Tag Archives: Bootstrap Cook

Diary Blog, 16 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/twins-separated-birth-find-each-28960150?int_source=nba.

Amazing story.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11638389/Half-universities-peddle-woke-agenda-students.html.

UK universities need a chistka (purge).

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/shepherds-bush-pub-assault-james-stephenson-leg-broken-b1052834.html

Another example of how public services in the UK just do not work any more. The victim of a bad assault, a woman, had to lie under blankets outside a pub for 2 hours, waiting for an ambulance that never turned up. Eventually, she had to take an Uber minicab to hospital.

Adding insult to injury, the police, until pressed, did not bother to gather easily-available cctv evidence.

Finally, the defendant (finally caught after the police had been pressured to actually do their job) was let off with a suspended sentence (albeit with a stiff financial penalty by way of compensation for the victim).

There was reasonable mitigation, yes, but the crime was both violent and unpleasant in itself and, also, the victim was left with continuing —and quite possibly permanent— disabilities and pain caused directly or proximately by the actions of the defendant.

If this continues, UK society will become a jungle.

Jack Monroe

Those who follow the “Jack Monroe” saga have noticed that she never, or at least rarely, admits to having bought expensive items for herself out of the monies she has available to her from several sources; she always either “finds” them, remarkably, or buys them for a song (for a tenth or less of the normal price), or is “given” them by friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, or strangers, or has acquired them via “exchange” for unspecified “services“.

As for her having been “in full time work for the best part of 2 decades“, that seems unlikely, but is a question of definition.

“Two decades” brings us back to early 2003. At that time, “Jack Monroe was 14 years old. She left school at 16 (~2005), working in a chip shop and a Starbucks before joining the fire brigade in Essex in 2007 as a call handler. She left in 2011, and was thereafter, for ~18 months, “on the dole”.

“Jack Monroe” worked for her local newspaper in 2012-2013, and also blogged, after which she got a book deal worth, I read, £25,000, with Penguin: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe.

So there we have 7-8 years of intermittent paid work, not quite the 10+ years she claims.

Since 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been (it seems) mostly or completely self-employed, as scribbler, blogger, TV talking head etc. To what extent that counts as “full-time work” is an open question; if yes, then the total is about 17 years; if not, about 7 or so, as said.

As previously noted, Jack Monroe both claims poverty, and so asks for the public to send her money, but also says sometimes that she was in poverty (while on State benefits for 1-2 years), but not now.

Since about 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been in receipt of monies from a number of sources: TV and radio appearances, Press interviews, about £100,000 royalties from her several books (most still in print, I think), deals with ASDA and other supermarkets, and substantial donations (eg from 634 —at time of writing— very misguided people sending her £3.50-£44 each, monthly, via Patreon),

It is claimed by some on Twitter that “Jack Monroe” is “downsizing” (as she puts it) not because she cannot afford the c.£4,000 a month rent and other expenses of her present home but because she is buying a new but possibly smaller home; some say paying the full price in cash. I have no idea whether that be so.

At what point do the 634 mugs still subsidizing her via Patreon start to think why they are still funnelling cash to this very unreliable “grifter” and fantasist, who has recently been in the Guardian laughing about how, when drunk or drugged, she would buy four large pieces of furniture in a few days “for a laugh” or some such.

Is all that is required, for “Jack Monroe” to receive donations from naive mugs, for her to snarl occasionally on Twitter about “cost of living” or “wicked Tories“? Even if they are (and no argument from me on that), how does that either seriously oppose “Conservative” policies or “help the poor“?

“Jack Monroe” has claimed to have been working on a measure of how “the poor” are disproportionately affected by inflation, something she calls (from one of the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett) the “Vimes Boots Index“, but it seems that that might be just another fantasy; in short, another lie.

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

Other tweets seen

A truth unacknowledged by those born with a silver spoon…

(((Simon Harris))) has to live, after all (I suppose) (whoever he is).

May be useful to people; I do not know.

An ethnic minority carpetbagger in Government will be protected, as far as possible. Others, English, less connected, poorer, would face sterner measures. I recall a colleague at the Bar, in 2007, telling me about a Devonian fishing captain that he had defended, and who (along with his few crew) had decided to evade tax on profits of fish caught. The man was apparently a heroin addict. They all pleaded guilty, the crew got off with suspended sentences, but the captain received a sentence of, if I recall aright, two years’ imprisonment. The amount was tens of thousands (perhaps about £20,000), not the millions of the Zahawi case.

Historical revisionism

Ostalgie-musik

[Grenzpolizei DDR (East German border guards). Maybe we in the UK need something similar in order to stem the migration-invasion]

It often seems that the UK now has effectively no border security. Untermenschen from various countries invade our territory without difficulty, and when “intercepted” (ferried to the UK, or met at the beach), taken to a 3* or 4* hotel, thenceforth battening off the British people for the rest of their lives.

The very best that can be expected of 99% of the migrant-invaders is that they will be totally useless; more likely, most of them are criminal and even murderous.

Late tweets seen

No Western news agencies or TV stations seem interested in finding out how the Kiev regime is treating captured Russian soldiers.

Late music

Diary Blog, 15 January 2023, with some childhood memories

Afternoon music

[Chopin memorial, Lazienki Park, Warsaw, last seen by me in the summer of 1988]

On this day a year ago

Peter Hitchens

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11635997/PETER-HITCHENS-Yes-Drake-did-wicked-things.html

Jack Monroe

It seems to me that the msm, and its “celebrity” endorsers such as Nigella Lawson, have already moved on from “Jack Monroe” but that, at the same time, a hard-core of loony “LGBTQXYZ” types, would-be “socially-progressive” wishful thinkers, naive mugs and/or “fans”, mostly “of a certain age” will continue to tweet in support of her, and that quite a few “mugs” will continue to send her money via Patreon. After all, no less than 634 utter mugs are (as of today) still signed up to send her between £3.50 and £44 each month, despite the disclosures on Twitter, Tattle, and in the msm.

I may be wrong, but I have wondered whether “Anthea Rogers” is in fact “Jack Monroe” herself. Maybe, maybe not.

Once again, a tweeter alleges (by innuendo) that “Jack Monroe” is or was a cocaine abuser. I should not be at all surprised, for several reasons.

