Tag Archives: knives

Diary Blog, 3 February 2025

Morning music

[Soviet painting of the Socialist Realism school, depicting Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin]

Talking point

Arabic might be considered the richest language in words based on its complexity. According to The National – the United Arab Emirates’ leading English-speaking news outlet – on average, a single written word in Arabic has three meanings, seven pronunciations and 12 interpretations.

Not merely a philological curiosity; it means that the meaning and/or intent of the Arab is not necessarily clear-cut.

True, the same word in English can have several meanings (some words can, that is), but I do not think that that is quite the same, mainly because, in English, the meaning is usually obvious from the context. Also, it applies to a relatively few words, not “the average“.

Something for the Arabists in the Foreign Office to consider, if they have not all been purged, and replaced by Zionists (which may well be the case, looking at UK representation in Ukraine and Israel in recent years).

Tweets seen

A few years ago, I posted on the blog my experience, sometime around 1994 or 1995, of having visited the UK’s biological research laboratories at Porton Down, Wiltshire, in company with the then Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK, who later became both an unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine and the director of a biological facility in Ukraine (he was a biochemist/microbiologist by training):

Bill Kristol [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Kristol#Early_life_and_education].

It’s always “them”. Every. Single. Time.

ELON: YOU COULD EASILY POWER THE ENTIRE US WITH SOLAR Elon: “You could actually power the entire United States with a 100 miles by 100 miles of solar.” Joe Rogan: “So you could just pick some dead spot that you fly over, cover that sucker up with solar panels, and charge the whole country, 24/7?” Elon: “Absolutely. We need batteries, but yes. It’s not hard, meaning it’s very feasible. The sun is converting over 4 million tons of mass to energy every second, and it’s no maintenance. That thing just works.” Source: The Joe Rogan Experience, October 2023, @joerogan.

Very interesting from the point of view of American autarky and isolationism.

Reform UK

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/02/reform-uk-can-win-scores-of-labour-seats-in-england-and-wales-says-study

Reform UK can win scores of Labour seats in England and Wales, says study.

Analysis of a mega poll shows Keir Starmer would lose more seats than Tories amid voter discontent with main parties.

Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of ­voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.

With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more ­moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on ­current trends.

Reform would win 76 seats if an election were held now, according to a constituency-by-constituency model. Of those, 60 would be won from Labour, including seats across the “red wall”, as well as in Wales and across the south of England.

However, the analysis also reveals that even a relatively small further swing towards Reform from Labour could see the party pick up another 76 Labour-held seats.

The narrow Labour lead in many seats means it is susceptible in the event of a high turnout among Reform voters, a surge in Reform’s support, or a drop in Labour turnout.

The huge study, commissioned by the Hope Not Hate campaign group, has been carried out by the Focaldata polling company using a mega-poll, or MRP, made up of almost 18,000 voters.

Its analysis of almost 4,000 ­voters currently minded to back Reform found that one in five were “moderate, interventionist” voters who were unlike those who had backed Farage at the last election or supported Ukip or the Brexit party in the past.

[The Observer/Guardian]

So there it is. Reform could end up with 152 seats even on present polling and trending.

As frequently noted, Reform is part of the journey, not the ultimate destination, but this news, overall, is very good.

I only believe stock exchange speculators when they start jumping out of windows.

You may as well ban cars because a few lunatics deliberately or carelessly misuse them to hurt others. There must be literally billions of knives, even of the type(s) mentioned, in the UK.

Most knife crime is done by “the blacks and browns”, followed by other ethnic minorities, yet contemporary msm scribblers, talking heads, Westminster Bubble drones want to get rid of knives (or certain types of knife)?! Get rid of those doing the crimes. Get rid of them.

That Tom Calver person is, apparently, a Times columnist. No wonder people do not want to pay, for content of that sort.

Laughter, the best medicine“…

Over the past few decades, the newspapers have gradually filled with idiots of the Tom Calver type, all trying to present themselves as “serious” commentators. Some, such as pro-Jewish lobby and pro-Israel expenses cheat, Michael Gove, even made it into government.

As for “celebrity” Idris Elba, is there “some chance” that he might be biased? I merely pose the question.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad“, and Britain certainly has gone mad. Not so much the “broad masses” of the population, but mainly the Westminster Bubble, the msm scribblers and talking heads, the ivory tower fake academics etc.

In the words of Katie Hopkins, “Batshit Bonkers Britain“…

The world has changed out of all recognition since 1951.

Talking point

More tweets seen

More music

More tweets

At last.

Look at the odd man out— the “Conservatives”. I think that they are in a death spiral.

Of course, the System MPs (rather than voters) will fight to keep FPTP, but proportional representation is an idea the time for which has finally arrived.

