Tag Archives: freedom of expression

Diary Blog, 25 August 2023

Afternoon music

Battles past

Tweets seen

Wall. Firing squad. Endex.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/08/11/the-jew-epstein-and-prince-andrew-the-british-royal-family-has-another-scandal-maybe-its-time-to-just-get-rid-of-them/.

The old British Imperial slogan was “trade follows the flag“. American power is slowly waning, despite the huge military-destructive power of the USA and its customary vehicle, NATO.

The Jew Zelensky is an actor who moved from comedy to tragedy.

Recent estimates of those killed, wounded (badly) or captured on the Kiev-regime side since early 2022 are in the region of 450,000. The Kiev regime is running out of cannon-fodder, having to use press-gangs to haul likely recruits off the streets, and making it harder generally to avoid or evade military service.

Does that thug not realize that, one fine day, a nuclear missile might completely destroy the whole of the city in which he sits?

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12444711/Migrant-carries-child-boatload-arrive-Dover-asylum.html

Pictures taken at the Port of Dover on Friday show the Border Force vessel BF Typhoon pulling into the harbour before docking to unload more people believed to have been rescued as they tried to cross the Channel...More than 4,000 people have made the crossing this month.”

[Daily Mail]

Rescued“? You mean “ferried across the channel pursuant to the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan“, i.e. the transnational conspiracy to flood Europe with blacks and browns, and eventually to create a mixed, coffee-coloured race across Europe, which will then be ruled by a small minority of others, mostly Jewish or mixed-Jewish/European. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan.

If you, a British person, find the roads and railways crowded, the hospitals full, the NHS GP unable or unwilling to properly monitor your health, your pay or State benefits inadequate, housing non-existent (or sky-high in cost), then you should know what is at least a very large part of the reason— 4,000+ across the Channel every month, and another 80,000+ every month entering by quasi-legal means (“students”, “family members”, “fiances/fiancees”, so called “key-skilled workers” etc). Then there are those being born in the UK to blacks and browns already here.

Migration-invasion.

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12444579/Killers-ex-fianc-e-fears-want-revenge-jailed-12-years-used-Red-Bull-mark-shallow-grave-cyclist-mowed-buried.html.

A killer driver who buried a cyclist’s body in the Scottish wilderness six years ago after mowing him down has today been jailed for 12 years.

Alexander ‘Sandy’ McKellar, 33, and his twin brother Robert were driving along the A82 in Argyll, Scotland, when he knocked down and killed cyclist Tony Parsons, 63.

The pair tried to cover up the crime in September 2017 by burying the former Navy petty officer on the nearby 9,000-acre Auchy estate, inside a peat bog where animal carcasses were dumped.

Three years later, McKellar confessed to his terrified fiancée Caroline Muirhead what he had done.

Ms Muirhead, 32, was later taken to the burial site, which she marked out by dropping an empty can of Red Bull – allowing police to pinpoint the body’s location.

Today at the High Court in Glasgow, McKellar was jailed for 12 years while his brother was sentenced to five years and three months.

[Daily Mail]

What always amazes me, leaving aside the moral or ethical rights and wrongs, is how many people feel the need to confess crimes, even serious crimes, to girlfriends or stray people. I can think of several famous or infamous cases, including several high-profile murder cases, where that was the case.

One was that of a pair of brothers who killed their (possibly —though never proven— abusive) millionaire adoptive (I think) parents on Jersey decades ago; one brother, the actual killer, confessed while “in his cups” to a girlfriend he met in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil and while on his yacht there. She testified against him at his trial, the primary witness evidence of importance.

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/1994/8/09/cotidiano/19.html;

According to this report https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2006/05/15/killer-wants-to-come-home/, he also confessed to his grandfather.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-410320/Man-murdered-parents-1million-inheritance-set-leave-jail.html

See also: https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/969837.lecturers-killer-past-revealed/

Even the notorious Jeremy Bamber case had elements of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Farm_murders.

Incidentally, Bamber had been another adopted child.

While understanding the need of some people for “absolution” after confession (as, in effect, in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment), I do think that such a need shows weakness.

Some people are just better than others at keeping a secret, I suppose.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-12442615/The-broke-21-year-old-moved-care-home-Teun-Toebes-young-Dutch-nursing-student-took-opportunity-experience-daily-life-elderly-residents.html

Worth reading. Important questions.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12445473/Primary-school-teacher-39-not-guilty-animal-cruelty-footage-showed-punching-kicking-horse.html

Sarah Moulds. She was “lucky in her jury”, as they say. She should have been convicted and punished.

More tweets

I never had much time for Trump, but look at the present alternatives! Biden, an unpleasant man who poses as affable “uncle” (’nuff said…), and who is plainly suffering from some level of dementia. Then there is his V-P, Kamala Harris. Absolutely asinine, with not an interesting thought in her little mind.

Scandinavia (especially Denmark and Sweden) went through a similar slide in social norms: at first (1950s, 1960s) liberalism, then (1970s, 1980s) increasingly dark decadence, until (from the 1990s, and along with the migration-invasion), the societies in question became such as should really be purged from top to bottom.

As for the UK, not much different, really.

It is, in a sense, strange that the USA persists with NATO, when (roughly) 95%, or more, of the military-destructive power of NATO lies in US weapons and support. Even in terms of conventional weapons, and troops, almost all of that is American. Even in terms of money— 75% of the money spent in NATO is American: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO.

NATO, post-1989, is really a fig-leaf for the New World Order (NWO) programme. Having over 30 “partners” with the USA makes the programme look better, more inclusive etc.

Is that to pacify the restive American electorate which wonders why hundreds of billions of dollars are propping up Zelensky’ brutal, shambolic and totally corrupt “failed state” at the same time as many American cities are riven by crime, disorder, drugs, poverty etc?

As said above on the blog, Sarah Moulds was “lucky in her jury”. The trial was at Lincoln Crown Court, so in a largely rural county. That may have been one factor.

I would not let her near any animals or children. She may not be a sadist, as such, but obviously has a hot temper, at the very least.

Late tweets

It seems that what is left of the Kiev-regime counter-offensive is concentrated now in that southern part of the overall front.

In Britain, they [defined] the problem of the Armed Forces of Ukraine [which is] fatal for Ukraine.

