The same people that told you they were winning in Vietnam, that Saddam was about to attack you, that Afghanistan was a "Win" and that Biden was "Sharp as a tack"
Have told you Russia is the aggressor. And that Ukraine is a Democracy?
At a general election, that would translate to about 221 Reform UK seats (Lab 181, Con 121, LibDem 66 etc), so a Reform UK minority government, presumably reliant on Con
The more I think about it, the less I believe that any but a few will vote for the Con Party, especially now that it is headed by a Nigerian carpetbagger. Kemi Badenoch, “Carpetbagger Kemi”.
Most people, even after decades of brainwashing in schools, the msm etc, still want the UK Prime Minister to be properly British, i.e. white Northern European.
Seems that the “Conservatives” learned nothing from having been ruled by the little Indian money-juggler, Sunak.
Also, where do “Conservative” policies markedly differ from those of Starmer-Labour?
Wrong. Brexit did not put mass uncontrolled low skill immigration on steroids. Elites did.
We can radically change the direction of this once great country by changing the elite. https://t.co/rPq93StZNV
For those saying Britain needs immigration to solve the birthrate problem, evidence exists to the contrary. Mass immigration directly harms the birthrate. More immigration will only continue the decline. https://t.co/Ig70hgYR37pic.twitter.com/X2Ja7s9lfD
…and tweeter “Elizabeth Chandler” should learn to spell before she tries to use big words to appear well-informed! (it’s “exponentially“, not “expidentialy“…).
Pseudo-“Conservative” greaseball Fraser Nelson is another total finance-capitalist, globalist, multikulti, puppet. One of the worst influences (and/or influencers) in the UK’s corrupt political and journalistic milieux.
I had not seen anything from that grifting loonie for a couple of years, as far as I can remember. She tweeted, earlier today, that anyone in the UK who did not (her word) “hate” Elon Musk had an IQ below room temperature. Well, while I myself do not agree with everything Musk says or does, I probably agree more than disagree, and my IQ was once (admittedly 40 years ago) measured at 156— I think that it probably stacks up well enough even today against that of grifting political idiot “Supertanskiii” (though one can almost admire someone who has made a living for years doing little but swearing online at “the Tories“, albeit that she has also been able to get State monies via the benefits system).
I have not heard so much from that kind of online pseudo-political “grifter” recently.
Fraudulent fake “cook”, “Jack Monroe”, has been comprehensively exposed and become obscure (I doubt that her rubbish ever appears in newspapers or major magazines any more); that Jewish fraud from Essex calling himself “Man Behaving Dadly”, Simon-something (Harris?), has apparently disappeared too, he having conned naive Essex County Council out of over £600,000.
Others have also seen their brief time of influence ebb away, such as non-practising medical doctor and facemask purveyor, Julia Grace Patterson. That one has now, it seems, almost given up trying to make money out of online “grifting”, and has not tweeted since November 2024, though she remains on the pathetic “Blue Sky” site, and has most recently (late 2024) been flogging Christmas cards online (while still pretending to be an active NHS doctor and health “activist”).
As I predicted a year ago, those sort of pseudo-political fake “activists” have found that their modus operandi of pretending to be tribunes of the people against the (admittedly) wicked “Tories” cuts little ice now that the said “Tories” have been replaced by a fake “Labour” government as bad as, or worse than, the “Conservatives” they replaced.
More tweets seen
The British Tory party's 'realignment', in 2019, was based on having 75% of Brexit/culturally conservative voters.
Today? They only have 29%. This is what matters when you ignore your own voters.
“The British Tory party’s ‘realignment’, in 2019, was based on having 75% of Brexit/culturally conservative voters. Today? They only have 29%. This is what matters when you ignore your own voters. The Tories are dying –as I said they would.”
[Matt Goodwin]
The tipping point may have been reached for Reform UK, and also for the once-great Conservative Party. Only time will tell. It is natural for people to assume that large political organizations, states, religions etc go on for ever. Not so.
Having seen a bit of what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when socialism died across Europe and elsewhere, I know that large structures can indeed collapse rather unexpectedly, albeit after long periods of slow preparatory weakness.
When you look at who votes or intends to vote Conservative now, you are really looking, mainly looking, at retired people or people close to retirement.
People who have seen Britain, certainly British cities and towns, turn from being white (i.e. British) to being largely black and brown (etc).
People who have seen large social and economic enterprises (water supply, railways, telephone system, bus network, Royal Mail etc), whatever faults they had, become often unresponsive and failing private-profit bodies.
People who have seen the great institutions of the State fail, and continue to fail, badly— police, courts, judges, legal system, prisons, NHS, border control, immigration control, Army, Navy, Air Force. Civil Service. Royal Family too. All useless, or rapidly becoming so.
What is the rotting head of that failure? The political system, Parliament, MPs, and the now-ludicrous House of Lords.
So when those people go to vote, how will they vote, those disenchanted, angry, let-down people, especially those aged 50+? Not for Labour, which (as I said on the blog for years) has become mainly the party of the “blacks and browns” and in general those dependent on the State for money and/or employment. Only the naive and fairly comfortably-off, in certain places, vote LibDem.
Conservative MPs mismanaged the UK for 14 years 2010-2025. Huge immigration, including the continuing “small boats” invasion. NHS failures. The “Covid” scamdemic/panicdemic. Much else besides.
