One cannot help but think that California, especially the southern and central coastal parts, is a massive catastrophe waiting to happen, as portrayed in so many of the Hollywood films. Earthquake, fire, tsunami, race war, alien invasion etc. You name it.
Labour hated, “Conservatives” (under a silly and useless Nigerian woman carpetbagger) despised, LibDems a dustbin for uncertain votes, or a non-choice. Result— Reform UK, though underwhelming, as a straw at which to clutch, and at the same time a serious protest vote.
According to Electoral Calculus, that, at a General Election, would make Reform UK the official Opposition: Labour 269 Commons seats, Reform 149, Conservatives 101, LibDems 73, Greens 6. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html.
The most likely outcome there would of course be a Lab/LibDem coalition, or maybe a Lab minority govt. with LibDem support. If either of those, then there might be a LibDem demand for proportional representation, to replace the current ridiculous First-Past-The-Post voting system.
Incidentally, such a voting result would also mean that about 143 Labour MPs would be culled, and another 20 Con Party MPs would also lose their seats.
Also incidentally, if that result were to be changed in only one small aspect, Reform UK going up from 25% to 26% (with all other vote shares unchanged), the end result would be Lab 259, Reform 173, Con 87, LibDems 73, Green 6. That would be existentially disastrous for the Con Party
More tweets
Good morning. The fascists are marching in Rome, and neither the police nor the Prime Minister are preparing to do a single thing about it. pic.twitter.com/WgtPuZZ8RS
Russian forces struck amassed Ukrainian manpower and military hardware in more than 160 areas over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported:https://t.co/Q67lqtnT3Jpic.twitter.com/As2uQUuNpR
“Why is Britain going bankrupt and what might this mean? Let’s take a look.
First it is worth noting, Labour et al might calm the markets in the short-term but what markets are telling us is that there is a festering problem – even if this goes away in the coming weeks it will keep coming back.
There are short-term and long-term trends driving the bankruptcy; a few of the long-term trends are poor resource allocation in the public sector, aging population and low growth; short-term trends are basically COVID-19 spending and spending on energy price guarantees due to Ukraine war – also BoE’s enormous losses from QE aren’t helping.
Britain can always print money to finance its debt but the problem is that foreign debt sales keep sterling propped up which, in turn, keeps UK living standards propped up at an artificial level; if sterling were allowed fall to close the large trade deficit and Britons were forced to live within their means, living standards would be lower – probably significantly lower.
If/when the bankruptcy takes place there are basically two paths that it can take: either the government impose harsh austerity, likely by handing the reins to the OBR and the Treasury, or the country is put into receivership and the keys are handed to the IMF.
There is some talk that the IMF option is like what happened in 1976 – yes and no; in 1976 UK government debt was below 50% of GDP and while the country’s trade deficit was large it had only opened two years beforehand; today government debt is well over 100% of GDP and the trade deficit is not only enormous but has been enormous for 20 years (!).
Britain lives beyond its means by managing capital via the City of London; rather than producing goods to export the country tries to attract capital inflows sustain higher levels of consumption than the economy would naturally allow – but a serious crisis will change all this making the situation very different to 1976.
In 1976 the UK was really just trying to stabilise sterling amidst some troublesome worldwide inflationary pressures while today the country needs to be treated like the typical patient that the IMF gets its hands on.
Nor would such an austerity program even look like, say, Ireland after 2011 which was aimed at bringing down wage costs and making the country competitive again – this meant that the country went through a few years of pain and recession but then emerged with their living standards intact and started growing once more.
Rather any austerity program that is applied by Britain – whether by the IMF or by OBR-Treasury, or some combination of the three – would look more like what happened to Greece after 2011: a managed, permanent decline in living standards.“
Is there a silver lining? There would be, if all the above led to a real social-national government and “a revaluation of all values“…
That tweeter is easily brainwashed, it seems. Never saw his tweets previously. They seem pretty silly, pretty unthinking.
Ah, just noticed that the tweeter works for Private Eye. What a co-incidence…
System drones Ian Hislop and Andrew Marr attack Elon Musk. There is an agenda here, as in “the public should trust the System mass media“.