The lack of personnel could be fatal for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, writes The Telegraph . Volunteers are no longer enough to maintain the combat capability of the army, and the West will not be able to help.

The combat effectiveness of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is under threat not only because of the colossal losses and lack of people, but because of the weather. The autumn months traditionally bring downpours that turn the soft soil of Eastern Europe into thick mud in which tanks, armored vehicles and artillery get bogged down.

All this can stop the advance of the Ukrainian army. Russian victory is finally around the corner as Western support begins to wane. If Kyiv cannot break through Russian positions now, then most likely it will never succeed, the author believes.”

In other words, just as I have been blogging for some time…

Late music

[The Kremlin, under threatening skies]

Diary Blog, 21 August 2023, including a few thoughts about women’s football, and ULEZ (etc)

Morning music

[Sophie Rhys, Full Moon]

Battles past

Tweets seen

The part that strikes me the most is North Korea— 6,645 tanks. They can have only one purpose— to strike, in a massive armoured spearhead, southward, towards Seoul.

A few thoughts about the “lionesses”

I have very little interest in football or other organized mass spectator sports. I have, however, had a few oblique thoughts about the women’s football situation, and the so-called “lionesses” (England women’s football squad).

Though women’s football goes back about 100 years, it has never had the high profile of the men’s game. The same is true of women’s cricket and most other sports.

Now, however, in the UK and other countries too, you have to be lucky to avoid it in the msm. This has come about rather suddenly, and seems to be being promoted as the latest mass “experience”.

One mass “experience” (eg “Black Lives Matter”, “Ukraine”, “Covid” and so on) replaces another, in a never-ceasing chain.

The period 2022-2055 is one in which the transnational secret rulers of the “West” are pushing certain trends very hard: a multiracial mass population in Europe, North America, Australasia etc (as part of the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan); globalism generally; globalized finance-capitalism; hostility to white Northern European people, culture, and way of life; “bio-security” (inc. microchip implants). “net zero” (inc. “15-minute cities”, anti-car campaign etc).

“LGBTQXYZ” too. It is noteworthy that a high proportion of women professional footballers seem to be lesbian, if the UK tabloid Press is correct.

Part of the transnational conspiracy seems to concentrate on the abolition of anything even resembling the traditional male/female binary. Thus the constant promotion of the “trans” nonsense, which has exploded in the West, mainly in the past few years. Thus one sees not only some female goalkeeper swearing loudly on pitch, but being widely acclaimed for displaying what until recently would have been described as “toxic male aggression”…

As said, I myself have little personal interest in mass spectator sports, and likewise no great objection to people (men or women) playing sports as they wish. My interest lies in what is behind phenomena such as the present promotion of the “lionesses” team etc.

More tweets

…answer came there none…

…and, as of today, a hard core of 383 utter mugs is still sending the “grifter”/fraudster some money every single month, via Patreon.

I do not agree about removal of pensions (in this case or any case) but dismissals are probably in order.

The NHS principle of “free at point of use” is one that I support, but it is clear that the NHS has gone astray in many areas, particularly the whole administrative area.

Even today, you hear people claim that only the UK has proper free health care. In fact, many other countries do healthcare better, not least France, where hospital wards (as distinct from one or two-person rooms) are now almost unknown, and where care is often far better as well.

I knew an late middle-age/elderly couple in Brittany (when I lived there for several years). They both had serious health problems. The husband of that couple said that, on telling the equivalent of an NHS consultant what medications he had been on in the UK, the doctor had nodded and replied, “I think that we can do a little better than that“… Does that not speak volumes?

I might add that the couple in question, who lived quite near me in Finistere-Nord, about an hour’s drive, 43 miles or 69 km, from Brest (where the hospital was), used to be ferried by taxi (paid for by the health service) to and from that hospital. Imagine that on the NHS…

There has to be partly a step back (eg reinstating the Matron position in hospitals), and partly a step or two forward (in listening to patients and putting patients first), in the NHS.

At present, the NHS, like the police, the court system, the school system, the university system, the BBC, the Foreign Office (etc), and various other parts of UK society, is just not fulfilling its proper function much of the time.

More tweets

Freddie Sayers

@freddiesayers

There’s something very odd about changing speed limits to 20mph all over London (and Wales) at the same time as rolling out ULEZ in theory to reduce emissions. The evidence suggests that driving slower at 20mph *increases* toxic emissions...”

That is because (like ULEZ), the programme to get everyone driving at 20 mph is only superficially about fuel emissions. The real or hidden agenda is the “electric cars only” agenda.

What is the real agenda? First, stop the most polluting cars being allowed to drive, then stop all diesel/petrol cars, then only allow certain types of electric vehicle on the roads (at first in London and other large cities, then nationwide, and even in remote countryside).

Result? Most people unable to afford to buy cars or to drive at all. They will then have to travel on monitored and controlled public transport (facilitated by under-skin microchips, in the end), or stay corralled in “15-minute-cities” etc, which will develop into (again) highly monitored and controlled zones almost like open prisons, or somewhere between normal neighbourhoods and the latter.

Convenience and social pressure will tend to “nudge” acceptance of “the rules”. Many may find the new social order not too bad— lower crime, no commute, easy shopping etc. Those who do not easily accept the bridle may be sanctioned in various ways via what may develop into a Chinese-style “social credit” system of control.

The most staunch of dissidents will then be removed, and will no doubt suffer the penalties usually visited upon such people by totalitarian states.

As with the 2020-2021 “Covid” hysteria (now being tried on again…), there is at least one hidden agenda.

More tweets

Such a case certainly kicks into the trivial zone my own last appearance (of very few) at Manchester (same building, but County Court), where I represented a young but absurdly well-paid footballer. In 2006 or 2007.

[Courts of Justice, Crown Square, Manchester].

I believe that Manchester now has a Civil Justice Centre at another location, and that civil cases are now no longer heard at the Crown Square buildings shown above. Manchester is not a city I know, really, and I have only been there about half a dozen times in my life.

Just read that. Partly true, but it leaves out the fact that, were there less income inequality, a greater percentage of the population would become net contributors to the public funds via taxes of one sort or another.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12428975/Outrage-paramedics-stopped-sandwiches-way-999-call-time-arrived-patient-died.html

Britain in 2023.

Late tweets

Diary Blog, 20 August 2023

Morning music

Battles past

Tweets seen

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Lorenz

Raus!