The only reason many older people stuck with the Conservative Party was the State Pension “triple lock”. Then the little Indian money-juggler, Sunak, reneged on that (for one year), though he reinstated it the following year. I think that that badly damaged trust.
In my judgment, things are now so bad in the UK and, importantly, seen to be getting worse, and rapidly, that many are willing to leave their old habits and loyalties behind, and to vote Reform. By no means only former Con Party voters. Labour ones too. Look at the case of Lee Anderson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Anderson_(British_politician).
So who is really going to vote “Conservative” in 2028 or 2029? I should say mainly those who are old or very old, who are set in their ways and in their habitual loyalties and, of those, who are fairly comfortably-off in their retirement, and whose local areas have not (yet) been badly-affected by migration-invasion etc.
I do not think that msm commentators have quite factored-in the significance of the Con Party now having a non-white leader. Yes, not the first one, but then look at Sunak’s electoral meltdown.
I would have put that middle-aged/elderly Con-voting group, and or with others willing to vote Con, as adding up to somewhere around 20% of the voting population (General Election 2024— 23.7%) but now I am inclined to think that, by 2028/2029, it may be as low as 15%. On that basis, the Conservative Party may be at the end of the line.
Using Electoral Calculus, and with Con 15%, Labour 25%, LibDem 15%, Greens 10%, and Reform UK 30% (its likely maximum), that would result in a House of Commons with 330 Reform MPs, 163 Lab, 72 LibDem, 20 Con, 4 Green (etc). Reform Commons majority.
Were Reform to get a lesser vote (25%), the result would change to Reform 220, Lab 208, LibDem 76, Con 49 (etc). Still no comfort for the Con Party; only fourth party in Commons.
The Conservatives would have to get 20% overall even to stay where they now are (121 seats). I doubt they will do it.
More tweets
At a record low of -54, the Labour government's approval rating is virtually identical to the final approval rating of Rishi Sunak's government, which was -56.
Just before Sunak left office, 15% approved of his government. Currently, 14% approve of Labour.
“At a record low of -54, the Labour government’s approval rating is virtually identical to the final approval rating of Rishi Sunak’s government, which was -56. Just before Sunak left office, 15% approved of his government. Currently, 14% approve of Labour. (Source: @YouGov)”
That tweeter is the ex-wife of an MP removed last year by the voters. For over three decades, she herself worked for him at Westminster, generously paid out of his Parliamentary expenses. She seems to be pro-immigration, pro-Israel, and anti-Russian, inter alia. Seems to be rather bitter in several ways. She is also wrong in most of her (evidently strongly-held) political judgments.
Certainly, so far as the Ukraine situation is concerned, Russia will not accept NATO forces there, even if under “peacekeeping” auspices. Anyway, contrary to that tweeter’s assertion, Russia need not accept any such forces. Russia is, slowly, winning, advancing daily in most parts of eastern Ukraine.
The war will conclude once Russia has occupied all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper. Why then would Russia accept “peacekeepers” who would be NATO troops under another label? Not the USA? Not the very weak UK. Not Germany. Once Macron stops trying to grandstand as a latter-day Napoleon, not France, either.
I do agree, overall, with the tweeter mentioned, though, about the CCHQ tweet below:
“Culture” or society does matter, in my view, but very few will look at Kemi Badenoch and think “now that’s the kind of person who should be Prime Minister“…
As mentioned on the blog earlier today, I can see the Conservative Party ending up with 10, 20, 30 MPs a few years down the line.
Van Hollen: "Can you imagine FDR in the middle of WW2 saying to Churchill, 'you know, we're not going to continue to help you until you turn over half of your coal and mineral reserves.' That's not how you behave when you want to support a friend who's under attack by an… pic.twitter.com/mKr3AZQeLf
Senator van Hollen obviously has no idea how Roosevelt ripped off the British Empire in various ways, not least by turning the Caribbean, at the time (pre-1941) pretty much a British lake, into what it later became and still is, basically an American sphere of influence, albeit nominally in co-operation with the UK.
The USA also took over, steadily, but after WW2, much of British industry and commerce internationally.
The role of the European Union in resolving the conflict in Ukraine is ruled out. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, stated that Europe must halt its arms supplies to Kiev, if it wishes to be included in future negotiations:https://t.co/ht5o0U4Lnspic.twitter.com/Ph2VCEoUYY
Russia and the United States have agreed to restore their embassies in Moscow and Washington to previous staffing levels to facilitate continued diplomatic engagement, said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio after talks with Sergey Lavrov:https://t.co/rxFNmV5tqEpic.twitter.com/COxFyIm3FQ
One cannot help but think that California, especially the southern and central coastal parts, is a massive catastrophe waiting to happen, as portrayed in so many of the Hollywood films. Earthquake, fire, tsunami, race war, alien invasion etc. You name it.
Labour hated, “Conservatives” (under a silly and useless Nigerian woman carpetbagger) despised, LibDems a dustbin for uncertain votes, or a non-choice. Result— Reform UK, though underwhelming, as a straw at which to clutch, and at the same time a serious protest vote.
According to Electoral Calculus, that, at a General Election, would make Reform UK the official Opposition: Labour 269 Commons seats, Reform 149, Conservatives 101, LibDems 73, Greens 6. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html.
The most likely outcome there would of course be a Lab/LibDem coalition, or maybe a Lab minority govt. with LibDem support. If either of those, then there might be a LibDem demand for proportional representation, to replace the current ridiculous First-Past-The-Post voting system.
