I happened to watch an edition of Celebrity Chase quiz show (from about 6 years ago). As usual, I did not know even the names of a couple of the “celebrities”, but “Eddie the Eagle” was there and, also, Michelle Dewberry [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Dewberry].
I believe that Ms. Dewberry is now employed by GB News TV as presenter of a current affairs show.
Sadly, Ms. Dewberry proved herself entirely ignorant about politics, and pretty much everything else. Even worse than I was expecting.
Full of unwarranted self-confidence, but empty of intellectual content. Totemic of the present-day (think “Boris” Johnson, for one…).
The presenter of The Chase, Bradley Walsh, introduced Ms. Dewberry as “businesswoman and TV presenter“, I think. True up to a point. She did have a business, though I think an unsuccessful one, about 15 years ago. She is best known for having won, in 2006, The Apprentice, the TV competition run by Jewish businessman Alan Sugar.
My problem with all that is that she is one of a number of people with considerable public profile, and who opines about politics, Britain’s future etc, and yet is entirely ignorant in almost (?) all areas.
I suppose that I have to be honest and admit that, in the commonly-heard (on TV at least) phrase, “she scrubs up well“, anyway.
I see now from Wikipedia that Ms. Dewberry is now in a personal relationship with a once-successful and still affluent businessman, who is also, inter alia, a TV/radio presenter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Jordan.
Ms. Dewberry seems to be an example of a widespread problem in the UK these days, namely people posing as business successes, political experts etc when they are nothing of the sort; but it suits the msm to present them as such.
Most such people are boosted by the msm and/or politicians because it suits an agenda, in Michelle Mone’s case as an example of a *woman from *a deprived or poor background, who *via her own efforts *became “successful” and *wealthy. The David Cameron-Levita, George Osborne, Iain Dunce Duncan Smith (etc) ideology personified— and as fake as those cheats.
In fact, Michelle Mone is a fake through and through, and always has been, as seen even in her Wikipedia entry. That, however, has not stopped her from having been —ludicrously, so be it— elevated to the House of Lords; nor has it stopped her from making hundreds of millions of pounds from useless hospital equipment, sold to the NHS via contacts in the Conservative Party, together with her present husband: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Barrowman.
There is something wrong about a country that seems not to care whether someone prominent, and/or in public life proper, is a fake. Look at Iain Duncan Smith. That man has so many layers of fakery that to examine them all in detail would require a book by someone such as Tom Bower [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bower].
We see now how history is not only misunderstood, but often faked in both its overall purport and in details. I am referring not only to the WW2 “holocaust” farrago, but to, for example, the attempts now made to present a one-sided view of European (including British) colonialism as something entirely bad, with no redeeming features.
When history is faked, how can present-day politics and intellectual life be unaffected?
Tweets seen
Scott Benton MP has LOST his appeal against a 35-day suspension. He was filmed in Times investigation offering to lobby ministers and leak confidential information for money: https://t.co/7pIZb4aTYa. Paves the way for likely by-election in Blackpool South (Tory majority = 3,690) pic.twitter.com/paR9n7Nbir
As in the many previous cases involving corrupt and moneygrubbing MPs, what always amazes me is how easy they are to entrap. They must have very little caution (perhaps as a result of their feeling of “entitlement”).
As Hitler said of the Weimar Republic’s creatures, “dirty democratic politicians“…
Incredible, or perhaps not, that the only penalty the House of Commons itself has imposed on Benton is a 35-day suspension. Of course, the real penalty will be if there is a by-election and he loses his seat, though he would have lost it —or will lose it— at GE 2024 anyway.
Tweets seen
Forget 30,000 dead in Gaza, tens of thousands more in prison without charge, five MILLION in stateless serfdom, forget 75 years of torture, rape, dispossession, humiliation and occupation, ITS ALL ABOUT YOU, Bella
How woke will Labour go? Tomorrow I'm doing a deep dive on some of the most divisive, insane policies that will likely be delivered by a Labour government. Get it herehttps://t.co/liUeIhMiRY
Retired US Air Force General and B-52 fighter pilot:
Even a B-52 flight over the Middle East could not change Iran's policy.
Our weapons systems are not designed to fight Iranian drones.
The United States has not yet been able to understand Iran, the resistance forces and this… pic.twitter.com/1iDrV9dorj
— S p r i n t e r M e d i a s e t (@SprinterMedia1) February 20, 2024
It may be that, in time, huge fleets of drones will attack Tev Aviv, Jerusalem, and Dimona.
A large crowd of protesters has gathered in front of the Supreme Court in London, UK, demanding freedom for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Assange is unwell and was unable to attend in person or online. In December, the WikiLeaks founder was so ill that he broke a rib while… pic.twitter.com/gwaZFFzFAy
The UK/US extradition treaty is, in practice, a one-way street. Abrogate it.
Incidentally, there was a time, mostly though not entirely in the years 1993-1995, when I appeared as Counsel pretty much weekly at the Royal Courts of Justice (always in the High Court). Seems long ago now, and indeed is. A different time, and a different world.
