Notre Dame, which as I write is still ablaze, is of course at the very heart of Paris and, metaphorically, France too. One could point to other buildings in that latter regard, perhaps the Sainte-Chapelle, the Sacre-Coeur, the Cathedral at Rheims, or even that of Chartres, but Notre-Dame symbolizes Paris, or did, until the secular landmark of the Eiffel Tower was constructed.
Like millions of visitors to Paris, I have been inside Notre-Dame a couple of times (as I have the Sainte-Chapelle, and the Sacre-Coeur with its unique atmosphere and where a Mass is continuously performed, 24 hours a day).
Sometimes, the burning of, e.g., a great building, is considered a symbolic event, marking a great change. One thinks of the Burning of Rome, the later Sack of Rome, the destruction of the great ancient Library of Alexandria, the Great Fire of London etc. In more modern times there was the deliberate burning of both the First Goetheanum in Switzerland (see Notes, below) and the Reichstag in Berlin.
Other catastrophic events can be —or be seen as— historically, politically or socially significant. When the Herald of Free Enterprise sank, in 1987, the very name made me wonder whether the era of “Thatcherism” was drawing to a close. It was. On a smaller scale, there was even speculation, at the time of the Marchioness disaster of 1989, as to the sociological meaning of it, if any (because so many well-heeled families in London, it was said, knew or were acquainted with one or more of the 51 people drowned and/or others on board).
Are these events causally connected in some way with the movement of history, or is it that human beings, having perhaps a premonition of coming events, attach meaning to large fires and other disasters? Was the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 somehow connected with the events that hit the British Royal Family in 1992 and in the years after the Queen’s annus horribilis? It was certainly the case that, after hundreds were crushed to death at Khodinka Field while celebrating the crowning of Nikolai II in 1896, the “simple people” thought it a bad omen. Were they wrong?
France is facing an existential crisis still not fully accepted as such by most. The influx of Algerians, Tunisians and black Africans since the 1960s became a flood, a disastrous flood, many years ago.
France and particularly Paris is now under siege from those of non-European descent, some of which may have been born and (semi) educated in France, but who are, except in language (and sometimes even in that way) alien.
An extremely high proportion of the population of France (at least 30%) is now non-European, and that situation is worsening. At the same time, there is a pushback by the (real) French via the Gilets Jaunes movement and via support for Marine le Pen.
“President” Macron, a complete puppet of the Jewish lobby and New World Order, has instituted a “Zionist Occupation Government” in France via his pop-up “party” (facade), En Marche, which consists of random people from nowhere who were recruited almost overnight, thanks to funding from secretive sources.
Macron’s expressed policies are to ruin the French way of life and French society, and to put in its place a globalized bastard-American culture. His secret policies (the policies of those behind Macron) are no doubt worse yet. He has allowed yet more hordes of non-Europeans to flood into France. Paris itself has become a poubelle (dustbin) compared to what it was only a few decades ago.
I hope that some of Notre Dame can be saved. I wonder whether France can be, and what it might take to do it.
“Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars” [Novalis]
I was just reading the blog of some Mancunian of whom I was unaware until today. I found his blog interesting despite his (to my mind, rather silly) pro-EU and (evident from his Twitter output) pro-immigration views.
His blog tells of how he and his family were immune from the mass hysteria all around after the death of Princess Diana. I found that interesting, partly because it echoes what I heard from people who were in London when it happened, in 1997 (the actual death was on 31 August 1997). I heard tales of pubs full of blubbing drinkers (days after the actual death), people who did not smile or even look normal in the streets, crowds treating Harrods department store (owned by Mohammed Fayed, the father of the last of Diana’s known lovers, Dodi Fayed) as if it were a shrine, taking flowers there etc.
In fact, I had seen the evidence of that last, because I had been to Harrods to buy a raincoat. I myself was not in England at the time of what I call the Diana Death Hysteria. I was then living in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Only about 70 English/British people lived in Almaty in 1997 (I know that because I had quite close contact with the small British Embassy and in fact visited the Embassy fairly frequently).
I did not have satellite TV and was unaware of the fact that Diana had died until 2 days later, when a colleague told me about it on Monday morning (the death having occurred on the weekend). I was later told that I was pretty much the only British person who had not gone to the Embassy to sign a book of condolence opened by the staff there.
On my return to London a few weeks later, I needed to buy a raincoat (it scarcely ever rains heavily in Almaty), so headed to Harrods in a taxi. When we approached the store, I noticed what seemed to be piles of trash outside Harrods, piled against crowd barriers. I asked the driver what that rubbish was doing there (to me it was reminiscent of the scenes seen during the 1979 “Winter of Discontent”, when rubbish went uncollected) but the driver replied, “that isn’t rubbish, Sir, it’s flower tributes for Princess Diana”. Well…
The phenomenon of mass hysteria or collective grief and/or jubilation has tended to pass me by. I also missed the mass celebrations for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 because, again, I was at the time overseas and incommunicado (in Rhodesia). Those who experienced either or both have found it hard to explain what exactly happened to (other) people (I can only assume that my own connections and associates are a hard-bitten lot!).
I am no psychologist (or psychiatrist) but have some tentative theories, revolving around emotional triggers in the population. I have wondered whether such mass emotionalism could be harnessed for the public good in future. In the past, a usually more restrained type of emotionalism bound the British people together. In the 20th Century, that involved devices such as the Union flag, shared “experiences” (even if in reality never actually experienced by many of those emotionally affected), such as the two World Wars, the Poppy Day commemorations, noted historical events and people (such as Nelson, Trafalgar, Wellington and Waterloo, Richard the Lionheart, Florence Nightingale, Robin Hood), music such as “For those in peril on the sea“, the National Anthem, “There’ll Always Be An England” etc. A patriotic and historical pastiche, certainly, neither comprehensive nor even particularly accurate in parts, but true enough and simple enough to bind a people together.
Today, the UK population is so fragmented in terms of race, ethnicity, language, age, (what passes for) “ideology”, culture, even sexual orientation or display, that it is hard to imagine them coming together in collective grief (false or otherwise) or jubilation today. I suppose that some would point to football or cricket games, the Olympics etc, but these are minority interests, despite the large number interested.
If one talks to people, or watches the often incredibly ignorant TV quiz contestants, it is realized that many (and by no means always the “blacks and browns”) know next to nothing of British history, literature, music, or even basic geography. Their world is not even a post-1945 one, but a post-2000 one of X-Factor persons, “soaps”, “celebrities” of whom I at least have never heard, music which is either banal or simply noise.
It may be that the Diana mood of 1997 was an elegiac lament for a Britain —or more accurately an England— which was on the point of disappearing (and now has disappeared).
A couple of days ago, I needed to buy a new mouse for my laptop computer and also to ask advice on a technical issue. I decided to go to a PC World outlet about 15 miles from where I now live. The PC World store was outside a small town on the coast of Southern England. I was there by 0900 hrs, its opening time. A routine matter, of course, but I felt that I should blog, briefly, about it because it confirmed some of what I have been saying online for years.
There was only one other customer in the large hangar-like store at nine in the morning. I was greeted on going to the service desk by a youngish blonde woman who looked rather fed up. I feared that she would be surly or unhelpful. I could not have been more wrong.
The woman, who was not as young as she looked (she turned out to have a daughter aged 16; well, the police now also look young to me…) dealt with my technical question in a matter of seconds (completely correctly, it later transpired). She also directed me to the part of of the store which displayed “mice”. I chose one, brought it back and, the store now being empty, was told that I could pay for it there at the enquiries desk rather than going to a check-out. I did that.
It might be asked at this point why I am bothering to write about this? Well, I ended up having a chat with the blonde woman employee who had been so useful and helpful, and what she said was very concerning. I don’t know why she confided in me, whom she had only just met, except that people often do. They seem to divine that I can keep a secret, for one thing, though that does not apply in this case. I think that people also know that I want to help if I can.
The blonde woman worked full-time in the PC World store, but lived in a housing association property and received Housing Benefit to pay for the rent or part of the rent. That alone confirmed some of my expressed views over the years. Here she was, in a full-time job, and moreover one which actually required some skill and knowledge, which job she was doing really competently too (as I myself saw), yet was unable to pay her modest rent (after all, this was a housing association property) out of her pay!
Now this is just plain wrong. Here we have a large chain, part of a group (Dixons Carphone, formerly Dixons Group) which, in the financial year 2017-2018, made (pre-tax) profits of £382 million, yet is not paying its staff enough so that they can even pay their domestic rent! Instead, PC World relies on the State to stump up monies (Housing Benefit and also, perhaps, Working Tax Credit— I did not talk to the woman in such detail).
In other words, the profits of the employer are being bolstered by the State, meaning taxpayers (and including, at least via National Insurance and VAT etc, the employee herself in this case).
Previous visits to PC World had been far less satisfactory. That woman had made the difference, yet was struggling to survive. When will British businesses realize that they are only as good as their employees, at all levels?
There is something wrong about a system or society in which the pay received by an employee for full-time work is not enough to allow her even to pay her rent.
Further, I was told that, because the Housing Benefit was delayed by a few days, routinely, the woman had fallen into arrears and, though the arrears were always only in existence for a few days, the Housing Association had taken her to court at least once and, as a result, she had had to pay £100-something in court costs and also a financial impost of about the same to the Housing Association! This surely must be seen as unfair and unjust.
The woman also told me that her daughter was autistic (I do not know, of course, to what extent) and had been getting Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in respect of that. Recently, the daughter had reached the age of 16. As a result, she had been forced off DLA and forced to undertake a “test” for “Personal Independence Payment” or PIP [off-piste, someone must one day do a sketch on the vulgar cheesy names for such things: “Personal Independence Payment”, “Jobseeker’s Allowance”, “Job Centre” etc].
The daughter had, subsequently, been awarded nothing. So suddenly, this girl, long diagnosed as autistic, had now, despite the diagnosis and her previously accepted status, been cut off from State funds by reason only of a change in policy by government (Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and the jew “lord” Freud, Esther McVey, not to mention David Gauke and Chris Grayling etc).
I went away from that encounter at PC World thinking about how unjust and in fact how simply inefficient the system in the UK is, in that instead of a person being able to work and provide for herself and her daughter and/or get help from the State in a simple manner, she (a useful member of society at that) was being made anxious and being forced to jump through hoops in order to survive.
The present system is not efficient, is callous and unfair and is a complicated maze. Hopeless. Parliament is hopeless. “Democracy” (as we know it) is hopeless. The MPs and “peers” are hopeless. Business is not pulling its weight. The people are not only not being helped but are being impeded unnecessarily by the overall system in which they live and work.
I have thought for a week or so before writing this. As one would expect, there has been an outpouring of virtue-signalling (accompanied by State repression or threats thereof) not seen since the Anders Breivik event in Norway eight years ago. I wanted to write not only about the Christchurch shooting itself, and about the perpetrator, but also about surrounding events and the overall context. I also want to examine the moral and ethical aspects.
Firearms
There are many mass shootings in the world. The USA alone seems to have one on a weekly if not daily basis (and those are only the ones which are reported heavily). The anti-gun lobby focusses on ease of access in the USA, New Zealand etc. Obviously, if a disturbed (or other) person cannot acquire firearms, then he cannot shoot people; he can, however, stab them, blow them up, drive at them etc.
Firearms events have more victims, usually. Having said that, one could say “ban cars, because some people misuse them”, to which the answer would no doubt come, “people need cars, they don’t need guns”. Well, true, though still arguable. It all depends on where society decides to draw the line. In the UK, since the late 1990s, it has been almost impossible to own lawfully-held firearms (except shotguns and, in some cases, certain types of hunting rifle). That was not always the case.
“Members of the public may own sporting rifles and shotguns, subject to licensing, but handguns were effectively banned after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996 with the exception of Northern Ireland. Dunblane was the UK’s first and only school shooting. There has been one spree killing since Dunblane, the Cumbria shootings in June 2010, which involved a shotgun and a .22 calibre rifle, both legally-held. Prior to Dunblane though, there had only been one mass shooting carried out by a civilian in the entire history of Great Britain, which took place in Hungerford on 19 August 1987.” [Wikipedia]
Note that. In the entire history of Great Britain there have only been three mass shootings, yet the government took the opportunity to ban most firearms (at which time there had only been two such events in British history), and did so with the apparent agreement of a majority, probably high, of the general public, most of whom know nothing about firearms, have never so much as seen one (other than on TV), and who were stampeded by the publicity around the 1996 Dunblane school murders.
