweets

Seems to be a genuine and worthwhile cause: https://www.gofundme.com/f/depher-cost-of-living-support-uk?qid=a6d81c76d0fb2349f78e7a06652165a6

Late music

[Scottish Highlands: a 19thC baronial-style lodge]

Diary Blog, 10 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11616555/Obscure-firm-handed-340-000-gift-Labour-MPs-Yvette-Cooper-Dan-Jarvis-Wes-Streeting.html

An obscure company has handed more than £340,000 to three senior Labour figures.

Analysis of political funding has revealed that MPM Connect Ltd has been the third-biggest donor to MPs since the general election.

It has given £183,317 to shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, £100,000 to former South Yorkshire mayor Dan Jarvis and £60,000 to health spokesman Wes Streeting.

[Daily Mail]

All Jewish-lobby puppets. What a surprise…

Tweets seen

Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy…Biden? Probably not, but time will tell.

Simon Pegg. Actor, apparently. I had not heard of him and, looking at him, have never seen him on TV either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Pegg.

Not that I disagree with him about Sunak’s “study maths until age 18” nonsense. The most important thing in that regard is to drill very basic maths (multiplication, subtraction, division) into pupils aged 7 or so. I constantly meet young and not so young cashiers at Waitrose who literally cannot work out how many lottery tickets are necessary for X-number of lines at Y-number per ticket. Some have to use a calculator!

Of course, “@TheFreds” are quite right: changing the colour of the deck chairs on the Titanic changes nothing but the scenery.

More lies from “Jack Monroe”

Serious pathological/psychological condition, I think.

I posed the question weeks, and I think even months, ago as to whether “Jack Monroe” sometimes makes up things and rolls out a pack of lies almost daring people to accuse her of lying, as in (to take a few examples only) that she was “on the game” (prostitution) in Essex (by reason of impecuniosity), that she attended the Grenfell Tower fire (60+ miles from where she lives), was “waved through the police cordon” (oh yes, the police would really allow a stray interfering rubbernecker to go through…) and even had plans of the building (why would she? How could she?).

The “Bootstrap Cook” said that she was so poor that she had to sell her small son’s toy dinosaur, that she had to take out lightbulbs in order not to waste electricity, and that she had to boil soap to make shower gel (which does not even stack up logically, when 90p shower gel lasts for 1-3 weeks with daily use, and when boiling soap costs money in itself; and why not just use the soap instead of trying to make gel out of it?). Ludicrous.

On several occasions, I have been certain in my own mind that her lies must amount to her thinking “surely the sad bastards won’t buy this one?!“, and then they (those who defend her to the marrow) do buy whatever absolute crap she comes out with at any given moment; while also (631 utter mugs as of today) each sending her between £3.50 and £44 a month!

In other words, at times she is certainly, in the well-known phrase, “having a laugh”, a laugh at the expense of the mugs subsidizing her and the others promoting her, the latter including Nigella Lawson, at least a couple of Labour MPs, and of course the media rats from the Guardian, Observer, BBC and Channel 4.

I think that “Jack Monroe” lies mainly because she enjoys inventing a fake or 90% fake narrative, and because she enjoys making absolute mugs out of those who not only defend her as a supposed —if risible— “champion of the poor” but who also send money to her!

She herself has said recently that her basic lifestyle, inc. rent, utilities, food, adds up to about £4,000 a month. The 631 utter mugs subsidizing her are anyway sending more than that (I am guessing about £6,000 but it may be more) each month.

I have no idea who that particular mug is, nor whether his/her problem is a mental illness or just plain everyday stupidity, but imagine taking money off someone like that on the false promise/threat that Con Party MP, Lee Anderson, was going to be sued for stating, entirely truthfully, something along the lines of the assertion that “Jack Monroe” is basically a fraud (at very least, a “grifter”) “living off the backs of the poor“, which is exactly what she is and does.

It is obvious that “Jack Monroe” is not going to sue Lee Anderson and/or Martin Daubney, though she has hinted at “things going on behind the scenes etc”.

Rubbish. Technically, she has 3-4 months left before the one-year limitation applies, but Lee Anderson has apparently not even received any letter before action.

It’s another “Jack Monroe” lie, in other words.

I think that “Jack Monroe” has one main intent, which is to be the centre of attention. Nothing else. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that even the money she gets from mugs etc. is very secondary to that central narcissism.

Incidentally, the “media folk” are still promoting her— there are a couple of articles even today in the Metro newspaper, giving “tips” and a recipe, and no mention of the scandal(s).

Afternoon music

[Ava Gardner in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman]

Strange to see: I was just reading about Ava Gardner [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ava_Gardner] and saw that she died in 1990, aged 67, at at her home in Ennismore Gardens, Kensington (London), near Kensington Gardens, where she had lived since 1968. I never knew. Had I thought of it at all, I probably would have assumed that she lived in either California or New York City.

I have only been to that exact place once, I think; in the very early 1980s, with someone escorting the then Metropolitan of Kiev (a kind of Russian Orthodox archbishop, the second-highest prelate of that church) who was then visiting London. The Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition is at the end of a kind of hidden-away cul de sac there. We dropped him there, and were invited in (no-one else was around, as far as I can recall). The Metropolitan kindly gave me a bottle of Moskovskaya vodka.

More tweets seen

In other words, only 1 person out of every 235 is on the side of “Jack Monroe” and her tweet.

Most supporters of the “Bootstrap Cook” effectively say, on the larger scale, “let’s bin the Tories. Once ‘Labour’ are in government, everything will be fine, or start to be fine“…

Does anyone with any sense actually believe that? The migration-invasion (both across the Channel and otherwise) will continue unchanged in numbers, and Rachel Reeves and her fellow Labour Friends of Israel MPs will be even harder on the unemployed, disabled etc than the fake “Conservatives” have been— she said so expressly.

In a binary political system, and one where both main System parties are really almost identical, you cannot change things very much by squashing one party at some election or other, because the other one is thereby strengthened, and the “Deep State” policies continue largely unchanged.

That Tom Doorley person is an Irish restaurant critic, who has been oddly biased in favour of the “Bootstrap Cook” for some time; see also https://www.tomdoorley.com/about.

Very true, though I doubt an accurate quotation. Or am I just too nice? I see various journalists tweeting that.

So much for people needing a degree. She did not have one, so (like Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and others), she just pretended to have one: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebekah_Brooks#Early_life.

Ha. Well, there it is. For once I have to agree with “The Harry Formerly Known as Prince”!

More tweets

A “counter-terrorism strategy“? Isn’t that rather similar to what, in more honest times, was just called a “police state”? See, for example: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/05/30/one-mans-extremism-is-another-mans-struggle-for-liberty-and-justice/.

Late tweets

Deutschland erwache!

…and Europe is about culture and civilization…

I myself am at present disinclined to bother with having my Twitter account reinstated (it having been “suspended” quasi-permanently after a pack of malicious Jews conspired to make a mass complaint in 2018).

Late music

Diary Blog, 6 January 2023, including more thoughts about Ukraine, more about “Jack Monroe”, and reminiscences about the actor Bruce Barry

Morning music

[Katyusha rockets, 1940s]

On this day a year ago

Ukraine

https://www.ft.com/content/216fecbc-31be-454b-bec3-9fa253580b15

Germany and the US will send armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine, the White House said, in a move that will deliver a big boost to Kyiv’s offensive capabilities.”

[Financial Times]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/05/germany-tanks-ukraine-russia-war

Joe Biden and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz have agreed to send infantry fighting vehicles to help Ukraine fight Russia, a day after France said it would supply its own armoured vehicles to Kyiv in an attempt to create a breakthrough in the 10-month war.

The joint announcement followed a phone call between Biden and Scholz and amounts to a step change in western military support for Ukraine, which has asked for up to 700 armoured vehicles to help force the Russians out.

Ukraine has repeatedly said it needs 600 to 700 infantry fighting vehicles plus 300 tanks from from the west in order to give its military a chance of breaking through the increasingly fortified Russian positions along the frontline.