Other tweets seen

Import corrupt non-whites to the UK, allow them to become businessmen, MPs, government ministers, and guess what happens? They import, with their selves, their behavioural tendencies.

More “trans” nonsense. Wants to be a Member of Parliament. Impossible? Who knows, now that Eddie Izzard is seeking selection.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.

Harsher than would be my judgment, but they have a point— it shows weakness. In any case, though he often —not always— writes sensibly, Hitchens is “conservative”, perhaps, but not “national” or nationalist: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/

Only social nationalism can save Europe now.

She knows, instinctively.

When I was a child of just 12 (late 1968), higher forces impinging on my consciousness probably saved my life.

It happened like this: my family lived at the time on the Cremorne/Mosman border in Sydney, Australia. We decided to go on holiday to Queensland by car, a long journey even now, but longer then, when there were no motorways, only a seemingly endless highway with one lane on each side. No particular destination, but in the end, we washed up in Bundaberg, after 800 miles of motoring in the family Ford Falcon.

[1960s Ford Falcon, Australian version; my family’s one was white, though]

The 2-3 day trip had not been without incident or interest. As said, no motorways or dual-carriageways in Australia then, once outside Sydney. The highway took us north, past small encampments of Aboriginals in Northern New South Wales, and also past the banana groves of the region.

The traffic was light, at times very light. At one point, our car was told by police to drive quickly through a limited area of bushfire on both sides of the highway.

We overnighted at a motel at Coffs Harbour [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffs_Harbour], then a very sleepy town which is far busier today. Over the border, we passed through the gaudy oceanside town of Surfers’ Paradise, mostly single storey then, but which decades later developed into what is now the Gold Coast [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast,_Queensland].

[Gold Coast highway, c.1965, about three years before I saw it]

The South Coast region was a very popular holiday destination for servicemen returning from World War II. However, inflated prices for real estate and other goods and services led to the nickname of “Gold Coast” from 1950. By the 1960s the Gold Coast’s infrastructure had grown considerably, and the local building industry was able to support the development of high-rise holiday apartments and hotels (the first of which, Kinkabool, was completed in 1959). Surfers Paradise had firmly established itself as the leading destination and the introduction of bikini-clad meter maids in 1965 to feed parking meters by the beach to prevent holidaymakers from getting parking fines was a particularly popular innovation.”

[Queensland State archives]

In fact, I never heard that region called “Gold Coast” then, but only “Surfers’ Paradise” or simply “Surfers’“.

Now, a large city (600,000 pop.) exists there:

[the Gold Coast as it is today]
[Gold Coast panorama, 2015]

We travelled on through long stretches of sugar cane.

The Millard family holiday in fact nearly ended disastrously when, just after the swift near-tropical darkness had fallen, a slow-moving freight train, carrying sugar cane through the night, just missed the car as it crossed the track. The level crossing had neither lights nor barrier, and not even a warning sign.

I say “near-tropical” because this was about 200 miles south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

My family decided, the next day, to go to a camping area by a beach in the then undeveloped Bargarah area, about 8 miles from Bundaberg, Bundaberg being now, in 2023, a much more sizeable and populated place but then, in 1968, known only for sugar, rum, and Bert Hinkler, an aviation pioneer whose statue stood prominently in or near the quiet town centre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Hinkler; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundaberg; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bargara,_Queensland.

[central Bundaberg as it now is; the population is now 70,000]

I wandered around under the coconut palms, having a near-miss when a heavy coconut in its fleshy surround crashed down, missing me by inches. A quiet beach on the Coral Sea, with hardly anyone there except a handful of families in tents and, nearby, a small cafe or snack joint of some kind, right by the beach.

The next morning, I felt unwell, and, oddly, told my parents, really insistently (I remember that), that I needed to go to hospital. What prompted that request I have no idea. Guardian angel? Instinct? The pain was (if I recall) not too bad, just a dull ache most of the time.

Anyway, after initial thoughts from my parents that I just needed rest in the heat of the Queensland summer, my mother reluctantly drove me to Bundaberg, where it was soon established at the General Hospital that I needed an emergency appendectomy. Apparently, had the appendix not been extracted, I might well have died.

I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks (that was more common back then), and was then flown back, with my younger brother, to Sydney via Brisbane (where we transferred to a large Boeing jet).

At that time, Bundaberg’s airfield had only a kind of hut as the “terminal”; and I was one of only a very few passengers on the propeller-driven plane, a Fokker Friendship with about a dozen or so people aboard (it had come from other coastal towns first).

My parents and youngest brother drove back to Sydney later; they probably recalled the holiday very differently to me.

[Bundaberg Airport today. It was redeveloped in 1986, and is now a far cry from the short strip and “terminal” hut of 1968, outside which was a flagpole, its flag lifeless in the near-tropical heat]

Anyway, the incident has always stuck in my mind as exemplifying how the overmind, or “higher forces” (?), can sometimes save people from injury or death.

I have had other such, though non-medical, “saving graces”, including one in Ireland in 1979.

More tweets seen

He is right. “We are where we are”, though…

I heard on the radio yesterday that the UK is getting even deeper into the Ukrainian war by sending the Zelensky regime 12 (it now seems 14) Challenger 2 tanks. Old but certainly serviceable. This gets close to being actually at war with Russia. Madness. I may not much like London and some of the areas around it, but I still would prefer them not to be destroyed by a nuclear attack…

[Challenger 2 main battle tank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2]

The reaction of the Zelensky regime is that it wants 300 tanks! Their ghetto negotiating style would be funny were it less offensive.

Where would the Kiev regime be without Western aid constantly stoking the war? In Lvov, if not Warsaw, probably. This was a failed state even before the war. Now it may have arms and ammunition funnelled to it by the Western powers, but 20% of the population is outside Ukraine now; the country is largely without electrical power; it has few gas supplies; it cannot manufacture; it cannot export much of its continuing agricultural production.

The only answer (saving Russian occupation of Kiev, Odessa and the territories east of the Dnieper) is for there to be a ceasefire on both sides, pending negotiation of at least an armistice and a freezing of the actual hostilities on both sides.

Incidentally, the largest tank battle of WW2 (and in history generally), Kursk, involved a total of over 8,000 tanks, incredibly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk.