Hislop, together with his totally unfunny pseudo-satire Have I Got News For You cabal, is to our society what the supposedly funny, supposedly satirical, Krokodil magazine was to Soviet society. Meaning— approved “satire” by approved “satirists” attacking “safe” targets.
Hislop has made a good thing for himself (and his bank balance) out of attacking “the right” targets. The same or similar might be said of Marr. Look at how they think, or want the public to think, that the mainstream media can be trusted. It could be called stupid to think like that, but Hislop knows exactly what he is doing.
As for Marr, a disgraceful System-approved journalist. His views? See below:
The fires in Los Angeles continue to rage, they are spreading rapidly, and the US government is unable to control them! Entire neighborhoods in Malibu have been reduced to ashes. pic.twitter.com/eEA0joxX1y
Ian Hislop became editor in 1986. He then became part of the BBC's HIGNFY team in 1990. Some 600 episodes later, at 20k a pop, Hislop has made 12 million quids. Becoming a BBC whore lapdog entailed selling out the entire raison d'etre of Private Eye.
Private Eye, Have I Got News For You etc are on the same level of System-approved fake “satire” as was the Soviet publication, Krokodil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krokodil.
Working class people concerned about immigration? Private Eye really is dedicated to 'punching down' these days.
When people are first promoted they often shrink away from the bigger responsibilities and wider vision required by the new role, and search frantically for something they know how to do. Which usually turns out to be the thing they did pre-promotion.
As I blogged a week or so ago, Starmer, the “file-clerk given power unexpectedly”, has retreated into his “legal people” comfort zone, and (despite the sycophantic tweets of many of the usual pro-Labour Twitter-twits) has shown himself not a proper person to be Prime Minister.
BREAKING: A 60-year-old man named Glyn Guest has been jailed for two years and eight months at Sheffield Crown Court over the Rotherham riotshttps://t.co/cFJoMDPECj
A 60-y-o man imprisoned for 2 years and 8 months for merely pushing a policeman to the ground. True, he should not have done it, but (as with almost all of the recent reactive sentences following the protests) this seems highly excessive.
I hope that he appeals on sentence. 40% of 2 yrs 8 months is about 13 months. If he can get the sentence reduced to 20 months, he might be out in 8 months. Still pretty stiff. A suitable sentence might have been either a “suspended” or maybe 5 months, allowing for his release in 2 months.
Top marks for cheekiest job application for a recently sacked Tory MP so far. Theresa Coffey applied for a well paid, senior post with the Labour government. You'll be amazed to hear she didn't get it, but top marks for the sheer cheekiness. https://t.co/Cp0rX9XJcI
Therese Coffey, like Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, falsified her CV in several respects, and is little better than a fraud. I blogged about her 5 years ago:
The truth is already inconvenient to a number of influential groups in society (and not just “them”)…
Why is the @britishlibrary, which we all pay for even though it has been effectively shut for the last 9 months, telling us we must share its values before it will talk to us? https://t.co/gvPlFvYxvP
As frequently blogged, the West needs a thoroughgoing cultural purge, as well as a political one. TV, radio, the Press, the academic and other cultural institutions, the advertising industry etc.
Woman, 52, is remanded in custody after appearing in court accused of buying eggs and water for rioters to throw at police.
My rapist didn’t even get remanded and there was DNA evidence.
Keir Starmer and the Labour Party are never going to live this down.…
Two-tier Keir has already failed as Prime Minister, but what will sink him is not so much his blatant attack on free speech and protest, but the fact that he and his cohorts have no idea at all how to tackle the real and pressing national issues, especially immigration (not just the rubber boats aspect), which causes or makes far worse all the other pressing issues— housing, benefits and pensions, pay, housing, crime, overcrowded roads, the environment; even water supply.