Until now, however, the US and Germany have been wary of supplying Ukraine with Nato-standard armour, because they feared it would be interpreted by Russia as escalatory. But the decision to supply western armoured vehicles is significant, even if both countries stopped short of sending tanks.

[The Guardian].

At what point does Russia decide that it has no choice but to use massive force (nuclear or conventional) to raze Kiev and Kharkov to the ground, so that the area of Ukraine east of the Dnieper (about a third to half of Ukraine) can be later rebuilt, and occupied by Russian settlers?

That may sound almost impossible but is actually similar, arguably,to what happened centuries ago when the Cossacks were formed as a group, or connected groups, around the various rivers in southern Russia and Ukraine— Don Cossacks, Zaporozhye Cossacks, Volga Cossacks, Dnieper Cossacks etc.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks

[“the Wild Fields”, where Cossacks lived]

Whatever the possibility of the above, there is no doubt that the supply of armoured vehicles, advanced missile systems, and tanks, to the Kiev regime constitutes considerable escalation.

In fact, one need not go back too far in history to find examples of Russian forces all but razing cities to the ground, then rebuilding them and filling them with the troops and civilians of loyal satraps: see Grozny in the 1990s— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#After_the_wars.

Afterwards, the Russians slowly entered the empty city and on 6 February raised the Russian flag in the centre. Many buildings and even whole areas of the city were systematically destroyed. A month later, it was declared safe to allow the residents to return to their homes, although demolition continued for some time. In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth.”

[Wikipedia]

[Chechen partisan takes cover behind a ruined armoured vehicle, Grozny, 1995]
[Presidential Palace, Grozny, 1996]
[central Grozny by night today]
[panorama of Grozny after dark]
[same area— daytime view]

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%931995); and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999%E2%80%932000); and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny.

The Russian tactic in 1999 was to hold back tanks and armored personnel carriers and subject the entrenched Chechens to an intensive heavy artillery barrage and aerial bombardment before engaging them with relatively small groups of infantry, many with prior training in urban warfare.”

[Wikipedia].

I read, re. Ukraine in 2023, that Russia has huge numbers of troops not “in theatre”, i.e. not (yet) in Ukraine. That may be because those troops are not trained enough yet, it may be because there are logistical problems in supplying them. If Russia can train them and supply them by next Spring or early Summer, then a vast offensive might be possible, to take Kharkov and even Kiev itself, though if the latter it would be a bloody battle, akin to Stalingrad in 1942-43.

In the end, Russia needs to take Kiev, Kharkov and, if possible, Odessa, along with surrounding territory. If it can do that, then it can write off Western Ukraine and its cities (chief of which is Lvov). That would mean continuing conflict with a regime which would be based on Lvov, but there would be little the Zelensky regime or its successor could do, with almost all Ukrainian cities of any size in Russian hands.

At this point, Ukraine is not a functioning state.

The “Jack Monroe” “scamstorm” continues

[https://unherd.com/2023/01/jack-monroe-the-acceptable-face-of-poverty/?=frlh]

Those “FBPE” tweeters are nearly always absolutely stupid, and often rather unpleasant as well.

The idea that “Jack Monroe” has “worked tirelessly” on behalf of anyone other than herself is ludicrous.

Tweeter “@codfather” is the usual “Jack Monroe” partisan: wilfully blind, a certain age (reading between the lines), reasonably affluent (ditto) and certainly not “poor”. Also, vituperative.

In fact, and as I started to understand some time ago, many of the pro-“Bootstrap Cook” tweets are actually from…”Jack Monroe” herself, pretending to be other people. So-called “sock accounts”. Not all, and I think not “@codfather”, but many others.

See also: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/05/cost-of-living-crisis-england-most-deprived-area-birmingham-hodge-hill.

The sheer delusion that many “Jack Monroe” partisans seem to live in has to be read to be believed; look, for example, at the tweet belkow, from (supposedly) a “professor emeritus at Bristol [University]”:

What the professor fails to see is that “Jack Monroe” has only one achievement (two if you include persuading large numbers of msm people that her whole story is true) — making a pretty good living for herself mainly by tweeting personal trivia, and recipes which look as dire as they are deficient in nutrient.

As for “measurement of food price inflation“, the ONS has made clear that their one meeting with her (at her request) had no effect on any of their work, and was not even noted or recorded. The “Vimes Boots Index”, supposedly being “worked on” by “Jack Monroe”, does not even exist, in reality. So what is left is the commonplace observation that the cost of basic foods has risen faster than that of luxury items.

Once again, a “Jack Monroe” supporter turns out to be a “woke”, and comfortably-off virtue-signaller, in this case an academic, or retired academic.

As I have blogged before, I have so far seen not one “Jack Monroe” supporter who is under 30, is “poor”, or who has ever been in circumstances of real financial difficulty.

Interestingly, also, I see not one “Jack Monroe” supporter who is black, brown, or Chinese. As someone who wants the UK and all Europe to be European, that in a sense is not a problem for me, but is still an interesting thing to note.

My take on that is that the ethnic minorities are too down to earth (and many also with too recent an experience of actual poverty) to take “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” seriously. Also, many would not look twice at the kind of swill she seems to produce much of the time.

Other tweets seen

The same is true in most areas. Politically too. Lenin was just one of a small number of marginalized exiles; Hitler was just an individual who was told to take a look at a tiny party, then joined it as member (possibly committee member) no.7.

Acorn—oak etc.

It is an incredible fact that (what is left of) the print newspapers in the UK are still churning out “editorials” or “leaders” which hardly anyone reads and by which even fewer are influenced.

19th Century thinking.

More music

Temps perdu: Bruce Barry

Ha. Back in the early 1980s, I knew a lady, a civil servant, who rented her basement flat near Central London to an actor well-known then in Australia, but obscure in the UK— Bruce Barry. I got to know him slightly.

At some point, maybe in 1984, Bruce auditioned for the part of Crocodile Dundee in the eponymous film. He told my friend, his landlady, that he had been shortlisted. The only other contender was… Paul Hogan. And the rest is history, as they say.

Bruce had spoiled his chance by going to the final meeting with the film people, at the Ritz in London, beautifully dressed (according to the lady I knew) but then enjoying “a liquid lunch“…

Bruce was fussy about food, living off wholefoods, nuts, avocado, and I think the occasional Australian steak, but drank too much. Drink and women were his downfall.

Not a bad fellow, though rather neurotic, and rather intense, in my view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Barry_(actor). Bruce had come to London at the age of ~46 to try to break into musicals. His divorce in Australia had left his wife (or one of them) and teenage sons in the family home, apparently a palatial house with grounds going down to the waters of Sydney Harbour, while Bruce himself was left with little.

In London, his first part was the male lead in The Biograph Girl [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Biograph_Girl], a musical about Lilian Gish [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Gish], which closed after (I now see from Wikipedia) 57 performances (I had thought, until today, after only a couple of weeks). Bruce had described it in hardnosed Australian fashion to my friend, the Civil Service lady, as “a bum show“, i.e. not much good.

I recall seeing Bruce on stage a couple of times, once at the Adelphi, in the Strand, where he was the second male lead in Marilyn! He played Andre de Dienes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_de_Dienes (though I cannot have been paying attention because until today I had thought he played Arthur Miller).

Bruce had very kindly given me two free tickets; I invited my mother, who lived in Surrey, and she enjoyed it. Musicals are not really my thing.

The other time I saw Bruce Barry in performance was at the Australian High Commission in London. I think that it was called An Evening with Bruce Barry, and was very good. I attended with the Civil Service lady, and met the real Australian Cultural Attache, who perhaps unsurprisingly was a very pleasant diplomatic fellow, and not a bit like “Sir Les Patterson” as portrayed by Barry Humphries [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Les_Patterson].

Bruce had a girlfriend, a tall Australian dancer who had been a member of the Bluebell Girls ensemble in Paris. One day, Bruce returned to his flat to find her in flagrante with a third party. The end of the affair.

Bruce toured a bit around England with well-known stars such as Rula Lenska and Elaine Paige. I believe that that was in Evita. One star he disliked intensely, though, was Barbara Windsor. He was, apparently, not alone in that. Several disliked her tie-ups with gangsters etc.

