Tag Archives: Boris Johnson

Diary Blog, 29 June 2020

Facemasks

The UK Government itself, despite making the wearing of masks compulsory on public transport, admits that the wearing of such masks has minimal effect on the Coronavirus situation generally, and in fact no more than minimal effect in terms of protecting the wearer or anyone else.

So why make the wearing of “face coverings” (which can be something as loose as a college scarf!) compulsory? Because this incompetent government is driven entirely by public relations and opinion polls. The plebs have been scared out of their skins by months of governmental and mass media propaganda. As a result, you see frightened rabbits wearing masks in Waitrose, carefully trying to stay the (again mandated for no reason— no scientific evidence backs it) “2 metres social distancing” from other shoppers.

Tweets and comments seen

The average age of death from Covid-19 in the UK is around 82, and most of those people have comorbidities. I said to our managers that we had to test people and could not just be throwing them into nursing homes. But that is what they did. Homes were virtually ordered to take elderly patients. We had one nursing home that ended up with 12 deaths in a week.”

The health service treated elderly, vulnerable people as figures on a piece of paper. The lack of any brain power being applied to this was amazing. They had one objective – to clear the hospitals – and everything else was subordinate to that. Of course, they will never say this is what happened. But that is precisely what did happen.”

We are probably all going to get Covid-19 and we are all going to keep getting it. The only purpose of lockdown was to protect the health service from being overwhelmed, which did not happen. The end result is that lockdown was a waste of time. It cannot be continued forever.”

[Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, in Spiked magazine]

If you were a German camp commandant somewhere like Belsen at the end of the war, and your inmates died of disease and malnutrition because Allied bombing etc had cut off supplies of food and medicine, you got hanged when the British or Americans arrived, but if you are an NHS adminstrator, and you deliberately send elderly and sick people somewhere, knowing that they will die as a result, or not caring (and you were “following orders” from superiors and Government), you are not hanged. People think that you are wonderful. They even stand outside their houses and clap like idiots on command to thank you. Mad world.

More tweets

How very true that is. A Cabinet headed by Boris-idiot, who is part-Jew, part-Turk, part-GodKnowsWhat, born in New York City, brought up largely in the USA and Belgium, descendant of generations of con-men.

Then there is the rest of the Cabinet, a scrapheap of Jews, Indians, and at least one woman (and a stupid woman at that) who became an MP on her back (if such is the bon mot); then we have an idiot (Williamson) who, as Defence Secretary, played with his pet spider while “threatening” China with a gunboat in the South China Sea (China has 850 large naval ships…), and so on. [Williamson is now Education Secretary, because even Boris-idiot saw that Williamson’s level of knowledge about military and naval affairs, and strategy, is limited to Airfix model soldiers, or playing Risk].

I have been critical of previous UK Cabinets and governments, but this one is unsurpassed. Jesus H. Christ!

This government is incompetent but, more than that, it is —like its predecessors— a tool of the New World Order conspiracy/consensus and the Jew Zionist occupation. ZOG/NWO.

I think, subject to correction, that it was William Cobbett (or maybe John Stuart Mill) who said that a sign that English liberty was no more would be when or if the civil jury were abolished. That is the civil jury, not the criminal jury.

In fact, the civil jury was largely a dead letter by the time of the Second World War, and was used in only a discrete number of case types. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juries_in_England_and_Wales#Civil_juries, a situation which has become even more constricted in recent times. Even defamation cases are now commonly heard in the absence of a civil jury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juries_in_England_and_Wales#Civil_juries

That was the civil jury. However, it has never been seriously mooted that the criminal jury be abolished. I say “seriously”; there have always, at least in my lifetime, been those against criminal juries. In my view, these critics mostly come into two categories: those (often academic lawyers) who think that ordinary juries are too stupid to think through the facts of cases properly; also, the more extreme “law and order” fanatics, who think that criminal juries acquit too often.

I disagree. While I do agree that (as far as observation can judge) the ordinary jury is certainly not on a high intellectual level, what the jury does, in reality, is import both a sense of justice and a societal imprimatur to the verdict. It is the job of both counsel and judge to explain the case to the jury in a way that will enable the jury, as the arbiters of fact in the case, to come to a just conclusion.

There have been exceptional cases. The Diplock courts in Northern Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_court. A friend of mine, a barrister, saw a Diplock court in operation in Belfast, in the 1980s. He said that it was like a bizarre parody of a normal UK court. The judge was similar, the barristers were similar, but there was no jury, and there were policemen there toting submachineguns! Incidentally, in the case that my friend saw, the accused was acquitted.

Comment: https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/opinion-juries-in-isolation

It may be that the size of the jury will be reduced: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8272455/Juries-reduced-size-time-WWII.html

Even in the Second World War, jury trials continued, and even in cases of espionage: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/28/britain-nazi-spies-mi5-second-world-war-german-executed, though I have to wonder how the discretion of the jury was maintained. Maybe the jury were “selected” specially, though they did occasionally acquit alleged German (usually Abwehr) agents.

Barristers vary much in their political and social views, but the vast majority still support jury trial in criminal cases.

I am also concerned about the idea of “virtual” trials, where the demeanour and impression of the witnesses cannot be, in my view, properly judged. That becomes all the more important in serious criminal cases

Traditional courts such as the Old Bailey (sketched during the trial of Ian Huntley) are too small to maintain social distancing so could be swapped for large lecture theatres
[above: artist’s sketch of the Ian Huntley murder trial; sketch by Priscilla Coleman]

More tweets

The blacks think that they are in the ascendant, but of course have no idea (((who))) is pulling their strings.

This “Black Lives Matter” nonsense is basically a puppet show for fools (including, sadly, quite a few white ones). Behind it is part of the ZOG/NWO scenario.

It does not really matter whether you call it The Great Replacement, White Genocide, or anything else. What matters is that white Northern Europeans are being systematically targeted by forces of evil. War has been declared, on all fronts.

Of course, there is a widespread though unfocussed wish for a better society. That wish is being used as a kind of motive power for a number of things, movements, events, which in fact (if they come to fruition) will bring into flower a society of evil, just as the legitimate desire of Russians and others in pre-revolutionary Russia led not to a better society but to one far worse in most respects than had been the case before the Revolution(s).

The present discontent

An opinion poll says that only 6% of UK people want to return to their former (pre-Coronavirus) lives. In a sense, that does not surprise me. While many (including me) disliked the “lockdown”/shutdown for various reasons (civil rights, the damage done to the economy, society and the health of the nation etc), there are many (as I blogged from the start) who were and are enjoying it all.

The more affluent part of society rather liked the “lockdown” because many of such people have pleasant detached houses, with large grounds or gardens, swimming pools, tennis courts, even stables. Many were “working from home”, either doing less work than usual or at least not having to commute for hours, or go to meetings etc. For many, it has been an early “endless Summer”. The Chardonnay and seafood has been delivered by Waitrose or Ocado, the only thing missing is the social interaction (and if those “rules” are broken, who’s to know anyway?).

What about those “furloughed”? The lower-paid, below about £30,000 p.a., are having 80% of their pay covered (up to £2,500 per month), with no need to work and no need to spend on transport to such work. True, that does not cut it for people on higher salaries, but many of those are “working from home”, not furloughed. Others may just have chosen to look upon it as a partly-paid holiday of sorts.

Even the unemployed and/or disabled are better off during “lockdown”. The DWP has suspended its pathetic but cruel regime of “face to face interviews” (with semi-educated jobsworths from DWP itself or from carpetbagging private companies), and no-one (as far as I know) is required to “seek work” by making 100 or 50 (?) pointless applications every week.

Leaving money aside, many people have rather liked the absence of boring old work in itself. Then there is the natural world. I myself have noticed the resurgence of Nature, birds in particular.

In the past, I have blogged about how society should move from the workaholic frenzy of the past 40 years to, not a 1960s “society of leisure”, but to a less harried lifestyle (which I have called the “society of measure”).

What that means is that there must be a rhythm and structure to society. Our society must not be this dystopian, pseudo-“libertarian” finance-capitalist frenzied rush, “open all hours” society; the “eat your sandwiches at your desk” society.

Such a “society of measure” will have at least one day a week reserved, if not for religion and philosophy, at least for watching old (or new) films at home, for playing bowls, or cricket, or polo at home (or at least not professionally). Also, for boating, or lazing, or whatever else is not directly productive.

Yes, that does mean no “B&Q” or other stores open on the designated “day of rest” (and recreation); it also means that the people who work in retail have at least one day off.

It may be worth looking at hours of work. Even if the now usual 40 hours per week were to be retained, that could be changed to 10 hours per day, 4 days per week, or some other configuration.

At present, the Boris-idiot government is saying that it wants to go for, as an earlier government put it, a “dash for growth”. Disastrous. Sunday trading hours to be expanded, gimcrack housing speading like a cancer over the countryside, planning regulation chucked aside, and so on. Completely wrong.

These (below) were my thoughts on this topic a few years ago: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/the-society-of-measure/

More tweets seen

Significant. People have seen the result of the pennywise/poundfoolish spending cuts of the past decade. As a Russian acquaintance of mine put it to me in 1993, referring to Leninism-Stalinism, and as we were sitting in the palatial main foyer of the Ukraina Hotel in Moscow, “Ian, that is an experiment that we do not wish to repeat“…

As in UK and across Europe. More testing means more “new cases”, but few require even basic medical attention; the death rate thankfully receding, because very few people who get the virus need medical help, and even fewer actually die from this.

Governments across the world (some governments) have made the wrong decision(s). The world economy is taking a huge hit, unnecessarily. The UK is facing a really major problem now.

The world (well, UK) in one tweet

I saw the tweet and radio clip below. For me, it contains about 6 things that make the UK worse than it need be. A radio presenter who is a Jewish woman (nein danke) and who is pursuing an “agenda” (nein danke), a radio show that is a bloody bore (nein danke), a black woman who is an MP (nein danke), and an MP (same MP) who is obviously as thick as two short planks and can hardly speak English even though born and (semi) educated in the UK.

NEIN DANKE! TO ALL OF THAT!

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

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

Late night music

Hilfskreuzer Atlantis.jpg
[above: the surface raider, Atlantis]

Diary Blog, 22 May 2020

UK “quarantine”

You couldn’t make it up! Thick-as-two-short-planks Priti Patel, posing as Home Secretary. “unveils” her great plan to save Britain from Coronavirus brought in by tourists and others:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/may/22/uk-coronavirus-live-news-update-covid-19-travel-quarantine-plan

The elephant in the room is why on Earth the airports and seaports were not closed long ago now, in February or March. Talk about “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted”! It is almost pointless to do anything now.

Normally, i.e. before and maybe after “Coronavirus”, about 100,000 visitors a day enter the UK. It seems that at least 100,000 but possibly as many as 800,000 visitors have entered the UK since the “lockdown” nonsense was implemented a couple of months ago.

As to the new “quarantine” measures, how absurd they are!

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has already described the plans as “idiotic” and “unimplementable,” and Airlines UK said they “would effectively kill” international travel to and from Britain.” [The Guardian]

Quite. So almost all of the arrivals by air (and sea, presumably) will be asked to provide an address in the UK at which they will “self-quarantine” for 14 days, on pain of a £1,000 fine? The police will, we are told, spot-check.

This is mere window-dressing. Completely unworkable. Let us say tha, on any given day at present, 15,000 people enter the UK (that is the Government’s own figure; the true figure may be twice that number). So those 15,000 all give, on arrival, a UK address at which they will be “self-isolating”. How many of those can be checked (even once) by the police within the 14 days? 100? 1,000?

A single policeman might be able to check 10 per day, arguably. So even to check a thousand of the fifteen thousand would take about 100 policemen. To check all 15,000 (once) would take 1,500 policemen. To check those 15,000 visitors twice, 3,000 policemen, working only on that job.