I see Kate Andrews is on #politicslive advocating zero-hour contracts and wants less regulation for employers
She is getting a lot of use with her #BBC politics season ticket, maybe the BBC board have her on speed dial pic.twitter.com/mFj3LUBYm2
— Louis 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 〓〓 💙 Defend the right to vote (@LouisHenwood) February 20, 2024
I blogged briefly about Kate Andrews a year or so ago:
I agree with tweeter “Betty’s Hotpot”/”@BigThickSlices” too. Reform UK is not properly social-national. I do not value it highly, certainly not to the extent of Matt Goodwin. Britain needs a social-national party which, sadly, does not even exist, at least as yet.
“A woman was left in shock after police allegedly told her to retrieve her stolen £30,000 Lexus car herself.
Alexandra Vlad, 32, woke up on February 6 to find her Lexus UX missing from her driveway in Newham, East London. Using a tracking app on her phone, she found the last known location of her car in Hackney, about six miles away. She called the police and provided all the information but claims she was then instructed to go and get the car herself.
Alexandra, who works in corporate finance, said: “I was more shaken by the experience of dealing with the police than the car being stolen itself. I told them what happened, and that I could see the last location of the engine. They told me they wouldn’t be there for at least an hour. It was a dodgy part of Hackney. I felt unsafe.“
[Daily Mirror]
The police are a prime example of how things generally do not work properly now in Britain, though there are many others— NHS, banks, insurance companies, the whole political and electoral system, repair of the roads, the non-existent border defences etc.
“A mouse has been filmed secretly tidying up a man’s shed almost every night for two months.
Wildlife photographer Rodney Holbrook noticed that objects he left out of place were being mysteriously put back where they belonged overnight.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw that the mouse was tidying up,” Holbrook said.
“He moved all sorts of things into the box, bits of plastic, nuts and bolts. I don’t bother to tidy up now, as I know he will see to it. I leave things out of the box and they put it back in its place by the morning. Ninety-nine times out of 100 the mouse will tidy up throughout the night.”
[Guardian]
Remarkable. Like something from a fairy tale or one of the Brothers Grimm stories.
I hope that the man leaves the mouse a little bit of cheese or some nuts occasionally.
“The study, by the thinktank British Future, projects that the number of ethnic minority MPs is most likely to rise from 65 to as many as 83, with much of this rise expected whatever the actual outcome of the election.
If the number of ethnic minority MPs does reach 75 or more, it will have increased fivefold in a decade and a half, having been just 15 out of 650 in the 2005 to 2010 parliament.“
[Guardian]
White people (the people formerly termed “British”) are being removed from Parliament too now. What will be the proportion, both in the population and/or in the House of Commons (and the Lords) by 2030, 2040, 2050? Over-representation in Parliament will be plainly obvious, I think.
In any case, this is the British Parliament, and should only have fully British —in every sense— MPs and (so long as the upper house exists) peers.
Worth reading. I have been writing the same, or similar, about the “Atlas Network” (or “Group”) on the blog for years. As always, others are late to the party.
Monbiot somehow leaves out the fact that the sinister Antony Fisher was a fervent Zionist…
What do you expect? Import this or that national or ethnic group, and you import with them their customary behaviours, and it matters not a jot that they or their offspring were born in, say, Southampton rather than Bombay, or that they attended Winchester, or Eton, or Oxford University.
American M1 Abrams tanks delivered to Ukraine will not participate in combat operations for the foreseeable future. After one vehicle broke down near Avdejevka in November 2023 – the tank broke down before reaching the front line – the remaining vehicles were evacuated. pic.twitter.com/i1UmsqQhVd
US Treasury Secretary Jeannette Yellen, who is on a visit to China, is criticized for her excessive friendliness, which was expressed in numerous bows at a meeting with her Chinese counterpart.
Diplomatic etiquette experts at The New York Post note that American officials do not… pic.twitter.com/PoQrLbUMJr
“US Treasury Secretary Jeannette Yellen, who is on a visit to China, is criticized for her excessive friendliness, which was expressed in numerous bows at a meeting with her Chinese counterpart.
Diplomatic etiquette experts at The New York Post note that American officials do not bow at all and point out that Chinese Vice Premier He Lifen, to whom Yellen bows glibly, does not respond with a mutual movement. A protocol error that critics will call a sign of America’s weakness.”
How embarrassing for the USA, to be represented by a peculiar and aged Jewish woman who has no idea how to behave. In fact, she looks like a giant chicken. She also looks like she would like to pull off the Chinaman’s hand and keep it as a souvenir.
In 1873 the US government killed 1.5 million buffalo to starve natives so they’d be more dependent on the US government. Now governments all over the world are killing livestock to "meet climate goals".
Valentin Tomberg was right. The “mask of Evil” did “start to come off” from the late 20thC onwards. Even more so in the first quarter of the 21st. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Tomberg.