Looking at it another way, it is certainly the aged who still support FPTP, because they have grown up with it, are used to it and many of them are too stupid to see that its time has gone.

As is she…

That is more or less my view, too.

I wonder how many of those in charge are Jewish? In the USA, psychiatry and psychology are heavily-Jewish areas, but I do not know whether that is also the case in the UK.

“I spent the weekend in an act of ‘wild service’ helping to restore nature & maybe helping to heal some if the urban/rural divide.

In an event organised by @StEthelburgas & @letterstoearth_, a group of urbanites came together in the glorious welsh countryside to plant hedges & trees.

The method of planting 100’s of metres of hedges to connect up existing habitats (copses, ponds, areas of scrub etc) cleverly balanced allowing the land to be used for farming whilst giving more connected space for Nature.

The thing I wasn’t expecting though was crossing cultural divides. Witnessing some of the farmers on twitter & in the media who repeat culture war bait about hating both Nature & urbanites in the countryside had coloured my impression of farmers more generally. However, our host Dave was so kind & welcoming to his land & seemed genuinely touched that we had come out to help plant & restore; the jar of homemade honey he gave to each of us was a wonderful reward for a weekend well spent.

Trees add so much to a cityscape or suburb, not only to the countryside.

Just had a look at that Brooker person. Supports the malicious and mainly Jewish “Hope not Hate” cabal, U.S. Democrats, Jess Phillips etc. Oh, and “anti-racism”. Retweets likely State asset and faux-socialist Paul Mason. Seems unclear what, if anything, he knows about the environment (etc).

Sounds like a box-ticker (at best)…

Talking point

National Carrot Cake Day

Carrot cake was introduced in the UK (or reintroduced, having been known from at least the 16thC, probably much earlier) on a large scale in the early 1940s days of food rationing, to use vast stocks of carrots (unrationed) in lieu of sugar. It then became popular, and has remained so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot_cake.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Second_World_War_1939%E2%80%931945.

More tweets

“Carpetbagger Kemi” steering the “Conservatives” straight into a crash landing, or just a crash.

LibDems, as usual, the “dustbin” or “cockroach” party, surviving and even thriving by reason of not being Con or Lab label…

Electoral Calculus suggests that those figures might mean Labour largest party (237 MPs), Reform UK second (148 MPs), Conservatives 125, LibDems 78, Greens 6. So Labour could form a weak minority government with LibDem and SNP (etc) support.

On those figures, the Con Party would not even be the official Opposition, thus weakening their shattered credibility further.

For Reform to be the largest party in terms of seats, its vote will have to increase to at least 27%, if not 28% or more. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html.

Deadhead MPs, An Occasional Series: The Scott Mann Story

A Few Preliminary Words

I have blogged in the past about a few MPs in the present House of Commons who stand out even in that —at best— mediocre ensemble for their stupidity, deadheadedness and general uselessness. My most recent targets have been Kate Osamor MP and Fiona Onasanya MP. I move now to examine Scott Mann, Conservative Party MP for North Cornwall.

Scott Mann has made so little impact in Parliament since he was elected in 2015 that I was entirely unaware of his existence until today, despite the fact that, in the years 2002-2004, I myself lived in the North Cornwall constituency and had a lease of one of the largest country houses there [seen below in a 1940s photograph]

Polapit-Tamar-in-the-1940s.-768x467

The North Cornwall Constituency

The constituency is largely rural, though it contains some fairly small towns (Launceston, Bude, Wadebridge, Padstow); it has a significant, mostly coastal, tourist industry. It was held by the Liberal Democrats from 1992 to 2015. The national collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote in 2015, which continued in 2017, was reflected in North Cornwall. The Conservative, Mann, increased his vote share from 45% in 2015 to 50.7% in 2017. It can now be considered a safe Conservative seat.

Scott Mann

I am not someone who is biased against those who drop out of school or education; after all, I myself did! (and then had to do it all myself later). There are several possible reasons (apart from sheer lack of ability) why someone gets a university degree late or (as in Mann’s case) not at all (and in any case the “degree” label is so devalued these days anyway), but Mann’s background, like those of so many MPs now, does not inspire confidence.

Mann was educated locally before becoming a postman, working out of the sorting office in Wadebridge (Cornwall), the town in which he had been both born and brought up.

In 2007, Mann was elected as a county councillor. In 2016, he resigned after having been criticized for poor attendance. He remained a postman until he became an MP.

Mann employs his girlfriend as “part-time secretary” via Parliamentary expenses (she gets about £30,000 a year for a part-time job). Apparently, they do not live together. He also claims, or has done, for other personal items, such as Amazon Prime [see Notes, below], and for his London accommodation. Well, after all, he lived for years on a modest Royal Mail pay-packet, and the opportunities to make hay, as a county councillor, are far more limited than those open to an MP.

