Morning music
On this day a year ago
From the newspapers
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/twins-separated-birth-find-each-28960150?int_source=nba.
Amazing story.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11638389/Half-universities-peddle-woke-agenda-students.html.
UK universities need a chistka (purge).
Another example of how public services in the UK just do not work any more. The victim of a bad assault, a woman, had to lie under blankets outside a pub for 2 hours, waiting for an ambulance that never turned up. Eventually, she had to take an Uber minicab to hospital.
Adding insult to injury, the police, until pressed, did not bother to gather easily-available cctv evidence.
Finally, the defendant (finally caught after the police had been pressured to actually do their job) was let off with a suspended sentence (albeit with a stiff financial penalty by way of compensation for the victim).
There was reasonable mitigation, yes, but the crime was both violent and unpleasant in itself and, also, the victim was left with continuing —and quite possibly permanent— disabilities and pain caused directly or proximately by the actions of the defendant.
If this continues, UK society will become a jungle.
Jack Monroe
Those who follow the “Jack Monroe” saga have noticed that she never, or at least rarely, admits to having bought expensive items for herself out of the monies she has available to her from several sources; she always either “finds” them, remarkably, or buys them for a song (for a tenth or less of the normal price), or is “given” them by friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, or strangers, or has acquired them via “exchange” for unspecified “services“.
As for her having been “in full time work for the best part of 2 decades“, that seems unlikely, but is a question of definition.
“Two decades” brings us back to early 2003. At that time, “Jack Monroe was 14 years old. She left school at 16 (~2005), working in a chip shop and a Starbucks before joining the fire brigade in Essex in 2007 as a call handler. She left in 2011, and was thereafter, for ~18 months, “on the dole”.
“Jack Monroe” worked for her local newspaper in 2012-2013, and also blogged, after which she got a book deal worth, I read, £25,000, with Penguin: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe.
So there we have 7-8 years of intermittent paid work, not quite the 10+ years she claims.
Since 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been (it seems) mostly or completely self-employed, as scribbler, blogger, TV talking head etc. To what extent that counts as “full-time work” is an open question; if yes, then the total is about 17 years; if not, about 7 or so, as said.
As previously noted, Jack Monroe both claims poverty, and so asks for the public to send her money, but also says sometimes that she was in poverty (while on State benefits for 1-2 years), but not now.
Since about 2013, “Jack Monroe” has been in receipt of monies from a number of sources: TV and radio appearances, Press interviews, about £100,000 royalties from her several books (most still in print, I think), deals with ASDA and other supermarkets, and substantial donations (eg from 634 —at time of writing— very misguided people sending her £3.50-£44 each, monthly, via Patreon),
It is claimed by some on Twitter that “Jack Monroe” is “downsizing” (as she puts it) not because she cannot afford the c.£4,000 a month rent and other expenses of her present home but because she is buying a new but possibly smaller home; some say paying the full price in cash. I have no idea whether that be so.
At what point do the 634 mugs still subsidizing her via Patreon start to think why they are still funnelling cash to this very unreliable “grifter” and fantasist, who has recently been in the Guardian laughing about how, when drunk or drugged, she would buy four large pieces of furniture in a few days “for a laugh” or some such.
Is all that is required, for “Jack Monroe” to receive donations from naive mugs, for her to snarl occasionally on Twitter about “cost of living” or “wicked Tories“? Even if they are (and no argument from me on that), how does that either seriously oppose “Conservative” policies or “help the poor“?
“Jack Monroe” has claimed to have been working on a measure of how “the poor” are disproportionately affected by inflation, something she calls (from one of the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett) the “Vimes Boots Index“, but it seems that that might be just another fantasy; in short, another lie.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory.
Other tweets seen
A truth unacknowledged by those born with a silver spoon…
(((Simon Harris))) has to live, after all (I suppose) (whoever he is).
May be useful to people; I do not know.
An ethnic minority carpetbagger in Government will be protected, as far as possible. Others, English, less connected, poorer, would face sterner measures. I recall a colleague at the Bar, in 2007, telling me about a Devonian fishing captain that he had defended, and who (along with his few crew) had decided to evade tax on profits of fish caught. The man was apparently a heroin addict. They all pleaded guilty, the crew got off with suspended sentences, but the captain received a sentence of, if I recall aright, two years’ imprisonment. The amount was tens of thousands (perhaps about £20,000), not the millions of the Zahawi case.
Historical revisionism
Ostalgie-musik
It often seems that the UK now has effectively no border security. Untermenschen from various countries invade our territory without difficulty, and when “intercepted” (ferried to the UK, or met at the beach), taken to a 3* or 4* hotel, thenceforth battening off the British people for the rest of their lives.
The very best that can be expected of 99% of the migrant-invaders is that they will be totally useless; more likely, most of them are criminal and even murderous.
Late tweets seen
No Western news agencies or TV stations seem interested in finding out how the Kiev regime is treating captured Russian soldiers.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 