Morning music
Reform UK
“Reform UK is now only a single percentage point behind Labour – putting their leader Nigel Farage within touching distance of Number 10 at the next election.
New polling data from YouGov, commissioned by Sky News, puts Reform on 24 per cent and Labour on 25 per cent – down a whopping 9 percentage points from their winning vote share at the 2024 UK election.
With the Conservatives on 22 per cent, the UK electorate may be about to usher in a new epoch of three-way party politics.
The new research puts Labour on 26 per cent, Reform UK on 25 per cent, the Tories on 22 per cent, the Lib Dems on 14 per cent and the Greens on 8 per cent.
In general the assessment of Sir Keir’s first six months in office is damning, with only 10 per cent of voters judging that he has been successful and an overwhelming majortity (60 per cent) saying he has been unsuccessful.
Labour insiders are also worried at how the party is hemorrhaging voters to other parties across the political spectrum.
The new data found that they have retained only 54 per cent of supporters from the general election – while 7 percent have defected to the Lib Dems, 6 per cent to the Green Party, 5 per cent to Reform UK and 4 per cent to the Tories.
Meanwhile almost a quarter of those who voted Labour in the polls (23 per cent) either did not say, weren’t sure or had decided not to vote at all.
Labour also faces a problem with elderly voters in light of policies like the removal of the winter fuel allowance, with only 14 per cent of OAPs now saying they would cast their vote for Labour – down eight percentage points from the election.“
[Daily Mail]
Naturally, Reform UK is not very close to me, ideologically. Pro Israel, pro-Jewish lobby, and (relatively) anti-welfare state; pro-finance capitalism.
Still, Reform UK has its uses. To move the “Overton Window”, particularly on issues of immigration, migration-invasion, free speech etc. Above all, to break up the LibLabCon “three main parties” scam which has been in place during my lifetime.
It may well be that all party politics will crumble to dust by reason of some existential catastrophe in the world, such as nuclear war, but that is another matter, arguably.
According to Electoral Calculus [https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html], the figures given, if replicated at a general election, might result in a House of Commons with Labour holding 287 seats, Conservative Party 128, Reform UK 107, LibDems 77, Green Party 4. That would indicate a Lab-LibDem coalition, or some lesser concordat, Labour being about 37 short of an overall majority on those figures.
Tweets seen
The (continuing) “reduction of the Gaza ghetto”…
Either ship him back or just get rid of him (and the rest).
When I was about 21-y-o, I wanted to get rid of hundreds of unwanted books, mostly paperback novels (spy stories and crime thrillers etc). I gave them to the Royal Marsden because I was then living at Reigate Hill in Surrey, only about 8 or 9 miles away from the hospital’s site at Sutton (though the distance seems more because the two areas are so different). I dropped them off at the hospital reception. I hope they at least passed the time for some of the in-patients. I suppose that must have been 1977 or 1978.
It looks, though, as if the lady tweeter noted attends not the Sutton site of the hospital but rather its other and older location, in Kensington (which would make more sense, because she lives not far from my old shooting club, the Kensington Rifle and Pistol Club, now all but defunct and no longer —since the 1990s, if not earlier—in West Kensington). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marsden_Hospital.
“My annual mammo is the best focus group of one you’ll get. Delightful radiographer tells me she’s never voted, they’re all as bad as each other and don’t listen to the NHS.
Furious about the social care plan delay not just as a healthcare worker but as the mother of a special needs adult who needs it. Her daughter volunteers in a food bank when she can, bless her.
3 disgraces in this story alone – underpaid NHS worker (my words not hers), crap & ludicrously expensive social care, food banks. I say I might have an offer you like and care passionately about fixing social care. And the rest. I also think doctors would run the NHS better, pen-pushers and deadbeat hospital CEOs, often from industry or politics, should be blocked off.“
All right. Some good points, but was she saying all that when she was married to a Conservative MP and Whip (until a decade ago)? I do not know, but I doubt it. She was (and still is? I wonder…) a passionate supporter of the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George (Gideon) Osborne, whose government of nasty nonsense, 2010-2015, imposed so-called “austerity” (for the poor) and spending cuts which permanently crippled this country in every way.
As for “food banks”, they scarcely existed until 2010. Only on a tiny scale, anyway. Another result of “Conservative” Party policies 2010-2015.
The Fiona Syms tweeter should think about why the Conservative Party presently stands at 22% in the opinion polls, 2 points lower than at GE 2024, despite the evident hopeless incompetence and unpleasantness of the “Labour” government of “Tel Aviv Keith” Starmer and his little Labour Friends of Israel cabal.
People have not forgotten the 14 years of truly bad “Conservative” government 2010-2024, finishing off with the government of the little Indian money-juggler, Sunak; and now the “Conservatives” are “led” by a political joke (again), a Nigerian woman who only came to the UK at age 16, albeit that she spent a day or two here after her birth (in London).
Having said that, it is clear that Labour (too) is finished. After a week or two of Starmer-Labour misgovernment, I blogged as much, at which time the msm were sycophantically applauding Starmer (some stupid woman scribbler in, I think, the Guardian, even said that she found herself attracted to Starmer sexually!— Well, Henry Kissinger did say that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac“…).
More tweets seen
What stands out there for me is how only among those 65+ years of age is voting Conservative anywhere near the level required to ground a Conservative Party government. 35%. Not very impressive anyway, but dropping to only 25% among those 50-64 y o, and to only 16% among those aged 25-49 before almost disappearing among those aged 18-24.
It might be argued that those aged below 65 y o might well change their views when they age further (just as it was said by Soviet anti-Christian propagandists in the pre-1989 period that “only old women now attend Russian Orthodox churches“, but that was countered by those who noted that there seemed always to be another generation of old women at church…).
