To my mind, two aspects stand out: firstly, the fact that Reform UK has been attracting voters from all System parties, leaving the Greens aside. Former Conservative Party voters, but also former Labour Party voters; even some former LibDem voters (presumably, people who previously voted LibDem as being “the least bad of a bad bunch”). Secondly, the fact that Reform UK seems to be able to pull out of their self-imposed (?) exile people who in recent times have preferred not to vote (presumably in disgust at the choice or, rather, lack of choice, offered.
I have said many times on this blog that, with (in 2024) just on 40% of the entire eligible electorate preferring not to vote, any party that could energize even a substantial fraction of those voters, might sweep to power. It is not clear what proportion of 2024 non-voters are now willing to vote Reform, but it seems to be a substantial proportion, anyway (and no other party is managing to do the same).
A further point of interest is how many 2024 Lab and Con voters are now intending to abstain. Quite a few, but more from the Labour camp. I am guessing that the one-time Corbyn supporters are either going Green or abstaining, while others are going LibDem or to Reform, but it may not be so clear-cut.
What the picture will be by 2029, I cannot say, but somehow I doubt that most of those dissatisfied voters will be flocking back like homing pigeons to Lab or Con. Indeed, it may well be that both main System parties will experience further drift away from their control and influence.
Gaza
'This is deliberate… this is the militarisation of starvation.'
Whoever in the UK —whether Jew or non-Jew— supports what the Israeli Government is doing in Gaza is complicit in war crimes of a deeply sadistic and brutal kind.
Jewish orgs in the UK, such as the malicious “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”], maintain that only 6% of Jews in the UK say that they are not “Zionists”, and that the vast majority of the remaining 94% support what the Israeli Government is doing. From the horse’s mouth.
Starmer-stein has vowed to maintain arms sales to Israel. He is therefore and thereby aiding and abetting the worst kind of state terrorism, indeed terrorism bullying a civilian population (a high proportion of which consists of non-combatant women and children) which has no means at all of protecting or defending itself, let alone of fighting the Israeli Jews with their jet aircraft, missiles, tanks etc.
It becomes ever more obvious that the establishment of the State of Israel was a terrible mistake. Still, perhaps it will be possible to correct that, together with other, connected, mistakes.
More tweets seen
#Mudlarking a satisfyingly chunky 1806 George III penny on the river Thames.
In 1806 this could purchase crossing Thames tributary, Deptford Creek, via its newly built bridge – a short distance from where I made this find over 200 years later. #mudlark#history#archaeologypic.twitter.com/hGZdhYKZ30
— Mud Historian (Malcolm Russell) (@MudHistorian) June 4, 2025
New post. “White Britons will become a minority in the year 2063, just 38 years from now, while among the under-40s, the tipping point will come much sooner, as early as 2050”https://t.co/AjgzjjbLMy
You only have to look at the schools, particularly at primary educational level, particularly in the cities, towns, and suburbs. There are few white children (“formerly known as English or British”) at all.
Electoral Calculus translates that result to Reform 376 MPs, Lab 129, LibDem 65, SNP 39, Cons 11. Once again, if replicated at the 2029 (?) General Election, terminal for the Conservative Party.
That kind of special forces type of operation is in a grey area alongside “terrorism”. The Kiev regime is doing it not from a position of strength but from one of military weakness, weakness on the battlefield. The Kiev regime’s forces are depleted, at little more than skeleton strength now. Russian Federation forces are steadily if slowly advancing across the major sections of the front, and are not retreating on any sector of the front.
I expect a Russian move shortly that will be both payback for the recent drone attacks on airfields as far away as Western Siberia, and an escalation which may create a breakthrough for the Russian side.
Russian forces struck Ukrainian attack UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) assembly workshops, storage and launch sites over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported:https://t.co/QBgL0UvDgPpic.twitter.com/L32aOuX8R3
The US plans to change the structure of its military deployments around the world to adapt to current tasks: protecting the southern border and increasing deterrence capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said:https://t.co/n1MGFQtPNIpic.twitter.com/QOPF6ruKpV
According to Electoral Calculus, that equates to about the following Commons seats: Reform 201, Labour 189, Con 131, LibDems 67, Greens 4. The only possible governments would be Reform as a weak minority one, or Reform backed up by the Conservatives, or a “Grand Coalition” of System parties— LibLabCon.
Russian troops liberated the community of Yasenovoye in the Donbass region over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday:https://t.co/eRwveZy2sbpic.twitter.com/iZu5Q4jLA4
This is so funny, Lee Anderson on fine form here completely rinsing the New Health Minister Ashley Dalton on her belief that people can identify as Llamas. 😂👇 🦙 pic.twitter.com/fIFGsjX30p
Billions for IRA terrorists, billions for shambolic black/brown “states” unable to rule themselves, billions for the Jew-Zionist dictatorship in Ukraine, billions for all sorts of total rubbish in the UK, but no money for our pensioners, our sick and disabled, our unemployed, our young people etc.
So why shouldn’t extremely bad and extremely controversial laws be pushed through by thick-as-two-short-planks MPs who, having been previously only “LGBTQXYZ” personal trainers, were gifted their Commons seats in very odd circumstances? Oh, wait a minute…
Talking point
Simon Myerson KC saying things that are false?
