“A decade of darkness, below-freezing temperatures and starvation for BILLIONS: The potential horrors of what a nuclear winter would really be like – as scientists call for ‘urgent’ public education.
While it sounds very much like a fictional scenario, an expert describes a nuclear winter as a real and ‘horribly contemporary’ risk due to Russia‘s war on Ukraine.
The research also gauged support in the UK and US for western retaliation in the event of a nuclear blast, which could be the difference between a one-off nuclear attack and an ongoing series of attacks resulting in nuclear winter.
Ingram found there was ‘a strong reluctance’ to support nuclear retaliation in response to [a] fictional Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine.
Out of all 3,000 people in the US and UK, fewer than one in five people – 19.4 per cent – surveyed supported retaliation.
Next, half of the participants in each country were shown infographics of nuclear winter before they read fictional news of nuclear strikes, while the other half were not (the control group).
Unsurprisingly, the stark infographics had the effect of putting people off retaliation.
Support for nuclear retaliation was lower by 16 per cent in the US and 13 per cent in the UK among participants shown the ‘nuclear winter’ infographics than among the control group.
‘Our research showed that when the public is aware of the global risks they are less likely to support nuclear retaliation,’ Ingram told MailOnline.“
[Daily Mail]
[Daily Mail graphic]
…and for what?
So that a fake and failed “state” called Ukraine, that did not even exist as a state at any point before 1991, and which is basically a Jew-ruled kleptocracy and dictatorship, completely shambolic, can continue to fight a war which, if push comes to shove, it cannot win.
This is not our (UK’s, USA’s, France’s, Germany’s) war. Time to stop supplying money and weapons to the Kiev regime.
Tweets seen
Some excellent advice & resources here to help you force a refund from Jack Monroe foe unfulfilled @Patreon obligations. https://t.co/IeCTSv5GI6
I've not donated to @TrussellTrust since Christmas because they've refused to publicly cut ties with her, despite how she treats people. Local independents are getting my hard earned £ recently, same with my friends & family.
It’s stories like this that make me so glad to have four boys all close in age. If one of them ever said anything like this, his brothers would subject him to absolutely remorseless ridicule. And that’s exactly how it is supposed to work, btw. https://t.co/22xgsoopnY
A whole generation, across Europe and North America, is growing up seeing ads mostly containing ugly fat black women, mixed-race couples and families, “trans” persons, every kind of ****-up etc. Who is behind it all? The (((you-know-who))), as usual.
The last one I interacted with rang my intercom repeatedly. Eventually I picked it up and said in all seriousness – 'If you ring this f*cking intercom *one* more time, I will come down there and pummel you' – That was about seven years ago, since then, nothing 🙂
Ha. Reminds me of when I was a superannuated Bar pupil in 1992, and we had a defendant, a big black man with an odd short haircut. He was a TV licence enforcement “officer”, and was accused at Wood Green Crown Court of blackmail and extortion, and a few other things (he was acquitted on all charges, in the end).
That case stuck with me (I was little more than a spectator) because the Indian Muslim solicitor said, angrily, after an altercation with his client, “why should I take that from a nigger with a horn in his head?” (!) and also because my pupilmaster (barrister notionally supervising me as pupil) had to make formal complaint to the judge that the alleged victim in the case had hired a number of black magic African women to intimidate the defendant (they were huge and evil-looking, and hung around the public waiting area, staring fixedly at the defendant when he was there; after the complaint, they were told by the court staff to get lost, in effect).
More tweets
BURN! They might be multimillionaires, but Harry and Meghan have traded in their dignity and any kudos they once has in the US. https://t.co/A9YTnFmfuK
Those one-trick ponies, the Harry Formerly Known as Prince, and his consort, Meghan Mulatta, have all but used up their ammunition. Like defectors from the old Soviet Union, they gave what were supposedly sensational titbits at first, but then descended to less interesting material (in their case into more petty whining). To employ another metaphor, the first cold pressing of the olive produces the best oil; after that, the product is of lower quality, and watered-down.
Sorry. Never heard of you. Are you someone important?
Ha ha! That put the useless Nigerian online “grifter” in his place. I might not think much of Lee Anderson or his views, but his enemies are even less to my taste.
What exactly do you do for anyone? Except get paid to go on tv and spout some shite? Be honest, you want to look like a great human being because you make money from it, when you really are nothing.
“Femi” is just another symptom of how sick British society now is. I wonder how long it will be before he tries to become a Labour MP? In fact, I wonder how long it will be before the Commons becomes majority non-white. Then it will be time for a second Guy Fawkes to make his appearance.
Certainly, every dead orc is another brick in the wall of freedom!
remember, they have the right to unconditionally surrender to save their lives… if they choose not to, they are welcome to an interesting future in the Ukrainian agricultural industry, lol 🌻🌻
I had quite forgotten that one-time rock “music” groupie, pitifully poor MP-for-5-minutes, and hard-core drug abuser, Louise Mensch, even existed, but there she still sits on Twitter, with her 269,000 “followers”, still trumpeting the same kind of Jewish/Israel/NWO propaganda as she has for a decade or more. She herself admitted that her hard drug abuse “messed with her brain“. Her exact words were “My mind is messed up after taking hard drugs.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Mensch.
Follower numbers on Twitter mean little, of course. Louise Mensch may have 269,000 Twitter “followers” (on paper), but that tweet I featured above, for example, tweeted more than a day ago, has only been seen by 304 people (as at present time of writing), only been “liked” by 14 people, and only been retweeted by 1 person. Not one hundred thousand, not one thousand, but just one individual.
[Louise Mensch smoking drugs years ago]
Actually, looking even at the most-seen tweets of Louise Mensch, which have been seen by several thousand people (because she tends to tag in well-known or famous people such as Elon Musk, Biden etc), the number of “likes” and retweets is small, often a mere handful.
Even her Jew husband got rid of her in the end. I have no idea how much it cost him in alimony but whatever it was, I have no doubt that it was cheap at the price.
Late tweets
The chief of MI6 is usually the only member of the spy agency who is permitted to speak in public.
Now, Britain’s female Secret Intelligence Service officers have spoken on the record for the first time – to @ftmag – and it's free to read https://t.co/ZAwOTrZK6a
Something I had not seen before today. Rather underwhelming. Above all, the activities of our intelligence, counter-intelligence, and security people rather miss the main point— the principal dangers to the UK come not from North Korean missiles, Chinese or Russian spies etc, but from internal decadence and events. Mass immigration. Births to non-whites with UK residency and/or nationality. The infiltration into politics, law, the msm and, indeed, security and intelligence agencies by Jews and/or Israeli agents. The decadence promoted by TV and other msm, particularly the BBC. The general decadence of British society.
Indeed, it could well be said that the UK is now little more than a colony of the USA anyway— the one-sided extradition treaty, the American bases on UK soil (often nominally “RAF bases”), the huge influence of American-funded (and often staffed) “think-tanks” such as the IEA, the de facto US control or power of veto of the UK “independent” nuclear deterrent, and so on.
Seymour Hersh's investigation proves conclusively -> US military & their Norwegian accomplices committed a criminal attack on NS & NS 2 gas pipelines.@state_duma proposal to initiate a thorough investigation of this act of international terrorism 👉 https://t.co/s3jxsQZOQapic.twitter.com/CiUsnUaKUF
🔺K.#Gavrilov: "Once again we warn – offensive arms transfers coupled with open incitement to seize 🇷🇺 territories draws @NATO member states into the conflict and can lead to an unpredictable level of escalation." pic.twitter.com/tgYysddchm
— Russian Arms Control Delegation in Vienna (@armscontrol_rus) February 15, 2023
4000 people gathered in Dresden, East Germany after an appeal from the famous actor Uwe Steimle's to gather in the city to demand immediate peace in Ukraine.
Still seems open, though the big guns of the mass media and Con Party are all promoting Sunak. So far, Penny Mordaunt has only 26 public declarations, with a mere 3 hours to go, though her camp claims “many more” private declarations to Sir Graham Brady of the 1922 Committee.
It may be, but time is running very short for her to get the necessary 100 declarations. She may now have anywhere between 50 and 100.
If Mordaunt were able to take the matter to the Conservative Party membership, she might well win; many rank-and-file members hate Sunak (see, e.g. the readers’ comments in the Daily Mail), and I can see the membership of the Con Party dropping to a few tens of thousands (if that) under Sunak’s obviously-intentioned “slash spending” regime.
Looking beyond, to the next general election, if Sunak starts to make everyone (but the already ultra-wealthy) much poorer by 2023 and 2024, then one has to ask where the Conservative votes are going to come from.
Not the young (say, under-30s— very few favour Con Party); not very many of the 30-60 age group either, who will mostly be even poorer than they are now, and struggling with exploitative rents, higher mortgage payments etc, and higher taxes. As for the mainstay of the Conservative vote, the 60+ age group, their allegiance has flagged since Sunak, as Chancellor, suspended the Triple Lock. They suspect that Indian money-juggler Sunak regards them as “useless eaters”.
If Sunak reinstates the Triple Lock, some of the 60+ age group may well continue to vote Con; if not, their votes will either go to the LibDems or Labour, or perhaps to snake-oil Farage’s conservative-nationalist “Reform Party”. Many might simply abstain.
The Conservative Party has let down the overwhelmingly English/British 60+ age group— on pensions, on mass immigration and migration-invasion, and on other issues important to that group, such as law and order.
The only question at present is whether the voters will give Labour —if only by default— a massive majority, or only a small-to-medium one.
Labour, which until very recently looked as if it had little future with white English/British voters, now looks almost unbeatable in the short-term, if only by default.
It cannot help Sunak, as likely Prime Minister, that he is almost forced to delay a general election, despite the perception that he has no real mandate, being the third prime minister since the 2019 General Election.
If Sunak were to call a general election this year or early next year, there would only be 50-100 Conservative MPs likely to survive, so he has no choice but to try to rule without much legitimacy.
The msm are mostly ignoring the fact that Sunak is Indian (yes yes, “born in Southampton, attended Winchester” etc).
Interesting times.