Yes. Raus!

The academic and historical-institutional sectors in the UK are rotten, riddled with termites that must be eliminated.

Yes!

Yes!

Pakistani carpetbagger Sadiq Khan now comes out with his real views—openly hostile to (real, white) British people. White Genocide is real, albeit by stealth. We are being replaced, and not by groups in any way better than or superior to us.

Harsh but true about Sadiq Khan, who is an enemy of the British people.

I lived in London, on and off, for over 20 years (1976-1998). My impressions of my most recent visit: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/06/30/diary-blog-30-june-2022-including-impressions-of-a-trip-to-dystopian-london/

More music

More tweets seen

That will be amusing to see, if a video is released (I doubt any will be, though). It seems that the audience was only 100-strong. “Jack Monroe”, as a brand, is a busted flush.

Not a situation about which I know much. Seems to be something to do with the “trans” nonsense, which is hard to avoid in the UK these days.

Just saw this, which covers the same situation:

Apparently, that individual was not only convicted in the Crown Court of sex assault on a minor but, on another occasion, attacked a man with a 9-iron (golf club), and was convicted at Crown Court in relation to that.

Lucky in his judges, though— has never been imprisoned, as far as I have read at least.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.

Apart from anything else, it should be illegal to claim to be a “lawyer” of any kind (or no specific kind) if unqualified. I myself really was a lawyer (barrister of the Bar of England and Wales) until improperly and indeed unlawfully disbarred in 2016, and I still am (as far as I know) “Attorney and Counsellor at Law” at the Bar of the State of New York, not that I care either way. I have not been disbarred in New York, anyway, nor “threatened” with the same.

Despite the foregoing, I have no interest in describing myself (as I still could) as “lawyer“. I do think that the public should be protected from fake lawyers or persons claiming to be lawyers.

[Update, same day: I have now seen the tweets below…

“CILEX” is the organization set up some decades ago to provide a professional structure for legal executives such as solicitors’ clerks, paralegals etc: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartered_Institute_of_Legal_Executives. Those with the qualification are, however, not “lawyers” as such. In the case in question, though, it seems that the person under examination never had any such qualification anyway, if that second tweet is accurate.]

Britain and the USA (etc) have been taken over, to some extent, by covert forms of the above (albeit with nuance), via both the msm and the educational system.

More tweets seen

Suddenly, all over the Northern hemisphere, in developed countries (USA, Canada, EU states), huge wildfires start and, at the same time, a huge propaganda campaign involving the UN and WEF goes into overdrive, blaming “climate change”/”global warming”, and demanding “net zero” to (somehow…) prevent it.

What is the real agenda here?

Does the Dutch Government have any idea what it would be like if even one nuclear missile struck its territory? Apart from almost everything in the Netherlands being blown up or set on fire, and those people not killed being heavily irradiated, the system of dykes and polders would be largely smashed, flooding with seawater 80% of whatever might be left standing.

Don’t escalate the Ukraine war. Stop funding the Jew Zelensky’s corrupt, brutal, and shambolic dictatorship.

The difference is that many young southern Europeans have always (since the 19thC) looked to emigrate for a probably/possibly better life or lifestyle. In the UK, though, such sentiment has only really taken off in recent decades, and especially the past 20 years.

Aux armes, citoyens!“…

More music

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12421715/Horses-animal-sanctuary-faces-eviction-multi-million-pound-retirement-village-built-greenbelt.html.

Britain in 2023. Very sad.

Late tweets

I myself became eligible for the UK State Pension about a year ago, but (without going into the detail of all my petty and not-very-interesting financial affairs) receive only half of the maximum amount (mainly by reason of having spent much time overseas).

The present government is toast unless it retains the Triple Lock (as blogged previously). Persons aged over 65 are now the only demographic still heavily voting for Conservative Party candidates.

The only hope for the Kiev regime is some kind of revolution or palace revolution in Moscow. Failing that, Russia cannot lose in the medium to long term.

Red lines being drawn on all sides, with unpredictable results if any are crossed.

Late music

Diary Blog, 19 August 2023

Morning music

[Cloisters, Salisbury Cathedral]

Battles past

Saturday quiz

Well, this week an easy victory over political journalist John Rentoul. He scored 4/10, whereas I managed 7/10, and might have scored 9/10 had I been able to bring to mind the answers to questions 1 and 7 (which I basically knew). The only question on which I had no idea at all was no. 3.

Tweets seen

Humanity owes a massive karmic debt to the animal kingdom.

Slava! All the same, that central westward thrust from Dnipro (Dnepropetrovsk) to Vinnitsa looks to me unnecessary and possibly counterproductive.

Russia needs to secure all territory east of the Dnieper, and also the coastal littoral of the Black Sea (including Odessa) but, above all, Kiev itself. Confine the Zelensky regime to a rump inland “state” based on Lvov.

The map shows, supposedly, something akin to the original scheme, but it probably is still the overall strategy.

More music

[Ely Cathedral]

Historical note

The Bürgerbräukeller, Munich, in or about 1923, shown above presumably before rather than after the “Beer Hall Putsch” (8-9 November 1923 :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch).

The photo shows a meeting of the NSDAP. All those shown in the photo were members or supporters of the NSDAP.

What interests me is that, at that time, the NSDAP was a relatively minor party even in its hub, Bavaria (in early 1923, the national membership was about 6,000, and by the Autumn of 1923 about 20,000).

In May 1924, i.e. after the failure of the “Beer Hall Putsch” (aka “Munich Putsch” or “Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch), the NSDAP (banned, so using the name “National Socialist Freedom Movement”) scored only 6.5% in the federal (national) elections, and only 3% in December 1924.

In 1923-1924, the NSDAP had the sort of minor public support that, in the UK of the 21st Century, UKIP was enjoying about a decade ago, and that the BNP had about 15 years ago.

All the same, look at that photograph of the NSDAP meeting in 1923. Many hundreds of people, at the least. All looking decently-dressed.

One cannot but help compare that to the tiny so-called “far-right” (national and social-national) parties of today’s Britain.

The main difference politically between Germany in 1923 and Britain in 2023 is, that in 1923 Germany, there were large numbers of Germans of all social and income groups who supported the idea of national renewal. The NSDAP may only have had a few thousand or tens of thousands of members, but other volkisch parties and groups, such as, and primarily, the Stahlhelm, had the same or more, in some cases hundreds of thousands: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Stahlhelm,_Bund_der_Frontsoldaten.