The Government in fact does not claim that all will be checked, even once. They say, “spot-checked”. So will only, say, 1,000 of the (Government’s low estimate of) 15,000 daily arrivals be checked (once)? Even that seems unlikely. 100 policemen….

Indeed, what do the fines, if any are levied, do? Nothing (except add £1,000 to police or central funds). Presumably the defaulters, if any, will not (if located before their planned departure dates) be deported, which would by then be pointless anyway (and in fact all the UK’s immigration-detention facilities have been closed by reason of “the virus”, leaving the formerly-incarcerated aliens to roam around as they please).

In terms of deterring those arriving from moving around as they please in the fortnight after arrival, the proposed checks and fines are akin to drink-driving: stiff penalties if caught, but the chances are, that if you only do it once or twice, or a few times, you will not be caught.

Are these “spot-checks” and possible fines even a deterrent? A little, perhaps. What they do do, though, and severely, is to deter from visiting the UK anyone who does not have a compelling and indeed unavoidable reason for coming. I cannot see many tourists, or business travellers for that matter, coming to the UK knowing that for the first 14 days they will be cooped up in their hotels, and checked by the police at that, and fined if they have moved to another hotel (eg if the first one was not to their liking).

This “plan” is typical of thick chancers such as Priti Patel, Iain Dunce Duncan Smith (not guilty in this case, but guilty in so many others…), Little Matt Hancock etc. Not to mention Boris-idiot. These political careerist chancers have no idea. They’re hopeless.

A Virgin Atlantic spokeswoman said that with mandatory 14-day self-isolation in place there simply won’t be sufficient demand to resume passenger services before August at the earliest.” [The Guardian]

The international travel and tourism business in the UK is finished for 2020 and possibly 2021. Hotels, airlines, travel websites etc.

More “enrichment” of the UK’s (once) white Northern European society…

Pictured: Ofogeli

Ofogeli, who smirked when the jury returned their verdicts after deliberating for just under 12 hours, was sentenced at London’s Old Bailey today.” [Daily Mail]

Shocking footage of him running amok with the large hunting knife, also described by witnesses as a machete, was posted on social media.” [Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8343951/Boy-17-stabbed-21-year-old-death-sentenced-20-years-jail.html

Born and brought up in Kent, not somewhere like the Congo…

Race is the root-stock, culture is the flower“…[Anon]

When we look into the future of the UK, do we want it to be an advanced, high-IQ, high-education, prosperous and cultured country, cohesive nation, and ethnostate, or do we want it to be a multikulti, bottom-of-barrel banana republic (with or without a fantasy “royal family” sitting on the peak of the rubbish-tip)?

Peter Hitchens

Some of my readers have been taken aback by my recent reposting of a large number of tweets by Peter Hitchens. This was not done because I agree with Peter Hitchens about everything, but because I agree with much of what he has had to say recently about Coronavirus, “lockdown”, economic shutdown; also, re. Government policy and behaviour.

I have blogged about Hitchens himself in the past:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/

Today, I disagree with him:

At least, I disagree with tweeter “@jona77”, above. If a “wealth tax” is “legalized theft”, then so is that amount of national economic value pumped (via governmental policy, tax policy etc over decades) into such things as, and primarily, private house values.

All but a tiny minority of those who actually have any wealth in the UK have most of it tied up in their house or houses. They themselves did not create such wealth (leaving aside improvements such as house-extensions); the wealth was created largely by the artificially-contrived expansion of value, a result of the policies of governments since, mainly, the 1970s. Margaret Thatcher turbo-charged it.

The value pumped into the real property sector in Britain has, of necessity, taken away value from other sectors.

In other words, if a “wealth tax” (which I do not necessarily support) is “theft”, then so is much of the value that might be “stolen” (taxed). I suppose that that observation is not original, not new. After all “property is theft” [Proudhon], arguably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!

As someone who has been cheated, most of his life, I find myself not very sympathetic to the “plight” of the inheritees, trustafarians, buy-to-let parasites, and the sharp-elbowed and property-owning Middle Englanders who always vote “Conservative” (even after that party has changed out of all recognition).

On the other hand, I am certainly in agreement with Hitchens here:

Other tweets seen today

and from one “@Macnessie”, the (it’s becoming a tradition on this blog!) dim SNP tweet of the day:

If the SNP and some Welsh MPs do not wish to attend the Commons, that is their choice and their decision, no one else’s. They are not “barred” by the perfidious English.

A reminder of the volatility of UK politics now:

May 2019, only a year ago…amazing. Conservative Party on 12%.

Talking about the recent past…

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/austerity-public-sector-borrowing-coronavirus-boris-johnson-uk-economy-a9528106.html

I have often thought that many of the stupid actions taken by British governments over the past few decades, from joining the Common Market and abolishing police foot patrols to the destruction of the grammar schools, are so mad that they can only be rationally explained as deliberate sabotage.

The same goes for the fervent dedication of the BBC and much of the press to any cause that would undermine tradition, morality, marriage and manners.” [Peter Hitchens, in the Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6197097/PETER-HITCHENS-reveals-REAL-truth-Communist-infiltration-Britain.html

Note: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, often described —by Jew scribblers, by the msm, by (((approved))) Wikipedia editors— as “a forgery”, is really literary fantasy, which however mirrors actual fact and real events. Poetische Freiheit or literarische Fantasie, if you like.

BannedTowerHamletsMural

Looks as though reality is slowly intruding…

Coronavirus lockdowns have failed to alter the course of the pandemic but have instead ‘destroyed millions of livelihoods’, a JP Morgan study has claimed. 

Falling infection rates since lockdowns were lifted suggest that the virus ‘likely has its own dynamics’ which are ‘unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown measures’, a report published by the financial services giant said.” [Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8347635/Lockdowns-failed-alter-course-pandemic-JP-Morgan-study-claims.html

Police officers confront a sunbather in Brighton last month when the lockdown in Britain was in full force - but a new study suggests the quarantine may have had little effect

[above: toytown police in Brighton making a nuisance of themselves last month]

Musical interlude

The disastrous “lockdown” nonsense

More than 30,000 pubs, bars and restaurants may remain permanently closed because the coronavirus shutdown has sent a wrecking ball through the UK’s hospitality trade.” [The Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/22/more-than-30000-pubs-and-restaurants-could-stay-shut-after-lockdown-coronavirus

So that’s about 300,000 more people on the dole thanks to Boris-idiot, “financial genius” Rishi Sunak, and the rest of the Cabinet of clowns.

Interesting film

Tweets recently seen

…and I noticed today (while in Waitrose) that that cretin, Littlejohn, was writing a rant in some trash “newspaper” about how UK beaches, parks etc should stay “locked down”. The cretin doesn’t even live in the UK anymore, but in Florida!

An incipient feeling of doom is around, despite the sun and warm weather and people flocking to beaches. A feeling of apres nous, le deluge

Diary Blog, 13 May 2020

EX43oYYWkAA87D4

Tweets of interest seen so far today

Again, this by Hitchens hits the nail on the head. Why oh why do people simply accept without question what deadheads like Boris-idiot and little Matt Hancock say? I put it down to centuries-ingrained English or British deference, a class-based behaviour, though in fact “Boris” is a part-Jew, part-Turk, of very peculiar origins, and basically acting a part, the “upper-class” “Englishman”, neither of which he is. The training in privilege received at Eton, then at Oxford, helped. As for the rest of the present Cabinet, they are mostly Jews or part-Jews, Indians etc, and the few English ones of a “beggar on horseback” type, such as Hancock.

Sadly, a certain confident manner and a Standard English accent (perceived as “posh” by the plebs) gets many mediocre types rather far, not least many MPs. People really should look at the real levels of intelligence, education and other qualities of “our” MPs. Very poor, for the most part.

I have to say that, though I am far from agreeing on everything with Peter Hitchens, he must have the patience of a saint, the endurance of a Trojan, and the hide of a rhinoceros to put up with the Twitter mob as he does. I admit that I myself would simply not have the patience. I can only assume that Hitchens perceives what he does on Twitter as a duty of some kind laid upon him.

This (above)…

One aspect that made me laugh from the start of the Coronavirus “pandemic” (which is now, in the UK, not even an epidemic) is that all or almost all the pseudo-socialist mob on Twitter have been in favour of ever-more restriction of liberty, ever-more rules and ever-stricter “lockdown”. It is one of their psychological flaws. The need or perceived need to be told what to do.

One saw it in the Brexit situation, that idea that the UK’s civil liberties etc (free speech being the greatest), fought and struggled for over hundreds of years by British people could now only be maintained by a pack of tired Eurotrash politicians and bureaucrats in places like Brussels and Berlin and Strasbourg. In fact, the wish not to be free was palpable in the Remain camp.

Indeed, would anyone think himself “free” in an EU where to question any of the often absurd details of the “holocaust” fable is actually a criminal offence?!

We have seen, all through this “crisis” or scare, that the Labour Party official Opposition has been pathetic, just supporting the Government! Really really pathetic. I think I understand why Keir Starmer is doing it. He really, at heart, would like to see Labour as part of a fake “National Government”, thus giving Labour some reflected credibility as part of that Government. “Boris”, though, thanks to his unmerited and unexpected 80-seat Commons majority, does not need Labour. The result is that Labour is a total irrelevance.

Likewise the TUC. I remember from my teenage years the TUC as a vast, monolithic, almost Soviet bloc of unions, powerful and of national importance whether one supported or opposed their actions. Today on, I think, Sky News, up pops Frances O’Grady, its General Secretary, and all she can do, really, is bleat a little. A waste of space. The TUC still has 5.6 million members (Wikipedia; another source says only 3.69M), but that is only about 1 in 5 employees; if you include the self-employed, probably 1 in 6. Like Labour, near-irrelevant.

The Jew Shapps

The “Cabinet minister”, Jew Grant Shapps, on TV news this morning, posing in front of a small bookcase prominently featuring two Union Jacks. Surely, in view of his Zionist ideology and one-time position as head of the youth wing of Bnai Brith UK, Israeli flags would have been more fitting?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%27nai_B%27rith

Gerry Adams

More madness…

We live in a society where the likes of Gerry Adams have their supposed “rights” fastidiously upheld by a “Supreme Court”, but also a society in which Jez Turner was convicted and actually sent to prison merely for saying that Jews should be deported from the UK (as has happened several times in history), and a society in which Alison Chabloz was prosecuted and sentenced merely for singing satirical songs about proven “holocaust” fakes!

alison [above: the satirical singer-songwriter, Alison Chabloz, at the piano]

Corbyn

Not that Corbyn is “wrong” in this, but he has just spent 5 years supporting the mainstay of the Israeli/Zionist state, i.e. the “holocaust” narrative! Also, decrying anything supposedly “anti-Semitic”. In other words, he is against Zionism in the Middle East, but —in effect— supportive of it in Europe, North America and Australasia!

Ah, well, Corbyn is back in his comfort zone, bleating about matters far away, which he has no power to influence or change…

Peter Hitchens’ tweets

Also known as “the shoplifter’s special”…

Actually, the “facemask” nonsense is the ideal excuse for anyone asked in court, “and why were you walking around covering your face?” The criminal defence barrister has a new tool to put in his box, along with “it was someone who looked like the defendant”, “his fingerprints were there because he had been there previously, and legitimately…” and (after conviction) “the defendant has had an unhappy life to date…”

People, most of them, are motivated by will or by emotion, not (and certainly not primarily) by thought.

A little night (but not light) music

Diary Blog, 11-12 May 2020

Boris-idiot and the Chinese virus

Well, Boris Johnson’s shambolic amateur-night Churchill impression of yesterday has not exactly gone down a storm. I think that the infamous casting director who first rejected Richard Whiteley’s application had the right injunction: “Himoff!

Even that peculiar little “Misbegot”, Philip Schofield, is doing a Peter Finch “Network” reprise!

Yes?