Myerson who reposted that I was the scum of the earth responsible for his client’s suicide?
If you want to know more about Myerson, signup link is in my bio.
Incidentally, he may have been allowed to present his 2024 dismissal from his part-time job as a Recorder as “resignation” but it was basically a sacking, as when a badly-behaved schoolboy or officer is “asked to leave” his college or regiment.
A woman from Grenada who arrived in Britain & illegally overstayed her visa has delayed being deported by claiming her home in the Caribbean would be "too hot" for her new Latvian husband who would "struggle to cope with its tropical cuisine"
“Reform UK is now only a single percentage point behind Labour – putting their leader Nigel Farage within touching distance of Number 10 at the next election.
New polling data from YouGov, commissioned by Sky News, puts Reform on 24 per cent and Labour on 25 per cent – down a whopping 9 percentage points from their winning vote share at the 2024 UK election.
With the Conservatives on 22 per cent, the UK electorate may be about to usher in a new epoch of three-way party politics.
The new research puts Labour on 26 per cent, Reform UK on 25 per cent, the Torieson 22 per cent, the Lib Dems on 14 per cent and the Greens on 8 per cent.
In general the assessment of Sir Keir’s first six months in office is damning, with only 10 per cent of voters judging that he has been successful and an overwhelming majortity (60 per cent) saying he has been unsuccessful.
Labour insiders are also worried at how the party is hemorrhaging voters to other parties across the political spectrum.
The new data found that they have retained only 54 per cent of supporters from the general election – while 7 percent have defected to the Lib Dems, 6 per cent to the Green Party, 5 per cent to Reform UK and 4 per cent to the Tories.
Meanwhile almost a quarter of those who voted Labour in the polls (23 per cent) either did not say, weren’t sure or had decided not to vote at all.
Labour also faces a problem with elderly voters in light of policies like the removal of the winter fuel allowance, with only 14 per cent of OAPs now saying they would cast their vote for Labour – down eight percentage points from the election.“
Naturally, Reform UK is not very close to me, ideologically. Pro Israel, pro-Jewish lobby, and (relatively) anti-welfare state; pro-finance capitalism.
Still, Reform UK has its uses. To move the “Overton Window”, particularly on issues of immigration, migration-invasion, free speech etc. Above all, to break up the LibLabCon “three main parties” scam which has been in place during my lifetime.
It may well be that all party politics will crumble to dust by reason of some existential catastrophe in the world, such as nuclear war, but that is another matter, arguably.
According to Electoral Calculus [https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html], the figures given, if replicated at a general election, might result in a House of Commons with Labour holding 287 seats, Conservative Party 128, Reform UK 107, LibDems 77, Green Party 4. That would indicate a Lab-LibDem coalition, or some lesser concordat, Labour being about 37 short of an overall majority on those figures.
Tweets seen
Speaking on behalf of Zimbabweans, we want our whites back to safeguard our food production and to revitalize our industries pic.twitter.com/v6eFY9SMbW
This is the norm with the black government in Africa. During the Rhodesia government, our parents had decent jobs, and no one risked life crossing borders for better living. Zimbabwe needs a white government, and zanu pf has failed . pic.twitter.com/eggQtI7yET
When I was about 21-y-o, I wanted to get rid of hundreds of unwanted books, mostly paperback novels (spy stories and crime thrillers etc). I gave them to the Royal Marsden because I was then living at Reigate Hill in Surrey, only about 8 or 9 miles away from the hospital’s site at Sutton (though the distance seems more because the two areas are so different). I dropped them off at the hospital reception. I hope they at least passed the time for some of the in-patients. I suppose that must have been 1977 or 1978.
It looks, though, as if the lady tweeter noted attends not the Sutton site of the hospital but rather its other and older location, in Kensington (which would make more sense, because she lives not far from my old shooting club, the Kensington Rifle and Pistol Club, now all but defunct and no longer —since the 1990s, if not earlier—in West Kensington). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marsden_Hospital.
“My annual mammo is the best focus group of one you’ll get. Delightful radiographer tells me she’s never voted, they’re all as bad as each other and don’t listen to the NHS.
Furious about the social care plan delay not just as a healthcare worker but as the mother of a special needs adult who needs it. Her daughter volunteers in a food bank when she can, bless her.
3 disgraces in this story alone – underpaid NHS worker (my words not hers), crap & ludicrously expensive social care, food banks. I say I might have an offer you like and care passionately about fixing social care. And the rest. I also think doctors would run the NHS better, pen-pushers and deadbeat hospital CEOs, often from industry or politics, should be blocked off.“
All right. Some good points, but was she saying all that when she was married to a Conservative MP and Whip (until a decade ago)? I do not know, but I doubt it. She was (and still is? I wonder…) a passionate supporter of the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George (Gideon) Osborne, whose government of nasty nonsense, 2010-2015, imposed so-called “austerity” (for the poor) and spending cuts which permanently crippled this country in every way.
As for “food banks”, they scarcely existed until 2010. Only on a tiny scale, anyway. Another result of “Conservative” Party policies 2010-2015.
The Fiona Syms tweeter should think about why the Conservative Party presently stands at 22% in the opinion polls, 2 points lower than at GE 2024, despite the evident hopeless incompetence and unpleasantness of the “Labour” government of “Tel Aviv Keith” Starmer and his little Labour Friends of Israel cabal.