NEW POST. NO. Nigel Farage didn't cause the RIOTS. The ELITE CLASS did.https://t.co/6tTOpMRoCr
“One of the most dangerous trends of our times”, said American writer Thomas Sowell, “is making the truth socially unacceptable, or even illegal, with ‘hate speech’ laws”. And this is exactly what is taking place in Britain.“
“What all this reflects is a wider point about the political left; in the end, as history shows, it will always sacrifice free speech and free expression on the altar of “social justice”. This is what we see in the online ramblings of people like Paul Mason, Oliver Kamm, Jessica Simor, and Edward Luce, all of whom have called for the shutdown of social media platforms, alternative television channels, and, ultimately, conversation among concerned citizens.“
I have already blogged occasionally about Paul Mason and Jessica Simor, as well as Oliver Kamm (all partly-Jewish, by the way); the last-named has an honoured place in my 2019 blog post They’re Coming to Take Me Away, ha ha! which (updated to quite recently) examines the linkages between mental illness, the self-describing “Left”, and Zionists (both Jews and non-Jews): see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/07/18/theyre-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha/.
"It wasn’t Farage who decimated the communities that saw the worst rioting by ushering in globalisation, mass immigration, & deindustrialisation; it was the elite class. It wasn’t Farage who promised they'd lower immigration only to do the opposite; it was the elite class" https://t.co/5Iw0i5rJAZ
#MCCFeszt recap No.4#Hungary is often criticised by the Western elites, but while he was here, @MCC_Budapest’s speaker @GoodwinMJ saw ‘no crime, no homeless people, no riots, no unrest, no drugs, no mass immigration, no broken borders, no self-loathing and no chaos’. ❕ pic.twitter.com/HCtFY3VW6I
Recession will hit the West most hard at the end of 2025 and will deal two blows IT IS UNPREDICTABLE WHAT CONSEQUENCES THE NEW LEVEL OF DELEGITIMIZATION OF THE SYSTEM WILL HAVE IN THE USA pic.twitter.com/iunobb2Wr9
What about the UK? Will this prove to be the open doorway for social nationalism, for which we have been waiting for most of our present lives?
In Kiev, another car of the Territorial Military Department, which distributed the war schedule and calls to the front, was burned. pic.twitter.com/avgefmvrj5
Ukrainian men generally are avoiding the draft, when that is possible. They have to be forced into uniform. Some are fighting back against the press-gangs of the Zelensky regime.
Johnson: Russia – especially after Kursk – will not negotiate with Ukraine
ZELENSKI IS MAKING FATAL MISTAKES BECAUSE HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SUPPLY THE BRIGADES HE SENT TO RUSSIA
Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson: The sitting offer will not be as generous as the previous one. It… pic.twitter.com/k73zmRlRSZ
“Russia – especially after Kursk – will not negotiate with Ukraine
ZELENSKI IS MAKING FATAL MISTAKES BECAUSE HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SUPPLY THE BRIGADES HE SENT TO RUSSIA
Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson: The sitting offer will not be as generous as the previous one. It will sound like this: withdraw troops from Odessa and transfer all others behind the Dnieper, and also demobilize your army, otherwise we will destroy it.”
I have been saying that recently on the blog and (with regard to the last bit) for 2 years. Who would have guessed that my analysis is swifter and better than that of the CIA?…
Sullivan: The future of the Ukrainian state causes pessimism
FORMER US AMBASSADOR IN MOSCOW: CONFLICT IN UKRAINE WILL NOT END WITH PUTIN'S CAPITOLATION
FORMER ambassador of the United States in Moscow, John Sullivan, assessed that the future of the Ukrainian state is… pic.twitter.com/01z019GVey
“Sullivan: The future of the Ukrainian state causes pessimism
FORMER US AMBASSADOR IN MOSCOW: CONFLICT IN UKRAINE WILL NOT END WITH PUTIN’S CAPITOLATION
FORMER ambassador of the United States in Moscow, John Sullivan, assessed that the future of the Ukrainian state is pessimistic.
The conflict in Ukraine will not end “with the capitulation of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Sullivan said in an interview with Foreign Policy. He admitted that he is pessimistic about the future of Ukraine: “The two sides do not want to negotiate, which could lead to a stalemate, and that is the best the West can hope for in the foreseeable future.”
Previously, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that Ukraine does not have enough soldiers to continue the conflict.“
The Pentagon is pessimistic about its ability to confront Russia, China and North Korea in a nuclear war, according to The Economist pic.twitter.com/4wckS3be10
A nuclear war would of course be terrible for all participants, and even those states not part of the conflict as active players.