Incidentally, such a voting result would also mean that about 143 Labour MPs would be culled, and another 20 Con Party MPs would also lose their seats.
Also incidentally, if that result were to be changed in only one small aspect, Reform UK going up from 25% to 26% (with all other vote shares unchanged), the end result would be Lab 259, Reform 173, Con 87, LibDems 73, Green 6. That would be existentially disastrous for the Con Party
More tweets
Good morning. The fascists are marching in Rome, and neither the police nor the Prime Minister are preparing to do a single thing about it. pic.twitter.com/WgtPuZZ8RS
Russian forces struck amassed Ukrainian manpower and military hardware in more than 160 areas over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported:https://t.co/Q67lqtnT3Jpic.twitter.com/As2uQUuNpR
“Why is Britain going bankrupt and what might this mean? Let’s take a look.
First it is worth noting, Labour et al might calm the markets in the short-term but what markets are telling us is that there is a festering problem – even if this goes away in the coming weeks it will keep coming back.
There are short-term and long-term trends driving the bankruptcy; a few of the long-term trends are poor resource allocation in the public sector, aging population and low growth; short-term trends are basically COVID-19 spending and spending on energy price guarantees due to Ukraine war – also BoE’s enormous losses from QE aren’t helping.
Britain can always print money to finance its debt but the problem is that foreign debt sales keep sterling propped up which, in turn, keeps UK living standards propped up at an artificial level; if sterling were allowed fall to close the large trade deficit and Britons were forced to live within their means, living standards would be lower – probably significantly lower.
If/when the bankruptcy takes place there are basically two paths that it can take: either the government impose harsh austerity, likely by handing the reins to the OBR and the Treasury, or the country is put into receivership and the keys are handed to the IMF.
There is some talk that the IMF option is like what happened in 1976 – yes and no; in 1976 UK government debt was below 50% of GDP and while the country’s trade deficit was large it had only opened two years beforehand; today government debt is well over 100% of GDP and the trade deficit is not only enormous but has been enormous for 20 years (!).
Britain lives beyond its means by managing capital via the City of London; rather than producing goods to export the country tries to attract capital inflows sustain higher levels of consumption than the economy would naturally allow – but a serious crisis will change all this making the situation very different to 1976.
In 1976 the UK was really just trying to stabilise sterling amidst some troublesome worldwide inflationary pressures while today the country needs to be treated like the typical patient that the IMF gets its hands on.
Nor would such an austerity program even look like, say, Ireland after 2011 which was aimed at bringing down wage costs and making the country competitive again – this meant that the country went through a few years of pain and recession but then emerged with their living standards intact and started growing once more.
Rather any austerity program that is applied by Britain – whether by the IMF or by OBR-Treasury, or some combination of the three – would look more like what happened to Greece after 2011: a managed, permanent decline in living standards.“
Is there a silver lining? There would be, if all the above led to a real social-national government and “a revaluation of all values“…
That tweeter is easily brainwashed, it seems. Never saw his tweets previously. They seem pretty silly, pretty unthinking.
Ah, just noticed that the tweeter works for Private Eye. What a co-incidence…
System drones Ian Hislop and Andrew Marr attack Elon Musk. There is an agenda here, as in “the public should trust the System mass media“.
Hislop, together with his totally unfunny pseudo-satire Have I Got News For You cabal, is to our society what the supposedly funny, supposedly satirical, Krokodil magazine was to Soviet society. Meaning— approved “satire” by approved “satirists” attacking “safe” targets.
Hislop has made a good thing for himself (and his bank balance) out of attacking “the right” targets. The same or similar might be said of Marr. Look at how they think, or want the public to think, that the mainstream media can be trusted. It could be called stupid to think like that, but Hislop knows exactly what he is doing.
As for Marr, a disgraceful System-approved journalist. His views? See below:
The fires in Los Angeles continue to rage, they are spreading rapidly, and the US government is unable to control them! Entire neighborhoods in Malibu have been reduced to ashes. pic.twitter.com/eEA0joxX1y
Aren't we always being told by the US and Israel that only terrorist set up command centers in the middle of highly populated cities so they can hide behind civilians? I mean wasn’t that the whole Israels Hamas spiel for why it was OK for Israel to bomb neighborhoods, hospitals,… https://t.co/iGVri5fZ95
— Jacqueline Anne Thompson (@ThatsJacqueline) April 14, 2024
Tel Aviv, other cities, and some thoughts about “new” cities
The events in Israel/Palestine have sparked a few thoughts.
Not very beautiful, but it is impressive all the same, when one thinks that, 150 years ago, there was very little if any urbanization, though the port of Jaffa, the original town in part of the location, has existed for 1,800 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa.