"Without hunger and thirst among the Gazan population, we will not be able to recruit collaborators, we will not be able to recruit intelligence, we will not be able to bribe people, with food, drink, medicine, in order to obtain intelligence" – Israeli Knesset MK Tally Gotliv pic.twitter.com/s2O6L5gbPg
Oh, look, one of (((those))) lovely (((you-know-who)))…
People like Vince Cable propped up an obscene Austerity driven Tory regime. He also botched up Royal Mail privatisation. And now he says it's not right to play "blame game",when so many innocent people lost their livelihoods. Another useless Yellow Tory like Nick Clegg!
I was tweeting (when I still had a Twitter account) and blogging for years about this scandal, long before most others. Incredible injustice. Cable seems incapable of seeing it, just as he did not want to see the miseries inflicted by the Con Coalition during 2010-2015. Like almost all LibDems, he is a useless waste of space.
I have, though years ago now, also criticized Paula Vennells, that dishonest careerist woman who also posed, at one time, as one of those Church of England “priestesses” of recent decades: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells.
Chris Skidmark resigned over his objections to the oil licensing in the North Sea which conflicted with his 2nd, 3rd and 4th incomes amounting to many hundreds of thousands of pounds from the green energy companies. https://t.co/rLbjPckVMb
I blogged recently about the fact that useless Skidmore had stepped down as MP before he got binned (his constituency disappears at the 2024 General Election, and no other constituency’s Conservative Party committee wanted him).
Skidmore is thus, as blogged previously, positioning himself to get a job heading some “green” quango or company.
A citizen walked more than 12 kilometers to transport his weak and sick mother to a safe place in the southern Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/wsVaruUMav
The Rwanda idea will only, even if implemented, deal with only a small fraction of migrant-invaders (on small boats), and none of the hugely-bigger number entering superficially “legally”.
“The largest Russian strikes on Ukraine in weeks killed at least six people and caused power outages across the war-battered nation on Thursday.
[Kiev-regime] military downed nearly half of the missiles launched by Russia over at least 10 regions, as the fight raged on for control of the symbolic prize Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east.
The deadly Russian barrage on Thursday struck the relatively peaceful Lviv [Lvov] region in Ukraine’s west and left second-city Kharkiv without power, water or heating.
Kyiv [Kiev] Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people were injured and 15% of households were without power and 40% without heating following explosions in two areas of the Ukrainian capital.
Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said the strikes had also cut off the electricity supply to the Zaporizhzhia [Zaporozhye] nuclear power plant, which is controlled by Russian forces and is Europe’s largest.
In the Kharkiv [Kharkov] region, located on the border with Russia, Governor Oleh Synehubov said there had been 15 strikes targeting ‘critical infrastructure facilities‘.
The wave of strikes comes after Russia reported making gains in the battle for the industrial city of Bakhmut [Artyomovsk], which has been the focus of months of fierce combat.
Ukrainian officials have warned that the fall of Bakhmut could lead to further Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.”
[Moscow Times]
[highway scene west of Bakhmut/Artyomovsk]
My Octopus Teacher
Saw an amazing and moving South African documentary, My Octopus Teacher, which might equally have been called “My Octopus Friend”.
Odysseus returns home after 10 years, and finds his home both occupied and in a state of exploitative chaos. His reaction, aided by his son and a couple of allies, is to draw his bow and slaughter the occupiers. Makes one think…
“The Harry Formerly Known as Prince, and Meghan Mulatta”…
"Earlier this year we learnt of a single mother who had to rely on a Salvation Army food parcel to survive. A Salvation Army food parcel, in this, the fourth richest country in the world, run by a Labour government." — David Cameron (2005)
— paulusthewoodgnome 🇺🇦💙 (@woodgnomology) March 9, 2023
Damning.
I see the BBC have filled the Awful Woman Chair with another IEA shill. Representatives of think tanks should be no where near the beeb unless they publish their funding. #PoliticsLive
Excellent. Another CCJ for faux poverty conwoman Jack Monroe Bootstrapcook to add to the collection – this one for failing to refund or provide Patreon rewards. The irony of someone who lied about being a firefighter at Grenfell burning her own career down…. 🤣🤡🤷♀️🤦♀️ https://t.co/im2g3WHZdh
One of several recent County Court judgments against “Jack Monroe”, so-called “Bootstrap Cook”. Puzzling to me that no less than 479 utter mugs continue, as of today, to send her a total of c.£1,800-£20,000 per month. Several thousand anyway, monthly.
In fact, “Jack Monroe’s” Patreon donor-mugs have fallen in number since the high point after Jewish TV chef Nigella Lawson stupidly endorsed her. At that point, “Jack Monroe” had something like 850 “patrons” (mugs), all sending her money each month. That fell to about 660 by November 2022, and is now apparently stuck at 479. Either loonies, or naive and/or uninformed in the extreme.
Strange though. “Jack Monroe” could have avoided the CCJ by paying only £10 to someone.
Wow, that Jack Monroe gravy train came to a shuddering halt, didn’t it?
