Morning music
From the newspapers
“While Labour is favourite to snatch the Northamptonshire seat from the Tories, Sunak’s party faces a battle even to take second place, if local opinion is anything to go by.”
[The Guardian]
Less an ordinary by-election, more a possible template for GE 2024. As I have blogged previously, there is a mood somewhere between anger and apathy, a mood which has become palpable in recent years, recent months.
The electorate now hates and despises the Conservative Party, whose governments now seem totally incompetent and ineffective. However, fake Labour is not much liked or respected either. “Least worst”, if you like.
As the Guardian report about Wellingborough indicates, that electoral mood leads people either to vote Labour as least-worst option, or to protest via Reform UK.
Sadly, no real social-national party is available.
The electorate’s present main emotion is wanting to stamp on the Government, on the misnamed Conservative Party, and on its MPs.
“A BBC editor was hired as an expert witness to help at least 15 Somalian criminals fight deportation – including a vile offender who sexually attacked a deaf teenage girl.
Last year, The Mail on Sunday exposed how Mary Harper, Africa Editor for the World Service, was paid to give expert witness evidence for Somali gang rapist Yaqub Ahmed during his five-year legal battle to stay in the UK.
Now an investigation by this newspaper can reveal Ms Harper has given expert witness evidence in a string of other controversial deportation appeals by Somali offenders – including for another three sex attackers, three drug dealers and a career criminal who spent a decade in British jails.
In one of the most shocking cases, Ms Harper warned that a Somali man who committed a horrific sexual assault on a profoundly deaf 17-year-old girl would be at ‘severely heightened risk’ if he was sent back to Somalia because he had committed a sex crime.
A judge disagreed and threw out his appeal against deportation. Astonishingly, this newspaper has discovered that, 16 months later, the 29-year-old attacker, who the MoS is banned from naming by a court order, has still not been kicked out of Britain and is living with relatives in a council flat.”
[Daily Mail].
Get rid of the invaders. Get rid of any who connive at the migration-invasion of this country.
Talking point: a medical episode
I do not usually blog about any medical conditions that may impact me, but in this case something wider, about the NHS, is illustrated.
When I lived for a year in Kazakhstan (1996-1997), I suddenly became almost deaf at one point. Ear wax. The wife of a Russian colonel with whom I was friendly took me to a local hospital not far from where I lived; I think that it was about a mile up the same long boulevard, Prospekt Lenina.
The treatment was basic but effective. A giant “watering can” was filled with water. I was enjoined to kneel down with my head sideways over a large receptacle. A metal cone about 2 feet deep was then positioned over one of my ears. One nurse held the cone as the other poured the water quickly but steadily into the cone.
The feeling —not pain exactly, but pressure— was almost unbearable for a second. It reminded me of a couple of experiences during scuba dive training. Then it was over, and a plug of ear wax the size of a little finger was floating in the water. Blessed relief. Hearing was restored.
I think —cannot now recall— that either the treatment was free or involved a small fee. I wanted to give the nurses themselves some money, but Ludmilla, the colonel’s wife, told me that that would not be necessary. She was always saving me from “wasting” money (and/or from the odd blonde), as when we were at the “Zilyony Bazaar” (“Green Market”), the Central Market in Almaty, and she would not hear of me having my fortune told by an ancient Kazakh woman sitting on the ground, and who used small animal bones to do her divinations. Ludmilla was a strong character, a contrast to her very easy-going husband.
The next time I had a similar problem, about 2015, the local GP surgery made me an appointment to see a nurse. I did attend, but in fact felt OK by the time I attended, and the nurse said that she could not see any wax anyway. So nothing had to be done.
Well, here we are in 2024. I was informed by the same GP surgery that they “no longer offer” any ear wax removal. A private clinic was recommended. It operates out of a small and quiet NHS hospital in a coastal village about 5 miles from my home. I made the appointment. £15 non-refundable deposit and £65 for the treatment. I could have had it done earlier, but am in fact going next week.
So there it is. Something that used to be free on the NHS now has to be paid for, or no treatment. I am not exactly affluent these days, and even a sum as small as £80 is not nothing (as the Russians say), but one can well imagine that there are many who would struggle to find the fee demanded.
