Tag Archives: Brian May

Diary Blog, 26 August 2024

Afternoon music

[Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro]

Tweets seen

Scuttling and scurrying.

Were I given the power, I would shut it down permanently, as a start.

I saw a few minutes of the dancing groups etc on Sky News. About 1% of the Rio Carnival, in all respects.

Israel and the Jew-Zionists in every country are almost always the ones clamouring for a shutdown of free speech. As regular readers know, the so-called “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”] has been demanding my prosecution for about 10 years.

The “CAA” finally got their wish in 2023, after having applied improper pressure on the “Clown” Prosecution Service, but their “victory” soon proved to be Pyrrhic:

More tweets

I am not necessarily opposed to imperialism or colonization. The Devil is in the detail.

Of course, Israel was largely founded on Jewish terrorism:

More tweets

…and I bet I know which group is making the most money out of all that rubbish, and/or is behind most of it…

Nice to know that people care.

Imagine a city of between 500,000 and 1,500,000 in the UK, somewhere such as Birmingham (nearly 1M population), Liverpool (nearly 900,000 population), Nottingham (730,000), Sheffield (635,000), Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Leicester, and others.

Well, each of those cities have a roughly equivalent population to the influx into the UK of mostly non-Europeans every year. Many have smaller populations.

Only a lunatic, or someone completely brainwashed by System multikulti propaganda, could think that such a situation is in any way sustainable in a country the size of the UK. Housing, pay, State benefits (including pensions), rail, roads, education, public order, even water supply.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/united-kingdom.

This is our economic model:

1) Spend more on “public services” – aka make way for more Night Czars and people who will spend your money on rainbow kayaking/ drag queen life drawing classes (real life examples of council spending).

2) Do nothing about factors increasing demand on services – eg migration (legal and illegal) – while building nothing and rarely expanding infrastructure. Then act surprised when prices increase (“rent controls now!”), as well as demonising anyone who points out that migration is a form of demand. They must be a bigot, after all, for worrying about the UK spending approximately £10 billion a year on accommodation for asylum seekers – paired with runaway demand. Rich people can pay for it, or something; anyway, doesn’t demand just vanish into thin air?!

3) Allow eco loons to impose anti-car measures on some of the most economically productive and in-demand workers; eg plumbers, builders and others with practical skills who need a car for their job. Ensure that they lose jobs from sitting in traffic and are subject to punitive measures for not being able to cycle a new bath tab to a client. Add red tape as much as possible to everything. Get a small business to prove its commitment to environment and diversity before it’s actually broken-even.

4) Hire for every state sector job through the primary prism of immutable characteristics.

5) Ignore what jobs are in demand – eg. practical/ technology – and continue sending droves of young people to university to do subjects that bear no relation to what skills employers need. Remember, young people should be able to “follow their dreams” – all of them! – and anyone who says don’t do a degree in decolonising dinosaurs is anti working-class. Besides, if Brits won’t do jobs, we’ll just hire from abroad, so that demand for housing can increase, and with it rental costs – which young people will then blame landlords/ lack of rent controls for.

And voila = growth!

I agree with pretty much all of that.

Most people “think” via their feeling, i.e. via emotion, or via undisciplined will. They want to believe, so they do believe. Someone of the Zoe Gardner (near) “open borders” type is a typical example.

Most MPs now are enemies of the people. All of the present Cabinet are enemies of the people.

People like Amy Lamé (a crazed American lesbian appointed —God knows why— as London “Nightlife Tsar” or something similar) are just a waste of space. She should be sacked and made to dig turnips, plant trees, or the like.

Incidentally, I seem to recall she tweeted unpleasantly to me about 8 years ago, when I still had a Twitter account.

“Public services” I support wholeheartedly, if they are useful. I am talking about (proper) police, fire brigades, public health workers (real ones, not “Covid crazies”), parks and park wardens, litter sweepers, public swimming pools, water supplies etc.

In 2024, Amy Lamé was awarded her fourth pay rise a few days after the 2024 London Mayor Election, in which her pay for her 3 days a week role was increased to £132,846.[27]

Her role and the ability for the London Assembly to hold her to account has been a source of confusion, given that she is classed as a GLA member of staff[28] and therefore cannot be scrutinised by the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives or the Greens in the London Assembly.”

[Wikipedia]

That useless waste of space gets £133,000 each year for a 3-day week…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Lam%C3%A9

I have never been there, but if I were to go there, I would prioritize the famous garden created by the Argentinian wife/widow of William Walton, and filmed for a Monty Don show:

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

https://www.lamortella.org/en/

https://www.lamortella.org/en/garden

Ha. I appreciate that, though I was prosecuted without having been arrested (via postal requisition).

Banana Boat

I first saw this amusing short documentary on American public TV in 1991 or 1992 (it was released in 1991). About a group of passengers on one of the Geest “banana boats” that (I think still) take cars and other items out from the UK to the West Indies, and then return with millions of bananas.

Such ships carry passengers because the income is a welcome extra, but they cannot carry more than (I think) 12, because any greater number would require the ship to have a doctor on board.