“In 1906, a group of Jews, among them residents of Jaffa, followed the initiative of Akiva Aryeh Weiss and banded together to form the Ahuzat Bayit (lit. “homestead”) society. One of the society’s goals was to form a “Hebrew urban centre in a healthy environment, planned according to the rules of aesthetics and modern hygiene”.[32] The urban planning for the new city was influenced by the garden city movement.[33] The first 60 plots were purchased in Kerem Djebali near Jaffa by Jacobus Kann, a Dutch citizen, who registered them in his name to circumvent the Turkish prohibition on Jewish land acquisition.[34]Meir Dizengoff, later Tel Aviv’s first mayor, also joined the Ahuzat Bayit society.[35][36] His vision for Tel Aviv involved peaceful co-existence with Arabs.[37][unreliable source]
On 11 April 1909, 66 Jewish families gathered on a desolate sand dune to parcel out the land by lottery using seashells. This gathering is considered the official date of the establishment of Tel Aviv. The lottery was organised by Akiva Aryeh Weiss, president of the building society.[38][39] Weiss collected 120 sea shells on the beach, half of them white and half of them grey. The members’ names were written on the white shells and the plot numbers on the grey shells. A boy drew names from one box of shells and a girl drew plot numbers from the second box. A photographer, Abraham Soskin (b. 1881 in Russia, made aliyah 1906[40]), documented the event. The first water well was later dug at this site, located on what is today Rothschild Boulevard, across from Dizengoff House.[41] Within a year, Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Yehuda Halevi, Lilienblum, and Rothschild streets were built; a water system was installed; and 66 houses (including some on six subdivided plots) were completed.”
Note, though, how even those first steps by the Jews were accompanied by the acquisition of land by subterfuge: “Jacobus Kann, a Dutch citizen, who registered them in his name to circumvent the Turkish prohibition on Jewish land acquisition“… [Wikipedia].
[Jaffa]
[Jaffa in foreground, with Tel Aviv in background]
The city of Tel Aviv grew rapidly as Jewish immigration increased in the 1920s and 1930s:
[Shadal Street, Tel Aviv, 1926]
[Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv, late 1930s]
[Allenby Street, Tel Aviv, 1940]
It could be argued that, like so much of the world, Israel/Palestine would have been better had it stayed under European, in this case British, rule (the British having conquered the region during WW1, and then administered it under League of Nations mandate).
I have seen other “instant” cities, at least cities which have been founded from effectively nothing and then have mushroomed quite quickly (in historical terms). Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) for one.
Incidentally, “Harare” was, pre-1980, the name of an African “township” (poor suburb outside the city).
[Jameson Avenue, Salisbury —now Samora Machel Avenue, Harare— in 1970]
[jacaranda trees in Salisbury, Rhodesia, now Harare, Zimbabwe]
I remember well how struck I was when I saw the flowering trees and bushes almost everywhere in the central and near-central parts of Salisbury. I have never been able to discover what were the quite large dark-green trees with football-sized spherical orange flowers that I saw quite often in 1977. Very beautiful.
[Monomatapa Hotel, Salisbury, Rhodesia, built 1974. I recall having a couple of beers there in 1977; someone abseiled down it for charity the same year; incidentally, that building project was completed despite UN sanctions]
In a way, a city such as Salisbury (now Harare) was even more impressive as a testament to human enterprise than somewhere such as Tel Aviv, which after all grew upon an existing port, Jaffa (or Yafa; the Jews call it Yafo). The location of Salisbury was almost terra nullius; only a few African tribesmen were in the area at the time of its foundation as a fort in 1890.
Population increases are always key. The present Harare has over 2M inhabitants; Tel Aviv (including autonomous suburbs etc) about 4M.
Another city, where I lived for a full year [1996-1997] is Almaty, Kazakhstan, founded (like Salisbury) as a fortified stockade in the late 19thC and called, by its Russian founders, Verny. Now, a city of over 2M inhabitants.
[part of Almaty, Kazakhstan]
[part of Almaty]
I find rather fascinating cities —and whole states and societies— which grow from almost nothing in a relatively short space of time. One, which I saw in its construction phase, was Milton Keynes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes]. I knew it for a few months in early 1977; on returning a few times about 30 years later, the difference was incredible. Whole suburbs where only fields were before; a railway station where none existed before; a population of over 250,000 (in 1977, only a few thousand); bus services (in 1977, effectively non-existent); filling stations; large modern hotels.
I appeared as Counsel a couple of times in the years 2002-2007 at Milton Keynes County Court; in 1977, there was no such court; neither was there the whole Central Milton Keynes district where the Court and the railway station etc are now located.
I saw Doha, Qatar, in 2001. A sleepy and not unpleasant city. When I returned in 2008, Doha was already unrecognizable, a city of concrete and skyscrapers. Since then, a further transformation along the same lines. A kind of Manhattan-look in the desert, and on the Red Sea.
One thing I can say which is positive about the Israelis is that much —not all— of their town planning is pretty good, from what I have seen from photos etc. Many of their suburbs and towns seem well-planned, with trees, parks and leisure facilities.
Of course, the foundation and sometimes fast development of cities has a flip side: cities can sometimes disappear quickly as well.
Last year UK government spending on refugees, asylum seekers & illegal migrants rose by £600 million to £4.3 billion — equivalent to 28% of the foreign aid budget (The Times)https://t.co/m5XM4gD08f
This government of Sunak (with those of his predecessors) is a disaster. There is every chance that the Israel-lobby Starmer-Labour replacement will be as bad, or even worse.
🇮🇷 Note that the Iranian army did not participate in the strikes. They have their own arsenal of various drones and missiles, which is different from that of the IRGC. pic.twitter.com/pxZXAlLDk5
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 14, 2024
Saudi Arabia🇸🇦 and Jordan🇯🇴 cooperated with the United States' surveillance & intervention efforts to protect Israel🇮🇱 from Iranian attack. pic.twitter.com/EsJNtzGYiX
Saudi Arabia is a useless, corrupt, decadent and hypocritical pseudo-theocracy.