People have not forgotten the 14 years of truly bad “Conservative” government 2010-2024, finishing off with the government of the little Indian money-juggler, Sunak; and now the “Conservatives” are “led” by a political joke (again), a Nigerian woman who only came to the UK at age 16, albeit that she spent a day or two here after her birth (in London).
Having said that, it is clear that Labour (too) is finished. After a week or two of Starmer-Labour misgovernment, I blogged as much, at which time the msm were sycophantically applauding Starmer (some stupid woman scribbler in, I think, the Guardian, even said that she found herself attracted to Starmer sexually!— Well, Henry Kissinger did say that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac“…).
What stands out there for me is how only among those 65+ years of age is voting Conservative anywhere near the level required to ground a Conservative Party government. 35%. Not very impressive anyway, but dropping to only 25% among those 50-64 y o, and to only 16% among those aged 25-49 before almost disappearing among those aged 18-24.
It might be argued that those aged below 65 y o might well change their views when they age further (just as it was said by Soviet anti-Christian propagandists in the pre-1989 period that “only old women now attend Russian Orthodox churches“, but that was countered by those who noted that there seemed always to be another generation of old women at church…).
Yes, those now aged below 65 may well be more inclined to vote Conservative when they reach 65+, but in my opinion the numbers will never be higher, or even as high, as they now are.
If the percentage of those 65+ voting Conservative is now 35% or so, by 2029 that might easily decline to 30%, and lower thereafter. The same slide might also be seen, and probably will be seen, lower down the age scale. If the present 18-24 y o generation only vote Conservative Party at around 5%, that will almost certainly increase, but maybe only slightly, over the years to come. To what extent is hard to pinpoint, but maybe by only about 5 points in each coming generation, so at age 65+ maybe to about 20%.
Admittedly speculative.
That is assuming that the present voting and political system will still be here in 2060, 2040, or even 2030. Or the present world as we know it…
No 10 blocks beaver release plan, officials view it as Tory legacy https://t.co/Dn9KlwOqgb via @yahooNewsUK Beavers/Nature/Natural. Yet another useless spiteful gov idea that will help protect OUR river banks from flooding. They will do anything to destroy the UK. Libour OUT
Hey Labour, know what else is a Tory Legacy? The useless and viciously cruel badger cull. Why don’t you end that vile legacy and leave badgers and beavers alone? https://t.co/Qi1pMyRIZU
Until 6 months ago, though I already predicted on the blog that Starmer-Labour would be useless, I did not think that this government would or even could equal in infamy the totally s**t governments of 2010-2024. Well, I was wrong in that last. Starmer and his crew are as bad as, or worse than, any of the “Conservative” governments of 2010-2024.
I think that this comes within the category “shocking but not surprising”…
"I lost my job for supporting a mainstream political party."
FSU member Saba Poursaeedi's fight for workplace free speech is closing in on £20,000 — but we still need your help to reach our £28,000 stretch target.
Yes. All true. However…where was Toby Young, and where was the “Free Speech Union”, when I was wrongfully (and, as it later turned out, unlawfully) disbarred in 2016, as a result of a concerted campaign by the Jew-Zionist lobby, specifically the overlapping “UK Lawyers for Israel” [“UKLFI”] and “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”]?
“A law student is suing Cambridge University for discrimination after he failed his PhD and delayed his career working as a barrister.
Jacob Meagher is seeking ‘substantial damages’ from the world famous institution, alleging he was the subject of disability discrimination and victimisation following the failure of his law PhD.
Mr Meagher also claimed that his oral ‘viva voce’ interview, where he was questioned about his thesis by two examiners, caused ‘significant damage’ to his health.
He ended up failing the examination, meaning he missed out on a opportunity to take up a tenancy at a ‘particular set of chambers’ and therefore ‘suffered a substantial loss of anticipated earnings’.
Outlining the claim, the judge said: ‘Mr Meagher…is a student at the University of Cambridge…undertaking a PhD in law.
‘[He] did not successfully pass his final viva voce examination of his doctoral thesis.
Court documents also stated that the University’s Disability Resource Centre had recommended that at the viva, examiners follow a set of guidelines, produced as part of a Student Support Document (SSD), to help him.
These included asking specific rather than general questions, using the active, rather than the passive, voice and allowing him pauses and breaks after questions…to allow him to ‘mentally retrieve the words or information that he needed in order to answer’.“
[Daily Mail]
How on Earth does that litigant think he is going to survive at the Bar (unless he does no court work at all) if he cannot endure being verbally challenged, and needs time “to mentally retrieve the words or information that he [needs] in order to answer“?
You need a thick skin at the Bar. I should know. I was a practising barrister, in court almost daily, from 1993-1996 in London (often at the High Court, as well as in County Courts and both “the mags” and, less often, Crown Courts), and during 2002-2008 based in Exeter (though travelling widely across the UK and beyond).
Being put on the spot by a judge, especially a High Court judge (I was never at the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court), can be a chastening experience even if the judge is (as most High Court judges are) reasonably courteous.