In the end, Bruce Barry, having not quite broken through in the way he had hoped, returned to Australia, remarried, and had parts in quite a few TV shows, including The Flying Doctors [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Doctors], where he played a landowner, I was told (I myself never saw it, though the series was shown in the UK).

The last I heard of Bruce Barry was that his second (or third) wife had divorced him, taken his home off him (as I heard it), and left him to drink and regrets.

I was unaware until today that Bruce had been with Mick Jagger in the film Ned Kelly, in 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly_(1970_film).

Bruce Barry died in 2017, aged 82.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hogan.

More tweets

Said Eritreans should have been executed by firing squad in the main square of Stockholm; it would have been a deterrent to other migrant-invaders (prior to their mass deportation). Sweden is even more mad than the UK.

The “CAA” is a pack of malicious Jew-Zionists, which cabal makes unfounded and untrue complaints to police and others: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/01/15/diary-blog-15-january-2022-including-an-outline-of-the-failure-of-the-latest-jew-zionist-attempt-to-prosecute-me/.

A number of wealthy Jews have recently donated £600,000 to that tiny group of troublemakers.

The Charity Commission should close down both its charitable status and, as far as possible, its fundraising.

In any case, why would “Jack Monroe” even go to the Grenfell Tower fire? She was never in the fire brigade, except as a civilian office bod answering the telephone in Essex (about 50-60 miles from Grenfell Tower) for a year or so, and years before the Grenfell Tower blaze. If she did go to Grenfell Tower (which I doubt), it could only have been as a “rubbernecker”, and the police would certainly not have “waved her through the cordon” as she claimed. She’s a fake, a total fake.

Someone should make a series on con-men, con-women, “grifters” etc. Hour-long episodes, each covering two or three perpetrators, a bit like the very interesting In Suspicious Circumstances presented by Edward Woodward [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Suspicious_Circumstances]. A favourite series, presently being repeated on satellite TV.

Another good one was Great Crimes and Trials [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Crimes_and_Trials]. I used to have all of those on video or DVD.

At a guess, I should say that copies of Thrifty Kitchen will soon be on sale in charity shops for about 20p. At least “the poor” will then be able to read the book, should they be so misguided.

I can only agree.

Ha ha. Just thinking again about the very idea that “the poor” need to be advised (very negligently) that, if they have a can without a ring-pull, and cannot find a can-opener, that they should use a hammer (or mallet?) and large knife! “Jack Monroe” obviously thinks that “the poor” are all completely brainless, and either cannot think of that on their own, or think of how to get an opener (less than £1 in some places).

She might as well “advise” people to invest in a Swiss Army Knife (mine has a can-opener which does work, though it’s hard work). The worst “investment” is to buy her book, in my opinion.

Now send “Jack Monroe” a fiver!

Once the book appears for 10p (at a stretch, 20p) in charity shops, which will be soon, I shall probably buy a copy just to give myself a laugh or two before I chuck it away.

“Jack Monroe” is a total £3-note…a fake.

…and, so far, despite 3-4 months of Twitterstorm and offline criticism, her Jewish lawyer, Mark Lewis, a resident of Israel, and with whose name (by implication) she used to threaten people who called her fraudulent, has not once emerged from his kennel.

Below, another typical “Jack Monroe” supporter:

a. much of her “lived experience” written about has been fantasy or lies; b. her “tips” are mostly worthless, or actually dangerous to health, or are obvious (eg “buy the budget range at the supermarket“); c. her royalties total around £100,000 to date; d. the monies from “fundraising to send thousands of books to foodbanks” seem partly, perhaps largely, to have been diverted into her own pocket; e. then there was the “sue Lee Anderson” crowdfunder scam; and f. the continuing Patreon scam, bringing her maybe £6,000 each month.

In addition to the above, it seems that, last year, “Jack Monroe” did a number of events, and getting, it seems, up to £15,000 each time.

Not exactly “earning a few quid“…

In any case, should a small-time robber get off just because a big-time robber down the road has committed a bigger crime?

Some types of bungalow do have a room upstairs, of course. #MoralHighGround.

Just looking again at the Twitter profiles of those who are the angry supporters of “Jack Monroe”: “professor emeritus” (ie retired academic), “noise consultant“, “retired HR lady“, “small businessman“, “writer“, “writer and photographer“, “part of brilliant Marketing Team“, “Pagan…therapeutic counsellor“, “#ACAB #BLM, Rape/Cop apologists blocked, TERFs blocked“, “novelist“, “High Profile hard left twitterer“, “Mother of Mayhem, Psychology student, Not Jack Monroe, Maybe“, “I’m a doctor but not working clinically” [i.e. another “grifter”], “fandom old, makes various media“, “BSc Psychology. History MA. Labour Party Member. MA Creative Non Fiction“, “Widower, autistic, stroke survivor. Tofu eating, Woke Corbynista“, “Labour & Co-operative MP for Oldham West & Royton | Chair, Co-operative Party | Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs” [n.b. if he cannot see through the “Jack Monroe” nonsense, Jim McMahon is unsuitable as MP and possible government minister], “Academic, political theorist, educationalist, former Pro-Director Education at LSE, HoD Department of Government LSE. ‘Woke Realist’ in a good way. Grandfather“, “Writing, blogging married mum of two boisterous boys..Tweets powered by Diet Coke, Earl Grey and wine“, “Educator/Writer/Student“, “Bristol based Graphic Designer. Gets giddy over lovely paper and buttons“, “*Producer|Cam|Editor *PhD #VR@ExeterDoctoral (yr 3, on hold) *Support Worker (#autism)“, “Nature, landscape, holloways, streams, printmaking. Wild swimmer & pluviophile“, “Founder & M.D of the Rabble Chorus, a lovely crowd of 350 community singers, open to all who fancy a bit of music on the side. Environmental activist, musician“, “Books. Music. Language. Science. Theology. Family. Talk. Think. Opinions my own. Pilot and PhD researcher (human factors and linguistics)“.

And so on.

Taken in a line. Just look at them. Not a steel worker, nurse, bus driver, train driver, cleaner, carpenter, plumber or the like among them. The “working class” seems to be absent.

Certainly not absent are the Guardian-readers, small business owners, suburban housewives (who prefer some other designation), well-paid freelancers, retired people (who used to be academics or working in reasonably-paid office jobs etc).

Also well-represented are various species of “Looney Tunes”.

Also absent is anyone likely to be “poor”.

As blogged previously, all her partisans are pseudo-socialists and/or “poverty tourists”, most if not all rather comfortably-off, many either retired or otherwise economically inactive (though not short of money); and quite a few with obvious mental health “issues” and/or problems with rational thinking. Also, various loony “trans” supporters.

Disturbing to see a Labour MP in there too, one Jim McMahon [Lab. and Co-op; Oldham West and Royton].

Oh, well, enough for now.

Late music

Diary Blog, 4 January 2023

Afternoon music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Satie]
[Tangier in the rain]

On this day a year ago

Tweets seen

This savage and unforgiving conflict will probably see huge escalation in 2023, especially in view of the refusal of the Kiev side to negotiate even a ceasefire unless Russian forces withdraw from all areas of mainland Ukraine and Crimea.

The Kiev side probably hopes that Putin will be deposed, and the war thus (?) ended. It may not work out that way, even if Putin does leave the scene.

The “Jack Monroe” Twitterstorm (etc) continues

A not atypical “Jack Monroe” supporter tweets. “Screenwriter and novelist” (unpublished?), and of a certain age. I have yet to see a Twitter pro-“Jack Monroe” defender who is either “young” (under 30) or in any way “poor”.

I have covered the Monty Python-esque “Jack Monroe” “advice” previously, in several blog posts, so do not want to repeat it all today, but the sheer nonsense of it is incredible (e.g. make a dinner for 11p per head; e.g. open cans using a knife and a mallet or hammer; e.g. make a curry by mixing a tin of peaches and one of chickpeas with some curry powder, and heat in a microwave, etc).

