Morning music
Tweets seen today
Peter Oborne on how the BBC and other msm are deliberately retailing fake news to the British public:
Still think that you are living in (what people long ago called) “a free country”? Police state.
Yes, at present only a “toytown” police state, but steadily becoming a real one. Tyrannical government, no real Opposition in Parliament (quite the reverse, in fact), the Press, TV, radio almost entirely pumping out System propaganda, the police becoming a Stasi-lite, the law corrupted or ignored, Government wishes (sub nom “guidance” and “advice”, or made-up “rules”) treated by the police as if “law”, while the courts are silent or craven.
At present it is “iron fist in velvet glove”, but for how long?
A debate which has been around for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. On the one hand, cities are the fount of organized culture and science, along with other desirable things; on the other hand, cities are sinks of dirt, corruption, decadence and evil.
Marx referred to “rural idiocy”, a point of view arguably typically Jewish; the Jews have long been associated with urban life, though not exclusively: there were once plenty of rural Jews in the Pale of Settlement (Western Russia and what is now Belarus), and also in Poland and Ukraine.
On the other hand, writers, poets and thinkers have always existed who were ready to extol the country life, and even life in the wilderness. Virgil, Rousseau and Thoreau among many others.
Perhaps the best way to look upon these questions of urbanization and rurality is to say that there can be decent and aesthetically-pleasing cities, and there can be a rural life with high cultural and living standards. There must be the will to create both.
Not just Gates. All the ultra-wealthy are now buying up huge tracts of farmland. Look at the UK. James Dyson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson] has been building up a huge farmland portfolio across the central belt of England: Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson#Personal_life].
Dyson may soon be akin to the 15thC magnate, Warwick the Kingmaker [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville,_16th_Earl_of_Warwick; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville,_16th_Earl_of_Warwick#Warwick’s_apex]; Warwick’s lands were said to be so extensive that he could ride through the whole of England, coast-to-coast, or North to South, and never leave his own estates.
Dyson is but one example of very wealthy persons buying lands in huge quantity in England and also Scotland at present. I myself have noticed how few large estates are on sale for long before being bought. I am sure that it is partly by reason of a drive for security. London is becoming a zoo. Who knows how long it will be safe for the wealthy? Also, in circumstances of socio-economic and/or socio-political meltdown—which may develop— rural estates are safer than London houses.
There is also the point that land is a hedging asset in a way that cash and equities (shares) are not. The pound must be sliding from now. Not just the “panicdemic”, but mishandled Brexit/Brino as well. We have just been told that the UK economy contracted by nearly 3% recently. Yes, the Government can borrow to distribute largesse— for a while. Not indefinitely, though.
I was just reading some American anti-Gates Twitter accounts talking about these issues. One fellow said that he has bought 1 acre and intends to build his own home on it and grow things. Fine, though an acre is very little, but, while that may be straightforward in parts of the USA, in Western Europe there are so many factors etc to overcome. God help the man who buys an acre of Devon or Dorset and just builds his own home on it without planning permission etc.
More tweets
Below, “Antifa” cheerleader (always from a very safe distance) and serial grifter, Mike Stuchbery, attacks the memory of Ashli Babbitt, an American woman who, though unarmed, was shot dead at the US Capitol building recently:
Stuchbery, who used to pose as “historian” and “journalist” (in fact, he was briefly a “supply” —i.e. temporary— teacher, who was sacked for reasons unclear) is now living off German welfare payments in Stuttgart (he also seems to scribble a bit for politically-tendentious online websites). I have blogged about him previously (he later sent, a couple of times, puerile and would-be threatening messages to me as a result): https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/10/23/a-few-words-about-mike-stuchbery/
An unpleasant character.
Ha ha! (see below):
Quite funny. First of all, and despite her extensive education (her father was a wealthy timber merchant, of the sort mentioned in Russian literature of the 19thC), Rosa Luxemburg was an idiot. She died before she was able to see most of the devastation wrought by Soviet socialism. Her own ideas were, arguably, typically Jewish, tending to protest, dissolution, revolution and chaos. Even had she been gifted power, she would have been unable to do anything positive with it.
Incidentally, her Wikipedia entry initially describes her as “Polish”, rather than “Jewish”, because of her having been born in Poland [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg]! The (((influence))) is very obvious in parts of Wikipedia.
Sad. Give the bird a chance. It can always be prevented from mating, if that is the problem. There’s no do-gooder “conservationist” as extreme as an Australian one (unless it’s a German one).
Ironic, though. A poor pigeon makes an epic journey to Australia and will be killed, but the idiots in Australia have let in every kind of ethnic riff-raff, and those idiots in Canberra and elsewhere pat themselves on the back for being so “hospitable” and “diverse”!
[update: it turns out that the pigeon was probably not from the USA, and so will not now be killed].
Ha ha! Not very polite, but then neither are these self-appointed “facemask vigilantes”.
In fact, the Jewish woman was probably making it up. Not for nothing was one of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not bear false witness“. Ingrained…
Late tweets seen
This is the problem not only in relation to the “panicdemic” but also in relation to other issues which scarcely impact on the very wealthy, and only peripherally on the merely very affluent Westminster denizens, whether politicians or msm drones. Immigration. Poor roads. Poor public transport. Crime (mostly committed by immigrants and/or their offspring). Declining quality of the NHS. Poor pay for most. Poor education.
In fact, the very wealthy don’t necessarily care much about most of those issues. Immigration? No problem (cheap labour inc. domestic help; and no immigrant “communities” live anywhere near them or in the same buildings). Poor rail and roads? No problem (private planes and helicopters, supplemented by chauffeur-driven or other Range-Rovers and other expensive cars). Crime? No problem (private security, expensive alarms etc). NHS problems? No problem (private healthcare, money for medicines unavailable on NHS…). Poor pay? No problem (inherited or other wealth). Poor education? No problem (anyone with wealth can pay for expensive schools and/or private tutors).
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 