Late music

Diary Blog, 14 January 2023

Afternoon music

[The Bund, Shanghai, 1930s]

On this day a year ago

Saturday quiz

Well, this week a modest 6/10. Still enough, however, to beat political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10.

I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, 8, and 10. I should have known question no. 4 too, having been there as a child and I think maybe even having been on that canal.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/10/donkeys-neglected-animal-deserve-their-moment.

Donkeys are beautiful, in their own way. Friendly and humble creatures. Probably my favourite animals, after cats.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/13/andrew-brigden-andrew-tate-online-safety-bill.

Pseudo-liberal scribbler wants less freedom of expression online. Was there ever an era in which so many self-describing “journalists”, “creatives” and, indeed, “radicals”, wanted not more free speech but less?

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

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/13/paul-johnson-obituary.

Sic transit gloria mundi… Paul Johnson, almost if not actually obscure to the public of 2023, was a major political, or socio-political, voice in the 1980s, 1970s, and indeed 1960s. I can recall seeing him on TV in the early 1970s, sternly extolling the potential virtue of having a State-controlled or subsidized newspaper which would be such a newspaper of record that it would only print the unvarnished truth of what had happened in the world. As people say, “good luck with that“… That TV chat was, of course, some years before Johnson turned away from socialism, and embraced Thatcherism.

I heard little of Paul Johnson in the 1990s, and his star faded (in the public eye) to the extent that I was actually surprised, some years ago, to discover that he was still alive.

The type of person who thinks his own views terribly important, to the extent that at least some others in the msm or System politics also think him important for a while, more important than he really is. Still, a prolific author, and certainly someone who influenced the uplands of British thought, though not the views of the man-in-the-street, for several decades.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Johnson_(writer).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11633669/Former-Labour-MP-Simon-Danczuk-frolics-hotel-swimming-pool-28-year-old-Rwandan-fiancee.html.

It could be said that the meaning of the words “Simon Danczuk” is “disgraceful“.

Rassenschande

How much did the freeloading bastard get from the Daily Mail? He was always in the pocket of the Jewish lobby, so I expect that he gets a few crumbs thrown to him.

Incidentally, the bastard is ten years younger than me but looks ten years older. His life and lifestyle have caught up with him.

At least his godawful ex-wife, Karen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Danczuk, is now forced to read about him while sitting on the dole in depressing Manchester. Thank God she failed to follow Danczuk into the Westminster monkeyhouse (which seemed quite likely at one point).

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Danczuk#Parliamentary_career

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632497/Shocking-moment-Bandidos-biker-gang-members-killed-motorcyclist-wearing-rival-colours.html#comments.

On the facts, certainly murder, not manslaughter. The jury must have been idiots. How was that not “intending to kill or to cause really serious injury [the victim then dying as a result]”?

The sentences were also far too lenient.

Tweets seen

Incidentally, I was just watching a 1970s episode of Crown Court, the facts of the case revolving around an overworked and slightly disorganized Accident and Emergency department of an NHS hospital. Plus ca change?

Very true, but of course the hell of it is that Jewish-lobby puppet Starmer’s fake “Labour” will be no better, and quite possibly worse.

Never give “scientists”, academics, or bureaucrats too much influence or power.

I blogged recently about how I refused the “vaccines” for “Covid”, and —despite a now rather unhealthy and sedentary overall lifestyle— am still fine, whereas my two brothers in the UK and Australia, lifelong sports and golf players, were both “vaccinated” and “boosted”, and both (in the same week last year) had to be taken as emergency cases to hospital, having had heart attacks (btw, both now OK after having had heart by-pass operations).

Co-incidence? Karma? Or what? I know what I think.

More music

More tweets

“The Harry Formerly Known as Prince” and “Meghan Mulatta”. What a bad joke it all is.

Paid for by her mug supporters.

Ha ha!

As yet, and as far as I know, the Jew-Zionist self-publicizer and resident of Israel, Mark Lewis, who was her solicitor on a previous occasion years ago, has not come out of his kennel in recent months to defend the “Bootstrap Cook”.

“Jack Monroe” was threatening to sue Con Party MP, Lee Anderson, in May 2022, and all her friends in the newspapers were writing about it, but since then it has transpired that not only has she not taken even the first steps to suing Anderson, but that she launched a crowdfunder in May 2022, and raised money on that basis to sue Anderson (and the commentator Martin Daubney), but has kept those monies for her own use, as far as can be seen.

The police should be investigating “Jack Monroe” on suspicion of having committed fraud.

Another idea struck me.

“Jack Monroe” lives in Essex, in the Southend area. Her father is a rentier who rents out a number of houses there. He was, I read, once a fairly high-ranking member of the fire brigade there, and also holds an MBE. He may (I do not know) be a freemason, as also are so many responsible officers of the police. Is that a factor in “Jack Monroe” not being (as it at least seems) properly investigated? Again, I cannot say, either way.

Or maybe “Jack Monroe” is just not a “celebrity” any more, and so the non-existent “Essex Police Celebrity VIP Twitter Squad” can no longer give her special attention (as “victim” of the emerging truth)? (Only taking the joke further…).

Incidentally, my own experience of the Essex Police, from six years ago almost to the day: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/ (blog post written six months later).

I, on the other hand, find it odd how so many of the remaining hardcore “Jack Monroe” supporters are zealous supporters also of the present inflated nonsense around “LGBTQXYZ”.

I still remain interested as to why there are, as it certainly seems, no young or even young-ish (say under-30, under-40) “Jack Monroe” supporters, and no ethnic minority supporters either, with the exception of a handful of Greek Cypriots I have noticed on Twitter (she herself is half-Greek Cypriot, her original name having been Melissa Hadjicostas).

I have previously suggested a couple of reasons why no ethnic minority people seem to support the “Bootstrap Cook”, one being that many of them know real poverty only too well to accept her nonsense, and the other being that few of them would look at the food of “Bootstrap Cook” with anything other than contempt.

There may be other reasons.

Unbelievably, there are, as of today, 634 utter mugs still sending between £3.50 and £44 a month each to “Jack Monroe”. No wonder she can spend money like a drunken sailor! The puzzle is why so many apparently crazed virtue-signallers want to enable it.

Those people are too kind…

Perhaps“?! Ha ha!..