Having said that, I feel that China and Russia would just about survive as peoples, probably, even if the states themselves were to implode. The USA is, relatively, more highly-centralized, more dependent on technology, more likely to fall into anarchy (meaning chaos).
If the top 100 population centres in the USA ceased to exist, the USA as a functioning entity would cease to exist.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “The war in Gaza is the bloodiest war of the century in terms of civilian deaths. Israel has killed many Palestinians in what it declared as safe zones.” pic.twitter.com/G6nriZrUDB
We hear little now of that rather fascinating tunnel network, said last year to add up to maybe 100-200 miles in length.
The armed forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region did not foresee that Russia would fight to the end and not retreat, Apti Alaudinov said.
▪️The goal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was initially to capture a part of the Belgorod region in addition to the Kursk region, he added. pic.twitter.com/3LtRkXxB6g
The world would be much better were both of those bastards not there.
Russian commander: More than 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers were engaged on the Kursk direction
"What can I say to Zelenskiy? Your 11,600 or 11,900 soldiers and all that combat equipment and all the tanks that were engaged did not fulfill their task," said the commander of the… pic.twitter.com/L3uUjtArIX
The Dictator Zelensky is so desperate to cling to power that he will do anything to impress his NATO masters. Bomb a nuclear power station, destroy his population
Well, I managed to beat political journalist John Rentoul again, despite scoring only 5/10 (had 2 near-misses as well). Rentoul awarded himself 2/10, plus two half-points, this week. I knew the answers to questions 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8.
“Hundreds of thousands of dementia patients in England face being denied access to revolutionary new drugs because the diagnostic capacity of the NHS lags behind every other G7 country, according to a damning report.
After decades of research to find a cure for the condition projected to affect 153 million people worldwide by 2050, scientists have successfully developed the first treatments to tackle the underlying causes rather than only relieve the symptoms. Two new drugs could get the green light for use on the NHS within weeks.
However, their effectiveness depends on prompt and early diagnosis of patients. The report, obtained by the Guardian, says the NHS lacks the diagnostic capacity to accurately identify those eligible in time.
The analysis reveals England is unprepared for the rollout of new treatments, with “large gaps in diagnostic capacity” for dementia. It also warns of a £14bn funding black hole that must be plugged if England is to diagnose dementia as quickly as the other G7 countries, the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.“
I have to say that the few Palestinians I have met (mostly in Qatar and around) have impressed me in that way, and far more favourably than the arrogant and stupid Gulf Arabs (Qataris and Kuwaitis) also met.
Sometime in the 1970s, I think probably in late 1977, I met the PLO representative in London, Said Hammami, who was based at the Arab League offices in Mayfair, and he was rather dismissive, but in retrospect I suppose that he had things on his mind, and probably little time in which to speak to a young person (21-y-o) with his head in the clouds in some ways…
I do not remember much about the discussion; mostly that the PLO man wore a rather filthy sheepskin coat in his little office, and that a young and rather stylish Arab woman in the outer office smoked a kind of long brown cigarette called More; I remember asking her what they were [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_(cigarette)].
Unfortunately, that PLO fellow was shot dead in the same office only (as far as I can recall) a few weeks later. The matter was never solved by the police. Either MOSSAD, or a different Palestinian faction to his own (he belonged to Fatah, I think). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Hammami. Apparently he was in favour of talking to the Israelis; that may have been the reason behind the assassination.
A senior #Tory MP sends intimate images to a total stranger and the numbers of 12 of his colleagues, two of them also then send images. These types of scandal used to bring down Governments but in a post Boris Johnson era it doesn't even become the lead news story #WilliamWraggpic.twitter.com/kak51SjSMB
— The Man of Hidden Shallows (@Richiemuso) April 5, 2024
Voters of Britain: whatever your ideology, whatever you support or dislike, when GE 2024 arrives vote any way you like except “Conservative”, or do not vote at all. Crush and exterminate this useless party. Equally-bad “Labour” can fall later, but first things first.
I don't see why this chap is attracting so much sympathy from the journalism trade. I don't have an issue with him being duped into sending pictures, it's that he then betrayed his colleagues – leaving them open to blackmail attempts too.