The NHS is less and less useful. Here we are, with GPs earning, in most cases, £100,000-£200,000 a year, monies coming out of all our taxes (even if, like me, you are not employed, you still pay out via VAT etc), and they no longer offer what was a minor but still very useful service. A sign of the way things are going.
The NHS lost its way many years ago. It now seems, often, to be run mainly for the benefit of those employed in it.
It is not just a question of supplying the NHS with more money, or higher staff salaries, bonuses etc. It is a question of making sure that the people are offered services, and that the outcomes are good. Also, that the people needing medical (and dental) help, and their families, are not messed around and ripped-off (eg by having to pay exorbitant parking fees).
At least I myself shall not have to pay for parking next week; having been to that small hospital once before, I know that parking is free, just as in the Good Old Days (or today in the USA, France and I think almost everywhere else).
Tweets seen
Far more than 100,000, in fact.
I may not agree with all of his expressed views, but the David Morgan account is one of the best on Twitter/X.
My view too, more or less.
“What would happen if ‘they’ held a (pro-Israel, pro-Jewish lobby) war, and no-one came?“… Perhaps we shall soon find out.
Drop Piers Morgan into the battlefield space as well, together with all the BBC/Sky (etc) pundits and know-nothings.
https://twitter.com/Sprinter99800/status/1754177470301917371
Demographics. The traditionally Roman Catholic —and Republican— minority [now not a minority, arguably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Northern_Ireland], was about 33% in the early 1970s, but is now well over 40% (42% in 2021 Census).
The Israelis will eventually face a group-karmic result from their present activity.
Stupid smug woman MP doing what the drone-MPs always do, i.e. spout a load of nothing. Fake democracy. As for Gillian Keegan herself— totally useless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Keegan
James Cleverly should be in his element. After all, his “McDegree” was in “Hospitality Management”. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cleverly#Early_life_and_education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belinda_de_Lucy
“I love the smell of [bs] in the morning…“
Not that I disagree with the view shown in the tweet, but Reform UK is only useful to the extent that it can further and deeper push the Conservative Party into the mire.
Sign of the times. People to be arrested for what they might be thinking…
The very concept of “free speech” is heavily under threat already in the UK (mainly from Jew-Zionists and the Israel lobby, and from unthinking police, CPS, and other “official” drones), but now we see that people are being criminalized simply for having it assumed that they are thinking something!
Kafka himself would scarcely believe it…
Sturgeon and her SNP crew deserve to be kicked into the political gutter.
How cheaply people are bought, though! The Scottish electorate was offered and given a few cheap trinkets for its votes: no hospital car park charges, no prescription charges etc. That, and the the promise of a wonderful affluent Independence (which will never happen).
Nothing wrong with free parking and free prescriptions, as such, but look at the wider cost to the Scottish people under Sturgeon’s poundland dictatorship.
Quite similar to, though I think slightly less pretty than, the stylish Edwardian conservatory at our (leased) house in Cornwall over 20 years ago. We also had a wisteria tree growing up a wall inside.
Late tweets
That occurred to me many years ago. Climate change (if occurring, and whether man-made or otherwise) may have as many upsides as downsides. We do not yet know.
Yes. I blogged about it at the time. Obedient rabbits lined up outside Waitrose, masked, and six feet apart (as decided upon by know-nothings “Boris” Johnson and Little Matt Hancock, and enforced by dim, black-clad, Handmaid’s Tale militia), only to rub shoulders once inside. Meanwhile, the pub across the road was open and without any restriction. Etc.
I am not a Champagne-drinker, but I might open a bottle of Krug when Gates goes up the chimney…
“Last year, I woke up to a police officer banging on my door accusing me of posting “hate speech” on Twitter. I asked her what law I’d allegedly broken and she couldn’t name a single one. She had no idea what she was talking about, but told me I’d be arrested if I didn’t stop doing the things she couldn’t even tell me I’d done. Helpful! Needless to say, free speech is nothing more than a relic of the past here in the UK.”
[David Morgan].
Tell me about it! (I am now going to be sentenced “in the mags” (in March, probably)— for having blogged nothing but the truth).
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 