The UK is in an extraordinary political and Constitutional mess. What is more extraordinary is that the person who should be trying to sort it out, as Prime Minister, is not only not doing so (and is in any case incapable of doing so, being totally unfit for his office), but is actively making the situation worse.
I do not often support the words of pro-Israel drone Douglas Murray, but he has it at least largely right here [see below]:
I have been saying for years that Boris Johnson is unfit for any office. Finally, after a decade or more, much of the the msm and also the more aware part of the public are catching up with me. I despise pretty much everything about Boris Johnson, who has been puffed for years as “Prime Minister in Waiting” by a dozy, complaisant or conspiring Press, radio and TV.
Boris is an idiot, the very words used to describe him by Israeli Embassy political intelligence officer Shai Masot, caught by Al Jazeera TV conspiring with former Labour MP Joan Ryan. The exact words? “…Boris is busy, you know. You know he is an idiot, but so far he has become the minister of foreign affairs without any kind of responsibilities…We like Boris”. Of course (((they))) do! Boris-Idiot will do anything that the Jewish lobby, Israel, or the “tail-wags-dog” USA want.
Re Pete Willsman and Israeli Embassy plot to interfere in UK politics This is Israeli spy (now expelled) talking to Labour traitor Joan Ryan of @_LFI Ryan : "What happened to the names we put into the Embassy, Shai" Masot : "We've got £1m…"pic.twitter.com/QekirLRyU0
— ICJ says Israel is guilty of Genocide (@TheBirmingham6) May 31, 2019
What is it about the UK, that an idiot is suddenly thought some kind of minor genius if he went to Eton and Oxford and can recall some of the Latin and Greek he learned at school? What is there in Boris behind the rote-learned classical Greek and the carefully-cultivated, careless “English” “upper class” persona? Which of course is largely a fake, because Boris is part-Jew, part-Circassian Turk, part God-knows-what, born in the USA, brought up partly there and also in Belgium.
Behind all the playacting, behind the Eton and Oxford, behind the pathetic am-dram reprise of Winston Churchill, what is in the middle of the onion? Anything? Nothing?
Boris Johnson, as I have repeatedly said (and with increasing frustration as he has been repeatedly promoted to the level of his incompetence— the Peter Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle), Boris is unfit to be in public life at all. In fact, he has outdone the Peter Principle, in that he has been incompetent in all of the jobs he has ever had (with the arguable exception of the editorship of The Spectator), yet has talked his way, with a fair wind from connections and msm, to become journalist, editor, MP, Mayor of London, MP again, Cabinet minister, and now Prime Minister, despite having been incompetent in all or almost all of those roles.
This government is an entirely illegitimate pro-Israel regime. All of its ministers and most of its MPs are members of Conservative Friends of Israel. Some are part-Jew, some full, e.g. Grant Shapps, dodgy business type from the Hertfordshire Borshch Belt, who was head of the youth wing of UK “Bnai Brith”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%27nai_B%27rith
This government is undoubtedly the least impressive in living memory. Few of its members, if any, have real or substantial achievement to their name. Some, notably East African Asian Priti Patel, incredibly now again a Cabinet minister after having been sacked by Theresa May, are or were Israeli agents, certainly agents of influence, possibly more.
There is no doubt that the Boris Johnson government is set to increase the repression of free speech where it affects Jews and Zionism. There are probably secret plans to introduce the mediaeval-style laws against “holocaust” “denial” that we see in several other European states. That alone means that Boris-Idiot and his Cabinet and his government have to be removed. Whatever it takes. At present, Boris Idiot would find it hard to introduce such repressive laws (unless with the help of Labour Friends of Israel MPs), tightening even further the repression introduced (mainly) under Tony Blair and also Theresa May. The Commons votes might not be there for that. However, were the —misnamed— Conservatives to win a Commons majority, we should expect all sorts of police-state actions to increase as the “Conservative” ranks would be padded out with unthinking newly-elected lobby-fodder.
That horrible bastard John Mann, who might well soon have been deselected by his local Labour Party anyway, has now accepted a well-paid role as the Government’s “anti-Semitism” “tsar” and will not be standing for re-election :
“Mann, who will be based in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, claims his sole aim is to make the UK a haven for the Jewish community.” (it already is, and that is a major problem).
“In her last act as prime minister, Theresa May appointed Mann, who backed Brexit and this week voted with the government to try to block emergency legislation intended to stop no-deal, as an independent adviser to the government on tackling anti-semitism.”
“Boris Johnson has since upgraded the role, underlining the importance the government attaches to the issue.” [The Times].
There you have it: Theresa May and Boris Johnson (both of part-Jew origins: one of Johnson’s great-grandfathers was an Orthodox Jew rabbi in Lithuania!) head and headed the two most pro-Jew and pro-Zionist governments in British history. Arguably the two worst-ever from other points of view too.
What about Brexit?
I have been pro-Brexit for years, well before the 2016 Referendum. Britain must try to get out of the EU “lobster-pot” (easy to enter, almost impossible to exit). I tweeted (until the Jew-Zionists had me barred from Twitter in 2018) and have blogged (since late 2016) about these matters.
Other states have voted not to go further into the lobster-pot. They were forced to “rethink” and “vote again”…Likewise, if states like Portugal and Austria elected any “far right” MPs, the EU cold-shouldered them until the “mistake” was “corrected”. The same squeeze is now being put onto Hungary and Italy. This is a tyranny, though —so far— of the “iron fist in velvet glove” variety.
As soon as the 2016 Referendum was over, I was predicting a long campaign by NWO/ZOG/EU to reverse the Referendum one way or another. Either Remain, or “BRINO” (Brexit In Name Only). I have no idea to what extent the criminal mishandling of the Brexit negotiations was deliberate, but I have my suspicions. Anyway, there it is.
The EEC was supposedly a matter of intra-Europe free trade and a customs union to facilitate that. When the UK joined the EEC and then voted (in a fixed referendum, in which the pro-EEC side had 10x the money to buy publicity etc…) to remain, in the 1970s, the bloc was still mainly beneficial. However, just as Bismarck’s Zollverein paved the way for a German unitary (unified) state in the late 19th Century, so the EEC paved the way for a transformation of the free states of Western and Central Europe into the EC and then, via Maastricht, the EU. The precursor to a one-Europe state.
I might not even object to that, were that EU superstate to be a true federation of equals and not under sinister “New World Order” [“NWO”] control, but that is not the case. NWO and “ZOG” [“Zionist Occupation Government”] work together to impose, over time, a ghastly and repressive tyranny, one that encompasses both Europe and North America and which aspires to control the whole world in time. George Orwell was a prophet. The EU is only part of the way towards the ultimate destination.
We are therefore left with a paradox: I want the UK to get out, fully out, of the EU, but also want an end to the present Boris Johnson “Conservative” government.
There is no place for my views in the present black-and-white msm narrative being put before the public, which narrative has room only for a binary choice:
No Deal Brexit + Boris; or
Remain/Brexit In Name Only/EU-approved “deal” + No Boris.
I reject that binary choice. It is just a couple of flickering shadows on the wall of the cave.
The best thing would be for the UK to leave the EU, and for the Conservatives to be heavily defeated at a general election.
There is no prospect that Corbyn and his deadheads can run a successful government either, so that might well open the door for a real social-national movement and party (which latter does not exist at present; it must first exist, naturally).
Desperate times, desperate measures. Only when people need real leadership from a social-national party and leader can that party and leader arise from obscurity to their true stature.
I wrote the words below some three months ago, in an earlier blog post about Boris-Idiot. They have worn rather well, if I say so myself. Give that man a cee-gar!
“We keep hearing that “Boris Johnson has the ability to be Prime Minister, but does he have the necessary character?”
My response is “where has Boris Johnson proven that he has the ability?”; on the contrary, he has, if anything, proven that he has not the ability.”
We have now seen the political theatre playing what seems to be somewhere between comedy and tragedy, or perhaps an unfunny farce. The talking heads and “experts” of the msm have been scrabbling for meaning amid the obfuscation and posturing. Some “newspapers” have even resorted to “experts” in “body language”:
Where does the truth lie? Where does Boris-Idiot lie? Everywhere and non-stop?
I find it infuriating to see, on every news broadcast, that part-Jew public entertainer posing as and (literally) playing the part of Prime Minister of this country. A total charlatan.
We now keep hearing the question, as in the TV game show, “Deal or No Deal?”, and, as in that silly but somehow addictive TV show, there is no skill involved. One just opens all the boxes to see what is inside. No skill, but much calculation as to one’s own best bet. In the case of The Boris-Idiot Show, we should ignore the flim-flam of the “head to heads” with what now are supposed to be “world leaders”. All that Boris-Idiot is considering is his own position and ambition; and was there ever in British politics such an empty ambition?
What After 31 October?
Even more than David Cameron-Levita, this latest ZOG figurehead has no real plans for the people of the UK, no interest in their lives or how to improve Britain’s place in the world. All he wants to do is to be seen as Prime Minister and show off. To that end, his girlfriend has cleaned him up and tidied him up a bit, told him to cut down on the rote-learned classical Greek and Latin and the silly obscure English words from the OED, and tutored him in how to appear, even if briefly, “prime ministerial”.
As noted, Boris-Idiot is the most ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] Prime Minister ever, and his Cabinet is the most Jewish and Zionist ever, despite the fact that most of them are not Jewish, nor even part-Jew. All (as far as I know) are members of Conservative Friends of Israel. All are also extreme finance-capitalist by ideology, though few if any have ever run a successful private business (unless you include the scams of Grant Shapps etc). They want to destroy the few rights that British citizens have qua employee or otherwise for that matter (eg free speech rights).
Johnson does in fact not much care whether “deal or no deal”, so long as the mass media narrative plays well for him. If “no deal”, then “Boris” plays the Poundland Churchill, standing up for lonely isolated Britain against the EU bullies. If the EU offers enough so that Boris-Idiot can present it as some kind of “breakthrough”, then he can play the role of popular returning Chamberlain, waving his piece of paper and proclaiming “peace in our time with the EU”.
The above two characterizations may seem facile, but that is the level Boris-Idiot is on. He has no serious political or ideological position; it is all showy nothingness, relying on simplistic formulae, 1950s or 1960s boys’ comic-paper cartoons about standing up for Britain etc, and on fooling people too stupid or uninformed to see through what is essentially a con-act. That applies to Brexit too.
I myself favour Brexit, favoured Leave in 2016 and still do, but the Brexit process was criminally mishandled by a load of idiots in the Conservative government(s), possibly deliberately, and so now we career into uncertainty.
At first, Boris was pro-EU, pro-Remain, then “sceptical” (as public opinion moved), then pro-Leave, then voted in Cabinet (during his disastrous months posing as Foreign Secretary) for Theresa May’s “deal”, then he decided that his political future would be better served by acting the part of the “battling Brexiteer”, which meant that, out of 65 million UK inhabitants, the 92,000 Conservative Party members who preferred Leave to Remain (or “Brexit In Name Only” and so Boris-Idiot to Jeremy Hunt) in effect appointed the idiot as Prime Minister, with no popular validation as yet.
If Boris thinks that he can fool people into thinking that he has “achieved” a “better deal” than the Theresa May one, he will take it, knowing that many in the UK are now uneasy at what lies ahead. That also has the advantage for Johnson that he will not have to actually organize the UK and/or try to negotiate trade agreements with other states, something at which he has no experience and probably no aptitude.
If Boris cannot get enough from the EU to fool the public, then the Poundland Churchill will reappear, taking the UK out of the EU on the WTO/No Deal basis. Simple as that. There is no thought either way for what is best for the UK and its people. Everything is “what is best for 1. Boris Johnson and (far behind…) 2. The Conservative Party?”
What will happen if a UK general election happens soon after 31 October 2019? To my mind, Boris-Idiot will have to call one fairly soon, before the economy worsens and before he is fully-exposed as being completely incompetent for his present (or any) office.
Brexit Party is key. If the UK stays formally in the EU, via an extension or otherwise, the Brexit Party will stand 650 candidates, win some seats but more importantly, prevent the Conservative Party from winning dozens and possibly 100+. That would very likely mean that the Con Party will not even be largest party in the Commons.
What if the UK does leave the EU on or before 31 October? If that happens via some stitch-up deal and is in fact Brexit In Name Only (BRINO), Brexit Party will still stand those candidates with hope of a high vote-share.
That only leaves “no deal” or “WTO” Brexit. If that happens, and if it happens without chaos, or before absolute chaos and/or economic recession ensues, then Boris the Poundland Churchill can say to Farage and Brexit Party that they should stand down their troops. Like a Pacific salmon, Farage has spawned and can now die having fulfilled his mission. Will Farage do that? If so, or maybe even if he does not, Brexit Party might have little impact on the Conservative vote, if the UK is seen to have truly left the EU. However, it might still impact the Con vote (if Brexit Party can, ironic as it would be, distance itself from Brexit as sole issue, and seek votes on a wider basis…). It is a gamble. Boris-Idiot is a gambler, a chancer.