Djibouti is host to more foreign military bases than any other country in the world. The US, China, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, France, and Italy all have troops there. How did this happen? Why are the world’s largest imperialist powers so interested in this tiny… pic.twitter.com/pzfA7Unxu8
— Kevin – WE THE PEOPLE❤️ – DAD🦁 🐉 🔥 (@bambkb) April 14, 2024
“Retired General Wesley Clark speaks about the USA’s plan to DESTROY 7 countries within 5 years in the Middle-East.
“Did you know that the USA wanted us to completely destabilize the middle-east and turn it upside down? Did anyone ever tell you this? Has there been any public dialogue about this? Did Senators or congress denounce these plans!? NO, they have not!!” “They told me that they were invading Iraq and I asked, WHY!? They said, ‘sir, it’s much worse than that, we’re going to destroy 7 countries in 5 years’ : We’re going to start in Iraq, then Syria, then Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia, then Sudan and we’re gonna finish with Iran.
The USA and allies already destroyed and demolished every country on this list except Iran – Who are the real terrorists that are terrorizing the entire planet? How can you hear this and not immediately think : Who the fuck is controlling the USA military and what is their real purpose? Who do they work for?
If you can’t use your critical thinking skills then you really don’t stand a chance at figuring shit out. The mainstream media creates your perception of reality on behalf of the globalists. The media is their strongest weapon of deception. Please STOP letting others shape your view of the world. Use your own brain and understand that we are up against a group of people/cult that runs and controls our world in secret. It’s OBVIOUSLY not easy to see through their deceit or else they wouldn’t have been in control of our planet for 100s, if not 1000s of years.“
Most of which is effectively as said by me on Twitter (until the Jewish lobby had me expelled in 2018), and on this blog since late 2016. NWO/ZOG.
Palestinians could be seen tearing down the separation wall in West Bank, following Iran’s attack on Israel. The wall was built to prevent Palestinians from entering into Israel, according to Israel’s Defence Ministry. pic.twitter.com/Rta05DB9cJ
Just a reminder. I support neither side because neither side supports White Europeans. Let them redact each other. Hail Victory⚡️⚡️ pic.twitter.com/OyGoxPbEue
I did quite like Calvin Robinson, until it emerged that his 'traditionalism' stops at the point the convicted conman Cyrus Scofield popularised the Christian-Zionist heresy.
Another day, another climate change lie exposed. 👇
“The sea level rise experienced in recent decades was supposed to lead to shrinking shorelines and inundated coasts. Instead, satellite observations reveal the globe’s island coasts expanded seaward (net) by 402 km² (155 mi²)… pic.twitter.com/sh8DkQAAgj
— Senator Gerard Rennick (@SenatorRennick) April 12, 2024
Interesting. White women who date blacks statistically have lower IQs than black women who date Whites. pic.twitter.com/9u27BH08Wx
Al-Jazeera showed a video showing a triangular-shaped object launching/intercepting missiles over northern Israel
The most popular versions are that the video shows the secret development of the US Army TR3B or TR-6 Telos. pic.twitter.com/mmVaKtLQ3h
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 14, 2024
The state of California, after the closure of borders by Texas, becomes the main destination in the United States for illegal migrants from Mexico pic.twitter.com/bJ0bqnNszf
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 14, 2024
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 14, 2024
It seems that the vast majority of cruise missiles and drones (though 99% seems very high) were destroyed in the air either by Israeli forces or by US, UK, French, Jordanian and Saudi aircraft. Such cruise missiles and drones are quite slow. If, however, the Iranians were to use the hypersonic missiles they are said to possess, then it might be a very different story.
It seems that the intellectual power behind the Boris Johnson throne is one Dominic Cummings, someone who only came to my attention recently. His new eminence put me in mind of a few similar people in the recent and not so recent past.
Brendan Bracken
Churchill had the egregious Brendan Bracken as his adviser and amanuensis. Bracken was, as such people often are, very strange indeed. He was born into modest but not poor circumstances in Ireland, drifted around Australia, attended Sedbergh School at age 19 (though claiming to be just 15), paying the fees himself, then left after one term, having acquired what the later KGB would have called a “legend” as an Anglo-Irishman who had attended a well-known English school (he let people believe that he had been there for years).
Armed with the Sedbergh “old school tie”, Bracken became a schoolmaster at Bishop’s Stortford College in 1921, but by 1922 was a magazine publisher and editor in London. He became wealthy quite rapidly. Puzzling. Here was a young man who had presumably saved some money while in Australia, and may have had a part-share in whatever his father left, but all the same Bracken’s swift rise to wealth is a puzzle. Still, there it is.
Having attached himself to Churchill, Bracken was instrumental at the vital moment when Chamberlain resigned in 1940:
” When Bracken became aware of Churchill’s agreement to nominate Lord Halifax, he convinced Churchill that the Labour Party would indeed support him as Chamberlain’s successor, and that Lord Halifax’s appointment would hand certain victory to Hitler. Bracken advised Churchill tactically to say nothing when the three met to arrange the succession. After a deafening silence during which Churchill was expected to nominate Halifax, the latter obligingly ruled himself out and Churchill was put forward as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, having avoided any appearance of disloyalty to Chamberlain.” [Wikipedia, and see Notes, below].