In fact, the usually supine msm talking heads such as Schofield seem to be getting back a heady whiff of journalistic (or whatever) independence. Look at Piers Morgan, here tearing a strip off one of the barrow-boy “Conservative” MPs, former market gardener Andrew Bridgen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bridgen#Early_life_and_career]:

Reading some of the readers’ comments in, eg the Daily Mail, the public mood is now becoming unforgiving toward Boris-idiot and his Cabinet of fools. And that is before the furlough money tap is shut off…

Even the msm journalists are scathing toward “Boris” now. The only one I saw who is not critical was the ancient reactionary joke scribbler, Janet Daley, in the Telegraph.

I forecast after the 2019 election that, with Labour an irrelevance, any opposition to the “Boris” government of fools would come from within the Conservative Party itself. So it is proving to be.

The public too are now, too late, awakening to the horror of the full uselessness of “Boris” Johnson. Yet he can only be (lawfully) removed by his own MPs, and they are very unlikely to do that at this stage.

Tweets seen, etc

In one part of his mind, “Boris”-idiot knows that the Underground is the best incubator that the Chinese virus could ever find. Another part of “Boris”, however, imagines that all those workers that have to resume (or continue to) work in London can just hail a taxi! Or perhaps bicycle, or stroll, to their work, as do Oxford students en route to lectures and tutorials.

“Boris” should be told that London workers of all kinds do not all live in the purlieus of the Palace of Westminster, or bicycle from Mayfair or Belgravia. Some come in from as far away as Didcot, Diss, Margate and the Isle of Wight! Not to mention North Finchley, Epping, Morden and Ealing

The tweet below caught my attention mainly because it is typical of the times: semi-literate, yet the tweeter is apparently a writer who has written or broadcast for BBC, Sky News, Guardian, New York Times etc…

As I have blogged before, forcing the public to wear absurd facemasks or scarves round the mouth or face will not only not do much (if anything) to stop the Chinese virus, but will be the biggest boon the shoplifters and other criminals have had for years. Eyewitness and cctv evidence will become almost useless, and people will look rather alike in many cases, so facilitating petty (and perhaps also serious) crime.

Evening foray

So to Waitrose. The police, even in this quiet corner (with apologies to Gogol’s Dead Souls) seem to have become much more active. A police jeep saw me and, though ahead of me just before I turned from one road to another, circled around by another route so that the police were behind me after a minute or two. Being rather intuitive, I had guessed from the start that that is what he or they would do, but (having a clear licence and the car insured and MOT-compliant), I could not be bothered to outwit them. In the end, the police followed me all the way to Waitrose in the nearby town, but did not bother to stop me after I turned into the store car park. Still, a sign of the times…

As to Waitrose itself, no obvious shortage of anything and, as on my previous visit, few shoppers, though this time none wearing those pathetic masks or wound-round scarves.

Recent tweets seen

Interesting tweet below, too!

and this (below):

I noticed that in someone, in either January or February (I forget which) for several days, and I believe that I myself may have caught this virus in early February but shown no symptoms at the time (despite being 63). I suppose that I shall never know.

“Furlough” scheme

The furlough payments scheme “should be extended”, it is said:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/12/extend-furlough-scheme-or-face-spiralling-job-losses-rishi-sunak-told

Why? It is not necessary once the absurd “lockdown” is lifted. The scheme costs £8 billion per month, almost as much as the entire NHS with its 2 million employees, which costs £11 billion a month.

It is suggested that the scheme might continue until September instead of end of June. Another £24 billion, almost as much as the wrongheaded HS2 project (in its entirety)! In fact, I would support the furlough extension if that meant that HS2 would be scrapped, but I doubt that ministers will do that. It would be too elegantly simple.

As for the idea floated around Westminster that employees might return part-time, and that the furlough payments be reduced accordingly, that idea would seem to have no logic at all behind it.

Kay Burley

I rarely bother with TV news these days. A kind of Soviet-style government mouthpiece, whatever the channel designation. However, I did see a few minutes of Sky News this [Tuesday] morning. Kay Burley interviewing Angela Rayner.

I do not have much time for Angela Rayner, but Kay Burley’s behaviour was extraordinary to those of us brought up to think that news presenters should be or at least seem “impartial”. To my mind, Kay Burley showed herself completely pro-Conservative Party, pro-Government. I am not talking about giving Angela Rayner a hard time as interviewee but Kay Burley simply shouting out her own opinions and refusing to leave open the possibility that the Government might have acted incompetently. In other words, she did not so much ask questions as demand that her view be accepted.

I have often seen Kay Burley cross the line into partisan territory. She was very hostile to Corbyn from 2015 to 2019, and totally in the pocket of the Jewish lobby; at least that was my strong impression. However, I always discounted the claims of Corbyn supporters that Kay Burley was biased in favour of the Conservative Party as such. No longer a question. She is.

Angela Rayner did try to remonstrate, mildly, with Kay Burley, about the latter’s behaviour in the interview, but to little effect. Indeed, Kay Burley hit back! This is what happens when fairly mediocre, not highly educated people, get jobs as news anchors, get paid a million a year or whatever, and then forget that they are only reporters or news facilitators, not active players. John Humphrys was another example.

Sanity breaks out here and there…

Coronavirus is not at epidemic levels in Britain, experts at Oxford University have said, with new figures showing that only a tiny proportion of the population is currently infected.

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that just 0.24 per cent of adults – approximately 136,000 people – have the virus. Separate surveillance by the Royal College of GPs indicates it may be even less. 

Figures released last week showed just 0.037 per cent of people have the virus…” [Daily Telegraph]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/11/coronavirus-no-longer-epidemic-uk-oxford-study-finds-cases-falling/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

Edwina Currie

Ghastly old Jewess Edwina Currie has apparently been on daytime TV, supporting the Government’s “policy” on “lockdown” etc. Poor Government!

https://twitter.com/lozhockers/status/1260106322701410304?s=20

https://twitter.com/BizPaul/status/1260106981609820161?s=20

Edwina Currie, like many Jews, especially women, “smiles”, or goes through the motions of what human beings do when they smile, when there is no actual reason to smile. I have never discovered why “they” do that. Like a nervous tic rather than any expression of humour or warmth.

As to Edwina Currie specifically, I remember well her overnight destruction of the UK egg market in 1988. My memory is not at all taxed. I remember that incident because I heard about it in specific circumstances that make it easy to recall. It was late at night and in December 1988, and I was at the Hotel Grand (now the Mercure Grand Warszawa) in Warsaw.

Ilustracja

I had just that evening arrived by train from Bielsko-Biala in the south of Poland. Outside, the snow lay heavy on the ground.

I turned on my radio and found the BBC World Service (which at the time was still worth listening to). The news from the UK had two main items: there had been a terrible train crash at Clapham, South London, with much loss of life; also, Edwina Currie, the government junior minister responsible for, inter alia, the egg industry, had said (wrongly) that most eggs in the UK were contaminated by salmonella. As a direct result of Edwina Currie’s mistake, 4 million hens were slaughtered.

Tweets seen

Ain’t that the truth?!” [above]. Now, every Tom, Dick and Sharon has a “degree” from some place or other, quite many have a “Master’s”, involving a 1-year course, which no-one ever fails; in fact at Oxford and Cambridge you get a “Master’s” degree merely on payment of a small sum, with no course requirement, work, or dissertation required!

I am not making that up. In fact, I recall that my then girlfriend, in the 1980s, was sent a letter from Cambridge University warning her that if she wanted to be able to put “M.A.” after her name, she would have to pay (I think) £35, because the time limit was approaching (as I seem to recall). She had graduated around 1971. The limit must have been 10 or 15 years, if there was a limit. Maybe the University just wanted the money.

https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/your-course/graduation-and-what-next/cambridge-ma

What a farce…

As for “academics”, “academia” in the wider sense is now full of fakes and simplistic ideologues such as the woman lecturer (I think from Southampton University), whose tweets I saw on Twitter recently, to the effect that books written by “Nazis” should be burned. These are among the gravediggers of European civilization. They must be stopped.

There are numerous “doctors” of this or that (esp. on Twitter) who actually use the title, despite not being medical doctors, academics in any formerly-accepted sense, or persons in either holy orders or scientific institutes. Infra dig, but that is what Britain today is like: just a bad joke.

Despite official figures (quite possibly inflated) showing that 30,000 or so people have died “of” (with) Coronavirus, i.e. about one person out of every 2,000 in the UK, and that only about 4 people (if that) out of every 10,000 are presently infected, the public panic has scarcely abated. Fear has been spread (by the Government, the Opposition, the NHS lobby, the msm etc), and it is now proving hard to rein back on that.

The “Great Replacement” continues…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8309529/Joy-52-migrants-saved-languishing-Greek-camps-flown-UK-start-afresh.html

More Hitchens tweets

This is key, but it is actually alarming that so many people, including those with “degrees” and recognized professional qualifications cannot see it. I had smoked salmon for breakfast this morning, and the weather became less cloudy. I do not imagine that the weather became less cloudy because I had smoked salmon for breakfast. It would have happened whether I had smoked salmon, devilled kidneys or raspberry pop-up tarts. cf. “lockdown” and Coronavirus.

Rishi Sunak and furlough

Sunak has extended the “furlough” scheme until October. A remarkable decision, and I think the wrong one. The right decision would have been to open up the economy completely or almost completely from this week or certainly by the end of the month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52634759

What has now been done is to say to at least 7 million employees and self-employeds, “stay on holiday until the Autumn” on what amounts —for many of them— on full pay, once the costs of simply being employed are taken away (eg transport to and from work).

Yes, others are “working from home”, either actually or notionally, while yet others are, whether as “key workers” or not, still working normally. However, a quarter of the total workforce are now as good as economically inactive until October or even November. The economic fallout will be massive, as will be the upfront costs of “furloughing” all those people: £8 BN x 7 months = £56 billion.

As Lord King, the former Governor of the Bank of England said today, the economy will not be damaged as much by the furlough programme costs (if only because the cost of State borrowings is very low at present and can be spread over long future periods) as it will be by the fact that a quarter of the workforce is not doing anything productive, and because companies on the edge before the “virus” struck are now insolvent but kept in suspended animation by “furlough” monies to employees, loans to companies from the State, and rent holidays (and/or suspension of rent default proceedings in the courts).

The furlough payments will keep up demand to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent, in that payments are capped at £2,500 per month.

The effect on the currency is as yet unknown. Other European (and yet other) countries have similar schemes, so there may well be relativity, but eventually the pound sterling must fall vis a vis most other currencies, thus fuelling inflation in the UK.

I have seen inflation of that type. It has political effects. I am not talking about the utterly mad hyperinflation of Germany in 1923 but a lesser, yet still fast, inflation. When I first went to Poland in 1988, the taxi drivers had a little sticker by the meter. You paid a multiple of what the meter said. When I was there in Summer 1988 (for a couple of months), the stickers read “x2” and then “x4”. When I returned, a few months later, the stickers read “x8”, then “x12”. The following year, the year when the whole Soviet and Eastern European socialist system started to collapse visibly, the stickers read “x40” and then, I think, “x200″…

For a foreigner (what some Germans of the post-WW2 occupation of Berlin called, in a mix of English and Russian, a “valuta vulture” , “valuta” being the Russian for “foreign currency”), the collapse of the Polish zloty in the late 1980s had selfish positive effects: I for example could take a taxi to whatever passed for a good hotel (when I was first in Poland, I was not staying in hotels), have a breakfast, get a taxi onward, and pay (including tips) about £1 or £2 for breakfast and taxis combined. That was not much even in 1988.

Anything produced in Poland could be bought for pennies in English or American currency. For example, I bought a few Polish vinyl records of symphonic music for about 10p or 20p each.

The drawback was that very little was for sale anyway. The usual local shops were not well-stocked. Anything imported had to be bought at hard-currency-only “PEWEX” (pron. “Pevex”) shops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex

Where did people get their dollars to spend at PEWEX? Mostly from the Polish diaspora, particularly the long-established Polish communities in the USA. Remittances to famly members.