Tweets seen
66 years ago today the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule began with the tearing down of a 25-foot Stalin statue in central Budapest. Hungary's Communist govt appealed to Moscow for help. The Soviets took a fortnight to drown the revolt in blood. Look it up. Remember it.
.@safcnono My latest book, out in November, will bring my total to nine. I think it might be more shocking to discover that *you* had *read* a book. The radical left assumes it is superior to its opponents, and so makes little effort to test its ideas. https://t.co/oEjaaxKtaU
In the UK, there is an epidemic of such cases, but because many (though far from all) involve individuals who are black or of mixed race (who are far more likely to be schizophrenic anyway), the msm generally ignore the role of marijuana in many of the most horrible violent crimes committed.
.@enochsage2 And to what question is Al ('Boris') Johnson (with his fake cuddly stage name, his mad lockdown, his social liberalism and his foreign warmongering) the answer? https://t.co/b3HvawylCz
One final thing on the numbers. We were told at 3.00 pm yesterday Boris had 100. He claims to have finished on 102. So if you believe his account, for some reason his campaign mysteriously stalled straight after announcing he had secured the required nominations.
Hopefully, useless “Boris” Johnson will now disappear, at least if he loses his Uxbridge seat before too long.
I have to say that I found “Partygate” a storm in a teacup, and the silly “rules” laid down partly by “Boris”-idiot himself were a waste of time anyway, but I know anecdotally, meaning from keeping my ears open, that many people did take “Partygate” seriously.
My criticisms of the buffoon were and are more weightily-founded, I think: shutting down the UK economy for nearly 2 years, imposing restrictions which were both dictatorial and stupid, involving the UK in the Ukrainian war that really has nothing to do with us, and failing to stop or even reduce the migration invasion.
Another factor that should focus the minds of Tory MPs. Hunt is continuing work on his financial statement. But there’s only so much he can do without approval of the incoming PM. Treasury sources becoming increasingly concerned at the idea this could drag on through the week.
Typical. Dan Hodges takes the pro-multikulti System line. “Diversity” (meaning promotion of non-whites, and subjugation of white people) supposedly “a strength“, when the opposite is the case.
Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.
We are drinking in the last-chance saloon. But in my view we can do this – and win the next general election. All we need is a straight shooter by the name of Rishi Sunak
Ha ha! So scribbles Jew fraud Grant Shapps, who used aliases even in the Palace of Westminster in order to flog dodgy get-rich-quick schemes to mugs.
Unbelievably, the Jew fraud is now Home Secretary (appointed last week), and privy to all sorts of secret intelligence etc. I suppose that he wrote that article because he wants Sunak to keep him in the job, or at least in Cabinet.
Just checked in w team Mordaunt, asking if she has any intention to withdraw. Told by someone in team they are not far off (public declarations miles off 100 mark at just 25) & “huge uplift” in support overnight with view RS shld be tested & members shld have say. Let’s see.
Needless to say, I am not very interested in Penny Mordaunt, but I cannot, and will not, accept an Indian, or any other sort of non-white, as Prime Minister of my country.
I got booed for this at Sunak launch. But Q still stands (& Lab will use as attack). 1/ Sunak received fine 2/ Qs over family’s past tax arrangements 3/ Qs over whether he Johnsonites will bury hatchet & fall in behind Sunak (he has received backing from some this am) https://t.co/DtillaFDKF
So Sunak wants honesty and probity in his government. Will he sack Grant Shapps, then? Or himself?
Mordaunt still fighting. Says she has “passed 90” nominations. Her spokes: "We have now passed 90. For the sake of the Party, it's important our members have their say."
Penny Mordaunt withdraws. So Rishi Sunak is the new PM. The WEF globalist has their man in and the backstabbing snake is now PM
Just wait for the endorsements to follow WEF, World Bank, EU , Biden German Chancellor and not to forget the warmonger Blair etc etc. pic.twitter.com/PtvAZcOPJG
Well, I have no faith in Farage-the-snake-oil-man’s “Reform Party”, though if it takes away votes from the fake “Conservative” Party, I wish it well to that extent.
No party that is not explicitly anti- (((you know who))) will ever get my endorsement.
Rishi Sunak – 3rd Tory PM in 2 months!
No mandate from the people. Excluded 3 million. Responsible for £billions of Covid fraud and errors in loan schemes. Champion of low regulation freeportshttps://t.co/zv4Hv9Tn6x
Funny how financial mkts/bankers tank Truss; Sunak's MP votes were lent to Truss to tank Mordaunt for a manipulated Truss/Sunak final, and now Truss gone, still end up with Goldman Sachs man who couldn't of won the previous final against Mordaunt or Truss #ToryShambles#torychaoshttps://t.co/JshczNyfc2
Sunak strikes me as competent, which worries me a bit. Mordaunt is harder to fathom but I wonder if in practice she would've been any better than Truss. And I think the lot of them lack any real values and will sell absolutely anybody out (again, special hate for Mordaunt there).
'This time I wouldn't vote', say two women who switched their support from Labour to Conservative in 2019 Boris Johnson "gave us a V-sign", Rishi Sunak "is a multi-millionaire' and "I've never heard of Penny (Mordaunt)", says 2 voters in the West Midlands.https://t.co/gv6zuwvFfR
The British people need and (unconsciously) want social nationalism, but are bamboozled 24/7 by a corrupt and Jew-Zionist-influenced msm.
You only have to look at the public attitude to Ukraine. It has gone from a country few had even heard of (up to early 2022, arguably), and that only a tiny handful had either visited and/or knew much about (up to today, really), to a kind of “ally” in a supposed “fight” with Putin and/or Russia. That despite the fact that the UK has never had a shared history with the quite new (1991) state of Ukraine, and never had anything substantial to do with —as it was called in English— the Ukraine (unless you count the Crimean War of 1853-1856, which was between Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Piedmont-Sardinia on one side, and the Russian Empire on the other).
At the time of the Crimean War, there was no question of Ukraine existing as an independent state, nor even as a separate country ruled over by Russia or the Russian Empire. It was far less “independent” or separate from Russia than, say, Scotland or Wales were and now are from England. As for Crimea, that had been Ottoman territory, mainly occupied by Crimean Tatars, until the time of Catherine the Great, and was incorporated into Russia in 1783:
Now, you see silly and ignorant people (eg in newspaper readers’ comment sections) claiming that anyone not supporting “the war” in Ukraine is a “traitor“, etc. They have been fooled by the (((msm))) into thinking that Britain is almost literally at war with Russia over the Ukraine incursion.
People are fairly easily whipped up into a completely fake pseudo-patriotic fervour when the msm and political class all sing the same song.
The mass of the British people are now being invited to blame Putin and Russia for possibly-upcoming blackouts, as well as for shortages in the shops, inflation, the falling pound sterling etc.
In reality, Britain used to get only 4% of its energy from Russia, and any trade problem with Russia was caused when the USA, EU, and UK imposed trade sanctions on (against) Russia.
The real causes of Britain’s economic disaster lie elsewhere: shutting down the economy (and country) for 2 years during the “Covid” “panicdemic”; racing to the bottom on corporate taxation; spraying money around thoughtlessly during the “panicdemic”; the misconceived “austerity” regime of the part-Jews, David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne, which continued under May and “Boris” Johnson until 2020; the sanctions which prevent most trade with Russia; totally-mishandled Brexit; continuing mass immigration; speculator-parasites in the banking and hedge-fund “industry”.
Reverting to the tweet above, I can see that the disillusion of those two women is widespread. They may not be educated people, but they know — too late— that “Boris” Johnson took them for a ride. They no doubt despise Truss (the 5-minutes “Prime Minister”, now already almost forgotten), and will not vote for a party headed by Sunak because he is a. Indian, b. a globalist near-billionaire; c. quite likely to cut their pensions, and certain to make them poorer overall.
They will probably not vote for Labour, either (as they say in the video clip).
[I wish, btw, that Sky News and other msm journalists would not write “disinterest” when they mean “uninterest” or “lack of interest“].
Interesting, and may help many people, but such clever ideas are, just like foodbanks, basically sticking plaster on an open wound.
More tweets seen
For years more established homeowners took comfort in the thought that, even if real-wage growth was terrible, at least the price of their house was rising. Those days are over https://t.co/eZoAfyaxe0pic.twitter.com/JuBaTKaqMB
In Australia and Canada prices could plunge by as much as 14% from their peak, a little more than is expected in America or Britain, according to forecasts from a number of property firms https://t.co/eZoAfysGs8pic.twitter.com/XAfVo3TQvq
Rising interest rates will have unpredictable political repercussions, as people who once benefited from the status quo discover what it feels like to lose out https://t.co/hv1HhjrlkV
Many governments will be tempted to come to the rescue. That could raise their debts still further and encourage the idea that home ownership is a one-way bet backed by the state https://t.co/G165UsZsde
Sunak pointedly ignores Little Matt Hancock, the would-be dictator of the “panicdemic”, as Hancock tries to get a Cabinet job with the Indian money-juggler’s new government.
Sunak did not shake hands with Hancock, nor (it seems) even look at the bastard. Looks like there will be no big new job for Hancock.
Late tweets
The worrying thing is not the psychotic actions taken by these 'protestors'.
It's the consistent presence of gormless goons filming it all on their phones while doing nothing to stop them.
It is these people who will be our undoing, not the state-funded, purple-haired vandals.
It is either white rule or brutal chaos. Note that even the supposedly pro-Brit Daily Mail will not print the likely truth, that the victim was white (ie English) and the bullying thugs black and/or half-caste.
Like a metaphor for anything created by white Europeans that falls into the hands of non-Europeans, whether it be a large house or an entire country.
Tweets seen
If you support Ukraine joining NATO then you support the US fighting a hot war with Russia right now. I don’t care what your reasoning is. If you support that, you are a dangerously insane person who should never be allowed to make these decisions.
