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Saturday quiz

This week, political journalist John Rentoul scored one of his rare victories over me: his score was 6/10, mine only 5./10 (and two of those were guesses). My correct answers were numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, and 8.

Talking point

It is rare for me to see the tweets of ex-officer and military-history writer Adrian Weale; even rarer for me to agree with any. Still, credit where due; I saw two yesterday (including 2 retweets) with both of which I agreed…

The first such tweet (and retweet) seen (referring to the effective dismissal of an academic for speaking sense about Jason Arday and similar matters):

See also:

The second tweet (and retweet), which also refers to the Jason Arday nonsense at Cambridge:

[“I think what’s happened is that, for a variety of reasons, the academy has lost the sense of what it is there for, which is to act as the guardian and proponent of best intellectual practice.

Much of that is because of the Gramscian ‘march through the institutions’ which has taken place over the last 80 years or so, which has had a devastating effect. Importing Marxian and Neo-Marxian dogma into the academy was guaranteed to dumb it down catastrophically and has left us, in the social sciences at least, with a self-marking come-as-you-are party for some of the most illiberal, narcissistic, corrupt perverts and weirdos ever to obtain academic tenure.”]

Britain in 2026

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/crime-spree-pensioner-kicked-robbery-37605890

“A sacked care worker broke into his former patients’ homes to rob them and kicked a blind wheelchair user in spate of robberies days after he lost his job.

Ediongseyene Essien broke into the homes of four elderly and disabled victims the day after he was suspended from work, even smashing down the back door of a petrified couple in their 80s to steal their money. Weeks later, Essien pretended to still be another ex-patient’s carer before kicking him to force his way into the home.

Laura Atherton, prosecuting, said the occupant, a wheelchair user and former patient of the defendant, was in bed when Essien gained entry by using a key stored in a coded safe outside the property. He subsequently took the man’s bank card, which was later used to make a series of purchases at Bargain Booze and L7 Village Market in Fairfield.

Earlier that same day, Essien was said to have called at the home of an 88 year old woman and her 85 year old husband, also a wheelchair user, at around 3pm and let himself in before departing. He returned at 9pm and began “ringing the doorbell and waving through the window” before coming back roughly 20 minutes later, at which point he kicked at the back door until he succeeded in smashing a glass pane.

The female occupant was left screaming for help as a result, with Essien having stolen the man’s wallet, which contained £200, before fleeing. In a statement read to the court on her behalf, she described how the ordeal had “completely devastated their lives”. She added: “We welcomed this man into our house and treated him with nothing but kindness and trust. To have this trust betrayed is heartbreaking.

“The feeling of absolute helplessness in that moment was truly awful. My home, which I loved and cherished, is no longer my safe place. Due to our age, disabilities and severe mobility issues, we are unable to leave the house. We are trapped in the very place this trauma occurred. He robbed an elderly couple of their peace, comfort and safety in their final years.”

Essien was arrested in relation to this series of burglaries before being released on bail, after which he turned up at the home of a blind cerebral palsy sufferer in Edge Hill shortly after 2pm on May 15. Having assumed that someone repeatedly pressing his doorbell was one of his carers, the occupant made his way to his front door in his wheelchair before explaining that he had cancelled his scheduled visits for that day.

Essien insisted he had been “sent to check on” the man and proceeded to force his way inside, kicking the victim out of the way as he did so. He then rushed in and took £90 in cash before fleeing the property.

This victim described in his own statement how he had “not slept properly since” and was now “very nervous and anxious”. With his aunt, whom he had previously lived with for 30 years, having passed away in March of this year, he added: “I just hope he doesn’t get away with it. I’m very wary of new carers. I’m scared he will come back.”

At approximately 5pm the same day, Essien then targeted a “highly vulnerable” woman who was “small in stature” as she made her way home after visiting a nearby shop.

He snatched her handbag, which contained £40 in cash and her bank cards, “forcefully pulling it from her grasp” when she attempted to fend him off with her walking stick.

Her shopping bag was torn during the struggle, sending its contents scattering across the pavement. She told the court in her statement: “I’ve lost any independence I had before. I used to go out to the local shop and attend various community activities.