One of Lenin’s probably apocryphal statements was “to destroy a country, first destroy its currency“. The fact is true, even if the attribution is not. Currency is a major factor of any state. States that do not have their own currency are joke states (eg Zimbabwe 2009-2019). States where the currency is very weak tend to be weak states (Weimar Germany in the early 1920s, Poland in the 1980s).

In Poland, the collapse of the zloty was not the cause of the collapse of the socialist system, but accompanied it, as did other trends, and the currency collapse was at least one cause of the collapse of “Polish” socialism.

The pound in 2020 or 2022 may not quite go the whole way of the Polish zloty of the 1980s, but “never say never”…

Image

What the government of fools has done, in effect, is declare a national holiday on full pay for millions of people. For a further 4 months. At the same time, the most egregious restrictions of the “lockdown” nonsense are to be relaxed (before the mob ignore them anyway…), so allowing all those people “furloughed” some freedom to enjoy their unexpected weeks and months of leisure.

 

Diary Blog, 10 May 2020

Yesterday evening, went out to Waitrose. First outing for 4 days. Roads fairly quiet but not empty. It was after 1900 hrs, though.

At Waitrose, the car park almost empty, though a source told me that a Tesco supermarket, in another and more populated area 21 miles away, had been packed earlier in the day. Different factors though: that other area is quite suburbanized, is on a major “A” road, the time of day was earlier, and of course Tesco is more popular than Waitrose anyway, being slightly cheaper.

At Waitrose, the Handmaid’s Tale militia (Waitrose “marshals”) were few, in fact I saw only three loitering outside or cleaning shopping trolleys. There have been as many as half a dozen in recent weeks. There was no line to get into the store; in fact there were almost no customers at all.

Inside, disappointed to see no last-minute offers at 10% or 5% of the usual price (I can be rather a scavenger), but for once no shortages. All the usual suspects were available: bread, dry pasta, rice, pasta sauce, even bleach. I think that the shopping public has decided that the “panic buy” emergency is at an end and so there is no need to join the throng. In any case, in my area, many people must be sitting on mountains of loo paper, kitchen roll, pasta and rice.

Still, there is still a background panicked atmosphere around. I saw one silly woman wearing a thick scarf very loosely wound round her mouth and neck. Very unlikely to make any difference whatsoever to getting or not getting the Chinese virus. Even more ludicrously, I saw another and even more silly woman driving out of the car park, alone in her car and wearing a face mask! So…she is afraid that she might transmit “the virus” to…herself? Or is she afraid that, somehow, the air that comes into the car might harbour “the virus”? Which is impossible.

Tweets seen

Some recent tweets by Peter Hitchens, who is worth reading because he is one of the few who has stood up against the Government-sponsored “virus” panic (etc) which has recently swept “the nation” (which latter does not exist any more, but let’s leave that aside).

“The virus that turned up late”

Covid-19 is no more than a nasty, but basically normal, viral respiratory infection, though you’ll be regarded rather as a mullah regards a blasphemer if you say so. Why is this?

After all: it is precisely because its symptoms seemed so similar to viral pneumonia that the initial outbreak in Wuhan was missed until the numbers built, and it is now clear that we have been missing Covid-19 cases diagnosed as pneumonia in Europe at least as far back as December, probably earlier. In the vernacular: it looks as though it was bubbling away for ages before we noticed.

and

There are really only two particularly unusual things about the Covid-19 epidemic: the timing of its arrival and the lockdown some countries declared. And if we ask “Covid, where is thy sting?”, it is lockdown that will sting: in the UK, the death-toll of people not turning up to hospital with cardiac issues (admissions are down 50% across the country) is now unmissable in the weekly non-Covid excess death figures published by the ONS, now running over 3,000 per week just for England and Wales. The downstream toll from missed cancer diagnoses (referrals are down 67%, as stressed by Professor Sikora) is heartbreak yet to come.

This is to say nothing of the toll on education, liberty and the economy. We’ve given up everything we should hold dear for a virus that just turned up three months later than similar viruses normally do.”

https://hectordrummond.com/2020/05/09/alistair-haimes-the-virus-that-turned-up-late/

Some of the comments appended to that blog post are also of interest:

It’s also a consequence of the media being increasingly dominated by young people, who thus have no sense of historical perspective. We see it in the climate change debate – weather events that are bog standard in any sort of medium to long term time span are immediately termed ‘unprecedented!’ by the media, whose attention span (and personal experience) hardly goes back more than a decade or so. Thus the idea that something that happened in the 1990s could be relevant to what is happening today would be laughed at.” [from above blog post comments section]

Life today driven by demands of the minority of vocal pathetic snowflakes’ demands for “no-risk”. Just look at the headline today about the Unions not wanting to go back to work until they ‘feel safe’. This is the language of infants.” [from above blog post comments section]

Three points. Lockdown started AFTER peak infection and peak hospital admissions. Continuing infections/deaths occuring despite weeks of lockdown because hot spots of infection unaffected by general population, they are in hospitals and care homes. Sweden, Japan, S Korea, Taiwan had no lockdown, considerably less deaths than UK.
Lockdown has had minimal effect on the normal bell curve of infection/deaths.” [[from above blog post comments section]

A “free country”?

Meanwhile, away from the toytown police state imposed on the British people, and in the real world:

Five boats carrying 82 migrants were intercepted in the English Channel on Saturday as people smuggling gangs stepped up their operations during the good weather conditions.”

“It means a total of 227 people have been brought from Calais to the south coast of England in 13 small boats within just two days.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/09/record-numbers-migrants-intercepted-cross-english-channel/

[Daily Telegraph]

My view about “lockdown”

It is clear that some countries which have had little or no “lockdown” have done much better than the UK in dealing with the Chinese virus, and have at least tried to save their economies from ruination; others, on far more strict “lockdown”, such as Italy and Spain, have done worse than the UK (per capita) and now face economic meltdown.

I blogged from the start that (as the UK Government said before crazed advisers caused it to go mad) the only known way to safeguard yourself from getting this virus is to keep thoroughly washing hands with soap and water (or gel, if in transit). The other “measures taken” have been driven by public relations rather than any scientific facts. I mean the “2-metre social distancing”, the facemasks, the “stay home” mantra. As to those three aspects, it may be that a tiny number of people have been protected by such measures, but at what cost?!

Meanwhile, the London Underground has stayed open, though (you couldn’t make it up!) with reduced numbers of carriages, thus making the conditions even more friendly to “the virus” (and other viruses and bacteria). And let’s not forget the influxes into the UK: air passengers allowed in freely, and migrant-invaders “caught” in the Channel or on beaches, then directed to free shelter, food and cash, and allowed to mingle freely with the unwilling host population.

As for “Protect the NHS”, well the sacred cow has been protected, but at the cost of thousands of lives: those often elderly people bundled up and shunted off back home (to often-inadequate home care), sent back to residential care homes where they and other residents have been dying in droves, while the “clap for NHS” rabbits have been virtue-signalling on cue every week (though not as many ever did it as the propaganda would suggest, and the display has almost died out now; where I live, it was always only a tiny minority doing it).

Then there are the uncounted thousands who have died and will die because “lockdown” has delayed or cancelled consultations, treatment, surgical operations etc.

One may laugh at Boris-idiot and his “government of fools”, but these opportunists are killing people, by their half-measures but also by their over-reaction and by their sheer ineptitude and negligence.

I do not think that “lockdown” is very useful, and in any case I think that the Chinese virus is far more widespread than at first thought. It probably started to infect people in the UK in January or even last December. Neither do I think that the “social distancing” measures are hugely useful. What I do think useful are closures of crowded nightclubs, pubs, busy cafes, sports venues, pop concerts and (which was never done) closure of public transport in crowded cities like London. Places where people are jammed together and may breathe over each other.

My bottom line? Whatever the truth of any of the above, either way, the fact is that “lockdown” (especially) has huge economic effects, despite and even to some extent because of the ameliorating measures put in place by Rishi Sunak.

The Government has scared people silly, unnecessarily. Now, the public is only gradually getting used to the idea of not being under a kind of house arrest, only gradually getting used to the idea of going back to their —in many cases, boring— jobs. The 80%-of-pay furlough payments (capped at £2,500 per month) add up to 100% of pay for those making under £36,000 a year and who pay for transport to and from their usual work.

Apart from the niggling restrictions, the civil rights aspects and the sheer boredom, the “lockdown” has, thanks to furlough payments, not been too bad for many. However, the Government simply cannot indefinitely bribe much of the public not to work, not at that level.

For me, that is the bottom line, beyond all of the medical, scientific and other arguments around “lockdown”: it simply cannot be maintained endlessly, because it cannot be paid for.

Many have accepted “lockdown”, as a temporary measure, because they are not suffering financially. Indeed, that is what the furlough payments (etc) were designed to do. Furlough alone is costing £8 billion per month. By way of comparison, the NHS, with 2 million employees, costs £11 billion per month to run.

I doubt that the Government will authorize furlough payments after the end of June. Maybe until the end of July. Not later. Then those furloughed will either return to work or, in many cases, go onto the”Universal Credit” dole.

We do not know yet the full economic cost of the Government’s imposition of a toytown police state. Everything has been frozen: redundancies, sackings, domestic property evictions, commercial property legal actions for recovery of rent; and so on. We do know that the “ruthless entrepreneurs” and “hardnosed private enterprise” chancers, like Branson, have all been demanding, or begging for, money from Government. Many will beg without satisfaction.

Airlines (and so airports) may be uneconomic for months, for years. Ground support companies as well. Retailers may soon be failing by the hundred, by the thousand, not only from “lockdown” itself but because people will have less money to spend and may prefer to spend what they do have safely, via the Internet. Fancy a holiday in Spain or Italy? I doubt it. Not for a year or so, anyway. Ferry companies will also struggle. The list continues.

Quelle surprise…

Nine in 10 people do not want the lockdown to ease immediately – with 50 per cent happy to stay off work if they are getting paid or receiving government subsidies.

As Boris Johnson prepares to unveil his ‘exit strategy’, a poll found just 4 per cent believe the draconian restrictions should start to be lifted now, and another 7 per cent were not sure.” [Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8304983/Nine-10-Britons-NOT-want-lockdown-end-immediately.html

So half the workforce are “happy” to stay off work so long as they are still getting paid? Well, there’s a shock (not).

The Daily Mail graphic is interesting, if accurate:

A poll found just 4 per cent believe the draconian restrictions should start to be lifted now, and another 7 per cent were not sure

So hardly any of the public (4%) want an end to the “lockdown” nonsense immediately (well, it’s not the first time I have stood as part of a small but worthy minority), more than a quarter think that the end of this month would be best, but a fifth think that the end of June would be best (!), while nearly a quarter prefer the end of July or even later!

I doubt whether many presently content to sit at home indefinitely, or at least for another month, so long as they still get paid, are aware of the probably lasting damage that this is doing to the UK economically. They will only notice it when it hits home in terms of no job, no home, no future for their children etc. By then, the virus may be in the past, but the negative effects of “lockdown” will be very much around.

Boris-idiot’s speech

Sitting in my car earlier, I heard a Radio 4 broadcast of a 10-minute speech by the person currently posing as Prime Minister. I should say that it was somewhere between mediocre and poor. A half-hearted attempt to reprise Churchill in 1940 fell very flat. Johnson called Coronavirus “the most vicious threat to the UK I have seen in my lifetime”. So it seems that the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War passed “Boris” by?

Johnson seemed overwhelmed. This was not the easy prime minister stuff he wanted to do. He gave the impression of being not quite big enough for the role. His speech was pedestrian, forced, unconvincing. An overgrown schoolboy pretending and posing and whistling into a cold wind.

As for Johnson’s movement on “lockdown”, too little by far. He also went through a list of matters which only served to underline his incompetence and that of his Cabinet.

What Johnson does not seem to understand is that people are not waiting for his permission to do things such as drive places, walk through parks or national parks, or on beaches. Or maybe he does understand that he, the Government and the toytown police are losing control. His remedy? To make “lockdown” easier before people just ignore it.