Putin signs treaties on the accession of Ukrainian lands into Russia, calls on Kiev to immediately cease military action, and vows to protect the annexed lands by all available means. …British local Media
Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia, says that we are already fighting in the Third World War, whether we acknowledge it or not. “We’ve been in this for a long time, and we’ve failed to recognize it,” she said.https://t.co/mwmAgy80HD
Angela came to the food bank after illness left her unable to work. “This is what I got from the food bank. Staff are friendly there,” she said. pic.twitter.com/zim994p8cJ
Daniel’s household costs are more than he can afford, so @HackneyFoodbank helps him out with food and essential items. “I’ve always wanted the chance to be a photographer,” he said. pic.twitter.com/uAwkLJWSm1
A decent society should not need foodbanks. In the UK, they scarcely existed before 2010 when the part-Jews, David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne, managed to trick their way into government.
However, they are now —as things are— an essential component of society for many.
More tweets
'The Russians feel badly used. We should forgive them. If they had done the same to us, we would denounce them bitterly.' An amazing prophetic article written in 1997: https://t.co/p1MZFFxKoy
It has emerged that the young Liz Truss, aged 20 in 1995, wanted to actually get rid of, inter alia, the State Pension.
All very well for her gophers to say that her views have matured since then, but who would trust this bitch, really?
It is only the pensioner or “grey” vote that has kept the so-called “Conservative” Party in power for the past 12 years. Now, it seems that Liz Truss, woolly-head Kwarteng and the rest of the present simply ridiculous Cabinet are about to throw pensioners under a bus. However, those over-65s have a sting in their tail. Their votes may not go to Labour (or anywhere else) but even mass abstention would finish the Conservative Party.
The latest opinion polls put the Conservatives on about 20%, with Labour well over 50%.
Just 37% of 2019 Conservative voters still intend to back the party.
17% now intend to vote Labour – this has doubled in the space of a week
Of course, Labour is a poor choice, but for most voters, an election in the UK is a choice of evils. The Conservatives have just got to the point where not only have they lost all credibility, but where very many people hate them and in fact fear them. Far more than in 2010.
If the “grey vote” abandons the Conservative Party, there is actually no other demographic of any real size that can keep the party in more than dormant existence. It simply does not deserve to exist any more.
If there were a credible social-national party, it could rise up as far and as fast as did the NSDAP in the 1929-1932 period.
If…
More music
Late tweets seen
Of all the words written about the catastrophe of the past week, this letter in the FT sums it up best of all. And it’s worse than we might have thought. pic.twitter.com/i35O9VlHPt
Truss, Kwarteng, and Clarke doubling down on their ‘small state’ ideology and rolling the pitch for spending cuts is totally detached from reality on at least three fronts:
2. We are in a highly volatile age. Russia, China, covid, an ageing population, technology, and, of course, the climate crisis. How, practically, does a smaller state fit with that context?
So they default to attacking welfare spending. But as many, many people have highlighted, most of this is a combination of pensions, in-work, and housing benefits.
As the response of almost every other European and North American country has shown, covid and the energy crisis has made the need for such a strategy even more compelling.
The cleverest thing that @Keir_Starmer could do right now is to commit to proportional representation and a full review of our constitutional arrangements. This must never ever be allowed to happen again.
Whether it's an accurate prediction or not, it's an insight into the feelings of the Tory Party right now. The fact they'd tell me – who they know to be a Labour backer who will blab on Twitter.
What amazes me about Liz Truss is that she must know that, at best, only a fifth of the people support her, and that about 80% if not 90% of the people are going to start hurting badly pretty soon, yet she seems to believe that she has some kind of entitlement to carry on with her package of wrecking policies, come what may, and without even the rough mandate of a general election behind her.
I am old enough to remember the Poll Tax riots of 1990 (though I saw them at a distance, on TV news in the United States). The population is now generally more quiescent (as witness the “panicdemic” compliance) but this might just be bigger than the Poll Tax, if people start hurting enough.
Liz Truss might have to “double and triple the guard”, before someone makes a —shall we say?— very personal and very effective “protest”.
“Jack Monroe”, the “Bootstrap Cook”: an assessment
I have blogged (briefly) previously a few times about the person known as “Jack Monroe” (originally Melissa Hadjicostas, half-Greek Cypriot), whose rather clever nom de plume is “Bootstrap Cook”.
The name Jack Monroe is now her official name, it having been adopted by deed poll.
In the past, I was content to be at least neutral towards “Bootstrap Cook”, in that I felt that anyone putting almost anything into the public domain that might help the millions of financially-struggling people in the UK deserved at least a chance.
Incidentally, this blog is written in the English language, and therefore does not refer to a woman (whatever her views or proclivities) as “they” or “them”.
“Ideological” criticism of “Bootstrap Cook” has come mainly from two directions. The first group would be those connected to or supportive of the “Conservative” regimes of 2010-present. They tend to say that there is no justification for the campaigning of “Bootstrap Cook” to raise State benefits etc, and that any food poverty that exists exists because the individuals subject to it cannot “budget” properly, or do not know how to cook cheap wholesome food.
An ignorant point of view (though not without a small kernel of truth, as with many basically lying narratives), which infuriates many, especially when expressed by the likes of Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, the MP who has also been a huge expenses blodger and fraudster, and who claimed vast amounts on his Parliamentary expenses (even a £39 hotel breakfast) while —as Secretary of State for the DWP— taking money away from people living in real poverty.
The second group who tend to criticize “Bootstrap Cook” are those who agree with much of her campaigning on benefits etc, but who say that she actually “enables” attacks on benefit recipients by reason of her claims that a family of 4 can be fed well on £20 a week or less.
Now, however, a third group has joined the fray, being those who claim that they and/or others have been taken for a ride by “Bootstrap Cook”, and that she is a “grifter”, or even an outright fraud, who has sold goods and services which were never delivered. These critics also claim that much of the “Bootstrap Cook” back-story is untrue, or embellished.
For example, it is said that “Bootstrap Cook” was either never in poverty herself, or was so for no more than 18 months. It is said that at least part of her financial difficulties were caused by her own (apparently past) alcohol and/or drug abuse. It is said that she makes up implausible stories about her past financial predicament, such as “having to” sell her little son’s beloved dinosaur toy to raise money (really? How much money would that raise? £1? £2? And how cruel is that, assuming the story to be true?).
It is also said that her parents are not badly-off financially, that they own buy-to-let property, and that her paternal grandfather was a millionaire. In other words, that “Bootstrap Cook” always had a financial lifeline. I have no idea whether, or to what extent, that may be, or may have been, the case.
Recently, following a storm of criticism on Twitter, “Bootstrap Cook” deleted her Twitter account, though others claim that she is merely taking a 40-hour “rest” from Twitter, and will return. Why 40 hours and not (as with Jesus Christ) 40 days, or whatever, I have no idea.
One aspect that interested me, as a former barrister, was the tendency of “Bootstrap Cook” to threaten some of her critics with legal action. A few years ago, “Bootstrap Cook” sued Katie Hopkins in libel.
Ms. Hopkins had libelled “Bootstrap Cook” entirely mistakenly as to the facts, had no defence whatever, and should have backed down and got out with minimal damage when she could have but, like many maximalisti, found sorry the hardest word, and so was hammered: £24,000 in damages, and very large legal costs. Ms. Hopkins had to sell her house in St. Leonard’s (the best residential district in Exeter) in order to pay those legal costs.
“Bootstrap Cook” retained as her solicitor Mark Lewis, the Zionist Jew who now lives in Israel, though he has also a professional foothold in London. His no-win no-fee cases have often been controversial.
I have to wonder how nice a person “Bootstrap Cook” is, if she is on friendly terms with someone such as Lewis.
As soon as people started suggesting, a month or two ago, that “Bootstrap Cook” was somewhere between “grifter” and fraudster, out came the Twitter threat that Mark Lewis and libel would be wheeled out (frankly, not so much of a threat— by no means have all of Lewis’s cases been brought to a successful conclusion, and when he was censured and fined by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority about 4 years ago, his Counsel said that his fine should be reduced because his only possessions were his clothes, a mobility scooter. and a private pension worth £70 a week).
In fact, when “Bootstrap Cook” threatened libel action against Conservative Party MP Lee Anderson [Con, Ashfield] (in May of this year), nothing ever came of it, as far as I know:
“Food journalist and activist Jack Monroe hinted at legal action against Anderson after he commented in an interview that “She’s taking money off some of the most vulnerable people in society and making an absolute fortune on [sic] the back of people”.[36] [Wikipedia].
The Guardian says “sues“, but the Independent said “hints at suing“, and I have seen nothing on the Mark Lewis Twitter output to the effect that he ever was “instructed” (the Guardian, again) on the matter. He may have been, he may not have been. I might add that all the news reports are from 15-16 May 2022; nothing since then.
Was Anderson right, though? As I have said, I was willing to cut “Bootstrap Cook” some slack, because in recent years, the past ~15 years, the social security system has become inadequate, pay for work has also become generally inadequate, and millions are struggling both to eat and keep sheltered and warm. My view was that any useable advice was, well, useful.
I still think that (despite the fact that, to me, many of the recipes of “Bootstrap Cook” do look like a dog’s dinner, and despite the fact that many disagree with her costings etc).
More serious criticism is that she has actually been making a pretty good living out of Patreon donations, while never or rarely providing the extras offered in exchange.
When I last looked, “Bootstrap Cook” had at least 800 Patreon donors giving a minimum of £1 a month. £800 a month. In itself not bad. When you consider that the suggested minimum is £3 a head, the total increases to £2,400 a month (perhaps). I have seen a tweet where the tweeter claims, truthfully or otherwise, to have been donating £44 a month. Well, you see the point. “Bootstrap Cook” must have an income from Patreon alone of between £800 and (?) perhaps as much as £8,000 a month. Or more. That’s before one takes into account book sales, other donations, paid (?) TV appearances, other appearances etc. We do not know.
Not that “Bootstrap Cook” claims poverty, these days. No, she claims, as I understand it (and perhaps truthfully) a degree of “precariousness” in her life and finances, and she is certainly not alone in that. It is almost the norm in the Britain of 2022.
“Bootstrap Cook” has a number of defence mechanisms. One is to threaten defamation actions, but the more usual tactic is to claim the shield of disability, and she has about two dozen options there.