Woe betide the barrister who is unprepared, or whose instructing solicitors have fallen down on their job. I usually managed to put up a good show, or at least a good front, but I have seen other barristers fall silent, unable to say a word, or flounder helplessly; even, in one case (in Camberwell Magistrates’ Court, before a particularly severe Stipendiary Magistrate —the people called District Judges now—) actually whimper and almost burst into tears (it was a man, too…).
At one time, a barrister who was disabled, even physically, was at a huge disadvantage in trying to get into any chambers. Now, it is arguable that things have gone to the other extreme.
When I was in provincial chambers in Exeter, from 2002-2008 , there was a girl Bar pupil from Northern Ireland. She seemed pleasant and was afterwards offered a tenancy (after which she became markedly less pleasant). The point, though, was that she had a bad speech impediment. In my opinion, the Northern Irish accent is hard enough to understand, let alone when the speaker has a speech impediment. She did get some criminal and family work, though; low-level stuff.
In the end, that Northern Irish person gave up the Bar entirely (I was told) and returned to her native Ulster. At least there they were, presumably, able to understand what she said.
[my old chambers in Colleton Crescent, Exeter, from where I practised law at the Bar during the years 2002-2008]
What a ridiculous monkeyhouse Westminster is! Look at thick-as-two-short-planks Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves (“Rachel from Accounts”) etc, all making noise, exchanging remarks, and laughing like badly-behaved schoolchildren. Then there is stupid Liz Kendall, sitting there like a nodding dog, and about as credible.
Instead of sending people who question mass immigration to live in the Middle East, why not send pro-immigration middle-class zealots to live for one whole month in Harehills, Ealing, Barking & Dagenham, Leicester, or Tower Hamlets pic.twitter.com/ENxHoK8wSS
The mainstream media milieu is a cesspit. I was just reading about some person whose name, though I had seen it somewhere, in the back of my mind, conveyed little to me. A few years younger than me (I am now 68), he has died, and even years ago was looking at least a decade or more older than me, looking at photos in the newspapers. In fact, make that 20+ years older.
Apparently, that person had, at one time, in the 1990s, been spending £4,000 a week on cocaine, and drinking 4-5 bottles of vodka every day!
You could double or treble that sum to get the same value in the money of 2025.
That tells me that such System-approved msm types are both hugely over-remunerated and totally decadent. Britain needs a thoroughgoing cultural purge even more than it needs a political purge. Hitler-level. Stalin-level. Biblical-level.
A few days ago, an American commentator tweeted:
“I don’t think the normies are getting this yet.
In the UK, the birthplace of Magna Carta, English Common Law, and the cradle nation of the USA …
In the latest effort to deny reality, the Leftist German word police have announced that a standard term for ethnic German is "racist and antidemocratic". Can we no longer even acknowledge our existence, asks Eugyppius. https://t.co/CWPNmB92cu
Well, there it is. Switzerland has officially lost its senses.
Didn’t Rudolf Steiner say something about how the Goetheanum (near Basel) would be devastated by war? Cannot quite remember. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetheanum.
[Hitler enters Vienna in 1938, after the Anschluss, and to general acclamation]
Tweets seen
"Terms like 'far-right' are now being stretched by liberal progressives to try and silence, stigmatise and shut down voters who question the established consensus among elites. Many voters can now see this"https://t.co/dmSQkhk9mG
By my use of Electoral Calculus, that might translate to Lab 476 Commons seats (overall majority 302), Con 68 (official Opposition), LibDems 62, SNP 13, Reform UK 4, Plaid Cymru 4, Greens 2 (Northern Ireland 18, Others 3).
What kind of “democracy” is it, though, when a party (Labour) might get 39% of the popular vote, yet get about 72% of the seats in the House of Commons (476 seats)? A strict 39% of seats would be 253 seats.
Another party (Conservatives) might get 19% of the popular vote, meaning, on strict mathematical equivalence, about 124 seats, not the mere 68 conferred by FPTP voting.
As for Reform UK, its present or forecast 17% should confer (under proportional voting) about 111 seats. The forecast under FPTP voting— a mere 4.
There again, the LibDems, with only 10% of the popular vote, are forecast to have 62 seats, almost the same as under a strict proportional allocation (65).
Can such an electoral system even be called “democratic”? Open question.
The DDR was a strange little country, in which I spent a couple of days in 1988; actually, not quite as small a country as commonly imagined: about 42,000 sq. miles, as against England’s 51,000, but with an overall density of population about a third of England’s (the UK as a whole has about 94,000 sq. miles).
Thérèse Coffey's constituency is on a knife edge. Lib Dems, lend your votes to Labour and a grateful nation will thank you. This needs to be reciprocated by Labour up and down the country. This is a generational opportunity to crush the Tories once and for all.#politicslivepic.twitter.com/yuNfo47v8l
— paulusthewoodgnome 🇺🇦💙 (@woodgnomology) June 12, 2024
Interesting both in itself and re. the tactical voting point.
“Two men have been jailed for a total of 67 years for shooting and stabbing to death an 18-year-old in east London.
Awadh Saleh and Rio Burton-Devine, both aged 25 from east London, were found guilty of the murder of Abubakar ‘Junior’ Jah, 18, at the Old Bailey today.