Oh well, at least that stupid “Stay at home; Protect the NHS; Save lives” slogan is now dumped. Dump the weekly “clapathon” too!

Van der Valk

Another episode of the new Van der Valk. Slick compared to the mid-1970s original, a more developed storyline (in 2 hours compared to the original one hour), but somehow slightly missing the heavy Dutch atmosphere of the original 1970s stories.

In fact, I have just read on Wikipedia that the 1970s original was revived in 1991-92: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Valk

I did not know that the series continued after the 1970s. As to that Dutch atmosphere, both productions were/are British, though filmed on location. I myself was first in Amsterdam in 1975, and made subsequent visits in the 1980s.

One aspect that seemed to be unnecessary in the new production was the introduction of a young black detective in a semi-comic role. Out of place.

Overall, I should award the new production 4 out of 5 stars. It is well done for the most part, though it suffers from the same problem as the first Van der Valk, namely the characterization of the title character. Somehow insubstantial or vacant. What makes him tick? Compare Van der Valk to Inspector Morse, Lewis, Endeavour, Wallander etc. Point made, I think.

Tweets seen

Seems that I am not the only one appalled by how out of his depth Boris Johnson seemed today:

https://twitter.com/alan0161/status/1259549326671597569?s=20

https://twitter.com/SkyeCity_/status/1259549345755652098?s=20

https://twitter.com/cononeilluk/status/1259548231635255296?s=20

and to date there are 117,000 more tweets in the same vein.

Diary Blog, 8 April 2020

“VE-Day”

I expect a huge amount of System propaganda today about the 75th anniverssary of VE-Day. BBC Radio 4 Today is going full Soviet Radio. It is like living in a parallel universe. In the BBC/Sky/msm universe, Britain “fought for freedom and won” in 1939-45, and today the Queen will “lead the nation” in a 2-minute silence. There will be speeches, RAF fly-pasts etc.

To a large extent, it is the Jewish lobby that now promotes all these contrived anniversaries. The 75th or 80th or 85th anniversary of whatever. It gives “them” the opportunity to yet again talk about “holocaust” etc. The line of travel is anniversary/WW2/Hitler/”holocaust”.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the UK government of fools has put almost the entire nation under house arrest, even calling it “lockdown”, a term previously used mainly in American and other prisons.

Leaving that aside, only on State-mouthpiece BBC (and the other System msm) will “the nation” (which scarcely exists now, as such) be waiting agog for the Queen’s speech, or taking part in any “2-minute silence”. In reality, hardly anyone will listen, let alone stand silent, though no doubt the msm can be relied upon to produce suitable photos or film clips.

Tweets

That graph says it all. The virus wave, in reality, peaked in February, a month before the “lockdown” nonsense was imposed. The biggest fall was when the “wash hands” propaganda was launched in early March. That propaganda or advice was the best and in fact the only useful advice offered to the public. The “stay at home” advice/threat was and is all but useless (as of course is the “protect NHS/save lives” stuff, and the weekly social coercion of the “clapathon”).

She is right. Boris-idiot is to a large extent a creation of a decadent and “tolerant” mass media. Inside the onion rings of rote-learned Latin and Greek, the Eton and Oxford polish, the public speaking skill etc is…nothing. There is nothing in the middle. Boris-idiot has no real programme that he wishes to implement. All he wanted to do was become Prime Minister, because it is the highest office the UK can bestow. Now he has achieved that, and so has nowhere to go, nothing to do.

https://twitter.com/hector_drummond/status/1258503193157394441?s=20

The facile answer to that tweet would be “well, no-one knew that a virus emergency would emerge”; but that simply begs the question as to whether these measures were necessary and/or proportionate. I think not.

This tweet, below, lays it on the line:

Boris-idiot, posing as PM, has messed up the Coronavirus situation in every possible way. Those to whom he delegated power, notably the half-Jew Raab, and little Matt Hancock, have also messed up. “Boris” can use his supposed Coronavirus illness to escape some of the consequences on an alibi basis (“I was in hospital and not in charge at the time”) though that hardly washes, in view of the fact that most of the big decisions were taken by Boris Johnson and before he became unwell.

He is now back at No.10 and still will not admit that he was wrong or wrongly advised; he will still not drop the “lockdown”, because it would mean losing face. He is being supported by the Twitter mob, much of it, and by the Gadarene swine of the msm.

Result? Well, even the Bank of England is now predicting a situation not far short of economic collapse, at least in the short term. That is not caused by “Coronavirus”, but by government policies.

Basic Income

I have supported “Basic Income” for years. In fact, I first conceived the idea in the 1980s, when thinking about the future direction of society. Others, with more appropriate letters after their names, were working on it at the same time or later, it seems. Now, it may be that Basic Income is an idea whose time has come, or will come soon:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/universal-basic-income-finland-trial-scotland-ubi-coronavirus-poll-a9504576.html

A few tweets around “VE-Day”

Most tweets seen by me were, as expected, replete with ignorance. Stuff about how “evil” National Socialism was, and how good were not only the Western Allies but the Soviet forces, including the Red Army pillagers and rapists. Such is the ignorance shown (especially on Twitter) that I would not bother to argue with it even had I still a Twitter account (the Jew lobby had me expelled in 2018).

I do not think that I shall bother to repost many ignorant tweets even to laugh at them, but here’s one, anyway:

https://twitter.com/Em_ca23/status/1258715897998520320?s=20

The ignorant young woman above has, on her Twitter profile,  “#law Graduate #LLM #LPC student #Lawyer wannabe. #feminist ~Ally ~ writer sometimes ~cynical always. #eurovision fan ~ Wine aficionado – Coffee Freak“.

So a trainee solicitor or barrister…good grief!

She thinks that “The only reason why WW2 was a success is because it was a European and common effort against the Nazis’ 3rd Reich.” Where does one start? Even leaving aside the evils of the Soviet Union under Stalin, there is the fact that much of Europe was either on the German side or neutral.

On the German side, inter alia (and taking only Europe into account), were Austria, Hungary, the Baltic states, Finland, former Yugoslav state Croatia, ex-Czechoslovak Slovakia, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and, in effect, Vichy France. Neutral were Spain, Portugal, Eire (Ireland), Switzerland, Sweden, and small states such as Liechtenstein (and the Vatican).

Individuals from all over Europe, including the states ranged against Germany, and including small numbers from the UK, fought on the German side. Members of the Legion of St. George, from the UK, were among the last few valiant defenders of Berlin in 1945, as the rapists and pillagers of the Red Army broke through the last lines of defence.

The Jewish element has poisoned the minds of many, especially in the past few decades, via msm, fake-history feature films, the whole “holocaust industry” in publishing, wrongheaded and/or biased teaching in academia (secondary and tertiary education).

Relatively few see the Third Reich or National Socialism straight. However, only political Twitter, with dissidents removed, really cares much about it all. Tomorrow, it will all be forgotten again, until the (((msm))) finds another anniversary or event for the “useful idiots” to emote about…

Finally, the young woman tweeting above thinks (because told so) that “WW2 was a success“. Well, if you think that the deaths of 80 million people, the smashing down of much of Europe, the misery caused by the war, the post-1945 collapse of European rule in much of Africa and Asia (with consequent wars, civil wars, wildlife destruction, environmental disaster etc) was “a success”. That’s even leaving aside the drab 44 years of Soviet rule, in effect, across Eastern and Central Europe, which lasted until 1989.

I don’t expect much now from most British people in the way of independent thought, reflection, even basic knowledge or logic. That way, I don’t get too disappointed. Usually.

A few pictures from that Third Reich that that young woman is sure had to go…

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[above: a woman talks to a German soldier —unarmed soldier, off-duty— in occupied Paris in 1940 or 1941]

bq-5c0512d0e024c

[above: a gendarme salutes a German officer by the Arc de Triomphe]

BqhtYX6IcAA_3Lk.jpg large

BpkHifIIgAAYhu3

CkduyY_XIAABu3j

42adfe6c2eac6a04

[above: SS man, with others (one probably Latvian), plays with a kitten]

C09oNwoWIAAVO_x

dresden1945

[above: Dresden 1945, destroyed, together with much of the civilian population, by British bombers. American fighters, flying low the next day, strafed defenceless civilians, including women with children]…

Berlin1945

[above: devastated Berlin, 1945. The photo shows the central Unter den Linden area]

More “words of wisdom” from tweeter “Em”:

That is the semi-literate level of someone in Britain, in 2020, someone with a law degree, a Master’s degree (joke though that usually is) and reading for either the solicitors’ profession or the Bar…It is not a matter of shaking one’s head at one individual but of noting one person as typical of literally thousands of others.

Tweeter “Em” has the excuse of relative youth. What is the excuse of such as James O’Brien?

Here below, Peter Hitchens deplores the outbreak of war in 1914:

https://unherd.com/2019/12/the-world-we-lost-will-never-return/

He does not think that the outbreak of war in 1939, and in particular the declaration of war on Germany by Britain and France, was wrong. He is wrong.

Ah, here is faux-revolutionary fake Owen Jones (part-Jew, btw, for those unaware):

So Owen Jones does not want debate…OK…

[my blog from January 2019 about Owen Jones: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/a-brief-word-about-owen-jones/]

Here is another who thinks that Sovietism was better than German National Socialism. An idiot, in other words:

So another one who believes only in force…OK…

This comic, below, makes a good point, amusingly…

1945 is now 75 years distant. Scarcely anyone who actually fought in it or was an adult civilian at the time is still alive. In Britain, “the War” still overshadows everything. Even the problems with a virus are referred back to “the War”! They are fighting on the beaches…against Coronavirus! How incredibly puerile… What they should be doing is fighting the migration-invasion, which is indeed, in part, quite literally “on the beaches”, mainly of Kent and Sussex. About 200 invaders a day now…idiotic Priti Patel is very quiet, for once. Useless.

Back to 2020, and away from fantasy 1945…

Peter Hitchens is basically an intellectual. He thinks or perhaps hopes that presenting facts, logic, statistics will convince people that the “lockdown” is a disastrous mistake that should be ended at once. The problem is that most people, including many who think themselves very clever, have only a thin veneer of intellect over the seething mass of emotion and will. The “lockdown” was accompanied by propaganda designed to affect the public on the emotional level, and by using emotional hooks, in particular that of fear. As Hitchens himself notes, the government of fools now finds that its own present desire to end “lockdown” (before the economy is destroyed almost totally) is thwarted by the same fear that the government itself has engendered!

The public, or about half of the public, are not willing to leave their houses because they are afraid despite the fact that there is actually no reason for at least 80%-90% of the public to be afraid! Most people, even if infected, show no symptoms, or few, and require no professional medical intervention. So far, fatalities have been, at highest, 1 in every 2,000 people in the UK.

There are other reasons why the public is not more keen to end “lockdown”. Some people live in pleasant large houses, with grounds or gardens. Some have swimming pools and tennis courts. I daresay that that description fits many of the houses of those droning dully every day on the BBC, Sky News, ITV News etc. For people in that position, and with no shortage of money (the msm is still paying 100% of pay; the same goes for MPs…), the situation is a kind of Oxfordian “Long Vac”. In fact, these days, for the affluent, with the Internet and its possibility to order food, wine, whatever, and to have almost anything delivered easily, life can seem like an endless Summer, albeit slightly restricted.

For others, not so fortunate as the above, there are other incentives: “furlough” pay at 80% of pay (with £2,500 per month cap). Many only make that much, or less, anyway, and the 20% cut is offset by the lack of need to pay for commute transport etc.

Only a small proportion worry about the civil rights aspect (the government dictating that the people stay in house arrest until further order, the antics of the toytown police and so on). That parallels all dictatorships. Only the few are dissidents. The dissidents are harassed, even imprisoned or killed (not yet in the UK, but who can say what it might be like in later years?), but if they survive they can become the next leadership cadre, as happened after socialism fell across Europe in and after 1989.

