Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

A Day Out in Cambridge

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Introduction

This is another vignette from my time at the Bar, specifically from my first six months (of a year, split up into two segments, in 1992 and 1993, with six months sojourn in New Jersey and New York in between) as a Bar pupil, which is a trainee barrister. I have, in a previous blog post, introduced the slightly comical figure of “the pupilmaster”, the anxious little Mauritian Indian barrister who was supposedly supervising me (we were the same age, 35). This account tells the tale of our day out in the university town of Cambridge.

Town and Gown

I had been to Cambridge a couple of times before. The first time was when I was about 25, with my then girlfriend. She was 32, a graduate of Cambridge University, and had contemporaries who were establishing themselves in academia and elsewhere. We stayed for a day or so with a couple who still lived in Cambridge; one of that couple was having his PhD thesis published as a book, and worked at the famous Scott Polar Research Institute.

My second visit to Cambridge, a decade later, was again University-connected, this time invited, by a friend at the Bar doing a Master’s degree, to Queen’s College, to the annual dinner of something called the E Society, a society which existed only to give its annual dinner; a club reminiscent of that written about by G.K. Chesterton in The Queer Feet [http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/QueeStep920.shtml].

That dinner took place in the richly-panelled rooms of the Dean of the College, a pleasant though cunning-seeming host and fellow (or should that be Fellow?), who later became briefly famous in the tabloid Press for two things: firstly, fulminating against “guests” of undergraduates (i.e. girlfriends/boyfriends) staying overnight in College; secondly, having a young woman actually living with him! (I believe that, by tradition, his office was reserved for bachelors living alone). The dinner was for about a dozen and was black-tie.

I also remember the dinner for other reasons: the Wagnerian-themed menu (“Valkyries on Horseback” etc); also the administrative slip when my “vegetarian request” (put in by the person who had invited me) turned out to have been lost in action. I was then ceremoniously served by the butler with a couple of poached eggs on toast! OK for me, but a hard-core veggie or vegan would have had a fit. I also recall the shock with which a fellow guest received my account of a TV programme I had seen about Filipino “psychic surgeons”. Turned out that he was the Something-or-Other Professor of Cardiac Surgery (and was unamused)!

Cambridge Crown Court

I saw Cambridge Crown Court on TV news recently. A horrible building which might be described as “public loo meets nuclear bunker” (with a nod to the Guggenheim in New York, in my opinion Frank Lloyd Wright’s least-successful conception).

https://courttribunalfinder.service.gov.uk/courts/cambridge-crown-court

However, in 1992 Cambridge Crown Court was still held in the ancient-seeming Guildhall (in fact built only in 1939).

It soon became clear that Cambridge was a little behind London in attitude. In London, when someone on bail “surrendered to custody” on day of trial, the “surrender” was nominal: he checked in with the Usher and his name was ticked off a list. In Cambridge, the defendant checked in and, despite having been on bail for months, was shoved into a cell! So it was that pupilmaster and I, having robed, found ourselves witness to an argument between two court guards and our defendant, who had arrived not long beforehand and had been roughly pushed into a cell with an injunction to “get your arse in there”… Having pacified the ongoing argument, we settled down (well, stood there– no furniture) to hear the defendant’s story already read in the brief.

According to the defendant (who was of “gypsy”, i.e. Irish tinker or, in today’s politically-correct terminology, “traveller” origin), he had been invited to travel with his friend (co-defendant) to Cambridge, far from their homes in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, in order to see a used car which the friend wanted to buy. While walking in the centre of Cambridge, he encountered a person described by him as “a hippy”, who had offered him a cigarette. Well, that cigarette “must have been drugs”, said the defendant, because when he regained consciousness he was in the back of a car which was being chased by a police car. He had been unable to understand why the police car, blue lights flashing and sirens sounding, was trying to chase the car in which he was now a passenger. The chase ended and, despite his having tried to explain himself, he had been arrested. Unlikely that he had ever read Kafka’s The Trial, but his surprise echoed that of Josef K.

The police account, which formed the case for the prosecution, was different. In their view, a car had been stolen by the co-defendant and defendant, had been sighted and chased and our defendant had exited the car on a bend and rolled under a parked car. His attempt to hide had been brought to a swift conclusion by a police dog.

This depressing and hopeless case might have caused pupilmaster to think a little unclearly. Never very punctual [see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/06/19/home-and-away-or-neighbours/], pupilmaster was in danger of yet again irritating a judge by appearing late in Court (a massive discourtesy if the judge has already taken his seat). He poo-poohed my warning about this, saying, “Don’t worry– I know a short-cut into this court; it’s up those stairs. I’ve been here before”, indicating a dark stairway not far away. The defendant was bid au revoir for the moment, and we ascended the stairs.

In the words of Victorian novels, “imagine my surprise” when, instead of emerging outside the courtroom, we found ourselves in the dock! Worse, the judge was seated, looking livid, and the court was packed to such an extent that it reminded me of the famous courtroom scene in the old black and white film of A Tale of Two Cities. This was not good. Pupilmaster hissed at me to find the (hidden) catch so that we could exit the dock and take our proper place. After some fumbling, this was done. The judge, quite the Judge Jeffreys type, had turned that odd red-purple colour which might be called Judicial Livid, and which I myself may have triggered a couple of times in succeeding years. Not good.