Yes, those now aged below 65 may well be more inclined to vote Conservative when they reach 65+, but in my opinion the numbers will never be higher, or even as high, as they now are.
If the percentage of those 65+ voting Conservative is now 35% or so, by 2029 that might easily decline to 30%, and lower thereafter. The same slide might also be seen, and probably will be seen, lower down the age scale. If the present 18-24 y o generation only vote Conservative Party at around 5%, that will almost certainly increase, but maybe only slightly, over the years to come. To what extent is hard to pinpoint, but maybe by only about 5 points in each coming generation, so at age 65+ maybe to about 20%.
Admittedly speculative.
That is assuming that the present voting and political system will still be here in 2060, 2040, or even 2030. Or the present world as we know it…
More music
More tweets seen
Until 6 months ago, though I already predicted on the blog that Starmer-Labour would be useless, I did not think that this government would or even could equal in infamy the totally s**t governments of 2010-2024. Well, I was wrong in that last. Starmer and his crew are as bad as, or worse than, any of the “Conservative” governments of 2010-2024.
Talking point
Talking point
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/saba-poursaeedi-lost-my-job/
I think that this comes within the category “shocking but not surprising”…
Yes. All true. However…where was Toby Young, and where was the “Free Speech Union”, when I was wrongfully (and, as it later turned out, unlawfully) disbarred in 2016, as a result of a concerted campaign by the Jew-Zionist lobby, specifically the overlapping “UK Lawyers for Israel” [“UKLFI”] and “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”]?
Likewise, where were the “Free Speech Union” and Toby Young when I was subjected to a “criminal” trial over my free speech rights, and this blog?
An example of 2025 craziness
“A law student is suing Cambridge University for discrimination after he failed his PhD and delayed his career working as a barrister.
Jacob Meagher is seeking ‘substantial damages’ from the world famous institution, alleging he was the subject of disability discrimination and victimisation following the failure of his law PhD.
Mr Meagher also claimed that his oral ‘viva voce’ interview, where he was questioned about his thesis by two examiners, caused ‘significant damage’ to his health.
He ended up failing the examination, meaning he missed out on a opportunity to take up a tenancy at a ‘particular set of chambers’ and therefore ‘suffered a substantial loss of anticipated earnings’.
Outlining the claim, the judge said: ‘Mr Meagher…is a student at the University of Cambridge…undertaking a PhD in law.
‘[He] did not successfully pass his final viva voce examination of his doctoral thesis.
Court documents also stated that the University’s Disability Resource Centre had recommended that at the viva, examiners follow a set of guidelines, produced as part of a Student Support Document (SSD), to help him.
These included asking specific rather than general questions, using the active, rather than the passive, voice and allowing him pauses and breaks after questions…to allow him to ‘mentally retrieve the words or information that he needed in order to answer’.“
[Daily Mail]
How on Earth does that litigant think he is going to survive at the Bar (unless he does no court work at all) if he cannot endure being verbally challenged, and needs time “to mentally retrieve the words or information that he [needs] in order to answer“?
You need a thick skin at the Bar. I should know. I was a practising barrister, in court almost daily, from 1993-1996 in London (often at the High Court, as well as in County Courts and both “the mags” and, less often, Crown Courts), and during 2002-2008 based in Exeter (though travelling widely across the UK and beyond).
Being put on the spot by a judge, especially a High Court judge (I was never at the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court), can be a chastening experience even if the judge is (as most High Court judges are) reasonably courteous.
Woe betide the barrister who is unprepared, or whose instructing solicitors have fallen down on their job. I usually managed to put up a good show, or at least a good front, but I have seen other barristers fall silent, unable to say a word, or flounder helplessly; even, in one case (in Camberwell Magistrates’ Court, before a particularly severe Stipendiary Magistrate —the people called District Judges now—) actually whimper and almost burst into tears (it was a man, too…).
At one time, a barrister who was disabled, even physically, was at a huge disadvantage in trying to get into any chambers. Now, it is arguable that things have gone to the other extreme.
When I was in provincial chambers in Exeter, from 2002-2008 , there was a girl Bar pupil from Northern Ireland. She seemed pleasant and was afterwards offered a tenancy (after which she became markedly less pleasant). The point, though, was that she had a bad speech impediment. In my opinion, the Northern Irish accent is hard enough to understand, let alone when the speaker has a speech impediment. She did get some criminal and family work, though; low-level stuff.
In the end, that Northern Irish person gave up the Bar entirely (I was told) and returned to her native Ulster. At least there they were, presumably, able to understand what she said.
Worth watching.
What a ridiculous monkeyhouse Westminster is! Look at thick-as-two-short-planks Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves (“Rachel from Accounts”) etc, all making noise, exchanging remarks, and laughing like badly-behaved schoolchildren. Then there is stupid Liz Kendall, sitting there like a nodding dog, and about as credible.
The mainstream media milieu is a cesspit. I was just reading about some person whose name, though I had seen it somewhere, in the back of my mind, conveyed little to me. A few years younger than me (I am now 68), he has died, and even years ago was looking at least a decade or more older than me, looking at photos in the newspapers. In fact, make that 20+ years older.
Apparently, that person had, at one time, in the 1990s, been spending £4,000 a week on cocaine, and drinking 4-5 bottles of vodka every day!
You could double or treble that sum to get the same value in the money of 2025.
That tells me that such System-approved msm types are both hugely over-remunerated and totally decadent. Britain needs a thoroughgoing cultural purge even more than it needs a political purge. Hitler-level. Stalin-level. Biblical-level.
Well, there it is. Switzerland has officially lost its senses.
Didn’t Rudolf Steiner say something about how the Goetheanum (near Basel) would be devastated by war? Cannot quite remember. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetheanum.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 