Amusing exchange…

I see that Dusty Springfield is trending on Twitter. She had an unforgettable voice, and was of course famous during my 1960s childhood.

The criminal Bar seems to have hit rock bottom…

(at least in the lower ranks)

Magistrates’ courts work never paid large amounts, but I can recall getting £5,000 for a week in City of London Magistrates’ Court in 1993. It could not happen now, partly because “old-style” committals (extended committal proceedings for trial in the Crown Court, in that case at the Old Bailey) no longer exist and because all criminal legal aid amounts have declined greatly in real terms.

Fees like that were rare (for me, at least) even in 1993 (part of why I remember it!).

Another great singer

A peaceful tomorrow may be an optimistic thought, but who knows?

Diary Blog, 1 May 2020

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.

Denmark and the Czech Republic have said partially easing their lockdowns has not led to a surge in new coronavirus infections” [Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/danes-and-czechs-say-easing-lockdowns-has-produced-no-covid-19-surge

More from the minor academic enablers of the new UK toytown police state

Keeping the over-50s in isolation longer and requiring people to prove their age when out and about is ‘the safest way out of lockdown’, researchers claim.

A Warwick University study found that a ‘rolling age-release strategy’ was the best option to end the lockdown introduced to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The strategy proposed by researchers is based on the fact that death rates from COVID-19 among 50-year-olds are 20 times higher than deaths among 20-year-olds. 

Study authors wrote that that police officers would have to be given the power to fine those caught breaking the age rule to ensure it was followed.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8273135/Over-50s-kept-coronavirus-lockdown-longer.html

The sheer cheek of the bastards! Everyone over 50 to be placed under house arrest “for their own good”, supposedly! It’s about time for there to be a national revolution in this country, to recover proper civil rights for British people, not the fake version peddled for 30 years. First up against the wall to be fake “experts” and minor official bullies but, even before these, those who make careers and money out of pretending to have the right to rule.

If anything like the measures proposed in the Warwick University study were implemented, the present government of idiots would do what Lenin, Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Margaret Thatcher failed to do, i.e. rouse the British people from their torpor, get them up on their feet and away from their (increasingly-Soviet style) TV boredom, and onto the streets.

Oh, look! The toytown police are at it again!

“An impromptu classical orchestra was shut down after police feared it would cause quarantined neighbours to flout lockdown measures amid the coronavirus outbreak.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8272681/Police-close-family-string-quartet-playing-classical-music-neighbours.html

Reality

The UK is about to hit an economic reef that will knock the stuffing out of the present system. Millions on the dole, millions in unsustainable mortgage debt and, very likely and before long, a house price crash and millions of mortgage-holders in negative equity.

I apprehend that, before very long, even the compliant serf-mob “clapping for the NHS” etc will be rooting out their pitchforks.

Tweets seen

https://twitter.com/BangoBilly/status/1256126668298747904?s=20

Perhaps I should (not for the first time) explain why I have been republishing so many of the tweets of Peter Hitchens. I do not agree with everything that he tweets or writes, especially about society generally, but as far as the Coronavirus situation, “crisis” and panic is concerned, he has been and is overwhelmingly right, in my view. It is therefore easier to republish his tweets than to write effectively the same views anew.

If anyone wants to see my assessment of Hitchens generally, here is my blog post from a year ago:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/

More tweets

38 MILLION unemployed in the USA! Already. Here in the UK, the policy is not identical. We have the “kick the can down the road” “furlough” policy. That ends in June. Will the government continue it? The costs are enormous. However, many of those furloughed will find, in all likelihood, that they have no jobs to which to return once the wrongheaded “lockdown” is lifted. The same will be true of the very small business operators.

Bloomberg and other organizations say that UK unemployment will exceed the 12% that the Thatcher government achieved or suffered in 1984. The money received by (and by any other word) dole claimants in 2020 is far less in real terms than it was in 1984, thanks to Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, the Jew “lord” Freud etc. One sees huge discontent ahead.

As I predicted about 2 months ago, the “recovery” will not be the “V” type predicted by the pathetic Office of Budget Responsibility but more like an “L”-shaped non-recovery. Britain’s biggest trading partner is Germany, followed by the USA, as far as I am aware. Both are being badly hit economically.

biggesttradingpartners

[above: biggest trading partners in geographical Europe. See how many have Germany as their biggest partner; over 20 countries]

More tweets

Facemasks

Wearing facemasks or scarves impacts little on the transmission of “the virus”, though it may protect the odd person from being sneezed on; that’s true. As against that, again we see huge disproportion (as with the “lockdown”): millions forced to do something with the supposed aim of protecting a few, despite little evidence that it works. Steamroller going over any reasonable idea of civil or individual rights, too.

As I blogged before, the criminals will love this! Perfect cover and disguise. Eyewitness evidence even less reliable than usual; cctv far less useful to police and prosecutors. Not only because the alleged perpetrators will have been wearing masks or scarves but because everyone else in the area will have been! Perfect conditions for “reasonable doubt” (assuming that the police can identify a plausible defendant in the first place).

David Icke

I have never met David Icke, though I heard him speak once (at Wigmore Hall, Marylebone, sometime in the early 1990s, I think). He used to follow my Twitter account, before the Jews had me expelled, and he follows very few people, so he cannot be bad! Anyway, (((they))) are trying to shut him up by taking away his online platforms. Facebook has now censored Icke permanently. See the tweet by Jewish Zionist Rachel Riley, below:

Still clapping for NHS?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8274403/Whistleblower-claims-elderly-Covid-19-patients-sent-die-care-homes.html

End the “lockdown” now!

https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1256268332732428291?s=20

Tweets seen

This amused me. It’s so true…

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This (below) is also very true, but is far less amusing…

A few late tweets by Hitchens with which I agree

Diary Blog, 27-28 April 2020

Well, the Coronavirus continues to decline (in reality), but the “this is a war, Boris-idiot is our great leader and we are all in it together to defeat the virus” nonsense is, if anything, being promoted even harder, though there is an obviously-growing dissent as well.

Police speak to sunbathers as they patrol Greenwich Park.

[above: police nuisance harasses and lectures a young couple minding their own business in Greenwich Park][Daily Telegraph]

Boris-idiot himself is back posing as Prime Minister and, predictably, has taken the easy road of continuing to impose the “lockdown”. No matter the economic damage. No matter the social damage both to individuals and to institutions. No matter the evidence against it.

The police are still enforcing ridiculous so-called “rules” that make no sense:

Ken Marsh, chair of the Met Police Federation, said the force need clearer guidance over what is and isn’t allowed during the lockdown. He told The Sun : “Why is it OK to queue with hundreds outside a B&Q but not to sit on a blanket in a park well away from other people?” [Daily Mirror]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coronavirus-lockdown-rules-make-no-21932799

Nightingale hospitals

The decision to open the temporary “Nightingale” hospitals was probably the right one, and the results in terms of construction and fitting-out were impressive for such a brief time, meaning the short time between the decision having been made and the places being ready. However, they now stand as proof that the Coronavirus situation has peaked in the UK.

The London Nightingale, with capacity for 4,000 patients at once, has only admitted about 40 patients altogether, over 3 weeks, and is said to have only about 20 left now, most having recovered and been discharged.

The latest figures say that 51 patients were treated in its first 3 weeks: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52448982

Several other Nightingales have either not been opened officially because of lack of demand, or have closed after having opened with much fanfare.

The death rate in the UK from the virus (supposedly) has fallen sharply, as it has across Europe. The deaths being seen now are probably mostly of people infected as long ago as February.

Boris Johnson: “the nation is starting to “wrestle” the “invisible mugger” that is Covid-19 “to the floor” – adding: “We are beginning to turn the tide“. [Mirror]

Boris-idiot is clueless. An Israeli expert who seems to know a great deal more than those advising the hopeless UK government has said that measures taken in various countries have varied, but that the virus travels through a cycle or wave lasting about 70 days, whatever measures are taken.

The UK government has half-trashed the economy already, and for what?

  • Schools are shut despite the fact that hardly any children under 10 get infected or at least show any symptoms; children and young people are generally little affected;
  • Very few people under 40 are affected badly enough to need medical help (example: Carrie Symonds, Boris Johnson’s fiancee);
  • Professor Keith Neal, an expert in Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Nottingham, explains coronavirus doesn’t appear to affect children under 10 – so they might be first to return. He also explains evidence has not actually revealed kids pose a spreading risk.” [Daily Mirror] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/what-new-normal-could-look-21935648
  • “Lockdown” has had, in reality, little effect: “So it looks like the virus had a fairly wide spread in Great Britain very, very early in this epidemic.

  • The 2 metre/6ft “social distancing” mandated is a purely arbitrary distance decided upon by civil servants.

What do we know about protection from Coronavirus?

Speaking in practical terms, that

  • Frequent washing of hands and lower forearms with soap and water (or gel, if in transit) gives quite good protection, and anyway the best protection available;
  • Avoid hot crowded places where people breathe or sneeze etc over each other;
  • Avoid incubator-places such as London Underground trains and stations; nightclubs and pubs too (now closed anyway);
  • “Social distancing” is pointless beyond a few feet distance; 3 feet is OK in most instances;
  • Face masks are only useful for doctors, nurses, dentists, barbers etc;
  • Preventing people from sunbathing, walking, driving around in cars etc is just silly and has no effect on Coronavirus.

Peter Hitchens

Peter Hitchens’ blog republishes his recent Mail on Sunday column. I think that it is worth copying some of it to this page:

I have come to hate this beautiful weather, the loveliest spring for 50 years. I long to wake up to a filthy morning of dirty grey skies and miserable rain, like the one Tennyson described when he wrote ‘ghastly, thro’ the drizzling rain, on the bald street, breaks the blank day’. This is because I think the British people are lost in an unreal, sunshiny dreamtime of delusion, seeing the current crisis as a sort of holiday after which they can all amble off back to the world. 

They once knew a world that died forever some time ago. I am reminded of John Wyndham’s terrifying science fiction novel The Day Of The Triffids, in which everyone is captivated by an amazing, spectacular meteor shower – and all those who watch it late into the night, oohing and aahing with delight, wake up the next morning permanently blind. 

Except, in this case, we will all be permanently less free and permanently poorer. And that will, of course, include the sacred NHS, which the nation love-bombs every Thursday night but which is already so threadbare that it cannot properly equip its doctors and nurses. Just wait and see how much worse this gets in the coming era of post-shutdown austerity.

Not to mention all the various zealots and fanatics who already see this new world as an opportunity to impose their various dogmas and fads on us. I won’t dwell yet again on the damage the Government has already done, and which deepens every day. I only say that without serious and angry opposition, this will only get worse. This clueless Cabinet is motivated only by fear. 

People who strove all their lives for office now have no idea what to do with the powers they thought they wanted, and are terrified of the responsibilities that came with them. They do not understand what they are doing and are not in charge of their own destiny.

And until they are afraid of the wrath of the voters, or perhaps of the courts, they will continue to hide in their bunker, biting their nails and wondering how to get out of the mess they panicked themselves into a month ago. They cannot admit they gravely overestimated the danger of the virus, and gravely underestimated the damage they would do to the economy.

Are there any good aspects to the situation?

  • Animals and birds are being helped by the fall-off in human activities;
  • Seas are being polluted less, for the moment;
  • Little Greta Nut has been pushed into irrelevance and off the front pages, in fact out of the news altogether.

Can’t think of anything else…

The clueless Government (and Opposition)

The Government should have kept most shops, businesses, schools and recycling centres open. It should not have prevented people doing things that certainly have no effect on transmission: walking in parks, on beaches etc; driving or riding around.

The results of the extreme “lockdown” will not become fully apparent until later in the year. Huge dole queues, businesses going bust all over the place, an even greater rollout of the poverty caused by “Conservative” governments (mainly) over the past decade or so. Also, the increase in deaths from other serious conditions.

