Tag Archives: corrupt police officers

Diary Blog, 9 January 2024, including a few thoughts about the LibDems

Morning music

From the newspapers

https://www.mylondon.news/news/east-london-news/corrupt-met-officer-used-police-28411081

Import such populations and you also import, with them, their behavioural patterns, including corruption and malfeasance in office. cf. Sunak etc.

How many similar police cases have there been, even over the past year? Many.

Tweets seen

LibDems are just wastes of space. There may be exceptions, but I have not seen any. Ed Davey is only marginally better than was Jo Swinson, and she was rock-bottom in every respect.

Even the old Liberal Party was mostly ludicrous in the post-WW1 (let alone post-WW2) era, though Jo Grimond was an exception: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Grimond.

Incidentally, Grimond’s memoirs are worth reading: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Memoirs-Jo-Grimond/dp/0434306002.

As to the LibDem chances in the upcoming 2024 General Election, I may be wrong but think them overestimated by commentators. Admittedly, many voters who despise the present Government and who see nothing in Starmer-Labour for which to vote may be looking for a protest vote, and some (those who do not favour Reform UK, the Green Party, or simple abstention may choose the LibDems, but I think not very many.

There are presently-Con seats where Labour has no chance, but where the LibDems often roll in second. Those seats may go LibDem, especially if Labour voters vote tactically. I cannot see the LibDems getting more than 10% overall (2019— 11.6%).

In both 2017 and 2015, the LibDems got below 8% after the years of Con Coalition. There is no possibility for the LibDems to revisit the 23% they achieved in 2010. “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time” [Abraham Lincoln].

However, what matters in UK Parliamentary politics is not the overall percentage, but the percentage concentrated in particular seats, which is why, in 2015, UKIP received 12.6% of the vote but only the one seat it already had, whereas the LibDems received a mere 7.9%, yet retained 8 MPs.

So it may yet be that, in the end, even on an overall 10%, the LibDems, who currently have only 15 MPs, will able to double or even treble their Commons strength.

Meanwhile, if Reform UK gets, nationwide, the same, or even 15%, it will probably end up still without any MPs.

The present pseudo-democratic system is a bad joke.

Kiev’s air defense forces are exhausted, and the West is in no hurry to help – Financial Times.

In the absence of new tranches of military assistance from the United States and the European Union, Ukraine is increasingly concerned that Ukrainian military personnel and military and industrial facilities may be vulnerable to Russian airstrikes, writes the Financial Times.

As Russia intensifies its campaign to strike energy infrastructure and other targets in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky called on Western allies to approve new military aid packages to bolster Kyiv’s depleted air defense capabilities.

According to Zelensky, there are not enough air defense systems both on the battlefield and for the defense of targets in Ukrainian cities. Kiev admits that Russia “controls the sky.”

At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces hope that Ukraine’s receipt of American-made F-16 fighters will put an end to the dominance of the Russian air force and help resume the counteroffensive, which has so far failed to achieve any significant successes.

Not so many people want to be bothered by real problems, let alone real solutions. The masses want to be distracted by winning or losing sports games on the other side of the world, the latest soap trash on TV, the latest “reality” (unreality) TV show, or whatever.

Also, there are huge numbers of idiots virtue-signalling online or otherwise about how it is “kind” or “decent” to allow a million, or ten million migrant-invaders into the UK, or a hundred million if it comes to that. We have already had ten million, over 20+ years.

Those “virtue-signallers”, the “refugees welcome” dimwits etc are lacking the intellectual honesty to admit that that means the end of our basically decent European society, and the end of opportunities for most British people. It also means a housing crisis, a transport and roads crisis, a gradually-worsening NHS, gradually-sinking (in real terms) pay, State benefits, pensions etc, as well as educational standards falling through the floor.

More music

More tweets

I cannot find a suitable cartoon with which to characterize this news. Something like a giant jackboot applied to Skidmore’s rear end…

Late music

[Michael and Inessa Garmash, After the Opera]