Morning music
There is a kind of indefinable purity in some of Holst’s lesser-known work.
From the newspapers
“Call this justice? Family of millionaire travellers who kept homeless men as slaves in filthy caravans are ALL out of jail and back at work – while 15 of their victims have died without ever getting compensation.”
[Daily Mail]
Parasites, scavengers and predators. I should like to offer a solution here but, sadly, “the usual suspects” and their political, police, and CPS puppets, have almost destroyed free speech in the UK, making any comment difficult, presently.
Tweets seen
That sort of thing is being driven by relatively small groups within each occupation, profession, and vocation.
I cannot say anything directly on the blog because we now have so little free speech in the UK (by reason, indeed, of those same “small groups”), so I shall just say “are you thinking what I am thinking?“…
This is becoming like a scaled down and ridiculous copy of Stalin’s purges. As Marx noted, first time— tragedy, but second time— farce [Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon].
Of course, that poor fellow quite wrongfully sentenced to 8 weeks in prison, will not see the (unfunny) joke, even though his 8 weeks will in the end be something like 3 (he will be out after 40% of the headline tariff).
In my opinion, the defendant should have pleaded not guilty. Unfortunately, he seems to have pleaded guilty (perhaps on advice of his solicitor) to get a notional sentence reduction from 12 to 8 weeks.
See another recent case in the same area: https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/24506682.maryport-man-jailed-facebook-post-police-bid-stop-disorder/
Starmer’s thoroughly wicked and unconstitutional suggestion (almost a demand, at least an expressed presumption) that anyone pleading not guilty to any charge arising —however peripherally— out of the recent protests) would be remanded in custody until trial (which these days might be months or even a year later) was a direct attack on the rule of law. Plainly intimidatory, and designed to make defendants cave and plead guilty.
The latest I heard, something like 700 arrests have been made. How many charges, I do not know.
The truth, of course, is now no defence, as I understood during my own free speech trial and sentencing (trial November 2023, sentencing March 2024: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2024/03/16/diary-blog-16-march-2024/
Compare those sentences of imprisonment merely for giving out a few online opinions (though the Court, “Clown” Prosecution Service and politicized police all try to make the “offences” seem far worse) with those handed down for real crimes committed in the same area, such as this one:
“A thief told the manager of a Carlisle Co-op store who had caught him stealing alcohol that he would return and “stab him” if he called the police, magistrates heard.
The defence lawyer representing prolific offender Elijah Ali, 34, told the city’s Rickergate court that the defendant denied making the threat. He did, however, plead guilty to the theft and to using threatening behaviour.
Prosecutor George Shelley outlined the facts.
He said the defendant and a second unknown male walked into the Central Avenue branch of Co-op at around 9.30pm on August 5 and began brazenly stealing alcohol from the shelves, picking up “numerous” bottles of booze and putting them in Ali’s jacket.
This prompted the store’s manager to make a 999 call, reporting that a theft was in progress and requesting urgent help.
The second male left the store but as he left, said Mr Shelley, Ali told the store manager: “If you call the police, I’m going to come back and stab you. That placed [the manager] in a state of fear.”
Ali’s record comprises 98 previous offences, 25 of them thefts and kindred crimes. “He’s a prolific offender,” said Mr Shelley.
Magistrates imposed a £200 fine and told Ali to pay the Co-op compensation of £200 as well as £85 costs and a surcharge.“
So a few online comments about a news item results in immediate imprisonment, but for a “prolific thief” (called Ali) with 98 previous convictions, and who threatened to stab a shop manager, only a minor fine (probably paid off at £5 a week).
Any comment, “Prime Minister”? That’s you, two-tier Keir.
More from the courts of the 2024 Star Chamber? https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/24513195.workington-woman-accused-social-media-post-stir-racial-hatred/.
More? This time a drug dealer, sentenced to only 12 weeks and that sentence suspended! https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/24512579.carlisle-drug-dealer-sentenced-four-years-arrest/.
As in the old Soviet Union, a political “crime” is now dealt with far more harshly in the UK than a real crime of acquisition or violence.
The language gives it away (“our communities” etc).
Exactly. Some completely blameless tweets by seemingly blameless middle-aged ladies, and which I reposted on the blog, are now gone completely (including from the blog, because I usually embed them). The ladies in question seem to have been frightened into deleting not only the (entirely lawful) tweets but also their Twitter/X account(s).
“Two-tier Keir” is a hateful bastard. Yvette Cooper is no better. They are conspirators, trying to impose a “woke” multikulti police state upon this country.
Or “I am an honest citizen and fully support Comrade Stalin! Starmer!” [tweeter “Chris Faux”, or his type, in another setting].
2,200 Twitter/X users have apparently seen that tweet of “Chris Faux”. How many have “liked” it? 4… How many have retweeted it? Only 1…
“Today’s authoritarianism knows no boundaries. London’s Metropolitan Police Chief just told the world that he will be coming after anyone who violates British social media censorship rules with international extradition requests – to include American citizens.