Britain 2020

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/heartbreaking-reality-poverty-stricken-children-21656083

London 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/27/london-coronavirus-sacked-hospitality-workers-sleeping-rough

Free speech in the UK

I have blogged before about those “alt-Right” wastes of space: “Prison Planet” Watson, “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin; Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson too. Pro-Israel, pro-Jew lobby etc. Just completely pointless politically and ideologically.

Back, inevitably, to the Coronavirus…

The tweet by “Sharon”, below, is of interest, mainly because it typifies the unthinking Twitterati, the “people should drive at 10 mph; it’s worth it, if it saves even one life” bleat. The bleat can be made more emoting (not emotional…emoting) yet by saying “child’s life” or “mother and child” (fill in other possibilities and tick box…).

In fact, it is instructive to read some of the tweets by the extreme pro-“lockdown” Twitterati. Apart from calling those with dissident views “morons”, “c*nts” etc, these types have obviously not really thought it through: they accept the official narrative, including the “lockdown saves lives” nonsense. They no doubt all “clap for the NHS” without really thinking why that is necessary or even desirable, and they imagine that the UK can simply shut down and live more or less normally “off its hump” for months or even years.

Twitter is, of course, now the home of the terminally out-of-touch. Twitter thought that Hillary Clinton would beat Trump, and that the Remain side would win the 2016 EU Referendum (easily), to name just two prediction errors. Now, Twitter thinks that Coronavirus affects everyone equally (patently not the case), that “lockdown” is essential, as is “clapping for the NHS” (which must be worshipped, whether in success or failure) and not leaving your home until Boris-idiot says so.

Actually, one of the most amazing aspects to all this is to see how compliant are the pseudo-socialists on Twitter. They are willing to say that the Government should have spent more on the NHS since 2010 (despite the fact that funding is by no means the only problem in the NHS), but are unwilling to say that the present Government has made an egregious and massive over-reactive error in dealing with this virus.

Another aspect is that the extreme Twitterati say that anyone who has seen through the “lockdown” scam is so evil that they, if suffering from Coronavirus (or anything else?) should not be afforded medical help. The same sort of thinking that leads some (even some doctors in the NHS!) to say that smokers and drinkers or the very fat should not be helped by the NHS, because their sufferings might have been “self-inflicted”. Strange, they never say that about, say, HIV/AIDS “volunteers”, blacks and browns carrying more traditional sexual diseases, or even drug abusers seeking “rehab”…

In fact, those Twitterati who want people to obey every word of Boris-idiot, Raab or little Matt Hancock are by and large the same sort that voted Remain in 2016 because Big Parent EU can look after (they foolishly imagine) their civil rights, workplace rights etc. It is a kind of socio-political infantilism.

Talking about little Matt Hancock, he was totally thrown by the not-difficult questions from the public at the news conference on Tuesday. Like a rabbit in the headlights. He just gabbled nonsense and fell back on the pathetic slogan of these times, “Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives”. Wrongheaded nonsense.

More tweets

Stasi Britain, 2020…

https://twitter.com/WatersideCops/status/1254080422469828610?s=20

One of the most striking aspects of the “lockdown” nonsense has been to notice how very enthusiastically many members of the public have “collaborated” with the police by fingering their neighbours and others.

We were told for years about how,”had Germany invaded”, the British would have not only “fought on the beaches” but later engaged in a sabotage and terror/guerrilla war spearheaded by a stay-behind secret army and supported by the whole nation. Complete and utter fantasy.

I have no idea whether the fantasy of a WW2 Britain fighting secretly after German invasion sprang from the febrile mind of Churchill alone, or whether lower-ranking figures had the idea. People such as Ian Fleming, who was appointed as male PA to the Director of Naval Intelligence, and then “commissioned” as a naval officer (before long, Lt. Commander) without ever having had any naval training. Neither had Fleming any experience or knowledge of intelligence work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming#Education_and_early_life

George Orwell noted that the British might have collaborated obediently under German rule, and that was certainly the case, overall, in the occupied Channel Islands during 1940-45, as was also the case in France (despite the ahistorical propaganda now put out about the “Resistance”).

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[above: Parisian gendarme salutes German officer by the Arc de Triomphe, 1941]

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[above: a Parisienne talks to a German soldier during the Occupation]

A Luftwaffe officer speaks with a British policeman in St Helier ...

[above: German Luftwaffe officer talks to local policeman, St. Helier, Jersey, Sept. 1940]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3291671/Pictures-Jersey-1943-Britain-looked-like-Nazis.html

In fact, in Germany itself, the Gestapo, which was in fact rather a small organization, contrary to the popular view, had only a few staff in most cities and towns. Records often did not survive the war, but those that did indicate a small staff, reliant on a fairly small paid-informer contingent, and secret or not-secret denunciation by members of the public. e.g. the Lower Rhine area, with 4 million inhabitants, had 281 staff in all. Quite large cities such as Frankfurt had only 20: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo#Population_ratios,_methods_and_effectiveness

The Gestapo was often overwhelmed by the amount of unsolicited denunciation it received. I was interested to read recently that several UK police forces during the Coronavirus situation have had the same problem: hundreds or thousands of denunciations, as in “my neighbours go sunbathing locally”…

Incidentally, the amateur secret army Churchill set up in 1940 would have lasted, probably, about a year before its active members were all shot or deported East.

Final thought: the whole discussion about whether or not there would ever have been a “British Resistance” (I doubt it) and as to how long it might survive if it ever had existed (a year, at maximum, is my guess), is anyway a pointless one. There never was a serious plan to invade mainland Britain. “Operation Sealion” (Unternehmen Seelöwe) was a typically detailed OKW (German Army High Command) contingency plan which was never going to happen, if only because the Germans lacked serious carrying capacity (barges, landing craft, ships).

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion#Background

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion#Chances_of_success

“British secret army”: “Service in the Auxiliary Units was expected to be highly dangerous, with a projected life expectancy of just twelve days for its members.

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

Tweets seen

https://twitter.com/InProportion2/status/1254901600881201154?s=20

https://twitter.com/NeuroNerd78/status/1254890858157129729?s=20

https://twitter.com/InProportion2/status/1254904363660828672?s=20

https://twitter.com/InProportion2/status/1254544775820296192?s=20

Contrast

I might not agree with every aspect of the American cartoon below, but it is certainly on the right track:

Image

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[above: “Russia has no borders; it is wherever there are Russians“. Geographical borders mean nothing; only the race and culture matters]

The madness which infests our society

Take a look at the tweet below:

https://twitter.com/WatersideCops/status/1255199543215427584?s=20

Incredibly, the above plainly deluded tweet came from an official police Twitter account! “Diversity” at the centre of “an ever improving society”! Absolutely off the wall! Simply mad.

Who writes this stuff? Some civilian employed by the police? A student working part-time? I hope not an actual police officer…

Interesting video

Diary Blog, 20 April 2020

Adolf Hitler [1889-1945]

Adolf-Hitler-1889-1945-German-statesman

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Virgin Atlantic

Looks like the mad policies of the UK government, and the effect of Coronavirus on the air travel market, will see the end of Virgin Atlantic:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/20/richard-branson-renews-virgin-plea-for-coronavirus-support ; https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2020/04/20/billionaire-branson-asks-for-government-money-to-save-virgin-atlantic-claims-he-did-not-leave-britain-for-tax-reasons/#664cca91e218

When I lived in Little Venice, on and off until 24 years ago, there was a large houseboat, where Branson was said to have lived once. Beyond Blomfield Road.

 

3 bedroom house boat to rent in Blomfield Road, Little Venice W9 , W9

[above: Branson’s former boat at Little Venice, or one very similar; I think the same]

I was told that that he owned a house right by where that houseboat was berthed.

Properties for sale listed by Riverhomes - Central London office ...

[above: the Regent’s Canal at Little Venice, not far from where I once lived; also not very far from where the previous photo was taken]

Virgin Australia, and other Branson-founded businesses, are also said to be teetering on the edge of insolvency.

I have no particular animus against Branson. He certainly seems no worse than other big businessmen, and in some ways seems better than others in the public eye. His courage cannot be questioned, after his ballooning exploits, and he is certainly willing to try new things in business. I do not particularly like some of his socio-political attitudes, and he is obviously mainly interested in making as much money as possible; that is, however, scarcely unusual in the business world.

At one time, 1989-1993, I was a fairly regular flyer on Virgin Atlantic, flying from the UK to Newark Airport in New Jersey. Not bad (for an Economy ticket), and more convenient for me than Kennedy Airport (which I also used, when other airlines had cheap tickets), because I then lived in Middlesex County, New Jersey, about half an hour by car from Newark Airport. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex_County,_New_Jersey

I was rather surprised to see that Branson’s enterprises employ as many as 70,000 people all over the world. I do not know how many of those are in the UK.

I do not see why the UK Government should give his airline £500M, even as a loan. Airlines are going to be a drug on the market (almost worthless) for some time into the future. Any loan to Virgin Atlantic would probably be money thrown away. Admittedly, that is true of most of the money now being pumped out by the present government of fools, but why add more? Also, it seems that Branson himself has not paid tax in the UK for 14 years. Not exactly an incentive for a government looking at public reaction.

Coronavirus: an interesting view from Israel

A similar pattern – rapid increase in infections to a peak in the sixth week, and decline from the eighth week – is common everywhere, regardless of response policies

[The Times of Israel]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-end-of-exponential-growth-the-decline-in-the-spread-of-coronavirus/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Tweets seen today

Hitchens has come to the same or a similar view to my own: this government of incompetents, advised by complete idiots, is starting to understand what it has done, i.e. pretty much killed, already, the UK’s economy (not to mention civil rights and the proper rule of law) but cannot, politically, simply whine that it got it wrong.

So comes the idea that there has to be an “exit strategy“, rather than the UK just resuming what is left of normal life overnight (by far the best idea). The Government (from its own standpoint) needs to pretend to be authoritative, in charge (and not, well, a bunch of idiotic mediocrities advised by similar ones).

I can think of one reason why a citizen (though perhaps not a very good citizen) might wear a surgical mask if required by the cretinous “authorities” of this poor country: it would be an excellent way in which those who commit crimes could stay undetected. I do not say that criminals, from shoplifters to bank robbers, will not still be detected and arrested (though, I hazard, in fewer numbers), but it will be harder for the prosecutors to get convictions in situations where not only have the accused allegedly been wearing masks but also where all other people at the alleged locus or loci were wearing similar masks! Eyewitness and cctv evidence will be almost worthless.

The above paragraph is, I suppose, me briefly wearing my former —but stolen from me— status as a barrister…see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/

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Below, Peter Hitchens teaches a little logic and commonsense to a lady evidently devoid of both:

https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1252187697453637634?s=20

Not sure that I agree entirely with the last tweet, above. If Branson were to be allowed financial assistance for his companies in return for stumping up some sum in lieu of taxes previously avoided, it would be analogous to an individual not paying, say, car insurance and then, after an accident, being allowed to pay some money and then be treated as if he had paid previously.

End lockdown now!

Long live freedom! What freedom? Oh, no, wait…

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1252235542390951939?s=20

Yes, if the speaker or interviewee is a dissident (I mean a real dissident, not a faux-“revolutionary” joke like Owen Jones or Ash Sarkar), a radio or TV station faces “sanctions” (i.e. punishment for not self-censoring), or may even be shut down.

Did you really believe that we live in a (mythical) “free country”?

More Coronavirus nonsense exploded…

The UK has today announced 449 more coronavirus deaths – the fewest for a fortnight – taking Britain’s total death toll to 16,509.

England declared 429 deaths and a further 20 were confirmed across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And 4,676 more people have tested positive for the virus, taking the total number of patients to 124,743.

The day’s death toll is a fall on the 596 fatalities announced yesterday, Sunday, and half as many as the day before that (888). It is the lowest number for a fortnight, since April 6 when 439 victims were confirmed.