Thus this odd man “from nowhere” was not only present at the pivotal moment, but can be said to have altered the course of the Second World War on the strategic level. Had Churchill not become Prime Minister, Britain would have agreed peace with the German Reich in 1940. The whole history of Europe and indeed the world was thus altered in its course by this now-forgotten man (forgotten by the public, at least).
Bracken was MP for Paddington North (1929-1945) and for Bournemouth (1945-1951). He was Churchill’s PPS from 1940, later promoted to Minister of Information (1941-1945) and was briefly First Lord of the Admiralty in 1945. He was one of the chiefs of the Political Warfare Executive. He was elevated as a viscount in 1952. He was the publisher of, inter alia, the Financial Times, The Economist and History Today.
Bracken was rumoured to have been Churchill’s illegitimate progeny, though this seems to have been a myth not discouraged by Bracken himself. The viscounty granted was hereditary, but Bracken was unmarried and without issue. He died in 1958.
Was this the story only of a remarkably talented self-made businessman and politician or was there more to it? There are hints of the then-concealed New World Order about it all. We shall probably never know.
Steve Hilton
[As with Cummings –see below— Hilton felt the need to display his “I’m an off the wall maverick genius” persona by wearing beachwear or surf dude getup to Downing Street…]
Wikipedia says of Steve Hilton the following:
“Hilton is the son of Hungarian immigrants whose original surname was Hircsák[7] (which some sources spell “Hircksac”),[8] who fled their home during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. They came to Britain, initially claiming asylum, and anglicised their name to Hilton. Steve Hilton’s father, István, had been goaltender for the Hungarian national ice hockey team and was considered one of the top ice hockey players in Europe in the 1930s.[7][9] After arriving in Britain, his parents initially worked in catering at Heathrow Airport. They divorced when Steve was five years old[7] leading to what he has described as a struggle and great financial hardship; his mother worked in a shoe store to earn the little money they had, and the two lived in a cold, damp basement apartment. He won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham before studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at New College, Oxford.”
“After graduating, Hilton worked at Conservative Central Office, where he came to know David Cameron and Rachel Whetstone, his future wife and Senior Vice-President of Policy and Communications for Uber.[11] He liaised with the party’s advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi, and was praised by Maurice Saatchi, who remarked, “No one reminds me as much of me when young as Steve.”[8] During this time Hilton bought the “New Labour, New Danger” demon eyes poster campaign[12] for the Conservative’s pre-general election campaign in 1996, which won an award from the advertising industry’s Campaign magazine at the beginning of 1997.[13] The Conservatives went on to experience their worst election defeat for more than half a century, with some journalists speculating that the poster contrasted unfavourably with Labour’s more positive campaign.[14] In 2005, Hilton lost out to future Secretary of State for EducationMichael Gove in the selection process for the Surrey Heath constituency.”
“Hilton talked of the need to “replace” the traditionally minded grassroots membership of the Conservative Party, which he saw as preventing the party from embracing a more metropolitan attitude on social issues.”
So he was at first, in the 1990s, little better than a gopher, but then he met his wife, Rachel Whetstone. Who is she? She is described in Wikipedia as having been head of communications for Uber taxis. For a number of years until 2015, she was in a similar position at Google. She has more recently joined Netflix.
“In February 2013, Whetstone was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4.[4] Whetstone has been featured on PRWeek’s Power List several times, most recently in 2016 at number 14.” [Wikipedia]
“Whetstone is married to Steve Hilton, whom she met after an affair with Lord Astor (stepfather to Samantha Cameron, wife of former Prime Minister David Cameron) in the lead-up to the 2005 election. Cameron is no longer on speaking terms with Whetstone or Hilton.” [Wikipedia]
More interestingly, Rachel Whetstone’s grandfather was one Antony Fisher, not much known to the public, though extremely influential behind the scenes:
“Sir Antony George Anson FisherAFC (28 June 1915 – 8 July 1988), nicknamed AGAF, was a British businessman and think tank founder. He participated in the formation of various libertarian organisations during the second half of the twentieth century, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Atlas Network. Through Atlas, he helped establish up to 150 other institutions worldwide.”
Antony Fisher may have been at least part-Jew, and was certainly a Zionist, pro-Israel to the hilt.
Hilton was thought by many to be half-mad. He was lucky to escape with a caution and a small fine after having assaulted someone on a railway platform in England. He had been arrested after the assault and after shouting “wanker!” at staff and police. At the time, this useless creature was being paid £200,000 a year from public funds. There were other incidents of aggressive behaviour during his time at No.10.
“Andy Coulson, the former communications chief who was later jailed over phone hacking, recalled recently in the Telegraph: “I would ask, ‘So how does that work then?’ If I got an answer at all, it was along the lines of, ‘It’ll be fine – just you see.’ That was mildly irritating, as it was my team who would have to get out and sell the latest product from Steve’s dream factory.”” [The Guardian]
“Hilton’s rightwing, free-market ideas certainly infuriated Lib Dems who worked with him, as chronicled in David Laws’s book about the coalition. One Lib Dem former adviser said: “I was unfortunate enough to spend some time in Steve’s thought wigwam and it was not a pretty place. I remember him suggesting we should scrap maternity laws and invest in cloud-busting technology to improve the British weather. I certainly do not remember at any time him raising any points about the immigration policy he is now criticising.”” [The Guardian]
Hilton accomplished nothing, certainly nothing concrete, at Downing Street, and eventually decamped to the USA, where he was, laughably, taken on as some kind of visiting “professor” at Stanford:
“In March 2012, Downing Street announced that Hilton would be a “visiting scholar” at Stanford University‘s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies for a year.[21] His last memo concerned the advocacy of severe cuts in the number of civil servants in the United Kingdom[22] and further welfare cuts.” [Wikipedia]
At time of writing, Steve Hilton is on the American TV network, Fox News, as a talking head, and is apparently a Trump partisan.