The barrister for the co-defendant was there and all we now awaited was the putting-up of the defendants. It was at this point that it turned out that the co-defendant had exercized his non-existent right not to turn up for his trial. As a result, the trial collapsed, the defendant was bailed again and a warrant was issued for the arrest of the co-defendant.

So it was that another day in the pursuit of Justice ended.

Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Home and Away, or Neighbours?

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Prologue on the Stage [with apologies to Goethe’s Faust]

At the belated age of 35, in early 1992, I embarked upon a Bar pupillage (which, for anyone reading outside England and Wales, means being a trainee-barrister for a year broken up into 2 6-month parts). The system was archaic. Having acquired a law degree and completed the 1-year Bar Finals course, and having passed all exams, you were expected, as a “pupil”,  to trail around after a barrister (“pupil-master”) from whom you were expected to learn not so much the law as the practical procedure and habitude of the Bar and the courts.

The pupilmaster was the same age as me (a source of many a joke from him) and was a Mauritian of Indian descent, by name Raj N., whose father had been Minister of Justice, I believe, back home. At short notice, the pupillage had been set up by a friend of mine who shall be nameless (now that I am apparently “notorious” as a “far right” “extremist”– if you believe the “Lugenpresse” aka msm liars). I had to take what I could get. Having said that, Raj N. was basically a very decent little chap and we became quite friendly. His practice was an odd mixture: partly civil law with quite a few High Court judicial reviews; the rest, Crown Court criminal trials ranging from armed robbery to blackmail and almost everything else.

The first six months were unpaid (in those days, but not so now, when most if not all pupils are subsidized); not even unavoidable expenses such as travel were covered. The only expense that could be relied upon, if the pupilmaster were decent, would be a supply of drinks at the Cittie of York pub in Holborn or at Daly’s wine bar in Fleet Street (in Rumpole of the Bailey, “Pomeroy’s”), at the time called something else, a change which the Bar did not accept (and the Bar won that one, because I noticed recently that Daly’s is now called Daly’s again…).

I had come back from the USA to do the pupillage and had very little money. I got by, God knows how…I may have forgotten to pay my Underground fares at times, and one day, en route to Wood Green Crown Court in North London, I noticed, while ascending the escalator at Bound’s Green Underground Station, where –ticket-inspectors permitting–the pupilmaster usually picked me up, if our case was in North-East London or beyond, that the soles of my expensive handmade shoes were starting to part company with the uppers. I was not allowed to do my own cases (initially, “rubbish” cast off from barristers in my Chambers) and so make any money at all until I was in the second six-month period of pupillage. It was hard. Steps had to be taken. They were. However, that would be another story in itself.

One thing that made the first six months of pupillage bearable was the degree to which the pupilmaster got himself into amusing pickles, often in Court. Here is but one example.

The One Where Home and Away was the Alibi

So to that Rumpolian staple, Inner London Crown Court, situate halfway between London Bridge and Elephant and Castle. A rather grim old setting for many a case of serious and often “heavy” crime. In this case, serious rather than heavy. In legal terms, robbery; in lay terms, a mugging. The primary facts were that, on the ghastly North Peckham Estate in South London, a young man was hit in the face and money stolen. What distinguished this case from the many was that the victim had actually met and been introduced to the alleged robber some months prior to the robbery, a fact that (presumably) the defendant had forgotten, but (unfortunately for the defendant) the victim had not. There had been an identity parade, what the Americans call a line-up. The robber had been picked out.

Now, on the facts as stated above, you might think that the best course would be for the defendant to hold his hands up, plead to it and hope that his Counsel might mitigate the sentence. In any case, the Court is supposed to knock a third off for a guilty plea, though that is of course notional, because the guidelines for judges have latitude built in. In this case the defendant insisted on pleading Not Guilty. So there we were: an alleged robber whose victim knew him personally or at least had met him, and had identified him. What did the robber have to say?

The defendant was a rather large West Indian, a former amateur boxer of about 30, with a considerable criminal record for theft, robbery, drug misuse and so on. His alibi was that he not only was he not guilty and not at or near the scene of the crime but that he could not have done the crime, because every single day, without fail, he and his girlfriend (also West Indian) and her sister sat down at (I think it was, about) 5 pm to watch the Australian soap, Home and Away. Needless to say, such an alibi was thin, even with a supporting witness (the girlfriend). He thought, God knows why, that he had a good chance of getting off. In the meantime, he was being held in custody at “high security” Belmarsh Prison.

The first day of trial was absurd, with the perenially-late pupilmaster being told off not once but twice for tardiness. On the second occasion, after lunch, the plump-faced but not unattractive lady judge also waved her beringed fingers in front of her (the middle finger housing a massive rock that looked like it belonged in the V & A) and had taken the trouble to procure a printed copy of a page which she pointedly invited the pupilmaster to “peruse at your leisure, Mr. N.” It turned out to be the responsibilities of Counsel not to waste court time and the power of the judge to recommend that his (Legal Aid) fees be docked accordingly.

When the Defence opened on the second day, it turned out that the judge required that both sides should agree on when Home and Away was screened. Much quiet amusement from public gallery and jury box, but the judge and all Counsel had no idea of the timings. Judging from looks and smiles, the jury already knew the timings. Prosecution Counsel, a jolly fat little man, acquired copies of Radio Times and TV Times. These were perused. At that point, it was discovered that Home and Away was screened twice on every weekday afternoon, once at 5-something and, before that, at 2-something. These were, apparently, identical episodes, so it would have been possible for the defendant to see the first showing and still be free to mug the victim.