Look now at Britain in 2023. The degenerate strata of higher-income and high-social-status groups do not, generally, support national renewal, but are (metaphorically) signed up to the trends which are destroying our society (and now destroying it quite rapidly).

What that means is that, should social-nationalism, by a political miracle (which I do not rule out) take power in this country, it will have to start its mission by removing surgically, and by drastic surgery, large sections of degenerate society, at all income and social-status levels.

[“At the end stands Victory”]

More music

[Shishkin, Before the Storm]

More tweets

Starmer is a complete fake, and a bureaucratic would-be desk-tyrant, totally in the pocket of the Jewish/Israel lobby, and very dishonest.

Ha ha! “Councillor Birgit Miller”. What a total mug. Typical “Jack Monroe” supporter (middle-aged, apparently fairly affluent, and unable to distinguish “grifting” deception and pointless tweeting from genuine campaigning).

As for the other mugs mentioned in the tweet, apart from Jewish TV cook Nigella Lawson, we have “Charron Pugsley-Hill, artist and hypnotherapist“, whose full Twitter profile says “Artist/Environmentalist Paintings of Nature/flower Paintings prints for sale. Solution Focused psychologist and hypnotherapist. Happier world together.” Another pretty typical “Jack Monroe” supporter-mug. Oh, and I have just seen that she is a facemask loonie as well. At least she is apparently an animal-lover.

I actually saw two facemask loonies today, one a supermarket cashier, the other a customer at the same place.

Late tweets

Maybe reality is seeping in. Anything even slightly looking like defeat for Russia in the Ukraine battlefield space might trigger a nuclear attack on the West. Don’t go there.

Exactly. That has been the case for at least a year now.

Late music

Diary Blog, 8 August 2023

Morning music

[Rembrandt, Man in Armour]

Battles past

Tweets seen

Human beings can be incredible.

More tweets

The UK could have had that, or better.

Only the continued flow of arms, ammunition, money, food, medical supplies, and signals intelligence to the KIev regime keeps this conflict going. Take away Zelensky’s ricebowl—

Anyone who chooses a cat based on those criteria is probably the wrong person to have one. Also, “too old” at 15 weeks? Ridiculous.

Strange dream

Like Churchill, I have the habit of having an afternoon nap when possible. Today that came with an odd dream. I was running some political organization, and there was not only some (unidentified) journalist there, but also Nigel Farage.

Upstaging the journalist, Farage had made a grandiloquent offer, that is that he would pay me a million pounds to interview me for some TV show or podcast.

The interview was to take place at an ordinary table on the (maybe) third floor of a building. Just a dull, carpeted space, with a few people (including that journalist) around. Someone else was accompanying Farage.

Farage was about to start when, not quite trusting him, I remarked (in the dream, “urbanely”…) that I was sure that, as a man of business, he would not mind if I asked for the cheque upfront. He started to expostulate evasively. I asked what value of cheque he was willing to give. The answer, after some “umming and arring”, was…£22!

I became angry, dragging Farage from his seat and across the grey-carpeted floor to the window, with him struggling and trying to escape.

As I approached the windows, Farage in my grasp (though struggling to break free), I shouted at him that I had known that he could not be trusted, and that not only should he be chucked out of a window but that I was going to do it!

I then woke up.

Well, that was what I was doing this afternoon…

From where did that come?

More tweets seen

In Diane Abbott’s case, the motivation is simple— she just hates white British people, despite having been given a very easy ride all her life.

She is also an idiot…

That idiot might easily have become Home Secretary.

When you look at the —superficially well-educated— political cretins who form the System political establishment, you see how it is that this country is sinking into the mire.

Well-intentioned if stupid members of the public donate money to Care4Calais etc, but I wonder(quite apart from the evil of importing hostile untermenschen into the UK) how much goes to “grifters” such as Clare Moseley, who also had an affair with a North African. In fact, the only reason she did not get knocked up by the said migrant-invader is because she was too old to get pregnant. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12085287/Founder-Care4Calais-steps-threatened-drag-volunteer-f-g-hair.html.

As a barrister (until wrongfully and unlawfully disbarred in 2016, though I did not practise law anyway after 2008), I saw, even in the early 1990s, the “rotten borough” that is asylum law, and immigration law in general.

Perhaps so, and indeed that dissident third would shrink further if the people asked knew that the invaders are not detained, can come and go freely, get free food and medical (etc) as well as shelter, and even pocket money on top.

Having said that, the barges are a distraction. Up to a thousand of the invaders cross the Channel daily. Only 500-600 can be accommodated on one barge. Also, cross-Channel migration is only a fraction of the whole (about a million a year, plus births to migrant/immigrant/other non-white women already here).

Not until London is cleansed. Read that however you like.

I wonder which pub that was. I lived, on and off, in Little Venice (Maida Vale), in those years. Just off Clifton Road..

I wonder how that army would stack up against either the Russian one or that of the Kiev regime?

Having said that, armies (especially large ones) vary much within themselves in their levels of effectiveness. Some regiments, corps, or other units are far above others.

Brutal. No wonder the Kiev regime is finding it hard to recruit volunteers, or even mercenaries.

Late music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vissarion_Shebalin]
[Akademgorodok, near Novosibirsk, Western Siberia, in winter]

Diary Blog, 5 August 2023

Morning music

[painting by Jack Vettriano]

Battles past

Saturday quiz

Well, this week, victory for me over political journalist John Rentoul; he got 5/10, but I trumped that with 8/10. I did not know the answers to questions 5 and 9.

Julian Assange

Tweets seen

The Kiev-regime police state.

Few are now volunteering for the Kiev-regime army. A death sentence if the recruit is sent (often with little training) to the front. The regime is using press-gangs to force men into the army. Maybe 350,000 have been killed or wounded in the past 17 months, mostly in the past year. Something like 750 a day, on average.

As for dissidents, arrested, mistreated, some even shot. “Ukraine” (Kiev-regime Ukraine) is not the free, principled place the propaganda portrays, but a corrupt, shambolic police-state where dissent is treason.

More tweets

That latter tweeter is right. Parris, when not in London, does live in such a cottage (in Derbyshire). I see now from Wikipedia that he also has a place in Spain.