“Had Bernie Sanders been the Democratic nominee, Hilton “probably would have supported him”. Hilton says he is not really a conservative or a liberal: “It’s hard to pin me down because I’m a bit of Bernie Sanders, a bit of Rand Paul, bit of John Kasich.” He’s pro-Trump simply because he was the candidate most likely to “shake things up”” [The Guardian]
Someone who actively likes and promotes chaos, in fact, just like Dominic Cummings [see below]
Steve Hilton, in other words, like the others examined here, is connected with cosmopolitan finance-capital and its intellectual superstructure of “think tanks” (which have proliferated over the years) and with supposed “institutes”, mostly carrying the same sort of message: internationalism, multikulti “get rich quick”-ism, destruction of tradition, race and culture, combined with State repression of those without money.
Dominic Cummings
[above, Dominic Cummings: note the “I’m Too Important To Wear A Tie Or A Jacket” affectation, as with Steve “Hilton”]
As stated at the start of this blog post, I know of Cummings only what I have read. The links are either posted here below or are available easily via Google.
One thing that did interest me was the Wikipedia statement, taken from a biography of Michael Gove, that “Cummings speaks Russian and ‘is a Russophile'”. It seems that he tried to start an airline with the single route line of Samara (a large city on the Volga) to Vienna, an interesting choice of route. We are told on Wikipedia that: “After university, Cummings moved to Russia from 1994 to 1997, working on various projects. In one Russian venture, he worked for a group attempting to set up an airline connecting Samara in southern Russia to Vienna; however, the venture fell foul of the KGB, and was abandoned after only one flight.“
Well, the “KGB” bit is wrong in exact terms, because the KGB was disbanded (reorganized) in 1991. The bulk of the “internal” work of the old KGB was given to the “FSK” which later became the FSB. As to why the revamped FSK/FSB would want to interfere in the activities of a foreign or foreign-connected airline, I wonder. There are, and have been for 2-3 decades now, numerous foreign airlines operating in the former Soviet Union, flying between Russia and other states.
In the 1990s, new “babyflots” (bits of the old Aeroflot) were emerging all the time, as were ad hoc operations such as the German airline “Luftbrucke” (Air Bridge), which transported tens of thousands of “Volksdeutsche” from Kazakhstan and Siberia to new lives in the reunified Germany (those people were mostly the descendants of Germans invited to Russia by Russian tsars, notably Catherine the Great, then deported East by Stalin). Luftbrucke, if I recall aright, also flew from Samara, as also from a host of cities in Western Siberia and Kazakhstan, such as Semipalatinsk.
I find the history of Cummings interesting. He graduated from Oxford in 1994 aged 22-23, his degree being in Ancient and Modern History. The very same year he moved to Russia “where he worked on various projects” including the idea “to set up a new airline”.
I admit that I myself have never set up an airline, but I know that you cannot do it without rather a lot of money, even in the conditions of post-collapse Sovietism (I myself was briefly in Moscow in 1993 and also dealt with legal and business matters in Russia and Kazakhstan for several years).
Cummings is said to be the son of an oil rig project manager and a special needs teacher. There is no suggestion of any heavy family wealth. Cummings only left university in 1994, yet by —at latest— 1997, so 0-3 years later, was setting up an airline? In fact, how did he get into Russian-oriented business anyway, with no obvious connections or personal monies. He is able to speak Russian, though. That too raises questions.
I lived in Almaty, Kazakhstan for a year (1996-1997), meeting dozens if not hundreds (and over the years, certainly hundreds) of businessmen, lawyers etc doing work in the various ex-Soviet republics. While most of the diplomats I met spoke at least some Russian, the vast majority of businessmen and lawyers encountered knew no Russian at all really (that was true of both British and Americans). Certainly unable to undertake even simple discussions. I even met some unable to order simple food and drink.
So Cummings leaves university in the UK, where he studied ancient and modern history, somehow speaks Russian (or learns it on the ground), and is at once involved with business activities which seem to go beyond being a mere gopher for others. I have to say that I wonder whether Cummings was up to something other than just being a British graduate drifting about and getting into Russian business speculations almost by chance. Maybe the Russian security people were right to be suspicious of him, as is suggested in his Wikipedia entry.
Anyway, he is now considered to be Boris Idiot’s eminence grise, and looks it (meaning “grey”, if not particularly eminent). In fact, despite being only 47, he looks 10+ years older than me, and I am now 62. His political career is summarized here:
I have to say that I agree with his view of many of the leading political and official figures (he described Iain Dunce Duncan Smith as “incompetent”, for example).
It seems that Cummings married a lady of the North Country gentry who is or was Deputy Editor of the Spectator. They live in Islington, in what the Daily Mail is pleased to call a “£1.6 million house” (though in London, what does that mean? I lived for years in a house in Little Venice now (over)valued at £4 million! Madness). Other details about Cummings are few.