In the event, the sole Defence witness, the girlfriend (the defendant did not give evidence) scarcely came up to proof. Prosecution Counsel’s killer question asked whether, if she and defendant watched the first showing on any particular day, they would sit down again 3 hours later and watch it all over again. Her angry “YES!” carried little weight. The jury took little time to convict. When it was all over and the Prosecution Counsel was leaving, he jovially remarked to us, “well, I’m off home, home to watch Home and Away!”, to which the family and girlfriend of the defendant, having heard the remark, addressed a few choice epithets before scurrying off.

When we saw the defendant in the cells below (they are always below…), he was happy enough, despite the pretty stiff 5-year sentence that he had received about an hour before (the pupilmaster liked to give convicted defendants time to cool down…). Defendant’s formerly vice-like handshake was limp, explained by his “Ah’m OK, man. I can do a 5 on my ‘ead. Ah’ve just ‘ad a smoke, ani-way”…Where he got the stuff (cannabis) from, God knows. Better not enquired after.

So there we have it. Justice a la mode. Followed by a drink at a convenient hostelry.

[this little remembrance forms part of an occasional series on the absurdities of Bar practice as it was for me between 1992 and 2008]

 

 

historical, Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, Uncategorized

Fake News, Fake History and Fake Memories: the UK in the 1970s etc

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The Story

“I went to school on the train endless strikes waiting on cold platforms for hours. Then returned home to a house with power cuts no heating hot food it was a nightmare for at least 10 years“— who can guess on what the lady I quote was, in a semi-literate fashion, commenting? The Second World War? Surely not: that only lasted for 6 years. The Siege of Leningrad? No, that lasted for a shorter period yet— 2 years, 4 months. What, then? In fact the lady in question was commenting, in the online Daily Mail, on the UK railways and, in the wider sense, on the UK generally in the 1970s.

Well, it certainly sounds like it was awful. The problem with that, though, is that it is in fact not true. The trains in England (where I lived; Wales and Scotland were similar) were not subject to “endless” strikes (though there were certainly far more than is now the case) and the station platforms were no colder than they are now. What about “power cuts”, “no heating [or] hot food”?

The Reality

The “Three Day Week” only lasted for 3 months (January-March 1974) and only commercial users of electricity were cut off or required to cease using electrical power. Most domestic users were unaffected. Newspaper printing, supermarkets and hospitals were also exempt. In other words, if the lady quoted at top is not simply making up her story of hardship (or failing to remember accurately), the reasons must lie elsewhere. Maybe her parents failed to pay their electricity bill! Only joking…In fact, two years before that, there had been announced (on 16 February 1972) a rolling programme of area outages (including domestic users) but peace broke out 2-3 days later (midday on 19 February 1972) so, again, few domestic users were affected, though a minority had seen limited outages earlier, in early February.

There was, also, the “Winter of Discontent”, which occurred in the winter of 1978-79, but in fact (in its acute phase) was only effective in January and early February 1979. In reality, we are talking about weeks rather than months. Neither domestic nor commercial users of electricity lost power; gas and coal users were likewise unaffected.

So there we have it: the lady commenting on these matters at top seems to be a victim of selective amnesia when she regards a decade of her childhood as having been an awful ten years without rail travel, heating, lighting etc. The “decade” in question turns out to have been affected for about 2-4 months out of 120…

In fact, the amnesiac lady is not alone. Time and again we read about how the UK spent much of the 1970s in the dark, in the cold, without public transport, without food, rubbish uncollected and dead bodies unburied. It’s nonsense, but many really believe it, even those who were there, which is worrying…I should add that I myself was there, having been born in 1956; by the way, those “dead bodies unburied” did exist briefly (for a few days) in the winter of 1978-79, but only in two or three small areas of Liverpool and Manchester. Less noxious rubbish did pile up, but not for very long and not everywhere.

This fake history, that the 1970s were a decade of “socialist” chaos and dislocation, is quite entrenched now. This canard has wings! The various “Conservative” newspapers in the UK repeat it as an article of faith.

Other Fake Memories

No, I am not going to blog, here anyway, about the “holocaust” scammers and delusionals. I want to focus on a few other things. One persistent idea (which I have even seen said and written by journalists and TV talking heads older than me) is that Britain had no decent food until about 20 years ago! It’s just nonsense! Another is that life was harder for people in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s than it now is. More nonsense. In, say, the 1970s, people mostly had secure jobs, which paid enough to live on; there were no such things as foodbanks; social security was far better overall, the disabled and unemployed were not bullied by DWP jobsworths; the mass immigration which is making the UK (especially parts of England) into a human zoo had not really begun to snowball; workers had fixed hours, which included decent lunch breaks of 1 hour (often interpreted generously); there was no such thing (for most employees) as being on call after hours, in the evenings or on weekends and holidays. In addition, it was far easier (for anyone qualified) to access higher education.

Conclusion

There is a wave of unreality around. I have a –perhaps idiosyncratic– theory that the various kinds of lies or lying fake “facts” that people are often now expected to believe (“holocaust” fakery, the idea that races and peoples are all somehow “equal”, the idea that National Socialism was “evil” etc) have affected the general sense of truth in society, so that many cannot detect lies, and indeed often lie to themselves as well as others about recent history and even about their own experiences.

Notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/16/newsid_2757000/2757099.stm

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

 

Conservative Friends of Israel, ethnostate, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, London Forum, Reminiscences and Musings, Russia and Russian relations, Uncategorized

Reply to David Dimbleby

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I have just now watched a BBC TV show, Putin’s Russia with David Dimbleby. In the programme, Dimbleby goes around Moscow interviewing a variety of people and asking their opinion of V.V. Putin. He started off by interviewing a lady who has had, I think, 10 children, thus ensuring her a medal, significant State financial benefits and a title which is different from but in essence the same as the old Stalin-era one, Mother Heroine of the Soviet Union. Fairly predictable opening gambit.

Dimbleby interviewed a number of dissidents: Yevgenia Albats, a fairly obvious Jewess and anti-Putin journalist; then another woman, who was arrested for 5 minutes, then released without charge, for going to the Duma (Parliament) with a satirical cardboard cutout of a pro-Putin politician accused informally of sexual offences. Hardly Stalinist repression: the same could happen in the UK. Finally, he interviewed an anti-Putin think-tank personage, who says that, while there probably was government interference in the recent Russian Presidential election, Putin would have won anyway. The dissident political figurehead Navalny was mentioned by Dimbleby. Navalny’s poll ratings have usually been well below 20% and his electoral showing as Presidential candidate was about 1%.

On the pro-Putin side, Dimbleby interviewed a smoothly duplicitous Russian Orthodox prelate who would not have been out of place in the Roman Catholic Curia c.1600. It should come as no surprise that the Russian Orthodox Church supports the Russian state. After all, the slogan of late-Tsarist official Pobedonostsev was Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality [Православие, самодержавие, народность]. The Russian Orthodox Church Church (that is, the small part not repressed during the Jewish-dominated years of the Revolution, Civil War, 1920s New Economic Policy and 1930s Stalinism) supported Stalin –or pretended to– during the 1940s, though ignorant peasant Khrushchev again repressed the Church during the late 1950s, the “Thaw”, a period otherwise thought of as “liberal”.

Dimbleby also visited a class of children being taught weapons handling and maintenance, mixed with some patriotism and religion, an ironic twist on non-urban America. Dimbleby went on to talk with others: one ultra-nationalist whose interview was short and not-so-sweet; a group of young people, all Putin supporters. However, his most telling interview was with an Englishman working for RT, who was comfortable with his job and role.

It was pretty irritating to see Dimbleby, mouthpiece of the BBC, which is itself a mouthpiece for the UK Government and (like the UK government) riddled with Jew-Zionists, criticize lack of journalistic and individual liberty in Russia. He himself was party to the planned ambush of (arguably, naive) Nick Griffin on BBC TV Question Time, which (again, arguably) finished off the BNP, until then on a roll. Dimbleby was scathing about what happens in Russia to those who say the “wrong” things. Perhaps he missed the several recent criminal trials in the UK of anti-Zionist dissidents such as Jez Turner of The London Forum (sentenced to 1 year’s imprisonment for making a speech partly about Jews), or Alison Chabloz, convicted of singing satirical songs about the “holocaust” scam and the Jewish fraudsters who make money out of it. Ironically, Alison Chabloz is in court in London tomorrow, for sentence. The last two people named have also had their Youtube channels taken down. Alison Chabloz has also (like me) been expelled from Twitter. “Long live freedom”…

Anyone who was in Russia or the Russophone area in the 1990s (I was: a week in Moscow in 1993, a year in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 1996-97) knows that, at that time, Russia was a wreck of a state, looted by (mainly) Jews. People starved by the million, especially the elderly. Yeltsin was a corrupt puppet. Putin may not be the perfect philosopher-king, and he does have both personal and ideological flaws, but his rule was and still is necessary.

Postscript

Dimbleby also criticized the lack of an independent judiciary in Russia. I was unable to compare that to the English system, in particular to the Alison Chabloz case, in which the defendant, a satirical singer-songwriter persecuted by the Jewish-Zionist lobby, was in court for –in effect– singing songs, because the matter was still before the court. Now that she has been sentenced, I can mention the fact that, at first, she was before the Chief Magistrate for London, one Emma Arbuthnot. The latter is married to a Conservative Party MP who, like 80% of such, is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel; the couple have been on all-expenses-paid trips to Israel. Alison Chabloz, via her lawyers, objected to Mrs Arbuthnot presiding, and she recused herself (stepped down from the case). Arguably better than Russia, but not much.

Alt-Right, elections, immigration, Party Politics, society, The Great Replacement, The Great Reset, the Great Reset, Uncategorized, white flight

Society, Politics and the Mental Landscape

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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.

Alison Chabloz, Alt-Right, animal welfare, David Icke, Defence, free speech, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, immigration, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, Nick Griffin, Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, society, The Great Replacement, Tommy Robinson, Uncategorized

One Man’s “Extremism” is Another Man’s Struggle for Liberty and Justice

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I had occasion to visit a small NHS facility recently. It was a lovely, quiet unit, with only about a dozen or so patients, those patients living, prior to discharge, in several large “bays” and a few individual rooms. The unit was surrounded by flower gardens with small flowering trees and a few classical statues. Beyond that (out of sight) was a very small town (little more than a village) and the countryside of Southern England. If you have to go to a hospital, you could do worse. So why am I blogging about this?

While waiting to go in to see the patient in question, I perused the literature rack by the nursing station. One leaflet caught my eye. I have it before me as I write. Under the NHS logo and the name of the NHS foundation trust running the unit at the strategic level, the title:

PREVENT

[the words contained within a shield device; with two hands –dark blue and light blue (the old KGB colour..ironic) and perhaps (?) representing white and non-white– clasped]. The leaflet was then sub-headed:

Preventing vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorism

Inside the leaflet:

What is Prevent? Prevent is part of the government’s counter terrorism strategy; aiming to prevent people of all ages from being radicalised and drawn into terrorism.