Simultaneously, the EU’s Censorship “Kommisar” Thierry Breton just told Elon Musk he can’t allow EU citizens to witness tonight’s interview with President Trump.
The elites who want to decide what is permissible to read and watch justify their censorship by labeling dissenting opinions as “misinformation,” “hate speech,” “far right,” or “extremist.”
During the lockdowns, MI-6 designated me and other health freedom activists as potential “terrorists.” But the label applies more closely to themselves, as they try to scare us into submission again with bird flu hoaxes, debt-fueled financial collapse, and ever more dangerous imperial wars of choice.
This is definitely a wake-up call, America. It’s time to reclaim our government. If not in America, the paragon of freedom, then where? https://zerohedge.com/political/london-calling-police-chief-threatens-arrest-people-around-world-online-speech.“
[Robert F. Kennedy jnr; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr]
His uncle, President John F. Kennedy, once said this:
Something about which Britain’s new “Labour” government (“elected” by only 20% of all eligible voters and a mere 33.7% of those who voted) might care to think.
The regime of two-tier Keir again.
Don’t stop what you are doing, Elon Musk. Hit Starmer hard.
The point is that the UK’s authoritarian/totalitarian laws and procedures have, in many cases, yes, been in place for some time, but have not been extensively used; in fact used mainly during and after the “Covid” scamdemic/panicdemic of 2020-2022.
This horrible nonsense has to go.
See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.
Bureaucrat-drone-dictator Starmer thinks that, by repressing free speech following the recent protests (and their riotous offshoots), he has somehow “solved” the problem that came across his desk. No. Every one of those recently sentenced, or sitting in some overcrowded jungle prison awaiting trial or sentence, now resents and hates Starmer and also the multikulti police state which he, Yvette Cooper, and Rachel Reeves, now head.
What does Starmer imagine will be happening in 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029, with British people scarcely able to make a living, to pay exorbitant rents, to buy houses the cheapest of which cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, or to walk the streets of their own cities safely?
Every day, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of migrant-invaders arrive illegally on our shores. Thousands more, every day, enter at least quasi-“legally”.
Britain is heading for a dystopian conflict never seen before.
Maybe also making “holocaust” “denial” (i.e. examination and historical revision, particularly of events of the 1940s and 1930s) illegal in the UK. Don’t forget that Starmer is a member of Labour Friends of Israel, and that his wife is Jewish.
Don’t forget the others, the ~1,000,000 migrant-invaders that entered “legally” in the past year, or the births to non-European mothers.
I bet that the airlines still flying out of Israel have their flights fully-booked.
Europe should be standing with Russia, for the future of European culture and civilization.
He would have been justified in smacking her in the face, in the circumstances. Not immediately, but by the end of her contrived and sustained confrontation.
Kiev-regime announcement
The Kiev regime has announced that it “is not interested” in hanging on to the little strip of land it recently invaded in the Kursk region of Russia.
Translation: the forces of the Kiev regime only made the incursion so that Zelensky and his cabal could claim to Western mass media that they are “winning”, or at least continuing to fight.
In reality, the Kiev-regime incursion forces, mostly press-ganged and poorly-trained serf-soldiers, have been mainly wiped out, and the rest are —literally— dying to be able to drive back over the border to Ukraine and relative safety.
The Kiev-regime incursion was never sustainable; the territory gained for a day or two, or a week or two, could never have been held.
I am worried, though, for the dim Ukrainian soldiers and their grieving, or soon-to-be-grieving families, and also for the Russian civilian families in the Kursk border region, their lives disrupted by this stupid publicity stunt.
At the same time, the Russian advance in the south-east continues steadily.
More tweets
“Just walked through Huddersfield city centre. Really struck by the starkest of contrasts.
Some older women sat outside a Merrie England cafe (remember ‘em?), trying to enjoy a civilised afternoon tea.
They were surrounded by the stench of weed, people shouting in foreign languages, couples in tracksuits hurling abuse at each other, gangs of lads hanging around, beggars off their faces.
Nothing noteworthy about the scenario – just everyday stuff in yer standard Red Wall town. But I was impressed by the dignity and stoicism of the women. The rest of it almost reduced me to tears.”
[Dr. Philip Kiszely]
I would suggest a few things, but no doubt that would bring the boring police drones to my door once again, as has happened several times in the past decade. They are the footsoldiers of the multikulti “woke” police state now re-energized by Starmer.
Much of urban Britain is now a dustbin.
[Update, 13 August 2026: in the event, tweeter David Morgan was arrested, charged, convicted (having pleaded guilty), and then sentenced to a harsh 20 months’imprisonment, all because two malicious Jews, an old woman (in North London) and a younger Jew (resident near Tenby, Wales) repeatedly demanded that the police charge him. David Morgan is, I believe, now released, having spent about 8 months, maybe more, in prison. I wish that someone who knows him would set up a GiveSendGo crowdfunder for him; https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/twisted-welsh-loner-able-spread-32962872]
Late tweets
Why is pathetic Sinn Fein supporting the migration-invasion of Ireland, and certainly not properly opposing it?
