Afternoon music
Tweets seen
What I know about alpacas would probably fill only a very small postcard. I was surprised to read that they can eat fir or pine trees and the like. According to Wikipedia, their usual diet is different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpaca#Diet.
You still see tweets etc demanding that “the authorities” or “the Government” should “do something”. Such tweets (etc) miss the point. The “authorities”, “Government”, “Opposition”, mainstream media drones and scribblers, and the craven legal and judicial system, are those, or some of those, responsible, pushing mass immigration, pushing the lie that it is a good thing, and pushing the multikulti society which is in the process of destroying what is left of our own society.
Lost wars are never popular and, while the Israeli war machine is slowly grinding the life out of Gaza, there is no easy victory for the (Israeli) Jews in that theatre, and casualties are mounting (though a small fraction of those suffered by both Gazan combatants and non-combatants).
Meanwhile, it seems to me that the strategic position of Israel has never been so precarious, even in the 1950s. Hezbollah threatens the northern border, Iran is developing longer-range missiles, and the Israeli economy is battered by the Gaza conflict, the evacuation of the northern border areas, by the situation in the Red Sea, and by a worldwide consumer boycott. Also, Israeli society itself seems fragmented, disunited.
To my mind, and for the first time in my lifetime [b. 1956] one can see a possibility, even a probability, that the State of Israel may not survive for very long into the future. Ironically, the nuclear and other advanced weapons of Israel may prove to be irrelevant, in that what seems most likely is a mass “invasion” or insurrection by lightly-armed militants (as in the recent Hamas incursions into southern Israel). Israel cannot use its most powerful weapons on its own territory.
A word about junior doctors striking
I have little time for the selfish yet virtue-signalling junior doctors. Many of them are useless anyway, and now we see that, when push comes to shove, they are willing to abandon their patients in order to demand better pay.
Yes, there remains a “skeleton service”, but that is a conscience-salve equivalent to the blank round given secretly to a randomly-selected member of a firing squad.
What about that pay? In the first year of work, they get a basic salary around £33,000, but that can greatly increase for overtime work of various kinds. Many are making over £45,000.
Admittedly, £33,000 is no fortune, but that is, after all, for persons recently-qualified. There are huge numbers of people in the UK making less, even after 20 or 30 years of work, and that is even disregarding the unemployed, sick, disabled, pensioners etc.
A second year doctor in a hospital gets £37,000+ (up to about £50,000).
Salaried GPs get between £70,000 and £105,000. Partner-GPs get far more.
Hospital doctors get increments annually; a complicated series of payments for various training programmes and placements raises the salary of many far beyond the minima.
NHS consultants start (in their first year of consultancy) on basic pay of just under £100,000, and make far more with seniority etc.
I say nothing about whether doctors (at any level) “should” get more pay, simply that it is disgusting that the junior ones seem willing to abandon sick and helpless people, often very vulnerable people, often people in pain (and in need of strong painkillers which can only be prescribed by doctors, meaning the “men —and women— in white coats”).
If junior doctors and, beyond that, what is so often —and cringingly— called “our NHS” callously abandon the British people, it may be that the British people will eventually abandon the doctors and demand a health service that works for its patients and not mainly for the benefit of those that work in it.
More tweets
The Jews cannot resist clowning, even while they are destroying the homes, health, and lives of two million people.
Not only in Israel/Palestine. In Ukraine, Zelensky was a cheap comedian before (?) he became President; and then look at (part-Jew) “Boris” Johnson.
“The land of freedom”…
No comment…
Actually, I do have one observation to make, which is that, obviously, in this conflict, truth has been the first casualty, but that, after truth, the next casualty has been the supposedly “elite” reputation of the Israeli Army.
I see that opinion polls are now indicating that Trump is gaining ground among the “young”, Hispanic, and black voters. That could be a gamechanger, if Trump can survive to be voted in and his second term inaugurated.
“Double and triple the guard...”, perhaps.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 