The whole Westminster monkeyhouse should be done away with.
Latest from @PeoplePolling, which tends to give biggest Lab leads, 4 Apr Lab 45% -1 Con 19% +1 Reform 14% +1 Lib Dem 9% -1 Green 8% +1 (Changes since 7 Mar)
How would flooding the country with foreigners and bulldozing down the last of the forests and meadows for low-cost housing be better for the environment? Does the British losing their homeland excite you or something? pic.twitter.com/7XuwGnAb1K
A senior US CIA official stated: If Iran attacks Israeli territory, it will target military or intelligence installations inside Israel. pic.twitter.com/Oiyi5SAL6a
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 6, 2024
The Israelis await events— will they be attacked soon or not? Just as the people in Gaza have awaited attacks from Israel for decades. “What goes around comes around“…
A police robot in Nanjing, China, stops at a police station and politely asks, “Please open the door. I need to recharge. Thank you". pic.twitter.com/fwUUyE71uJ
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 6, 2024
Not so much a sign of the times as the shape of things to come.
Weasel words from Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar who voted for Scotland’s new Hate Crime Law, won’t repeal it and says the problem has been the manner of its implementation. Not good enough.
An example of how Labour, after GE 2024, intends to be an “elected” (by default) tyranny.
Meanwhile, thick “diversity hire”, David Lammy, has been on TV saying that Churchill replaced Chamberlain “a few days before” the outbreak of war with Germany. In fact, it was 8 months after the declaration of war on Germany by Britain and France.
🇮🇱 Protest in Tel Aviv on the eve of half a year after the war in Gaza
▪️Demonstrators are demanding early elections, the removal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and an urgent agreement on the release of hostages.
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 6, 2024
Near-hysteria. Imagine what would happen if Israel were to be invaded.
A war with Russia can only lead to the complete destruction of France , said the leader of the French left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He also called to find a way to talk about peace. pic.twitter.com/bCMeHwIBSF
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 6, 2024
Late music
Crowdfunder
A few weeks ago, I set up a crowdfund appeal to help with the imposed costs of my recent free speech trial. Any donations gratefully received.
If you cannot donate, please share the link wherever you can.
Even the largely-“controlled” Spectator has sat up and taken notice. The cartoon should be more menacing, though, to reflect the reality— invasion by economic migrants and/or criminals rather than desperate migration by “refugees”.
It will be recalled by regular readers of the blog that Derbyshire Police performed most ignominiously during the 2020-2021 “panicdemic”, bullying and harassing fell walkers and picnickers. The same force had previously behaved atrociously towards Alison Chabloz (who was at the time resident in the Peak District).
Seems that Derbyshire Police find dealing with real crime rather harder.
£750 compensation and a suspended sentence for attacking the victim from behind, with a hammer, and in a sustained attack which ended only when an uninvolved third party happened upon the scene.
Evidently premeditated as well, in my view, though admittedly there is a bit of wriggle-room there, on the facts as reported.
Sacked Jew criticizes Elon Musk. Elon Musk therefore cannot be too bad.
In terms of a strict logical syllogism, the above is perhaps a flawed conclusion, but I suspect at least arguable in real terms.
A pack of Zionist Jews finally managed to have me expelled from Twitter in 2018, after years of trying. I wonder whether the Twitter employees involved have now lost their jobs under the Elon Musk cull. I hope so.
Tweets seen
Just happened to see this, which was posted months ago:
70-year-old Francis Romero was in a coma in hospital. His dog was allowed to stay with him, and did not leave him day or night. After a month Francis woke up from the coma with the words:
"Where is the white angel who constantly whispered that everything would be all right?" 🙏 pic.twitter.com/oirXCC2lWE
Gentle goats are mutilated and killed for cashmere and mohair. @hmunitedkingdom promised to ban these cruelly obtained materials, but the company has gone back on its word! Urge it to stop profiting from goat abuse. #HMHorrorshttps://t.co/A2JJTms2JF
According to Twitter, a picture of a beautiful wild snow leopard in the Himalayas is “potentially sensitive content“. Mad. Twitter needs a big shake-up.