A further defence tactic is, I read, to set her fanatical fans (she apparently calls them “flying monkeys“) onto any critics, and I have certainly seen tweets where mentally-disturbed fans have come close to suggesting violence against anyone daring to utter critical words.
The problem here is that “Bootstrap Cook” has become a totem for a certain tribe of virtue-signallers. Not really “the poor” but more the sort of people who like to think that they are socially-progressive etc. Facts do not matter to those people, belonging to the “right” tribe does. cf. “Covid”, Ukraine, “Black Lives Matter” and, of course, “FBPE/Remain/Rejoin” etc.
When you consider that someone who claims to be able to feed a family of 4 for £20 a week might be said to be, arguably or in effect, saying that UK benefits are perfectly OK and need not be increased, is that really something positive or not?
Some tweets seen about the issues raised:
Updated with recent events, plus Jack's responses to the ONS, Lee Anderson, Patreon and Georgia Church Suppers allegations.https://t.co/j4p8QUznId
I simply don’t understand how you can read this article, made from HER OWN TWEETS, and think Jack Monroe is anything other than a grifter https://t.co/WTCmHTdHD5
— Kelly Jackson | It’s More Fun In Your 30s (@Kelly_Jackson88) September 19, 2022
Why on earth would any Tory politico want to silence Jack Monroe? She plays straight into their message that ‘the poor’ can eat on £20/wk and are just too thick to budget & cook. Plus, she has made little to no impact on public policy. (Rhetorical tweet, obvs!)
Claiming you can't afford to put the hot water on, have unscrewed the lightbulbs and are using solar lights, and haven't bought shampoo for two years in order to gain internet points and cash donations, is also wrong.
Giving people "money-saving" advice that is going to cost them *more* money is wrong.
Not making an effort to make sure people understand that you've mistakenly given the wrong advice and pointing people to more accurate advice, is really, really wrong.
I have very good intentions. I *intend* to write book reviews and advice for people querying, to be supportive of other writers, especially those newly agented.
I don't actually do that, though. And because I don't, I don't expect to be held up or praised for it.
Jack Monroe wasn't hounded off of Twitter because of some anaemic roast potatoes. She's left because too many people were raising questions about her lucrative Patreon, murky charitable donations and questionable finances. Jesus, people are gullible.
As many have noted, this whole Bootstrap Cook thing is more like a creepy cult than anything. It’s as if a lot of fairly affluent or at least not poor people have decided that supporting “Bootstrap Cook” —right or wrong— validates their evenings of going out, their Netflix subscription, their holidays in Cuba or Costa Rica, their new cars, and in fact their whole comfortable existence.
In fact, it reminds me of the “indulgences” sold by the Roman Catholic Church before the Reformation.
Not that that is necessarily the fault of the “Bootstrap Cook” herself.
I've not much to say on the Jack Monroe issue except that if a government minister tries to tell someone how to survive on a box of cornflakes and a tin of sardines, they tend to get pilloried for it.
Just… bloody hell. The tide really does seem to be turning on Jack Monroe. Interesting that she was approached for comment and declined, same as with my blog. https://t.co/vfjJXHKlaE
(Past caring if Jack Monroe's fans abuse me as did for 48 hours few week back).
Authentic, knowledgeable women in poverty now could offer useful, genuine insights into experience but overlooked and devalued while Monroe's more acceptable celebrity face of poverty is prioritised.
Well, if you can believe that the “royal” Mulatta is a sadly-abused “princess”, then believing that a poverty campaigner, who seems to be making “a nice little earner” out of it and naive followers, is a modern Joan of Arc, must be easy enough.
It was absolutely nothing to do with “the far right” and everything to do with the revelations that she’s lied about a lot of things and taken money off a lot of people in very shady ways.
I followed #bootstrapcook's 'Wintry chicken broth' recipe word for word and not only did the meal cost me £4.61 more than she suggested it came out looking like this. I want a refund! pic.twitter.com/EK2ev0rh8g
Let's say you agree to pay the Times £x per month and in exchange they promise to send you a code to access their online issue – but they never send the codes. Would you see a problem there? Read the Patreon page and see if you agree the comparison.https://t.co/LUPccSWorV
No John, it appears that you don’t understand what it is. Each payment tier system means a certain amount of rewards/content in return. Jack has received money every month & has not honoured the obligations that Jack pledged. No rewards/content for TWO years.
What about the rest Anthea? The shop was open until a few days ago. What about the Patreon money? The funds raised for the libel case that hasn’t happened?
How had she helped others? I’m seeing a lot of upset people who have given her money over the years. They’re feeling ripped off. pic.twitter.com/H6Y00rtGVs
The only ‘attacks’ I’ve seen have been requests for financial transparency or refunds. She says she had death threats but then again she says a lot of things. Some of her supporters, however, their behaviour has been abhorrent.
There's a whole community of Jack watchers on a website called Tattle. Any updates are there. Have to say, they don't seem a right-wing crowd. Better characterised as working-class mums who seem pissed off about what they see as grifting.
She was caught out as a habitual liar, grifter and generally an abusive individual who was too happy to play the disability/race/victim cards, and too many people were questioning where all of the donations went.
She's never done that herself though. Her recipes and weekly shops would lead to malnutrition pretty bloody quickly. Not enough calories, or protein. And she has storecupboards and freezers full of food that aren't included in the performative £20 asda shop. It's a dangerous lie.
Her recipes are shit and she only keeps within budget because the portions are toddler sized. Totally dishonest and unsustainable. No one uses her recipes though, because as mentioned, they're shit.
Because you need to be a parent in order to… count calories. Some of Jack Monroe's meals are less than 200 calories per portion. Her best meals are in the region of 400-500 per portion. It's not enough. You too can eat cheaply, if you starve.
Well, that’s enough. There are hundreds of other tweets in similar vein.
As blogged previously, my view is that Bootstrap Cook’s stuff may well be of interest to many, though —as already said— much of it looks to me like carbohydrate-heavy food often presented like a dog’s dinner.
I do not think that “Bootstrap Cook”set out to defraud anyone, and it may be that she has no such intention now, but it does seem that legitimate questions about her fundraising have been asked by a number of donors, but not answered by her.
If people think that they are somehow accomplishing something by subsidizing the not-uncomfortable lifestyle of that person, then that is their business, in a sense, but it is legitimate for others, arguably more clear-minded, to ask “where is the money going?“, “is any of this true?“, and “are people being tapped for money under false pretences?“.
I can also see that her fans seem to be, almost entirely, not the truly poor but more those who are not “poor” but who support her “non-binary” profile, the “gender bender” aspects, and the general “government must do more for the poor” activism aspect.
I think that it is legitimate to question, not only “where the money went” (or goes), but also, whether in reality Bootstrap Cook has actually influenced government, or large enterprises such as ASDA (it seems that one or two supermarket chains were actually paying her for advice or consultancy or something).
Poverty is a huge problem in the UK now. Anyone claiming to be expert in it must expect searching inquiry.
Is this all really just a morning TV virtue-signal writ large? After all, at the end of the day, the decisive question is what government does or fails to do.
I personally have no animus against “Bootstrap Cook”, but my view of her has certainly become far less positive over the years since I first heard of her.
I do think, also, that if you claim that a person can feed healthily on £5 a week, you are really playing into the hands of swine such as Dunce Duncan Smith, Esther McVey, Therese Coffey etc.
I think that anyone wanting to help “the poor” could probably do so more effectively via GoFundMe or local foodbanks than by subsidizing the lifestyle of “Bootstrap Cook”. Perhaps I am mistaken, but that is my firm view and opinion.
On a wider point, we have in the UK this msm thing whereby TV channels or shows like to have a “go-to” list. Brexit discussion? Call Farage. Free speech discussion? Call Toby Young. Poverty discussion? Call Jack Monroe. And so on.
Thus you get “activists” who are really just “famous for being famous activists”. The Caroline Criado-Perez phenomenon. A hundred thousand or a million Twitter followers but, outside Twitter etc, really unknown and without real influence.
Of course, the msm now like to feature (supposed) “experts” who are, if possible, young, female, and black. “Bootstrap Cook” is not black, but as “Meatloaf” once opined, “two out of three ain’t bad“…
Well, there it is. I prefer to concentrate on other and larger issues really, but felt that I should examine the above first, after the recent Twitter storm in a teacup.
For clarification purposes this is a live poll so results don't necessarily represent public opinion. However, the latest results are: * still 81% re bankers bonus cap * still 82% re 45% tax cut for the rich * 88% re recall of parliament * 87% re govt loss of control of economy
All that the doomed “Conservative” Party had to do, to consign Labour to the bin, was select a leader to succeed “Boris”-idiot who was even slightly competent. It failed to do so. Endex.
Here's what the UK's new electoral map would look like if tonight's YouGov poll were repeated at a general election. pic.twitter.com/HbGJQywCB2
The implications are clear: either the Con MPs get rid of Liz Truss as soon as they can, and put in someone who at least looks semi-competent, or the Con Party will be near-finished by next year. Same goes, of course, for Kwarteng, Cleverly, and Coffey.
More tweets
I’m not sure you can call people angry and bitter, and then in the same tweet hope that they meet an unpleasant fate in an alley, all while still trying to maintain your own moral high ground. But I’m pretty new to Twitter, so I’m still figuring the moral maze out… https://t.co/KgZ3iqCdN9
Jack Monroe pulls apart tweets that suggest people can live off a cheap bag of pasta or oats (rightly so) but SHE reinforces this ideology with her £20 weekly Asda shops. They do not contain enough nutrional/calorific value for one person, never mind 2 to 3 people!
Look at ANY of the weekly shops she has posted. There is a good reason she doesn't follow it through with a FULL meal plan for the week. She states a few times that she'll post a meal plan or recipes for the week later on but they never appear. The idea that you can continually
COVID held a mirror up to society. As most of us were forced to slow down, we noticed it was not the mega rich or obscenely paid super stars that we relied on, but the dismissively termed ‘unskilled’ front line workers. We can’t now allow them to be forced into ‘working poverty.’