At one time, there was little regulation of firearms in the UK:
“Following the assassination of William of Orange in 1584 with a concealed wheellock pistol, Queen Elizabeth I, fearing assassination by Roman Catholics, banned possession of wheellock pistols in England near a royal palace in 1594.[73] There were growing concerns in the 16th century over the use of guns and crossbows. Four acts were imposed to restrict their use in England and Wales.[74]
The Bill of Rights restated the ancient rights of the people to bear arms by reinstating the right of Protestants to have arms after they had been illegally disarmed by James II. It follows closely the Declaration of Rights made in Parliament in February 1689.[75] The Bill of Rights text declares that “That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law”.” [Wikipedia]
“British common law applied to the UK and Australia, and until 1791 to the colonies in North America that became the United States. The right to keep and bear arms had originated in England during the reign of Henry II with the 1181 Assize of Arms, and developed as part of common law.”
Starting in 1903, there were restrictions placed on purchase of certain firearms (mainly pistols), subsequent Acts of 1920, 1937, 1968 and 1988 tightening the law in other respects too.
It is worth noting that, following the two 1997 Acts, which effectively banned private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) and required surrender of thus-affected weapons, 57,000 people (0.1% of the population) handed in 162,000 weapons and 700 tons of ammunition! In other words, one maniac with a few weapons became the trigger (so to speak) for a law which affected at least 57,000 people all of whom had held and used their weapons peacefully until then!
I personally was not affected by the ban, though I was at one time (mid 1970s/mid 1980s) a member of the Kensington Rifle and Pistol Club in London. In the UK and/or other countries, I have fired a variety of weapons, including the 7.62 R-1 automatic/semi-auto rifle (there was a switch on the side), semi-automatic pistols including the 9mm Browning Hi-Power and numerous others in .32 and .22 calibre, and also revolvers such as the Colt .32, .38 and .357 Magnum, and have handled (overseas and mostly long ago, again in the 1970s and 1980s) others, such as the famous Uzi submachinegun and some Warsaw Pact automatic weapons. Despite that, I am not in fact particularly interested in firearms (or any weapons) and, even in the unlikely event of the 1997 Acts being repealed, would probably not bother to join a gun club. As far as shotguns are concerned, I have used them in Ireland and in England (in England only for clay pigeon, because I disapprove of shooting birds and animals for sport or “fun”). I myself have never privately owned any firearm.
I doubt that many people now even know that there used to be public ranges in England, where for a small fee, people could take their own weapons and fire them. I went once (in 1976) to the one at Dartford (Kent), quite near what was then a (disused?) mental hospital. Now the area is probably either a housing development or perhaps might be the present Dartford Clay Shooting Club, which (I just saw on Google) seems to be at or near the same location (it is not an area that I know, though).
Most British people have never fired nor even seen a firearm and that does tend to colour their reaction.
In the USA, things are of course very different. The old English Common Law right to bear arms is written into the U.S. Constitution, though muddied by the famous words about “a well-regulated militia” etc. Leaving aside the legal and quasi-theological arguments revolving around that Amendment, it always seemed to me when I lived there (in New Jersey) that it was odd for many American states to require people to have a licence to own or at least drive a car, but not a pistol, shotgun or something even more dangerous.
In the UK, people tend to say, “look at the USA: easy ownership of guns and a massacre every week!”, but that has to be set against the fact that tens and probably hundreds of millions of Americans own firearms. Probably the vast majority have never received even the most basic training. True, there are huge numbers of crimes committed with firearms in the USA, but simply banning guns (as in some other countries) is a simplistic solution which might leave American citizens helpless. Societies differ. I met an American lady, a blonde with startlingly blue eyes, in the Caribbean. She said that she had a large silver-plated semi-automatic pistol (I forget the marque), which she kept under her pillow. I never got to see it, by the way!
As far as New Zealand is concerned, its gun ownership laws were lax compared to the UK or even Australia, but huge numbers of New Zealanders (about 5% of the population, 250,000 out of 5 million) own at least one weapon. New Zealand is a country about 10% larger than the UK but with only about 5 million inhabitants. Much of the country is rural. There had never been a massacre there such as the one recently perpetrated in Christchurch by Brenton Tarrant.
First impressions, Muslims in the UK and NZ, the history, the demographics
When the Christchurch attack happened and the news organizations started to report, my first surprise was to hear that New Zealand has 50,000 Muslims living there! That figure may seem small, but is still 1% of the whole population.
In the UK, there were at one time effectively no Muslims, though trade with Muslim lands, evidenced by coins, goes back at least as far as the time of King Offa in the 8th Century. All the same, there were only a few Muslims in England, mostly diplomats, traders etc, for centuries, e.g. in the Tudor and Stuart periods (15th-17thC), until sailors from British India (mostly Bengal) known as lascars started to spend time in ports such as London, Bristol, Liverpool etc in the 19thC. There may have been 10,000 at any one time, but few were permanent residents. The Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle occasionally mention lascars, not infrequently preceded by words such as “rascally”.
The first small mosque in England was built in Woking (Surrey) in 1889 (it’s still there, quite near the railway station), having been built there adjunct to an Islamic burial ground. The first mosque in London only appeared in 1924. By 2007, there had been established 1,500 mosques in the UK! Now, in 2019, the figure is even greater: 1,750 [BBC statistic]. 250 more mosques in little more than a decade…
[please see addendum at foot of this blog post]
As to the population figures, England and Wales had 50,000 Muslims in 1961. That was then around 0.1% of the whole population. A decade later, in 1971, there were 226,000, a quadrupling, then by 1981, 553,000; 1991, 950,000. Doubling every decade at that point. Then 1.6 million in 2001; 2.7 million by 2011 and, a mere three years later in 2014, well over 3 million.
The present number of UK-based Muslims is not officially known but is around 3.5 million.
So in the UK, 50,000 Muslims became (via immigration and births) 3.5 million within little more than half a century. New Zealand has 50,000 now. New Zealand has different immigration and other factors as compared to the UK, but will New Zealand, a land of only 5 million people now, have a population of Muslims alone of 3.5 million by, say, 2075 or 2100? It cannot be dismissed out of hand. At that point, the Muslims would be already dominant even if the general NZ population will by then have grown to, say, 10 million (twice its present level). Yes, that projected third of the population could in fact be the dominant bloc. A laser is powerful because its light is concentrated and disciplined, not diffuse.
The intention of the shooter
It seems that the perpetrator of the massacre had been travelling, perhaps using inherited monies, for 7 years. Information given out by the msm indicates that Tarrant was “radicalized” not while a member of some group or party, but by events witnessed while travelling around Europe and, finally, in New Zealand itself.
The manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, The Great Replacement, will not be reproduced here. It is found with ease on the Internet, via Google or the like. I do not want to give anyone hostile the excuse to say that, by posting it on here, I am somehow “encouraging” terrorism or political violence. It does seem very repressive that major Internet platforms have been pressured to remove his manifesto, and have acquiesced.
Reading that manifesto, the motivation of Brenton Tarrant seems to be almost impersonal on the face of it. It has elements of sacrifice and self-sacrifice. It shows determination (he has that in common with Breivik). As to education or erudition, I do not think that he lays claim to much, but there is intelligence manifest in the document. He has learned (whatever might be said about that) from his travels.
Politically, Brenton Tarrant describes himself as an “ethno-nationalist”. He also says (the manifesto is mostly written in Q & A format):
“Were/are you a nazi?
No, actual nazis do not exist.They haven’t been a political or social force anywhere in the world for more than 60 years.”
That is a good point. As Hitler said, “National Socialism is not for export.” Hitler also remarked to his last secretary, Traudl Junge, and others, in 1945, that German National Socialism was finished, but that something with the same essential core might emerge “in a “hundred years” and then “take hold of the world with the force of a religion”. Well, here we are in 2019, 100 years after the founding of the NSDAP, though of course we are only 74 years from the end of the Reich.
Tarrant also describes himself as an “eco-fascist” as well as writing that he is at one with many of the policies expounded by Oswald Mosley. A word of explanation might be useful here. I knew someone who was at one time quite well acquainted with Mosley. She always said that he was basically an intellectual who saw himself as a “man of action” (“Action” was also the name of Mosley’s newspaper). Mosley of course was also a “man of action”, who had flown in the First World War (where he was a fellow-officer of the aforesaid lady’s husband in the Royal Flying Corps), but he, arguably, made too much of sports, fencing, physical fitness generally, as a politician. That was the Zeitgeist of the 1930s though, not only in Germany and Italy but in the UK, where lidos and indoor public swimming pools etc proliferated.
Mosley was once described as someone who could have been a great prime minister of the UK, for either [System] party. He was unwilling to accept mass unemployment, so resigned from the Labour Party (under which he was a government minister).
Mosley is now remembered, in the public mind, in the “cartoon” version put out by a largely Jewish mass media: the sneering Fascist demagogue in his black uniform. As with all important lies, of course, there was a kernel of truth in that.
As to Tarrant’s “eco-fascism”, there has always been linkage between “green” politics, environmentalism etc, and social nationalism. See:
In fact, the author Henry Williamson, who wrote Tarka the Otter, combined Englishness, support for Mosley and support for German National Socialism with being an early environmentalist and, in essence, “green” activist:
Tarrant declares in his manifesto that he will not kill NZ police. He kept to that and allowed himself to be captured. He also makes the following point:
“Were/are you a supporter of Brexit?
Yes, though not for an official policy made. The truth is that eventually people must face the fact that it wasn’t a damn thing to do with the economy.That it was the British people firing back at mass immigration, cultural displacement and globalism, and that’s a great and wonderful thing.”
Amen to that.
He adds, re. Marine le Pen’s party in France:
“Were/are you a supporter of Front National?
No,they’re a party of milquetoast civic nationalist boomers, completely incapable of creating real change and with no actual viable plan to save their nation.“
Rather oddly, Tarrant says that one Candace Owens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens#Political_views was a major influence. I had to look up her details. I myself see nothing of any real interest there, but this blog post is about the New Zealand attack and its author, not me.
As to the psychology of Brenton Tarrant, hard to say. True, he shares some characteristics with other “rampage killers”, being marginalized by society, not having a solid career or place in society, not having a solid marriage or other relationship either. He seems to be sane and in fact makes some very good if obvious points in his manifesto. No doubt the New Zealand state’s psychiatrists will find suitable labels to attach…
The reaction of the New Zealand state, msm and public
Once the initial shock of the massacre ebbed, there was a wave of sympathy for the victims, especially in New Zealand itself. Looking at the TV news, one can see how warm-hearted the New Zealanders are, though it is all too easy to see a crowd of a few hundred and assume that it represents a whole country. The New Zealanders have proven that they have a heart. It is far more doubtful as to whether they have a head. Like Australia, New Zealand has gone from being an entirely white European society (albeit grafted onto an existing “native” one) to a developing multikulti mess, but the extent of that is probably slight enough in terms of numbers and percentages (so far) that most New Zealanders are unaware of it. I cannot say.
The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, immediately started virtue-signalling on an epic scale, wearing Arab dress and insisting that even women police officers did the same. It was rather chilling to see an armed policewoman carrying her automatic rifle and wearing the Arab hijab. Reminiscent of the ISIS barbarians.
Stray thoughts
Many of those who virtue-signalled like mad about the people shot in New Zealand scarcely noticed, I think, the many killed recently by American or British bombers when the ISIS barbarians were under attack. The ISIS fighters had to take their chances, perhaps their camp-followers too, but what about uninvolved civilians? What about small children also killed by the assaults on towns such as Raqqa?
Then take another example: the Second World War bombings (on both sides, though the Allied bombing was far worse, in Germany, both in terms of numbers killed and in terms of intensity). In Japan, the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have supported the war effort, may also have been related to soldiers or whatever, but were themselves not combatants. Their children even less so.
[above, Dresden 1945]
To attribute blame becomes difficult. That is why human beings cling to the conventional. Many will have seen The Night of the Generals, which is based around questions like that: in the midst of a massive war, where thousands are being killed monthly or weekly, and where the Wehrmacht resistance to Hitler is in the background (with its premise that Hitler must die for the greater good…), an investigation is launched into the murder of a prostitute.
If conventional morality says that it is justified for a state to kill civilians and even civilian children for some larger end result, then perhaps the same argument could be used by an individual who massacres civilians whom he regards as either “the enemy” or “collateral damage” to achieve some larger end? The moral question which looked so clear superficially becomes opaque.