Fair play to her for getting a 10 year career out of what was basically catching someone’s eye at a food bank, once’s
If it is true that that fake is still getting invitations to such as the Cambridge Literary Festival, and if 479 mugs are still supporting her booze and (alleged) cocaine-abusing lifestyle, then she still has at least the remnants of a near-celebrity “career”, arguende.
Wagner video confirms a lot of unprofessional soldiers left in the city with boys & elderly people, who do not survive long. unconfirmed reports say Ukraine military pulling some of its most precious units, & retreat is covered by untrained fighters from the territorial defense.
There is news that a significant number of Twitter employees are refusing to engage with Elon Musk and his wish to return freedom of expression to the platform.
To my mind, such wilful refusal to go along with the changes Musk wants to implement in Twitter shows that an intransigent core of intolerant “woke” activists has taken root in the Twitter organization, and needs to be rooted out.
It may be necessary to sack many of the existing employees and to recruit new people who believe in free speech.
Kate Andrews is, as an individual, of no political importance. As a drone/puppet of the transnational conspiracy, however, and once employed by the so-called “think-tanks” the IEA and the Adam Smith Institute (and now at the Spectator, as Economics Editor), she is of significance.
Kate Andrews has a degree in International Relations and Philosophy from St. Andrew’s University, Scotland. She was born in London in 1990, but sounds American (possibly holds dual nationality). She attended school in an affluent part of Connecticut bordering Long Island Sound: see https://uk.linkedin.com/in/kate-andrews-1673a945. She has no formal qualification in economics.
Kate Andrews is 32 years old. She is believed to be married, but nothing is known publicly about the identity, nationality, or activity of her husband.
The IEA was founded by one Fisher [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Fisher], who also founded about 150 other organizations, including the Adam Smith Institute. An important international conspirator, pro-Zionist etc.
Fisher’s granddaughter Rachel Whetstone [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Whetstone], who has held major positions at Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Uber, is married to the egregious Steve Hilton [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Hilton], the “blue sky thinker” (and waste of space) connected to the rotten misgovernment of David Cameron-Levita 2010-2015.
The “takeaway”? These people, these organizations, are all connected, and feed into the transnational conspiracy matrix.
We are in the first year of the present 33-year socio-political cycle. Socialism, as traditionally experienced, was largely killed off, in its various forms, in and after 1989, the last such significant year.
We??? Like you’re one of us. Oh do dry up, disappear and take your right wing bullshit with you, you Tufton Street Ghoul. Shame on you BBC for giving this darkly funded vampire air time to spout her dogma #bbcqt#questiontimepic.twitter.com/KPdYVKexOS
I'll come out and say it. I feel literally nothing for Jack Monroe and anything she faces as a result of her scamming being exposed. Same as I'd feel with a burglar being beaten by a homeowner. Don't want the consequences? Don't do the thing that leads to them.
…but, whether Twitter exists or not, there will still be (as of today) 666 mugs paying “Jack Monroe” up to £10 each, monthly, via the Patreon website…
Elon Musk is up against several connected pressure groups or tendencies, not least the Jew-Zionist lobby that wants Twitter to be open for any Jewish trolls to abuse, usually anonymously, but also wants Twitter to ban or expel anyone said Jew-Zionist lobby labels as “antisemitic“.
To be frank, and without —I hope— being too grandiose about it, if Twitter is not open to someone like me, then it is all but worthless anyway.
Wiltshire Council set to BUY Houses for Ukrainians:
“As the six-month minimum time expires there will be some Ukraine nationals who face an uncertain future. We are going to purchase homes that can be used for Ukraine nationals.”
…and for British people, a tent in a field, if you have a tent and a field…
The power grid can't cope with mass ownership of electric vehicles, so the real plan is to force ordinary people out of their cars and off the roads. They were always going to screw over electric car owners, like they did with diesels. https://t.co/q5vP9chdvw
Your annual reminder that your donation to BBC Children In Need, first of all pays for a Chief Executive at £140k a year, thirteen more executives between £60k and £120k each a total of 142 employees on the books, costing £6.6 million.
Sudanese Nabil Abdullah, who came to the UK as a refugee is 2014, has been jailed for two years for hitting a man in the face with a brick. Already subject to a deportation order Abdullah has 31 previous convictions.https://t.co/t1ogyxIDc0
I despair of this government, giving money away left right and centre, reparations for burning coal and putting illegal immigrants up in hotels, whilst also taxing the British public to make up for the financial hole. It’s beyond parody.
Many people have yet to understand that the UK is governed or misgoverned by The System, which has several faces for the masses to “support”, the two main ones being the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, neither of which does “what it says on the tin“…
We have no financial responsibility for other people in other countries. Scrap all foreign aid, Stop sending Ukraine money to fund the playboy lifestyle of Zelenskyy and stop paying 7 million pounds per day to keep illegal immigrants in hotels and put our own people first.
— lieutenant colonel Kojak slaphead the 3rd. (@Scarfer13) November 18, 2022
Government plan to tax people to death to plug a £30 billion gap in UK finances.