Never has the Labour Party been lower in public esteem or public support. Not all Corbyn’s fault. The Jews have mounted an attack on Corbyn for 4 years. Some of the mud has stuck. There are other factors. Corbyn and his allies have not really stood up to the Jew-Zionists. They have continued to parrot support for the “holocaust” fakery etc. There is also the “deadhead” nature of most of the Labour MPs around Corbyn (or not). Blacks and browns prominent, but also some of the English ones. Think Kate Osamor. Think Diane Abbott. The whole package is not electorally appealing beyond the ethnic minorities, beyond some of the public service people, beyond those reliant on State benefits and pensions.
I was until recently convinced that Labour would end up as largest Commons bloc after a 2019/2020 general election. Now? I cannot say with any confidence. That might still happen. Alternatively, the Conservatives might be largest bloc, as now, but with fewer MPs. There is now even a small chance (God forbid) that, in the absence of a popular Opposition, and in the possible absence or effective absence of Brexit Party, the Conservative Party might win a majority in the Commons. Boris Johnson might just survive as Prime Minister against the odds (and against merit), and with real power.
If that were to happen, the future really would be cast into the hazard.
Update, 20 October 2021
Having noticed that the blog post has had a few hits today and in recent days, I felt that I should update it.
Well, I was more or less right. “Boris” played the Poundland Chamberlain in the end. He then (as I predicted) called a swift General Election which, in December 2019, gifted him and the risibly misnamed “Conservatives” with an 80-seat majority, which the msm proclaimed to be a “landslide victory”, despite the fact that the Conservative Party popular vote scarcely increased on its 2017 showing.
The factors which propelled a clown (a sinister clown) into power by rigged “popular acclamation” were twofold, basically: the key factor was the collapse of the Labour Party popular vote from 40% (2017) to about 32% (2019); the second factor of importance was that political snake-oil salesman, Nigel Farage, cynically sabotaged his own Brexit Party, then unilaterally decided to stand down most of its candidates. In the circumstances, amid the Brexit kefuffle, that all but guaranteed a Conservative party victory, though the extent of it must have been beyond the wildest dreams of both part-Jew “Boris” and the Jewish lobby (which was desperate to do down Corbyn)…
Why does @ChtyCommission allow Zionist groups to ‘police’ UK citizens using tactics synonymous with The Cheka police. How long before ‘volunteers’ claim leather coats on expenses? Make no mistake #Chekism is alive and well just watch Joe Glasman’s video. https://t.co/zZvuGe5HWg
Since the 2019 General Election, “Boris” has of course brought in quasi-dictatorial laws giving his Friends of Israel regime wide-ranging social and police powers, all on the back of the 2020-2021 “Covid-19” “panicdemic”. A story, at time of writing, still unfolding.
I have just been listening to a rather disturbing Hard Talk interview on BBC World Service radio, in which BBC man Stephen Sackur interviewed the co-founder and (?) de facto leader of “Extinction Rebellion”, Roger Hallam.
Extinction Rebellion
I have blogged previously about Extinction Rebellion:
The Wikipedia entry is not very detailed, saying nothing about Hallam’s life before 2017 (he is, at time of writing, 53, having been born in 1966) except that:
” Hallam was previously an organic farmer in Wales; he attributes the destruction of his business to a series of extreme weather events.” [Wikipedia]
Strange. When I was about 25, I worked for a couple of weeks (unpaid) on an organic farm in West Wales. That farm, Blaencamel Farm, in 1982 a rather pathetic though beautiful 24 acres (now, I notice, 50 acres) in Ceredigion, has become (as I heard on BBC Radio 4 Farming Today a couple of years ago), a highly-successful business which is also the hub of the organic movement in that part of the world:
Apropos of nothing, I notice that the farmer at Blaencamel Farm, Peter Segger (who had previously, that is before he bought that farm in 1979, been a mainstream food industry executive, buying shiploads of Arctic fish etc), seems to have mellowed considerably and, though still recognizable, has aged considerably (haven’t we all?) in the past 37 years!
I suppose that the point is that there are numerous successful or at least sustainable organic farms in West Wales. I have no idea whether Hallam farmed 500 acres, 50, or lived on a 5-acre smallholding. I suspect nearer 5 than 500, which if so would make his farming inherently unsustainable from a strictly business viewpoint. In fact, when questioned by the Daily Mail in April 2019, Hallam said that ” ‘No-one wants to get arrested. I want to get back to my farm. I’m just a poor farmer, nothing special.” So he still has a farm? I thought that he was supposed to have lost it? Does it mean that he still owns a farm but does not farm it? We do not know.
[Update, 17 September 2020: Hallam’s Wikipedia entry now reads “Hallam was previously an organic farmer on a 10-acre (4-hectare) farm near Llandeilo in South Wales.” So it seems that my guess that Hallam’s farm was “nearer 5 acres than 500” was pretty close to the mark.]
In any event, he first came to public attention in 2017: “Between at least 2017 and early 2019 he was studying for a PhD in civil disobedience at King’s College London,[5] researching how to achieve social change through radical movements. In January 2017, in an action to urge King’s College London to divest from fossil fuels, Hallam and another person, using water-soluble chalk-based spray paint,[4] painted “Divest from oil and gas”, “Now!” and “Out of time” on the university’s Strand campus entrance.[7][5]They were arrested in February when they again spray painted the university’s Great Hall,[7] charged by the state with criminal damage and fined £500.[8] In May 2019, after a three day trial at Southwark Crown Court, they were cleared by a jury of all charges, having argued in their defence that their actions were a proportionate response to the climate crisis.[5] In March 2017, Hallam went on hunger strike to demand the university divest from fossil fuels—the institution had millions of pounds invested in fossil fuels but no investment in renewable energy.[8] Five weeks after the first protest, the university removed £14m worth of investments from fossil fuel companies and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025.”
Now I have no objection to older people studying, though I am surprised that King’s College London offers a Ph.D. in Civil Disobedience (is this 2019 or 1969?), but for someone in his fifties to spraypaint the interior and exterior of his college with activist graffiti seems not so much youthful as puerile.
In the Hard Talk interview, Hallam sounded fanatical and inflexible. He kept referring to “the Science” (with a capital “S”), repeating it like a religious mantra, yet he himself is not even a scientist. He referred to himself as “a sociologist” at one point. So…here we have someone who got a sociology degree from somewhere (either in recent years or perhaps in the 1980s), and is now an almost perennial student aged 53 who has taken 2 years, it seems, to get a “doctorate” in “Civil Disobedience”, and yet (in the radio interview) lectures the interviewer on the need to believe The Science (which Hallam may or may not understand and —at least judging from his rather unintelligent radio persona— probably does not). He certainly does not think that there can be any doubt about what he says that The Science tells us about “climate change” (formerly “global warming”), despite there being a degree of scientific debate on the subject.
I have to say that I found Hallam’s style disturbing. Did the Levellers of Cromwell’s time sound like that? Or the true believers in Trotsky, Lenin or Stalin, circa 1920 or 1930?
Hallam referred, in the interview, to his belief (he said “fact”) that 6 billion people would die if the UK (and the rest of the world?) did not reduce “carbon emissions” to zero by 2025. When challenged by Stephen Sackur about how that would mean that, within 6 years, the UK would have to have no (or very few) cars, planes, trains, or centrally heated (by gas) houses, Hallam just retreated into his bubble of unreality and said that it was a matter of political will! I suppose that the last country to try that was mid-1970s Cambodia, sub nom “Democratic Kampuchea”, the Year Zero society of The Killing Fields etc.
Hallam claimed that the UK produces 10% of “emissions”. That is plain wrong if he meant 10% of the world’s carbon emissions. The real figure is about 1% (he may, however, if I take the role of Devil’s advocate, have meant 10% of all EU emissions). In other words, even if the UK disappeared into a black hole tomorrow, the other 99% of “emissions” in the world would still be there. That is taking “The Science” at face value, as Hallam obviously does.
What Hallam and his fellow Extinction Rebellion types fail to see is that in fact only the removal of 90% (maybe 80%) of the world population will “save” the planet now. Man-made climate change (taking it as Extinction Rebellion believe it to be) is not caused, at root, by cars, planes etc as such, but by the billions of people in the world, as well as their farmed animals, cars, planes, central heating etc. Numbers.
I agree that there is an environmental crisis, though “global warming”/”climate change” is only part of it. I have blogged about it, as well as the need to create what would be seen as a “super-race”, i.e, evolution of the species combined with evolution of consciousness:
It is as plain as day that Hallam and many of his fellow leading Extinction Rebellion zealots are basically fanatical drop-outs and misfits, most of whom have and have had no profession or occupation (or much academic background) to speak of (see the Daily Mail report in Notes, below):
Hallam himself, ex-farmer and now a superannuated “student” aged 53: “Mr Hallam has also claimed paralysing traffic will eventually cause food shortages and trigger uprisings” [Daily Mail];
Simon Bramwell, 46-47, a former builder, now “bushcraft instructor”;
Gail Bradbrook, 47-48, a mother of two teenage children, who divorced her husband and became an “activist” after an hallucinogenic-drug trip to Costa Rica;
Tasmin Osmond, 34-35, “a veteran of ‘direct actions’ such as Occupy London, the poverty protest which set up a camp outside St Paul’s cathedral in 2011. The granddaughter of Dorset baronet Sir Thomas Lees, Omond [sic] went to Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where she read English.” [Daily Mail] (no actual profession or occupation ever, apparently; presumably a trustafarian);
George Barda, 43-44: “He is a post-graduate student at King’s College in London and the son of classical music and stage photographer Clive Barda…Mr Barda is also a dedicated revolutionary who camped outside St Paul’s cathedral in the Occupy London campaign. Today, he is a director of XR parent company Compassionate Revolution and regularly appears on Russia Today.” [Daily Mail]. So again no profession or occupation, another “eternal student”…;
The XR “strategy”
I see that none of those noted above, or the others reported on by the Daily Mail, are climate scientists or anything similar (Gail Bradbrook apparently has a Ph.D. in molecular biology).
More accurately, they have a “programme” for protest action, or how to create a kind of anarchic situation, but no programme for what to do if, in some parallel reality, they were to attain to political power. They say that they want 3.5% of the population to create a momentum for change. 3.5%? From where does that come? Popular “philosophy”? Some paperback sci-fi novel? A brainwave by someone such as Hallam? Or a vision seen by the lady noted in the Daily Mail report below, in Notes, Gail Bradbrook, while on ibogaine, ayahuasca, peyote or magic mushrooms? We are not told.
I do not mistake labelling for understanding, but what do we call Extinction Rebellion, ideologically? Perhaps the closest is “anarcho-syndicalism meets treehugging” (and I favour treehugging far more than I do anarcho-syndicalism).
Were Extinction Rebellion actually able to stop government, society and economy from operating in the UK, the result would indeed be the deaths of millions, not from “climate change” but from disruption of supplies of food, water, medicine, not to mention huge lawlessness. That in turn would certainly lead to political dictatorship if not tyranny, as the “huddled masses” start to cry out for, not freedom, and most certainly not for “zero emissions” (!) but for safety, security, food, water, heat etc.
Maybe these Extinction Rebellion cranks think that they and their “3.5%” of (?) “woke” “activists” will become that dictatorship (once they understand that popular mass meetings cannot run a society of more than a couple of hundred people). More likely, they would be among the first to be put up against a wall and shot.
As I said earlier, I am very much an environmentalist and very concerned about the state of the planet in that way and in other ways, but this silly “reduce emissions to zero” idea will get nowhere in itself (even if it were to be put somehow into effect worldwide). In six years? Fantasy politics. As for “Extinction Rebellion” leading some mass movement, that is also complete fantasy:
as in… “ALL TOGETHER NOW!— “WHAT DO WE WANT?”; “NO CARS, PLANES, TRAINS, DECENT FOOD, ELECTRICITY OR HEATING!”; “WHEN DO WE WANT [TO LIVE LIKE STONE AGE PEOPLE]?”— “NOW!”
I cannot see many begging for that. Certainly not Emma Thompson, achingly politically-correct actress and “XR” supporter. She would not want that (at least not for herself and her contrived multikulti “family”). My God, it might mean that she would not be able to fly First Class from LA to London to speak at the, er, Extinction Rebellion protests! She might even have to give up some of her half-dozen luxury homes around the world!
Roger Hallam, in interview, bravely opined that “young people” support XR, but quite a few of the XR activists are over 60 and most seem to be over 40 anyway, though I do not have statistics to support that provisional view. Hallam stood as an Independent for the London constituency, during the EU elections. His vote? 924 votes (out of 2,241,681), a vote-share of 0.04%, so not even a half of a tenth of one per cent… Seems that only 4 in 10,000voted for Mr. Hallam. Statistical zero. Eloquent testimony.
The Extinction Rebellion protesters were (belatedly) cracked down on by the Metropolitan Police. Not for several days, though. Why? Was the fix in, as with so-called “activist” on climate change, the weird 16 year old Swedish autistic, Greta Thunberg, who has had a remarkably smooth ride, meeting leading politicians, receiving respectful attention, despite her obvious mental problems and what seems to me to be scarcely-concealed malice. [I shall blog separately about her].