Parris himself has really never had a job as such, unless you include his unsuccessful two years as trainee diplomat and his likewise disastrous stint as correspondence secretary to Mrs. Thatcher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Parris.

Having said that, Parris often writes uncomfortable truths, but I think not in this case, perhaps because he has never had the experience of doing a “real” job in the real world.

Likewise, as the tweeter below points out, PIP (the successor-benefit to the now-disappearing Disability Living Allowance or DLA) , is not an out-of-work benefit, and is thus disregarded from income for benefit purposes.

Parris thus follows in the footsteps of many scribblers, TV talking heads, and radio presenters, as well as MPs, who talk about State benefits and/or pensions out of ignorance, not knowing the most basic facts.

A one-time, and briefly, “rising star” of the Conservative Party.

Some people are just incredibly fortunate in life. I mean, look at Houchen: born 1986, was a student until about 2008 or 2009, when he became (I think, not sure) a solicitor. He may have worked as a solicitor for a couple of years (again, not sure about that), and his political career to date has consisted of being a local councillor for 5-6 years (2011-2017), then Mayor of Tees Valley (2017-2023 and continuing), and now (thanks to “Boris” Johnson) a member of the House of Lords.

Incidentally, when Houchen was elected in 2017, I tipped him on this blog as someone to watch, having heard him on the radio. I was right, but in more than one way…

So now, in personal financial terms, Houchen is riding high— £65,000+ as Mayor of Tees Valley, plus expenses —not a fortune but better than poke in eye with sharp stick— and £350 a day plus extra expenses whenever he turns up (even for half a hour) at the Lords, on any sitting day. So well over £100,000 a year, perhaps, plus generous expenses. Not bad for someone still only 36, and who has only just about (for ~2 years) done any real/non-political job (as a local solicitor in his native region).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Houchen,_Baron_Houchen_of_High_Leven; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Houchen,_Baron_Houchen_of_High_Leven#Controversies.

Whether there was actual corruption involved in the Redcar Steelworks affair (scandal), I do not know. Questions have certainly been raised. £45M has gone missing.

More tweets

Import into the UK (or the rest of Europe) the various races and groups of Asia, Africa etc, and you import with them their political ethics (or lack of), their moneygrubbing, and the rest of it. Don’t be so surprised, and do not imagine that a few years at Winchester or Eton, or Oxford University, will make much difference.

I also think that new houses ought to have some kind of built in rainwater storage, to be used for gardens or, in extremis, washing and cooking. When I was working and living on a small Caribbean island about 24 years ago, my villa (like most of any size there) was built around a water tank. No mains water where I lived.

All water for bathroom and kitchen came from the tank, and it never ran out (despite rain being rare outside the hurricane season). Drinking water one had to buy. I usually bought filtered and cleaned (via ultraviolet light) Miami tapwater, costing (1999 prices) USD $5 or $6 per U.S. gallon. Sounds expensive (maybe $9 or $10 in 2023 money) but it would last me several days.

Late tweets seen

While of course prisoners have to be restrained from carrying out vigilante justice, equally naturally they are often disgusted at being forced to live around persons as evil as that. His crimes and, even more so, planned crimes, were appalling.

Justice is, as St. Thomas Aquinas noted, “immanent”— ingrained in human beings; inherent. Even the “lawless” have their own code of laws or rules, usually.

The blue areas are 50% of the areas that, according to US Secretary of State Anthony Blenkin, the “Ukrainian Army” has liberated!! The most advanced military equipment that was available to the member countries of the alliance was destroyed and lost in this blue area. The equipment that some inside western country claimed that when it reaches the battlefield, not only Crimea but also Moscow and Saint Petersburg will be captured.”

[Katyusha rocket artillery, 1940s. “Stalin’s organ pipes”]

Late music

Diary Blog, 27 July 2023, including some thoughts about swan numbers, the ENO, “Jack Monroe”, a future “super-race”, and the views of Jewish talking-head Emily Maitlis

Morning music

[Paris, rain, thoughts…]

Battles past

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12341783/STEPHEN-GLOVER-wont-politicians-admit-housing-crisis-fuelled-LEGAL-immigration.html

All System parties and politicians in the UK, and the rest of Europe, and even beyond (e.g. Australia, New Zealand) are guilty.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12342491/Controversial-plan-relocate-English-National-Opera-outside-London-postponed-three-years-Arts-Council-gives-2029-move.html

How ridiculous, to move a successful company like English National Opera out of its long-established home to some provincial centre.

Most countries concentrate their cultural treasures in terms of opera, ballet etc in one city, usually the national capital, a concentration of cultural forces. Moscow, Paris, etc. Not all, but the exceptions are countries which were only unified (or created) in the 19thC (Germany and Italy, the USA).

By all means tour around the UK, but base yourself in London. Also, the concentration of cultural companies in London leads to cross-fertilization of the arts.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12341741/The-Global-Majority-sinister-insulting-term-not-white-fashionable-new-phrase-peddles-racial-division-no-matter-new-jargon-invent-disguise-writes-NANA-AKUA.html

The most important thing is to keep a bloc of white Northern Europeans intact, because that bloc can be the foundation for a later “super-race”, one far ahead of where we are now. That foundation has to be “post-Aryan” and white European; the other races and groups cannot provide such a foundation. The later “super-race” will be a quantum leap in human evolution. The other races and ethnicities will be left behind, just as, compared to our world of today, previous forms of humanity have been left behind.

Tweets seen

Israel-puppet Rachel Reeves. She would never acknowledge that a large number of organizations including banks and law firms have been promoting —and, in many cases, over-promoting— women for virtue-signalling and box-ticking reasons for about 30 years. I myself have seen many examples.

Apart from that, the ridiculous woman implicated in the latest Coutts/NatWest scandal was getting £2M a year for that job, and had —and still has— several other very extremely lucrative appointments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Rose_(banker); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Rose_(banker)#External_appointments.

I think that it is time to impose an income cap, at least on mere office-holders (as distinct from genuine entrepreneurs such as Dyson).

One correction: as far as I can see, the only “neo-Nazi problem” that Ukraine has is that so few “neo-Nazis” seem to exist there. If that is wrong, why do they tolerate Zelensky’s corrupt, brutal, and shambolic NWO/ZOG tyranny?