Tweets seen
Why aren't you? Why wouldn't you put the welfare of your own ethnic group first? It's because you've been brainwashed into believing it's bad.
Every other race/ethnicity puts its own group first, I put White people first and it's moral to do so. https://t.co/yltDkhjZes
Pathetic to see Hislop humiliating Gary Neville on HIGNFY last night. Like watching someone beat a dyslexic at scrabble then do a victory lap of the living room. Absolutely worthless.
And Hislop gladly takes his fat pay cheque from the same BBC that is choosing to broadcast extensive coverage from the tournament in Qatar. Difficult to call out the hypocrisy of others, when you've got your snout in the same trough.
The children of a tiny minority of the wealthy elites got to study across the EU, whilst the average working class Joe got longer NHS queues, larger class sizes, lower wages and got called racist by narcissists like you.
The Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan (conspiracy) has come out into the open over the past several years. Now, you do not have to wonder about it, you just have to look around you (especially if you live in London or another large city or town, or just watch TV dramas, soaps, ads etc).
“No civil war ever has a single cause. It’s always a multitude of factors that lead to decline and collapse. The current US has several of what the CIA calls “threat multipliers”: environmental crises continue to batter the country, economic inequality is at its highest level since the founding of the country, and demographic change means that the US will be a minority white country within just over two decades. All of these factors tend to contribute to civil unrest wherever they are found in the world.”
According to Wikipedia, about half of the pre-conflict (i.e. pre-February 2022) population had already fled by the end of May 2022. It is not known either how many have fled in the past 6 months or how many now remain in the city.
It is clear that this battle will be of great importance. I find myself wondering whether Putin intends to use tactical (“battlefield”) nuclear weapons to almost destroy the city if it looks like falling to the forces of the Kiev regime. Those Western “experts” who have pronounced say “no” to that idea; Putin’s people also say no. So maybe “no” is the answer. I do feel a little uneasy about the possibility, though.
Putin has recently referenced, I believe more than once, the American slaughter of very many of the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (perhaps 230,000) in 1945, in the atomic-bomb attacks that pretty much levelled both cities. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki.
Does Putin really mean to destroy Kherson if necessary? We do not know.
[view of Kherson]
If Putin’s intent is to destroy one city so as to say to the Kiev regime “I have just destroyed Kherson. Surrender, or Kiev will be next” (in similar fashion as the Americans did in Japan in 1945), that would be a complete gamechanger, and might even bring in NATO on the “Ukrainian” (Kiev regime) side. In that event, the next world war might be, and probably would be, triggered.
What is inescapable is that the high-grade armament given by the USA, UK etc to the forces of the Kiev regime is having a very great effect on the battlefield. Russian forces are very definitely now on the defensive.
Russia is now, after some hesitation, targeting the electrical power and other infrastructure that keeps the Kiev “failed state” going. I expect that to both continue and intensify.
What a horrible bloody mess (as blogged previously). If only the Russian Army, its General Staff, and the GRU had been fit for purpose at the start, the invasion would probably have ended within days and with complete success, particularly had the Jew Zelensky and his cabal been eliminated by what used to be known in Soviet days as “Olympic Spetsnaz” (which may not even exist now— I do not know).
Now, huge numbers of Ukrainian civilians and their companion animals are suffering and many are dying, together with many Russians, partly because the Russians have made such a shambolic mess of all this, and partly because the West is keeping the war going by vast transfers of arms, ammunition, training, medical and other equipment, and sheer money to the Zelensky regime.
More music
[painting by Volegov]
If life gives you lemons…
I happened to see something about the “Rogue Trader”, Nick Leeson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson], who caused a big kefuffle in the mid-1990s, when caught out making unauthorized trades nominally on behalf of Baring’s Bank (which collapsed with massive debts because of him).
Turns out that, after serving over 4 years in Changi Prison, Singapore (2/3 of a nearly-7 year sentence), and having (earlier) written the bestselling Rogue Trader [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Trader_(book)], he became commercial manager (I had thought, accountant) for an Irish football team, Galway United; then he became CEO of the same club until, some years later, having to resign by reason of the club’s financial difficulties.