Previous claims that “we have x-years to save the planet”
Silly people ranging from Ed Miliband and Al Gore to Prince Charles all said, back in or around 2009, that “we have 3/5/7/etc years in which to save the planet”. Then the planet yawned and the silly people went away again. There is too much of an attempt, a repeated attempt, to panic us (white Northern Europeans) into accepting lives that are not worth living. Yes there are too many people on this Earth at present. My view is that the advanced peoples should live, procreate and evolve higher. The backward peoples and races (who are by far the more numerous) are not required.
Accusations of “terrorism”; analogy with Greenham Common
One senior policeman said, after the London protests, that XR was, or was close to being, “terrorist”. I think that he was right. Look at these people. Listen to the Stephen Sackur interview. These people are willing to do anything to achieve their ends, even though their ends (insofar as they have “ends”) are in fact unachievable, certainly via protests etc.
The Greenham Common women in the early 1980s thought that they were stopping cruise missiles being based in the UK, whereas their protests (which were hell for the local people— much the lesbians and/or feminists cared…) actually achieved nothing. The missiles were removed by reason of NATO-Warsaw Pact negotiations. The “Women’s Peace Camp” was a complete waste of time and effort.
“A series of meetings held during August and September 1986 culminated in a summit between United States President Ronald Reaganand the General Secretary of the CPSUMikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík, Iceland, on 11 October 1986. To the surprise of both men’s advisers, the two agreed in principle to removing INF systems from Europe and to equal global limits of 100 INF missile warheads.
The United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which led to the removal of all nuclear missiles from the base. The last GLCMs at RAF Greenham Common were removed in March 1991, and the 501st TMW inactivated on 4 June 1991.” [Wikipedia]
Incidentally and incredibly, even though the last missiles left Greenham Common in 1991, even though the Americans left Greenham in 1992 and even though the UK Ministry of Defence closed the base in 1993, putting it up for sale (the area being almost all designated by 1997 as public parkland), the “Greenham Women” stayed, some of them, until 2000! To me that proves that without their having “political activism” to do, some of them had nothing to do with their time or their lives. They were unable to accept that their protests (for 19 years!) had actually achieved nothing and in any case had been superseded by large-scale international events. Like the Japanese soldier in the 1970s, fighting a lone war in the jungle, 30 years after the Pacific War had ended.
Extinction Rebellion protesters are obviously not entirely peaceful. Some are willing to use violence or force to achieve their immediate aims, eg to shut down London. Hallam has, it seems, mooted the shutting down of Heathrow Airport using drones. This is not Gandhi’s “non-violence”. If 10,000 protesters are willing to shut down London by obstruction or inertia, if 1,000 are willing to be even more disruptive, then it may be that 100 are willing to use drones or other means to attack airports, electrical supplies etc. Is it not at least possible that, out of the 10,000, 10 might be willing to use violence of a directly and unambiguously terroristic kind “to save the planet”? I would not bet against it.
We shall soon know. The big “XR” protests are scheduled for October 2019.
"A petition being submitted by hundreds of independent climate scientists and professionals from numerous countries to heads of the European Council, Commission and Parliament declares "There is No Climate Emergency."" https://t.co/NELzaEpm09
“The Metropolitan Police have described the protests as “unprecedented” in their scale and length and warned that they will arrest those breaking the law.
However, Extinction Rebellion has told its protesters not to co-operate with so that they have to hold them in the cells and cannot arrest another activist.
The group wrote on their website: “There are roughly 1,000 jail cells in London – we filled many of them in April.
“Police could often only arrest 100-200 people a day because the cells were full. If we fill them every day – the streets will remain ours. That it is why we refuse bail, to fill up the cells and to show our open defiance of the system that is killing us.”” [Daily Telegraph]
My solution? If the arrested refuse bail, then stuff them ten to a cell like they do in Egypt. And if that is not enough, stuff them twenty to a cell. This is war.
For once, I agree with Boris-Idiot…and while we are on the subject of idiots, what about the one featured in the report below? Pathetic does not even start to cover it. He must have mental problems.
She has elected Crown Court trial (jury trial) despite the risk of a heavier sentence on conviction. She obviously hopes for a sympathetic jury. I see that the Daily Mail, itself ever-sympathetic to the middle classes, calls her a “molecular biologist” because she has a degree in the subject (though I doubt whether she has ever worked in that field or any other).
Update, 20 January 2020
Hallam now wants “a World War 2 mobilization of society”, with rationing and “confiscation of private property”. He says that “Nuremberg” trials should be set up for anyone “guilty” re. climate change, and that some people should “get a bullet in the head”.
What about people who just own a car, or central heating? Do they get a bullet too, or just deportation to re-education camps? In short, this Hallam character is not only an idiot, he is a dangerous idiot.
“What are the dangerous and shadowy links between the UK Government’s Rwanda flights and a heartbreaking war over resources in Africa that is also fuelling the climate crisis and destroying vital ecosystems? Today Extinction Rebellion activists answered that complex question. The group staged a protest in the House of Commons pretending to hold guns to their heads and unfurling a banner saying: ‘STOP FUNDING RWANDA WAR IN D.R. CONGO’.”
“Police have arrested six Just Stop Oil activists at a supposed soup night in London this evening.
Hackney Police has detained a number of key organisers for the group who had allegedly been plotting to cause mayhem for thousands of holidaymakers this summer by disrupting airports across the UK.“
[Daily Mail]
Just Stop Oil, connected to Extinction Rebellion.
It is clear that MI5 has people in there, and reporting.
What struck me, apart from the violent and cowardly attack on the girl victim and a friend of hers, was how useless every public service was proven to be. I leave aside my surprise (and disapproval) that a girl of 18 is in a Manchester nightclub at 0330 and leaves on foot to walk home.
Read the report above.
Initially, the victim and her friend (apparently a teenage boy who was also a victim), were helped by some civilian volunteers who offered to call an ambulance. The victims refused because they were told that there would be a 2 hour wait. Two hours! The victim(s) then went to hospital by taxi. The hospital simply dispensed eye drops and told the girl to go home. When she returned to hospital a day or so later, she was told that she has a blood clot on one eye. The police were informed of the attack, but no police officer has spoken to the victim. The victim utilized social media, as a result of which a witness has come forward. The police have made no comment to the newspapers. The local council has offered to check cctv for film of the attack or suspects.
In case anyone knows anything and, by some statistical miracle, reads this blog, the main suspect is white, about 5 feet 8 inches in height, and was wearing a pink T-shirt. I am no detective, but I should have thought that the starting point would be the nightclub interior cctv…
My point in writing about this is not just because the behaviour of the criminals outrages me (and makes me wonder whether flogging should be reintroduced as suitably condign punishment in such cases) and not just because I feel sorry for the girl (and her friend). My point is that this case shows that, all too often, things are just not working in our society.
In the case displayed here, the girl was let down by general public safety (police, primarily), by the ambulance service, by the NHS hospital A & E service, by the police. Had the perpetrators been caught, if they are caught now, the CPS and magistrates will no doubt also let her down.
As Napoleon is supposed to have said, “there are many reasons for failure, but never an excuse.” Funding for public services has been cut drastically in the past decade. That is obviously a factor. How, though, does that explain (still less excuse) the “polyclinic” approach apparently adopted by the hospital, or its failure to make a proper diagnosis? I concede that my knowledge of clinical-medical matters is limited, but even so…
Is lack of funding of police personnel really the only reason why the victim has not been interviewed? Yes, she was knocked unconscious, but still might recall identifying details from before that. Also, it would reassure her that she is not alone in a jungle.
Is the police force doing what it can (eg checking nightclub cctv) to track down the suspects? Why was the social media appeal left to the victim to do?
One sees everywhere, now, “things not working right”, from the NHS and police, through rail and road maintenance, every aspect of the justice system (from CPS and police to sentencing, probation and prisons), the postal service (still mostly OK), the planning system, education at every level, the DWP and its post-2005 “torture the unemployed and disabled” ethos, the armed forces, Parliament. Everything, pretty much; and it is unlikely that a government headed by Boris-Idiot will be able (or even try) to improve matters.
My feeling is that the UK is still in many respects in that state of which a 1960s senior civil servant said (I think, to Anthony Sampson) that his job was “the management of decline”, but more so. Further down the steepening slide. The migration-invasion of the blacks and browns, the destruction of culture in the msm etc, have accelerated that process.
Only a truly focussed social national government can fix this country.
Afterthought
I should not like it thought that my criticisms devolve mainly on individuals working in public service. No doubt most of those who work in the police, NHS etc do their best most of the time. I criticize, primarily, the system(s), the decisions taken, and the management.
I do not know Manchester well, in fact scarcely at all. I have been there a few times, many years ago now, driving straight to the Manchester County Court (there being a massive open-air car park nearby, close to an overhead rail line) and then driving away as quickly as possible. Apart from that, my only visit was to the Manchester Royal Infirmary in or about 1985, accompanying a member of the Georgian State Dance ensemble from the Soviet Union.
The dancer (who spoke only Russian and Georgian) had cut several fingers to the bone while practising, pre-performance, with his razor-sharp Georgian sword (the swords have to be that sharp in order to create showers of sparks during the mock fights that are part of the dance performance).
Even back then, some 34 years ago, we had to wait for about 30 mins or more to be seen, though the nurses tried to expedite it for me and were very pleasant (and very pretty, though perhaps my memory is sugar-coating things for me…).
We come soon to the culmination of the farcical Conservative Party leadership election, the result of which will be decided by a simple majority of the supposed 140,000 (possibly only 100,000, though a few say 160,000) members of that party. About 1 in every 300 or 400 UK adults is a Conservative Party member. If two-thirds vote in the leadership election, that means that not only the Conservative Party leader but also the Prime Minister –by default– is about to be elected by perhaps 50,000 or 60,000 people, in other words by about 1 in every 900 adults in the UK. There is something bizarre and even sick about this.
At time of writing (5 July 2019) it looks as if Boris Johnson (for me, Boris-Idiot is the right label…) will win easily. Others say that the race may be closer than most have thought. Either way, very few if any are predicting a win for Jeremy Hunt.
I have blogged before about the contest and also about a few of the main protagonists. Most relevant now would be these:
Returning to my first paragraph, I happened recently to hear some Radio 4 Today Programme interviewer, perhaps Nick Robinson, asking Conservative Party members in Wales their views on what I see as the tragi-comic “leadership” contest. There were about half a dozen or so, all from one local Conservative Association.
Only one in that group was thinking of voting for Hunt; the rest all preferred Boris-Idiot. Only one struck me as in any way thoughtful, a young man (the only one, in fact, who seemed to be of under pensionable age) who was not much taken with either candidate.
What interested me most about that group was the incredible level of both political ignorance and socio-political unreality. One old bird, who sounded around 80, opined (re. Brexit) “we got through two world wars, we can get through this, and I think that Boris is the man to bring the country together.”
Where does one even start to unpack nonsense of that sort? First of all, it implies that Britain somehow endured two massive wars and came out OK (if not “victorious”), whereas in fact the two main open conflicts of the 20th Century crippled the UK and mortally-wounded the British Empire (qua empire), a fact concealed by the very great overall improvement in British living standards since 1914.
Then there is that bit about “Boris” being the politician (surely even the aforesaid old bird cannot regard the idiot as a “statesman”?) who can “bring the country together”. What country is that? Can people really be that blind? There is no “country” to speak of any more. What there is is a geographic space, inhabited by a motley collection of races, ethnicities, social groups, “tribes” (both social and ethnic), lifestyles etc. I do not think that even the old descriptive term “classes” really fits any more. Society has fallen apart to the extent that the idea of a “working class”, a “middle class” or “middle classes”, let alone an “upper class” or “aristocracy”, is not just lacking in credibility but is actually pathetic. That is even if we leave aside the race question.
What is the “working class” now? Anyone who receives less than a designated income? The bottle-throwers of the EDL? “White van man” with his artisan trade and his purchased council house or tract home, complete with Sky TV and an above-ground pool in the back garden? The “chavs” or “chavscum”, with their sub-American “culture” of baseball caps, untaxed cars and drug use? The officially-bullied and taunted unemployed or disabled? The blacks and browns?
Faux-revolutionary scribbler and metro-gay propagandist Owen Jones was unable to shoehorn these new types into the traditional Marxist categories, so conflated proletariat and lumpenproletariat in his book “Chavs: the demonization of the working class“. Unable to find enough steel workers, miners and trawlermen to constitute a viable “working class”, Jones ropes in whatever he can from the poorly-incomed “precariat”: call centre workers, unemployed, retail staff, low-paid office bods etc.
Then we have the “middle class”, or as used to be said, “the middle classes”. Prior to World War Two, these strata were fairly well defined: the “upper” middle-classes (fringing on the gentry and even aristocracy), with their successful, long-established business firms (The Forsyte Saga), Oxford/Cambridge education (Brideshead Revisited, Zuleika Dobson etc), careeerism in the Diplomatic Service, the Bar, the higher ranks of the medical profession, the armed services. Then there were the “middle middles” in management, small business ownership etc. The “lower middle class”, meaning the lower ranks of management etc, were a vast throng, sometimes only distinguishable from “the workers” by the wearing of a tie.