At the same time they're borrowing to give away: £12b in foreign aid, £16b in climate reparations, £5 billion a year in hotel bills. = £33 billion
Great. Hard-core. Only thing is, the evildoer could hardly have understood what was coming at him so suddenly, so his suffering would have been minimized by that factor.
I wonder whether that socio-political propaganda will backfire on the System’s msm drones. After all, for the ideas expressed to be featured at all must mean that those ideas are slowly influencing the mainstream public mind.
Please don't introduce this child to the shit head Jack Monroe.
Start with Delia for basics, then move on to Ramsay, Nigella, Jamie Oliver. Anyone, just not this idiot that has no idea how to cook and can only muster secretions with zero nutritional value. https://t.co/PgGow9QVe5
Instead, the “Bootstrap Cook” has ploughed on as if the report had never been printed. Apart from the odd reference in tweets to her “trolls” (meaning those raising legitimate concerns about her alleged “grifting”, “scamming” etc), she has also ignored the Twitterstorm which has now been raging for about 3 months.
Now, Bootstrap Cook tweets about anything but the criticism and reportage. About her apparent upcoming move. About how she has had to sell items (have we not been here before?) and (needless to add) about how expensive moving is (is that a hint that a few more donations would be welcome?).
I should have thought that, whatever the circumstances, someone whose Patreon income alone may run into figures above £6,000 a month in cash would have little difficulty in covering all the costs.
Late tweets
This is a very good theory as to why there's not been more media investigation into scammer Jack Monroe. I thought it was just guilty secrets round the ❄️❄️❄️ mirror after West London dinner parties… https://t.co/sp7FRk5XCi
90% of the food I have seen (in photos) produced by the “Bootstrap Cook” has looked like a dog’s dinner (or worse). Some of the photos make me feel quite sick, if truth be known.
New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.
You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.
I have raised on the blog the question of where Russian prisoners of the Kiev regime are being kept, and under what conditions. The mainstream media in the West seem completely uninterested in this human rights issue. I have seen not one reporter on TV or journalist in print, or online, address the point, and there have been no TV news reports from any camps where the prisoners might be incarcerated.
Now it seems that Kiev-regime forces are, at least sometimes, taking no prisoners, or taking them then immediately despatching them. This is generally accepted to be a war crime.
It seems that the intellectual power behind the Boris Johnson throne is one Dominic Cummings, someone who only came to my attention recently. His new eminence put me in mind of a few similar people in the recent and not so recent past.
Brendan Bracken
Churchill had the egregious Brendan Bracken as his adviser and amanuensis. Bracken was, as such people often are, very strange indeed. He was born into modest but not poor circumstances in Ireland, drifted around Australia, attended Sedbergh School at age 19 (though claiming to be just 15), paying the fees himself, then left after one term, having acquired what the later KGB would have called a “legend” as an Anglo-Irishman who had attended a well-known English school (he let people believe that he had been there for years).
Armed with the Sedbergh “old school tie”, Bracken became a schoolmaster at Bishop’s Stortford College in 1921, but by 1922 was a magazine publisher and editor in London. He became wealthy quite rapidly. Puzzling. Here was a young man who had presumably saved some money while in Australia, and may have had a part-share in whatever his father left, but all the same Bracken’s swift rise to wealth is a puzzle. Still, there it is.
Having attached himself to Churchill, Bracken was instrumental at the vital moment when Chamberlain resigned in 1940:
” When Bracken became aware of Churchill’s agreement to nominate Lord Halifax, he convinced Churchill that the Labour Party would indeed support him as Chamberlain’s successor, and that Lord Halifax’s appointment would hand certain victory to Hitler. Bracken advised Churchill tactically to say nothing when the three met to arrange the succession. After a deafening silence during which Churchill was expected to nominate Halifax, the latter obligingly ruled himself out and Churchill was put forward as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, having avoided any appearance of disloyalty to Chamberlain.” [Wikipedia, and see Notes, below].
Thus this odd man “from nowhere” was not only present at the pivotal moment, but can be said to have altered the course of the Second World War on the strategic level. Had Churchill not become Prime Minister, Britain would have agreed peace with the German Reich in 1940. The whole history of Europe and indeed the world was thus altered in its course by this now-forgotten man (forgotten by the public, at least).
Bracken was MP for Paddington North (1929-1945) and for Bournemouth (1945-1951). He was Churchill’s PPS from 1940, later promoted to Minister of Information (1941-1945) and was briefly First Lord of the Admiralty in 1945. He was one of the chiefs of the Political Warfare Executive. He was elevated as a viscount in 1952. He was the publisher of, inter alia, the Financial Times, The Economist and History Today.
Bracken was rumoured to have been Churchill’s illegitimate progeny, though this seems to have been a myth not discouraged by Bracken himself. The viscounty granted was hereditary, but Bracken was unmarried and without issue. He died in 1958.
Was this the story only of a remarkably talented self-made businessman and politician or was there more to it? There are hints of the then-concealed New World Order about it all. We shall probably never know.