“What is clear is that this character is right now in the maelstrom of chaos and action that he loves so much. A defender quipped that he’ll be thrilled with upheaval – it’s the only way he sees people being forced into action. His friend once heard him quote Lenin: “The worse the better.” [Reaction magazine]
The Prophets of Dystopia
These “advisers” (of whom I have selected a mere few from a larger pool) and their connected “think tanks” etc are, even when some of their critique of society is justified, basically destructive. The same applies to the people themselves. Admittedly, Brendan Bracken left a less obviously destructive legacy, but then, after the huge and unnecessary war which he, from the shadows, did so much to bring about, what more need he do to be adjudged a negative force?
Look at Steve Hilton, Dominic Cummings etc. Where are their real achievements? Leaves blown away by the wind. These people may themselves have acquired riches, but only or mainly because they married wealthy wives, then used their own political attachment and profile to become highly-prized TV, radio, press and online “gurus” . They themselves have not established anything solid, whether in commerce, industry, academia, the arts, the sciences, charitable work or anywhere else. They are creatures created from the chaos and decadence in society. They prosper from the decadence and weakness of the political system in the UK and attach themselves to stupid, weak, posturing politicians vainly trying to reach to statesmanship, people such as David Cameron-Levita and Boris-Idiot. They are a symptom of dark days ahead. Social nationalism must rise up to exterminate evil and to found a better and better-organized society.
Is it fanciful to compare the sliding society we now have (look at the past few days…) and the prominence of these odd characters such as Hilton and Cummings, whose academic and patchy work histories are at best underwhelming, with the sliding Russia of the last few years before the Revolution(s) of 1917? Perhaps, but in late-Tsarist Russia too the government, civil service, certainly the politicians, were paralyzed, helpless to do anything positive, and so the influence grew of odd characters: tarot practitioners, mystics and occultists, fortune-tellers of all kinds, persons believed to have arcane knowledge and unorthodox ways to make politics work via persuasion and peculiar ideas and methods. The starets (he was never a monk or priest) Rasputin was only the most important of a whole host.
In fact, I agree with some of what Cummings has said:
“We should stop selecting leaders from a subset of Oxbridge egomaniacs with a humanities degree...” That is true, though I have nothing against degrees in the humanities, but the whole idea of the “generalist” (almost always armed with a degree from Oxford or Cambridge) has blighted UK political, cultural and even industrial life for 70 years, perhaps 100 years. The Soviet Union tended toward the same behaviour (the politically-OK “Man From Moscow” who could “direct” anything from a tyre factory to a Young Pioneer camp or the building of the Moscow Metro), and look what happened there (the Metro in Moscow admittedly being a —rare— success of the Soviet system).
Of course, the worst single example of the generalist might be Cummings’ present employer, Boris-idiot, who has proven that he is incapable of doing anything properly, but who can do it while quoting a bit of rote-learned Ancient Greek, or using an English word no-one else has ever heard of (he must trawl the OED for those silly words, I expect…what a complete waste of space he is!). As the journalist writes,
“All evidence goes out the window. The grandest ever Oxbridge egomaniac of them all (with not even a very good humanities degree, as it happens) is seeing only the flickering shadows on the news on the wall. It is not even day 14 and already we have beaten a hyper-accelerated march to the world of crap policy for political gain.“
The journalist continues, citing a recent Times article by Cummings:
“Elsewhere, in that same Times article, we read: “We must train aspirant leaders very differently so they have the skills and experience of managing complex projects.””
“And here he is, bringing in policies that would make Norman Tebbit look enlightened, working for a leader whose skill at “managing complex projects” so far extends to some rolling windowless sauna buses, a cable car to nowhere, and a ghost garden bridge that may or may not take you to a demented airport that has never and will never be built.“
Seems that my blog was (again) prescient, if I say so myself: not a day or even part of a day goes by now without someone publishing something in the newspapers about Dominic Cummings (though Steve “Hilton” is old news and Brendan Bracken ancient history).
'Sources close to the prime minister tell me that he cried when he heard the news' – fascinating @jennirsl insight into the moment Boris Johnson heard his brother was resigning in the national interest https://t.co/LUNDmcPJeR
“Through his system, as yet unexplained – “I will go into what I think this vision could be and how to do it another day” – he will turn a nation of average people into one of the most successful countries in the world. He will sweep away the suffocating postwar mainframes of politics, and build something capable of withstanding the unknown crises ahead. Or so he would wish. In truth, he may be little more than a survivalist in the woods, soldering wires together in the belief he is saving us all.
Is Dominic Cummings a visionary or a fool? The remarkable fact is that the Conservative Party has risked its future, and the country’s, on which one Cummings turns out to be.” [Harry Lambert, writing in The New Statesman]
Dominic Cummings dresses down (even more) in Downing Street on the day of the Saturday sitting of the Commons (today). Not sure whether the bimbo is Boris Johnson’s girlfriend or a lookalike.
All he lacks is a few copies of The Big Issue and a plastic cup for tips. Oh, no, wait, he’s holding the cup…
[Update, 28 March 2026: Well, I have now identified the young woman seen with Cummings in that photo. Not Carrie Johnson (as she now is), but Cleo Watson, a government Special Adviser (SpAd) at the time of the photo; she is from an affluent background in Herefordshire, has written 2 novels of the romans-a-clef type, and is now around 35 years of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_Watson.]
Update, 3 November 2019
I very much doubt that Dominic Cummings works or worked for Russian Intelligence…au contraire.
Ian Robert Millard 