For me, the NZ shooting was unpleasant, unnecessary and possibly counter-productive. Tarrant obviously disagrees with that conclusion. All one can say is that the large-scale movements of population will continue until someone says or enough people say NO.
Nature's sublime experience with its terrifying beauty of incomprehensible power threatens our human finiteness with the infinitude of spaces. Human speech fails to fully describe its vast power likewise it cannot be defined ethically [good or evil]. pic.twitter.com/Ng5NB1nkOB
In 1997, I moved back to London after having spent an interesting year in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Almaty was, even then, a quite large city, was at the time the capital of Kazakhstan, and boasted green spaces, tree-lined streets, pavement cafes, pretty girls in short skirts (or furs, depending on the season), a city as hot as 40C in high Summer, sub-zero and snowy in Winter.
[immediately above, Pushkin Street, not very far from where I lived at one time]
[above, Almaty in Winter]
On returning to London after 12 months, in late September 1997, I found that it was easier to be “offered” another overseas position than to actually get one. In the world of the headhunters, words are cheap. I found myself rapidly running out of funds in a London where the weather became wet and then cold and wet; in fact, my very first day back in London, it became necessary to visit Knightsbridge to buy a raincoat (unnecessary in Almaty, where it rains heavily for only a few days in the year). I went on holiday to Minorca and then, after a number of fruitless meetings re. possible contracts (everywhere Russophone from Moscow to Moldova to Baku and back to Almaty) sat down to decide where to winter, in the hope that a new contract might be offered in the upcoming new year; it was by now already early December.
It had to be somewhere both reasonably warm and reasonably (if not very) cheap. I considered the Canaries, Asmara (Eritrea) and a few other locations, before settling on Egypt, partly because I had been there before (only briefly though, a short break at the Luxor Hilton a few years before), partly because I knew that it could be cheap if one did not stay at a luxury-grade hotel, partly because it would be pleasantly warm even in December. There had also just been a terrible massacre at the Temple of Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings (across the river from Luxor), which led me to consider that there might be cheap flights and hotel rooms on offer.
What spoiled the flight part of the plan was that after the news media reported the massacre, the package tour and cheap flights people immediately cancelled all flights to Egypt. However, I had already decided by then to go, my resolve hardened by a pointless breakfast meeting at 0730 (!) with a couple of American “emerging markets” hucksters at the Mount Royal Hotel near Marble Arch, after which I got an overpriced taxi back to Little Venice in the pouring rain and chill.
Olympic and Egyptair were still flying, so I bought a ticket to Aswan via Athens and Cairo.
Egypt
Cutting through the detail of my first weeks in Egypt, I stayed in subtropical Aswan (it’s 1 degree North of the Tropic of Cancer) for 2 weeks before spending a couple of dull weeks at an almost deserted, beautiful and undeveloped beach (living in a large tent) near the then almost uninhabited and tiny settlement of Marsa Alam on the Red Sea. Served by one bus every day or two, it was hard to get to and harder to escape from… (now, over 20 years later, that almost derelict area is very different, has luxury hotels and even its own international airport!). From there I went, not without difficulty, to Alexandria, a journey of at least 12 hours by both what in Tunisia is called voiture de louage (a 6-seat car shared by 5 customers and driver) and long-distance bus via Port Safaga, al-Quseir and Hurghada.
I had already selected a small 3-star hotel on the Corniche in Alexandria, thanks to my Lonely Planet guidebook. Walking distance from Ramla, the central place in Alex. However, unknown to Lonely Planet, the buses no longer terminated at Ramla for reasons of traffic control, so I ended up pulling my heavy (thankfully, wheeled) suitcases (inc. portable typewriter) miles along the Corniche (seafront).
After a day or so, I decided to stay in the supposedly good semi-gated beach suburb of Mamoura Beach, at the Eastern extremity of Alex. If possible, I would then rent a flat there via a local agency.
As anyone who has spent more than a brief holiday in Egypt will tell you, organization is not to be expected, chaos is the norm…
At the railway station, which was not busy, I got a local train. It terminated at Abu Qir, which was the place where, in the bay of which, Nelson defeated a French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 (the westernmost mouth of the Nile itself is now a few miles to the East of that bay).
I had bought a ticket to Mamoura. The train would then continue only for two or three stops until it finished its journey. The seats were polished wooden benches and the train’s journey passed at a snail’s pace. Eventually the train reached Mamoura. I disembarked. It was still mid-morning.
I was not entirely expecting the typically Egyptian scene outside the small station. Crowded streets, traffic, donkey-carts carrying aysh (flat and usually very tasty Egyptian bread), schoolchildren in uniform (this was the first day of Ramadan, so they had probably been sent home early). I had been expecting a quieter sort of place.
What I did not understand at the time was that I had got off at the wrong stop. I had assumed that the nearest station to Mamoura Beach would be Mamoura, whereas in fact the latter was a suburb to the East of Mamoura Beach. I should have disembarked at Montazah.
I had a map, but not a good one. I walked through a couple of crowded residential streets going North, in the direction of the sea. I came upon an Islamic cemetery, the wall of which had a gap on the other side. A small boy was climbing through it. I assumed (wrongly, again…) that he must have been going to the beach, so I followed. When I arrived on the other side, the boy had gone and I found myself in a large open area with some buildings in the middle distance. I saw some soldiers doing road repair on an unused roadway. Their sergeant, when approached, directed me (thanks to my Arabic phrasebook) to where there was the hotel (the only one) on Mamoura Beach, and where I had thought that I might stay. He helpfully wrote the name of that hotel (as I thought) on a scrap of paper, in case I needed to ask anyone else.
I carried on but was surprised to see that the beach, cut off by barbed wire, appeared to be mined. The skull and crossbones motif and a warning in Arabic and English made that plain. As for what I thought was some kind of disused military camp, it appeared now to be, well, an in-use military base. Oh dear…
I walked on and found myself next to a large ground-to-air missile battery, with 4 missiles in place, pointing upward at about 45 degrees.
Realizing that I had to get out, I moved across cut grass towards a distant wall, only to find that a small pack of what seemed to be wild dogs, sunning themselves near the wall, had noticed me. I slowly moved away, tracked parallel to my course by one of those dogs. This was not a military base as known in the UK, USA or even (where I had been in 1977) Rhodesia.
It was at that moment that an officer spotted me and sent over a young sergeant to me to see who was this European wearing chinos, climbing boots and a tweed-style jacket. After I had dropped the half-brick I was carrying (in case the dog attacked), the sergeant escorted me to the officer. A short conversation later (in which I tried to thank them for their help and to walk out of what I could now see was the nearby guarded exit from the base), ended with me taken a few steps to a nearby low building, which turned out to be the Officers’ Mess. Half a dozen curious officers came out, one with a wooden chair, which was placed in front of me. I was gestured to sit. The officers were not unfriendly (several shook hands with me), but just very curious. It felt like being treated as were the shot-down fliers of the First World War. The only thing missing was the bottle of champagne.
Minutes later, a car rolled up, which turned out to contain a major and a captain, who turned out to be the security officer (major) and intelligence officer (captain) of the base. The major searched me, including my boots (while still on my feet), then I was placed in the car and driven away. Thus began a boring but not uneventful day.
The major and captain (the latter more pleasant and I thought probably from a more cultured background, though that was just an impression) questioned me over some Arab coffee (which I like). The captain spoke English, the major none or almost none. There was no rough stuff, no violence or obvious threat. However, they went over my reasons for being in Egypt, in Alex, in Abu Qir and, most of all, on their base.
It turned out that the address in Arabic scrawled by the sergeant I had encountered was not the Mamoura Beach Hotel but a special Soviet-style hotel for officers only, just by the base. Why did I have this in my pocket? Why did I have a Swiss Army knife? Why did I have a map, a small torch, a phrase-book? And so on. One officer casually remarked that, the year before, they had caught an agent of MOSSAD. I have no idea whether that was true, or if so what happened to him, and I decided not to ask, or to appear too interested in what happened to spies in Egypt. I just evinced what I hoped sounded like polite slight interest.
Several times, I asked for the British Consul. The responses were almost amusing, but it was hard to see the joke: “the Consul? Oh, no, the Consul is only for the most serious cases. You don’t want to be treated as a serious case, do you?” or “the Consul will be busy. We just need to ask a few questions more.” When I said that I needed access to the Consul because I was under arrest, the answer was “No, no! You are not under arrest. You are very welcome in Egypt!” (“Ah, so I am free to leave?” “Once we have asked a few more questions…”).
After a couple of hours of such light diversions, including my asking about whether the base had been once a British one, which was me trying to lighten the atmosphere as well as genuine curiosity (they said no), I was informed that I would be leaving, but only because some civilian colleagues needed to speak to me. This was not good news. The Mukhabarat (security police, secret police) is a ubiquitous and feared organization in Egypt. I had entertained a slight hope that the Army might just release me as innocent tourist with a warning not to stray in future. Vain hope.
I was escorted out of the office into a larger reception-style office crowded with ordinary Egyptian soldiers, many of whom were plainly there to catch a glimpse of me, though none said anything. There was also a very sinister body, a civilian, in a light brown leather jacket, with dark glasses and heavy stubble, who absurdly —in that situation— pretended not to have noticed that a foreigner was in the reception area. One of “them”, of course.
I was taken by car out of the base in a car driven by the young sergeant, my fellow passengers the captain and the major. Alexandria is about 20 miles long but only a mile or so deep. It runs along the coast. We were driving now from the edge of the city, past vegetable allotments and near the sea towards central Alex. It was not long before we were in one of the suburbs of Alex not far from the centre of the city (as I thought; I did not then know the city, of course). I thought that we were possibly in the Chatby neighbourhood. The car stopped by a quite high wall. A door was there. We were admitted. On the other side, there seemed to be a fine looking white house, like a small palace, amid luxuriant gardens. There was a little white painted waiting building by the entrance. We waited. The captain left. I lightened the atmosphere by asking the young conscript how come he was a sergeant at such a young age. He blushed as the major asked what I had said! When the sergeant translated it, the major laughed.
A civilian with a long scar down his cheek came to take me into the house. The soldiers left, the major shaking my hand. In a way, that seemed ominous.
Inside, the house was all marble, white and gold. I was shown into a glitz-palatial room, with white and gold chairs around a long low coffee table. It was the very image of the rooms in which Saddam Hussein used to receive his visitors.
Already gathered there were my new interrogators, several Mukhabarat officers. The only one who said nothing was Scarface, presumably there to provide the muscle in case the dangerous spy tried to escape or to kill those present with his bare hands.
A boy came in to take orders for coffee. Displaying all the confidence of my dozen words of phrase-book Arabic, I requested “aqwa mazboot, min fadlak” (loosely meaning Arab coffee with a little sugar please) and one of the Mukhabarat people jumped on it: “oh, so you speak Arabic?!” “I have a phrasebook, that’s all”. “But you ask for coffee with a good Egyptian accent…” and so I nearly became the first man hanged (well, not really, but halfway there) because I owned a good phrasebook. Thanks, Berlitz!
I tried the ask-for-British-Consul thing again, with the by-now-expected response: “The Consul will be busy…You are not under arrest…You are welcome in Egypt…We just have to ask a few questions” etc.
Then the polite but persistent questioning resumed: why was I in Egypt? Why was I on the military base? “What do you think of Israel?”; “I have always opposed Zionism”; “Oh, why would you answer thus to an Egyptian intelligence officer?” Smiles all round, mine by far the most nervous.
Another strange question: “what do you think of Princess Diana?” [who, as mentioned above, had died about 3 months previously]; “I have no particular view of her”; “Really?” [incredulously]…”all Egyptian people love Princess Diana”. Now it was my turn to respond “really?”. “Yes…I myself met Princess Diana here in Alexandria.” I supposed that that was plausible, Mohammed Fayed (father of her lover, Dodi Fayed) having originated in Alex.
Yet another strange question: “why do British government not clear the mines that they put on the beaches of Egypt?”, this a reference to the thousands, maybe millions, of landmines placed under the sands of Egypt (beaches and inland) by the British, Germans and Italians during the Second World War. There are even some on Red Sea beaches. The barbed wire with the warning symbol and English/Arabic “Beware Mines” is everywhere in some regions. I could only nod sympathetically and indicate that I had no influence or power over the British Government or its actions… All in all, this was a very odd little tea party or, rather, Arab coffee party.
In the end, after a couple of hours, it was decided that I had to return to my hotel on the Corniche to get my passport (I carried around only a photocopy). Scarface, a younger officer and a driver accompanied me.