Ha ha. Yes, that ghastly little bastard Schofield is one of the worst people on TV in the UK; and, yes, it is peak contemporary Britain, just like…well, there are just too many examples around…
An eloquent warning from the former British ambassador to Moscow, in 1997 'Does Nato really have a future at all? Is enlargement really no more than a substitute for policy, the thrashing about of an organisation which has lost its raison d’etre? 'https://t.co/p1MZFFPTCG
: 'Over the centuries one great power after another has threatened the stability of Europe….in 1815 and…1945.. the victors were intelligent and self-interested enough to bring the defeated as equals into the comity of European nations.' https://t.co/p1MZFFPTCG
A good example was seen the other night. A new detective drama called Karen Pirie.
Set partly a few decades ago, partly in the contemporary era, even the older setting, in St. Andrews, Scotland, decades ago, had a black character appear. In a small town in what seems to be a bleak part of Scotland (I have never been there). Then we are introduced to the two detectives now investigating the cold case. One a small Scottish woman, the other a black or half-caste…
I do not have a great deal of patience with films or TV shows. If they do not catch the interest after 15 mins, switch— OFF. I gave this one 20 mins. A bloody bore, poorly conceived and worse-acted.
This evening, I saw an old episode of Wycliffe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wycliffe_(TV_series)]. All characters more or less credible, and what I like best about Wycliffe is that it manages to catch the atmosphere of Cornwall well, from what I recall from when I lived there. It does not rely on cliche (most of the time, at least).
Late tweets
The UK's economic woes appear to be a story of fiscal recklessness that's forced the Bank of England to stabilize crashing financial markets by buying up government bonds.
The real story is actually more complicated, and it all comes down to pensions https://t.co/H0wFKJe8IQ
But you’ve now borrowed short-term money to buy volatile financial assets.
The thing that was so good about pension funds — their structural long-termism, the fact that you can’t have a run on a pension fund: You’ve ruined that! https://t.co/Q6dEeBI8Ztpic.twitter.com/qTFzhEjNYT
➡️A margin call earlier this year when rates rose, which depleted the pensions’ collateral buffer ➡️Liz Truss's catastrophic mini-budget led to long-term interest rates spiking 100 basis points https://t.co/8vucDdxTDQpic.twitter.com/PeAj4jmPt1
But the questions about what happened in recent days run deep, are far from relevant only to the UK and are most certainly not over https://t.co/25jsfBV8mH
The BOE may have left itself hostage to misfortune with its actions.
The risk is that it finds itself in a standoff with markets, with pressure increasing to hike borrowing costs before its next meeting, which might tip the economy over the edge https://t.co/FLzsjzcWzr
In the month since I wrote about “Jack Monroe”, the “Bootstrap Cook”, the storm around her murky financial arrangements has become fiercer yet. A few tweets:
Oh look, yet mire Jack Monroe bootstrapcook lies exposed. She's gifted donations to fund legal action and not even followed any pre-action protocol & got in touch. That money's been spent…. ❄️❄️❄️❄️⛄️ https://t.co/LrXqDsDB1b
In light of Jack Monroe @BootstrapCook's latest "working class" lies, it's worth retweeting her dad's comments regarding his professional landlording, which also reveal he has no bank debt, ie mortgages. Not surprising given he inherited 3 of his millionaire dad's 12 properties. https://t.co/7BrPnLiVtA
He is sometimes described, inaccurately, as having become a “pro bono” lawyer who works for free, out of quasi-charitable motives, whereas he in fact seems to work on a “no win no fee” basis, which is not at all the same thing.
“Jack Monroe” has tweeted that she still has several/many months in which to sue the MP Lee Anderson and the politico Martin Daubney. In theory, up to a year after the alleged libel, but the relevant Practice Directions do say that the courts will still expect any claim to be made expeditiously, so not, e.g., 10 or 11 months after the alleged libel.
The courts may (probably will) penalize even a successful defamation claimant (“plaintiff”, as was) in both award and costs if the action is not brought expeditiously.
Why are you tagging bootstrapcrook? ,she is literally doing the tories work by claiming you can feed a family on 20 quid a week, she has ripped of 1000s of working class people who have been paying into her patreon and received NOTHING, people are complaining and getting refunds
Part 1 of my new Jack Monroe blog is up now, complete with slideshows – I am very excited about the slideshows! The next part will follow shortly. This time with alt text.
Plenty of msm comment to the effect that Putin is washed-up, that there may be a coup d’etat etc. Hard to say.
Some of the “Putin is finished” comment (including that with origins in UK/US intelligence services) may be wishful thinking. There is no obvious replacement for Putin, as far as I can see. If there were, he would not live long once Putin noticed him!
We hear that the war in Ukraine is lost. Is it? The pockets of Ukrainian resistance in the south and south-east have just been stamped out. The UK msm may call the surrender of the Ukrainian forces at the Azovstal plant near Mariopol/Mariupol an “evacuation“, but few are fooled by the “transformative language”. The Ukrainian forces left alive surrendered to the Russian forces.
To my mind, there are two, maybe three, main factors why Russia has not used even more brutal tactics in order to win militarily in Ukraine. The first is that Ukraine, after all, was almost part of Russia, certainly very closely linked, for a thousand years or more, albeit that the history is complex: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ukraine.
The second reason that Russia has not as yet pulled out all the stops is that use of the most brutal weapons and tactics (e.g. battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons, e.g. flattening completely all major Ukrainian cities not in Russian hands) might bring down NATO response despite the inherent dangers in that.
The third reason why Russia has not brought to bear all its enormous power is that Putin wants to take over at least something of a functioning agricultural and industrial economy after any Russian victory, an objective impossible of realization if the cities are totally destroyed, the population killed or driven out, or if the land itself is contaminated.
I note that the Jew Zelensky, puppet head of the Kiev regime, has now said that diplomacy, not war, is the way to end the conflict. Does that betoken a perceived weakness in the Ukrainian position on the ground, or does it mean that Zelensky’s cabal thinks that the Russian military position is weak? You could look at it either way.
Zelensky, however, has obviously been told not to cede any territory to Russia de jure, not even Crimea, where 90%+ of the population is Russian and only about 2% Ukrainian now.
Speculating here as advocatus diabolus, some in the Russian camp may be thinking of a “Devil’s alternative”— destroying Kharkov, and even Kiev, almost entirely, as well as other places, driving out the Ukrainian population, then eventually repopulating the part of Ukraine east of the Dnieper with Russian settlers.
That would be a terrible and almost Biblical scenario, but it has happened in Europe previously, most recently in 1944-1946, when German populations were killed and/or driven out of East Prussia, Galicia, Pomerania and Bohemia, replaced by Russians (Konigsberg, East Prussia/Kaliningradskaya oblast), Poles (East Prussia, Pomerania and Galicia), and Czechs (Bohemia/Sudetenland).
Tweets seen
🔴Exclusive: Hospitals across the country have set up food banks and emergency “hardship” loans as health leaders warn staff are “struggling to feed their families” https://t.co/byR65hp9oh
The Cavell Nurses’ Trust told The Independent it had seen a 140% rise in the number of people seeking help in the first four months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021
When will we get truth about #TheBalmoralHotelIncident & Injunctions, Sturgeon & Murrell lies, missing £600k, Salmond, Mackay cover ups, phony Mhairi Black, When will somebody in media tell all truth?
— Kingdom Books 🏴🇬🇧 (@KingdomBooksUK_) May 22, 2022
Goering’s train
Interesting short historical documentary.
Alison Chabloz
Many readers of this blog will be aware that persecuted satirist and singer-songwriter, Alison Chabloz, was imprisoned (again) in mid-April for poking fun in song at some aspects of Jewish behaviour. She was sentenced to 22 weeks, which in terms of actual custody is 11 weeks (77 days). She has now served 38 days, meaning that sometime tomorrow (Monday 23 May 2022) she will be at the halfway point of her actual custodial sentence.
Imprisoned for singing a song. Britain has fallen far…
— BBC Hampshire & IoW (@BBC_Hampshire) May 20, 2022
A social menace that has been treated with kid gloves for far too long.
This is how modern 'politics' works. Politicians are spending £MILLIONS of our money every day, selling us their vile agendas. How much did the COVID propaganda cost? https://t.co/dJ4z7jwwra
— TheEndOfEverything (@EternalEnglish) May 22, 2022
A key part of the elite's "Great Reset" agenda is to destroy ordinary people's mobility by forcing them off the roads and out of their cars. Note how the Mayor's policy targets lower-income motorists who tend to drive older vehicles. https://t.co/jd8ITW85Vf
— Richard Wellings (@RichardWellings) May 21, 2022
…and another part of that is to divide and rule over the motoring public, as witness the recent slew of fake “opinion polls” saying that “most people” want those over the age of 90, 80, 70, and even 60 either to be barred from driving or forced to retake a driving test (most people, even at 20 or 30, would struggle to pass the test again years after having passed).
As with all of these state-sponsored programmes, they are not only pushing whites from the benefits of all of their generational industriousness, they are creating layers of state-dependent operatives, who will always be enthusiastic purveyors of the state's agendas. https://t.co/KR9ayvUCqZ
— TheEndOfEverything (@EternalEnglish) May 22, 2022
…yet we hear all the time from System sources that the “Great Replacement” is a mere “conspiracy theory”. Indeed, Prosecution Counsel in the recent Alex Davies trial made that very point, if I recall the newspaper report aright; yet here we are, and we see that the Guardian (no less) is citing a United Nations report on it.
— TheEndOfEverything (@EternalEnglish) May 22, 2022
Martin Luther King Jr was a trained communist agitator who didn't even write his own speeches, he had a Jewish speech writer, he was a serial adulterer and laughed when his friend raped white women. He was a piece of filth and contributed to the downfall of America pic.twitter.com/BnZnlppKHr
The American lawyer, William Pepper, who defended King’s alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, was a door tenant at the very odd chambers where I did my pupillage in London (in 1992-1993). I met him once.
I remember that a young lady I knew laughed on seeing the board by the entrance showing the names of all members of chambers, and which had him down as “Dr. Pepper”, like the root beer. Well, in her defence, she was only 15.