Judge Mark Dennis KC sentenced the pair to 36 years and 31 years respectively for the ‘brutal and cowardly’ attack in 2021.”
[defendant]
What will London be like in 2034 or 2044?
The System parties have no real answers.
Late tweets
This seems like a bit of a tipping point / watershed moment. My gut tells me that a decent proportion of Tory voters were waiting on this moment – using it as a test to see if Reform really could be considered a legitimate political force.
By my use of Electoral Calculus [https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html], that actually puts the Cons in a marginally better position than other recent polls, by reason of the slip in Labour’s position, but it still means Lab 466 (overall majority 282), Con 70, LibDem 70, Reform UK 4, Greens 2.
Were Labour to recover to 40%, the number of Con MPs would reduce to 51; were Labour to rise to 41%, the number of Con MPs would be a mere 42.
https://t.co/ImFdML1ebM Nigel Farage’s Reform party has overtaken Conservatives in a poll for 1st time. Tories were pushed into third in the survey, by pollsters YouGov.The findings will come as a blow to Rishi Sunak after a disastrous election campaign & risks triggering panic
— ML ie @randlight which has been deactivated why ? (@LightfootMarg) June 13, 2024
ITV Debate tonight – When questioned by Reform UK's Nigel Farage on why should the public trust the Conservatives on immigration, Tory Penny Mordaunt calls on the recent Prime minister's record to defend her – the Tories are a joke!#itvdebate#VoteReform#NigelFaragepic.twitter.com/DdEiD5IEPk
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning not so much for the Conservative Party as for her own political career (in fact, her career full stop, for she has no other). It seems 50-50, at best, that she will be re-elected anyway.
Labour is as dull as ditchwater, as witness its pathetic Manifesto for the General Election, but I do not think that it much matters now. The main aim of 80%+, maybe even 90%, of the electorate is to get rid of the Conservative Party not just for the next 5 years but permanently. Starmer and fake Labour will only fail to sweep all before them —by default— if something so devastating happens to their campaign that it is hard to imagine what.
Late music
[a rainy night in Tunis; I last trod that pavement in 1986]
Apart from his highly incentivised devotion to Israel, does David Lammy have any other qualification whatsoever to be probably the UK's next foreign secretary?
Hard, in a sense, to see what that snake-oil salesman would add to Reform UK’s limited popular appeal, especially after his recent frenzied pro-Israel soundbites, but then I am not a typical voter. Parties need leaders, either that or at least figureheads.
If Farage takes up the reins of Reform UK, and if that boosts its vote-share from last week’s 18% to 26%, and if the extra 8 points come equally out of the Con and Lab vote-share, leaving Cons on 14%, Labour on 44%, LibDems on 9% and Greens on 7%, the result might be Labour with 490 Commons seats, Reform UK with 57, LibDem 55, Con 6, and Greens 2. [calculation via Electoral Calculus https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html].
Is that possible? The uncertainty alone speaks volumes. It seems impossible… and yet…
That would put Reform UK into Parliament as second-largest party, and official Opposition. As for the Conservative Party, 6 MPs and a very very poor fourth place; for them, it would probably mean the end of the road.
If Sunak, the little Indian money-juggler, were to lose his seat, he would not even have to find a reason to relocate, with his immensely rich wife, to California. If so, good riddance.
Even were Labour to ebb to 40%, and the Cons to recover to 18% (where one opinion poll had them last week), that would still leave the Cons with a mere 35 MPs (Lab 435, LibDems 58, Greens 2, but Reform UK with 79 MPs!
A party has to get well beyond 20% to get any seats at all under the UK’s FPTP voting system, but if it can get 25%+, it may hit the jackpot.
We shall have to wait and see, but the situation looks dire for the treacherous and incompetent Con Party, and I doubt whether the latest pseudo-1940 “fight on the beaches” appeal, featuring the Indian money-juggler and the Jew Shapps (he of the 5 fake identities and the Israeli Bnai Brith membership) will do anything, except confirm that the voters will vote “ABC” (“Anywhere But Conservative”).
Talking point
I happened to be out early in the car this morning, and tuned in to the Radio 4 Today Programme for a few minutes. I caught most (I think) of an interview with a retired general, only a year older than me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Shirreff.
The general seemed to want, or want to risk, a war with Russia, and seemed totally signed-up to support for “Ukraine” (the Kiev regime). He wants “the Ukrainians” (Kiev regime) to be given more and more-powerful weapons, so that they can attack Russia, and far deeper inside Russia.
“That’s what you do in war, attack the enemy“, proclaimed the desk warrior (his only active “war” command a few months in the Gulf in 1991, as a major, and aged 36).
When the interviewer hesitantly wondered whether that might lead to all-out war between NATO and the Russian Federation, he seemed sanguine about that awful possibility.
The general also seemed to miss the point that, while the Jew-Zionist regime in Kiev may be at war with the Russian Federation, we in the UK are not…; not yet, anyway, no thanks to people like him.
Britain has not been well-served by its chocolate soldiers of recent times, and it seems to me that their very limited-in-scope yet gung-ho pseudo-macho posturing might yet lead this country into becoming the target of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal.