In America, these terms are (certainly now) either not used, or used differently.
Then we have the “aristocracy” and “gentry”, the latter sometimes termed (as late as the 1950s, in novels by the likes of Agatha Christie) as “the County” (the older, more significant, or wealthy landed families in any particular county). This stratum was already being infiltrated by foreign or alien elements as early as the 19th Century.
Winston Churchill was famously half-American. He was not alone. Many ancient or at least old houses admitted an American admixture, usually for reasons of money. Even some Jewish and part-Jewish women married into the English and Scottish nobility. One well-known example was the 6th Duke of Carnarvon, whose ancestral home, Highclere Castle, is today used as the fictional Downton Abbey on TV. His mother’s biological father was a Rothschild: “Rothschild provided a marriage settlement of £500,000 and paid off all Lord Carnarvon’s existing debts.” [Wikipedia] Tens of millions in the money of today.
The 2nd Duke of Westminster was incensed by the way in which Jews were infiltrating the British aristocracy, and (according to his third wife, Loelia) was writing a book on the subject, which book has, regrettably, never been published.
The society which now exists in Britain, especially in England and Wales, is a mixture of the old pre-1939 society, that which developed between 1939 and —arguably— 1979 or 1989, and that which has since emerged.
I think that we have to be quite clear here. At present, we do not have a functioning or sustainable society in the UK. The appearance of one owes much to the older, pre-1989, way of doing things, to institutions which still exist, though badly-wounded: the monarchy, the police, the armed services, the NHS, the Civil Service, local government. The people who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and even 1960s are carrying on as if Britain is a unified country. It is not. It is a mass of contradictions and absurdities.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s (officially, 1991), huge numbers of people in factories, on farms, attending country rail stations, driving trams, carried on working even though in many cases they were not being paid. The society carried on under its own momentum for a while. Britain is like that socially, politically. More and more parts of British society are either not working properly or are not working at all, but many have not fully woken up to that fact.
If the working classes and to a large extent the middle classes have been replaced by the “chavscum” and “precariat”, the short-term contract people, the here-today-gone-tomorrow little businesses etc, then the former “gentry”, “aristocracy” (insofar as the term has meaning in Britain) and even royals have just become functions of the cosmopolitan wealth-soaked “celebrity” culture, in which it is hard to distinguish between a film star, a pop star, a TV talking head, a Premier League footballer and his WAG, Gary Lineker, Prince Harry or the Royal Mulatta.
As far as the Royal Family are concerned, it is noticeable how there is an almost-complete gulf between the older royals, such as the Queen and Prince Philip and the present generation, with Prince Charles and the others a kind of halfway house. The older royals are recognizably “royal”. One might or might not be “royalist”; that is another question, but no-one could mistake the Queen and consort (whether one “likes” them or not) for “ordinary citizens”.
By the time you get to Prince William and “Kate”, or Harry and the “Royal Mulatta”, there is very little that marks them out as “royal” at all, unless it is ingrained public acceptance (propped up by the msm) and their own huge sense of entitlement, brought home most recently by the endless boring soap opera of Harry, the £2.5 million refurbishment of his new house (work paid for, in effect, by the people) , and the various rumours and tabloid interest around “the Royal Mulatta” (a mixed-race woman, formerly a Hollywood TV actress, and formerly married to an American Jew).
The present generation of “royals” are scarcely “royal” at all: they are educated in ordinary (if expensive) schools and universities, live lives which are carefully crafted to at least seem “ordinary” most of the time, and seem to feel that they can do largely as they please in terms of marriages, children etc.
In fact, it could well be said that the only thing linking the attitudes of the present three generations of royals is their sense of entitlement.
When we look at the more “ordinary” people of the UK, do we see there a “country” which is “united” or which might be “unified” (leaving aside the question of whether a clown like Boris Johnson could “unify” anything)? I think not.
The racial question is also hugely-important. Can a multikulti society survive and thrive? I think not; not for long. People used to point at the USA. Well, look now. Falling to pieces. Britain is about 87% “white” (mainly English), but even that figure is doubtful. If you take out Scotland, and Wales, and Northern Ireland, that figure, now for England alone, shrinks alarmingly. Huge cities and large towns in England now have a minority of inhabitants who are really English.
Looking again at Boris-Idiot:
“The Balliol College Register for 1983 contains an entry that begins: “JOHNSON Alexander Boris de Pfeffel: JOHNSON, Boris – b. 19 June 1964. New York. American. Generally known while at Balliol as Boris Johnson. Eton; Balliol 1983–7.” [Daily Telegraph]
Note that. “American”. At that time, Johnson was considered to be an American, born in the USA, with an American passport, and brought up in the USA and Belgium as well as the UK.
“In reference to his varied ancestry, Johnson has described himself as a “one-man melting pot” – with a combination of Muslims, Jews, and Christians as great-grandparents.”
[Wikipedia]
We see, time and again, and reflective of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion [usually called a “forgery” but better described as “literary fantasy reflecting facts and real events”], that those assigned leading political positions by the New World Order [NWO] and ZOG [“Zionist Occupation Government”] are not Jewish as such but part-Jew. Boris Johnson is one example. David Cameron [Cameron-Levita] was another. Theresa May another. Sarkozy too. This all fits in with the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan, which underpins the EU.
“In his book Praktischer Idealismus (Practical Idealism), written in 1925, [Coudenhove-Kalergi] describes the future of Jews in Europe and of European racial composition with the following words:
The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian–Negroidrace of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals. […]
Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. No wonder that this people, that escaped Ghetto-Prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of Europe. Therefore a gracious Providence provided Europe with a new race of nobility by the Grace of Spirit. This happened at the moment when Europe’s feudal aristocracy became dilapidated, and thanks to Jewish emancipation.”
[Wikipedia]
There you have it: a black-brown-white mulatto dustbin race, ruled over by Jews and part-Jews, and/or by freemasons. That is their vision of EU Europe, including the UK. Now you see how it is that the 2016 Referendum result has led to delay, vacillation, huge fear propaganda, plans to hold a second referendum, blah blah blah. All because this goes beyond trade, beyond co-operation. It is a massive international and cosmopolitan conspiracy.
“Hitler did not share the ideas of his Austrian compatriot. He argued in his 1928 Secret Book that they are unfit for the future defence of Europe against America. As America fills its North American lebensraum, “the natural activist urge that is peculiar to young nations will turn outward.” But then “a pacifist-democratic pan-European hodgepodge state” would not be able to oppose the United States, as it is “according to the conception of that commonplace bastard, Coudenhove-Kalergi…”“
[Wikipedia]
As so often, Hitler has been proven to be right. The EU, that “pacifist-democratic pan-European hodgepodge state” is indeed unable to oppose the American expansionism which is in fact better termed NWO/ZOG expansion. It was planned to be like that, secretly. The EU does not stand in opposition to the USA (meaning the NWO) but is at the higher levels tied in with it.
The EU has already begun “the Great Replacement”, the replacement of decent, progressive, evolving European peoples with the backward black and brown peoples who will make suitable slaves for the planned robotic and AI-oriented superstate or “European space” of the near or medium-term future. Below, one aspect of that:
The “Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor” will run from Sweden and Finland, through Denmark, Germany, Austria and Italy to Malta in the south https://t.co/RkhECaQTEw
decide to break EU law and to “invite” untold millions of blacks and browns etc to invade EU territory. This is all part of the plan.
This continues, though now not much publicized. Meanwhile, EU “leaders” [NWO puppets such as Macron] recently met in Marrakesh, where they “decided” to funnel millions more migrants “legally” into the EU, thus not so much disturbing the invaded European peoples. At the same time, they decided to make any criticism of it illegal. The real decisions are of course taken earlier, behind closed doors.
Returning to the UK, to the Conservative leadership farce etc, there seem to be various possibilities when Johnson wins and, however briefly, becomes Prime Minister. The first thing to understand is that Boris-Idiot is no strong character, but a weak and vacillating one. I cannot be sure, but I think that he will probably agree to something with the EU, then try to sell it to the British people as a huge improvement on Theresa May’s “deal”. I doubt that he will, in any real sense, take the UK out of the EU in October 2019. If he does, it will almost certainly be a con-trick. Brexit In Name Only.
One has to ask oneself why the msm have been promoting Boris-Idiot as “Prime Minister in Waiting” for years and years, despite his obvious unfitness for any kind of high office.
Should Boris Johnson really try to take the UK out of the EU on WTO terms, his time as Prime Minister will be measured in weeks not months. It only takes 3 or 4 Conservative MPs to abstain in a confidence vote to effectively remove Boris Johnson as PM. Or for 2 or 3 Conservatives to vote against their own government.
If that were to happen, there would be a general election and one of the first seats to fall would be that of Boris Johnson himself, at Uxbridge. It will be recalled how Johnson at first signed up to the Theresa May “deal” (he wanted to stay in the Cabinet…). How much more will Johnson want to cling on as Prime Minister! He has no honour, no real ideas (beyond schoolboy ones such as garden bridges, cablecars over the Thames, water-cannon, Boris Island etc). He has no ideals, no real ideology. He is also administratively incompetent. He is very likely going to be the worst prime minister the UK has ever had, certainly for the past century or more.
Boris Johnson is looking to be not only one of the least-worthy and least-fitted persons ever to hold that great office of Prime Minister of the UK, but also one of the weakest. Johnson will be a prisoner of Remain-favouring MPs. He has no real desire to Remain or Leave. All that matters to him is being Prime Minister for as long as possible, not to accomplish anything, but just to be there (and to get the perks etc). Money in terms of salary etc is not the main thing, in fact he might lose out, though only temporarily. Memoirs can be penned later and millions paid…
Will Johnson last as PM (assuming that he even gets that far)? Probably not. He is being pulled in various directions, by the DUP whose votes he will need, by the pro-Remain MPs, by the EU. He is as weak as weak could be, politically.
The likelihood must be a 2019 general election.
Beyond that, there is a crying necessity for a serious social-national movement in the UK.
Having watched the above clip, either Boris Johnson is on cocaine, which would be worrying, or he is not, which would be even more worrying. What more can one say? This is somehow an area beyond ideology. It was once said that the Soviet Union was divided into the drinkers and the non-drinkers. Now Britain, whatever its other divisions, divides into, on the one side, those who see that an idiotic, uncontrolled, madly-ambitious, conscienceless incompetent, without ideas or ideals, is about to become, incredibly, Prime Minister of this country, and on the other side, those who either do not see, are too stupid to understand what Boris-Idiot is, or are totally deluded (or both, or all).
If anyone wanted to be convinced of the complete decadence of “democracy” in the UK, I should think that the Boris-Idiot/Jeremy Hunt “debate” (schoolboy level spout-fest) would be enough, judging from –admittedly– the bits that I myself have now seen. As for the audience, they seemed to love Boris-Idiot, I suppose because they, like mobs and crowds of plebs down the ages, from the days of the Roman Empire and even Republic, want to be entertained, want to be pandered to, and above all do not want to have to think seriously.
A small selection of Twitter vox pop
WOW! Just got to the #ITVDebate question on taxes. What a f*cking embarrassment that was all round! @BorisJohnson answering & one-upping a shambles, @Jeremy_Hunt calling people on £51k “rich” and that’s without the pathetic playground squabbling and talking over each other 😤🤦🏼♂️.
— Charlie George Woodgate (@CG_Woodgate) July 9, 2019
"Nonsense" does not give justice to the utter rubbish coming out of their mouths, especially the blonde bi-polar's one. #ITVDebatehttps://t.co/DvJz8k3IP1
— 🕷Francesco Carollo 🇪🇺🇬🇧🇮🇹 3.5% (@Innovandiamo) July 9, 2019
The lady below sets the bar low! What a stupid woman!
Would appear the only votes that count in the Hunt/Johnson circus are the votes of a small minority of the British people: the Conservative Party. How close to dictatorship is this? #ITVDebate
That #ITVDebate was not normal. The Johnson march to Downing Street is not normal. The complete lack of accountability and transparency is not normal. Surely we should be discussing that rather than who scored more debating points?
The Isle of Man isn’t in the UK or the EU. Why are we all so fucking stupid we let this airbed full of porridge say whatever the fuck he likes without question. https://t.co/mugbJVYDKt
Boris-Idiot won by about 92,000 votes to about 48,000. Clear but not overwhelming. “Boris” will therefore become PM today or tomorrow, unless some public-spirited chauffeur runs over him in a ministerial limousine.
92,000 elderly Conservative members have decided that they want Boris-Idiot as Prime Minister. The other 65 million UK residents have no say. All that UK voters can do, in any future Westminster election, starting today, is vote any way exceptConservative.
The reaction has been sharp and is not confined to those who want to Remain in the EU.
Foreign or near-abroad reaction?
'Johnson is a profoundly unserious man wildly unsuited to high office… In normal times, his ineptitude… would hold his country back. In these times of crisis, his character flaws could prove catastrophic' – @IrishTimes view https://t.co/FdivRhdRit via @IrishTimesOpEd
On the face of it, a clear case, with no doubt about the immediately-relevant facts. The defendant admitted to the crime and was sentenced to a year in prison. There are some nuances, however.