Late music

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

Diary Blog, 13 January 2023

Afternoon music

[Dnieper dam after reconstruction, 1947]

On this day a year ago

“Jack Monroe”

In any case, “her lawyer” (if any) has not sent a letter (whether “strong“, not so strong, or apocalyptic and written in Hebrew on stone tablets) to Con Party MP Lee Anderson.

Another day, another “Jack Monroe” lie…

“Jack Monroe” is, or has become, a fraudster, basically (and far worse than I thought when I assessed her on the blog at the end of September 2022). Having said that, the non-practising doctor tweeting in support of her, Julia Grace Patterson, is not much better.

The 631 utter mugs still sending her between £3.50 and £44 a month via Patreon will no doubt continue to collude in their own mugging, though…

Other tweets seen

The flow of migration-invasion would be curbed if either a. the boats were destroyed in the Channel, along with the invaders; or b. the invaders simply disappeared after reaching the UK, never to be heard of again. Either of those measures would deter others from trying to invade.

A general feeling of “end of an era”, as in 1939 and 1914…

More music

More tweets

Can you imagine what the remains of our culture and civilization would look like (and will, unless we take charge soon) if only blacks and mixed-race half-castes were to exist? Think Mogadishu, Haiti, most of Africa, but on a larger urban scale. Just the remains of civilization and greatness, half-reduced to rubble, and the untermenschen crawling over the ruins.

That “Dr Freya Vass” (a teacher of dance, apparently) sounds like a complete loony, like most of the “Jack Monroe” partisans.

The whole long thread about Serebriakova is rather interesting. A feeling of Doctor Zhivago about it.

That’s Napoleon III, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann

Archetypes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes.

More seen about “Jack Monroe”

The tweet went the same way as that “Bootstrap Cook” blog post which claimed that she had been “waved through” the police cordon at Grenfell Tower in West London, and (armed with the “building plans“, no less!) more or less took over the rescue etc.

Remarkable for someone who was not, at the time employed by any fire service, or any other emergency service, and who lived about 60 miles from the fire— in Essex, where (for a year or so) she had answered the telephone at a call centre for the Essex fire brigade.

How could she have had the “building plans” for Grenfell Tower? Simply impossible.

That blog post was a remarkable exercise both in fantasy writing, and in trying to create an entirely false story. Some of her fans actually believed it, incredibly.

It emphasizes the psychological (narcissistic) need “Jack Monroe” has for placing herself centre stage. The big story of the time was the Grenfell Tower fire, but that happened 60 miles from Southend, and there was no nexus at all between it and “Jack Monroe”, so she simply invented a scenario in which she was right at the centre of events— striding purposefully through the police cordon to take charge of the emergency. Ludicrous, but some people believed it.

I agree. While one does not expect the editor of The Grocer, Best magazine, or even the Metro, to be particularly aware or intelligent, what can be the excuse of the editors of the Guardian and the Observer?

As blogged before, though, I would be surprised if the msm kept on, for very much longer, promoting the nonsense of the “Bootstrap Cook”, despite her numerous “personal connections” etc.

More tweets

Late music

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

Afternoon music

[painting by Jack Vettriano]

On this day a year ago

NHS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tweets seen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the newspapers

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

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

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

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

[Daily Mail]

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

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“Jack Monroe”

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

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

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Late tweets

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

Late music

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

Diary Blog, 11 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11620213/Accomplished-fraudster-paid-1-3m-pretending-doctor-NHS-22-years.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11620389/Moment-woman-forced-defend-kick-man-away-lunges-double-decker-bus.html

London. Zoo.

Cheerful news

Only now just realized that one smug and unpleasant individual, who used to post rather nasty tweets about me years ago, around 2013 and 2014, died a few years ago. Not quite sure how many that makes.

#TenGreenBottles.

Tweets seen

Ha ha! Now that really is funny. I think that, out of all the absurd tales made up by (mostly) Jews about the Second World War and the so-called “holocaust” farrago, that is pretty much the best yet.

Your friendly local medical centre is becoming just another “grift”, taking large amounts of money but providing little support.

It’s quite funny, in a bitter way— decades, even centuries, of Irish nationalism have come to exactly nothing, and now even the pathetic Sinn Fein/IRA rump has caved in. Ireland is ruled by globalist puppets (including a half-Indian gay doctor as “Taoiseach”), and is being flooded by blacks and browns.

Should have gone to Specsavers…

Like most System politicians, that one deserves a good kicking.

Very few of that 1M+ believe “Jack Monroe”, or give her any credence.

As a former quasi-celebrity who has had her “15 minutes of fame”, she is pretty much dead in the water, but so long as 631 utter mugs keep sending her money each and every month (between £3.50 and £44 each), she will probably not be too worried that most people have woken up to her nonsense.

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See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.

You mean the Indian money-juggler posing as Prime Minister?

I have blogged more than once about this. The “Bootstrap Cook” has not launched legal action, and will not. The money she “grifted” from mugs wanting to help her sue Con Party MP, Lee Anderson (and also “alt-lite” commentator Martin Daubney) has been kept by her and my belief (unless I see convincing evidence otherwise) is that she has stolen it.

I also believe that the police should be taking an interest in “Jack Monroe” and her whole range of activities.

Less subtle thieves than “Jack Monroe”

Look at the Tesco employee in that clip! He would not notice if a tank crashed through the wall. What a deadhead!

I wonder how long it has been since the thieves landed on the Sussex beaches in their rubber boat?

Any comment from the “refugees welcome” dimwits?

Afternoon music

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The MPs are just puppets of an international conspiracy; same with the msm. The Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan; http://adam.curry.com/art/1543753587_mkXBrvrY.html.

A typical facemask idiot.

More from the newspapers

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/two-15-year-old-thugs-28928822.

The “justice” system is routinely failing victims. This was not a mere peccadillo by silly teenagers, but a vicious and unprovoked attack.

I am generally against corporal punishment, but a good flogging would have been in order in such a case.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/harrowing-cctv-shows-accused-killer-28929885

Comment unnecessary (?)

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ex-mp-jared-omara-denies-28928813

(See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/07/24/deadhead-mps-the-jared-omara-story/).

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-tory-mp-andrew-bridgen-28926820

The System punishes anyone prominent who questions the “vaccine(s)” (or the so-called “holocaust” farrago)…

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Good grief! I actually agree with unpleasant Jew, Giles Coren, today.