Now Mann has come to public attention as the idiot who says that all knives should be fitted with GPS (!) and that anyone carrying one should be severely punished unless hunting, fishing or shooting! P.G. Wodehouse meets Common Purpose? I have some sympathy with the tweeters who asked “how are you even an MP?”

“Scott Mann admitted his idea was “s—“, but added: “ultimately we do have a problem, and no one’s coming up with any solutions, we need to sort it out.”” [Daily Telegraph]

I fear that the answer to the above question (as to how this idiot ever became an MP) is the same as applies to all other “deadhead” MPs (and they are many) in the Westminster monkeyhouse: they get through a selection procedure which is often a joke, or rigged, then get “elected” in circumstances where only one candidate (sometimes two, very occasionally three) has a realistic chance, because of FPTP voting, dominated by 2 or 3 System parties.

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Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Mann_(politician)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Cornwall_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/150608/mann_scott.htm

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25383/scott_mann/north_cornwall

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/11/nine-mps-used-parliamentary-expenses-fund-amazon-prime-subscriptions/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-47572133

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mp-ridiculed-after-saying-all-knives-sold-in-uk-should-be-fitted-with-gps-trackers-a4091791.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/14/mp-mocked-suggesting-knives-should-fitted-gps-trackers/

The tweet that exposed Scott Mann MP as a deadhead…

The twitterati respond…

Update, 4 December 2019

Unusually, especially for a Cornishman (I would suppose anyway), Mann cannot swim. He nearly drowned in 2016 and had to be saved by fellow-MP Johnny Mercer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mercer_(politician)#Personal_life

Update, 26 February 2020

The General Election 2019 confirmed Mann as MP for North Cornwall. In fact, Mann received the votes of no less than 59.4% of those who bothered to vote, the largest winning percentage in the history of the constituency if one leaves out the unopposed victories of Liberals in 1918 and 1923.

In 2019, Mann managed to more than double his 2017 majority to 14,752; he also doubled his majority in percentage terms. Interestingly, the LibDem candidate’s percentage share (30.8%) fell not only compared to 2017 (36.6%) but even as compared to 2015 (31.2%). Another sign that the LibDems are on the way out even in former strongholds.

Update, 2 March 2020

In February 2020, Mann was appointed PPS to Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education (formerly —and risibly— Secretary of State for Defence), who himself has featured in these pages as a “Deadhead MP”: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-gavin-williamson-story/.

Update, 21 June 2024

Well, less than 2 weeks separate us from Election Day 2024. The Guardian has done a piece on North Cornwall at election time: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/19/field-fork-disillusioned-voters-feeling-pinch-north-cornwall.

Seems that deadhead MP Scott Mann is now odds-on to lose his seat to the LibDems. Five years ago, and in fact until quite recently, I thought that “LibDemmery” was dead, but it has revived as a result of the total incompetence of the present Conservative Party and its ministers and MPs, and may be set to actually get 40, 50, maybe even 60 or 70 seats at the 2024 General Election. Who would have thought it? Unmerited, of course, but unmerited benefit is, after all, so UK 2024…

As for Scott Mann himself…well, my opinion is that, for someone with his very underwhelming academic and work background, he has been very lucky to have had a pretty well-paid near-sinecure as MP for 9 years.

Indeed, in 2022, he was even appointed to a minor ministerial position (as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, or PUS) by Liz Truss. That was after he was “shifted” says his Wikipedia entry (probably edited by Mann himself) in 2021 after a few months being a Government Whip (paid) to being an Assistant Whip (unpaid). Translation: he’s useless.

Mann will now have to forgo the MP salary (now over £90,000 p.a., plus pretty decent expenses), and that also means that the London flat will go, as will (at least as paid “part-time secretary”) his girlfriend.

In fact, MP salaries are not paid while Parliament is not sitting by reason of a General Election, so he may already be feeling the pinch.

Mann could, I suppose, go back to being a postman, a far more socially-useful job than being an MP, at least one of the type Mann has been. Otherwise, unless his friends can find a job for him, he may soon start to learn from personal experience how hard life can be in contemporary Britain for the unemployed, especially at his age (46).

That should not come as too much of a shock to him, though. After all, he himself voted for all of the anti-“welfare” nonsense put through from 2015-2024, and approved of most if not all of the Dunce Duncan Smith nonsense of 2010-2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Mann_(politician)#3rd_term_as_MP_(2019-).

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25383/scott_mann/north_cornwall#profile

https://www.theipsa.org.uk/mp-staffing-business-costs/your-mp/scott-mann/4496

Update, 5 July 2024

Mann came a very poor second at GE 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Cornwall_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s