More tweets
Hungary does not support new EU sanctions on Russian gas – Politico
Hungary expressed serious doubts about the new Russian LNG sanctions proposal during initial conversations with ambassadors, refusing to directly oppose the move but signaling its wariness, several sources said.… pic.twitter.com/DlWouq9tH2
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
Former Pentagon head Mark Esper fears Belousov's appointment:
"Moscow's biggest argument is that it is moving towards a military economy. 7% of GDP is focused on defense. And the new defense minister is pro-innovation. I'm sure we'll learn more soon. This is an important and… pic.twitter.com/zOWBdiql4k
— Sprinter infofactory (@Sprinter00000) May 14, 2024
a warehouse in the Tel Hashomer Israel base has caught fire after getting hit by unknown source pic.twitter.com/9b0QkizyQm
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
A military helicopter landed at a hospital in Jerusalem, carrying soldiers wounded during the fighting in the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/Bkx2rba4GM
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
Settlers of the Israel hold rallies in northern settlements due to the Israeli's failure to protect them .
📢 Israeli Radio:
Protesters block a road in the Upper Galilee to protest a decline in security and the lack of a government plan for the north. pic.twitter.com/CeSZpvA9dd
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
Settlers of the Israel hold rallies in northern settlements due to the Israeli's failure to protect them .
📢 Israeli Radio:
Protesters block a road in the Upper Galilee to protest a decline in security and the lack of a government plan for the north. pic.twitter.com/CeSZpvA9dd
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
Israeli protesters blocked a column of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza.
Angry protesters stopped trucks and threw boxes of humanitarian aid from them. pic.twitter.com/ST2te9PG52
— Sprinter infofactory (@Sprinter00000) May 14, 2024
Both Esther McVey and her husband MP Philip Davies claim £1,625 a month each in rent for Flats less than a mile apart this has cost you over £250,000 in total.
This war should not be a competition to see which side can be more cruel than the other. Israel had the whole world's sympathy on October 7 only to squander it for retribution.
"If a social democratic, high-trust country like Denmark can publish data on migrant crime rates, then why can't Britain?" – Guy Dampier https://t.co/6v9cNQgktw
When I started at the (English) Bar in 1993 (I had been Called to the Bar a couple of years before that but was living in the USA), I did some criminal cases, mostly in the magistrates’ courts in London, and also some Crown Court trials. Most of the defendants were non-white. To some extent, that reflected the rather rackety chambers I was in, but not only that; most serious criminal defendants in London were non-white, mostly West Indian. That must be even more so in 2024, over 30 years later. That, despite the fact that, in 1993/1994, the proportion of non-whites in London was probably only about 10% to 20% (it’s 46% in 2024).
As for relatively recent migrants, say those who have “arrived” in the past two decades, it is hardly surprising that they commit a huge amount of crime: most are young or youngish men, few even speak English beyond a “pidgin” level, few have any marketable skills, and few have any money (though they must have had some previously in order to have been able to buy their passage from the people-smugglers).
Hamas covertly attacks Israeli armored vehicles near Rafah.
The first operation is of particular interest – a group of Palestinians penetrates an IDF field base through a tunnel, installs an IED and attacks the equipment with an RPG.
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
Russia only needed one crack in Ukraine's defenses to increase its vulnerability – The New York Times
Recent Russian offensives in eastern and northeastern Ukraine are beginning to “dangerously” change the geometry of the front for Kyiv. The “sudden” breakthrough of Russian… pic.twitter.com/QRGFIAg2JA
— Sprinter infofactory (@Sprinter00000) May 14, 2024
“Russia only needed one crack in Ukraine’s defenses to increase its vulnerability – The New York Times.
Recent Russian offensives in eastern and northeastern Ukraine are beginning to “dangerously” change the geometry of the front for Kyiv. The “sudden” breakthrough of Russian troops in Ocheretino illustrated how even a small crack in the defense line can cause a cascading effect, threatening already stretched platoons of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with encirclement from the flanks, writes The New York Times.
The publication spoke with Ukrainian soldiers and commanders on the front line. They acknowledged that they were in a more vulnerable position than at any time since the “first harrowing weeks” of the conflict.
Moscow is trying to use the window of opportunity that has opened. Its army is increasing pressure in the Donbass and is seeking to open a new front by attacking Ukrainian positions along the northern border near Kharkov.
According to the publication, months of delays in American assistance, a growing number of casualties and an acute shortage of ammunition led to dire consequences for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This is evidenced by the exhausted faces and tired voices of Ukrainian soldiers.
“To be honest, I’m scared,” the commander of a Ukrainian tank battalion told The New York Times. “Because if I don’t have shells, people, equipment with which my people can fight… then this is the end.”
Several areas in Kiev have been cut off from electricity.
Earlier, Ukrenergo announced that 10% of Kyiv residents would be cut off from power supplies. pic.twitter.com/yOrHcBJ8hw
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
A city suffering blackouts has a strange atmosphere. When I relocated (for a year) to Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 1996, blackouts were an everyday occurrence, affecting various areas of the city in turn, even the “Presidentsky District” (the governmental and diplomatic quarter) where I lived. I have blogged in the past about this.
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 14, 2024
A typical example of the shambolic brutality of the Zelensky dictatorship.