The many tweets below are worth considering:

Very modest— I doubt that “Jack Monroe” is pulling in less than £6,000 a month from Patreon alone.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to support, with a one-off £5 or so, a genuinely-poor and struggling couple, that lady (“@frugally-minded”) has a crowdfunder: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/heather-booth-3?utm_term=Gde7678Nq.

Having been “down there” in the pit of actual poverty a few times in my life (thankfully never for longer than a few months at a time), I am well-qualified to advise people how to really survive and even somewhat thrive in such circumstances, but I prefer not to publish openly my very valuable and learned/experienced advice. ‘Nuff said!

I notice that the number of “mugs” sending “Jack Monroe” between £3.50 and £44 each month via Patreon has now fallen to 623, as of time of writing; that’s about 25 fewer than yesterday. 25 mugs woke up (at last).

Stray idea

If you take as a notional starting-point the idea that there are about 40 million people of or over the age of 21 in the UK, and if you consider that the UK has an area of about 92,000 sq. miles, which is about 60 million acres, then that works out at, very roughly, 1.5 acres per person.

Now let us assume that the State took ownership over about 4%-5% of that land, in other words less than a tenth of an acre per person, allotted to any applicant such a plot, and let such people use the land allotted to them in a manner akin to an “allotment” (or, if they want, to do nothing with “their” land, which would help wildlife at least). It might have a huge effect, as well as helping poor people to feed themselves.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden.

The details might need refining, and the concept would need organization, but I think that the basic idea would work.

Incidentally, if any object that the idea involves “expropriation”, I reply that that is so, but it would merely redress a small part of the balance from the time of the “Enclosures” of common land, and/or the “Highland Clearances”. The aim is, however, not backward-looking “revenge” but forward-looking policy.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11597803/Santander-major-bank-UK-hire-graduates-class-degree.html

Santander is changing its degree requirements in an attempt to increase socioeconomic diversity in the workplace.

The bank will no longer require a 2:1 degree for graduates as recruiters try to find the ‘best candidates from a wide range of backgrounds’ – meaning those with third class degrees will now be able to apply.

[Daily Mail].

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11598345/Terrifying-moment-hundreds-men-swarm-girl-17-dressing-immodestly-Iraq.html

These are the type of backward bastards flooding into the UK with the acquiescence and/or connivance of the (((occupied))) “British” Government.

Maybe Santander will offer some of them a job.

More tweets

Ha. Not the only time the egregious and self-publicizing Jewish lawyer, Mark Lewis (now an Israeli resident and citizen), gave what at least some of his clients (as reported on Twitter and in the Press, and seen by me) regarded as duff advice.

I blogged about Mark Lewis, several times, years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/11/update-re-mark-lewis-lawyer-questions-are-raised/

The Anti-national Covid Service. How sick, that untermenschen of his sort taint the work of very many good people in what is left of the NHS.

Twitter, home of the nut

Today’s total nut on Twitter is…”Ninawildflower”

Incredibly, seems that that Twitter account is not a parody-account.

…and any parent who (as that one claims) forces his child to be the only one in his school to wear a facemask is not only stupid but cruel and/or crazy, and should face some kind of intervention by the school or others.

More tweets

That has been my impression. Apart from which, this whole idea that “poor people” —or others— need books of recipes is rather odd in the age of the Internet, when thousands of recipes of all types can be accessed in seconds and without payment.

I see from Twitter that, in face of the continuing and indeed increasing Twitterstorm, “Jack Monroe” has, once more, tried two of her favourite tactics— feigning illness, and withdrawing from Twitter interaction until the hue and cry dies down. She has done that (combination) frequently before, the last time only a few weeks ago. She always returns quite swiftly, ready to ignore the many cries of “will you refund the money you took?“.

Cookery books are bestsellers, quite often, but I wonder how many people (I presume mainly women) buy them but then never actually use them to make things? Not a rhetorical question. I actually do not know.

I do recall seeing, as a child of 10 (in 1967), several massive coffee-table-size books in the kitchen of my aunt-by-marriage, in Mosman, Sydney. I still recall the title of one: Larousse Gastronomique [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larousse_Gastronomique]. A huge and thick hardback book.

I have no idea whether my uncle’s wife ever actually cooked anything. I certainly never saw her make anything there, and that kitchen was as pristine as the rest of her large house on the side of a bay (Middle Harbour). There again, she had a cleaning lady and no less than three Norwegian au pairs (there to “assist” with her two adopted children— a baby and a small child), so perhaps the lack of mess or detritus was not surprising.

There was in fact one time I when I saw the said relative make something; in a holiday beach house at Palm Beach (in the area now called the Northern Beaches, the very northmost part of the Sydney area, but it was not called that then). The food in question was lobster with home-made (I think) mayonnaise, the first time I had eaten either; consumed outside. I do not recall having either lobster or proper mayonnaise again until I was in my twenties.

See also: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Larousse-Gastronomique-Hamlyn/dp/0600620425.

Late tweets

Sunak is actually proud of having participated in the lockdown/shutdown of the “panicdemic”, and proud of having sprayed money around like a drunken sailor!

Meanwhile, sick people are not being adequately helped, migrant-invaders continue to be ferried across the Channel, many are suffering financially very much, and the UK’s environment is being degraded.

Late music

Diary Blog, 3 January 2023, including more about the “Jack Monroe” “scamstorm”

Morning music

On this day a year ago

The “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” situation continues

“@frugally_minded” is a woman who was cheated by “Jack Monroe”, and who, despite being now in a parlous financial state, has been refused a refund by the so-called “Bootstrap Cook”.

I saw an interesting allegation, which may or may not be true, to the effect that “Jack Monroe” is now subscribing to her own Patreon donation appeal, in order to keep the numbers up and prevent the perception that she is being abandoned by her real donors (hundreds of utter mugs).

Quite. There are a number of recognized defences to an action in defamation, one of which is “Truth” (formerly called “Justification”).

Apart from that, as that tweet implies, many potential claimants (“plaintiffs”, as was) will not want their business and life generally, exposed to public view. That of course applies a fortiori to those who may have unethical, or even criminal, matters to hide.

There is a further matter, which is that a claimant claiming that he/she has been defamed will have to spend much money bringing the matter to court, money which can only be recouped (and it may not be) from a wealthy, or affluent, or at least solvent defendant, or one who at least owns valuable real property.

We hear much (mainly on Twitter) about how people can sue others using litigation insurance etc, or “pro bono” lawyers. It’s not as easy as that.

Firstly, litigation insurance will only be available where it is thought that a claim is not only well founded in law and fact but also where the putative defendant has assets, or income, that might satisfy any claim.

You can see where that leaves the “Bootstrap Cook”— up a gum tree. The last thing she wants is forensic and/or judicial examination of her allegedly dishonest and/or near-fraudulent “grifting” cottage industry.

In any event, most of those criticizing her probably have next to nothing, certainly not enough to satisfy the legal costs (and award of damages) flowing from a successful defamation action.

The “Bootstrap Cook” was lucky in her action against then-columnist and socio-political commentator, Katie Hopkins. who quite plainly did defame her (about “Jack Monroe” having allegedly vandalized a war memorial), who had no really arguable defence, and who —crucially— owned a house in the best residential neighbourhood in Exeter, St. Leonard’s. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_v_Hopkins; see also https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/10/jack-monroe-wins-twitter-libel-case-against-katie-hopkins.

[St. Leonard’s, Exeter]

The house owned by Katie Hopkins had to be sold to cover both the actual award to “Jack Monroe” (£24,000) and the costs of the claimant (£300,000), most of which went to her lawyers, meaning to her solicitor and —I think, two— Counsel.

The solicitor engaged by “Jack Monroe” in the Katie Hopkins matter was the egregious Jew-Zionist Mark Lewis, resident now in Israel, and about whom I have written quite a lot on the blog in years past: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/11/update-re-mark-lewis-lawyer-questions-are-raised/.

Incidentally, “pro bono” properly refers to cases taken by a lawyer for no fee, not the “no win, no fee” speculative type; as when one of my tutors at degree level, who was an Old Etonian, appeared pro bono for Eton College in a 1980s High Court matter involving, I believe, land and trusts.