A very good film, and nicely presented by one Nigel Farrell, who —I just now see— must have been 37 or 38 at the time, and who (I have just read) died in 2011, 20 years after the film was made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Farrell.

How short our lives are.

I might add that the BBC once made charming, interesting little films like that, about 40 or 50 years ago, but no longer.

More tweets seen

Late tweets

The Kiev regime just keeps pushing and pushing. This will not end well for the Ukrainian civilians living under Zelensky’s Jew-Zionist dictatorship.

The prime aim of statesmen should be to stop that, but there are secretive cabals and ruling circles across the West pushing for war with Russia.

Late music

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

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

Afternoon music

[painting by Jack Vettriano]

On this day a year ago

NHS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tweets seen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the newspapers

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

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

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

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

[Daily Mail]

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

More tweets

“Jack Monroe”

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

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

More tweets

Late tweets

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

Late music

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

Rewilding and Reafforestation of Parts of the UK

An extract from an article of 2013 by George Monbiot:

“You could argue that an intensification of farming is a response to rising population pressure: the need to produce more food has caused greater damage to wildlife. But this is where the madness kicks in: much of the habitat destruction for which farm policies are responsible has little or nothing to do with producing food.

The uplands of Britain are astonishingly unproductive. For example, 76% of the land in Wales is devoted to livestock farming, mostly to produce meat. But, astonishingly, by value Wales imports seven times as much meat as it exports. Six thousand years of nutrient stripping and erosion have left our hills so infertile that their productivity is miniscule. Even relatively small numbers of livestock can now keep the hills denuded.

Without subsidies, almost all hill-farming would cease. That’s not something I’m calling for, but I do believe it’s time we began to challenge the system and its outcomes. Among them is a policy that’s almost comically irrational and destructive.

The major funding that farmers receive is called the single farm payment, which is money given by European taxpayers to people who own land. These people receive a certain amount (usually around £200 or £300), for every hectare they own. To receive it, they must keep the land in what is called “Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition” (GAEC). It’s a term straight out of 1984.

Among the compulsory standards in the GAEC rules is “avoiding the encroachment of unwanted vegetation on agricultural land”. What this means is that if farmers want their money they must stop wild plants from returning. They don’t have to produce anything: to keep animals or to grow crops there. They merely have to prevent more than a handful of trees or shrubs from surviving, which they can do by towing cutting gear over the land.

If they want to expand the area eligible for this subsidy, and therefore make more money, they must get their tractors out and start clearing vegetation. From my kayak in Cardigan Bay I have often watched a sight that Neolithic fishermen would have witnessed: towers of smoke rising from the hills as the farmers burn tracts of gorse and trees in order to claim more public money. The single farm payment is a perfectly designed scheme for maximum ecological destruction.

[Why Britain’s Barren Uplands Have Farming Subsidies To Blame, George Monbiot, The Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/may/22/britain-uplands-farming-subsidies

George Monbiot is quite right about subsidized farming. In relation to the upland and hill areas [relatively similar areas, but often taken to be different in terms of specific UK farming conditions: https://www.nationalsheep.org.uk/know-your-sheep/uk-sheep-farming/], the farming lobby will say that the land there is only suitable for sheep, so if the UK wants to produce food at a maximized level, then sheep farming is essential and can only exist if subsidized.

There are various aspects to all this, most of which are addressed in the George Monbiot article (above). The upland/hill areas are not very productive (generally, the higher they are above sea level, the less productive); they can support food animals other than sheep, in principle (deer, highland cattle, game birds etc) if not denuded of vegetation; the upland and hill farmers are only surviving by reason of a fairly generous (they might disagree) but environmentally-mad subsidy system.

In broad terms, the single farm payment gives the farmer on average about £150 an acre (2019 value), so a small farmer (and most UK upland and hill farms are small), who has about 200 acres, will get about £30,000 in subsidy (leaving aside the various official or other definitions of what constitutes a “subsidy”— see Notes, below). The actual net profit from farming itself on such a farm comes to something like £3,000, maybe even less. It’s minimal. Some farmers have only 100 acres, thus reducing their subsidy-income to maybe £15,000 and their real farming income to as little as £1,500.

The conclusion, surely, is that subsidies should be eliminated. They are disastrous for wildlife, give the country little in terms of food production and in fact give the already-wealthy farmers on the more favoured lowlands the bulk of the money (a large estate of say 10,000 acres might receive as much as £1,500,000 a year in EU subsidy). However, this article is about rewilding and reafforestation, not an overview of the whole agricultural sector.

There are UK and EU “subsidies” or grants for such activities as tree planting, but these are far less generous than the ones given for (nominal or actual) farming.

It seems harsh, on the face of it, that small farmers should face having to give up their way of life (in some cases, a way of life that has generations of history and custom behind it), but they will have been preceded after all by those working in other sectors, including coal mining, steel production etc, and now retail work. Why should huge amounts of public money be provided to farmers just because they bleat that without the money they cannot survive and would have to get other work?