Interesting. Usually, the “instructor” in such a situation would be the one from the army of the state, not from the private military company. However, who knows from where that “instructor” has come, in career terms? Russian Spetsnaz? The post-Soviet VDV? These are not fake “mercenaries” as once found in Soldier of Fortune etc. They are a very serious fighting force.

Sad report

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66317374

A historic royal census, known as “swan upping”, has revealed a 40% drop in the number of cygnets on the River Thames, compared with last year.

The decline has been blamed on avian flu but also a growing problem of violence, including shootings, catapult attacks and dogs killing swans.

[BBC]

I was saddened to hear, on BBC Radio 3 news this morning, that same report, i.e. that the number of swans counted on the Thames this year is about 40% lower than in previous years, and that, worse yet, part of the decline is because of “increased violence towards swans“. Jesus Christ! What sort of horrible bastards are cruel to swans?! They should be flayed alive if caught mistreating swans.

Having said that, there was always a small amount of such badness. I remember rowing my inflatable boat, with someone from my school, down the then-still-closed river Kennet in 1971, and seeing a dead swan in the water. The swan was obviously not long dead. That happened somewhere between Newbury and Reading. Not long after having seen the dead swan, we passed an unpleasant-looking young man on the bank, not older than about 20, with some kind of rifle or air-rifle. Were the two sights connected? I think probably they were.

Incidentally, the Kennet, and connected Kennet and Avon, was then only navigable by carrying the boat around disused locks, over barbed-wire fences etc. Since then, volunteers have been able to re-open the waterway to traffic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennet_and_Avon_Canal.

[where the Kennet meets the Thames at Reading; viaduct bridge carrying the mainline Paddington to Reading railway also in the picture]

More tweets seen

More tweets

As if “Jack Monroe” is going to do any of that…

She hopes that her critics will tire of trying to enlighten the public (including the 397 utter mugs still —as of today— sending her a total of several thousand pounds per month via Patreon). If the critics tire, then she can resume (on a larger scale) her decade-long career of “grifting” and defrauding and embezzling and “cosplaying”, as may be convenient for her; maybe even get onto Question Time again (which does not usually pay, but does tend to validate her with the msm in general and with the uninformed majority of the public.

Ignorant Jewish talking head Emily Maitlis, hugely overpaid by the BBC thanks to the outdated and tyrannical “licence fee” system, wilfully fails to see the bigger point about freedom of expression. I can only assume that she is unaware that other people, less famous than Nigel Farage, have also been “cancelled” for having the “wrong” views (i.e. anti-System views), people such as Mark Collett, Laura Towler, Sam Melia (all of Patriotic Alternative), and others. They all lost their personal bank accounts, and they were not “cancelled” by Coutts but by standard high street banks such as Barclays and (I think) Halifax.

You hear much (and rightly so) about the attempted bank account cancellation of Farage, but where were Laurence Fox, the “Free Speech Union”, Toby Young etc when those other victims had their bank accounts cancelled? Where were those “champions of free speech” when Alison Chabloz was imprisoned for posting online legitimate satire about Jewish and Zionist behaviour, or during my continuing persecution at the hands of the Jew-Zionist lobby? Absent.

Jewish/Zionist/Israel lobby…

I agree on every single one of those.

Ukraine (Kiev regime) cannot win this war; indeed, without having been propped up by vast amounts of money, arms, ammunition, clothing, food etc from the West, it would already be totally on its knees.

He left out a fourth aspect— Jewish-Zionist control (of banks, businesses and commerce, legal services, newspapers, television, radio, and pseudo-democratic politics).

Scotland

Pakistani “Scotsman”, SNP Leader and First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf, now proposes the flooding of Scotland with new huge numbers of Pakistani and other migrant-invaders.

If that were ever to happen as proposed, many migrant-invaders would take up Scottish citizenship purely in order to, sooner or later, relocate to England. That in turn would entail the building of…a wall…to keep them out. Certainly the construction of border fortifications.

In reality, though, it will almost certainly never happen. Even bearing in mind the pseudo-nationalist idiocy that leads to nearly half of the Scottish electorate voting SNP (that’s right— the SNP has never garnered even half of Scottish votes), this must surely give even die-hard SNP supporters pause.

Yousaf may just have cost the SNP a goodly portion of its votes.

I usually steer clear of commenting on Scottish politics, but think that faux-“Independence” is losing traction.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Party#Electoral_performance.

Late tweets seen

The Kiev regime’s “big push” may soon become its “long walk home”.

Late music

[the Urals]

Diary Blog, 22 July 2023

Morning music

[The Angel of the North]

Battles past

Saturday quiz

Well, this week I scored a convincing victory over political journalist John Rentoul: he scored only 2/10, whereas my score was 8/10. I did not know the answers to questions 5 and 10. I admit that I guessed the answer to question no.1, but that still counts.

Tweets seen

Now, Biden is demented; back then, in 2019, he was just a very obviously unpleasant person. Were he not a politician, notunder public scrutiny, and were he in, say, an Irish-American bar somewhere, one could imagine him viciously assaulting his interlocutor.

The Harry Formerly Known as Prince, and Meghan Mulatta, are a pair of one-trick ponies. They are rapidly becoming yesterday’s news, except as a kind of joke.

So, again, who is hurt by sanctions against Russia? The consumers and taxpayers of western and central Europe. Not Russia or Russians. The gas produced in Russia will still be sold elsewhere in the world, and Russian citizens are, if anything, better off than they were before the sanctions were imposed.

“Western decadence”, or just “Western” madness?

A strange “war”, in which Ukraine (Kiev regime) allows transit of Russian oil exports through its territory (at a price) and, until last week, Russia allowed the Kiev regime to export grain.

Eliminate the users and you also eliminate the dealers, importers, chemists, as well as the social problems resulting from drug abuse.

Is it not the other way around? Whatever. The fact is that there is little clear blue water between the two major System parties, a fact many voters have started to realize.

There is a good chance that, whoever wins the next U.S. Presidential election, the USA will take away Zelensky’s ricebowl.

Take them down!

Late music

[fraternisation francaise…]

Diary Blog, 19 July 2023

Morning music

Battles past

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12312963/Boy-15-walks-free-court-despite-battering-David-Quigley-69-left-brain-bleed-died-three-weeks-later.html.