The leaflet continues:

What kind of extremism does Prevent aim to deal with? It aims to deal with all forms of extremism; for example far right extremism, animal rights extremism and religious extremism.

So we see that “terrorism” has already been conflated with or replaced by “extremism”, an even less easily-defined idea. Moreover, we see that Islamist terrorism, the only kind actually posing even a slight threat to public order in the UK, is not mentioned by name (no doubt that would be called “Islamophobic”…) and only coyly implied, sub nom “religious extremism”. No doubt the Jewish Zionist fanatics, who go in their hundreds to be trained by the Israelis in Israel, are not considered “extremists”, “terrorists” etc. No, they just go to an alien society to be trained in the use of weapons and in the techniques of killing with bare hands (oh, and of course, how to “bring down” British MPs thought not to be pro-Israel or pro-Jew…).

Who are these “extremists” in pole position in the Prevent leaflet? Ah, yes, the “far right” (also left undefined, presumably social nationalists, those who hate mass immigration and the trashing of the UK by certain groups and types) as well as those who hate the cruelties inflicted on the animal kingdom by some humans and by human society; but let us now return to the leaflet:

What are some of the possible signs of radicalisation?

  • you may notice changes in the person’s behaviour or mood;
  • the person’s appearance may change and they may spend excess [sic] time on the internet;
  • the person may start to express extreme political or radical views;
  • the person may become withdrawn or have a change in their circle of friends.

So now we have travelled from “terrorism” and even “extremism” to people who have or may have merely “radical” points of view about, say, the disastrous effect that mass immigration has had on the UK, or about the exploitation and cultural contamination carried out by Jew-Zionists, or even about animal welfare.

The leaflet then asks what the reader might do should he or she actually suspect that another person has changed lifestyle or perhaps have acquired “radical” views:

  • NOTICE: Be aware of an individual’s vulnerability to radicalisation, any change in behaviour or ideology. An ideology is a set of beliefs an individual may have. [this section of the leaflet also contains the iconic alien-looking “all-seeing eye” motif…]
  • CHECK: If possible and appropriate check out any concerns with the individual…your line manager and the [NHS] safeguarding team. [this section of the leaflet contains a motif of a magnifying glass with a little humanoid figure inside the lens…]
  • SHARE: You need to share your concerns with the [NHS] safeguarding team. They can advise you on any relevant partner agencies who will need to be contacted. [note “will need to be contacted” not “may need”…presumably police, MI5 etc].

The leaflet then goes on to list telephone numbers and internet contact details, before ending with these dystopian remarks, which would not have been out of place in an early 1970s BBC Play For Today, or perhaps George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four:

What happens to my referral? [“my referral”, note, not “my denunciation”, “my informing”, my accusation” etc…]. Prevent referrals are shared with the MASH (multi-agency safeguarding hub) or [name of city] SPA (single point of access) depending on where the individual lives. Referrals are then screened for acceptance in to the channel process.

What is channel?

Channel is a multi-agency process whereby professionals and partner agencies can share resources and expertise. The aim of channel is to work with the individual to reduce risk. If your referral is accepted into the channel process you may also be asked to attend the channel meetings to share relevant information as part of effective multi-agency working.

I have sometimes been accused of being, inter alia, a “grammar Nazi”, and am, of course, (also) appalled by the poor English displayed in the leaflet. I have no idea by whom the leaflet was written. Perhaps the Home Office and MI5 are now less likely to recruit graduates from Oxford or Cambridge, or perhaps the near-illiteracy shown is just a function of the UK’s sliding educational standards. The main impression given, though, is that of a police state operation which would be recognizable to an official of Stalin’s Russia or any similar society. The saving grace is probably that it is not (though I am guessing) very efficient.

Indeed, shorn of the millennial “nudge”-government, fake “sharing caring” and armchair psychology nonsense, the leaflet could be seen simply as a method of recruiting agents…

Finally, think about where this leaflet was found– not in a prison, a government office, nor even in a university library, but in a normal NHS clinical environment in the heart of the South of England…

Notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Addendum, 25 January 2019

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/humberside-police-transgender-twitter-thinking-2466084

Addendum, 4 February 2019

http://www.salisburyreview.com/articles/going-to-prison-for-having-the-wrong-thoughts/

scan25

Update, 2 September 2019

So there we are: once the chistka starts, it takes on a life of its own…

Party Politics, Uncategorized

What Italy is now telling us

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Italy has just held its 18th national election since the present republic was established in 1948. The results have appalled the EU/ZOG/NWO System but have given hope to many both inside and outside Italy.

The Results

The coalition headed by Lega [“The League”, formerly The Northern League], anti-EU, anti-Euro currency, anti-mass immigration, got 37% of the popular vote and (under Italy’s partly-proportional, partly-First Past The Post electoral system) 265 seats in the Chamber of Deputies). 265 seats out of 630. Lega got a plurality (125) of the coalition’s seats, most of the rest being taken by Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.

The Five Star Movement, with less direct but not dissimilar policies (anti-EU, Eurosceptic, broadly anti-mass immigration etc), got 227 seats on a popular vote of just under 33%.