More music
More tweets
Strange. I have read about the increase in alcohol consumption during the “lockdown” nonsense or 2020-2021. I went the other way, almost stopping my relatively-modest consumption.
There have been times in my life when I drank little or nothing, other times when my consumption was quite high. I suppose the latter was true of when I was living in the former Soviet Union, in the Caribbean, and in France, as well as when I was practising at the English Bar (during the years 1992-1996 and 2002-2008).
Now, most days, I drink no alcohol at all. No particular reason predominates. It may be partly a function of increasing age (I shall be 68 next month, ironically on the same day as the birthday of “two-tier Keir” Starmer, though he is six years younger than me).
Another reason is that the wines, especially the red wines, that I once liked, such as Chateau Margaux, are extremely expensive (I suppose they always were, but that I notice it more now), or are hard to source (some Moldavian and Georgian wines).
One kind of booze I do like is what the French term eaux de vie, such as 40%+ Kirsch and Poire Williams etc.
A Central and Eastern European taste too, that I must have picked up somewhere or other, is Slivovitz (plum spirit), which UK Lidl had on sale recently (I bought 2 bottles, 42% alc.), and what the Hungarians call palinka, fruit spirit, which may be distilled from one fruit, or a mixture. Apricot is probably my favourite, though I have not had any for well over 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1linka; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsch; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poire_Williams; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slivovitz.
On a hot day, though, beer is often the best drink (apart from water). I used to like (30-40 years ago), Zhiguli beer from Russia, which was at that time sold in the UK, in Selfridges. Czech beer is pretty good, of course, as is some Polish.
When I was living in Turkey for a few months, I liked Tekel beer, made by a State enterprise. It no longer exists, at least in that form.
One type of wine that I liked a lot in the 1980s, and early 1990s, was the kind of white wine produced in Australia at that time, especially heavily-oaked quality Chardonnay. Harder to find now, of the same type. Maybe tastes have changed, and the producers have followed suit..
Late tweets seen
As I noted on the blog during the “Covid” hysteria, the self-describing “left”, including almost all of the “human rights” tribe, were all in favour of more severe “lockdowns”, more severe penalties, dissidents and people ignoring the “Covid” hysteria to have all civil rights taken away, deprived of all medical treatment, even when entirely unconnected to “the virus” etc.
Indeed, the self-describing “left” has lost almost all of its former ideology and direction, and seems to exist purely to cheer on the right labels (“Covid”, “Ukraine”, “BLM”, “trans”-whatever) and of course “Labour”, despite Labour (also) having lost all or 99% of its former ethos. That, and to “deplatform” from everywhere possible any people who are labelled derogatively by them.
Professor Tettenborn is someone I met a couple of times in Exeter circa 2002-2003. He was at that time the professor at the law faculty of Exeter University. I was in a small set of barristers (now very much larger and, under another name, the largest in the South West outside Bristol; the former head of my old set is now a Circuit Judge).
I sat with Professor Tettenborn and another as a notional “Lord Justice of Appeal” at a moot competition held in the Guildhall at Exeter in mid-2002. My only day as a Lord Justice of Appeal, or indeed any sort of judge.
Incidentally, the winner of the moot (out of three student contenders) was a young Anglo-Armenian who had engaged in some sharp practice during the competition. We three “Lords Justices of Appeal” discussed disqualifying him, but in the end relented. As a student advocate, he was head and shoulders above the other two students, and we thought that that had to be recognized.
A few years later, as a young barrister, the same person got into trouble over allegations of sex harassment (not in my own Chambers but another set), I heard. Not sure whether that went to the Bar Standards Board (I think it did), but the person in question is still, I believe, at the Bar and still based in Exeter; I think that he was also, quite a few years ago, an unsuccessful Conservative candidate for MP at Exeter.
All a long time ago now.
Professor Tettenborn also made a very cogent case at the Law Commission inquiry as to whether the very bad law known as Communications Act 2003, s.127, should be repealed. That was what was recommended, but the section has so far not been repealed, and is regularly misused either by the police/CPS or by the malicious “Campaign Against Antisemitism”.
Ironic. I myself was noted at the end of that Law Commission report as having been a contributor, yet was myself later a victim of that same bad law: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2024/03/16/diary-blog-16-march-2024/.
[Update, 13 August 2026: the young Anglo-Armenian mentioned in the 2024 blog post as having been a university student moot contestant in 2002, a barrister accused of sexual harassment some time later (looks as if the allegations never became official complaints, though), and a Conservative candidate (at GE 2017— he came a poor second), is now appointed a District Judge: https://www.judiciary.uk/appointments-and-retirements/district-judge-appointment-taghdissian/.
Incidentally, while that is one of the lowest rungs on the judicial ladder, it pays quite well— £144,350 as of April 2026.
How time flies]
“He” being Nick Lowles of (((“Hope not Hate”))).
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 