Obviously, criminal damage cannot be tolerated, and it is certainly not very nice and certainly not very polite to daub words on the door of a neighbouring dwelling; but to my mind the sentence was harsh.
The defendant was sentenced to a year in prison and will therefore be released in 6 months’ time, possibly earlier. The chances are that he will lose his local authority home. I have no idea what possessions or companion animals he may have, but unless he has friends or family somewhere to look after them, they too will be lost. He will come out of prison with nowhere to go, and may not be rehoused if some local penpusher decrees that he made himself homeless by his own actions.
That is part of the background. Then we have the point that the defendant had no previous convictions save for a silly one, 27 years previously, involving a “sick-note”.
In view of the fact that the local authority would probably take the crime to be a breach of lease terms or conditions, and so would take away the defendant’s home anyway, would it not have been more just simply to have given this defendant a suspended sentence?
This looks like kicking a man when he is down. At the same time, we see the courts daily giving thugs, thieves etc non-sentences. Of course, this was a “racial” crime…the courts have obviously been told to treat any offence having a “racial” element more seriously (harshly), in an attempt to keep the doomed multikulti society from falling to pieces.
I noticed, also, that the victims were from the Congo. Again, I do not know the full facts, but it is odds-on that what we have here are either “refugees” or economic migrants who have left Africa in order to settle in the UK. Odds-on, again, that the British people (including the defendant) are paying for the victims to live here and breed.
The case above reminds me of one about 25 years ago in Hammersmith, in which a man was driven half-mad by the incessant noise of blacks and their “music”, parties etc in the flat above his dwelling; so much so that he burned them out, killing several. He got a sentence, I think, of about 10 years for manslaughter and arson. Again, the act can scarcely be “justified”, perhaps, but it can be understood. Legally, provocation does not exist and provides no defence in such a case. In real-life terms, though, I think that many will feel a little sorry for such a defendant.
There is a further point: the defendant in the immediate case in question felt the need to say that he is not “racist” (perhaps after consultation with solicitors or Counsel). So even he himself felt the need to “virtue-signal”! If he or his advisers thought that a display of “contrition” and “I’m not racist” protesting would mitigate the sentence, they seem to have been mistaken.
There is also the point that, as hundreds of thousands of blacks and browns etc flood into the UK every year, and as politicians bleat about the “need” to destroy what is left of the countryside in order to build little boxes for migrants on agricultural land and forested land, very many fully-entitled British people are homeless (after today’s sentence, add another one, 6 months down the line).
I am at present also preparing a blog post about Peter Hitchens, who thinks that the UK is doomed in terms of its present society. I suppose that most of us hope that he is wrong. I also suppose that he is probably right.
[above, Rory Stewart, many years ago in Afghanistan, consciously reprising Lawrence of Arabia; he was sometimes called both “Florence of Arabia” (in Iraq) and “Florence of Belgravia” (because of his well-connected and wealthy background)]
Introduction
My attention was caught by the BBC Politics tweet below.
Rory Stewart MP [Con, Penrith and Borders], who until yesterday was Minister of State for Prisons, a political dead-end, now can be said, appropriately enough, to have jumped free with one bound, and is now Secretary of State for International Development, a position again not quite in the front rank but a Cabinet post all the same. From his new elevation, Stewart has wasted no time in declaring his candidature for Conservative Party leadership.
I have been interested in Stewart and his political career for several years. I was puzzled as to why someone who appeared to have so many advantages (wealth, family influence, expensive education, pre-political career moves, a degree of public prominence etc) seemed to have run into the sand as an MP. However, it may be that he was playing a long game which will yet bring him to the highest office.
I do blog about MPs individually, but mostly those I term “deadhead MPs”. Stewart is certainly not one of those. However, his CV is almost too obviously brilliant. He seems to have almost too many talents, qualifications and virtues to be true. I do, perhaps unfairly, harbour a suspicion that the sum of his many parts may not quite add up to the same amount.
“After graduating, Stewart joined the Foreign Office.[11] He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia from 1997 to 1999, working on issues related to East Timor independence, and was appointed at the age of 26 as the British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign.” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is believed to have been, like his father, an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service [SIS], a fact alluded to by David Dimbleby on BBC Question Time. Stewart neither agreed nor demurred. Still, a touch of the James Bonds impresses the common herd, I suppose…
[above, Brian Stewart, the father of Rory Stewart, wearing the badge of a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), the 4th-highest order of chivalry in the UK (if excluding two now-dormant orders, the Order of St. Patrick and the Order of The Star of India)]
“After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he became the Coalition Provisional Authority Deputy Governorate Co-Ordinator in Maysan and Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator/Senior Advisor in Dhi Qar in 2003, both of which are provinces in southern Iraq.[9] He was posted initially to the KOSB Battlegroup then to the Light Infantry.[12] His responsibilities included holding elections, resolving tribal disputes, and implementing development projects.[12] He faced growing unrest and an incipient civil war from his base in a Civil-Military Co-operation(CIMIC) compound in Al Amarah, and in May 2004 was in command of his compound in Nasiriyah when it was besieged by Sadrist militia.[9] He was awarded an OBE for his services during this period. While Stewart initially supported the Iraq War, the International Coalition’s inability to achieve a more humane, prosperous state led him in retrospect to believe the invasion had been a mistake.” [Wikipedia]
Full marks for honesty, but not for perspicacity. Let’s look at the above again: Stewart joined the FCO (and/or SIS) in 1995-96 and by 1999, at age 26, he is British Representative in Montenegro, at that time emerging from nearly a decade of ex-Yugoslav conflict.
This is rather remarkable. Why was a 26-y-o appointed to this rather important strategic post? Even more remarkably, perhaps, Stewart was then posted to Iraq in the immediate post-invasion era, and was rather famously deputy-governor of an Iraqi province at the age of 28. As noted above, he even “saw action” to some extent when his compound was besieged by militia fighters.
“From 2000 to 2002 he travelled on foot through rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey totalling around 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses. He had previously walked across West Papua in 1998,[115] and has since made a number of long walks through Cumbria and Britain. He also travelled into Libya a day after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi.” [Wikipedia]
“In late 2005, at the request of the Prince of Wales and Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan,[15] he established, as Executive Chairman, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a human development NGO, in Afghanistan, and relocated to Kabul where he lived for the next three years restoring historic buildings in the old city of Kabul, managing its finances, installing water supply, electricity, and establishing a clinic, a school and an institute for traditional crafts.[4] Stewart was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society‘s Livingstone medal in 2009 “in recognition of his work in Afghanistan and his travel writing, and for his distinguished contribution to geography”.[16] Stewart stepped down as Executive Chairman of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in May 2010.” [Wikipedia]
By any standards, Stewart’s life up to age 33 at least (he is now 46) was packed with achievements and adventures. Not many UK MPs could lay claim to anything even a tenth as interesting and varied (note my blogs about “deadhead MPs”). Indeed, it seems that, in 2008, a Hollywood studio (Studio Canal/Brad Pitt) actually bought the film rights to do a biopic of Stewart, starring, it was envisaged, Orlando Bloom as Stewart! No film has been made (yet).
This is not the British politics we know! This is somewhere in the realm of John Buchan and Sidney Reilly, a post-imperial Great Game pastiche.
Stewart’s second book, The Prince of the Marshes: and other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, also published as Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq, describes his experiences as a Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator in Iraq.[4] The New York Timescritic William Grimes commented that Stewart “seems to be living one of the more extraordinary lives on record”, but for him the “real value of the new book is Mr. Stewart’s sobering picture of the difficulties involved in creating a coherent Iraqi state based on the rule of law”.[126] Stewart’s books have been translated into multiple languages.
Stewart’s reflections on the circumstances under which outside military and political intervention in countries’ internal affairs may or may not hope to achieve positive results were distilled in a 2011 book, Can Intervention Work?, co-authored with Gerald Knaus and part of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series. He has also written about theory and practice of travel writings in prefaces to Wilfred Thesiger‘s Arabian Sands,[127]Charles Doughty‘s Arabia Deserta[128] and Robert Byron‘s The Road to Oxiana.[129]
In 2016, he published The Marches, a travelogue about a 1,000-mile walk in the borderlands separating England and Scotland, known as the Scottish Marches, and an extended essay on his Father, Brian Stewart.[130] The Marches was long listed for the Orwell Prize, won the Hunter Davies Lakeland Book of the Year,[131] was a Waterstones Book of the Month,[132] and became a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.” [Wikipedia]
I suppose that many would be well satisfied to have done even one or two or three of the things noted above. Stewart has dozens of accomplishments and successes to his name. A few more are:
“His 2008 cover article in Time magazine, where he debated presidential candidates Obama and McCain, arguing against a troop surge in Afghanistan, has been shortlisted for an American Journalism Association Award
Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart, a documentary in two parts that tells the story of foreign intervention by Britain, Russia and the United States in Afghanistan from the 19th century to the present day,which aired on BBC2 and which won a Scottish BAFTA (2012).[139]
Border Country: The Story of Britain’s Lost Middleland, which investigates the rift created by Hadrian’s Wall, and the issues of identity and culture in a region divided by the fabricated border, which was singled out for praise by David Attenborough.”
“Stewart speaks some French, Persian (Dari), and Indonesian. He has also studied at school, in the Foreign Office, and on his Asian travels, Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Serbo-Croat, Urdu, and Nepali languages. He acknowledges that the latter three languages are “very rusty“;
He has lectured at Harvard and even advised Hillary Clinton…;
He is a karate expert (level unknown) and belongs to the Special Forces Club in London, some of whose members were in WW2 secret work, some were in the military and naval special forces, some ex-intelligence personnel —and there are also some who are rumoured to be just gold-plated fakes and fantasists;
“His speech about hedgehogs in Parliament in 2015[39] was named by The Times and The Telegraph as the best parliamentary speech of 2015 and described by the Deputy Speaker as “one of the best speeches she had ever heard in Parliament” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is married to an American woman who had previously been married to a fellow NGO worker. One of the children of the Stewarts was delivered by Stewart himself without medical assistance.
Stewart once tweeted to me about something, several years ago, and was very polite, something that I value. I do not attribute that entirely to the influence of the Dragon School or, indeed, Eton. He seems to know how to behave (though not all agree, I have heard).
Thoughts
Stewart’s stellar career stalled after he became an MP in 2010. Having said that, he has chaired Commons committees, been promoted slowly but surely, and Wikipedia notes that he attended the Bilderberg cabal along with George Osborne. Not that being a Bilderberg attendee is a guarantee of lasting political success (cf. Nick Boles MP) but it does indicate that the primary powers behind the Western throne consider that a person is of interest.
This is Rory Stewart’s moment of opportunity. He has seized it. Once Theresa May leaves office, the Conservative Party will elect a new leader. Stewart is the international System candidate nonpareil. I should not be surprised were he to win a first ballot outright, bearing in mind the collection of fools, knaves, deadheads and frauds likely to oppose him in the contest:
Penny Mordaunt, best known for diving in a swimsuit (she looked good, so be it…) and for being a reserve naval sub-lieutenant;
Michael Gove, pro-Jew, pro-Israel fraud and expenses cheat (I tweeted that once and it was one of 5 tweets that had me disbarred at the instigation of the Jew lobby, so it pleases me to repeat it!);
Boris Johnson (aka Boris Idiot), who proved as Foreign Secretary that he cannot hold down high office;
Andrea Leadsom, a nonentity;
Jeremy Hunt, smarmy clever snake and tipped to take May’s purple;
Amber Rudd, yet another dimwit, though she thinks herself terribly clever. Pro-Israel, pro-EU, pro-immigration. Was involved personally with Kwasi Kwarteng, the “African at Eton” (well, one of them), who has now married, or is about to marry, a younger Amber Rudd lookalike. Amber Rudd’s own seat may well be lost next time;
Philip Hammond, careful calculating Remainer;
Dominic Raab, part-Jew, pro-Brexit, hardfaced and careerist.
There may be others. There would have been Gavin Williamson (who has the self-confidence of the stupid) and Stephen Crabb (sex pest, expenses cheat and so pro-Israel that he could be termed “an agent of influence”) but both of those have ruled themselves out by their egregiously poor behaviour. Deadheads.
It scarcely needs to be said that, as social nationalist and thinker into the future, I am not on the same page as Rory Stewart, so obviously NWO/ZOG in orientation is he, and whose MP voting record etc is far from entirely to my liking. He also wanted the UK to remain in the EU and now seems to want to “leave” but not really leave: Brexit in name only (BRINO). However, there is no doubt that he is the standout candidate now to replace Theresa May, which means that he could be Prime Minister by the Autumn.
Still don’t understand the hard-on people have for Rory Stewart. Guess Brits can’t get over their worship for the military or posh men addicted to lying about statistics.
Military? Does 5 months as an instant 2nd lieutenant count? Or is that a reference to Stewart’s “secret war” posts?