Most of the rest of the 630 seats (122) were taken by the “Centre-Left Coalition”, and most of those seats (112) were taken by the Partito Democratico [“Democratic Party”], i.e. System social-democrats.

Thus we see that the insurgent parties, with an anti-EU, anti-mass immigration outlook, have 492 seats out of 630. Similar results were recorded in the Senate. In terms of popular vote, the winners got about 70% of votes cast. By any standards, a landslide, albeit for a general outlook rather than for one party or one coalition of parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_general_election,_2018

The Reaction of the System

The Italian President, unwilling to approve an anti-Euro politician as Finance Minister, now appoints someone who is not even a politician to be Prime Minister until fresh elections are called next year! The person “appointed” is a former IMF economist, i.e. another NWO/ZOG EU drone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44280046

The reaction of the leader of the Five Star Movement:

“Why don’t we just say that in this country it’s pointless that we vote, as the ratings agencies, financial lobbies decide the governments?”…

Italy is the fourth-biggest state in the EU, both in terms of population and economy. The EU would fall to pieces without it, especially if the UK really leaves, at present still an open question.

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Here we see, again, the conspiratorial basis and mechanism of the EU, below all the “human rights” stuff, below all the financial subsidy sleight-of-hand. Wrong vote? Hold another one and another, until the “right” result is obtained. Wrong views? “Holocaust” “denial” laws backed up by the “European Arrest Warrant” system will correct that outburst of free expression…

Relevance to the UK

In the UK, we see that the clear though not huge majority to leave the EU is being undermined heavily now. The army of self-congratulatory “Remain” whiners on Twitter etc are backed by secret monies on a vast scale, by UK civil servants unwilling to do their jobs, by System MPs burrowing away to make Brexit effective in name only. The Italian situation reflects the same EU ZOG/NWO conspiracy at core; the same has happened in the past in Portugal, Ireland, Austria etc. If the “wrong” people get elected, measures are taken to get rid of them one way or another, from scandals “appearing” suddenly, to elections rigged, even to “car crash” deaths. Look at Catalonia. Another example.

Conclusion

Social-national political parties must exist (none do in the UK at present; there is no credible and effective one at least), but ordinary political activity may not be enough on its own.

Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

Social Media and Political Influence

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I was recently “suspended” (in reality, probably expelled) from Twitter. The “usual suspects” (Jew-Zionist provocateurs) were to blame, but that is another story (and the guilty will be suitably punished in due course, no doubt). This event has led me to reassess whether Twitter is even useful for someone from a political-influence standpoint.

At first, it seems to be a non-question: of course Twitter spreads influence. After all, most MPs have a Twitter account, along with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. However, those Twitter accounts (and the myriad showbusiness ones with millions of Twitter “followers”) are only followed and (sometimes) read because the people running the accounts are of note in the “real world” outside Twitter.

I acquired my Twitter account in 2010 but only started to tweet regularly in 2011 or 2012. My follower count increased steadily from zero to, at peak, just under 3,000, falling back at time of “suspension” to about 2,800. What struck me in the last months was that my follower count had plateaued, oscillating between 2,700 and 2,800. I began to suspect that my total of followers was being artificially limited. Others, with far more followers, have started to tweet, as did I until my expulsion, along the same lines. Anne Marie Waters for one.

Another Twitter tactic has been stealth censorship, sub nom “shadowbanning”, both of tweets and replies. I found (by accident) time and again, that Twitter had not notified me of replies, often supportive ones. The Jew-Zionist fix is well and truly in, and not only on Twitter; Facebook is said to be worse. When the UK Government (ZOG) talks about working with Internet platforms to reduce “extremism”, this is what they mean– censorship and banning.

One consequence of spending time tweeting is that you are not doing something offline or elsewhere online. Thus we see much tweeting, Facebook posting etc by social-nationalists, the “Alt-Right” and others, but less and less real political activity. That does affect System parties too, but less so, because they already have organizations, MPs, MEPs etc.

My conclusion from all this is that, while tweeting etc is useful in terms of raising consciousness and bridging gulfs, it cannot be a substitute for real-world political, social and military action.

Update, 4 March 2019

Twitter is censoring many others now, especially people with any real political influence. Tommy Robinson got bumped off the site. Many others have suffered the same fate. A recent example:

Alison Chabloz, Alison Chabloz, Alt-Right, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, David Icke, elections, ethnostate, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, immigration, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, London Forum, Nick Griffin, Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, safe zones, society, The Great Replacement, The Great Reset, Uncategorized

The Political Situation, Social Nationalism and the “Alt-Right”

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Preliminary

I write in a condition of profound dissatisfaction with the situation on the broadly nationalist wing of British, European and world politics. Yesterday, someone whom I have only met twice but who has made a favourable impression on me, Jez Turner [Jeremy Bedford-Turner] of the London Forum, was found guilty of incitement to racial hatred under the Public Order Act 1986 after a Crown Court trial, being then sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, meaning that he will be incarcerated for nearly 6 months, all for making a harmless speech about Jews.

Also yesterday, the latest hearing in the Alison Chabloz case took place, legal argument prior to the judgment, which is expected on 25 May.  Most reading this will know that Alison Chabloz is being prosecuted, in effect, for singing songs.

https://alisonchabloz.wordpress.com/

As with the Turner case, that of Alison Chabloz has been promoted by the malicious Jew-Zionist group calling itself the “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism” or “CAA”, which organization has previously (and unsuccessfully) tried to have others, including me (and David Icke, and Al Jazeera TV etc…) prosecuted:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/

The outcome of the Alison Chabloz trial is of huge importance not only for the future of free speech in terms of socio-political expression, but also in terms of artistic expression. A “guilty” verdict (from the single magistrate) would chill lampooning, making fun of politicians and events and, frankly, would cause the UK to become something pretty close to a police state.