Someone like me, without real property, valuable assets, or much of an income, is effectively “unsueable”, unless the claimant were willing to accept that any award made, and costs which might top half a million pounds (bearing in mind appeals etc) would be irrecoverable. Of course, what at least used to be called a “prohibitory injunction”, and/or a “mandatory injunction” (those being orders to prevent a repeat of any alleged libel, and/or to order the taking down of the libel complained of) might be ordered, true, but at what cost!

More “Jack Monroe” fakery and nonsense:

So tweeter “@sarahcam3ron”, apparently one Sarah Cameron, thinks that “Jack Monroe’s” suggestion of using a mallet and a chisel or knife to open a can (when you can get a new basic tin can-opener for a little as £1 in a cheap supermarket, or a used one for 20p in a charity shop) is good advice for “the poor” (seen as a “huddled mass” yearning to be preached to). These “Jack Monroe” fans and partisans believe what they want to believe.

In fact, the same tweeter seems to think that the bad behaviour of “Jack Monroe” is de minimis in the face of larger injustices in society: see below.

Jack writes a book“? Try “Jack fleeces hundreds, indeed thousands, of people out of money most cannot really afford“. In any event her ‘recipes’ are largely carb-heavy slush that must be hard to stomach for many, from what I have seen.

Does anyone not totally loony think that a nutritious feed can be had for (as “Jack Monroe” claims) 11p per person? Even hardcore Con MP Lee Anderson only claims he can make such for 30p, and I (admittedly no cook) doubt whether anyone can make a decent lunch/dinner for less than about £1. I suppose a slice of toast with a Burford Brown very large egg on it— that would cost about 70p.

Frankly, I should rather have a peanut-butter and lettuce sandwich or two (cost? maybe 40p, if that) than any of the stuff I have seen from the “Bootstrap Cook”— and it would also remind me of when I was 10-11 years old and had that (with some slices of rock melon) every day at Middle Harbour School in Mosman, Sydney, in 1967, sitting outside in the warm sun.

Other tweets seen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melibe_viridis.

The world is an amazing place.

It would not matter were a kind of mundane Ragnarok to take place, so long as the 1% —or 10%, so be it— of the population left at the end were relatively cultured, reasonably capable, and European.

There are bigger issues facing the UK than “Jack Monroe” allegedly scamming a few thousand well-meaning or virtue-signalling “mugs” out of a total of maybe (?) £6,000 a month. Yes. No argument.

There are bigger issues facing the UK than “Jack Monroe” (to use the Essex argot) “blagging” her way to a mass media semi-“celebrity” profile in the Guardian or on TV. Yes. No argument.

Having conceded the above, I just find it absolutely infuriating both that that person seems to have cheated all those people, some genuinely “poor”, out of money, and also that the msm scribblers and talking heads in this country are so dim and negligent that they accept many poseurs and/or frauds at face value, without checking them out; and that applies not only to the “Bootstrap Cook”, but to many many others, from “Boris” Johnson and Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, Liz Truss and Woollyhead Trussbanger (Kwasi Kwarteng), to relatively obscure individuals such as Aisha Ali-Khan (featured on yesterday’s blog: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2023/01/02/diary-blog-2-january-2022-2/).

More tweets seen

People might like to peruse my blog for a look at one or two of the several times I myself have had both brief and somewhat extended brushes with poverty in my own chequered and (some would say) picaresque life…e.g. https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/08/25/diary-blog-25-august-2022-with-a-few-thoughts-about-poverty-and-living-through-hard-times/.

“Jack Monroe” has surely descended into the realms of Monty Python now. Nutritious lunches made for only 11p a head, opening cans using a knife and a hammer, or mallet (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, ROSPA, must love that one), and her various weird and not very wonderful “tips” reading like a dystopian Blue Peter charade.

I think that it is no accident that most of her supporters on Twitter seem to have mental problems of one sort or another. Many seem pretty stupid as well. Example? See below:

Another idiot? See below:

The sheer inanity of idiots like that!

People are angry about “Jack Monroe”, and the reason is that she has been making a good living by pretending to care about “the poor”, while taking money from, in some cases, genuinely poor people, and not even giving them what she promised, and because her food looks to many like “Mahashma Gandhi”, a dog’s dinner of beans and noodles mixed with curry powder etc.

Below, someone with more sense:

I’m with “@belfaststeve”…

More tweets

She is right, just as I and others were. People, many of them, don’t want to hear that. No, our national economic problems, they say, are caused by “Covid”, by Putin, by the war in Ukraine, by “climate change”, by anything other than the 2020-2021 ridiculous lockdown shutdown(s) of the UK for up to 2 years.

Enjoy your 11p “Jack Monroe” dinner in the dark and cold, once you get that can of ASDA cheapo spaghetti hoops open with a mallet and knife! And don’t forget to bring a couple of forks to the feast!

Late tweets

Late music

Diary Blog, New Year’s Day 2023, with more thoughts about Ukraine, and re. the continuing “Jack Monroe” storm

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Ukraine

We are constantly fed an NWO/ZOG msm narrative about how “Ukraine” (the Kiev regime) is “defeating Russia”. Is it true?

What would “Ukraine defeating Russia” look like, ultimately? Presumably, in that scenario, all Russian forces would be forced to leave behind not only the pre-2022 borders of Ukraine but also the Crimea, the population of which is at least 85% Russian and only a few percent Ukrainian now (there are also Crimean Tatars and others).

So, in that scenario, Russia would have been driven back into its own unargued territory, and kept there by Ukrainian/Kiev-regime military might. Is there any logic at all to that?

Russia is, of course, famously the largest country in the world, over six and a half million square miles, so about 72 times the size of the whole of the UK, and 29 times the size of Ukraine (even including Crimea and the Donbass). A country which covers one-eighth of the landmass of the entire planet.

Russia has a population of over 144 million (147 million if Crimea is included); Ukraine had 41 million people (excluding Crimea) in 2021, before the Russian invasion or incursion, but about 20% of the population of Ukraine (I suspect the relatively affluent layer) has fled beyond Ukraine, so the real population, at present, is perhaps 30 million.

Russia has, therefore, almost five times the population of Ukraine.

Russia’s economy may not be booming, now that Western (NWO/ZOG) sanctions have hit hard, but it is still functioning. Russia is getting huge amounts from oil and gas (and mineral) sales, and has, of course, no problem with generating electricity. Russia’s domestic agriculture has actually been stimulated by the Western sanctions which prohibit import and export.

Compare that to Ukraine— it has very limited sources of fuel of all kinds, its electricity generating and distribution capacity is being smashed, possibly beyond easy repair, its industry is scarcely operational, and its agriculture is unable to export easily.

Even before the invasion/incursion of 2022, Wikipedia noted that “Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe by nominal GDP per capita.”

The only material advantage that Ukraine has is that the Kiev regime is in receipt of enormous amounts of Western aid: arms, ammunition, military transport, food, clothing, medical supplies, and money.

There is no suggestion that Ukrainian forces can either invade or destroy Russian territory or cities. There can, likewise, be no suggestion that Ukrainian forces will actually topple Putin or the existing Russian Government (unless obliquely— e.g. should a coup d’etat take place).

The most that the Ukrainian forces can do, the peak of their realistic ambition, would be to expel all Russian forces from the pre-2014 Ukrainian borders, and then dig in, in effect.

Russia’s war aims have never been openly or clearly expressed in a manner that makes any sense, but part of them would be the necessity to demilitarize Ukraine, something that is now impossible without Russian control over the bulk of the territory, including Kiev.

Under other circumstances, Russia might now be sitting on the entire eastern half of Ukraine (ie Ukraine east of the Dnieper), but “we are where we are”, in the tiresome phrase.

As I predicted would happen on the blog months ago, Russian forces have recently been trying to think outside the box by applying “oblique warfare”, targeting the electricity production and generating system deep inside Ukraine, using missiles and drones.