A few more thoughts, 4 April 2019:
It seems that Stewart favours immigration:
“One farmer told Stewart, “All illegal immigrants should be rounded up and on the first ship out.” Some voters might expect their Conservative candidate at least to nod, but Stewart said, “Hmm,” and changed the subject. After leaving that house, he said quietly, “Actually, I’m rather in favor of immigration.” [The New Yorker]
So he favours (mass?) immigration. That would chime with those Bilderberg/Davos linkages. Also, it is all very well for a spoiled son of the “British Establishment” (father was a high-ranking SIS officer; Stewart lives in a country house surrounded by a small estate of a hundred acres or so) and who has always had access to effectively any money or anything he wanted without struggle or effort, to be OK about the mass of British people being replaced by blacks, browns, Chinese etc; and having to live with those basically backward peoples, share limited housing, road/rail space etc. Not to mention the effect on rates of pay, and the huge strain on public services, education, NHS, “welfare” etc.
Stewart is quite consciously remote from the concerns of the British people. He has put in huge effort on his adventures and career, but has never had to. Big difference.
I seriously wonder now, looking at or studying Stewart, whether he is right for the office of Prime Minister. Yes, it is very impressive to have run an Iraqi province (effectively or not, though?…) or part of Kabul (ditto) when only 28 or 30-ish, it is impressive to have walked across Afghanistan etc. It is impressive to have all those literary and other medals. However, how far does that get you in terms of being a British Prime Minister?
As a matter of fact, is it really that impressive to have been deputy governor of an Iraqi province when you were (some say) no bloody good, accomplished almost nothing and got a transfer a few months later to a more congenial post elsewhere in Iraq? I do not know the truth of it all, and I may be unfair or simply mistaken here, but I wonder whether Stewart’s other great accomplishments have a rather thin layer of reality under the surface glitter?
Impressive though those career highlights are, I am unsure as to whether Stewart really does have what it takes to be Prime Minister of this country in 2019 or 2020, as distinguished from being in that high office in a John Buchan political landscape circa 1912, and as a kind of Richard Hannay, a Hannay who is playing the role of an earlier and English/Scottish type of “Jack Ryan”, the American adventurer-patriot who eventually becomes President in the bestselling books of Tom Clancy.
I have spent some time (by my standards anyway) in preparing and writing and rethinking this picture of Rory Stewart. He disturbs me more than he reassures me: he seems rather fixated on himself, his own psychology, his motivations, his own (enormous and not denied by the man himself) ambition.
It worries me that, in the interviews and profiles I have read, Stewart says much about himself, his achievements, his accomplishments (or allows them to be known…), but little about the needs of the world, of Europe, of the European peoples, of the British people. I see little or nothing in terms of policy, or wider ideas, just a self-view that he is the right sort of chap to run the UK. That sounds like a more impressive sort of David Cameron-Levita-Schlumberger to me, and that worries the hell out of me.
Parris is not only remote from the concerns of the British people (though in his case the remoteness comes not from ancestral hauteur but is the self-consciously created la-di-da-ness of the fastidious metropolitan gay), but is also a pro-immigration Remainer who thinks that ruling the UK should be left to people like him and his affluent, cosmopolitan, pro-multikulti friends. Trouble is, it has been, and look at the result! (Parris himself, elected in 1979, was reprimanded by Mrs Thatcher for having replied to a constituent that she should count herself lucky to have a council house, whatever its flaws…), though he stayed on as an MP until 1986.
I started off thinking that Rory Stewart was, judging objectively, far and away the best candidate to replace Theresa May. I still think that he is by far the most accomplished candidate, but I the more I read about him, the more doubts and suspicions I have. I am also disturbed that some of the Jewish lobby on Twitter seem to favour him.
In the end, no System party or candidate has the right to rule the UK. Social nationalism must triumph.
A few recent tweets seen about Rory Stewart
I’ve a horrid feeling it means they are going to do a deal soon. She will announce she is going, the contest will start with Rory Stewart being lined up as her successor. Democracy is dead in this country, I just worry they will do us out of voting for MEPs too.
Rory Stewart abnormal. Who ignores pleas fr help when a quadriplegic prisoner lying on back 24/7 with bedsore so badly neglected & tissue deteriorated that pelvic bone is exposed ? Stewart as Prisons Minister downright cruel.
I thought I’d heard it all from Diane Abacus until this bloke Rory Stewart springs up. Where do political parties find these lying conniving self indulgent corrupt fuckwits? https://t.co/6cbEnUKXnY
Here is a surprise. The MI6 house journal, the Guardian, shills for ex MI6 officer Rory Stewart (whose dad was also deputy head of MI6). The Guardian views his role in the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as making him "highly qualified" in International Development. https://t.co/2NrZXzC9tE
The first day of his promotion to Cabinet is an opportune time to recall a classic from Rory Stewart's back catalogue. As Floods Minister he said the flood defences had worked well but the water had come over the top of them. #r4today#BBCNews#Reshufflepic.twitter.com/1N2iHIkvpP
Oh, dear…(see below): I am thinking now that Stewart is rapidly using up his credit with at least some of the public, though in the end the ones who will vote for a new Conservative Party leader will be, initially, the Con MPs in the Commons, not Joe Public. It may be that Stewart will be seen as the ideal “Stop Boris” candidate, someone to rally to. I do not know what level of MP support he now has. I presume some, or why would he risk being humiliated? On the other hand, he does strike me as a very ambitious gambler and chancer.
Am I alone in thinking Rory Stewart comes across as a complete prat. I’ve never seen less leadership qualities from an officer in the armed forces.
The tweeter above is yet another who seems to think that Stewart’s 5 months as a gap-year “officer” on probation is something real, rather than a kind of adventure holiday for the gentry. Unless the tweeter, like others, takes the term SIS “officer” at face value, rather than as a conventional designation (cf. police “officer”, council “officer” etc).
Update, 25 May 2019
Well, here we are after Theresa May’s announcement of departure, and Rory Stewart is on all msm outlets. He has put the knife into Boris-Idiot and may have damaged the latter’s campaign. Opinion on Stewart himself is divided, half seeing his accomplishments and character, half seeing his gaffes. The tweet below is more favourable than not to him
On the other hand, I saw Stewart on TV, saying that “we” must build 2 MILLION (!) houses. My reaction? “Only because the UK has imported millions of unwanted immigrants, who are breeding fast; and Britain CONTINUES to import huge numbers, even in 2019!”
I see no willingness in Bilderberg/Davos Stewart to take on mass immigration. In fact, he seems to support it. The negative effects will scarcely impact him or his family, after all, in his listed Borders country house…
Ah…another tweeter who raises points against Stewart:
and, below, the sort of statement that comes easier to those who have never been poor, hungry, desperate etc…Almost clownish coming from someone who has been an MP and whose votes, with those of other Conservatives and LibDems, enabled the attacks on the unemployed and disabled since 2010…
The country can be a much better and much happier place if we learn again to focus on the small things that make a real difference to people. pic.twitter.com/KfYxEi6E6e
Stewart seems to be an engaging fellow, at least on the surface, but the more I see of him, and the more that I read about his voting record and views, the less I like him ideologically or politically.
Update, 1 June 2019
Ah, I see that I am not alone in thinking that Stewart’s accomplishments and achievements are perhaps not quite all that they seem on paper:
“Though few would speak on the record, there is a broad critique of Stewart that his biography is a little overegged and certainly self-regarding – leading to a nickname, a member of his wider social circle confides, of “Florence of Belgravia”.” [The Guardian]
“Though Stewart has claimed to know “what it feels like to be in the army”, for instance, he spent only a gap year stint in the Black Watch and did not see active service. He can often give the impression his role in Iraq was rather more important than the reality, according to someone who witnessed his work there (“He was regarded as a pretty competent mid-ranking Foreign Office official … He wasn’t a nonentity and I think the view in Iraq was that he was conscientious, but he wasn’t Lawrence of Arabia.”).” [The Guardian]
“Several well-placed observers of Stewart’s time in Afghanistan point out that his much-discussed Afghan walk, the origin of his reputation as an expert on the region, was a month spent crossing a comparatively safe part of the country (“Other people would call it a walking holiday,” notes one).” [The Guardian]
“In general, he has done a lot and it’s all very impressive,” says someone who observed Stewart at close quarters in Kabul. “But it’s not quite as impressive and remarkable as he allows people to think. This is not necessarily all his doing, but the willingness of others to project things on to him … All sorts of journalists wrote up the Turquoise Mountain Foundation [Stewart’s Afghan NGO, which aimed to preserve local crafts] as the most amazing project in Afghanistan, when it was actually a rather low impact thing that affected the lives of a small number of people.” [The Guardian]
“…to his credit he does not dissemble when asked directly about his experience (“It was unbelievably brief,” he told the New Yorker of his time in the Black Watch.)” [The New Yorker; The Guardian]. So not even 5 months? Sounds as though it was somewhere between the 5 months previously claimed and, er, what? A week? A month? A few months?
“Claims this week to have “negotiated in Iraq, negotiated in Afghanistan” provoked “snorts of derision”, the former Afghanistan correspondent Jon Boone tweeted. “Who with, the Kabul guild of potters and calligraphers?” [The Guardian]
Maybe Stewart should not have exposed his gilding to the very harsh light of scrutiny.
A few more thoughts
Since I penned the main blog post, much has happened. Stewart has come under more scrutiny, but also has travelled the country (the UK, not Afghanistan) doing Twitter vox pop chats with random passers-by. At least he is not afraid to do that. He is becoming better-known to the public and apparently now has a few Conservative MPs supporting him; but not many. As to the bookmakers, some have him as 66/1 for “next Conservative leader”, though Betfair betting exchange has him at 12/1, which strikes me as more realistic (making that 66/1 a value bet if you can get it)
“Speaking in her personal capacity – and not in her current role as chief executive of the Jo Cox Foundation – Catherine Anderson told The Courier she was drawn to Rory’s internationalism.” [The Courier]
A few more endorsements like that and it’s Goodnight Vienna to Stewart!
Ah…seems that Catherine Anderson is “an aspiring Conservative MP” who used to be “Chief of Staff” and Campaign Manager for (drum roll…) Rory Stewart! In fact she worked for Rory Stewart for nearly 9 years!
Well, the first ballot has been held and Rory Stewart is still standing. Just. 4th from bottom. All below him (McVey, Leadsom, Harper) eliminated (though only from the contest, sadly…). So far, only 19 MPs voted for Stewart. His immediate prospects look bleak, inasmuch as Boris-Idiot, someone with no real vision, ability, ideas, ideals, nor even basic decency, is the frontrunner still. Boris has 114 craven MPs backing him, so far.
Our analysis of the results of the first ballot of the Conservative leadership contest… three candidates have been eliminated – Leadsom, Harper and McVey. pic.twitter.com/GUlcsa900q
What does it say about the Conservative Party and, to a lesser extent, the UK (England, mainly) that a blot like Boris Johnson may soon be Prime Minister? I am not talking about his character alone, but also his actual ability to be effective. Still, there it is…
Update, 17 June 2019
Well, as I guessed a couple of days ago, Rory Stewart has gained ground, at least in the betting, though the betting exchanges’ and bookmakers’ odds are often not a reliable guide to political results (see the EU Referendum, the Trump election, the recent Peterborough by-election etc).
Stewart is now at 2nd place in the betting to be next Conservative leader, though only at 16/1. Boris Johnson is favourite at around 1/5 odds-on (Hunt 20/1, Gove 46/1, Raab 85/1, Javid 120/1).
By all accounts, Stewart did well in the TV debate (Johnson the sole absentee, obviously afraid of being exposed as an idiot and incompetent, as well as wanting to seem to be the “presidential” figure above the fray).
Having said that, Stewart will have to pull off a considerable coup even to be one of the final two, though that now seems a 50-50 possibility.
Update, 19 June 2019
Well, Rory Stewart is out of the race, which means that, until or unless Boris Johnson leaves frontline politics, his career is stalled again. He pledged not to serve in a Johnson Cabinet, and, as I blogged previously, it is doubtful that Johnson will appoint him to anything significant anyway.
That leaves Johnson, Hunt, Gove, Javid.
Looks as though arguably the worst candidate is about to win…
Talked to a Tory MP last night who was backing Johnson "Do you think he'd be any good as PM" "No" "What on earth will he do about Brexit"? "No one knows" "Why do you want him, then?" "He's the best hope we've got" "By 'we" you don't mean Britain do you?" "No the party, of course"
Having said that, Stewart has staked his claim to be taken more seriously somewhere down the line. System politicians, like revolutionary ones, are all seeking to catch the right wave, like surfers.
Update, 20 June 2019
Just saw this tweet, posted 2 days ago. Worth reading; one has to take its veracity on trust, not ever having heard of the tweeter, and the emailer mentioned remaining unnamed.
So Rory Stewart is standing down as MP for Penrith and Borders at next election. He has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Reasons not given. Maybe, in the end, he just was not hungry enough, which would explain why he did not want further ministerial preferment, or to seek the role of PM, but does not explain why he has also decided not to continue as MP; neither does it explain why he has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Perhaps the situation will be clarified in due course.
Update, 5 October 2019
Ah…mystery solved. Stewart is intending to stand for the post of Mayor of London.