The situation on the front line "on the edge" – the director of the Ukrainian intelligence service
Ukraine's precarious position on the battlefield will worsen in the near future, warned the director of Kyiv's military intelligence service in an interview with the New York… pic.twitter.com/fizCM1p6j6
— Sprinter infofactory (@Sprinter00000) May 14, 2024
Transitioning from Zionism to anti-Zionism is a phenomenal experience, even blissful.
The mind starts funtioning as it should; the fallacies, the contradictions, the cognitive dissonance one has been indoctrinated to contain and excuse vanish.
Fight for freedom 😂😂😂 Zelensky cancelled elections .. Zelensky has thugs going around kidnapping people and forcing them to the front .. Ukraine is bankrupt and ruled by thugs .. what freedom?
… We violated everything. And we have long since begun to undermine any prospects for #Ukraine to be an independent and, in fact, neutral country in the heart of Europe. We did it.
Owning a dog or cat can slow cognitive decline in later life, particularly for those who walk their canine friend regularly, a study has suggestedhttps://t.co/D5kUQHdsM5
Incidentally, I am told by a reader of this blog that The Times has printed some kind of report about my recent trial. I refuse to pay even a small amount in order read the sort of rubbish put out by the contemporary “British” newspapers, so I do not know exactly what is the content of that report (I can guess, pretty much, anyway), but what strikes me is that it has apparently only appeared today, five days after the trial itself. Hardly “breaking news”.
I wonder what will happen with the newspapers in the UK. Several years ago, Rupert Murdoch gave the paper versions of newspapers only until about 2025 to survive, and certainly one rarely sees anyone buying a newspaper these days. I occasionally see an elderly person (always elderly, meaning 70+ if not 80+) buying a newspaper in Waitrose; not so often though.
The quality of journalistic language, let alone analysis, has fallen through the floor despite (?) the now almost exclusively graduate entry. Poor English, and little background knowledge, are patent.
I read somewhere that newspapers are still functioning because the online versions both take subscriptions, and make money out of advertisements; also, the mainly young “journalist” scribblers are paid very modestly. The only highly-paid scribblers now are the “celebrity” columnists, or so I read.
I myself last bought a newspaper about 25 years ago.
State pension to rise by 8.5% to £221.20 a week as Chancellor confirms 'triple lock'https://t.co/eWwBDR3Gy6
Hunt and Sunak had little choice, politically. Opinion polling puts the Conservative Party on about 20% for the 2024 General Election. Most of that consists of State Pensioners. Without the pensioner vote, the Conservative Party is toast. It may be that it is anyway, but being seen to pander a bit to the most obvious interest of those over 65 is a desperate way to shore up, at least to some extent, that core vote.
Incidentally, using Electoral Calculus, the difference between (A) a 20% vote and (B) a 15% vote is (A) 57 Conservative MPs (Lab 508) and (B) 19 Conservative MPs (Lab 541).
Were the Con Party able to rise to a support-level of 25%, the result might be 125 Con MPs (Lab 452); on 30%, 219 Con MPs (Lab 360).
For Sunak and Hunt, the (for now) retention of the Triple Lock is a no-brainer, of course. However, it will not save them. The best they can hope for, I think, is a hard defeat next year. It is an open question whether that defeat will prove almost, or actually, existential.
Well blow me down!
Rishi Sunak's main election strategist Isaac Levido is also a very highly paid lobbyist for Palantir, the dodgy US firm owned by a far-right billionaire that"s just been given a huge NHS data contract.
'Whatever we're being sold now… Forever war, fear of pandemic, net zero and all what that lunacy demands, I do not want it. I don't want any of it' Neil Oliver.
The best way to make money, is to make war, including a war on the people, so we are being conditioned to accept… pic.twitter.com/gYXPemi0qB
“Three train robbers who battered a victim for their £36 chain in a spate of 14 violent thefts have been jailed...”
[My London]
[the defendants]
More “diversity” in our wonderful new multikulti society…
I wonder what our society will look like in 20 years? Or 50? Thankfully, I shall probably not be around to see 2043, and certainly not 2073.
Why is this not a resigning matter? How far have our standards fallen? Just finding another catering college graduate to be the Home Secretary https://t.co/zwm0DCA0oz
Another week, and another victory over political journalist John Rentoul. He scored 5/10 this week, which I trumped with 7/10, though two of those (questions 2 and 9) were fairly firm educated guesses. I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, and 7.
Triple Lock
Sunak risks political suicide if he doesn't honour the triple lock promise. He got away with it last time because of Covid, he won't if he does it again.https://t.co/j1B1lG0X9w
If Sunak ditches the triple lock on what is already one of the worst pensions in Europe, he can kiss goodbye to millions of votes at the next election. Bleating about the economy whilst lavishing £millions on illegals just won’t cut it.
Sunak and Hunt will be very brave to not keep to the triple lock while they are supporting illegal immigrants, housed and fed, plus more. Kicking the elderly in the teeth ain't a good look while paying for people who shouldn't be here. @GBNEWS
— Matthew Harper We're in big trouble, (@MattHarperUK) October 27, 2022
There’s going to be 11 million very angry pensioners in the UK if the triple lock is removed yet again. Take heed @RishiSunak. We won’t forget come next GE.
If Sunak doesn’t go ahead with the triple lock for pensioners then that should show us where the priorities are for this country. Government seems to be able to find the money for all these illegals which is costing this country an absolute fortune & WE are all paying for them.