Late tweets

Little Matt Hancock will be looking for a lucrative sinecure after he leaves the Commons. The Jew-Zionist lobby sorted similar positions out for, inter alia, Ruth Smeeth, Mary Creagh, Tom Watson, Michael Dugher etc, after they left politics. Hancock is “showing willing”, in other words.

“They”…(((They)))…

Late music

[Mosley, 1930s]

Diary Blog, 9 January 2023

Morning music

[Akademgorodok in winter]

On this day a year ago

The Harry Formerly Known as Prince

Caught a few minutes of the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme. Some talk about “Harry” and Meghan Mulatta etc. The programme played a short part of an interview with the self-exiled former “royal”. His self-delusion is patent, saying that “the whole world” is waiting to hear from “the Palace” in reply to his accusations.

The idiot obviously thinks that the tawdry soap opera involving him and Meghan Mulatta is centre-stage in the world, whereas in reality it is just a side issue, a kind of entertainment for the masses in the UK and USA etc.

I really think that he has burned his boats now. He has become more or less a ventriliquist’s dummy; when he speaks, 90% of what is said is what the Mulatta wants to have said. Pathetic over-privileged idiot.

Tweets seen

Hardly anything is working properly in the UK. That has in fact been the case for years, but now more people are noticing. The System is determined to destroy everything worthwhile, so that a kind of semi-dictatorship (ruling over a mixed-race population) can be instituted. The Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.

“They” must be worming their way back in. (((they))).

“Jack Monroe”

[Update, 4 July 2024: please note that the above now-deleted tweet referred not to “Jack Monroe” but to yet another online fake and “grifter”, Julia Grace Patterson, on Twitter/X as “@JujuliaGrace”]

She [Julia Grace Patterson] worked in the NHS for about a year or so as a junior doctor, but now just makes money online by selling stuff and getting donations, tapping into the public concern about the NHS really not working properly. A crazed facemask fanatic too (she made money selling facemasks, and forced her young son to wear one even when walking in the park). Rather unpleasant.

As I have often said previously, never trust a medical doctor who is primarily a socio-political activist.

Keywords? “Swill“, “dog’s dinner“, “inedible”, “horrible-looking“; “unhealthy” etc. My keywords, more direct than those actually used in the above-mentioned review.

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I rarely mention my family or living relatives on the blog, but I shall make an exception, pro bono publico.

Both my younger brothers, one in the London area, one in Sydney, Australia, had themselves “vaccinated”, and I think one at least may have been “boosted” at least once if not twice. Neither had previously had heart problems. Both have now had to have heart bypass operations, one being a triple bypass. Both were suddenly afflicted, both had to be taken into hospital urgently (last year).

Both are now OK, but, in my opinion, the events cannot be mere co-incidence, i.e. that they both developed serious heart probems after having been “vaccinated”.

Incidentally, their ways of life and diet are very divergent, one (in the UK) eating a healthy diet, the other an unregenerate old-time Australian one consisting largely of steak and booze, with scarcely a vegetable in sight.

As for me, I refused the “vaccine” several times in 2020-2021, thank God, and have no heart problems; neither (as far as I know) have I had “Covid”, though there was a period of a few weeks last year when I had a terrible flu-type ailment, and difficulty breathing at times. Maybe that was it. I rarely get anything like that, and when I do, it usually goes within a day or two. My only medication, BTW, was the odd Lemsip, with top-grade Manuka honey.

More music

More tweets

I was just looking at the latest “Jack Monroe” supporters on Twitter:

Much the same as previously: retired or near-retired minor academics, a soft-headed C. of E. vicar, marketing bods, IT bods (mostly retired), “retired HR marketing lady“, “artist“, “retired maths teacher“, “interdisciplinary researcher…lecturer, University of Kent“, “Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing Strategist“, “retired lab technician“, “widower and drum nut“, “Anti-racism. Anti-fascism. Pro LBGTQi. Pro-Choice. He/His. #BLM Fuck TERFs.“, “Francophile“, “Founder + CEO :@CareersWeek |@NCWUganda |@NCWGhana |@NCW_Foundation |@Green__Careers“, “makes films/writes things/proudly dyspraxic“, “Full prof./cis white woman“, “craft, nature, 90s music, musicals, books, chocolate, coffee, mushrooms, proud child/dog mum, mediocre business analyst“, “writer who loves to cook and travel“, “CEO Western Biological Labs in Monterey, but a citizen of the world with a base in UK [probable parody account]”, “Arts reviews, views, and opinions“, “golfer and retired maths teacher“, “Retired Chartered Engineer. ‘Citizen of nowhere’. Probably woke“, “retired company director” [etc].

In other words, mostly people over 50, with many over 60; quite a few rather loony-sounding types as well, but what leaps out is, as far as one can see, a complete absence of anyone young (under 30), an almost-complete absence of anyone under 40, a complete absence of anyone likely to be “poor” or “working class”, and a complete absence, it seems, of anyone from any recognizable ethnic minority.

The conclusion —as when blogged before re. this— is that the “Jack Monroe” supporters are basically “middle-class” virtue-signallers, most of whom probably read the Guardian and/or Observer, most of whom at least think of themselves as well-meaning, and socially conscious, most of whom seriously think that “Labour”-label would be very different from “Conservative”-label.

If I had to guess, I should imagine that most if not all the pro “Jack Monroe” crowd support the UK rejoining the EU, support the Kiev regime of the Jew Zelensky, support the facemask-wearing nonsense, support the toxic “vaccines”, support the “refugees welcome” migration-invasion (and of course they cannot see —or will not see— how mass immigration impacts pay, benefits, NHS, social services, transport, schools, and housing); they no doubt support the “LGBTQXYZ” and “trans” stuff too.

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I think that those claiming that they were cheated by “Jack Monroe” should take legal action in the Small Claims Track of the County Court. Limited (or no) liability for costs if not successful, but every chance of success (on the facts as put out on Twitter anyway). Perhaps with damages expressly limited to £1,000. No need to pay out for solicitors and/or Counsel.