The General Election of 2019 has washed up an almost embarrassing number of new deadhead MPs onto my golden shore. I have now an even wider choice than heretofore. Out of that mass, I have now chosen Selaine Saxby [Con, North Devon].
I have to admit that I had never heard of Selaine Saxby until yesterday. The material available online about her is sparse, but I think that one can come to an outline understanding of her character and background from what can be found.
Twitter has had much to say about Saxby, mostly critical:
The MP for North Devon has just gone and said some very cynical and mean-spirited things about Free School Meals.
One stand-out is: She hopes businesses which "are able to give away food for free … will not be seeking any further government support."https://t.co/piwkLA2OPp
Selaine Saxby, MP for North Devon, wrote that she 'very much' hoped businesses who helped feed hungry children 'will not be seeking any further government support' https://t.co/O6MdxvO2WS
You certainly do champion the hospitality industry. £500 a night hotels… on MP's expenses obviously (while also claiming rent) pic.twitter.com/6b5S89BmaW
.@SelaineSaxby has only been an MP for ten months, but she's already claimed £30,315.41 in expenses from the public purse. She voted not to feed poor children in the school holidays. 322 MPs voted against – here are their expenses https://t.co/u5t26PI7MTpic.twitter.com/QGZ7NaFHPC
I’m a Tory & have run Parliamentary offices for 30 years. I have huge issues with this administration & many of the new intake. There might be a reason you’re getting grief. Compassionate Conservatism seems to have passed you by. In a deadly pandemic your words are dreadful. pic.twitter.com/JYAU141wwE
Tell you what…I'll leave this here and just ask yourself "what pond life would allow children to starve during these unprecedented and difficult times?" Tory MPs! You are #ToryScumpic.twitter.com/DziIlVHTBt
You said anyone voluntarily feeding hungry children should not expect support from the government. It was crystal clear. You want to punish businesses for being humanitarians. Do they send you on some training course to rip the humanity out of you after you’ve become an MP?
As a former teacher who taught for over 34 years, rather than for 5 minutes, I know how complicated children’s lives can be, especially when they are living in poverty. You could have voted to help them; you didn’t. Shame on you.
What I find extraordinary about Selaine Saxby’s original comment is not only that it shows a complete absence of any compassion for the poor and struggling, but that it also attacks the very people most likely to vote Conservative: business people, company directors etc.
Selaine Saxby’s background
I had not previously encountered the Christian name “Selaine”. My brief researches have discovered that (unlike, say, Sharon, Sarah, Selena) “Selaine” has no classical or other meaning. There is some suggestion that it might be of French origin, but I have discovered that, in the whole of the past century, and in the whole world where records are available, only 80 girls were named Selaine, almost all between the years 1970-1990, and mostly in Brazil. A mystery.
Selaine Saxby was born in November 1970 in Coventry, and will be 50 within a few weeks. Her father was a school headmaster. Her school education is not, apparently, in the public domain; she then read Mathematics and Management at Cambridge.
I saw a tweet to the effect that Selaine Saxby is “a lawyer”, but that seems to be wrong. I can find no trace of her ever having qualified as either solicitor or barrister.
Having been born in 1970, Selaine Saxby probably graduated in the early 1990s, about 1991 or 1992. The years between then and 2000 are blank, it seems. What was she doing in those ~8 years? Sitting on a beach? Surfing? Working for MI5? We do not know.
Selaine Saxby started an online sport bra company (Lessbounce Ltd) in 2000. It seems to have been modestly successful, but was liquidated in 2016, with debts.
Other activities have included raising money for charity (though she seems to have done that as a “consultant”, i.e. she was paid, so there is no need to look upon her as having been particularly altruistic…).
Her Lessbounce (Lesbounce?) company was obviously no more than modestly successful. When it collapsed in 2016, she had already been working for a year as salaried Chief of Staff (big title for smallish job?) for gay Conservative Party MP, Ben Howlett [Con, Bath, 2015-2017]. As to Ms. Saxby’s own private life, Wikipedia, the several profiles of her online, and the MP’s own website, are silent.
After Ben Howlett lost his seat at Bath in 2017, Ms. Saxby’s job disappeared, so she became a schoolteacher (mathematics) at a state secondary in Bideford (North Devon) for what seems to have been only a few months, until a date in 2019. She had previously fought a doomed campaign at Llanelli (Wales), in 2015, in which contest she finished last out of four candidates.
Ideology
Nothing much is known of Ms. Saxby’s ideological stances except that she voted Leave in 2016, and was elected on the “get Brexit done” basis. Her recent comments seem to reflect unthinking “Daily Mail” views on social welfare. She seems to have said nothing publicly on questions of race and culture.
Attitude to money
I note that, since her election, Selaine Saxby has claimed expenses which have been not huge, and I find it odd that her “staffing costs” seem to have been only £885 in the past year (the maximum claimable is something like £165,000). She claims to take “a packed lunch” to Westminster! If true, rather silly and almost vulgar in view of MPs’ pay and expenses, especially when MPs get excellent restaurant food at Westminster for a few pounds, i.e. heavily subsidized, like the old Soviet “Kremlyovsky payok” (Kremlin ration).
I wonder whether she is not basically a bit of a skinflint. That would seem to explain her comments about both hungry children and struggling businesses.
Ms. Saxby is, incredibly, a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee in the Commons (she gets extra pay for that).
Conclusion
Selaine Saxby’s recent comments well qualify her as a deadhead MP. I have read her own website and what has been written about her online by Wikipedia, in the Press, on Conservative Home, the House of Commons online resource etc. Phrasing this in the colloquial, I do not detect a lot going on there…
Having said that, she is not going anywhere. North Devon has alternated between Conservative and LibDem for decades, and before that, Liberal, in toto for over a century. Nick Harvey held the seat for the LibDems for 23 years (1992-2015), and Selaine Saxby took over the seat from another Conservative Party MP in 2019.
The collapse of LibDemmery nationwide has meant that a number of their former strongholds are now safe Conservative seats. North Devon is one. It seems, therefore, that Ms. Saxby will be around for some time.
What the government needs to do is to end the “lockdown”, right now, but also to keep advising people strongly, via the msm, re. washing hands (the only really effective way to prevent getting the virus) and reasonable social distancing (i.e. in particular avoiding crowded places and/or places where there are hot and excited people).
Michael Gove
Michael Gove, the pro-Israel, pro-Jewish lobby careerist MP and now Cabinet minister, is in the news again. It will be recalled that he was an expenses cheat in the 2005-2010 Parliament, to the extent that he was lucky not to be prosecuted for fraud. He is also a (supposedly former) cocaine abuser and drunk, who was also filmed in 2019, in the Chambers of the House of Commons, either dead drunk or drugged.
Gove has a Jewish wife, Sarah Vine, who is a Daily Mail scribbler:
“She is thought to come from a wealthy background and, although it is difficult to find out what her parents did, at the time of her marriage to Gove in 2001, they were resident in Monte Carlo. The wedding was at the beautiful village of Vence in the south of France and the reception was held at a local chateau.” [The Guardian]
I can't stand Michael Gove, Dishonest, slippery, self serving, pushed by his dreadful wife to a position far beyond his ability. He embodies everything that is wrong with the UK.
Michael Gove is a repulsive, sinister, rancid, rotten, vile, creepy, disloyal individual, this snake like creature slithers onto our screens to reassure us, no integrity, dishonest, if you believe this spiv, go have a chat with yourself, Murdoch taught him well #Ridge#Marr
Is our lazy alcoholic clown PM really about to get his P45? And which of the parade of ghouls might replace him? Gove positively makes my flesh creep so it'll probably be him 😨
It was a tweet about Gove which was one of five tweets (yes, that’s right, only 5 out of 150,000+) that got me disbarred in 2016, at the instigation of a pack of Jews: see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/ , or google “Ian Millard barrister” for a one-sided msm view. Now, my tweet about Gove can be seen to have been obviously true (as were the other 4). At that time, Gove had not yet been exposed as a “cokehead”, just as a fraudster, embezzler, doormat for Jews and Israel, and a backstairs manipulator.
The emerging British toytown police state
Something to look forward to: Bullying police officers stopping people for not wearing facemasks and forcing non-wearers to don them in the street. Shops refusing to admit non-wearers. Non-wearers denied access to pubic transport. For months and months and months.
1/2 We agreed to all these new arrangements by our national passivity when our new status was imposed on us. Neither our institutions, nor most of us, uttered a whisper of opposition. We took the yoke, and have entered a new servile relationship with the state. https://t.co/Elpg3F1iyk
2/2 I think that when we are all *compelled* to don facemasks – in most cases useless against infection, but very useful in dehumanising and humiliating their wearers and imposing an obedient prison-style uniformity – some of us may grasp that we've actually embraced servitude. https://t.co/Elpg3F1iyk
It strikes me that, in most revolutions (in their uncontrolled “street” phase), it is not the intellectuals, not the ideologues, not the “responsible” trade unionists or the faux-revolutionary newspaper scribblers and TV talking heads who are the first to take to the barricades, but the delinquent youths and the —to use the contemporary colloquialism— the “totally pissed-off— who do so. They are the ones who assault the police, hang the HVO secret police (Hungary 1956) , burn down the headquarters of the local Stasi and destroy its files (East Germany/DDR 1989) and who create the conditions for an actual revolution going beyond mere temporary upheaval.
Who are those who are “ignoring the rules” of toytown dystopian Britain in 2020? Not the bloggers, not the journalists (not even the dissident ones), not the pesudo-religious priests, priestesses and other frauds. No, we see that it is the youth, or part of it, plus a hard core of people willing to think for themselves and show themselves unafraid of the state, as well as (whisper it) the blacks and other non-Europeans in the UK (who have no thought for the principles of liberty, but who just want the practical or actual freedom to go to parks, play football on Brighton beach etc).
There is no revolution happening in Britain. Not yet, anyway. However, I notice that the young are the ones mostly ignoring the new repressive law and the police-invented “rules” taken from Government ministers’ mere wishes.