He has obviously seen how Boris-Idiot used the position to keep his profile high until he was ready to re-enter the Westminster fray.
The other main candidates are already known: Sadiq Khan, the present Mayor, for Labour, and Shaun Bailey, the West Indian who will be the Conservative candidate. Sadiq Khan has the support of the msm, the Jewish lobby etc, as a Labour mayor who is rather anti-Corbyn. Shaun Bailey may be seen by the blacks as rather an “Uncle Tom”, and there are still questions around missing or misapplied funds of a “social enterprise” he set up in 2006: the monies missing were never accounted for; other monies, amounting to the bulk of spending by the organization, went on “travel and subsistence”, probably for Bailey himself. No criminal charges or civil claims were ever brought, though.
Despite Khan’s poor record as Mayor, he is probably well-placed vis-a-vis Bailey. Now that Rory Stewart has entered the fray, Bailey is holed below the waterline and his candidature will inevitably sink. Whether Rory Stewart can beat Khan and the other candidates (the LibDem being the main also-ran) is an open question.
London is a mainly non-white city now, and an English candidate (well, Anglo-Scottish) like Stewart may find this an uphill slog. On the other hand, Khan is not a popular figure, Stewart is a fresh and now politically non-aligned contender who, however, has high public recognition and profile. I do not think that he can be written off here, and if that is so, his wider ambition, to be Prime Minister, may survive the presently wintry conditions.
Update and addendum, 10 October 2019
Thank to an alert and well-informed blog reader, I can now add a significant addendum to my study of Rory Stewart:
So it turns out that, notwithstanding the listed country house in the Scottish Borders, notwithstanding the almost caricature “country gentry” persona, Stewart is part-Jew! It now is clear that he is what the Reich called a “Mischling”, in his case one-quarter, his maternal grandfather having been “a Jewish doctor from Wimbledon”, whose own parents were Jews from Romania who arrived in London after having lived in New York City for a while.
Well, now it becomes clearer: the self-publicizing (shades of Boris Johnson…), the liking for “fancy dress”, eg tribal costume and being photographed posing in it, the pro-immigration stance, the Davos and Bilderberg linkages.
More than that: Stewart’s wife, Shoshana Stewart, is half-Jewish. In fact, the “half” in question is the maternal half, which means that, according to the way that Jews themselves calculate ancestry, his wife is “Jewish”, simpliciter; that also means that, according to Jewish custom, Stewart’s children are Jewish (though of course we non-Jews decide such designations according to genetic science, meaning that his children are in fact three-eighths Jewish, if my mathematical calculation is right, which often is not the case; anyway, no matter if the right answer is three-eighths or something else, the exact proportion changes nothing). According to the Jewish Chronicle report, above, Stewart and his wife and children celebrate Jewish religious holidays as well as the main Christian ones.
I smelt a rat about Stewart when I saw that the vocal Jew cabal on Twitter all seemed to favour him during the Conservative leadership contest, but it did not occur to me that he himself was part-Jew. I thought that his odd and dark looks came from Western Scottish origins (as they presumably do, in part). I thought that the Jews were supporting Stewart because of his “liberal” Conservatism…
How do these facts, concealed or at least not publicized until now, affect Stewart’s London Mayor election bid? Damaging, I think. While the Jews of North London will probably support him now, the far greater number of Muslims and others who commonly disfavour Jews will probably not vote for him (despite the fact that the present Mayor of London and Labour Party candidate, Sadiq Khan, a Muslim by origin, has been a complete doormat for the Jewish lobby for years).
Fair comment, surely, if one looks at Rory Stewart’s voting record as an MP (2010-2019).
Without taking away from his interesting and accomplished background, as detailed in my lengthy blog hereinabove, my feeling at the moment is that Rory Stewart is basically an oleaginous, dissembling, part-Jew shit.
Update, 6 April 2020
Stewart is no longer standing as candidate for Mayor of London:
There must be a reason; I do not know that reason.
feels entirely absurd that one year ago this month Rory Stewart became the new DfID secretary in Theresa May's cabinet, and since then he's resigned from that post, run for the Tory leadership, left the Tories, and run for London mayor as an independent
So once again Rory Stewart is the nearly man: nearly something important in SIS or FCO, nearly Conservative Party leader, nearly Mayor of London. Sometimes a candidate has to stick in there and await Fate. Had Stewart not huffed off and resigned as MP after losing out to, ultimately, Boris Johnson, his time might have come, after Johnson messes up even more, which is inevitable.
I always recall being in the USA during the 1992 US Presidential Election campaign. At one point, Clinton was placed third of the three major candidates in the opinion polls. A poor third, at that. He stuck it out (admittedly, what else could he do?) and, after Ross Perot dropped out, beat George Bush snr. for the Presidency, being inaugurated in 1993.
[addendum, 31 October 2021: my point about Clinton sticking to it applies more forcefully to Ross Perot, which I should have explained better. Had Perot shown more resilience, and stuck to it, he might easily have become President and thus, as a non-Republican/Democrat candidate, made history. As it was, he dropped out, later claiming that sinister forces had threatened him and his family. Who were they? NWO/ZOG?].
Years earlier, Clinton, who at 31 had been a very young Governor of Arkansas, was defeated there after one 4-year term. Undeterred, he tried the next time and was re-elected. A stayer.
I should think that this spells the end of Rory Stewart as a potential political leader. What does it mean for the London race? I have not followed it closely, but it must give the Conservatives a better chance, despite their candidate being a West Indian with a very dodgy background in terms of near-fraud (though he has never been charged with anything).
Sadiq Khan was running at 8/1 on (1/8) with the bookmakers. Rory Stewart was at 11/8. Shaun Bailey, for Conservative Party, at 20/1. Now that Stewart is gone, I imagine that Sadiq Khan will go out to about 1/6, and Shaun Bailey go in to about 10/1 or so. Despite his poor record, Sadiq Khan is unlikely to lose to Shaun Bailey.
In a John Buchan story, the Stewart or “Hannay” character would no doubt “retire” from public life only because he would be secretly saving the Empire from imperial Russia, or imperial Germany, or would be thwarting a dastardly plot involving transnational conspirators. In fiction, he would save the Empire, then either be knighted or (and/or) be appointed Chief of the Imperial Secret Service. In real life? I have no idea. Stewart is now, or was until recently, teaching at Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart#Post-political_career.
Update, 22 January 2022
Boris Johnson is a symptom of a much broader problem in British politics – which can only be fixed with new policies, and – almost certainly – new parties and a new electoral system https://t.co/4XUQ8YGAZ8
Had Stewart retained his MP-status, he might now be in again with a real chance of leading his former party. Having decided not to continue as MP, he is necessarily out in the cold.
Update, 9 July 2022
Just read an appreciation of Stewart from the Tatler (2016, expanded and updated 2019). Don’t think I saw it before today. Written by Quentin Letts [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Letts].
Frankly, nowhere as complete, or as good, as my own assessment, if I say so myself. As for it containing “everything you need to know about Rory Stewart“, I think not! For one thing, no mention of the part-Jewish background, and no mention of the fact that his wife is half-Jewish.
Update, 2 April 2023
Well, in the end, the London Mayoral Election was held in 2021. There were 20 candidates, both Independents and those from political parties. In the run-off, Sadiq Khan (40%), beat Shaun Bailey (35.3%) in what turned out to be a close-run thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_mayoral_election.
As for Rory Stewart, now 50, he has pottered around doing podcasts in the past couple of years. He also moved to Jordan in 2021 with his wife and children, apparently to do work connected with his Turquoise Mountain charity.
That article mentions that Stewart is (or was, in September 2021, when the article was written) thinking of possibly standing again as a London mayoral candidate in 2024. I doubt that he will. The 2024 election will be run on FPTP lines, giving an outsider (in his case, as a non-party candidate) fewer chances.
Overall, it seems to me that Rory Stewart’s political career is finished, in all likelihood.
“Anyone with the slightest interest in politics should get a copy of Rory Stewart’s political memoir.
Not because he had a particularly long or even influential career: just nine years in Parliament and only months in the Cabinet. But you will learn more about the nature of Westminster machinations and how government actually works (or doesn’t) from this volume than from those of many more illustrious politicians. In terms of the quality of writing, there has been nothing to approach it since the diaries of Alan Clark (who never made it to the Cabinet at all).
But whereas Clark was a genuinely bad person — part of the attraction, perhaps — Stewart is a fundamentally good man, even if his self-belief, touching on the messianic, occasionally made him appear preposterous.”
[Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail].
Interesting that Stewart was apparently in SIS/MI6 for several years, and that Dominic Lawson was said to have been a long-term SIS/MI6 source: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Lawson. Lawson is 17 years older than Stewart, in fact born the same year as me— 1956.
However, the allegations about Lawson do refer mainly to the 1990s and focus partly on the Balkans, particularly (ex-) Yugoslavia. Stewart joined FCO/SIS in the mid-1990s, and was posted to Montenegro in, I think, 1999. Tenuous link, perhaps nothing…
“This silly little man has delusions of grandeur“, “I cant wait to see the back of Khan, but Rory Stewart god help us“, “Gottle of Gear“, “Nay ,nay ,thrice times nay.“, “The guy’s a joke, and not a funny one“, “Please no, he’s a right weirdo” and “Oh no! Not this opportunist” are among some of the more polite.
Rory Stewart has now written his latest book. His profile is high enough even in 2023 to ensure msm interest and comment (not all favourable, though):
Behind a paywall, but I include it for the sake of completeness.
[Rory Stewart, 2023]
I expect that I shall buy the book secondhand off Amazon, once it reduces to about £5 or £2. The price for the new and unreleased (until 14 September) book has already declined from the original £22 to £16 or so.
I am not now in the new-book-buying classes (and prefer hardbacks) so the Amazon website is a great boon for me.
Not long ago, I bought the memoirs of Gorbachev, a heavy tome; great value at about £5 including postage from a used-book company on Amazon.
I have now bought another book: £2.80 only, and also including the postage. Hard to believe. One wonders how they make a profit, but then (to coin a phrase) I never was much of a businessman!
I met the author a few times in the 1980s. Frankly, a rather pompous man whom I (even more frankly) found rather unpleasant in a minor way, but his book might be interesting. As for the author, he is now deceased.
(about how Stewart is now angling for both a peerage and a ministerial portfolio from Starmer…).
Stewart’s ambition and careerism are both relentless, if inconsistent.
Actually, in terms of individual jobs or posts, I should say that Stewart (despite his many accomplishments) is a “quitter”, but behind that is his already-noted enormous ambition, “looming like a thundercloud over the scene“…
An old friend of mine used to quote her deceased husband (ex-Guards officer, ex-Royal Flying Corps, WW1, d. circa 1970): “if you throw a Jew out of the door, the Jew will sneak back through a window“… Of course, Stewart is only part-Jew.
If Starmer can indeed give Rory Stewart a job and put him out of his often expressed misery of not being a politician with a brief anymore then that really would be great for everyone including those who are tired of hearing him pine pic.twitter.com/83Q6CfN6Lz
Stewart will fight Vance over 'ordo amoris' but stands idly by while mothers kill their own children in their wombs and HMG arrests those who pray silently against it!
Emasculated phoney who actually cares nothing for the most vulnerable and marginalized.
USAID: British politician complaining that his wife was supposed to get $1M in USAID grants before Trump cancelled the contract. Rory Stewart's wife runs Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which exposes modern art to puzzled Afghan women.
USAID: The NGO which Rory Stewart’s wife works for just has its USAID funding cancelled, The Turquiose Mountain Foundation, teaches ‘liberated’ Afghan women about modern art like Duchamp’s urinal. pic.twitter.com/0IJdoF2Rwn
Oh this has absolutely made my day. Rory Wrong About Everything Stewart whingeing about his wife having her $1 million contract from USAID cancelled with immediate effect by DOGE. Priceless, absolutely priceless🤣🤣
Stewart once again proving the truth of the old adage about how it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people assume that you are an idiot, than speak and thus confirm it…
I have blogged previously about the need for Basic Income (see Notes, below).
One important point is that the nexus connecting work and pay is loosening in the more developed countries. Already, computers, automation and modern business streamlining have led to the situation whereby, apart from actual unemployment, there is huge underemployment. In the UK, we see, in big picture terms, that the poorer half of the workforce is still being paid less in real terms (the latest statistics suggest about 7% less) than was paid in 2007 for equivalent work.
Now, there is a headlong rush into greater automation and, crucially, to Artificial Intelligence [AI].
Working Tax Credits as Government Subsidy to Poor-Paying Employers
Even before the financial upheaval of 2007-2008, it is clear that the “market”, as “hidden hand” mechanism, delivering adequate pay for required work, was not working properly or as old-thinking economic theory suggested that it should. Employers were unwilling or in some cases unable to offer pay high enough for employees to subsist on, let alone live decently on.
The answer of the Blair-Brown governments was to offer employees “working tax credits”, i.e. a form of “welfare”/”social security” for those in employment, the purpose of which was (and at time of writing still is) to top-up inadequate pay to a determined level. A more limited measure, Family Credit, claimable only by families, was in operation from 1986-1999.