Nick Griffin’s Booklet

I have no particular animus against Nick Griffin (whom I have never met). He did well, alongside Andrew Brons, to get the BNP into the position where it could get two MEPs (Griffin and Brons) elected in 2009, but in my view he underestimated the sheer dishonesty (and determination) of those who opposed him and the BNP. He also seems to have thought that soft-pedalling on the “holocaust” revisionism would mean that the Jew-Zionist element would lay off a little. That was naive, as was assuming that he was invited onto BBC Question Time just like many another guest, when the object of the exercise was to ambush him and trash him and, via him, the BNP.  Having said that, Griffin was one of the outstanding people in a party not over-endowed with the well-educated and reasonably credible.

I mention Griffin here because I was sent, yesterday, a pdf version of a booklet by him:

http://altrightnotright.com/

I found the contents disturbing and challenging. I agreed readily with some of them, indeed the majority; with others, particularly the attack on Jez Turner, I disagreed, though I concede that I am in no special position in terms of inside knowledge.

Griffin’s main arguments against many of the “alt-Right” personalities and entities struck a chord with me. I have from the start been suspicious of any and all “nationalists” who are pro-Israel, loudly “anti-Nazi” (though Griffin himself is guilty of a certain amount of that latter) or who somehow find a way of squaring the circle and reconciling being a “white nationalist” with support for Israel. This pathology is particularly seen in the USA, where it is not seen as odd to be a “nationalist”, a pro-Israel blockhead (“holocaust” belief and all…) and a kind of anti-government “rebel” all in one, mixed in with a bit of Bible study and membership of the National Rifle Association.

Griffin correctly points out the Zionist/System infiltration into nationalism in Europe too: Front National, Geert Wilders etc. In the UK, we have seen the so-called “nationalism” of UKIP and smaller offshoots, of which the one now promoted most widely is the “For Britain” party, headed by an Irish lesbian ex-secretary called Anne Marie Waters. To paraphrase-quote a general in the film Lawrence of Arabia, For Britain is a sideshow of a sideshow, a one-trick pony “party” which has no prospect of mass appeal or electoral success.

Many see the promotion of so-called “kosher nationalists” as a way of diverting the nationalist torrent. My problem with that analysis is that, so far at least, there is no nationalist torrent (in the UK). That may change, but at present the single great fact of British nationalism or, as I prefer, social nationalism, is that its support in the wider population is minimal. Again, that may change: in 1928, the NSDAP received only 2.6% of the national vote in Germany, lower than it had managed several years before; however, by 1932 that vote had become 33% and in 1933 (by which time Hitler was already Chancellor) 44%. In the UK, there have been governments –with working majorities in the House of Commons– which have been elected on less than 30% of the popular vote.

The Alt-Right

I have had no personal contact with the “Alt-Right”, unless there is included my February 2017 talk to the London Forum (which was on YouTube until that organization caved in to Jewish-Zionist pressure and removed the London Forum YouTube channel in its entirety…”long live freedom”…). I find myself in sympathy with much of what Nick Griffin says in his booklet about odd young men with odd lifestyles, swinging (if such be the bon mot) between braindead “libertarianism” and a (sort-of) white nationalism mixed with pro-Israel sympathies. These people set off alarm bells for me. I find it telling that such people are all in favour of “free speech” until it comes to those such as Jez Turner and Alison Chabloz (and me) who are hated by the Jewish Zionists. We are, at best, ignored, even when on trial or in other peril. Big alarm bells…

The Answer

The answer, for me, is straightforward in principle but complex and difficult to put into effect:

  1. A political organization must exist. Voters cannot vote for a party that does not exist. It may be that such a party faces insuperable obstacles in a rigged system, but it must exist. At present, no such party exists;
  2. The social national population must cluster in one or more “safe zone” areas of the UK. I have blogged fairly extensively about this on WordPress.

The present situation is intolerable: Jew-Zionists and “anti-fascists” (often the same) try to shut down even the limited free speech that exists now in the UK. Meanwhile, the major cities are going black-brown, with births to those populations outpacing those to the white northern Europeans. A new way forward must be found.

Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

Some Experiences I Had at the Bar (with reference to a recent book on the justice system in England)

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I see that The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken (or, as The Guardian online has it, “Brokem“) is published:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/28/secret-barrister-stories-law-review-justice-system?CMP=share_btn_tw

I have no idea who “Secret Barrister” (apparently a criminal specialist) is; in fact I block him (or her) on Twitter simply because he (or she) seems to be friendly with some Jew-Zionists and others who have proven themselves to be hostile to me. It will be recalled by some that, though I ceased Bar practice in 2008, I was nonetheless disbarred in 2016 (!), after a malicious complaint by a pack of Jews calling themselves “UK Lawyers for Israel”. The main facts can be found here:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/

I should add that I have not read the Secret Barrister book.

My Bar pupillage (on-job training year, in my case mostly in 1992), was largely criminal (the rest being mostly civil and public law). Prior to that, I had done –and was only able to do– unpaid “pro bono” work, such as helping an eccentric small publisher to win a libel perpetrated on him by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous Russian author having claimed via innuendo that the plaintiff –now “claimant”– had acted as an agent for the Soviet K.G.B. We won £10,000 and costs; if anyone is interested, the case was Flegon v. Solzhenitsyn and was reported on the front pages of the more serious newspapers.

