Well worth reading: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8715881/DOMINIC-SANDBROOK-Britain-feet.html
“Wouldn’t it be better to focus on shielding the vulnerable, instead of shackling the entire population? And above all, the six-million-dollar question: is this insistent nannystatism really the only way?
A few weeks ago I wrote in these pages about my recent visit to Sweden. Right from the start, the Swedes had no lockdown, no masks and no curfews. When I visited, I found the restaurants and bars packed.
The shops were a little quieter than usual, but still busy enough. Life, in other words, was going on. Mere anecdotal evidence, some people said. And it’s true that back in the spring, the Swedes made a complete mess of shielding their care homes, which drove up their fatality rates.
Even so, just look at the facts. Without imposing sweeping restrictions, and by trusting people to behave responsibly, the Swedes have avoided a second surge. Their figures for Covid deaths in the last three days were 2, 1 and 4 respectively.”
“They’ve also avoided the worst of the economic damage. According to figures released this week, the Swedes actually made a £4bn budget surplus last month. By contrast, our most recently monthly figure was a deficit of £27bn.”[Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Mail]
Now it appears that Boris-idiot is intending to spend £100 BILLION or more on useless testing. This is going beyond mere incompetence. It is getting to the point where Boris-idiot and the Cabinet of Clowns can be regarded collectively (with the “scientific advisers, as well) as an existential danger to the British people. They should be put down, pro bono publico, starting with Boris-idiot.
This stupid and interfering government is also intending to create a force of busybody “marshals”: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8715109/Social-media-users-mock-Boris-Johnsons-army-Covid-marshals.html.
I sincerely hope that those busybodies get a good kicking.
Ha ha! Was just reading some of the Daily Mail readers’ comments, and I predict that the new toothless Handmaid’s Tale militia busybodies will face resistance. One reader said that they might end up upended in a wheelie bin! That, in turn reminded me of a incident from the mid-1980s.
When one of the Soviet ballet or dance ensembles visited the UK in the 1980s (I forget which one it was, out of several tours with which I had peripheral contact at the time via people I knew), the large group visited a number of Northern cities.
One day, a few of the main dancers were in, I think, Liverpool, along with their interpreter and their “Ministry of Culture” (KGB) minder. At one point, local “youths” decided to push over some wheelie bins and dustbins. Observing this, the KGB man asked an English person also there, “may I pliss do something about zis?” and, with that, approached the main youth, who was initially truculent until lifted up bodily and smashed into some more bins, with much clattering. End of the nuisance…
These new “marshals” remind me of the “PCSO” “police” (who are not actually police but sort-of look like them, and get paid about half as much). When the Jewish pack were trying to get me into trouble one way or the other, several years ago (in fact, I think that this particular incident happened in 2014 or 2015), the police were pressed into service, and a PCSO actually appeared at my now-humble home. A blonde woman from somewhere like Yorkshire transplanted to Hampshire, she had clearly not only failed to become a real policewoman but also dropped out of the Charm School.
The woman claimed that the Metropolitan Police wanted to speak to me and that my telephone number was required. I gave it to her. She wrote it down. I was told that the Metropolitan Police officer would be calling me at a certain time late that afternoon. In fact, there was no call.
The PCSO waste of space reappeared the following day, furious that I had (deliberately, she alleged!) “given her the wrong number” (I had not), and she said that if necessary she would call for a (real) police officer to come. I reiterated that she had been given the right number. I repeated it. The thick bitch checked. She had written down two repeated digits, but the right number had three repeated digits. The charmless bitch had written down the number wrongly but preferred to pretend that I had deliberately misled her.
The “Metropolitan Police officer” never did call me. There was a kind of ending to the story, though. I saw the aforesaid bitch in Waitrose some weeks later, buying some kind of “free-from” health food snack bars. I stood there until she turned around and saw me. She jumped! Ha ha! She maybe thought that I was about to assault her or worse. Let’s hope so…
I feigned amiability and said hello. She replied, dully. The woman actually then had the effrontery to ask me whether “anything happened” in relation to her visit to me. I thus had the opportunity to reply, “No; never heard anything. I expect that the police must have made a mistake.” Touché…
I did see the bitch once more, again some weeks later, after hours of heavy rain had just stopped. She was “walking the beat” down a side-road in the nearby town. Right next to her was a large and deep puddle, about 20 feet long. I had an unholy desire to drive and indeed roar past her, depositing a tsunami of rainwater all over her, but good sense prevailed (sadly…but she would either have recognized me or got my number). I took another way around.
In the following months, the Hampshire Police made most if not all of the PCSOs in my part of the county redundant for costs reasons, so she was probably chucked onto the dole. I hope that she was. Power-mad bitches like that should not be irritating and harassing members of the public and trying to intimidate them. Maybe she will apply to become one of Boris-idiot’s “Covid marshals”. If so, I hope that I see her patrolling after another cloudburst. I am less patient these days.