Steve Hilton
[As with Cummings –see below— Hilton felt the need to display his “I’m an off the wall maverick genius” persona by wearing beachwear or surf dude getup to Downing Street…]
Wikipedia says of Steve Hilton the following:
“Hilton is the son of Hungarian immigrants whose original surname was Hircsák[7] (which some sources spell “Hircksac”),[8] who fled their home during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. They came to Britain, initially claiming asylum, and anglicised their name to Hilton. Steve Hilton’s father, István, had been goaltender for the Hungarian national ice hockey team and was considered one of the top ice hockey players in Europe in the 1930s.[7][9] After arriving in Britain, his parents initially worked in catering at Heathrow Airport. They divorced when Steve was five years old[7] leading to what he has described as a struggle and great financial hardship; his mother worked in a shoe store to earn the little money they had, and the two lived in a cold, damp basement apartment. He won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham before studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at New College, Oxford.”
“After graduating, Hilton worked at Conservative Central Office, where he came to know David Cameron and Rachel Whetstone, his future wife and Senior Vice-President of Policy and Communications for Uber.[11] He liaised with the party’s advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi, and was praised by Maurice Saatchi, who remarked, “No one reminds me as much of me when young as Steve.”[8] During this time Hilton bought the “New Labour, New Danger” demon eyes poster campaign[12] for the Conservative’s pre-general election campaign in 1996, which won an award from the advertising industry’s Campaign magazine at the beginning of 1997.[13] The Conservatives went on to experience their worst election defeat for more than half a century, with some journalists speculating that the poster contrasted unfavourably with Labour’s more positive campaign.[14] In 2005, Hilton lost out to future Secretary of State for EducationMichael Gove in the selection process for the Surrey Heath constituency.”
“Hilton talked of the need to “replace” the traditionally minded grassroots membership of the Conservative Party, which he saw as preventing the party from embracing a more metropolitan attitude on social issues.”
So he was at first, in the 1990s, little better than a gopher, but then he met his wife, Rachel Whetstone. Who is she? She is described in Wikipedia as having been head of communications for Uber taxis. For a number of years until 2015, she was in a similar position at Google. She has more recently joined Netflix.
“In February 2013, Whetstone was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4.[4] Whetstone has been featured on PRWeek’s Power List several times, most recently in 2016 at number 14.” [Wikipedia]
“Whetstone is married to Steve Hilton, whom she met after an affair with Lord Astor (stepfather to Samantha Cameron, wife of former Prime Minister David Cameron) in the lead-up to the 2005 election. Cameron is no longer on speaking terms with Whetstone or Hilton.” [Wikipedia]
More interestingly, Rachel Whetstone’s grandfather was one Antony Fisher, not much known to the public, though extremely influential behind the scenes:
“Sir Antony George Anson FisherAFC (28 June 1915 – 8 July 1988), nicknamed AGAF, was a British businessman and think tank founder. He participated in the formation of various libertarian organisations during the second half of the twentieth century, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Atlas Network. Through Atlas, he helped establish up to 150 other institutions worldwide.”
Antony Fisher may have been at least part-Jew, and was certainly a Zionist, pro-Israel to the hilt.
Hilton was thought by many to be half-mad. He was lucky to escape with a caution and a small fine after having assaulted someone on a railway platform in England. He had been arrested after the assault and after shouting “wanker!” at staff and police. At the time, this useless creature was being paid £200,000 a year from public funds. There were other incidents of aggressive behaviour during his time at No.10.
“Andy Coulson, the former communications chief who was later jailed over phone hacking, recalled recently in the Telegraph: “I would ask, ‘So how does that work then?’ If I got an answer at all, it was along the lines of, ‘It’ll be fine – just you see.’ That was mildly irritating, as it was my team who would have to get out and sell the latest product from Steve’s dream factory.”” [The Guardian]
“Hilton’s rightwing, free-market ideas certainly infuriated Lib Dems who worked with him, as chronicled in David Laws’s book about the coalition. One Lib Dem former adviser said: “I was unfortunate enough to spend some time in Steve’s thought wigwam and it was not a pretty place. I remember him suggesting we should scrap maternity laws and invest in cloud-busting technology to improve the British weather. I certainly do not remember at any time him raising any points about the immigration policy he is now criticising.”” [The Guardian]
Hilton accomplished nothing, certainly nothing concrete, at Downing Street, and eventually decamped to the USA, where he was, laughably, taken on as some kind of visiting “professor” at Stanford:
“In March 2012, Downing Street announced that Hilton would be a “visiting scholar” at Stanford University‘s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies for a year.[21] His last memo concerned the advocacy of severe cuts in the number of civil servants in the United Kingdom[22] and further welfare cuts.” [Wikipedia]
At time of writing, Steve Hilton is on the American TV network, Fox News, as a talking head, and is apparently a Trump partisan.