While the Kiev-regime forces have supposedly been downing most of the attacking missiles, the ones that are getting through have been smashing the electrical system of Ukraine to pieces. What next? Possibly the railway network.

Russia is said to be mobilizing more troops, possibly with the idea of a mass assault on Kiev next summer.

Unless a peace treaty or armistice can be agreed and executed, the war can only escalate. However, Russia can only “win” this ghastly mess of a war by taking Kiev and toppling the present Kiev regime.

The “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” story rolls on

See also: https://tattle.life/wiki/jack-monroe/. Very eye-opening. One could even call it “devastating”.

Hard to see why anyone not very feeble-minded would send money to “Jack Monroe” after reading that Tattle Life exposé . Surprising, therefore, to see that no fewer than 647 utter mugs are still sending her £3.50-£44 monthly, a total of between £2,265 and £28,468, each and every month. “A nice little earner“, in the estuary argot, even if the actual total amount sent is nearer to —at a guess— maybe £6,000 or £7,000 a month rather than the maximum. Probably taxfree as well.

I have no idea whether the Essex Police, Metropolitan Police, trading standards officers, or fundraising regulators are “on the case” or not. If not, though, why not?

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/dec/31/mikhail-bulgakov-museum-kyiv-calls-to-close

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/30/gerry-adams-docklands-bombing-declassified-documents

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11588913/Rooms-honouring-Sir-Hubert-Parry-elite-Royal-College-Music-renamed.html

The composer of Jerusalem has been effectively ‘cancelled’ by the Royal College of Music (RCM) because his views on race a century ago are unacceptably offensive to today’s woke students, The Mail on Sunday understands.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Parry]

There will be a real race/culture/religion war somewhere down the line.

London. Zoo.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/31/man-stabbed-to-death-in-peckham-rye-park-south-london.

Peckham Rye Park, by Peckham Rye where William Blake supposedly saw an angel in a tree about 200 or so years ago [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peckham_Rye]

I have also been there (in the 1980s). Just as well that Blake and I do not walk around that part of London now; we might get stabbed by some untermensch, almost certainly non-white.

I recall having a beer at the Clock House pub once, in the late 1980s.

[The Clock House pub, Peckham Rye]

Tweets seen

Peter Hitchens’ column is worth publishing in full:

What a twisted society we have become. We stir up wars in other people’s countries and praise ourselves for doing it. 

But there is no political reward for protecting our own people against crime and disorder on their streets and in their homes. It is no longer clear if anyone is governing the country at all, so busy are we putting other nations to rights.

Burglaries go unprevented, uninvestigated and unpunished, in colossal numbers. Our capital city seethes with uncontrolled knife crime and stinks of marijuana.

Christmas brings news of terrible ultra-violent crimes in supposedly peaceful suburban areas. Migrants stride boldly ashore in unknown numbers. We pay heavy taxes for pitiful services, cratered roads and a health system that is the envy of nobody.

Yet, nothing happens about all this. The surest way to gain praise in politics is to make simple-minded statements about a crisis abroad and demand that we send bombs and shells to some strife-torn state, or actually bomb it ourselves.

The idea that such things are often complicated and dangerous, and may do harm, has faded from view. When Prime Minister Anthony Eden dragged us into his disastrous attack on Egypt in 1956, the entire country was bitterly divided. And rightly so. The archives, when they were opened, showed that the adventure was based on lies, futile and doomed.

When the USA sank up to its waist in the bloody mud of Vietnam in the 1960s, the whole world was at odds. Once again, now that the truth is revealed, we know that thousands of brave men died, and many more thousands of innocent civilians were killed, because of a mistake.

But since the Blair revolution of 1997, pious, allegedly virtuous foreign crusades have come back into fashion. Criticising them gets you into trouble. There is only one permitted view. Few go back to find out how things actually went.

The Kosovo episode, for instance, did not bring paradise to that part of the world. Nor did the Iraq invasion. I know most people now pretend to have been against it at the time but as one who actually was against it at the time, I can assure you that they are mistaken. It had wide support. The same goes for the daft adventures in Afghanistan and Libya.

In fact, the last three did so much harm that it will never be measured. Together they began the era of mass migration from the Middle East and Africa to Western Europe. This is probably the biggest event in human history since the First World War, and perhaps bigger.

How can we do all this stamping about in foreign countries when we are so bad at governing our own and also not very strong? Our country doesn’t work properly. You can’t even see a doctor. The police are equally invisible. Our Army is as tiny as our debts are huge. Our grandest new warship, the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, has broken down. Even when it works, we have to borrow aircraft from the Americans to fly off it.

None of this will be properly discussed at the rapidly approaching General Election and nobody will stand in that poll who prefers reforming Britain to foreign policy fantasy abroad. Why do we put up with it?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11588573/PETER-HITCHENS-stir-trouble-foreign-countries-run-own.html

My rhetorical answer to Hitchens’ rhetorical question? This:

“The British/English people do not rebel against all of the above, not yet anyway, because they are bombarded with propaganda brainwashing 24/7, because few have either the independence of thought, or the (real) education, to stand against the tide, and because the “plebs” think that all that matters, or that the main matter of importance, is whether the “England” sports teams (which are now largely black or brown anyway) win some meaningless game, match, or tournament somewhere or other in the world.”

That, and because those in political life, those of great wealth, those in the mainstream media, who should all be protecting the people, are exactly those who, from malice, evil, or just sheer inability and lack of basic competence (as with “Boris”-idiot, Liz Truss, Woollyhead Trussbanger —Kwasi Kwarteng— etc), are encouraging migration-invasion of this country, are letting standards and services slide, and are preventing —by ever more repressive laws— even obviously justified criticism from being made. They are, in effect, signed up to the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan

http://adam.curry.com/art/1543753587_mkXBrvrY.html

[the odd link immediately above now seems to be the only one for the interesting Western Spring article].

Incidentally, I see that the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday is now, yet again, refusing to allow its readers to comment on Hitchens’ column, no doubt afraid that the readers will leave comments hostile to mass immigration, migration-invasion, “intervention” in foreign wars or countries, or even (could it be?) comments hostile to the Zelensky Jew-Zionist regime in Kiev…

More tweets seen

More music

[Warwick Castle]

More tweets

Ha ha! Brilliant! Goed gedaan!

Interesting. I only saw that tweet today.

There are also other areas of society where there is a need for equity and justice.

Undeclared social nationalists in the right places, e.g. within the legal or “justice” system, could do a lot of good.

Late music

Diary Blog, 27 December 2022, including discussion about Twitter and the “Covid” “panicdemic”

Morning music

[Lincoln’s Inn, London, the vault under the Chapel, itself consecrated 1623, twenty years after the death of Elizabeth I]

On this day a year ago

Temps perdu

Some years ago, I noted on the blog that my old head of chambers, one M.B., a pretty good civil barrister, had been appointed to the office of Circuit Judge. Now I see that no fewer than three other fellow-members of the same chambers (now and for some time joined with another set under a new name) have also received judicial preferment.

The first, one “R.P.”, was, as I recall him from over 15 years ago, a small and rather dapper man, maybe about 40 at that time, unfailingly polite, who had been a magistrates’ court clerk for many years, and had written a very well-received book on sentencing, as well as (and I only saw that today) several other books on law and procedure. Someone both erudite and modest, a good combination.

I see just now (thanks to the Internet) that R.P. is 56-57.

R.P., a man so modest and self-effacing that I know nothing about him on the personal level, despite having been in the same chambers as him for at least a couple of years (I was there 2002-2008, he for not so long), was (if I recall aright) nominally a “pupil” at first, having been previously a solicitor (again, if I recall correctly); as said, he had spent years as a magistrates’ clerk.

R. P. is therefore now “His Honour Judge R.P.” and has been, as they say, “deployed” to the North East as a Circuit Judge. In the old days, pre-1970s, people would practice almost entirely on one circuit, such as Western Circuit, Midland and Oxford etc, and if granted judicial preferment, would be appointed, almost always, on that Circuit. Now, however, they can be sent anywhere within England and Wales.