Boy, 15, walks free from court despite battering David Quigley, 69, who was left with a brain bleed and died three weeks later.

Britain in 2023.

How long will it be before British people generally understand that we are in the opening stages of a multiform civil war? Not a race war, as such, and not just a traditional civil war based on ideology, but a hybrid type, encompassing both of those and also social aspects.

One aspect that is relatively new is that it is precisely the wealthy and powerful parts of society that are encouraging the incipient chaos, so that they can profit by that chaos and then impose a “multicultural” police state. The “Covid” “panicdemic” was a test run for that.

Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.

Tweets seen

I agree with that.

The “grifter”/fraudster “Jack Monroe” set up dozens, possibly hundreds, of Twitter “sock accounts” many years ago, and has continued to do so. Some look like genuine accounts with a few even having a couple of hundred Twitter “followers”. They praise “Jack Monroe”, her non-existent “activism”, and her ghastly “recipes” such as mixing tinned peaches with chickpeas and curry powder to make a kind of pseudo-Indian dinner. Mahashma Gandhi?

The aim of “Jack Monroe” is to try to keep her name appearing online for something other than cheating the less-intelligent members of the public out of their money.

Incidentally, as of today, 397 utter mugs are still sending “Jack Monroe” a total of thousands of pounds each month, via Patreon.

My provisional view is that the System set up GB News as “controlled opposition”, meaning that it was supposed to act as a safety valve by blowing off steam (public anger) at various issues, but (crucially) avoiding “antisemitism”. Look at who set it up as first Chairman— Andrew Neil.

Having said that, I think that it has spiralled out of System control to some extent. That is what happens. Look at Father Gapon in the St. Petersburg of 1905. The fake “resistance” sometimes mutates into real resistance.

The public were supposed to be bamboozled by GB News, but by some quasi-divine grace, the just anger of the public has, to some limited extent, taken over GB News presenters and agendas.

Talking point

More tweets seen

Money money money…

Rachel Reeves: member and vice-Chair, Labour Friends of Israel, supporter of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation (connected with the contrived “holocaust” farrago), wrote part of an Israeli propaganda book etc. Family income (herself and husband) of around half a million pounds a year. Suspected of being part-Jewish.

Still think that any “Labour”-label government under Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and Yvette Cooper is going to be any better than the present fake “Conservative” shambles? 99% the same.

For a start, tax transnational enterprises trading here but domiciled elsewhere.

Then take away Zelensky’s ricebowl— stop sending billions in money, arms, and the rest to the Jew-Zionist regime in Kiev.

Then stop importing useless non-whites. Then get rid of the ones already here.

Then remove the hundreds of thousands of fake “refugees” from Ukraine who are here. Few are genuine refugees, and few are without money.

Then stop wasting money on useless projects such as HS2.

Start with the above, then keep going.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BookTrust

BookTrust was founded in 1921 by Hugh WalpoleStanley Unwin, Maurice Marston and Harold Macmillan…”

On Friday 17 December 2010 it was announced that the government would cut its entire £13 million annual grant to BookTrust’s English bookgifting schemes. The schemes, including Bookstart, Booktime and Booked Up, provided more than two million packs of books to English children annually.”

[Wikipedia]

The priorities of the part-Jews, David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne…

Until removed or otherwise dealt with, the migrant-invaders should be prevented from breeding, both among themselves and with members of the indigenous population.

Hot weather

Just saw a weather report. Apparently, parts of Sicily are now the hottest they have been since…1957. So not quite unprecedentedly hot. I suppose people will say that that proves nothing. I wonder.

More tweets

Ha ha! “Jacktivism“…I like that! (cf. “Supertanskiii”).

A couple of weeks old now. If that is still so in 2024, we could be seeing the end of the Conservative Party as a major political force. That would leave a vacuum…and Nature abhors a vacuum, as we know…

More tweets

Another sign that the expected or possible Labour government from some date in 2024 will be, if heavily successful at the General Election, an “elected dictatorship” even worse than that of Blair/Brown.

Damning.

Late music

[storm clouds gather over the promenade at Odessa]

Diary Blog, 16 July 2023, including thoughts about Neil Oliver, Andrew Bridgen , and a hostile GP

Morning music

Battles past

Neil Oliver

I noticed that a Twitter lynch-mob has been attacking dissident broadcaster Neil Oliver over the past day or two after he had a dialogue with a doctor who disagreed with him on one or two issues. The Twitter mob have been trashing Oliver not only about the medical questions which were the subject of the show (on, apparently, GB News) but also Oliver’s whole past history, his TV shows on archaeology, his views in general, the way he looks, speaks etc.

Many of the Twitter mob claimed (and at time of writing, are still claiming) that the doctor in question completely defeated Oliver. Also, that Oliver (and MP Andrew Bridgen) had no right to speak because said doctor is a doctor, and so of course (?) knew more than they do.

Well, is that last so? I did not watch the discussion (in fact I have never seen GB News and am unsure whether my TV can even receive its broadcasts) but the said doctor is, as I understand it, an ordinary GP, not a specialist in vaccines or, indeed, viruses.

What interests me is how there is this superficially huge number of persons on Twitter (though probably not even a tenth of 1% of the general population) who are willing to join in with others of their sort to create a Twitterstorm which, in terms of real effects in the real world, makes not a ripple in society or the body politic.

The sheer hatred of their vituperative tweets is incredible. These are, more or less, the “anti-racists”, and/or those who mostly believe every last (and latest, and unexamined) detail of the Jew-Zionist so-called “holocaust” farrago, and who “support” (by having little Ukrainian flags on their Twitter profile) “Ukraine” (the regime in Kiev). Most probably support such as the “Black Lives Matter” nonsense, no doubt echo “refugees welcome” slogans (and so what if most of the migrant invaders are in reality not “refugees”), and prefer not to think of the impact of the invading hordes on British health services, housing, social cohesion, crime and, down the line, pay and conditions of employment. Oh, no, that’s for “the Government” to worry about.

I would be prepared to bet that pretty much the same bloc of Twitter posters support the “trans” nonsense, are “anti-Tory” (while —most of them— somehow believing that Labour-label under Jewish-lobby puppet Starmer will be far better), and that almost all of them will identify with Remain/Rejoin and, of course, “FBPE”.