The expressions on the faces of the staff at the hotel were telling: they were petrified. They knew at once who my “guests” were. The officers examined my baggage, my passport etc. They were most interested in the typewriter, my snorkelling equipment (especially the very large “professional”-size fins) and my sole reading matter: Barbarossa, by Alan Clark.
I was surprised that we did not return to the villa, but went to another, possibly more central neighbourhood (not knowing the city, I was trying to see clues to where we were). The driver was a professional, the only one I ever encountered in Egypt who did not use the horn incessantly. It was now drizzling as darkness fell, and as we drove slowly down a street of tall pre-WW2 houses, rather reminiscent of Paris (Alex having been effectively under joint Anglo-French control in the decades up to the late 1940s), the streetlights showed a steel barrier ahead, guarded by a phalanx of uniformed security police with submachineguns, the rain glistening on their short capes, again reminiscent of old Paris. They were ready for trouble, wearing not caps but steel helmets. As our car approached at a snail’s pace, the driver signalled twice using his headlights. The barriers were parted for us.
The car stopped. I was asked to disembark. The air was fresh and cool, as it often is at night in the Alexandrian winter. I was not restrained in any way. After all, to where would I run (even if I were not shot in the back)?
We were outside what had obviously been the townhouse of some wealthy merchant of the late 19thC. Depressingly, the windows were all barred. At first, I thought that I was going to be actually imprisoned in that place.
Above the door, the coat of arms of the Mukhabarat, incorporating the Egyptian all-seeing eye and a hawk or eagle (I think hawk: Horus was “the Hawk of Light” in ancient Egypt; that eye was his eye, “the Eye of Horus”). Also, the words, in Arabic and English, “State Security Headquarters, Alexandria”.
I was led in. At one time in the mists of history (well, pre-1945 anyway) the entrance hall must have been quite grand. A very high ceiling, a wide curved staircase leading up to the next floor, a crystal chandelier, a generally white and gold ambience. An entrance hall for a Hollywood film, perhaps one starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Or some version of Anna Karenina. The effect was spoiled, however, by the general lack of maintenance and cleanliness, the long sofa with its dirty fabric badly torn, and the battered old wooden table, at which sat a scruffy middleaged fellow in a warm jacket, his revolver casually in front of him on the table, together with a clipboard and a landline telephone.
Once I was left there, this individual struck up a conversation as I sat on the sofa that the Mukhabarat might have taken from a skip, so old and used was it. There was no-one else around. Kafka-esque. The “receptionist” told me that I was waiting to see the general in charge of all state security in Alexandria. He would then order my release. I had little confidence in that, having been given the run-around all day and knowing that Egyptians can have an odd sense of humour (and a certain streak of sadism, somehow, too). Still, I had no choice but to wait.
At one point, around 1900 hrs, some people arrived and ascended the staircase. The night shift? Or do secret police personnel find the night more congenial for their work? One fellow, dressed in what looked like an expensive suit, was obviously important, because the scruffy receptionist actually got off his rear to greet him. The new arrival looked rather comical to my mind, in that he seemed almost as broad as he was tall, like the British advertising cartoon seen on posters and TV in my childhood, “Mr. Cube”, who was the face of Tate & Lyle sugar. There was something slightly sinister about this man, though. He stopped part-way up the grand staircase and turned round to look at me briefly. His gaze was or seemed quizzical.
I was later escorted by the scruffy fellow upstairs and through quite bright, well-appointed corridors to a small but comfortable office occupied by, as the reader may have guessed, “Mr. Cube” and a colleague, the largest person I ever saw in Egypt. They were friendly enough, and Mr. Cube (aka General Cube, who introduced himself only as the head of state security in Alexandria) explained that before I could be released, he would have to be satisfied that I was not a spy. So we ran through all the same stuff all over again. Mr. Cube was not unfriendly and had some Turkish or Arab coffee brought in, the best I have ever had, served in exquisite tiny china cups. Very welcome after a foodless day (I had not even had breakfast).
At the end of our talk, Mr. Cube did a strange thing (but one I later read about in relation to both the Soviet and British intelligence services). He just looked at me, straight in the eye, and his friendly demeanour turned into something so chilling and indeed evil that it has stayed with me to this day. His gaze seemed to be penetrating deep into my consciousness. The word which came to mind later was “pitiless”. This was a man who might be capable of anything and quite probably had tortured and killed people. Then Cube turned off the terror as easily as he had turned it on, and pronounced that he thought that I was not a spy, but that he had to get clearance from Cairo before releasing me. He busied out of the office and his large assistant clapped me on the back in a friendly way (which felt like the blow from a large bear must feel).
Half an hour later and Cube was himself driving me back to my hotel in his own (very modest) little car (I think that it was a Fiat). It was almost midnight, about 2300 hours. He wished me a pleasant stay in Egypt (in fact I did stay, for another 2 months) and I entered the hotel again. Again the faces of the staff said it all. They obviously had not expected to see me again. The waiter even raised his arms in the air and quietly cheered, as if a goal had been scored.
Well, I did many other things in Egypt but that’s enough for now. If anyone ever asks me about my longest trip to Egypt and what happened, I just say that I was “not” arrested…
Alexandria, San Stefano (now redeveloped)
Early morning sea view from the Corniche at Alexandria
above: the main residential road in Mamoura Beach, Alexandria, where I rented a flat a few days after the events described above; I lived there for a month
above: Mamoura Beach. When I was there it was off-season, January, but quite warm in daytime, though cool and often wet at night.
above: Old Montazah Station, near both the Montazah Palace and Mamoura Beach where I lived for a month.
The short 1946 film below shows mainly the grounds of the Montazah Palace in Alex, not far from where I lived for a while; it also shows the Corniche.
Alexandria was much better under European rule and/or influence!
[above: scenes from pre-Nasser Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere]
[below: old Alexandria]
[below: amateur film from, at a guess, a few years ago. It shows some places I occasionally frequented, such as the Brazilian Coffee Stores in central Alex, mentioned in Lawrence Durrell’s books known as The Alexandria Quartet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alexandria_Quartet]
[below, a critical look at Alexandria as it is now]
Below, another view of Alex as it is now:
Another (less impliedly critical) film, below:
above: scenes of Alex, the one immediately shown above being the Montazah Gardens, surrounding the Montazah Palace. Easy walking distance from my one-time temporary refuge at nearby Mamoura Beach. I was there a couple of times. An oasis of tranquility.
below: amateur video from the city
A few further thoughts…
When I was first in Alex (as every foreigner calls it before long), my impression was of a kind of Miami Beach, or as such a place might be after large-scale devastation and/or long-term neglect. Ironically, one seafront part of Alex is actually called Miami! Maybe that’s where the more famous one got its name, but [see Note, below] apparently not.
Despite the acreage of decaying concrete there, despite the nuisance of a goodly part of the population, despite the traffic (and noise thereof), despite despite despite, there is something compelling about Alexandria, at least to me. The sea is a large part of that. The sea at Alex is so beautiful that not even the decaying concrete and the often-ghastly people can ruin it. I was there in winter, and it may be that winter, or perhaps slightly earlier or later, is the best time there. In any case, the 5+ million population swells even more in summer, and Alex must be unbearable then. When I was there, in 1998, the settled population was “only” 3.5 million, so has grown by about 50% in just 20 or so years! Before the Second World War, the population was below 1 million.
There is, or was, something indefinably romantic about Alexandria, despite everything (concrete near-ruins, street nuisances, general chaos, tasteless redevelopment —the most egregious example since I was there being the huge excrescence now at San Stefano). I am not sure that I have any wish to return to Alex, but I cannot say that I never shall.
I interrupt other blog writing to address an immediate issue. The activist known as Tommy Robinson has now been banned from Facebook, he having already been barred from Twitter. That news highlights again something that I have been writing about, blogging about, speaking about (at the London Forum in 2017) and tweeting about —before I myself was banned or rather expelled from Twitter in 2018— for years, the privatization of public space.
In past ages and, indeed, until about 20 years ago, public space was literally that: the agora of ancient Athens, the forum of ancient Rome, the barricades of revolutionary France, the brief outbursts of free speech in the Russia of 1917 or the early 1990s, and Speakers’ Corner by Hyde Park in London, where a youthful Millard (aged about 21) spoke to fickle crowds a few times in the late 1970s.
Today, the traditional fora of free speech, eg in the UK, are very restricted. Jez Turner (Jeremy Bedford-Turner) made a speech in Whitehall in 2015. He mentioned Jews a few times. That alone was enough (triggered by the malicious Jewish Zionists who denounced him, the supine police who are now so often in the Zionist pocket, the wet CPS who are not sufficiently resistant to the Zionists’ endless whining demands, a Zionist-controlled System-political milieu, and a Bar and judiciary which are frightened of their own shadows and even more of those of the Zionists) to have Jez Turner imprisoned for a year. He served 6 months and was only recently released to live for months more under considerable restriction.
The “public space” which is now most significant is online space. Twitter, Facebook, blogging platforms etc.
I myself was expelled from Twitter last year. I had been the target of both the Jew-Zionists and mindless “antifa” (aka “useful idiots” for Zionism) for about 8 years. I have also had my freedom of expression taken away in other ways, as well as having been interrogated by the police (again at the instigation of malicious Jew-Zionists) for having posted entirely lawful comments on Twitter. I was also disbarred, quite wrongly, for similar reasons.
Alison Chabloz was persecuted, prosecuted and convicted for singing satirical songs in the manner of 1920s Berlin. She is appealing her conviction and the result of her first-stage appeal. She has also been expelled from Twitter (as well as being made subject to a court ban from social media, which bars her from posting until mid-2019).
If Twitter or Facebook ban you, you may have some limited right of appeal, if they so choose to extend it to you. You have no legal right to stay on Twitter or Facebook despite the fact that, in real terms, they are near-monopolies. Yes, I am now on GAB, but GAB has only 500,000 users, if that, whereas Twitter has perhaps 500 million! The fact that, as I believe, Twitter is largely a waste of time, is beside the point.
The point is that, beyond your very limited contractual or other rights qua customer, you have no rights in respect of Twitter or Facebook (etc). Qua citizen, you have no rights at all. You have no right to post, and if the owners or executives of those companies decide to bump you off, off you go, whether you have 50 followers, 3,000 (as I did) or a million.
The Blair law of 1998 [nb: 1998 = 666 x 3…], requiring political parties in the UK to be registered, all but killed any semblance of real political-party democracy in the UK. Now, free speech both online and offline is being, on the one hand, criminalized or subjected to other State repression (at the instigation of the Jewish-Zionist lobby), and on the other hand choked off at source, by companies (under Zionist control or influence) barring dissidents or known activists from even posting dissenting or radical views online.
As to Tommy Robinson, I am not personally one of his supporters, and I deplore his attempt to play the sycophant for Israel and Zionism, but he has some views which are valid, in my opinion.
In any case, freedom of expression is indivisible. It is facile to make arbitrary distinction between some free speech, calling it “hate speech” and so unacceptable, and other speech which is labelled “acceptable” (politically approved) speech. That is mainly hypocrisy. Even my own relatively mild postings are and always have been targeted by the enemies of freedom, of which the Zionists are the worst.
So we have, not only in England but elsewhere (eg in France, under Rothschilds cipher Macron) the same repressive tendency. Sajid Javid, Amber Rudd, Theresa May, others, are enemies of the British people and enemies of freedom of expression. They seem to want to ban all political activity and all political or socio-political expression which does not support the existing System. It is immaterial whether you call it that or “ZOG”.
The System in the UK, in France seems to think that it can slowly turn the screw on repression, controlling the political parties (or setting up “controlled” new ones, as with Macron in France and, perhaps, the “Independent Group” in the UK), preventing free speech by putting the fix into Twitter, Facebook etc, only having controlled news on or in the msm (controlled mass media outlets).
The Soviet Union tried a less subtle form of all that, and it still collapsed in the end. What the System politicians, msm faces and voices etc, fail to see is that a head of steam is building up in the UK (and France) and, if bottled up by the State and those behind the curtain, will eventually explode.
Another example, taken almost at random from Twitter:
As well as censoring our content over the past few weeks, Twitter have now deleted all the people we were following, which in turn means we have lost a ton of followers
Please RT and follow if you’re still right behind us – we have no idea why Twitter is doing this pic.twitter.com/opwxMMr6fX
Another example. A typical pseudonymous Jew-Zionist tweeter (troll), below, exults that a very prominent pro-Corbyn Twitter account, “Rachael Swindon”, has been “suspended” (probably, like me, expelled):
In fact, Rachael Swindon has been reinstated, though only after Twitter’s vice-President for Europe intervened. Why should such people control the online public space? Again, why should the police barge in with large boots and interfere with free speech when no threats are involved? It’s all wrong.