“Had Bernie Sanders been the Democratic nominee, Hilton “probably would have supported him”. Hilton says he is not really a conservative or a liberal: “It’s hard to pin me down because I’m a bit of Bernie Sanders, a bit of Rand Paul, bit of John Kasich.” He’s pro-Trump simply because he was the candidate most likely to “shake things up”” [The Guardian]
Someone who actively likes and promotes chaos, in fact, just like Dominic Cummings [see below]
Steve Hilton, in other words, like the others examined here, is connected with cosmopolitan finance-capital and its intellectual superstructure of “think tanks” (which have proliferated over the years) and with supposed “institutes”, mostly carrying the same sort of message: internationalism, multikulti “get rich quick”-ism, destruction of tradition, race and culture, combined with State repression of those without money.
Dominic Cummings
[above, Dominic Cummings: note the “I’m Too Important To Wear A Tie Or A Jacket” affectation, as with Steve “Hilton”]
As stated at the start of this blog post, I know of Cummings only what I have read. The links are either posted here below or are available easily via Google.
One thing that did interest me was the Wikipedia statement, taken from a biography of Michael Gove, that “Cummings speaks Russian and ‘is a Russophile'”. It seems that he tried to start an airline with the single route line of Samara (a large city on the Volga) to Vienna, an interesting choice of route. We are told on Wikipedia that: “After university, Cummings moved to Russia from 1994 to 1997, working on various projects. In one Russian venture, he worked for a group attempting to set up an airline connecting Samara in southern Russia to Vienna; however, the venture fell foul of the KGB, and was abandoned after only one flight.“
Well, the “KGB” bit is wrong in exact terms, because the KGB was disbanded (reorganized) in 1991. The bulk of the “internal” work of the old KGB was given to the “FSK” which later became the FSB. As to why the revamped FSK/FSB would want to interfere in the activities of a foreign or foreign-connected airline, I wonder. There are, and have been for 2-3 decades now, numerous foreign airlines operating in the former Soviet Union, flying between Russia and other states.
In the 1990s, new “babyflots” (bits of the old Aeroflot) were emerging all the time, as were ad hoc operations such as the German airline “Luftbrucke” (Air Bridge), which transported tens of thousands of “Volksdeutsche” from Kazakhstan and Siberia to new lives in the reunified Germany (those people were mostly the descendants of Germans invited to Russia by Russian tsars, notably Catherine the Great, then deported East by Stalin). Luftbrucke, if I recall aright, also flew from Samara, as also from a host of cities in Western Siberia and Kazakhstan, such as Semipalatinsk.
I find the history of Cummings interesting. He graduated from Oxford in 1994 aged 22-23, his degree being in Ancient and Modern History. The very same year he moved to Russia “where he worked on various projects” including the idea “to set up a new airline”.
I admit that I myself have never set up an airline, but I know that you cannot do it without rather a lot of money, even in the conditions of post-collapse Sovietism (I myself was briefly in Moscow in 1993 and also dealt with legal and business matters in Russia and Kazakhstan for several years).
Cummings is said to be the son of an oil rig project manager and a special needs teacher. There is no suggestion of any heavy family wealth. Cummings only left university in 1994, yet by —at latest— 1997, so 0-3 years later, was setting up an airline? In fact, how did he get into Russian-oriented business anyway, with no obvious connections or personal monies. He is able to speak Russian, though. That too raises questions.
I lived in Almaty, Kazakhstan for a year (1996-1997), meeting dozens if not hundreds (and over the years, certainly hundreds) of businessmen, lawyers etc doing work in the various ex-Soviet republics. While most of the diplomats I met spoke at least some Russian, the vast majority of businessmen and lawyers encountered knew no Russian at all really (that was true of both British and Americans). Certainly unable to undertake even simple discussions. I even met some unable to order simple food and drink.
So Cummings leaves university in the UK, where he studied ancient and modern history, somehow speaks Russian (or learns it on the ground), and is at once involved with business activities which seem to go beyond being a mere gopher for others. I have to say that I wonder whether Cummings was up to something other than just being a British graduate drifting about and getting into Russian business speculations almost by chance. Maybe the Russian security people were right to be suspicious of him, as is suggested in his Wikipedia entry.
Anyway, he is now considered to be Boris Idiot’s eminence grise, and looks it (meaning “grey”, if not particularly eminent). In fact, despite being only 47, he looks 10+ years older than me, and I am now 62. His political career is summarized here:
I have to say that I agree with his view of many of the leading political and official figures (he described Iain Dunce Duncan Smith as “incompetent”, for example).
It seems that Cummings married a lady of the North Country gentry who is or was Deputy Editor of the Spectator. They live in Islington, in what the Daily Mail is pleased to call a “£1.6 million house” (though in London, what does that mean? I lived for years in a house in Little Venice now (over)valued at £4 million! Madness). Other details about Cummings are few.
“What is clear is that this character is right now in the maelstrom of chaos and action that he loves so much. A defender quipped that he’ll be thrilled with upheaval – it’s the only way he sees people being forced into action. His friend once heard him quote Lenin: “The worse the better.” [Reaction magazine]
The Prophets of Dystopia
These “advisers” (of whom I have selected a mere few from a larger pool) and their connected “think tanks” etc are, even when some of their critique of society is justified, basically destructive. The same applies to the people themselves. Admittedly, Brendan Bracken left a less obviously destructive legacy, but then, after the huge and unnecessary war which he, from the shadows, did so much to bring about, what more need he do to be adjudged a negative force?