My local online newspaper reports that the police have, inter alia, tried to apprehend 7 youths fishing. My God, fishing! What devilment is this?! In fact, “when the officers arrived, the youths ran off“. Meanwhile, in other evil, police were called to a beach where youths had been reported to be using a jetski. My God, don’t they understand that they could be “spreading Coronavirus“, “literally killing people“, and “destroying the NHS“?
Well, no, actually. Because they are not. This pathetic poundland police state-ism is driving even me up the wall. Fishing in small groups (people who already know each other anyway), or using a jetski on the sea (much as I dislike jetskis) are not behaviours with the slightest chance of spreading this bloody Chinese virus.
In fact, the police were out of luck with the jetski “criminals” too, because it appears that, “by the time officers arrived, the youths and the jetski had gone, but officers found the remains of a barbecue on the beach.” A barbecue? The bastards!
Joking aside, what does it take for “Middle England” (let alone the brainwashed plebs) to defend what little is left of their liberties and civil rights?
Actually, my impression is that the vast bulk of the British people have sold their soul not for fame, money (in any large quantity), or other of the usual inducements. No. Just chuck them a family-pack of loo paper, some dried pasta, and a bottle of booze. That’s them sorted…and goodbye all the fine words about “democracy”, “a society under law” (nb. “law“, not laws“), “freedom”, “civil rights”, “human rights” etc.
I don’t want to hear any more about the (large fake anyway) “wartime spirit”, “Dunkirk spirit”, “Blitz spirit” etc, and how “we” fought “tyranny” (as propaganda had it in WW2 and, germinally, for several years beforehand, as well as since).
We see the 100-y-o ex-officer raising £20M or more for the NHS, and he is quite rightly being honoured. Having said that, why does a National Health Service need to have monies raised for it by ad hoc crowdfunding? The fact is that the NHS has been both underfunded and, at least equally important, maladministered for years, even decades. In the past decade, vast sums have been shaven off NHS budgets and, since 2017, nurses have had their pay frozen.
Will the £20M-£30M raised be properly deployed or applied? Come to that, I wonder whether that 100-year-old ex-officer himself voted Conservative in 2010, 2015, 2017 or 2019??
It's been clear to me since at least September 11 2001 that a lot of people in the modern world do not especially wish to be free. The ready acceptance of the presumption of guilt and the convict-like treatment of air-travellers at first amazed me. Then I realised. They liked it. https://t.co/lnqVZS1CGp
“Yes, the virus has killed a significant number of people, but the expected mass onslaught of deaths has not arrived. The NHS has a huge number of empty beds for the time of year. The mortality figures show a confused picture, not least because it is not clear how the authorities decide who is and who is not recorded as a Covid-19 death.” [Peter Hitchens, in the Daily Mail]
Lol, it's funny though that all the things that conspiracy theorists have been warning about for the last 20 years seems to be coming true, implantable ID chips, cashless society, never ending wars against imagined enemies, constant surveillance, the rise of technochracy etc
— C-Store News #GasPrices #OpenForTakeOut (@CStoreNews_) April 18, 2020
1/2 Governments which are good at sweeping, grandiose gestures (such as quarantining millions of healthy people in their homes and shutting down an entire economy) are unsurprisingly bad at the hard detail, such as protecting the old and equipping doctors. https://t.co/WxSAWpGB8X
The 2019 General Election has been called, enabled partly by the LibDems and SNP, as John Rentoul, the only System journalist-commentator usually worth listening to, has written.
I was surprised that Labour did not block the vote, but I suppose that, with the Government ready to repeal, in effect, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, using a one-page bill, Labour had little choice but to appear unafraid to address the electorate.
So what now?
It it has been axiomatic, since Harold Wilson pronounced his famous dictum, that “a week is a long time in British politics”.
[Harold Wilson as Prime Minister, pictured in 1967 on the quayside at Hugh Town on the island of St. Mary’s, Isles of Scilly; the young Millard, 9-10 years old, at left]
Harold Wilson was sceptical of opinion polls. When he was in discussion with Lyndon Johnson about the Vietnam War, the U.S. President asked “what are the polls saying?” Wilson later recalled that he had thought that Johnson was referring to the Poles, and that he, Wilson, had tried to recall recent speeches by Gomulka!
That was then. Since then, British politics has given up the realms of commonsense thinking and has taken refuge in ideological spiderswebs and in the reading of electoral tea-leaves.
The opinion polls at present seem to be predicting a Conservative Party victory of as great as a 150-seat majority. Even mainstream commentators are talking in terms of a 70-seat Conservative majority. To me, that would be disastrous. Nothing to do with Brexit (which I favour). For me, to allow the present ZOG/NWO Cabinet of idiots, traitors, aliens and Israeli agents real power would be a calamity for the people of the UK. I have previously blogged about this: see Notes, below.
I am talking about domestic policy and, to some extent, foreign policy. I am talking about the imposition of an elected dictatorship on the British people. I am talking about rule by a concealed Jewish-Zionist lobby. I am talking about worse pay, pensions, State benefits, working conditions, living conditions etc. I am talking about destruction of free speech, too.
Is a Boris-Idiot government (with real power) inevitable? I do not know. Maybe not, but things are looking black.
The first thing to note is that polls usually narrow towards Election Day. At present they point to a Conservative majority of maybe 60. However, if Labour can pull itself up by a few points, that majority might shrink to single figures. Then there are the other parties (in England, mainly) to consider: LibDems and Brexit Party.
Labour
The Jewish lobby has weakened Corbyn and Labour via incessant attacks over four years. Some of the poison has seeped into public perception. The attacks continue. Only today, the “MP for Barrow and Furness —and Tel Aviv”, John Woodcock, was again attacking Corbyn and Labour, under the banner of which he scraped back into the Commons in 2017, though he has now left Labour amid charges of sex pest behaviour, and will soon no longer be an MP (no doubt “they” will find him a well-paid position). Again, I happened to see “former Labour Party adviser” John McTernan today on Sky News All Out Politics. Sky’s Adam Boulton was too polite to point out that McTernan’s advice proved disastrous for Labour in the past, and also for the Australian Labor Party. McTernan on Sky again derided Corbyn. With “friends” like those, Labour needs no enemies!
Labour’s more serious problems are, firstly, that it is unclear about what it stands for. Not just on Brexit. No overarching narrative. In the past, Labour’s position was a given: the voice of the “workers”, meaning the industrial proletariat, other manual and low-paid workers, renters rather than “owners” of freehold or leasehold property.
In those days, meaning until the 1970s, there was no serious racial aspect. Though there had been an influx (ultimately calamitous, by reason of breeding) of blacks and browns since the 1950s but mainly in the 1970s (and of course later), the percentage of blacks and browns and other non-Europeans was small until the 1980s; there was no constant wave of immigration in the hundreds of thousands, as there now is.
In the 1980s, Labour lost its way. The industrial proletariat started to disappear along with its industries. Immigration and births to immigrants started to create raceless and cultureless “communities”, including huge numbers of mixed-race individuals. British culture on TV and radio started to be overtaken by the Americanized cultural takeover that started in or immediately after WW2. The stalwarts of traditional Labour in the Commons and in constituencies started to be replaced by those who were influenced by the anti-white politics of post-Marxism, by the feminist and/or lesbian “sexual politics” movements, by persons who were unaware of the fight that Britain had with Jewish extremists in Palestine in the 1940s.
Such Labour activists were brought up in the 1960s and 1970s and had been indoctrinated by “holocaust” hoaxes and nonsense, such as the films of the faked “diary” of Anne Frank, of Schindler’s List (many people now think, quite mistakenly, that it is a “true story”, unaware that it was an adaptation of a novel, Schindler’s Ark, which was written in 1982 by an Australian who was only a child during WW2, having been born in 1935; he was brought up in New South Wales).
Gradually, Labour became the bastion both of the politically-correct ideologues and of the careerist “centrists” such as Tony Blair and his wife, both affluent barristers with no connection to Labour’s history (Blair’s father was a Scottish professor; Cherie’s father was a dissolute Liverpudlian TV actor). Labour went from being led by elderly Marxist hypocrite Michael Foot to, at first, a middling position under, in turn, Neil Kinnock and John Smith, then to Blair’s neoliberalism, with the Jewish-Zionist element firmly in control.
Labour lost connection with the “working class”, first because the old monolithic, unionized industrial proletariat had gone, and because the new concerns of former Labour areas (mass immigration, race and culture, poor conditions of non-unionized and precarious employment, sexual abuse of English girls by, mainly, Pakistanis, drug abuse) were simply ignored and, indeed, denied by the Labour Party.
Labour, in short, was becoming, under Blair, what it now is: the party of non-Europeans (the “blacks and browns” etc), of those dependent on public funds (public service workers, council employees, NHS people, those living on State benefits). These Labour voters were ruled over by a dictatorial pro-multikulti Common Purpose stratum, above which sat the Labour Friends of Israel MPs and above all the Jewish-Zionist “fixers” of the Lord Levy sort, who arranged the funding, doled out peerages and other “honours” to the compliant and “liaised” with Blair and his courtiers.
Meanwhile, Labour’s leadership became a cosmopolitan and finance-capitalist clique, “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” as one of its degenerate creatures, the Jew “lord” Mandelson put it. By 2010, it seemed to many that there was little difference in substance (as distinct from style) between Labour and Conservative. Labour lost to the Conservatives led by David Cameron-Levita.
Corbyn, though poorly-educated and no sort of leader, gave hope to the “children of the proletariat” (speaking ideologically: many are from rather comfortable backgrounds). His almost miraculous accession to leadership seemed to be a return to old Labour values: community, nationalization, State funding, workers’ rights. I have blogged about the “Hand of God” aspects to Corbyn’s election, eg his getting exactly the number of nominations required, some of which were from MPs who had no intention of even voting for him!
Labour now is a house divided. The Jewish-Zionist lobby may have attacked Corbyn-Labour, but that is only part of the story. Most Labour MPs date from the pre-Corbyn era, most from the pre-2010 era. Some MPs are volubly anti-Corbyn and closer to a careerist “Blairite” or “Brownite” position, such as Jess Phillips (ironically, only elected in 2015).