The pro-Jewish lobby freeloader and careerist Tom Watson MP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson_(Labour_politician) who has wormed his way to becoming Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (with his eyes on Corbyn’s purple day and night), has attacked Tommy Robinson in the House of Commons and asked YouTube to take down Tommy Robinson’s YouTube channel, which is his last online platform of any importance.
The excuse for Watson’s actions and statement has been the apparent fact that Robinson came to the house of one Mike Stuchbery, a failed (and sacked) supply teacher who poses as both “historian” and “journalist” online, and whose main activity seems to be online advocacy of opposition (including violence, though he usually uses weasel words) to any form of British or other European nationalism. Tommy Robinson has exposed the apparent fact that Stuchbery colluded with others to visit Robinson’s wife or ex-wife at her home. Robinson’s response seems to have been to do something similar to Stuchbery. Tom Watson, in his Commons statement, referred to Stuchbery as “journalist”, based presumably on Stuchbery’s politically-tendentious scribbles for HuffPost and other, smaller, online outlets.
In the end, if someone is prevented from making socio-political expression, that person can either subside into silence, or take other action. That other action might be peaceful, it might not be. When the repressed individual is a public figure with many thousands of supporters, those supporters may also take other action. That might include, potentially, and in the French term, “action directe” somewhere down the line.
Those (of various types: Jew Zionists, the politically correct, “antifa idiots etc) in our society, who crow at shutting down the freedom of others to make socio-political expression should, in the well-worn (Chinese?) phrase “be careful what they wish for”. The Spanish also have a phrase, a proverb in fact: “Do what you will, and pay for it.” Repression of views, not “allowing” people a public platform (and anyway, who is, for example, a blot like Tom Watson to decide who should or should not be allowed to speak?) can only lead to upheaval in the end.
It will be interesting to observe the UK political scene in the coming months and years.
A few tweets seen
A tweet with a few examples of the frequent passive but malicious incitement of violence against white people by “antifa” bastard Mike Stuchbery of Luton:
@MikeStuchbery_ is the coward who Doxxed #TommyRobinson's wife and children accompanied by the Media and a Crackhead. He is a Far Left Antifa Thug who needs exposing to the Whole country.
Below: self-described (fake) “journalist” and “historian” (failed supply teacher and house-husband) Mike Stuchbery inciting serious political violence but trying to deny it…
Below: fake “historian” and “journalist” Mike Stuchbery threatens minor Northern Ireland politico David Vance with a lawsuit. Does he have any idea how much a defamation action (for example) costs? He must have got the idea of constantly threatening to “sue” from the Jewish Zionists and their useful idiots on Twitter, who are always threatening legal action, and who often invoke the “sainted” name of Israel-based “Mark Lewis Lawyer” in this regard. In reality, Lewis is a wheelchair-bound blowhard fake, recently fined by a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for his behaviour. At the Tribunal, he admitted that he often had no idea what he was doing because of his intake of prescription drugs. Oh…and Lewis’s own Counsel said that “he has no assets” and that “his sole possessions are his clothes and a mobility scooter”! See:https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/?s=mark+lewis
This individual has been proven to be an unhinged, hate-filled extremist, who has whipped-up his followers to engage in violent acts. this pathetic weasel should be charged with incitement to commit a hate crime on this evidence – pic.twitter.com/Ec2Yr9AAMM
Something called “Press Gazette” also refers to grifter Stuchbery as a “journalist” (does he have an NUJ card? I suppose that, these days, any wannabee can scribble for peanuts or for free in the HuffPost, silly little online “news” agencies, or for the (now often semi-literate) online msm “newspapers”, and then to call himself “journalist”…and in Stuchbery’s case, “historian”, too!…)
The more serious point here is that “Culture Secretary” Jeremy Wright MP thinks that he is entitled to ask YouTube to take down Tommy Robinson’s videos, Tom Watson MP having already demanded the same. Freedom? Free speech? Free country? Hardy ha ha…
Update, 11 March 2019
and still the tweets keep coming…
You are my favourite tweet thus far. Mike is just an observer? Excuse me for hooting with laughter. Mike is an extremist. It’s documented all over Twitter. He earns a living from incitement not observation. Yet he refuses to take ownership of the effect he has on others.
and Stuchbery has hit back with the piece below, posted on yet another of the plethora of new “news and comment” websites that pose as quasi-newspapers, in this case calling itself the Byline Times
Stuchbery (and many others on Twitter etc) really should refrain from using legal terms wrongly or pointlessly, eg, in that piece averring that Tommy Robinson defamed him. Well, that may or may not be the case, in the lay sense, but any actionable defamation requires publication. I have no idea whether in this case, Robinson published (meaning said or wrote to third parties) any of the allegedly defamatory material via video streaming etc. It seems not. Then there are all the other factors, such as the defences, one of which is that the statements, even if defamatory on their face, are true…
In any case, it costs vast amounts to sue for defamation, though in some open and shut cases it may be possible to find “no win, no fee” lawyers (in the old American parlance, “ambulance-chasers”) willing to take it on, with the help of specialized legal “insurance” (which in my view comes close to champerty, in the old Common Law sense)
…and here we see some supposed “comedian” (comedienne? Never heard of her), by name Janey Godley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janey_Godley , saying that those exposing Stuchbery are “a danger to free speech”:
In fact, I also must have missed seeing any support from Janey Godley for Jez Turner, imprisoned for making, in Whitehall, a humorous speech mentioning Jews and their history in England; neither did I notice the aforesaid Janey Godley (I had never heard of her in any regard until today) tweet anything in support of satirical singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz, persecuted by Jewish Zionists, then privately prosecuted by them before being prosecuted by the CPS (under pressure to take over the matter…) and then convicted, in effect, of singing songs.
An example, below, of the muddled thinking of many on Twitter and elsewhere: this idiot, calling himself/herself “66ALW88” (what?) thinks that the way to preserve free speech online is for the online platform companies to “crack down” on, er, free speech online…
Below, a tweet not at all significant in itself (there are literally thousands of unthinking, purselipped nobodies like this Irish “academic”, one Fergal Lenehan, around, all waiting for the chance to denounce people, to “report” to Twitter, Facebook or police, or wanting to ban the free speech of others not signed-up to the System/ZOG mental straitjacket). It is the trend, the existence of a large bloc of such nasty idiots that is of importance.
and here (below) is a well-funded basically Jew-Zionist organization which admits that it wants, inter alia, to stop the historian David Irving from conducting lecture tours. I think the reverse: that those who oppose freedom of speech on political, social and historical topics should themselves be stopped…
The fact that Irving has done this before does not mean that we should allow him to do it again. We have plenty of advance notice to prevent it this time.
Let’s try & stop this grotesque event from happening ever again.
— Anti-Fascism & Far Right 🥤 (@FFRAFAction) March 17, 2019
Update, 18 March 2019
Now the cowardly and mentally-disturbed grifter, Stuchbery, continues to try to claim the moral high ground, which is laughable (and note the support from a political cretin, “Leftwing Revolt”, in the thread below, who is a member or supporter of “Resisting Hate” and sees nothing wrong with someone he might disagree with being attacked with an axe! Resisting hate? You could not make it up…). I might not “support” Tommy Robinson, but I prefer him a hundred times over to Stuchbery and the “useful idiots” of “antifa”!
and (below), another little shit like Stuchbery, this time a New Zealander, who positively welcomes censorship and repression (and he is, wait for it…a “writer/director” of film and theater”!). One of the weird aspects of the present time is that those most eager to see censorship and ideological repression are “creative industries” drones, writers, film and TV people etc, and journalists.
and he retweets, approvingly, this (below) announcement of New Zealand governmental censorship. I personally have no wish to see footage of the recent New Zealand massacre, but that should be my choice, not the New Zealand (ZOG) government’s.
Chief Censor David Shanks has officially classified the full 17 minute video of the fatal Christchurch shootings as objectionable.
It is illegal for anyone in New Zealand to view, possess or distribute this material in any form, including via social media platforms.
and…again: the same little shit, one Andrew Todd, does not want the accused to be allowed to defend himself in case he says something the New Zealand government (ZOG) does not want people to hear…
Not everyone on Twitter agrees with the idea of censoring views and people being found guilty as soon as they are accused, however:
So you believe in a system where your proven guilty before your convicted by a judge and group of your piers. Let me give examples of places this has happened: Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, and Uganda during the rule Idi Amin.
Here’s another one, below, a New Zealand journalist positively gagging for censorship (I had no idea that NZ was so ZOG-occupied):
FYI, more useful detail on how the big tech companies are failing to weed out hate speech videos and how they missed out on white supremacist videos https://t.co/lYdO10D2Nr
and yet another virtue-signalling “journalist” who is, it seems, an enemy of both freedom of expression and of the future of the European peoples…
I spent a good part of 2 years reporting on ISIS internet and how the group uses social media — in 2019 it's mind-boggling to me how well the coordinated cross-platform effort to remove them from the internet worked and how there hasn't been a similar one for white supremacists.
The grifter actually makes a joke out of his begging and scavenging!
It's been a challenging – and expensive(!) – couple of weeks, so if you enjoy the written pieces, the history threads, or whatever, you can always make a small tip through my Ko-Fi… https://t.co/Xd2iEmxucQpic.twitter.com/OJ7UGuAzPr
Tommy Robinson has now been banned from Twitter (welcome to the club…) despite (because of?) his being a candidate in the European elections (North West England).
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” [John F. Kennedy]
Update, 5 June 20199
Another random example of how the quasi-monopolies of youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc have arrogated to themselves the right to censor and banish: [Update, 22 July 2022: the tweets etc noted have now been completely deleted]
Update, 18 June 2019
More…
A Dr Who writer @OldRoberts953 is expunged from a book by the BBC because he won’t conform to the latest transgender ideology. His views on transgenderism are probably shared by 90%+ of Brits but he’s now a Non-Person for the BBC. The net tightens around free speech. Please share https://t.co/G9fM2BK1e4
Grifter, “antifa” supporter, fake “journalist” and “historian” Mike Stuchbery is desperate to close down free speech for those with whom he disagrees politically. See his recent tweets, below. This is one of the worst enemies of freedom of expression in the UK.
YouTube shut down four major US white supremacist channels in the last 24 hours.
If they're serious about reversing the spread of radicalisation, here's four accounts in the UK they could shutter today… https://t.co/nNG4sk938a
The latest news is that some odd woman tied up with both “antifa” nonsense and Jew-Zionists has created a GoFundMe appeal on behalf of Stuchbery, supposedly so that he can sue the political activist known as Tommy Robinson.
I prefer not to comment on the proposed legal claim until I read more about the foundations for such claim. I presume that Stuchbery is doing this (the woman mentioned above may be raising funds for him but only Stuchbery himself can actually sue) because:
he knows or believes that Tommy Robinson has assets sufficient to satisfy any successful claim;
he has seen that others are already suing Tommy Robinson;
he thinks, perhaps, that a civil legal action will damage Tommy Robinson by starving him of funds;
if successful, Stuchbery will make a great deal more money than he gets at present via online begging or his part-time work in Stuttgart, where he now resides.
Were I the defendant, and leaving aside the potential substantive issues that might be in issue in the proposed case, I suppose that I should focus firstly on the fact that Stuchbery is
resident outside the strict jurisdiction (albeit still in the EU);
is a foreign national (as I understand, an Australian citizen);
has no real or other property in England and Wales;
has no means with which to satisfy any judgment on costs or in respect of any counterclaim or setoff that might be claimed by Tommy Robinson, should the Court decide against Stuchbery on one or more issues or otherwise.
I doubt that this claim will get off the ground. I certainly doubt that it will clear the probable first hurdle, as explained above, but we shall see. It appears, however, that plenty of mugs are donating to the said GoFundMe appeal at present.
Update, 25 November 2019
Stuchbery’s solicitors, Eve Solicitors (the firm is a limited company in fact, possibly in effect a one-man operation), are operating out of a rundown Victorian terrace in Bradford; several other small legal and other firms are operating nearby. The operation has only been in operation since 20 May 2019, at earliest:
The “firm” has only been at its present address since 28 September 2019, before which, i.e. from its incorporation in May until September 2019, it operated out of a tiny Victorian terraced house in a “Coronation Street” lookalike, Hudswell Street, Wakefield (Yorkshire).