Indeed— paying for cross-Channel migrant-invaders (50,000+ in 2022 alone); useless and often hostile elements, some of which are actively dangerous, such as the 30% to 40% of them who are actually Albanian or Roma Gypsy criminals and not —even on the widest definition— “refugees”.
As for the triple lock on pensions, Indian, and (supposed) “clever boy” and money-juggler, Sunak, seems to believe of the “grey vote” that pensioner voters have no choice but to continue to vote Con as most have done (in overwhelming numbers) up to now. If he and Hunt really think “where can they go?“, they are very mistaken.
As blogged previously, the Conservative total vote is heavily-dependent on the “grey vote”:
The General Election 2019 was unusual inasmuch as the age-weighting was less than has been usual in recent years, mainly because huge numbers of usual Labour voters abstained; some voted Con but more abstained.
In other words, the Con Party is now, in 2022, likely to be even more dependent on those grey votes, meaning the votes of the 60+ age group.
In 2019, over 47 million people were registered to vote. About two-thirds did vote. In other words, about 32 million.
That means that the 60+ age group comprises nearly half of the actual (actually-voting) electorate. If that half either abstains or votes somewhere other than Con, the Con Party is toast.
This is more or less where the opinion polls now are:
According to Electoral Calculus [https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html], that would give Labour a stonking overall majority of 404 (527 seats), and leave the Conservative Party with only 30 seats (LibDem 17; SNP ~52). It would be ironic, and yet quite possible, were the 30 Con seats left to include both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
The above prediction is based on 23% of the voters (the vast majority aged 60+) staying loyal to the Conservative Party. If only about a quarter of that 23% were to abstain, not even voting elsewhere, the Labour majority would rise to an even more absurd “elected dictatorship” level of 454 (552 seats), and the Conservative Party would be left with a mere 2 seats.
It would be even more deeply ironic were those 2 remaining Con seats to be those of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
Sunak should think carefully before abandoning that Triple Lock. His sword may have two edges.
Tweets seen
What happened the day Team Truss were caught red handed moving against Boris at the height of Partygate?
Liz Truss is a type of woman found widely not only in UK politics but also in law firms, barristers’ chambers, and commercial companies: someone not hugely intelligent but full of both ambition and unmerited self-confidence, and someone who, while not really any good at her job(s), plays internal or “office” politics to a “T”.
I have met dozens like Liz Truss.
…Only in Britain would such a scene be imaginable. Our county has quietly become the greatest melting pot in the world – and I write about this for the Daily Telegraph today https://t.co/JQY1xKuvB0
“Conservative” greaseball Fraser Nelson seems to have missed the “elephant in the room”, namely that his wonderful multikulti Britain is also a Britain collapsing culturally, socially, and economically.
@chespncheerless. You really don’t know? The detail keeps changing but the thrust is that Russian has no official status, despite very large numbers who speak nothing else. This of course has effects on both education and employment. Look it up. https://t.co/DC4mvNAIio
The armchair “I stand with Ukraine” and “Slava Ukraini” lot, “useful idiots” for the Kiev-based dictatorship of the Jew Zelensky and the New World Order [NWO], are promoting war, and are also being manipulated.
I wonder what their last thoughts would/will be, if/when Russian nuclear weapons incinerate them, their families and homes etc? Maybe “was it worth it?“
➡️In what was seen as a move to reassure Nato allies amid Russian nuclear-sabre-rattling, the replacement process will begin in December, having previously been expected next spring
➡️B61-12s have four yields that can be selected – 0.3, 1.5, 10 or 50 kilotons.
The 12ft-long weapons feature new tailkits that allow them to be dropped from planes as a "dumb" gravity bomb, or in "guided drop" mode, with an accuracy of within 30 metreshttps://t.co/3qYXR0hQfy
➡️In what was seen as a move to reassure Nato allies amid Russian nuclear-sabre-rattling, the replacement process will begin in December, having previously been expected next spring
“Reassure“? Ha. So making Europe more of a target?
In days of yore, the old Soviet Union would have deployed Spetsnaz commandos to deal with at least some of such weapons on the ground. Whether Russia now even has such capabilities seems an open question.
Today in Madrid! Natasha and I are very grateful to all those who don't forget Dasha… pic.twitter.com/CnTYldRdyf
The first successful Atlantic attempt was made in 1858 when two boats met in the middle, tied their ends together, and sailed their separate ways.
The cable snapped soon after, but not before Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan could share a congratulatory Telegram 🇬🇧🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Fo0VqlAyZ1
Today, the world's internet travels through around 1.1 million miles of subsea cables that are reinforced with steel, insulation and armour – yet they are not invincible
Fishing alone caused about 1,000 cable breakages between 1959-2006. Known sabotage is very rare… pic.twitter.com/6qz7g9nZp0
For more on what saboteurs could actually do to our internet – and the attempts to stop this happening – read the full piece below or in tomorrow's paper https://t.co/ifSKrruFLV
Final studio sale of the year. Investing in original art is probably safer than almost anything else right now. Just keep it away from purple-haired people holding soup cans.https://t.co/0GnYs3xbAIpic.twitter.com/mJDo5BzAQ7
Ian Robert Millard 