I recall having read his book when it came out in 1995 or 1996.
Now, however, like a reformed bank robber advising banks on security, Leeson apparently speaks for fees at seminars, and also after-dinner. Such bookings can be very lucrative (ex-Prime Ministers etc get paid tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands). Leeson is obviously not going to be in that league, and I am unaware of what he does charge, but it might be a few thousand pounds a time, a couple of times a month. Nice work if you can get it.
After a brief year or so of being a successful stock market trader in the early 1990s, Leeson was stunningly unsuccessful, famously so, and his later time at the Irish football club was hardly crowned with success, but his 1990s notoriety now provides him with a living, perhaps a good one.
The (Jewish) journalist even refers to Jews as “the tribe“.
It occurs to me that the most repulsive MP in that report is not in fact a Jew (though married to a Jewish woman, and with children being brought up as Jewish). No, not Keir Starmer but Robert Jenrick. A complete doormat for Israel and the Jewish lobby.
More tweets
Suella Braverman like's talking tough. But it won't be enough. The British people have heard it all before > Mail on Sunday > https://t.co/QCqET8HD3a
Indeed. People wanted the migration-invasion “sorted”, as is now said, and they have had enough of big-talking on immigration from “Conservative” ministers, which big talk has led to no or no useful action. Priti Patel the least useful big talker/no action (so far).
One interesting thing about the Gavin Williamson row. I spent the back end of last week asking people what his job in Government actually is. No-one could tell me.
According to Electoral Calculus, with Reform Party getting maybe 5%, that would result in Labour 471 seats, Conservative 91, LibDem 13, Green 1, SNP 52. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html.
(with “tactical voting” ticked, Con = 30 seats on the same numbers).
If Reform only get 2%, much the same result, but even were Reform (Farage’s latest vehicle) to get 10%, all that would happen would be Reform getting 1 MP, Con 100, Lab 460, LibDem 14. The FPTP voting system is hard to shift.
Indeed, even were Reform to get 15% (higher than UKIP’s result in 2015), Reform would still only get 1 MP! The big change there, though, would be a further Con collapse, to 37 MPs (Lab 521, LibDems 16).
Even on 20%, Reform would get nowhere.
To really arrive, Reform would have to get to about 25% and take votes from Lab as well as Con. As people now say, “a big ask“.
Personally, I do not believe that the Reform Party agenda of “libertarianism” mixed with some less American elements (support for NHS, opposition to more mass immigration etc) will pull in the punters.
There again, Farage stabbed his own Brexit Party supporters in the back in 2019, and (in lay terms) stole the candidates’ money as well! Who would trust him now?
A more social-national party might succeed, if credible: nationalization of strategic utilities, support for private enterprise otherwise, with taxation of large enterprises greatly increased, and support for a thoroughly reformed —but still free at point of use— health service; law and order, support for proper defence; opposition to the Zelensky regime but humanitarian aid to families and animals in Ukraine, and much closer links to Russia.
One aspect that interests me is that, as others have noticed, hardly any tweeters supporting the “Bootstrap Cook” are actually anywhere near “poor”. Many are decidedly affluent, as can be surmised from their Twitter headlines: CEO this, Director that, author, journalist, food writer on a large newspaper, and so on.
I know you know, I just keep posting it so it gets seen as much as possible.Jack Monroe's falsely claimed working class valour really pisses me off.I read her very first article at the time and knew it was 🐂💩. Her list of self diagnosed ailments is another reason to dislike her
…and that may be only half or a third of her full income.
The extraordinary thing is that quite large numbers of affluent scribblers and others are absolutely vituperative in their self-appointed defence of the “Bootstrap Cook”, as in the example(s) below, in which two employees of the Irish Daily Mail, Tom Doorley (a restaurant critic) and Philip Nolan, jump on someone critical of “Jack Monroe”:
I am now even more honoured! Jack is an amazing person.
Remarkable self-awareness from the little gobshite, Philip. At least s/he admits they are spouting pure ordure (if they even know what the word means). I'm amazed at how these moral pygmies constantly trawl Twitter for references to Jack.
Ian Robert Millard 