The principal (and only named) solicitor is one Waseem Ahmed.
Where the name “Eve” came from, God knows. My only guess is “Adam and Eve”, as in the Cockney rhyming slang, “you wouldn’t Adam and Eve it!”
Only joking.
Having said that, when I was a practising barrister in London in the early-mid 1990s, I knew of Pakistani and other ethnic-minority solicitors (in London, in Luton and elsewhere) who used “English”-sounding names for their small firms. Some of them still owe me money! (Unpaid fees). I am sure that Stuchbery’s solicitor is not like that.
I looked earlier at the GoFundMe appeal set up to collect money for Stuchbery’s proposed legal claim against Tommy Robinson. So far, 262 mugs have donated a total (as of time and date of writing) of £5,209 to start the claim. I wonder whether they or others will donate the rest of the £15,000 asked for? Frankly, I doubt it, though the amount so far raised has been raised in only three days.
I doubt that the proposed lawsuit will either launch or get anywhere.
Further thoughts
The woman who is fundraising for Stuchbery, and who seems to have all day to tweet etc, has tweeted that “As many of you know, Mike Stuchbery is about to sue #TommyRobinson for harassment. He is backed by #ResistingHate and a full legal team.“
A “full legal team”? So that would be someone called Waseem Ahmed and…?
I do not say that “Eve Solicitors” (i.e. Mr. Ahmed) is a one-man-band (though it certainly seems to be), and I cannot say that there are no legal people offering advice etc from the sidelines (what used to be known at the Bar as “cocktail party advice”), but I do know, having been at one time a practising barrister who (in the 1990s) regularly appeared (weekly, at least) in the High Court, as well as in County Courts, and more occasionally other types of court and tribunal (both then and in the 2002-2008 period), that GoFundMe £20,000 will only serve to kick off such a case and claim, if I have understood its likely nature properly. Costs rapidly escalate.
Solicitors vary in their fees, barristers likewise. Simply to issue proceedings in a High Court action (which I suppose the proposed case would probably be) would be several hundred pounds as a minimum, and many thousands of pounds in some cases:
As a rule of thumb, a barrister will get anywhere from (as minimum) £500 a day on a small civil matter in the County Court, up to many thousands of pounds per day for almost any High Court matter, though there is no “limit” as such, and some barristers, eg the top commercial silks (QCs) will be on £10,000 a day or more. The spectrum is very wide.
As those who enjoyed Rumpole of the Bailey will know, a barrister usually gets a “brief fee” (to cover all preparation and the first day, if any, in court), then daily “refreshers”. How much are they? How long is a piece of string?
One of my own last few cases was a County Court commercial matter involving a large amount of cattle feed. Now that it is long ago since I last appeared in court (December 2007; this case was not long before that), I think that I can reveal, by way of illustration, that I was paid, that time, £5,000 as a brief fee and £1,000 a day for refreshers (in fact there were no refreshers, because the matter settled on the first day in court).
I have no real idea how much the case of Stuchbery v. Robinson might cost Stuchbery in legal fees if it is ever pursued to court, but my semi-educated guess (“semi” because I have not been involved with the Bar for over a decade) is that whoever presents it in court (unless doing it for free or on the cheap) will probably want a brief fee of perhaps £5,000 (at least) and (at minimum) £500 per day refreshers. Maybe £10,000 and £1,000 per day. It can be seen that, even at the lower estimate, a 2-week hearing (10 days in court, which this well might be) is going to cost £9,500 for Counsel’s fees alone.
Solicitors’ fees also vary widely. When I myself worked (overseas) for law firms (as an employed lawyer), the firms charged for my work at anything up to USD $500 (or about £400) an hour (I myself didn’t get that, sadly, the firms did); and that was over 20 years ago. I suppose that Stuchbery’s solicitors will not be very expensive, but will probably still charge maybe £50 an hour at absolute minimum. Solicitor case preparation might take hundreds of hours. 100 hours @ £50 p.h. = £5,000.
Then there are what solicitors term “disbursements”, i.e. the expenses of the case such as issue fees, witness expenses, whatever.
You can see how £20,000 can be quickly exhausted…
However, even if Stuchbery’s solicitors (solicitor?) can launch the proposed matter and fund a couple of weeks in court (and don’t forget that the solicitor, if in attendance, will also be charging for his time there), there is the matter of what happens if Stuchbery loses. No, that is not left to chance. The lawyers for the proposed defendant, Robinson, will in that event have to have their costs covered too. Even if they only come to the same level as Stuchbery’s (which I doubt), that puts Stuchbery (and possibly others who have funded the claim) £20,000+ in the hole. It could be a great deal more. Maybe even hundreds of thousands.
Stuchbery is an Australian citizen, maybe also a German one now (I do not know). He has no real property in the UK or, as far as I know, even in Germany, where he now lives. He has no, or no substantial, monies in the UK (or anywhere?). He does not have a substantial income or a full-time job.
On the above facts, and if Robinson applies in court for that, Stuchbery is almost certain to have to provide “security for costs”, i.e. [see above] monies “paid into court” (into a court-controlled account) to cover Robinson’s costs should Stuchbery lose his case. Likewise, on the above facts, that would almost certainly have to be the whole of Robinson’s likely outlay in defending the case. Certainly tens of thousands of pounds. Possibly over £100,000.
If Robinson applies for security for costs, if the court agrees with the application, but then Stuchbery cannot come up with whatever sum is demanded (I cannot think that it would be lower than £20,000; probably far far more), then the claim (the case) will be struck out, possibly with costs awarded to Robinson.
Stuchbery will probably have to raise £40,000+ even to start his case.
I think that my readers will understand better now why I think that Stuchbery has no chance of success regardless of the merits of his case (if any).
Presumably, Stuchbery does understand that, in a case like this, witnesses (he himself, Robinson, others) will have to give evidence, be cross-examined on that, all the while with Stuchbery staying in the UK, perhaps for weeks or even a month or more.
Once again, I am deflected from my slow and peaceful writing of a piece about my several years in Cornwall and Devon, and particularly those spent at Polapit Tamar [below, pictured in the 1940s], and which has an interesting history of its own,
by the need to write about contemporary political events. Still, duty calls…
Social Nationalism is stalled in the UK, but waking from a dormant state…
In other blog posts, I have criticized Corbyn-Labour-supporting Aaron Bastani, Ash Sarkar etc, but Bastani is surely right in tweeting that “The space for a successful far-right party in the UK is massive.” The label “far-right” I disparage, of course, but in essence I agree with him. The difference is that he opposes the birth of such a movement, whereas I support it!
The space for a successful far-right party in the UK is massive. We are fortunate that both the BNP & UKIP failed to fill it.
The fact that much of the establishment still thinks a 'centrist' politics is even remotely possible shows they either don't know this or don't care >
I have recently blogged about the “Independent Group” non-party, about how it will struggle even to get to a 2015-UKIP level of support (see Notes, below), both for “technical” reasons (FPTP voting, a likely even level of support nationwide, so insufficient to create a winning concentration of votes, a Schwerpunkt, in any one constituency etc) and because the voters are moving to the falsely so-called “extreme”. I examined also the Social Democrat Party of the early 1980s.
There is however also the point that Bastani raises in the tweet shown above (does he read my blog?): the fact that people generally are getting frustrated, and many angry, very angry, with smug, “centrist” MPs and MEPs complacently making hay for themselves as people struggle and, in not a few cases, literally starve to death in the UK (thanks to policies such as the “welfare” “reforms” which were imposed by political rats such as Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, Esther McVey, the Jew “lord” Freud and many others).
The roads are potholed, the trains are expensive and don’t even run much of the time, mass immigration has, taking the effect overall, trashed our European society, legal services, local services etc have been cut or destroyed, housing has not only become completely inadequate (mass immigration, millions of births to backward aliens, private profiteering) but threatens to become even less adequate.
The British people want and increasingly will want concrete results. The Westminster game of using the corrupt electoral system to win over the “moderate” voters in the 50-100 most marginal constituencies to a “same-old” pseudo-democratic con-game is seen as the rigged system that it is.
A few years down the line, the choice will be stark: European civilization and social nationalism against “multikulti” neo or pseudo-Marxism and also against Zionist-controlled private profiteering and fake “conservatism”.
When the right time comes, our society will be changed in the right way, keeping what should be preserved, creating what is new and worthwhile, but destroying the inferior with the flame of justice.
I interrupted writing a longer article to write this brief piece. I am in fact unsure whether it is worth the effort, but I should regret not saying something about this typical piece of propaganda presented as documentary film.
I made the mistake of watching what passed for a documentary, presented by Alice Levine, a Jewish woman who has apparently (I had not previously heard of her) presented a number of TV and radio shows. Wikipedia says this about her:
I wasted an hour watching this. In the film, London-based Jewish media person Alice Levine spent a week, or at least a few days, living at the house of Jack Sen, a British nationalist activist. The house is in Southport, Lancashire.
I do not know Jack Sen, though I have heard of him. I believe that we exchanged a couple of tweets several years ago, when I still had a Twitter account. He stood as UKIP candidate in West Lancashire in 2015 and, despite being disowned by UKIP after he tweeted something of a critical nature to then Labour Party MP for Liverpool Wavertree, the Zionist Jewess Luciana Berger, achieved an honourable 6,058 votes (12.2%), and thus retained his deposit.
I have to say that I myself would never invite a Jewish (or even non-Jewish) media person into my home, let alone agree to that person staying for days. I can only assume that either Jack Sen is one of those who thinks that “no publicity is bad publicity”, or he received a fee for his participation. I cannot imagine any other motivation.
The film introduced Jack Sen’s mother (also resident there) and his charming Ukrainian wife and little daughter.
The Alice Levine person, when in bed in the room she was allocated, seemed to wear several layers of clothing. Whether that was because the house was cold, or because she did not want Sen to take “sleeping with the far right” too literally, must remain a puzzle!
There was, of course, no attempt to let Jack Sen properly explain his socio-political outlook. One of the problems with this kind of show, for the subject (“victim”), is that not only does the interviewee not know what will be raised by the interviewer, but also what will be left out of the finished product.
I found Jack Sen to be somewhat eccentric, though that was obviously deliberately amplified by the programme-makers. This was, after all, a week compressed into an hour. He seems to be a basically decent person, to my mind, at least on the personal level. I am unwilling to speculate that he is not. “The soul of another is a dark wood” (Russian proverb), in the end. I am aware that many distrust him and his motives, but I cannot comment either way.
At one point, Alice Levine “discovers” from Sen’s mother (I would bet that her researchers discovered the fact well before she ever arrived at Sen’s house) that his original name was Dilip Sengupta, Sen’s father having been either Indian or half-Indian, a fact mentioned by Sen himself to Ms. Levine. The mention of the name(s) to Sen made him angry. He did not present himself well at that point. He allowed the Jewess to provoke him. Later, she tried to give the impression that she was afraid of Sen, which I very much doubt was the case.
It was obvious that Alice Levine had no idea of life outside her comfortable careerist bubble. She went from a comfortable childhood in Nottinghamshire to the University of Leeds and straight into TV and radio. Jack Sen’s background (not much explored in the film) has obviously been more difficult.
Sen did not (out of politeness, or hospitality?) put Alice Levine on the spot about her Jewish origins, beliefs, attitudes etc. Having said that, I was surprised that she was offered pork by Jack Sen (even I found that rather insensitive!) and even more surprised that she apparently ate it.
At any rate, Alice Levine obviously lives in a bubble where everyone thinks and feels much as she does. In a word, biased. She evidently found it challenging even to think that many do not share her multikulti views. She was unwilling to be challenged on Skype or similar by Nick Griffin.
I had to laugh at it all. If Alice Levine thinks Jack Sen “extreme”, what would she make of me, I wonder?
This attempt to copy Louis Theroux was a waste of time, unenlightening. It is the sort of “documentary” that taxpayer-subsidized Channel 4 does. Dull, really.
My blog, as regular readers will know, concentrates on ideas or matters of general import to society or the world. I do occasionally blog about other things, such as the less strictly legal aspects of my life at the English Bar, particularly if the story or anecdote has a humorous element or one which, to me, seems to say something about society as a whole.
When I blog about people I have known or had connection with, I usually keep them anonymous, or use initials only as identifiers. However, there are cases where the individual is either very well-known or, in my view, does not deserve the protection of anonymity.
Let us go back to December 2007, when I was beginning to have serious problems with the Revenue, problems which were not resolved until 2012. I made my last appearance in court (a truly ridiculous 3-day construction case at Central London County Court…long story, deserving a blog piece of its own some day) and left for my home in North Finistere, France (though I remained, purely nominally, a barrister in chambers, and at the practising Bar, until mid-2008).