Look at Steve Hilton, Dominic Cummings etc. Where are their real achievements? Leaves blown away by the wind. These people may themselves have acquired riches, but only or mainly because they married wealthy wives, then used their own political attachment and profile to become highly-prized TV, radio, press and online “gurus” . They themselves have not established anything solid, whether in commerce, industry, academia, the arts, the sciences, charitable work or anywhere else. They are creatures created from the chaos and decadence in society. They prosper from the decadence and weakness of the political system in the UK and attach themselves to stupid, weak, posturing politicians vainly trying to reach to statesmanship, people such as David Cameron-Levita and Boris-Idiot. They are a symptom of dark days ahead. Social nationalism must rise up to exterminate evil and to found a better and better-organized society.
Is it fanciful to compare the sliding society we now have (look at the past few days…) and the prominence of these odd characters such as Hilton and Cummings, whose academic and patchy work histories are at best underwhelming, with the sliding Russia of the last few years before the Revolution(s) of 1917? Perhaps, but in late-Tsarist Russia too the government, civil service, certainly the politicians, were paralyzed, helpless to do anything positive, and so the influence grew of odd characters: tarot practitioners, mystics and occultists, fortune-tellers of all kinds, persons believed to have arcane knowledge and unorthodox ways to make politics work via persuasion and peculiar ideas and methods. The starets (he was never a monk or priest) Rasputin was only the most important of a whole host.
In fact, I agree with some of what Cummings has said:
“We should stop selecting leaders from a subset of Oxbridge egomaniacs with a humanities degree...” That is true, though I have nothing against degrees in the humanities, but the whole idea of the “generalist” (almost always armed with a degree from Oxford or Cambridge) has blighted UK political, cultural and even industrial life for 70 years, perhaps 100 years. The Soviet Union tended toward the same behaviour (the politically-OK “Man From Moscow” who could “direct” anything from a tyre factory to a Young Pioneer camp or the building of the Moscow Metro), and look what happened there (the Metro in Moscow admittedly being a —rare— success of the Soviet system).
Of course, the worst single example of the generalist might be Cummings’ present employer, Boris-idiot, who has proven that he is incapable of doing anything properly, but who can do it while quoting a bit of rote-learned Ancient Greek, or using an English word no-one else has ever heard of (he must trawl the OED for those silly words, I expect…what a complete waste of space he is!). As the journalist writes,
“All evidence goes out the window. The grandest ever Oxbridge egomaniac of them all (with not even a very good humanities degree, as it happens) is seeing only the flickering shadows on the news on the wall. It is not even day 14 and already we have beaten a hyper-accelerated march to the world of crap policy for political gain.“
The journalist continues, citing a recent Times article by Cummings:
“Elsewhere, in that same Times article, we read: “We must train aspirant leaders very differently so they have the skills and experience of managing complex projects.””
“And here he is, bringing in policies that would make Norman Tebbit look enlightened, working for a leader whose skill at “managing complex projects” so far extends to some rolling windowless sauna buses, a cable car to nowhere, and a ghost garden bridge that may or may not take you to a demented airport that has never and will never be built.“
Seems that my blog was (again) prescient, if I say so myself: not a day or even part of a day goes by now without someone publishing something in the newspapers about Dominic Cummings (though Steve “Hilton” is old news and Brendan Bracken ancient history).
'Sources close to the prime minister tell me that he cried when he heard the news' – fascinating @jennirsl insight into the moment Boris Johnson heard his brother was resigning in the national interest https://t.co/LUNDmcPJeR
“Through his system, as yet unexplained – “I will go into what I think this vision could be and how to do it another day” – he will turn a nation of average people into one of the most successful countries in the world. He will sweep away the suffocating postwar mainframes of politics, and build something capable of withstanding the unknown crises ahead. Or so he would wish. In truth, he may be little more than a survivalist in the woods, soldering wires together in the belief he is saving us all.
Is Dominic Cummings a visionary or a fool? The remarkable fact is that the Conservative Party has risked its future, and the country’s, on which one Cummings turns out to be.” [Harry Lambert, writing in The New Statesman]
Dominic Cummings dresses down (even more) in Downing Street on the day of the Saturday sitting of the Commons (today). Not sure whether the bimbo is Boris Johnson’s girlfriend or a lookalike.
All he lacks is a few copies of The Big Issue and a plastic cup for tips. Oh, no, wait, he’s holding the cup…
[Update, 28 March 2026: Well, I have now identified the young woman seen with Cummings in that photo. Not Carrie Johnson (as she now is), but Cleo Watson, a government Special Adviser (SpAd) at the time of the photo; she is from an affluent background in Herefordshire, has written 2 novels of the romans-a-clef type, and is now around 35 years of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_Watson.]
Update, 3 November 2019
I very much doubt that Dominic Cummings works or worked for Russian Intelligence…au contraire.
Ian Robert Millard 