The other two appointments seen by me were those affecting two people who were, like R.P., both pupils of M.B. twenty-odd years ago. When I knew them, they were both in their early twenties, so must be about 45 now. Let us call them, in the manner of M.R. James, “JB” and “AW”.

J.B, a pleasant-enough fellow, and rather likeable, albeit no intellectual (if I recall aright), and who came from an affluent family (his father is or was a businessman involved in trade with China), has been appointed both as an employment judge (i.e. at the Employment Tribunal) and also as a Deputy District Judge (which is same level, really, as a full District Judge, but only sitting for 15-50 days per year).

As for A.W., I recall him as a serious and bearded young man, bordering however on the humourless (admittedly, I only spoke with him a few times); intelligent, and who, with his wife (whom I never met), actually played music live at least once on either BBC Radio 3 or BBC Radio 4 at that time, i.e. about 16-17 years ago.

A.W. is apparently appointed District Judge as of early January 2023, and has been deployed to Worthing in West Sussex.

Such appointments as District Judge etc may seem minor (there are c.400 full District Judges in England and Wales) but actually such jobs are not badly-paid— about £114,000 p.a. at time of writing (Circuit Judges get more, about £145,000).

I can see why barristers often apply for such jobs. They carry none of the uncertainty which can be part and parcel of being a barrister, such as where the next brief will come from; also (for barristers of a certain age) there is the attraction of a generous pension scheme, something unknown to the Bar (unless you pay out for a private one). Also, the judge (at any level) does not have the need to travel much, if at all, whereas a barrister in a provincial set can travel extensively.

When I myself was in London as a practising barrister (early/mid 1990s), almost all my cases were within London itself (often at the High Court, a shortish No. 6 bus, or a taxi, ride from my then home in Little Venice); but when I was based in Exeter in 2002-2008 (and living 50 miles west of there, on the Cornwall-Devon border), I sometimes had to travel as far north as Manchester, and as far east as London, Cambridge, Brighton etc. 600-mile roundtrips. I even made the odd overseas journey, though admittedly that also happened when I lived in London.

Always interesting to see what is happening over time to those whom I knew in the past.

Finally, I should add that I have no idea whether those I used to know, and who have been appointed to the judiciary, are freemasons. Possibly. Not impossible, anyway, thinking back to when I knew them, and thinking about what I do know of them.

Tweets seen

…and in Oxford Street, London, Jews danced in a circle, guarded by police and “CST” “minders”. An expression of Jew-Zionist supremacism.

Why did no-one shoot him, or just run over the bastard in a car? We always hear so-called “Christians” droning about “turning the other cheek” but what about “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you” [Matthew 7-6]?

Covid “panicdemic”

Well, there it is. Proof that hugely loss-making Twitter was both (as I speculated years ago on the blog) acting as an intelligence-collecting system for NWO/ZOG, and also proof that —time and again— the overall public debate or discussion in the “online forum” or “online public space” is —and in the case of Twitter, especially, was— being twisted by Twitter staff (etc); also offline (by the usual msm suspects). The “online public space“, as I termed it on the blog, as well as in my 2017 talk offline, at the now-defunct London Forum— with others later imitating my language and reasoning.

What at first surprised me slightly, years ago, was that I could see that the usual crowd of “human rights” lawyers, bien-pensants, “liberal” msm types, anti-censorship loudmouths, pseudo-socialists etc (many, but by no means all, Jews) were in fact perfectly OK with a secretive transnational finance-capital offshoot such as Twitter censoring dissenting views, and/or “deplatforming” dissidents and/or persons labelled “neo-Nazi” etc.

The mask of Evil has slipped a little as regards Twitter, but remains firmly in place in respect of other online and offline platforms.

This is not just about the Covid “panicdemic”. It applies also to other matters, especially the constant Coudenhove-Kalergi propaganda being blasted out across the TV, radio, newspapers etc.

I happened to see a copy of Vogue magazine the other day, not my usual reading material. Flicking through it for a few seconds, I noticed that almost every photo and report was basically about blacks, and pushing blacks forward, to an almost unbelievable extent. No one is going to tell me that that is simply about making money for the publishers. There is something more behind it all. See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/12/10/tv-ads-and-soaps-are-the-propaganda-preferred-by-the-system-in-the-uk/.

Returning to “Covid”, I see that the Chinese Government has now turned its massive state repression machinery into reverse, and almost overnight dismantled the “Covid” police state measures. According to Sky News in the UK, that has meant an increase in “cases” (whether labelled “influenza” or “Covid”-this-or-that. Of course.

The stupid “lockdowns” isolate people. When they have to be released (because to shut down society and economy indefinitely is unsustainable, impossible) naturally their immune systems have been weakened. “Lockdowns” were always the wrong policy, not only from the economic point of view (look at the UK, for example) but from the strict health point of view as well.

While on the subject of Twitter, I see that it continues to omit the (only-recently-dropped) “Latest” tweets column on any given subject or subject-name searched for. This really weakens the usefulness of Twitter.

Late tweets

I have blogged in the past week about the poor standard on Christmas University Challenge, and again below.

That sign was still the ethos at Blackwell’s in the 1970s, when I asked for a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, sat at a table reading it for a long time, then left without buying it, and still got a cheery goodbye from the staff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum

Christmas University Challenge

Again, two dispiriting performances from the alumni teams (Cardiff v. Bristol), who displayed the ignorance which has been the hallmark of the series both last year and this year, and which by now I actually expect.

One who at least attempted to answer, though usually wrongly, was Dominic Waghorn of the Bristol alumni team, of whom I see that Wikipedia says this:

Dominic David Waghorn (born 1968, Lambeth),[1] is a British journalist who is the Diplomatic Editor of Sky News and presenter of the channel’s weekly international affairs analysis programme World View. He was before that US Correspondent of Sky News, the 24-hour television news service operated by Sky Television, part of British Sky Broadcasting. He is based at Sky News’ Washington Bureau. He was formerly Sky News’ Asia Correspondent, based in Beijing and Middle East Correspondent, based in Jerusalem. He became Sky News’ US Correspondent in 2011.”

[Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Waghorn]

That reads well, on paper, but that supposed “expert” not only failed to identify Volgograd as the “new” (since 1961) name for the city of Stalingrad, even after prompting from Jeremy Paxman, but then compounded his error by venturing “Voronezh?“, a city about 360 miles away, and in a different part of Russia.

There were several other errors by Waghorn and worse ones by others (those who actually tried to answer any questions at all).

The problem I have with these well-known and/or “celebrity” contestants is not only that their general-knowledge levels are, indeed, generally abysmal, but also a. that they are all people paid plenty of money by society as a whole, partly by reason of their supposedly “elite” education, and b. that those working in msm current affairs are delivering misinformation to the public on subjects such as Ukraine, European politics, and the “Covid” “panicdemic”.

Tweets seen about the show:

Good point (especially as I practically never get a popular music question right…).

Ha ha! That must be intended as good-humoured satire, surely? (from one of the subject’s colleagues on Sky News). Waghorn even failed to get right a fairly easy question about which seas were mentioned in Churchill’s famous post-WW2 speech at Fulton, Missouri, which brought the term “iron curtain” into popular speech (though Churchill had lifted the term from Schwerin von Krosigk, unless it was a simple co-incidence).

The seas in the question were Baltic and Adriatic, not (as Waghorn said) the Adriatic Sea and Black Sea. The other team also got that one wrong, incidentally, citing Baltic and Atlantic.

To be fair on him, Waghorn did get a few other questions right.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain#Churchill_speech; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutz_Graf_Schwerin_von_Krosigk.

Late music

[painting by Joyce Norwood]

Diary Blog, 18 December 2022

Morning music

[Tiger tanks advance, Ukraine, 1943]

On this day a year ago

Tweets seen

Once again, a “mug” imagining that “Jack Monroe” somehow “helps” the “vulnerable” by having 643 other mugs pay her between £3.50 and £44 a month into her personal bank account(s).

True up to a point. I spent time in Poland and (to a very limited extent) elsewhere in the East of Europe in 1988 and 1989. Unfortunately, many people in Eastern Europe and Russia, after 1989, found that they had just exchanged one big boss-tyrant (the socialist State) for lots of little bosses (finance-capitalists).