Not long before I left for France for the last time (I had been bi-weekly commuting for 3 years via car ferry and air), a nuisance joined chambers. I had twice (successfully) opposed this barrister, one Brent McDonald, in fairly minor County Court negligence cases in the South West of England and had been frankly unimpressed by him. Though he seemed not unintelligent, he also seemed devoid of common sense: for example, insisting to a judge that a motor accident must have happened in a certain way because of the laws of kinetic energy! He was originally in the construction trade, I believe, and had a technical background. I disliked his attitude, which was very and unnecessarily confrontational. He was also a sore loser. If I am being completely honest, I thought that there was something wrong with him mentally.
That individual, I believe of Scottish origins, was, according to the senior clerk to chambers, married to an Indian (I think) woman, and they apparently had a child (in fact, if memory serves, two children). The Clerk said that he had plenty of good work, mostly legally-aided.
I was, at the time, a member of Rougemont Chambers, Exeter, which had burgeoned from a handful of people and not much work when I joined in 2002 to being a busy provincial set with a couple of dozen barristers and three clerks in 2007 (it is now merged with another set under a new name and is the largest set in Exeter and the largest in the South West outside Bristol).
The other members of chambers (it was always a surprise to me what poor judges of character many barristers are) were apparently impressed by McDonald at a reception chambers held for him, and the senior clerk was impressed by the list of solicitors supposedly willing to instruct him (and thus bring work and revenue to chambers). I abstained on accepting him into chambers, rather than voting against him, because both the Head of Chambers (who is now a Circuit Judge) and the Senior Clerk had persuaded all other members to approve him and I did not have the power to veto his acceptance.
In the first day or so, McDonald was not offensive and even remarked on how impressed he was that I was mentioned in the main legal directories (that “review” barristers and solicitors) as someone to brief on matters such as Caribbean and other offshore laws, and oil and gas questions, the latter particularly involving the Russophone jurisdictions where I had had very direct experience (including a year living in Kazakhstan).
It was not long, however, before McDonald started to buttonhole me on my political views, though only on the race question (including the Jewish Question). This was odd, because members of chambers rarely discussed anything political. McDonald was insolent and inquisitorial. To me, his attitude was unbelievable, not least because he had only just joined chambers and was in every way junior to me! Protocol is important to me. His demeanour was would-be intimidating, would-be bossy. I was fuming but courtesy also is very important to me. In fact, the bastard even remarked, half-sneeringly, on how polite I was and how it was obvious that politeness was important to me!
McDonald effectively admitted that his antipathy toward me was based on (his kneejerk assumption about) my political views, combined with the fact that his wife and offspring (I think that he had two children) were non-European; as noted above, I believe that his wife was Indian. In the end, he grudgingly accepted that I had different views from his and we effectively agreed to avoid each other in chambers. Until he arrived, chambers had been a pleasant place. It was an object lesson in how one person can poison a whole environment very quickly.
So I left the practising Bar and my Exeter chambers and England, though not primarily (in fact, scarcely at all) because of McDonald (though his being there was certainly a disincentive to me, like the taste of a bitter piece of peel when eating a fruit).
I do not think that McDonald stayed long in those chambers before joining a larger set in Bristol, an offshoot of a London set. I noticed that he was himself now mentioned in the legal directories which he seemed to revere. They said that he “had come up through the ranks” and was well-regarded or some such.
I myself have always viewed such legal directories with skepticism, not so much because they recommended me at one time (!) but more because I had read glowing reports about people and organizations which did not chime with my direct experience of them, such as the “Emerging Markets” mini-department at Cameron McKenna (a large City of London law firm) for which I worked for 6 months in 1996-97, based for most of which time in Almaty, Kazakhstan (I later stayed on there, working with a very large American law firm).
That Cameron McKenna department was largely a Potemkin village created by an Australian woman of Russian-speaking (note speaking) origins, who would have been incapable of organizing the proverbial “piss-up in a brewery”, but who was very good at putting on an impressive front: when her department was about to be closed (when the **** hit the fan in various ways), about a year after I myself had moved on, that person not only managed to move just in time (and with a few toadies) to another large City of London law firm dealing with Russia, Kazakhstan etc, but the Times legal section and the main legal directories all (briefed by her and/or cronies, no doubt) lauded her new firm as having been “strengthened” by having this useless and devious woman and said toadies on board! (the last I heard of her, a few years ago, she had returned to the Antipodes and was an Australian trade delegate at a fairly high level, no doubt flourishing like the green bay tree…).
Anyway, returning to this McDonald character, I pretty much forgot about him for a decade, but then I started my blog and included a few reminiscences etc. So it was that I decided, recently, to see whether he was still at the Bar. To my surprise, I could not find him in the Bar Directory, or anywhere else, even by Googling. I did find some noted (i.e. appeal) cases, dating from 2008 or so. I wondered whether he had died, emigrated, even been disbarred! I drew a blank everywhere. Then I noticed that there was someone with the same surname at his last-known chambers. Not his wife at the time I knew him, because hers was a foreign, I think Indian, first name and this one was called Fran. Anyway, the Indian woman had not been at the Bar. So I thought that the surname must be co-incidence (McDonald being a fairly common name). Then, however, I noticed a few more facts.
It turned out that appeal cases from 2008 and later, proudly noted on that chambers’ website as having been done by Fran McDonald, had in fact been noted, in the law reports themselves, as having been done by Brent McDonald. I took a closer look.
The Bar Directory now has no public record for a Brent McDonald, but does now have an entry for one Lola Francesca McDonald…
Now a stranger move yet! It turns out that the barrister formerly known as Brent McDonald and now known as Fran McDonald has relocated to, of all places, the small New Zealand town of Nelson, at the top of NZ’s South Island.
What makes this move even stranger, on the face of it (and notwithstanding that Nelson seems a pleasant small town, reputedly the sunniest in New Zealand), is that McDonald (whether as Brent or Fran) was a personal injury specialist (though in Exeter he did other negligence-related and yet other work in the brief time when we were both members of Rougemont Chambers in 2007). There is, as far as I know, no personal injury legal work in New Zealand (see below for the reason for this).
The legal directories said:
“‘…rising star [Fran] McDonald continues to act on severe injury and fatal accident cases in the UK and abroad. She is very popular.’ (2012)”; and
“‘[Fran] McDonald is solely focused on personal injury and clinical negligence.’ (2014)”
(note the square brackets: looks as if Fran was still Brent in 2012 and 2014, despite the “she”; as for the Legal 500, that organization does not note McDonald’s New Zealand departure in its latest online offering: see below)
“WORK DEPARTMENT
Personal injury; public inquiry; clinical negligence; product liability; inquests.
POSITION
Fran is a specialist barrister acting in the field of personal Injury who is recommended in both ‘Chambers & Partners’ and ‘The Legal 500’. Fran’s practice is focused on personal injury, including fatal accidents, inquests and inquiries.“
The favourable references cease after 2016. The reason is a little vague (to me at least). I have no idea how long “gender reassignment” takes (or whether Brent/Fran underwent it), though, apropos of nothing much, I did once own a copy of the memoirs of April Ashley, my copy sadly abandoned in France in 2009, along with 99% of my library of 2,000 books. The April Ashley book was rare, too, the print run having been pulped.
I presume that the apparent hiatus after 2016 may have had something to do with what must be a very trying metamorphosis for anyone.
What makes the emigration to New Zealand odd is that it is clear, on the face of it, that McDonald built up a solid reputation in England in personal injury and the related clinical negligence area, but has now relocated to a country where there is effectively no personal injury or clinical negligence work, because New Zealand has a “no-fault” system, based on universal insurance, assessment of injury etc (see Notes, below).
I notice that McDonald, despite and perhaps justly boosting his/her personal injury repertoire on the London chambers’ website (to the exclusion of almost everything else), now lists as specialisms “employment law” and, even more weirdly (to my eye), nautical matters!
“Fran’s main specialism in Nelson is issues relating to employment law. After completion of his exams in the new year he will resume practice over his full range of contentious interests including tort law (negligence, trespass etc), insurance, commercial/contractual disputes, professional liability, property disputes, medico-legal matters, engineering and construction and health and safety legislation.”
and
“Many of his cases over the years have had a nautical theme such as claims involving distraint of containerised goods, allisions or breach of contract especially where jurisdictional/conflict of laws questions arose. Fran is equally happy to bring or defend claims. For example, he acted for UK Marines injured on the battlefield at the same time as being counsel for over 1,200 Iraqis alleging they were imprisoned, tortured or had family members murdered by UK forces.“
The Nelson law firm names McDonald as Fran, as do the chambers in London (of which he/she is still, it seems, a member), but the London website refers to “she/her” whereas the New Zealand one has it as “he/his”. All very confusing… In addition, the New Zealand law firm shows McDonald as male, in a suit, shirt, tie, with short hair. The London website shows Fran as, or as if, female, with matching hair. Even more confusing…
The New Zealand law firm, Hamish Fletcher, which McDonald has joined in Nelson, has —actually not too unpleasing aesthetically, from the architectural point of view— offices on the floors above some retail outlets: Specsavers, a clothing shop and a “vape shop”, as can be seen via Google Earth.
Well, there it is. I am no psychiatrist, but it appears that the underlying motive force here is a wish for reinvention: the young man in construction or engineering becomes a barrister, marries, has children, changes sets, changes locations, changes sex, emigrates to the far side of the world and to very different circumstances, even (as it appears) metamorphosing in appearance again.
In the Russian proverb, “the soul of another is a dark wood” [чужая душа темный лес].
Does the above story tell us anything beyond the egregious McDonald’s personal odyssey? Someone seemingly rootless… is that typical of the age, typical now of UK people? I myself was once called, in jest, “the wandering Aryan”! It does reinforce my view of “legal directories”, not to mention chambers’ and law firms’ websites!
What about the “gender bender” aspect? A lady barrister I knew in London once was convinced that pollution of the water and air was leading to feminization in the males of both fish and humans (she was looking at her boyfriend at the time!). Was she wrong? I merely pose the question. When both April Ashley and (btw) a later friend of mine, Della Aleksander, had “sex change surgery” in Casablanca (April Ashley in 1960, Della Aleksander sometime in the early 1970s, I believe), such things were outrageous enough to draw down huge tabloid press interest. Now, it sometimes seems as though everyone and his dog is having a “sex change”! I do not think we can simply shrug our shoulders at all this. It may be that we are coming to the point where our whole civilization is about to experience a crisis.
Many readers of my blog will be aware that I ceased to be even nominally a barrister in late 2016. For those who are not, and are curious as to why, please see:
I happened to notice that the name of the subject of the blog post no longer appears in the online list of barristers belonging to his former chambers in England.
Update, 28 May 2022
Having seen that the original blog post has had a number of hits overnight, I checked out the website of that law firm in Nelson, New Zealand. It seems that the individual in question has now reverted to “Brent”.
What an unexpected and odd world we live in.
Update, 14 June 2023
Upon looking up the individual in question (on the website of the New Zealand law firm) for the first time in over a year, it appears that the individual no longer says anything about specializing either in personal injury or “wet” shipping matters, but now gives priority to business mediation etc, and even claims to have always done that kind of work. Really?
I cannot recall him ever doing that kind of work when I had the misfortune of being acquainted with him, whatever he may now claim. I should know. I did a bit myself when in the same chambers as him, and even sat as a business mediator now and then.
Oh, well, there it is…
Update, 15 July 2024
The blog post having had quite a few recent hits, I decided to see whether there was any further or better information that I should add. Turns out that the individual in question is still “Brent”, and now sports a beard. He moved on, apparently, from his former law firm a year ago and over the past year has been associated with two other law firms in turn, both on the South Island of New Zealand. He is not, however, and as of today’s date, on the websites of either.
I was reminded yet again (not that I require the reminder) of the migration-invasion of the UK, having seen a Daily Telegraph article written some 6 years ago (2012), just recently tweeted or retweeted by (ironically) a Jew-Zionist extremist. To read the full article, see Notes, below.
What the article says
In that Daily Telegraph article, the authoress writes that
“I feel like a stranger where I live.”
I am living in a place where I am a stranger.”
“Muslims…it feels as if they have taken over.”
“There are, of course, other Europeans in my area who may share my feelings but I’m not able to talk to them easily about this situation as they are mostly immigrants, too.”