The Twit-mob lynch-mob of today is a contemporary version of the Stalinist or Orwellian “daily hate”. Examples seen today on Twitter:

Work in a charity bookshop and it’s very noticeable that we can’t give Neil Oliver history books away. They used to be steady sellers. Same for Starkey and Johnson. History book buyers avoiding like the plague and GBNews viewers can’t read.

If there was ever going to be a Scottish UnaBomber it would be Neil Oliver.

Neil Oliver was always a biased clown, even on his “history” programs – now he’s just plain lost his mind.

“No need to present evidence to dismiss the crazy claims of Neil Oliver and fellow loonies.”

There are hundreds of tweets like that, all from people who think that they know things, and they think that they “know” purely because they believe, by default, various System and msm sources.

They cannot bear even seeing a dissident opinion.

Opinion polls in the UK seem to be showing that censorship, “no-platforming”, “cancelling” etc are becoming more popular, especially among the young.

As far as I am concerned, if people are becoming more and more like easily-corralled sheep, then such people are not worth having in our society, and read that how you like.

Tweets seen

Is that true, or just jingoistic hot air? I have no idea.

I am unsure at present whether there are being concentrated Russian forces in Belarus with the aim of launching an offensive south, toward Kiev, or whether those forces are there to keep Kiev-regime forces tied down on or near the Ukraine-Belarus border, so as to prevent the deployment of the Kiev-regime forces to the southeast regions, notably Donetsk and Lugansk, where most of the active combat is happening.

Russia is obviously not short of trucks, which is interesting.

Another Kiev-regime press-gang. They have few volunteers now, and are running out of cannon-fodder.

Britain should be politely distant with China, friendly with Russia, and hostile only to (((you know who))) and other untermenschen…

There is no “after this conflict“. Either Russia effectively “wins” the conflict (whether by negotiation or in the field), or the whole thing turns into a general Eastern European and Central European war between Russia and NATO, which might or might not go nuclear.

Whatever or whichever, there will be few more UK troops in Ukraine. In any case, the British Army is almost non-existent now in terms of major field presence. Take away the office bods, clerks, rear-echelon elements, and the whole brass-hat staff officer element (etc, meaning all non-combatant units), and I doubt that the UK could field, overseas, more than about 20,000 active troops, at most.

Who cares what Ben Wallace says, anyway? His military service consisted of 7 years in the Scots Guards (1991-1998), during which he attained the modest rank of captain. His subsequent pronouncements have been mostly idiotic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wallace_(politician).

Incidentally, we need not take his decision to stand down as MP at the next general election (presumably in 2024) as having been prompted by anything based on principle.

Wallace’s Commons seat, Wyre and Preston North, is set to be abolished via boundary changes, so were Wallace to wish to stay in the Commons, he would have to find another seat quite soon, almost impossible in view of the expected Conservative Party mass wipeout at the (2024?) general election.

I suppose that Wallace will now be looking for some well-paid business sinecure, combined with a nice £350-taxfree-per-day House of Lords peerage in Sunak’s resignation honours list.

That’s 282 mph…

Puppet on a chain…

Late tweets

The Zelensky cabal counting their chickens before they are hatched.

No reaction so far from the usual Western “human rights” parasites about the plan to expel 800,000 Russians from their homes in Crimea, something akin to the deportations carried out by Stalin or (to a far lesser extent) Hitler.

In fact, the Kiev regime is engaged in “pie-in-the-sky” politics. Putin and the Russian Government (and people) will never allow the Kiev regime to annex Crimea again. If there were any real danger of that, the Russian forces would use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield and, if that were not enough to stop any annexation, a strategic nuclear missile or two on Kiev itself. In that event, “goodbye Zelensky” or at least his corrupt and brutal government.

A Spy Among Friends

Watched about 10 mins of the new TV spy drama, A Spy Among Friends. Had I known that it was about Philby, I should probably not have bothered. I do not have a lot of time for the so-called “master spy” whose reputation was and still is the most inflated since Mata Hari. No need to go into all that now, though.

I am rather impatient with films and TV dramas. If they bore or irritate me in the first 10-15 mins, I rarely watch on. In this case, there were invented scenes, which may have been inevitable, but some of them lacked any credibility. For example, there was a West Indian involved in the first few minutes, highly unlikely in 1963. Also, the show pushed, in those opening minutes, the buttons of all the known cliches about Philby— cricket, booze, womanizing etc.

It is true that Philby, had he become Chief of SIS, would have been a “master spy” or “legendary agent” (“legendary” in more ways than one). Not because (or primarily because) he would have been able to give the KGB secrets at all levels, but mainly because he would have been in a position to cripple SIS strategically, structurally; even more important, he would also have been in a position to deliberately mis-advise the Prime Minister and other ministers, and to point them in the wrong direction strategically.

It never happened. Philby was found by General Kalugin to be living in a permanently intoxicated state in his apartment in Gorky Street (now once again Tverskaya Street). Kalugin, and Philby’s last wife, Rufina, sobered him up somewhat, and Kalugin gave him mentoring work to do.

I myself was slightly acquainted in the early 1990s with a former KGB officer (turned businessman) called “Ed” (Edvard, from the Baltic regions or pribaltika), who told me at lunch in Hall at Lincoln’s Inn in 1994 (I think) that he had once heard a lecture by Philby at the Lubyanka. That lecture must have been late 1970s, or maybe early 1980s.

Though Philby claimed publicly in January 1988 that he did not regret his decisions and that he missed nothing about England except some friends, Colman’s mustard and Lea & PerrinsWorcestershire sauce,[84] his wife Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova later described Philby as “disappointed in many ways” by what he found in Moscow. “He saw people suffering too much,” but he consoled himself by arguing that “the ideals were right but the way they were carried out was wrong. The fault lay with the people in charge.”[85] Pukhova said, “he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. He said, ‘Why do old people live so badly here? After all, they won the war.'”[86] Philby drank heavily and suffered from loneliness and depression; according to Rufina, he had attempted suicide by slashing his wrists some time in the 1960s.”

[Wikipedia]

Assuming that the above is accurate, Philby’s only very superficial understanding of politics, geopolitics, history, and economics is almost too obvious.

Even were A Spy Among Friends better than my first impressions, I would probably not bother with it, because at root, Philby just does not much interest me.

Late music