Although the statistics are known to drop after a weekend, the sharp fall adds to evidence that the peak of the UK’s epidemic has blown over.” [Daily Mail]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235979/UKs-coronavirus-crisis-peaked-lockdown-Expert-argues-draconian-measures-unnecessary.html

It comes as a leading expert at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.

Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6’6″) away from others.” [Daily Mail]

Looks like I was right…all the way along, in fact…

The government of fools

As I blogged before, it is clear the pack of mediocrities and idiots now in government are afraid to take the decision to end the toytown police state called UK “lockdown”. They are avoiding having to take responsibility. The same is true of Boris-idiot, who (surely obviously now?) is hiding out at Chequers until the “crisis” he himself has partly manufactured is over or seen to be almost over. He can then reappear as clown “conquering hero”…

 

Unexpected? Maybe not

Looks as if people are now unsure (at least more of them than previously) as to whether the EU was a “good thing” for the UK. Hard to say. Presumably, 13% are “Don’t Knows” or similar. On the other hand, in the actual EU Referendum of 2016, while there was just the binary choice to Leave or Remain, 27.8% failed to vote. Were they “Don’t Knows”?

Is anyone listening out there?

People may ask of me, “if you think that the government-mandated lockdown is a poorly-conceived and petty-tyrannical measure, and likely to half-wipe out the UK economy as well, why do you yourself obey it?”

My reply? “I am broadly going along with the lockdown nonsense because:

  • I find talking with (let alone being lectured by) the police (most of whom are poorly educated and as thick as two short planks) a bore, so I want to minimize the chance of being stopped on the local roads (mainly semi-rural or rural) around here, or on visits to the nearby small local town;
  • Almost nothing is open anyway, and I am not a partygoer, public (or private) sunbather, team sports enthusiast or general rambler on foot (these days).
  • On that basis, I may as well only make occasional shopping forays.”

 

 

 

Diary Blog, 17 April 2020

First thoughts

Turned on the TV, to see that The World at War is again being shown. Interesting to the extent that many people who were in quite high positions in WW2 were still alive and able to be interviewed in 1973 when the series started. Not the top leaders, of course, but (mainly on the British and German sides) the secondary or lower commanders and other personalities: Speer, General Warlimont, Stalin’s interpreter etc.

As before, I was struck by how close the Wehrmacht came to capturing Moscow. As I have blogged before, in 1993 my driver made it from the Khimki memorial (the point of furthest advance in 1941) to close to the Kremlin in 15-20 minutes!

tanktrapmemorial

A 1941 German tank would take longer, but even so… (yes, since both 1941 and my first visit in 1993, an IKEA store has appeared there!).

Annoying that, in World at War, Laurence Olivier, doing the voiceover, attempts a kind of faux-Russian pronunciation which is in fact wrong in both Russian and Western usage, eg “Shtalin” for “Stalin”.

Ash Sarkar

Ash Sarkar, who taught briefly at a new university (and now at some institute in the Netherlands, founded by a Dutch Jew), is now seen quite often on TV in the UK as a kind of “licensed Bolshevik”, following her rather silly “I’m literally a communist” outburst on a daytime TV show a couple of years ago. She is 28 today. That fact is “trending” on Twitter.

Ash Sarkar is part of the Novara Media set-up, along with Aaron Bastani.

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

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

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

Here is not the time or place convenient to examine the inanity of being both “communist” and “libertarian” (which is what both of the above claim to be; they also both claim to be “feminist”). To go into the full depths of their political childishness would take too long today. I have blogged about them, en passant, in relation to wider issues:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/disordered-and-infantile-people/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/some-thoughts-about-venezuela-socialism-and-developing-a-more-advanced-society/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/a-brief-word-about-owen-jones/

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[above: Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar]

Neither is here and now the time and place to examine how it is that Anglia Ruskin University had someone whose degree and MA were both in English Literature teaching “Global Politics” for a year. We are talking about someone who defined Communism as “the desire to see the coercive structures of state dismantled, while also having fun“… I wonder what Marx (let alone Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky) would have thought of that!

dfbzlnnwaaal3ei

As said, Ash Sarkar has taken over from Owen Jones the mantle of the “licensed Bolshevik” or “System-approved faux-revolutionary” on the msm in the UK. She appears, despite her “I’m a communist” outburst, on BBC, Sky etc. I wonder whether the System msm would have been so accommodating had someone said “I’m literally a National Socialist”? Or even “social-nationalist”? Of course not. Blackballed at once. So Ash Sarkar fulfils the role of pseudo-revolutionary or radical. The BBC or Sky can then say “look, we’re an open and free mass media outlet. We even have revolutionaries on our shows.” Yes, of course…

The Ash Sarkar trend on Twitter provides yet more evidence of how little Twitter reflects the real political world. I read that Novara Media has grown from having only a few thousand readers in 2015 to hundreds of thousands, on occasion 1 million or more, now.

However, there are 70 million inhabitants of the UK. If you looked only at Twitter, you might imagine that most support a “Novara Media” political position, when in fact Labour as a whole (and there is little organized “socialism” outside Labour) only has the support at present of about 25% of the population, and an Ash Sarkar position some very small proportion of that.

Twitter has expelled most truly dissident personalities (including me, in 2018), mostly at the behest of the organized Jewish lobby. Increasingly, one can almost judge the public mood by seeing what is favoured on Twitter, then reversing it.

Westminster Bridge clapathon for idiots

I blogged about this yesterday. I have to agree with this fellow:

https://twitter.com/Mister_Woodo/status/1250918479626108930?s=20

and this one

(though I wish that some people would stop referring to the British police as “the feds”! Did that come from American TV via the blacks in the UK, somehow? How silly it is…)

Katie Hopkins [below] is right:

https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1251043599439007754?s=20

The UK as North Korea-lite, complete with emotional blackmail (if you don’t clap, and more importantly if you don’t support “lockdown”, or if you doubt the official narrative, you must be a bad person, almost a murderer…)

The Government of fools

It seems that little Matt Hancock and his fellow-clowns may “instruct” anyone over 70 and also anyone under 70 with health problems as common as high blood pressure to stay “indefinitely” in “lockdown”, i.e. under house arrest! For years, or for the rest of their lives!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8225021/Pressure-cafes-shops-reopen-government-expert-warns-mass-testing-come-first.html

I suggest that little Matt Hancock and this government shut up before they really do cause a (typically British, quiet?) revolution in this compliant nation of serfs.

The only reason that I am not going out wherever I please on a daily basis at present is because I have nowhere much to go anyway! If the proposed restrictions (beyond May) are mandated, however, I may have to go out with the specific intention of “flouting” the UK’s toytown police state “laws”.

Meanwhile…

and…https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11423742/nhs-volunteers-idle-thanks-shambles-app/

Below, UK North Korea-lite riot squad goons (“Territorial Support Group” in the Metropolitan Police) getting very agitato at a (Jew) journalist who tried to film an arrest (probably a pointless one):

https://twitter.com/simonchilds13/status/1250718305889013760?s=20

This is always the problem, in any country, when you give the police too much power. They tend to abuse it and/or treat government preferences as “law”. What the government wants is not law. Look at the sergeant in charge there, in the clip. Shouts out that the journalist “is killing people” by standing outside a park, filming. How bloody stupid can you get?! When will the sergeant call in an air strike?…

This, below, is how the UK Government of Fools runs its toytown “war effort”:

Strange tweet and article, reproduced without comment or endorsement:

https://twitter.com/ForFreeSpeech1/status/1251083393476984833?s=20

https://virily.com/business/sacrifice-rituals-for-moloch-on-13-days-of-preparation/

another unusual tweet:

https://twitter.com/ForFreeSpeech1/status/1251079209423966210?s=20

and what of this?

Other tweets seen today

Hubris is A Bad Thing, so I shall not claim that Peter Hitchens is [see below] copying my blog remark of yesterday, which compared the government of fools’ “lockdown” with the actions of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. After all, the parallel is rather obvious.

A thought out of season

A few years ago, a pack of Jews, including some public entertainers, got together and, via the Jew-Zionist fake “charity”, the “Campaign Against Antisemitism”, had the satirical singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz barred from the Edinburgh Fringe, part of the Edinburgh Festival. How they laughed! Well, guess what? Most of those singers, monologuers, comedians etc were hoping to appear and make money, or advance their careers, at the Fringe this year. Oh, no, wait. Coronavirus…

Festival cancelled. Fringe cancelled. As Windsor Davies used to say, “oh dear, what a pity, never mind”.

L’homme qui rire

The same is true of all those barristers who either applauded my getting disbarred (via an allied pack of Jews) in 2016, or who failed to defend me publicly (not one did defend me, in fact). Coronavirus has now shut all of the courts, or almost all (I believe that some magistrates’ courts are still ploughing their way through their pathetic daily lists of minor crimes). Much of the Bar (despite “virtual hearings” here and there) has had its court work frozen. Not all have paperwork to do.

I sincerely hope that those who attacked me or failed to speak up, not so much for me personally, but for freedom of socio-political expression, suffer stinging blows; and well-deserved.

Unfortunately, many barristers have plenty of capital on which to draw, but many do not. I hope that those who opposed me and especially those who tried to kick me when I was down (via Twitter etc) will take a hit. They will anyway, eventually, one way or another, but now (in the pocket) would be a good start.

A tiny glimmer of commonsense (but not much)

Driving to the countryside and walking – where more time is spent doing the latter than the former – is among a list of reasonable excuses for Britons leaving their home during the coronavirus lockdown, according to advice issued to police.” [The Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/driving-for-exercise-allowed-under-lockdown-rules-police-advised-coronavirus

…yet still no sign that the “authorities” or the police or public understand that, in terms of commonsense, there is nothing wrong in driving around just to get some change of air (with window down, for example). It neither exposes anyone to the virus, nor spreads it (because the virus is only able to move in air, briefly, in droplets of water, as when someone sneezes).

Prison Island UK

So the Government of this country, unlike all others in Europe, at least so far, is suggesting that 10% or 20% of the population is going to have to remain under house arrest for months, maybe years, until a vaccine is found or…when? Until the next Chinese virus is upon us? First thought: tell the Chinese to stop eating bats, rats, pangolins, birds’ nests and all the other disgraceful stuff they eat.

It is not acceptable for a British government to place a substantial minority or indeed majority of the population under house arrest. The only reason that the UK is in a bad position vis a vis this virus is because the Conservative Party governments have been for years cutting to the bone the NHS, care homes, social care in the community, and other relevant areas.

Do we see in Germany, France, Scandinavia etc this panic about shortages of equipment, of staff, of beds, of hospitals? No. Do we see in those other countries officially-approved “clapothons” to “celebrate” the health service? No. Do we see individuals having to (or deciding to) collect funds for the health service via crowdfunding, because that service is underfunded? No.

Well, I drove out on a couple of connected errands, both (I regret) within the new toytown police-state “rules”; two errands, one drive, as the Chinese might put it. My first afternoon drive for weeks.

My impressions: more cars than when the “lockdown” was first imposed, though fewer than when the UK lived what was then called “normal” life. No obvious police presence, though I hear through local sources that the police have been quite active in the wider local area in the (presumably) late evenings, i.e. after the supermarkets and convenience stores shut (mostly 2000 hrs). They have apparently been stopping cars, checking people out etc.

The little village shop a couple of miles away is now operating a “1 out 1 in” system, with only 2-3 people in toto allowed in at any time. I was able to buy some artisan trout pate and trout pate with horseradish, and a couple of bunches of local asparagus, as well as a few Lotto tickets.

It strikes me that “social distancing” is having a quite powerful psychological effect on people, a mental or emotional distancing too. Fewer smiles, a feeling around of wariness. What is really behind all this? As with the mass sacrifice of cattle during the Foot and Mouth emergency, there seems to be at least one hidden agenda.

China

I am coming to the provisonal view that the world as a whole is going to have to treat China as a deadly enemy. I am not happy about that tentative judgment, but I cannot see an alternative, the way things are. We must see things as they are, not as they might be in a more perfect world…