I did no ordinary criminal cases after the mid-1990s and –as mentioned– ceased Bar practice entirely in 2008, and so have no direct knowledge of the damage done to the justice system in England and Wales by reason of post-2010 “austerity” (that being the subject matter of the Secret Barrister book), but my observations more generally may be of interest.

When I was at the “Bar School” (the Inns of Court School of Law in Gray’s Inn, at the time the only place where the academic part of Bar training, culminating in the Bar Finals Exam, could be undertaken), the legal scene in London was vibrant. The pre-recession late 1980s saw major newspapers ( Times and Independent especially) carrying dozens of display ads weekly for lawyers of all types and levels of seniority. In the private salaried realm, pay for employed lawyers went from perhaps £25,000 for very junior to £100,000 and even £200,000. I knew a Bar student who needed to get a salaried job on Call to the Bar. The Crown Prosecution Service, founded only in 1986, offered him £26,000 a year as starting salary, quite good by the standards of many non-legal employees at the time. I have no specific knowledge about the salary which his equivalent might be offered today, but I doubt that it is much more, despite inflation in the succeeding 30 years.

As to those I knew who went on into private Bar practice, I followed their progress from afar, mostly from the USA. One got into criminal chambers doing fairly heavy criminal (including white collar) crime: fraud, armed robbery, serious violence. The frauds paid especially well and my friend was, by the early 1990s, making well over £100,000 a year as junior Counsel often led by a “silk” (QC). This was, to me, a stunning amount paid to a young man in his mid twenties from a no more than average academic background (a comprehensive school in the North of England, then a law degree from a provincial university) to be making, but in his milieu it was just accepted as the norm. I mention all that because it was at that time that the newspapers started to report on the amounts some barristers were making from legal aid fees. Indeed, it was about then, or not very many years later, that a handful of barristers paid via legal aid were starting to break through the million-pounds-a-year barrier.

As to others I knew, they were doing well too: an appearance in the Mags (magistrates’ court) might only pay a couple of hundred pounds, but that has to be set against the fact that many “ordinary people” were paid that much, or less, for a week of work, as opposed to what might well be, in terms of time in court (leaving aside preparation, waiting, travel) only half an hour or less in some small magistrates’ cases. I joined the throng in 1993 and, though scarcely in the stellar league (much at the Bar depends on the quality of the chambers you are in; chambers supply almost all of your work), made a reasonable living, anyway. I do recall one brief I had, an “old-style” committal for trial in a modestly-large multi-handed (7 or 8 defendants) cheque fraud case, at City of London Mags. It went on for a few days and I remember even now that my fee for that was £5,000, which for me at the time was a windfall very gratefully received (it could not happen now and of course I recall it mainly because of its rarity. I did not get the expected £20,000-£40,000 Old Bailey trial, because the Nigerian solicitor gave “my” trial to a recently-Called young Nigerian woman barrister who just happened to be a daughter of his friend…but that’s another story).

Scroll on a decade or so to the years before the Conservative Party victory of 2010. I had made my last appearance in court in late 2007 and since my return to the practising Bar in 2002 had done only privately-paid civil work, no criminal (except for the odd regulatory violation committed by large companies); in fact, before mid-2002, I had also spent years overseas in various parts of the world, from the Caribbean to Kazakhstan. During that time, legally-aided Bar fees in England had generally not kept pace with inflation. For example, back in about 1993 I had appeared on a Mention at a Crown Court, this being more or less what it sounds like: the matter (an upcoming trial) is listed for Mention, the judge examines any issues arising and makes any directions necessary, then it finishes, about 5 minutes or ten minutes after it started. A silly thing and it paid £46. I heard some time ago that, 25 years later, the fee is still less than £50! It is said that the same is true of many fees for both criminal and family work that is legally-aided.

Apparently, somewhere around 258 courts have actually closed in the past 8 years. This means that parties often have to trek quite far to their cases. Some people are poor, cannot afford fares and may not have a car. Unjust in itself.

It was in the fake “austerity” atmosphere after 2010 (which in fact started before 2010, under the equally “ZOG” Gordon Brown government) that the Jew-Zionist “Conservative” MP Jonathan Djanogly commented, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary (a junior government post for an MP), that the UK justice system was “the most generous in the world” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Djanoglyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Djanogly]. This laid the ground for the Ministry of Justice becoming a prime target for “austerity” cuts. Djanogly himself left government in 2012 and his political career seems to have stalled, probably permanently.

I want to be clear. I have little sympathy for the Bar, meaning barristers, as such (and less for solicitors). I think that those who made good and often very good livings out of legally-aided work (criminal, family and other) were lucky when compared to many people in the UK who work at hard, boring, maybe dirty jobs, often for a pittance. Many at the Bar still are fortunate. Having said that, any decent public service or arm needs to be properly funded, whether it be the Army, Navy, Air Force, SIS, NHS or Ministry of Justice. There are arguments to be had about some aspects of MoJ funding, as about priorities too, but as the book in question seems to be saying (from reviews seen), the justice system (and that includes prisons, probation, forensic science etc, as well as courts and legal services) is now under very serious strain.

July 2018

Since I wrote the above, The Guardian amended its article and, inter alia, cured its spelling error.

Proposals for a new society…