Tweets seen today
[redacted] him!
Not only Peter Hitchens! He, however, has a platform on the msm.
…and that is precisely why a “Conservative” Prime Minister can elevate a former Revolutionary Communist Party member, and defender of IRA terror bombing, to the House of Lords. Power above principle (or even decency).
Musical interlude
David Vance
I never had much time for David Vance, the minor politico from Northern Ireland, who has now been “suspended” from Twitter (probably expelled in reality, like me, Katie Hopkins and thousands of others).
Vance is an unpleasant man who was rude to me on at least two occasions. Probably a minor freemason, certainly pro-Israel and pro-Jewish lobby. A typical Northern Irish/Scottish “kosher nationalist” or Unionist, in short.
These “kosher nationalists” never seem to see that, no matter how much they proclaim their misguided devotion to Jewry and Israel, the Jewish element hates them anyway, as do those dupes of the Jews known as “antifa” (who often, and risibly, tend to be both pro-Jew and anti-Israel!).
Having said that, Vance’s expulsion is the latest attack on free speech on Twitter.
The funny thing is that the anti-free speech types on Twitter (Jews, “antifa” etc) fail to see that their tweeting accomplishes nothing in the real socio-political world. Not only are tweets ephemeral but people tweet in little bubbles or, as often said, “echo-chambers”. I see the same people tweeting pretty much the same things to each other that I have seen for a decade.
I repost tweets on my blog because it is a quick way of making points or taking the pulse, but tweets have no real weight, politically.
The tweet below by one “Dave Monk” (must be a misprint: that is “Dave Spart”, nicht wahr?) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_themes_and_in-jokes_in_Private_Eye] is fairly typical. Everyone not of his exact viewpoint must be “deplatformed” if not actually prosecuted or executed.
[Update, 2 February 2022: Well, “Dave Spart”/Dave Monk has himself now been “deplatformed”! Point proven, I think. The Twitter wannabee revolution has devoured (another of) its own children. “I’m lovin’ it!“]
That “@TheRealGrumpDad” idiot, above, like many of the same sort, fails to see that his formula “you have free speech but not freedom from the consequences of that speech” could be said of, say, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China etc. Yes, you can say whatever you like, but say the wrong thing and there will be “consequences” (imprisonment, even execution).
“GrumpDad” is not alone in his defective reasoning. A law lecturer from East Anglia, one Paul Bernal (a descendant of the part-Jew Marxist scientist J.D. Bernal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Bernal), often tweets in similar vein. Pathetic.
Those who rub their hands in glee as dissenting voices are censored or expelled from, eg, Twitter, seem not to realize that, if all peaceful means are taken away, people will turn to less peaceful means. In other words, there are “consequences” to actions as well.
Brexit
As I have said previously, I favour exit from the EU and have done so for a long time, well over a decade, but the fact is that several prime ministers of the UK have messed it up. That applies especially to Theresa May and Boris-idiot.
I may have been mistaken on one point: I thought that the UK would in reality stay under the EU’s rule even if the UK left the EU formally. Some kind of “agreement”, so little change on the ground (akin to the past year). To my surprise, it now seems that the UK might really leave, and under conditions of chaos and confusion. We read of government contingency plans involving the use of troops to contain urban discontent if there are shortages of medicine and even food.
In the immortal words of that little moneygrubbing MP, Johnny Mercer, this is shaping up to be be a complete “shitshow”.
Add to the above Brexit confusion the “virus” absurdities of this government, the continuing migration-invasion, and the general economic slide (including the slide in confidence and currency) and you have the basic conditions for a situation in a year or two which is, in principle, very favourable for social nationalism.
Asset-buying
The very wealthy are buying assets. Confidence in the pound sterling is waning. Gold continues to appreciate in value, and I have noticed that, compared to 10 or even 5 years ago, large estates are not readily available now for any money. For example, Rightmove had numerous large Scottish estates for sale at any one moment during the years 2010-2018 or 2019, but now there are few. Any that come onto the market go quickly.
The same is true of England. Valuable real estate is being bought up now, as a hedge. For example, one place, a house with 40 acres and a sea view, and only a mile from my own humble home, has just sold for £8.5 million, having been up for sale for weeks only. Another, about 5 miles away, seems to have sold for about £6 million.
These otherwise unremarkable incidents are all signs of a lack of confidence in both cash and equities.
Meanwhile, we are in the hands of people whose incompetence is boundless, led by a total idiot who has somehow been elevated to the position and rank of a prime minister, but who is incapable of fulfilling that role with even modest competence.
Boris-idiot is now planning to spend £100 BILLION (!) on entirely useless daily or weekly testing of the entire population! For a disease or condition which is now killing only 1 person out of thousand upon thousand of the population! It is madness. As said before, is this just total incompetence, or is it a form of conspiracy and treason?
Late tweets
[above: the satirical singer-songwriter, Alison Chabloz, at the piano]
Ian Robert Millard 