“I suspect that many white people in London and the Home Counties now move house on the basis of ethnicity, especially if they have children. Estate agents don’t advertise this self-segregation, of course. Instead there are polite codes for that kind of thing, such as the mention of “a good school”, which I believe is code for “mainly white English”. Not surprising when you learn that nearly one million pupils do not have English as a first language.”
“I, too, have decided to leave my area, following in the footsteps of so many of my neighbours. I don’t really want to go. I worked long and hard to get to London, to find a good job and buy a home and I’d like to stay here. But I’m a stranger on these streets and all the “good” areas, with safe streets, nice housing and pleasant cafés, are beyond my reach. I see London turning into a place almost exclusively for poor immigrants and the very rich.”
“…now, despite the wishful thinking of multiculturalists, wilful segregation by immigrants is increasingly echoed by the white population – the rate of white flight from our cities is soaring. According to the Office for National Statistics, 600,000 white Britons have left London in the past 10 years. The latest census data shows the breakdown in telling detail: some London boroughs have lost a quarter of their population of white, British people. The number in Redbridge, north London, for example, has fallen by 40,844 (to 96,253) in this period, while the total population has risen by more than 40,335 to 278,970. It isn’t only London boroughs. The market town of Wokingham in Berkshire has lost nearly 5 per cent of its white British population.”
“It’s sad that I am moving not for a positive reason, but to escape something. I wonder whether I’ll tell the truth, if I’m asked. I can’t pretend that I’m worried about local schools, so perhaps I’ll say it’s for the chance of a conversation over the garden fence. But really I no longer need an excuse: mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all.”
So finally the authoress, obviously by nature something akin to what the Americans might term, mutatis mutandis, a “Country Club Republican” (meaning “liberal conservative”) has to concede that “I no longer need an excuse: mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all.”
The only thing to be added to her article itself is that it is 6 years since she wrote it. The statistic given of 600,000 white British or mostly British who left (fled?) London in the decade before the article was written could probably be updated to 1M or more now.
Personal Experiences and Thoughts
The Daily Telegraph article focusses on the Muslim influx into London. Firstly, that influx has been far greater in percentage terms in some of the post-industrial Northern towns and cities; secondly, the writer says that “Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim, with the majority of them young families. That is not, in reality, a great number.”
In what world is a million (now? God knows…) not a great number? In what world is nearly 13% (now, what?) of the population (and growing fast as those “young families” breed) not huge? The lady writer so obviously wants to be “nice”, and not to “offend” etc, but I fear that desperate times betoken desperate measures. Nice polite sentiments are, well, nice and polite, but we have to face facts with both clear thought and clear expression of thought if Western civilization is to survive.
The Daily Telegraph guest writer prefers to focus on the Muslims as a population bloc (and, though unsaid, population bomb), but effectively ignores the multitude of other races, ethnicities and nationalities that now comprise part of the London population. Africans, West Indians, Chinese etc, a giant multikulti Pandora’s Box. We hear much now about the explosion in youth “gangs” and “knife crime” etc (almost all of which is carried out by blacks and other non-whites), and the System msm and political milieu becomes ever more hysterical with calls to restrict and get rid of…knives! In the old phrase, “’nuff said”!
I once lived in London, starting in Little Venice in 1976 (at age 19; I returned intermittently and that was the main area in which I lived over the years), eventually living in a number of different areas, some good, some not so good: Blackheath, Lee, Lewisham, East Dulwich, Tulse Hill, New Cross, Holland Park. The house in which I first lived, in Little Venice, was valued at £100,000 when sold to the lessee c.1980. It was sold in 2005 (by my friend who bought the freehold c.1980) for £1.4M…That same house, or at least identical Victorian semi-detached villas with good gardens in the same road, were valued in 2018 at up to £4M! A 40x increase in “value” in less than 40 years! A low to average pay in 1976 would have been about £100 per week; similar work would today pay perhaps £400 or £500 a week. In other words, pay has increased, for most people, at a face value of perhaps 4x or 5x over those 40 years, but the cost of a house by 40x! Rent has increased similarly.
Mass immigration is only one of the factors that have driven up the cost of London housing, but it is a major one and probably the most important. The wealthier parts of London now house largely a cosmopolitan crowd of Chinese, “Russians” (many of which are in fact Jews from Russia), Israelis, Arabs, you name it. In fact, large swathes of expensive housing are owned but kept empty by absentee foreigners. The poorer parts (such as in the Daily Telegraph article) are now flooded and indeed swamped by a motley mob of blacks, browns and others (and also whites from the poorer parts of Europe).
Little Venice has changed from, in 1976, being a fairly affluent, in places wealthy, and also rather intellectual (because of the BBC studios in the outer part of Maida Vale, perhaps), inner suburb, to a now very wealthy enclave (one cannot list the famous pop stars, theatrical people, film stars, “entrepreneurs” etc who now live there, so numerous are they). However, this “island” is surrounded by a black/brown sea in all directions North and West. Even in the 1990s, if a school trip party from the nearby areas were to be encountered at Warwick Avenue Underground Station, there were few if any white children.
I myself saw what was coming, decades ago. I stayed in London (for much of the time, though I was sometimes overseas, at times resident in the country or in the USA) until I left to live in Kazakhstan on kommandirovka (work contract) for a year (1996-1997). Others I knew in London had started to leave by then.
One couple, the sister and brother in law of a lady I knew, lived in Catford, South London, in what was probably the only decent road there: a leafy enclave of large detached Victorian or perhaps Edwardian houses. They, professed Labour supporters and, I think, members, no doubt “anti-racist” etc (I was warned not to talk politics with them, and I think that they had been given a similar warning!) were able, for a while, to live there an comfortably affluent life (he a partner in a City of London law firm, she a housewife –though I daresay never accepting such a label– and Open University student) and able also to put out of mind the enveloping near-jungle that started at the end of their own road. They relocated to rural Kent in the 1990s, pleased to discover that their Catford residence could be sold to their advantage, allowing them to buy a country house complete with acres of manicured grounds, a swimming pool, tennis court, stables (and horses) etc, somewhere near Tonbridge.
I doubt that the above couple would ever have said (even between themselves, probably) that there was a racial element to their relocation (escape?); more likely to have cited fresh air, space, less noise, better schools for their two children etc (and would never have linked those factors, at least consciously, to the racial-ethnic one…).
The lady whose sister and brother in law are mentioned above also relocated out of London, in the late 1990s, having contracted a marriage or quasi-marriage. She and her “partner”, to use the contemporary word, sold their London homes (in his case in the “bandit country” of the Seven Sisters neighbourhood of North London) and bought a house in Brighton. Neither of them, I am sure, would ever mention ethnic-related crime as one reason to move (they were both strong “anti-racists” and she is the only woman ever to have walked out on me at a restaurant, the result of an ideological disagreement at the –now and sadly closed-down– Luba’s Bistro in Knightsbridge). More likely to be mentioned: sea air, a less frenetic life etc…
Thirdly, a barrister I knew, who also relocated, also to the South Coast, in the early 2000s, together with his very charming wife and then-young children: another Labour Party member (and one-time Islington councillor, who was offered but declined the chance of a safe seat in the Commons under Blair), I am sure that the reasons which he or his wife might give for having moved out of London would be fresh sea air, space, good schooling for their two children etc; certainly nothing to do with the ethnic swamping of London. They may even believe that themselves. Call me a cynic…
It may or may not be significant that in all three of the above cases, one person from each couple had to commute a considerable distance daily to London. Obviously, those people thought that the trouble and extra travel expense was worth it.
Another case: someone I had known from school, who bought a house (later two others) in South London, rented rooms, converted two houses into flats, starting around 1980. He eventually married and then, around 2000, moved out of London to what the Daily Mail might call “leafy Buckinghamshire”. I do not know whether he would say that racial or ethnic swamping was a cause of his relocation or not; he would probably cite cultural factors. Like the others above, he and his wife are bringing up their children (indeed, by now have brought them up) in a basically white English racial and cultural milieu.
There are similar relocations constantly, from London and other UK urban centres to the country, to Australasia etc. Few of those fleeing or, put less dramatically, relocating, are very “political”; if they were, there might be no need for “white flight”!
Safe Zones
I have previously blogged about the need for English (to a lesser extent, Welsh and Scottish) people to relocate to “safe zones” and in particular to the one major zone which I propose in the South West of England. This is not exclusively a racial imperative. It is also a social and cultural one.
I have been criticized by old-thinking persons who say that English people should “stay and fight” (at least politically). Such people still think in terms of starting a political party, printing leaflets (in the digital age!), holding meetings, and canvassing voters “on the doorstep” just like System party MPs and candidates pretend to do at election time as part of the meaningless flim-flam of System party politics. Well, how has that worked out? The NF tried it in the 1970s (before the Internet). Result? Nothing. The BNP tried it in the 1990s and 2000s. Result? Almost nothing (and eventually nothing). UKIP tried it and is still trying it with its few members. Result? Nothing, really.
How is it possible to fight or struggle politically for social nationalism in a city such as London which is majority non-white/non-European? A doomed struggle. That is what faces us in most UK urban concentrations.
There must be a concentration of forces, to enable a new future to be developed. Not just “white flight” away from certain ways of life, but advance to a new society.
Further to the above, I saw the youtube video below, which is self-explanatory and also hilarious, as virtue-signalling Swedes tie themselves in knots trying to backtrack after lying that they would, if asked, accept a “refugee” into their homes as a staying guest. It reminded me of all those enemies of the people in the UK, who are constantly telling (other) British people to give up their living standards or even their own homes to (mostly fake) “refugees”. You know some of the worst of them: Yvette Cooper, Lily Allen, Billy Bragg, the jew “lord” Dubs etc.
Now look at these virtue-signalling Swedish morons!
and here (below) is the Peter Hitchens view. Sadly, not a social nationalist, but he does castigate mass immigration
Update, 3 June 2019
I am probably wasting my time talking about a random tweet seen, especially when it is typical of thousands, but anyway…
Nicely put! 🙂 I am one of those Brits living in Europe and fighting for the rights of my children and grandchildren to enjoy FOM.
which is in a very pleasant and quiet (and European-race) corner of France (the village or town has fewer than 3,000 inhabitants). Hardly any non-Europeans live anywhere in the whole region.
This woman is tweeting in support of a Romanian girl who wants to stay in the UK, where the Romanian has been living for 7 years (probably at State expense in part, possibly as cheap labour in part) and who is doing a PhD (on “migrants in the UK”! You could not make it up!). Judging from the photos tweeted, the Romanian girl is at least real Romanian, not one of the horde of Roma Gypsies with Romanian or other passports.
My attitude? I have no objection to the odd (real) Romanian coming to or staying in the UK; n.b. not Roma Gypsies, not in the millions (of any kind of person). As for the tweeters supporting mass immigration, “idiots”, “bien-pensants”…..”well-meaning fools” pretty much covers it. Look at the Woolf woman, wishing yet more swamping of the UK… from her rural idyll in one of the most scenic and prosperous (and unswamped) parts of Western France!
I suppose that I should add that I myself was resident in France (Finistere-Nord, Brittany) for several years, but there again (unlike many of those who are swamping the UK) I am of European race and culture, did not use the French social security or free health system, brought money into France rather than exporting funds from France and was never in trouble with the police (save for one minor nonsense “crime”, an on-the-spot speeding ticket, when I was caught doing nearly 100 mph on a dual-carriageway with a speed-limit of about 65 mph).
These idiots tweeting their virtue-signalling tend to equate British pensioners, business owners, or expat residents (working part-time in the UK or elsewhere if working at all), with (often non-European) cheap labour, fake “refugees”, criminals, scavengers etc! Such hypocritical and (at least in their own minds) “well-meaning” idiots are some of the gravediggers of Europe’s future.
Update, 27 June 2019
A Daily Telegraph property report published this week.
“Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) said that “property prices are a big deal” and the main cause of internal migration from London. “Obviously people also want a better quality of life, but they also want access to good schools, to live in rural areas and to get away from the stabbings.”“[Daily Telegraph]
“Neil Park, head of the ONS’s population estimates unit, said: “In the last two years, population growth in the UK has been at its lowest rate since 2004.”
“For the fifth year in a row, net international migration was a bigger driver of population change than births and deaths”
The racial-ethnic aspects of migration by English people out of London are not mentioned directly once in the (immediately above) Daily Telegraph report. It’s all “better schools”, “fresh air”, “leisure opportunities”, “knife crime” etc. Same old…meaning same hypocrisy and same unwillingness to face the truth.
Ian Robert Millard 