It would also ensure much Press coverage, quite likely not very favourable to the so-called “Bootstrap Cook”…

[me, 30+ years ago, in 1992]

Caveat: now that I am no longer a barrister (see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/), and it having been some 15 years since I was last in court, any “advice” I give (meaning mere opinions and/or observations) must come with a “non-governmental health warning”. Naturally I do not keep up with law and procedure as would a barrister still practising.

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In fact, if anyone wants to give a little cheer to someone genuinely poor/struggling, that lady “@frugally_minded” has a crowdfunder: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/heather-booth-3?utm_term=Gde7678Nq

Only when the MPs who are enabling the migration-invasion face consequences themselves will anything even start to be done to stop and reverse the invasion.

They are not “Romanians“, though, but backward “Roma” Gypsies; something completely different. Non-Europeans, albeit with Romanian or other passports.

Late music

Diary Blog, 8 January 2023

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Jack Monroe

There does not seem much else to say, but the backwash from the storm continues.

“Jack Monroe” herself has gone for the main chance, meaning a general “I’m sort-of sorry but will not/cannot refund anyone“, combined with a plea consisting of “I’m not really guilty of anything, because I am sort-of mentally-disturbed, ex-alcoholic, maybe ex-cocaine abuser, with a huge number of physical and mental problems (self-diagnosed autistic, ADHD, arthritic etc), as well as sort-of lesbian, sort-of ‘trans’, sort-of single mother, as well as a ‘shopaholic’, and anyway have spent all the money I took from people [cheated out of well-meaning mugs]”.

I suppose that the hard-core “Jack Monroe” fans will buy all or some of that, and that the 600+ utter mugs funding her lifestyle via the Patreon website will very likely continue to do that, even as she openly mocks them.

Damage to the septum?

Tweeter “@cashandcarrots” is another one who seems to believe that “Jack Monroe” has done things that “help the poorest and most disadvantaged in society” rather than nothing except help herself (literally).

What? What exactly has she done, when you strip away the virtue-signalling on social media and in the msm? Nothing.

“@cashandcarrots””Michelle” really cannot accept that she and others have been conned by a cunning and manipulative woman entirely out for herself. Even has to pretend that one of the staunchest critics of “Jack Monroe”, “@TruthSignalUK” is somehow part of a [non-existent] “trolling” conspiracy (why would he be, though?).

“@WivFunnyFarm” has evidently bought the “I’m unwellexculpa.

That Bleasdale person tweets all sorts of rubbish. His tweet about the “Bootstrap Cook” is a good example of entirely false logic, i.e. presenting a false choice.

Relentless advocacy for people on the breadline“? Not really. She mostly tweets and sends other online messages about herself, mixed with a bit of typical Twitter “I hate the Tories” stuff (I feel similarly about the “Conservatives”, to put it simplistically; but I also “hate” the “Labour” hypocrites). “Jack Monroe” also constantly messages or tweets with a subtext of “please send me money“.

I wonder whether the loonies and mugs sending money regularly to “Jack Monroe” will ever wake up to the fact that she despises them and mocks them?

As for the “Bootstrap Cook” herself, what are her talents? Not cooking, that’s for sure, looking at the swill that seems to be the bulk of her cuisine.

There is nothing wrong with being well-meaning, as tweeter “@PaulOnBooks” seems to be, but that has to go in tandem with an objective outlook. We are enjoined to be “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves“. Both.

Good advice is never, or only very rarely, to trust a medical doctor who is primarily a socio-political activist.

More “Jack Monroe” lies, it appears.

“Jack Monroe” has a number, perhaps a large number, of Twitter “sock accounts”, many of which tweet “supportive” messages to her main account. Her level of dishonesty is incredible.

Whatever her problems are, they never get in the way of taking people for as much money as possible.

More music

The heavy brigade

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11610889/A-quarter-Britains-soldiers-classed-dangerously-overweight-past-five-years.html

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[“Don’t damage my necklace, Wills!”]

Whatever one may think of Peron and his wives, the fact is that political leadership is only one factor, albeit perhaps the most important, in whether a country is rich or poor (either overall as a country and notionally per capita, or in terms of how much that wealth is actually spread among the population).

Argentina was once a very wealthy country, certainly. Uruguay too. In fact, right up to the 1950s, Uruguay was one of the most prosperous countries in the world. A number of factors changed that.

There again, between 1918 and 1939, Estonia, Latvia and Czechoslovakia were very prosperous, and the citizens were, per head, much better off than the average of those in, say, the UK, France, or most other states. That changed mainly though not solely because of political changes and invasions, notably the Second World War and Soviet invasion (1940, and later 1944, in the case of the Pribaltika states; 1945 in the case of Czechoslovakia), Germany having also effectively occupied them during most of the war years.

Cuba was, economically, once a vibrant economy, albeit suffused with corruption and inequality. Castro’s socialist regime killed the economy. His decision to replace mixed farming with, mostly, a sugar monoculture (in the 1960s) worked up to a point, so long as the Soviet Union paid over the odds for sugar (and whatever else Cuba could export) but resulted in total collapse when the hidden subsidy was removed in the early 1990s.

Likewise, Cuba’s socialist experiment resulted in an end to development in the residential housing sector. Today, Havana and much of Cuba is falling to pieces, and people try to grow their own food if they can.

Some people say that the Cuban system is good re. medicine and education. “Education” in the basic sense perhaps, though obviously rigid in terms of what can and cannot be taught. As to medicine, perhaps so, again in a basic way, though.

The question is whether the supposed advantages of such a system are enough to compensate, both for the poor economy largely the result of that system and also for the harshness of the system politically and in terms of civil rights.

Russia before 1914 was arguably the fastest-growing economy in the world. War (lost war) and then civil war and political upheavals, followed by the socialist system —especially under Stalin from about 1928— weakened, and also distorted the economy. Collectivization, prioritization of heavy industry etc.

I recall reading the memoirs of the self-publicizing Jew Armand Hammer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer]; Hammer— Witness to History. He operated businesses in agreement with the Soviet Government during the 1920s, including a concession to produce pencils.

Hammer discovered that the best pencils were produced in Bavaria. He imported to Moscow both machines and German technicians.

On returning to the Soviet Union in the 1970s or 1980s (I forget; 1970s, I think), Hammer was taken to the pencil factory, still operating. He discovered that nothing had changed: the machines were still working, a few of the original workers, now in their sixties, were still there; even his own old desk was standing unchanged in the same place.