The irony is that most farmers vote “Conservative” and are among those most ready to talk about “welfare” “scroungers” etc! It often seems to me that farmers generally want it both ways, to receive money from public funds merely as an entitlement for being holders of land (either freeholders or tenants), but on the other hand want no official interference with how they farm, because they run private businesses!

It has long been accepted that the farming lobby, and especially the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) is one of the most effective lobby groups in UK politics at national level.

Alternative uses for marginal land

After WW1, the UK was almost denuded of forest, having only 5% cover. The government set up the Forestry Commission in 1919 to address the domestic timber shortage, rather than for aesthetic or environmental reasons. Thus were born the typical blocks of forest seen in Northern England, Scotland, Wales: mostly Norway Spruce and Sitka Spruce. Though better than nothing, such coniferous reafforestation does not do much for wildlife, though the trees themselves can be, if not cut, longlasting (a Norway Spruce in Sweden may be the oldest —though regenerated— tree on Earth, dating back nearly 10,000 years).

The forest cover in the UK has increased markedly since 1919, to about 13% of land. The Forestry Commission itself and its now-devolved Scottish equivalent manage nearly 2 million acres of forest and, in some areas, have replanted with broadleaf trees which will encourage a greater biodiversity.

In addition, there have been a few large-scale initiatives formulated and put into action. There are a number of “community forests” (some created from bits and pieces of land) not all in public ownership but all of which have some public access: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_forests_in_England

The Heart of England Forest (mostly in Warwickshire) is one superb initiative, the vision of one man, the late Felix Dennis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dennis].

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

https://www.heartofenglandforest.com/

Another new wooded belt is the National Forest, planted in a number of linked areas North East of Birmingham:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Forest_(England)

https://www.nationalforest.org/

In addition, some very large and altruistic landowners, such as a Dane who owns over 220,000 acres in Scotland alone (over a dozen Highland estates), have exciting plans both for reafforestation and for wildlife recovery, even to the extent of importing wolves, lynx, bears, beavers etc.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47803110

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/21/danish-billionaires-anders-and-anne-holch-povlsen-say-plan-is-to-restore-scottish-highlands

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/28/revealed-billionaire-philanthropists-rewilding-scottish-highlands/

https://alladale.com/

There are many smaller projects around, such as the wood created by Brian May, the Queen guitarist, in Dorset, being planted and growing on land May bought as a gift in trust, and which was originally going to be a housing estate (nb. were Britain not flooded with unwanted immigrants and their offspring, it would not be thought “necessary” to build on beautiful areas of countryside).

http://www.bereregis.org/brian-may-woodland.htm

Brian May Woodland – Image(1)

Brian May Woodland – Plan

Forests are not a waste of land…

George Monbiot has written about how upland forests and woods (or even areas of smaller vegetation such as bushes) delay the passage of rainwater to lower levels, protecting those lower levels from destructive floodwater.

Wild areas can provide food for people. Not just game animals, birds and fish (if permitted and/or in time of dire necessity), but mushrooms, fruits, wild vegetables etc.

Forests not only have amenity and aesthetic value, but are havens for wildlife of all types. In particular, the parts of the country that are relatively marginal for farming should be far more heavily wooded than they are. Animals, birds, fish, insects all thrive, given half a chance.

Badgerurban

Cz5ru01XgAAAIn2

There are huge areas of the UK suitable for rewilding and/or re-afforestation. Not only in Scotland. Wales is especially blessed with upland and hill areas suitable for such projects. There are parts of England also suitable, such as the South West peninsula, within which there are areas where the population is surprisingly sparse, such as the Hartland Peninsula in West Devon, on the Atlantic coast. It is true also of the moors of Devon and Cornwall, but they tend at present to be under National Park or other restrictive control.

Rewilding and reafforestation are not inimical to the livelihoods of existing local people, who can derive benefit via catering to tourists, managed and sustainable forestry, wildlife protection jobs etc; whereas the present land use often benefits only small groups of farmers and landowners (via subsidies, and/or via the use of land for commercial driven shoots).

Rewilding is not just a matter of afforestation. Other types of landscape can also be rewilded: marshes, river estuaries etc. However, the forest is the key, whether it be managed forest or forest left to grow completely wild.

Bt7iAkdIEAAWIHV.jpg large

Notes

https://fullfact.org/economy/farming-subsidies-uk/

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

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

https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/statistics-by-topic/woodland-statistics/

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.nationalforest.org/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47803110

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/21/danish-billionaires-anders-and-anne-holch-povlsen-say-plan-is-to-restore-scottish-highlands

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/28/revealed-billionaire-philanthropists-rewilding-scottish-highlands/

https://alladale.com/

http://www.bereregis.org/brian-may-woodland.htm

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/21/rewild-quarter-uk-fight-climate-crisis-campaigners-urge

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/15/rewilding-britain-launches-with-the-aim-of-restoring-uks-lost-wildlife-and-habitats

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/rewilding/rewilding-projects/

Swastikatree

Update, 7 November 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/07/farmland-birds-see-decline-55-per-cent-last-50-years-defra-reveals/

Update, 25 December 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/24/britains-ancient-wetlands-peat-bogs-must-restored-protect-thousands/