Morning music
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.”
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 