An example of the lack of dynamic change in a socialist system.

Having said that, that same system put the first satellite into space, and created some products and programmes not seen even in the finance-capitalist West. Priorities? As Goering said in the 1930s, “Guns before butter“. That is, of course, a political choice.

Political direction is the single most important factor governing the prosperity of a country, but there are others. Where would the oil states of the Middle East be without demand for oil (and gas)? Back riding camels, almost certainly.

In their case, they have money in vast amounts despite their political and religious backwardness. There again, Europeans (and Americans, who are basically European in origin) discovered the oil and gas, extracted it, knew how to refine it, and also exported it to European and other markets. The Arabs only profited because they were there, and because they were on the cusp of the two contending Cold War cultures, neither part of the Soviet world nor the Western world.

Perhaps the best way to put it is that political leadership can assist an economy but cannot create it, whereas the wrong political direction can certainly ruin an economy, especially if that direction is too rigid. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_threefolding.

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Damning…

[https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/author/andylynes]

Peak Twitter? Some “IT bod” from darkest Northamptonshire, one James Drury, tries to trash food blogger Andy Lynes, who is, inter alia, a Masterchef semi-finalist…

Ha. Very good.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/08/meet-the-people-who-took-an-evening-class-and-changed-their-life.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/08/tory-right-warns-sunak-calm-before-storm-small-boats-brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/08/what-the-love-of-cats-taught-me-about-myself

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So “Jack Monroe” cannot, by her own admission (or claim) “manage money”, she cannot cook (as far as I can see), certainly not to any kind of professional standard, and she has cheated hundreds, probably thousands, of people out of money that many can ill-afford to lose, yet the msm is still promoting her! As someone who can advise “the poor”, at that! Why?

If someone like Al Capone can pull themselves up out of difficult times…why would anyone attack that?

Some people really do not know what day it is…

Incidentally, if any reader is interested in seeing how my opinion of “Jack Monroe” has hardened in the past 3-4 months, take a look at my blog assessment posted on 30 September 2022: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/09/30/diary-blog-30-september-2022-including-an-assessment-of-jack-monroe-aka-the-bootstrap-cook/.

If the facts change, so does my opinion“.

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…and I mistrust anyone who is referred to as “a national treasure“…

Late music

Diary Blog, 7 January 2023, with the latest on the “Jack Monroe” scandal

Morning music

On this day a year ago

Saturday quiz

Well, this week brings another victory over political journalist John Rentoul, trumping his 4/10 with my 7/10. I did not know the answers to questions 6 and 10, and I just could not recall the answer to question 1 even though I “really” knew it.

The “Jack Monroe” juggernaut rolls on

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/07/jack-monroe-interview]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/07/jack-monroe-interview

I suspect that some hurried rewriting had to be done by the Guardian’s scribbler.

That Guardian piece was evidently planned to be part of the launch of Thrifty Kitchen, the latest book by “Jack Monroe” (and at the end has a link via which enables any “mug” unaware of the full “dodginess” of the book and its authoress to buy a copy).

The interviewer mentions “Jack Monroe’s” Patreon “grift” but not the crowdfunder launched by “Jack Monroe”, ostensibly to sue the MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, the proceeds of which have gone straight into the bank account of the “Bootstrap Cook”. Certainly no legal action has been launched, not even a “letter before action”, and Ms. Monroe’s favoured solicitor, Israel-based Mark Lewis, has not emerged from his kennel since the Twitterstorm etc around “Jack Monroe” gained strength several months ago.

That Guardian piece gives the impression of sitting uncertainly on the fence after the more recent revelations, neither wholeheartedly endorsing the woman and her book (the recipes from which seem to have been lifted from a number of different Internet sites such as BBC Food), nor making an all-out hatchet attack on her. More the former than the latter, arguably.

The interviewer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Hattenstone.

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The “Bootstrap Cook” is not alone in wanting to join the world of fake “celebrity” while still pretending to “stick up for the poor”. Look at the pseudo-revolutionary and pseudo-Marxist poseur, Owen Jones, who has made a career out of being a kind of “licensed Bolshevik” while still doing fashion shoots for glossy magazines on occasion, attending receptions with the “rich and famous”, and making a rather large income in various ways.

Another? What about Chuka Umunna, the half-caste one-time “Labour” MP, who whined about not being allowed into the VIP area of some louche nightclub?

All fakes.

Notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuka_Umunna; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Jones; https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/04/a-brief-word-about-owen-jones/.

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Of course. “Jack Monroe” might like to ask advice on that from her one-time solicitor, Israel-based Jew-Zionist Mark Lewis, who admitted or claimed a few years ago at the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal (that found him guilty on several charges) that at times he did not know what he was doing because his mind was affected by prescription drugs (etc).

[Update, same day: “Jack Monroe” has swiftly deleted her tweet threatening (making empty threats of) “libel” action].

“Jack Monroe” once again snarling at people and threatening “libel” action. Ha ha!

I should imagine that her lawyer (if any) is well aware that a defamation action, though it has to be be brought within one year, should all the same be brought as expeditiously as possible within that 1-year window. In the case of Lee Anderson and Martin Daubney, the alleged “libel” (in fact the totally true assertion that “Jack Monroe” has made a living off the backs of the genuinely poor) occurred in early May or even April 2022. No libel case will be brought by the “grifter” against Lee Anderson now, in my opinion. Let’s see.

As for stray tweeters or, indeed, me, “Jack Monroe” will be unable to bring legal action successfully (certainly not against me) for a number of reasons, including the fact that I would have a number of arguable defences (including what the English law now terms “Truth”). Also, having no capital and a very low income now, even a successful libel action against me would leave the claimant about £500,000 out of pocket; in reality, no claim could even be launched against me, and I apprehend that the same would be true of many tweeters critical of “Jack Monroe”.

That would tend to explain, if true, where much of the money “earned” by “Jack Monroe” has gone…

Like many liars, “Jack Monroe” ties herself in entangled knots of her own fabrication.

So tweeter “@JanetAnscombe” thinks that “Jack Monroe” cheats her Patreon donors because her life was or is “in chaos“? “Jack Monroe” never seems to fail to take the money, or to set up ways of taking more. Well-organized in that sense, anyway.