The most obvious drawback of Working Tax Credit [WTC], i.e. that it in effect subsidizes poor and poor-paying employers out of general taxation, was either not foreseen by self-styled financial genius Gordon Brown, or was ignored by him and/or Tony Blair. Adding insult to injury was and is the fact that some of the worst-paying employing companies are also those most adept at avoiding tax liability: transnational enterprises such as Amazon in particular.
In other words, an employee is forced (by circumstances) to work for pay which is not enough for that employee to live on, even at a very basic level. That pay is then topped-up to a minimum subsistence level by Working Tax Credit, which is paid for not directly by the exploitative employer but by government, and so by general taxation. Low-paid employees pay little or no income tax now, but still pay so-called National Insurance, which is today just another or extra income tax in all but name. Put simply, the low-paid worker is paying out for his or her own Working Tax Credit, at least to some extent.
The poor-paying employer has no incentive to pay decently, because the government will stump up enough to keep the employee in place.
Real-terms pay now, for very many people, is inferior to what was paid in the 1980s and 1970s. Conditions of employment are also worse in reality (though that aspect is not part of this blog post).
At present, 5 million people in the UK receive WTC, while another 2 million are entitled to receive it but, for whatever reason, do not apply for it.
Other Government Top-Ups to Pay
In addition to basic Working Tax Credit, people in low-paying jobs and who have children can get extra money via WTC , as can disabled workers.
Persons who are disabled or unwell (including employed persons) can receive Disability Living Allowance, which is not means-tested.
Persons who have children are also entitled to Child Benefit, regardless of capital or income (up to £50,000-£60,000, tapering).
Persons of the age(s) specified can receive State Pension regardless of whether they work or not; moreover, whether or not they have ever worked.
Limited Elements of Basic Income Already Embedded in the Existing System
State Pension, paid whatever the individual’s capital or income, and whether or not the individual is working (employed or self-employed) or not and (if you include Pension Guarantee Credit), payable regardless of how much the pensioner has paid in via National Insurance;
Child Benefit, paid regardless of income (under £50,000 p.a.);
Disability Living Allowance (and its successor, “Personal Independence Payment” or PIP), paid regardless of capital or income to qualifying persons (and this is not the place in which to examine why politicians and Department of Work and Pensions [DWP] civil servants often choose vulgar names for State benefits and programmes: cf. “Jobseeker’s Allowance” etc).
Advantages of Basic Income
Simplicity. A Basic Income would mean that most of the existing DWP structure could be dispensed with: the vast edifice of “Jobcentres” (office buildings), filled with DWP staff engaged in adminstration, and the snooping upon, monitoring, “assessing” of claimants etc. The absurdity of it is that many claimants are only getting about £75 a week anyway. The present Kafka-esque set-up really should be and can be junked. Probably 90% of the present 85,000 DWP employees can be made redundant. The financial savings from that, decommissioning of buildings, running costs etc would be in the tens of billions annually; the untold billions paid by the State to useless and dishonest private contractors, such as ATOS and Capita, would also be saved;
Security of Citizens. It has been shown in overseas pilot studies (eg recently in Finland) that having a Basic Income, even if small, gives people a sense of security only available until now to those with an inherited private income. Yes, some people will decide to loaf all day, maybe even drink all day, but others will do paid work, start small businesses, improve their cultural level, volunteer locally or far away etc. The idle and/or useless are like that under the present system anyway and are costing the State money even now, both directly and indirectly (eg via the costs of policing, NHS, prisons etc);
Doubts Often Expressed about Basic Income
“People will not want to work if they get money for nothing”: well, most wealthy inheritors of capital, most of those living off trust incomes etc do seem to want to work in some way, or to set up businesses, or at least to write, paint, or other similar activity. Don’t disparage writing or other artistic activity. After all, Harry Potter, which snowballed into a huge industry employing, altogether, many thousands and even tens of thousands, came out of the mind of one lady, a single mother on State benefits; J.K. Rowling herself has said that, under the punitive present benefits regime, she would have been messed around so much that it would have been impossible for her to sit in cafes with her baby writing Harry Potter. True, some people will simply loaf. They do that under the present system. Don’t think that there are no costs to the State and society now (even if actual benefits are cut off): police costs, court and legal costs, NHS costs, too;
“The cost to the taxpayer”: the cost of Basic Income would be little more than the present “welfare” (social security) system, once you take into account the huge savings on DWP and HMRC bureaucracy, savings by not using useless/dishonest outsourcing organizations, the economic benefit of people spending more, stimulating the economy, setting up new small businesses;
“People getting Basic Income money that they do not even need”: firstly, what people “need” is, beyond the basic level, something subjective. Apart from that, there is no problem with clawing back monies paid to those above a certain income. All that need happen is that a maximum level of income (all income) for recipients be set. All persons above that income level to be taxed or super-taxed to the same level as Basic Income received. The level might be a total (including Basic Income) of £30,000, assuming Basic Income of perhaps £15,000 per year. In that case, the person would be taxed the £15,000, leaving £15,000. Yes, there would be apparent unfairness at lower income levels, whereby it might be questioned why work, when you could simply receive the (in the example given) £15,000 and not work. However, even then the recipient does gain, via extra security in case of job loss or illness; alternatively, the threshold could be set higher, say at £50,000 p.a.
Variations on the Basic Income Theme
Instead of money alone, Basic Income could include benefits paid to certain persons, such as free housing for persons receiving less than a certain income. The danger here is in the complexity and cost, as under the existing system, as well as monies wasted going to landlords charging excessive rents. It may be that the way forward is to add to the existing (in the UK) more or less “free” (at point of use) health service, free education at primary and secondary level etc. Examples:
free public transport, whether local or regional;
free car insurance;
free domestic utilities;
free NHS or similar;
free education.
Basic Income as Necessity
It is clear that, in the UK, relatively few people at present are purely living off what they can earn by work or by investments and/or trust income. 7 million are eligible for Working Tax Credits, millions more are children, retired people, disabled and not working, unemployed etc. For many, working for pay does not cover the basic necessities of life, let alone provide a decent human existence. The State already recognizes these facts.
The explosion in artificial intelligence and robotics will turn the screw. For example, there are at present356,300 taxi drivers and private hire drivers in the UK. The technology already exists to replace them. It is unlikely that more than a small percentage will still be doing such work in, say, 2030. That’s just one group affected. Groups as diverse as farmers, lawyers, surgeons, pilots, security guards will all be made, as groups, largely redundant.
Basic Income is not just the right thing, but the necessary thing.
The necessity for Basic Income is spreading, but not yet to enough people. Many still think that it is “expensive” (probably the same people who believe that the answer to a recession is to “cut spending”…). There is, however, dissent…
I have been interested for several, indeed many, years in the socio-political effects of the AI/robot/computer revolution, which effects started to be felt as long ago as the 1960s, accelerated in the 1980s, but which still mushroom, and may be considered to be still in the youthful stage of development.
I happened to see an online article which was about 25 types of human work likely to be largely replaced by robots. Some were unsurprising, such as Data Entry Clerks and Bookkeepers, others less so (as a former barrister, I noticed “Lawyers” with interest!). I did not expect to see “Farmers” on the list, though in fact much agricultural work has already moved from human and animal labour to robotic or at least automated: sophisticated machines now already sow, harvest and process agricultural produce. Some of the most delicate tasks can still not be effectively automated without loss of quality, but that will probably change. The picking of grapes is done today as it has been since the dawn of recorded history– by hand. The best tea is also still picked by hand, though experiments have been made with automation: the Soviet tea industry tried it back in the 1970s (“on Georgia’s sun-dappled hills”, as Lermontov had it).
Looking ahead, one can see that many more jobs will be automated. Even now, that is leaving many either with no jobs, or with “McJobs”, minimum-wage bottom-of-barrel jobs. Increasingly, there will be discontent as those who have either no job or a job which does not cover even basic necessities become more numerous. At present, in the UK, those who have existed on poor pay have had that pay topped up via “tax credits” etc (and/or, now, the cretinous “Universal Credit” pipedream of Iain Dunce Duncan Smith), administered by a shambolic and punitive bureaucratic regime. That can and will be taken over by a Basic Income, paid without reference to whether the individual is trying to find work or better work.
The essence of the plan in respect of AI etc is that automation creates economic surplus. That surplus, at present, is today then distributed mostly to shareholders and higher executives, by means of dividends, pay and capital gains (eg via share options). That surplus or benefit should be shared out with the employees of the enterprise and with the people in general, via the mediation of the State. Not forgetting the need for an economic enterprise to have reserve funding for R&D etc.
Basic Income will give to all citizens at least a measure of the financial and life security currently enjoyed by only the wealthy, the “trustafarians” etc. It will enable those who want more than the basic minimum to work for that extra money, those who want to volunteer or do charitable work to do so and yet still subsist, those who want to think or write to create. As for those who only want to loaf, they do that under any system (including the present one) and at least Basic Income makes society quiescent.
The cost of Basic Income is high, but the cost of administering and paying out the present “welfare” system is hugely high too! Admin, snooping, interrogating, complex payment structures etc.
Taken to absurdity, one could envisage a society entirely dystopian, where no human workers are needed at all. The machines (etc) then produce goods and services which cannot be bought and paid for, because the humans have no work and therefore no pay and therefore no disposable income.
In such a scenario, either goods and services have to be given away free of charge to the humans unable to pay for them, or the humans need to be given money-value for which they have not directly worked. Basic Income.
The present society is already exhibiting a trend to work which pays little or nothing and a connected trend to an amelioration of the effects of that first trend (via State welfare, pensions, tax credits etc).
In the end, Basic Income is essential, because the robotics/AI revolution is loosening the nexus between work and pay.
It has been proven that to take away the familiar and known from an individual is to disorientate that person. It is a well-practised method of breaking down a prisoner for interrogation, for example (sensory deprivation etc). A less harsh form, usually, is recruit training in armies and similar organizations. However, the same is true in societies generally. When the familiar is taken away, society suffers something akin to a nervous breakdown. The singer Morrissey has commented recently that England now is little more than a memory.
In the UK, we have seen how society was already struggling with the importation of millions of immigrants even before 1997, when the Tony Blair Zionist government (ZOG puppet government) took power. It is now a matter of record that a deliberate decision was taken by the Tony Blair government to import further millions of immigrants, mostly non-Europeans, in order to destroy Britain as it has been and to a limited extent still is; to destroy the racial and cultural roots and foundations of our country. White genocide.
That policy, spearheaded by two corrupt Jews, Phil Woolas and Barbara Roche (both now removed from Parliament), has been successful. Britain is now, at least in part, an ethno-social dustbin. The millions imported have been breeding, prolifically. Recent reports and studies estimate that the UK will become majority non-white by 2050. If one takes England alone, the date can probably be reduced to around 2040. Already, some English cities are English in name and history only or are getting that way: London is already majority non-white (native-born population: 44%), Birmingham and Manchester are rapidly following (57% and 66%), while smaller cities such as Leicester and Bradford are already, like London, mainly non-white.
The above ethno-cultural changes have destabilized the national mental landscape. The change has been accompanied by a propaganda campaign stealthily making use of “soaps” and TV advertizing. The mixed-race family is presented as the norm. Even Midsomer Murders, the archetypal Middle England comedy-drama detective series, was forced, after criticism, to put blacks and browns into the cast lists. This is (as with TV ads) not really reflective of reality but the creation of a new “reality”. Social engineering.
The wrenching apart of the accepted “mental landscape” does not end with the racial-cultural question. It is far wider. It includes the gratuitous renaming of commercial and trade union organizations. Thus the old trade unions, with their easy to understand names and functions, have become amorphous huge conglomerations with names that mean little, such as “Unison”, “Unite” etc, and have abandoned their members’ interests to pursue a politically-correct agenda involving “anti-racism”, “anti-sexism”, promotion of mass immigration etc.
In the same way that the trade unions have been corrupted, so commercial enterprises have been renamed and somehow displaced. Norwich Union insurance becomes “Aviva”, and so on.
The result of this dislocation of the mental landscape on the large scale has been the rupturing of the connection between the people as a whole and the mainstream political parties. The Conservative Party, which once had a membership in the millions, now numbers only a few tens of thousands and is still sliding. Labour, which was going the same way, has recovered under Corbyn to about 450,000, but its popular vote has not recovered. The Liberal Democrats are a very small party in terms of both members and votes. UKIP too has fallen back, in its case to almost nothing, but the fact that it briefly mushroomed into a threat to the older parties indicates that the voters are no longer anchored to System parties. However, a non-System party credible enough to come to the fore has not yet emerged.
Another symptom of the mental-landscape dislocation is seen in the notionally “nationalist” direct-action operations carried out by the “lone wolf” dissidents. The highest profile case is probably that of Thomas Mair, who killed Jo Cox MP a few years ago. In his case, the sheer dislocation suffered by society seems to have triggered a determination to make a point through forceful action.
More significantly, the lack of secure anchorings in society may lead to a volatile political milieu in which a social-national party could be formed, become popular and then move to attain power within a relatively few years.
Ian Robert Millard 