The idea that a sovereign state is like an ordinary person, and its finances like those of Mrs. Thatcher’s “housewife’s shopping basket” is absurd yet now ingrained in the public mind.

“New Zealand Secret Intelligence Service”. What a joke, even without that horrible ugly woman who is apparently their Chief.

I blogged about the UK version of this “woke” police state system (inc. “Prevent” and “Channel”) over four years ago: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/05/30/one-mans-extremism-is-another-mans-struggle-for-liberty-and-justice/.

Late tweets

Surely the Essex Police should also be investigating the several alleged frauds complained of?

Does the Oregon medical profession allow its members to incite harm like that? Seems anti-Hippocratic, apart from anything else.

https://www.oregon.gov/omb/investigations/pages/how-to-file-a-complaint.aspx.

This is not so much a “criminal” problem as it is an existential demographic problem. Britain must become a white European country again, no matter what.

To suggest, as Carl Benjamin/”Sargon of Akkad” does, that the solution is something as trivial as corporal punishment (even assuming that the untermenschen are actually identified, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced) is a typical “Conservative-nationalist” or semi-nationalist “libertarian” non-solution.

Late music

Diary Blog, 11 December 2022

Morning music

[view of Berchtesgaden, Bavaria]

On this day a year ago

On the blog 5 years ago

More music

[SS-men take the oath of loyalty at the Feldherrnhalle, Munich]

Tweets seen

It is a strange fact that the Scottish tabloids are even more treacherous, even less truthful, than those of England. That may be because both the pro-Israel and/or Jewish element(s) and the freemasonic element is very strongly embedded in Scotland.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kriss_Donald.

The time may yet come, and have to come, when every white person of, or over, the age of 28 (and who is not on record as a criminal) will be entitled by law to carry a standard firearm, such as an automatic pistol; however, any untermenschen doing so will face the most rigorous penalties.

Thus will public order be preserved.

Our whole advanced —if often misled and misguided— society is living on borrowed time.

So there are anyway 40 MPs out of 650 who may have a few redeeming features. Still far less than a tenth of the bastards, though.

All change

I wrote a piece on the blog some months ago about my impressions of London as it now is compared to when I lived there (intermittently from 1976 to 1998): see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/06/30/diary-blog-30-june-2022-including-impressions-of-a-trip-to-dystopian-london/.

Today, I took to Google Earth again (I find it quite addictive) to look at the area between Little Venice, where I lived for many years, and the Edgware Road Flyover. Huge changes.

The old “top security” Paddington Green police station by the flyover is closed down and presumably to be redeveloped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddington_Green_Police_Station.

A few steps away, a huge new development of rental apartments. I think that there were little shops and restaurants about 2 or 3 storeys high along Edgware Road, previously.

For such a central location, not too bad, aesthetically, but not cheap. The cheapest apartments come in at well over £2,000 a month, and many are £4,000 or more.

Actually, if anything an improvement on the tacky two or three-storey buildings previously there.

I notice that several old pubs have gone, including long-derelict-looking The Maida, where Edgware Road becomes Maida Vale (avenue). As blogged on a previous occasion, that pub, whose now-gone sign also said “Sir John Stuart, the Hero of Maida” (a general of the Peninsular War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart,_Count_of_Maida) is now no more, though the name “Hero of Maida” has been taken up by a new gastropub in another part of Maida Vale (area).

The original pub was the one after which the whole area, and that part of the A5 road, was named.

Another old pub has become a Moroccan restaurant, “Dar Marrakesh”.

The “Arab” part of Edgware Road, which at one time was the stretch between Marble Arch and the Flyover, has now spread further north as far as the start of Maida Vale avenue: Arabic shopfronts, ethnic food shops, shisha lounges etc. I have to admit though that, overall, Edgware Road actually looks better than it once did.

I notice that the old Metropolitan Cafe, which was opposite the police station and, presumably, named either after the police or perhaps the equally-nearby Metropolitan Line Underground station , is now a small convenience store. Another cafe-casualty has evidently been the 1930s cafe further along the road, which retained its original styling until at least the late 1990s, when I last consumed egg and chips therein.

I notice that there are more trees now, and that some that did exist 25 years ago are now quite grown.

I wonder what that area, and others, will look like in 2122. Perhaps they will resemble the destroyed ancient cities now visited by tourists visiting the countries around the Mediterranean.

More tweets

Exactly. “They” (((they))) are the number one problem. Most other problems stem from “them” and “their” influence and activities.

…especially —though admittedly not exclusively— those run by “grifting” West Indians such as Shaun Bailey, who is still a member of the London Assembly, and who nearly became Mayor of London: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Bailey_(London_politician)#Career_before_politics.

I would cite, also, “charities” such as the Jo Cox Foundation, and political so-called “charities” such as the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”], run by a handful of Jew-Zionists largely actuated by malice.

Late music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ladmirault]

Diary Blog, 10 December 2022

Morning music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geirr_Tveitt]

On this day a year ago

On the blog 5 years ago

Saturday quiz

Well, 6/10 this week, thus again beating political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10.

I did not know the answers to questions 4, 5, and 8; I also could not recall the surname of the playwright at question 9 (though I got the first name), so disallowed myself that point too.

Tweets seen

It is hard enough to beat a human grandmaster. In 1971 (I think), I took part in the Marlow International Chess Tournament, held in a school at Marlow, Buckinghamshire on a weekend in July. I camped in the grounds.

I took part in a “simultaneous exhibition”, in which a famous and very strong player takes on a number of others; in this case me and 19 others against Jana Hartston, a women’s grandmaster, former Czech women’s champion, and also (being then married to William Hartston, himself a grandmaster) British Women’s Champion.

I decided that I had no chance against her, so rather than trying to play seriously, started with a few conventional moves followed by an outrageously oblique one (not thought through at all). The result was mildly comical: the serious and youngish woman (she was herself only ~24 at the time; I was, I think, still 14) came swiftly around the rectangle of desks, each housing a chessboard. When she came for the third or fourth time to me, I made my move.

Madame Hartston paused, evidently puzzled for a moment, then made a swift move before moving on. I tried the same tactic again the next time round, but she barely paused.

I was checkmated after about 20 moves, if that, and was the second player to be beaten by her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jana_Bellin; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hartston.

In the main tournament, I also fared badly, not lasting very long before being knocked out.

The view from Woollyhead Trussbanger

More tweets

Well, “a week is a long time [etc]”…and the betting market is often wrong on political events and predictions.

One factor in former Conservative Party voters refusing to vote Con (or at all) is the continuing migration-invasion, about which the present hopeless Government is either doing nothing, or actually encouraging.

…and the North London police…

Migration-invasion continues

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522837/Opportunistic-investors-buy-cheap-buildings-house-asylum-seekers.html

More tweets

The dystopian dictatorship is already starting to happen: Laura Towler, Sam Melia, Mark Collett and others (most but not all from the Patriotic Alternative group) were told a year or more ago that their banks (major “high street” banks) were unwilling to continue to offer them (as individuals, not merely as “Patriotic Alternative”) any banking services. The (Jewish) fix was in, in short. The banks had been pressured by Jew-Zionist orgs to close them down, not only as a group but quite specifically as individuals.

Indeed. Look at the big picture. As recently as 20 years or so ago, Britain was still 90% white. Even a decade ago, it was about 85% white. The latest figures show 80%.

Now add to that the destruction of potentially very useful infrastructure such as power stations, military camps and airfields (over the past 30 years), railways and rail track (for about 70 years).

Add to the above the dumbing-down of education generally (primary, secondary, tertiary), and where do we see our society going? Straight down.

The callous or cruel destruction of the Welfare State

…and those responsible in the past (eg Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, Esther McVey etc) and in the present, at all levels, remain unpunished.

There is so much wrong with the country now that only social-national revolution can save what is worth saving, help those in need of help, reform that which requires reform, and punish the wrongdoers.

Late tweets

London. Zoo.

Late music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Atterberg]