Opinions are OK, but should be based on evidence…

I note that, like many “Jack Monroe” fans, “@JanetAnscombe” is (judging from her photo) retired, seems to live comfortably (in Tenerife), and according to her Twitter profile, is “Doctor, ancient historian, “leftie elitist”, mother of chickens, hermit-ish, trauma & neurobiology wonk, Celt, European, MBE.” (and a facemask zealot as well).

So not exactly “poor” or “working class“. Again.

As blogged previously, I have not myself seen even one present “Jack Monroe” fan who is actually poor, or “working class”, or for that matter from any ethnic minority; as I opined yesterday, few of the blacks, browns, Chinese etc would eat the swill that the “Bootstrap Cook” makes or pretends to make.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that anyone still defending “Jack Monroe” should not be listened to on any subject…

Ha ha! “@sitebadger”, another “Jack Monroe” defender. Once again, not poor, not someone who claims to have been: “Environmental Manager / planning compliance. BA(Hons) Landscape Design. MSc Conservation Management.”

Rhetorical questions: Where are the poor? Where are the “working class”?

…and of course, another one who “stands with Ukraine” (on Twitter), and is almost certainly a facemask fanatic, like most of the rest.

More “Jack Monroe” lies, in other words.

Other tweets seen

No-one can rule guiltlessly” [Saint-Just].

“Dr.” Louise Raw

So far no news about “Dr” Raw’s doomed and ostensible attempt to sue Jeremy Clarkson for making rude remarks about Meghan Mulatta.

Surely Ms. Raw is not going to use the money she has raised via GoFundMe for other, or even personal, purposes? She has almost hit her financial target of £15,000 (£13,787 as at time of writing), but no news from her about the supposed upcoming legal action. What a surprise.

Mike Stuchbery (notorious Twitter “grifter”) and Roanna Carleton-Taylor (former “antifa” cheerleader who is now keeping very quiet…) claimed, a few years ago, that they were going to sue “Tommy Robinson”. Raised ~£12,000 for that ostensible purpose. No legal action ensued. I wonder what happened to the money of the 700+ mugs who donated?

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/10/23/a-few-words-about-mike-stuchbery/; https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/11/27/mike-stuchbery-and-tommy-robinson-legal-dispute/.

Stuchbery was also (he claimed) going to sue me (never heard from him or his —non-existent— lawyers), and he was going to sue various other people, including several Danes. Never happened. A man of straw.

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Exactly, and the tweeted typo (?), “cause celeb“, is actually —and ironically— more accurate than the correct “cause celebre“.

Indeed. In fact, she has had a good run, bearing in mind the easily-disprovable lies, at times reaching heights of absurdity only achieved by Monty Python, The Goodies, The Good Life, or maybe The Goon Show.

Next? Maybe “Jack Monroe” will turn and turn about, and become a pseudo”Conservative” social commentator with a column in the Daily Mail. Hard to see, but in the madness of the UK in 2023, not actually impossible.

“Jack Monroe” has been mocking her mug donors for years, but usually only in private. Now she does it openly, “telling the truth to shame the Devil” (?).

Still, as of today, no less than 624 utter mugs are still signed up with Patreon to send her between £3.50 and £44 every month! Hard to believe how stupid people can be.

At last! A “poor” or “working class” “Jack Monroe” fan!

Oh no, wait…— “Director: @Air_Cover_PR | #HR PR | ‘James Staunton is a PR faster than Muhammad Ali’ –@guardian. Once part of @InstinctifPtnrs, @wriglesworth and @PwC_UK“…

The absurdity becomes surrealistic…

I suppose that, were Katie Hopkins still scribbling for the Daily Mail, she would be wondering aloud in print how much of the £324,000 she had to pay “Jack Monroe” after the libel action (£24,000 to “Jack Monroe” herself as an award, £300,000 for the legal costs of “Jack Monroe”) went up the nose or down the throat of the “Bootstrap Cook”.

More seriously, I cannot see that “Jack Monroe” offers anything much to the truly poor or struggling. She has some way to go, however, before she reaches the rock-bottom uselessness of other “one-trick-ponies” such as the crazed feminist trustafarian, Caroline Criado-Perez [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Criado_Perez].

As blogged, most of the supporters of “Jack Monroe” are middle-aged if not elderly. Not sure why. Not all aged lesbians, either. Men of 60+ as well. Why? I do not know; and, as already said, I have yet to see anyone under 40, let alone under 30, supporting her; also, no non-whites (are they too practical when short of cash?). A conundrum.

Just look at that Adrian Hilton idiot! Doesn’t know his **** from his elbow, yet purports to teach at university level [“Adrian Hilton is a conservative academic, theologian, author and educationalist. He has spent more than 20 years in secondary and university education, teaching, writing and lecturing in politics, jurisprudence, philosophy and theology in the UK and the US.“].

Typical.

Tweets on other subjects

Rachel Reeves: Labour Friends of Israel member, and quite possibly part-Jewish.

When you look at Starmer’s Israel-lobby Shadow Cabinet, there would seem no point in replacing the similar Con Party government with that.

Only a social-national government or rulership will or could save the British people, but there is not even a social-national party worthy of the name.

I do.

Afternoon music

[Berlin Wall, 1960s, from the Western side]
[street scene, East Berlin, 1970s]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_John_Moeran]
[BBC TV Centre, White City, under construction, early 1950s]

Late music

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

Morning music

[Katyusha rockets, 1940s]

On this day a year ago

Ukraine

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

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

[Financial Times]

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

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

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

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

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

[The Guardian].

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

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

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

[“the Wild Fields”, where Cossacks lived]

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

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

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

[Wikipedia]

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

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

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

[Wikipedia].

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

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

At this point, Ukraine is not a functioning state.

The “Jack Monroe” “scamstorm” continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other tweets seen

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

Acorn—oak etc.

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

19th Century thinking.

More music

Temps perdu: Bruce Barry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce Barry died in 2017, aged 82.

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

More tweets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can only agree.

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

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

Now send “Jack Monroe” a fiver!

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

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

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

Below, another typical “Jack Monroe” supporter:

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

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

Not exactly “earning a few quid“…

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

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

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

And so on.

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

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

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

Also absent is anyone likely to be “poor”.

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

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

Oh, well, enough for now.

Late music