“As a result of this, I’ve felt very anxious at even the thought of going out on my own. I have to ask staff in my supported accommodation to go out to the shop for me. I’m a very vulnerable person. I feel that the person has seen me as an easy target, which is why he’s attacked me. I fear someone will see me as an easy target again.

Essien admitted two counts of robbery, four of burglary and a charge of fraud. Appearing via video link to HMP Liverpool, he was seen holding his head in his hands before he was jailed for eight years and handed restraining orders which will ban him from contacting his victims for the next decade.“

A useless and in fact dangerous low-IQ parasite, let into the UK by “dirty democratic politicians”, in Hitler’s well-known description.

The judge was told that, upon serving a third of his sentence, the defendant would probably be deported. Maybe so (I wonder, though), but I say don’t send it back to Africa. Put it up against a wall. In public.

We, the ever-dwindling real people of these islands, have to retake control, whatever it takes.

Tweets seen

I wonder what today’s equivalent would be. I certainly doubt that reality has much crept in, reading how the trashier parts of the Press (Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Star etc) are enthusiastically advising their (mostly pensioner-) readers about plans to introduce conscription and food rationing by reason of the “Russian threat” (which only exists because UK governments have been provoking Russia since at least 2014 —and, arguably, since 1991).

MAFF was the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food until 2002.

Officialdom , the Westminster monkeyhouse, and the msm in the UK seem to think (or pretend to the public) that fighting a war against Russia (a Russia with ~7,000 nuclear weapons, apart from anything else) and when the UK these days scarcely has an army, navy, or air force, will be a slightly updated version of the Battle of Britain, the Normandy Landings, El Alamein, or even the Western Front circa 1916.

Regular readers of the blog know my views on this: take away Zelensky’s ricebowl, focus on improving relations with Russia, leave NATO, arrange for cost-price gas and maybe oil from Russia, and find in Russia a massive market for UK goods and services (even more so if the EU states and Americans continue to apply punitive sanctions against Russia).

Britain still has a nuclear deterrent with maybe 150 submarine-launched missiles available (altogether), and that (once the Americans are shown the door) can be, for the first time in decades, a truly independent deterrent, akin to the French force de frappe. A backstop. Enough.

Late tweets

[“One evening in the biting winter cold of 2014, I went down to Maidan with my Ukrainian translator and her mother. It was packed, lively like a festival. “What do you think of all this?” My translator asked me as her mother waved a large Ukrianian flag above her head.

“It won’t end well.” I replied.

After covering Libya, Syria, you get to know the political movements that will only lead a country to ruin. An alliance of foreign money, oligarchs and ultra nationalist extremists was clearly in that bracket.

I asked my translators lovely mother why she supported it. She said something along the lines of “Europe is richer than Russia. And I like going on holiday there.” She had little magnets of the places she’d been to on her fridge. London, Paris, Spain. They were sold a dream of a bright European future.

I was there when a statue of Lenin was pulled down in the late evening. With a truck and some chains. Down it fell and people cheered as it shattered on the ground. I picked up a piece. I think I’ve still got it at home. But most Ukrainians didn’t want their statues pulled down. It wasn’t what it was supposed to be about. Or rather it was. But they didn’t know it.

The East rose. Crimea lost. More statues pulled down. And eight years later, the real slaughter began.

The ukrainians I know have already fled abroad. Those who claim to support Ukraine want them to stay and die.

The dream turned to ashes by the inevitable hammer blow of political reality and great nation politics. People manipulated and left for dead for a misplaced chess move on the geopolitical map.

And those who speak sense are silenced. Sometimes fatally. They’ll silence the wise in order to manipulate the politically illiterate. Then give them flags to wave. And nations fall.

Blame whoever you want. But it’s a hell of tragedy. Other nations beware.”]

[“Decisions are not being thought through”

NATO lacks strategic thinking, according to statements made in Europe. The organization is not prepared to take responsibility for the inevitable retaliatory strikes by Russia against Ukraine, believes Professor Glenn Diesen of the University of Southeast Norway.

“What is the point of escalating the conflict by striking Russian civilian infrastructure, when Moscow far surpasses Kyiv in terms of air power, and Ukraine does not even have adequate air defense? These decisions are not being thought through… The NATO elite always goes from euphoria during reckless escalation to crocodile tears when a retaliatory strike is necessary,” he wrote on social media.”]