Labour gives an impression of being split two or three ways, and that is even before Brexit is mixed into the equation. This plays badly, electorally.
A normally loyal Labour MP on Corbyn and prospects for #GE19:
‘We’re led by a lunatic. He’s a nice but dim man who is being controlled by truly evil people.’
So are Labour’s prospects dead? Maybe not. Firstly, it has the support of the non-whites, to a large extent, though that tends to be concentrated in relatively few constituencies. Then it has most of the public service people. Finally, it has the young. Very few under-25s vote Conservative now, only about 4%. Only about 15% of under-35s vote Conservative. The rub is that younger eligible voters tend not to vote. So far.
Corbyn’s policies on utilities, transport and fares, rights for tenants etc may play well for him, if Labour can get them heard amid the Brexit noise and the Boris-The-Idiot-Star clowning and posturing.
Where Labour is undermined is in its disconnect, in visceral terms, from its former core communities: eg in the black-brown MPs Labour has, some of whom seem almost half-witted. Diane Abbott would be Home Secretary under a Corbyn government…
Corbyn’s lack of leadership is also a factor, as is his asinine support for Roma Gypsy thieves and scavengers and for the horrible “tinker”/”traveller” element. That must alienate millions.
In the end, Labour now has no real reason to exist in its present form. It is somewhat neo-socialist, but not at all “national”. It divides rather than unifies, because it prefers non-Europeans to the white British people among whom and for whom it was founded.
“I am a socialist, but a white man first.” [Jack London]
The above parody tweet was sent to me by a blog reader. It does rather set the scene for the past decade, the “austerity” (inflicted by part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne and continued by Theresa May and now —so far— by Boris Johnson, again both part-Jew…) upon the poorer half or more of the UK, while the more affluent half and especially tenth of the population have been “doing rather well”
I have blogged rather extensively about the Conservative Party and about its leading members, particularly Boris Johnson aka “Boris-Idiot”.
The Conservative Party, like Labour, has travelled far from its roots, even far from where it was in the 1970s. The old country Conservatives scarcely exist in MP terms now. Like Labour, the Conservative Party is now packed with pretty mediocre MPs, most in it for the money. In fact, many would be flattered to be as good as mediocre. Like Labour, the Conservative Party has ceased to be representative, not only of the country as a whole but even of its traditional supporters. In the 1950s, nearly 5 million people were members of the Conservative Party. Now? About 140,000. Boris Johnson was elected by about two-thirds of those. 92,000 people in a UK which now holds some 70 million. Only 1 in about 500 adult inhabitants of the UK is a member of the Conservative Party.
The trump card of the Conservative Party in this election is that it is not the Labour Party. It has little else to offer, except the Brexit “deal” that Boris-Idiot fluffed and which is worse than that offered to Mrs May 18 months ago. It is only the clown-image, of Boris the Clown, which, bizarrely, is keeping the Cons high in the polls. That, and Corbyn’s rock-bottom ratings.
So Johnson has once again gambled. The gamble is that he can win more Leave-supporting seats than he loses Remain-supporting seats.
Stress points for the Conservatives? Privatization, by the back door, of the NHS; Johnson’s character; the wealthy getting wealthier, the rest getting poorer; privatized rail and utilities; poor pay; the cruelty of the post-2010 benefits system.
LibDems
Ironically, the key to the LibDems taking seats might be Brexit Party taking away Con votes in the South of England, and so letting the LibDems in. That might happen even more if Labour voters in strongly Con areas vote tactically. I do not have much time for Jo Swinson, a pro-finance capitalist and Orange Book LibDem who pays lip service to the Jew-Zionist lobby, but I have to concede that she has put in a couple of stellar performances in the Commons recently.
The LibDems are pro-EU, pro-Remain, anti-Brexit. They are the only party unequivocally Remain. That clarity has to help them. How much it will help them is unclear. They need to get an across the board 20%+ even to regain the number of seats they had in 2010 and 2005. They are presently polling around 18%, but the night is young.
Brexit Party
Brexit Party has lost its mojo somehow. Its stellar start, with the rallies and speeches and huge enthusiasm, seems a long time ago already. I think that the reason is that Brexit is really its only policy, though others will no doubt appear soon. It is largely “the Conservative Party at Leave”, and people do have concerns other than Brexit. I doubt that it can poll much above 10%. It might manage 15% across the board. Chance of gaining more than one or two stray seats seems minimal at present. However, that may change, but BP needs to start attacking the Conservatives, not forever saying how much they want to play ball with them.
UKIP; Change UK
Both washed up, as I have long predicted. Polling at statistical zero. Dustbin of history zone.
Thoughts
There are 6 weeks to go. In 2017, turnout was below 69%. In 2015, turnout was 66% and in 2010, 65%. 2005: 61%. 2001: 59%. Since the 1990s, turnout slumped in 2001 and has gradually increased again but is still several points below the 1990s figures. If there were an unexpectedly high turnout, particularly among the younger voters who generally favour Labour or the LibDems, that could change the picture completely.
At present, the smart money is on the Conservatives. The smart money was on Remain in 2016, on Hillary Clinton to beat Trump, on anyone but Corbyn to replace Ed Miliband. You get the picture. I do not think that Labour can do well on its own merits, but devotees of the Turf will know that frontrunners rarely win. The election is Boris’s to lose, and he may yet do just that, counter-intuitive though that now appears.
This is an example of where Britain went wrong during the 1980s, 1990s and particularly under the 1997-2010 Blair-Brown era, and which continued on into the 2010-2019 years:
News heard on the early Today Programme on BBC Radio 4:
Farage has been reported as possibly going to direct Brexit Party to stand in as few as 20 seats, all Labour-held, 2016 Leave-voting seats;
Could it be any clearer that Brexit Party is not a serious party, not even a semi-serious protest party? I think that Brexit Party can probably be written off at this point.
The news, if accurate, does reinforce my previously-blogged point that Farage, despite his people skills, speaking skills and public profile, is not really very knowledgeable or effective politically. After all, UKIP was in the end a big Westminster zero after 25 years of operation and, so far, Brexit Party has underwhelmed. No by-election successes, and its polling for Westminster has dropped from 20% at one point to 12% now. My feeling is that Brexit Party could have gone the distance, but missed its moment to morph into a real party.
The other piece of news so far today is polling that, incredibly, shows
Boris Johnson “more trusted on NHS” than Corbyn!
Whatever one thinks of Corbyn, this is just mad and bolsters my view that the UK has gone mad, socio-politically. Already, we have had polling, from a month ago, to the effect that part-Jew, part-Muslim origined Johnson, whose father was a part-Jew who worked for the World Bank and was an MP, Boris Johnson who had a U.S. passport until recently, who was born in New York City, was brought up in USA and Belgium before attending Eton and Oxford, and who even belonged to the wealth-saturated and degenerate Bullingdon Club, “has the common touch” more than Corbyn!
On the campaign trail
Soon-to-be-ex-PM Johnson 'booed out of Addenbrooke's Hospital' during Cambridge visit.https://t.co/aIBA8I7Uud
The latest Ipsos MORI poll gives Conservatives 41%, Labour 24%, LibDems 20%, Brexit Party 7%, Greens 3%.
“Ratings for the Government as a whole are low, with just 19 per cent of voters happy with how it is running the country, including only a third of Conservatives, while 74 per cent are dissatisfied. Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos MORI, cautioned: “As Theresa May knows, a poll lead can be lost during a campaign and this puts the Conservatives at the upper margins compared with other polls. Nevertheless it confirms the Conservatives are starting in a strong position.” [Evening Standard]
If the above poll is accurate, we are staring down the barrel of a Conservative majority of 196, according to my use of Electoral Calculus (I gave Scottish results as likely SNP 50% and LibLabCon 15% each). That 196-seat majority would be disastrous for the UK.
Still, the starting gates have only just opened. All the same, Labour needs to hit hard now. For example, instead of weakly accepting that “antisemitism must be addressed” etc, Labour should start defending the British people; point out that many exploiters and parasites in the UK—by no means all, of course– are Zionists. Take the fight to the enemy and Labour might well find that many many British people want the Zionists taken down, their influence and power reduced greatly.
The opinion polls are proving to me that what so many British people want and need is social nationalism of the right sort.
Below, “Conservative” and, quelle surprise, not entirely English (part-Indian?), judging by photos found elsewhere than on her Twitter profile, freelance scribbler seems to have been living under a rock (or under the protection of a trust fund or affluent family) for the past 10+ years.
"Understandable, but will lead to economic armageddon"
The <40s are already living with "economic armageddon", stagnating wages, insecure jobs, spiralling housing costs. All under the watch of the #Selfservative party of 'fiscal responsibility'#GE2019#VoteLabour2019#JC4PM
Ms. Gill does seem to understand that there is the possibility of radical change inherent in the dispossessed UK young (and, indeed, the not so young). She does not want such change and does not exactly identify what change it might be (“economic armageddon” sounds to me suspiciously like socio-political illiteracy), but the change in question could as easily be social national as post-Marxist.
Strange. Perhaps I was too critical. She seems to take a different and more sympathetic view here (or is it just that she is more concerned about things when they affect her own and personal life?): *click on it and read entire thread…
These are FAQs if you complain about the housing crisis.
1. Why don't you move outside the South?
Yes that's a good idea as there are more houses, but one in three jobs are created in London. From a personal perspective, I need to be near newspaper offices + Westminster
Below, a very accurate though totally obvious view of what has been happening over the past decade in the UK. Though I would not want any Jew to be Prime Minister, I did like the way in which Ed Miliband had time for ideas, for policy, and for the results of applied policy; a holistic view. That used to be the norm in UK politics, before the rise of socio-political idiocy in or around 2005-2010, the Iain Dunce Duncan Smith-type of nonsense.
Lots of objections to class war appearing. Totally agree. Assault on welfare state, slashing top rate and corporate tax while imposing cuts on everyone else, driving people to food banks, Universal Credit, pay freezes, growth in zero hours. Where will it end? FFS.
Ian Robert Millard 