Tag Archives: Milton Friedman

Diary Blog, 17 August 2025

Morning music

[Nymphenburg]

Talking point

I was just looking at a blog post from 2017, which received a couple of hits yesterday. I think that its message is still correct in 2025:

Tweets seen

Wait a minute…I may have hit upon a use for some of the unwanted elements of our present society (with apologia to Marx).

Talking point

Another old blog post, this one from 2018, which had a few hits this morning:

More tweets seen

Israeli war crimes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/17/israeli-military-preparing-to-expel-gaza-city-residents-as-baby-in-tent-among-those-killed-in-latest-attacks

Jew-Zionist organizations and individuals in the UK, and non-Jews who are pro-Israel (e.g. Starmer-stein and his misgovernment) are supporting Israeli Jews and the Israeli state in what is happening, and has been happening, in Gaza and the West Bank. They are complicit; therefore they are guilty.

More music

Talking point

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/16/nigel-farage-adviser-uk-would-be-better-off-if-it-had-not-fought-nazi-germany

An adviser used by Nigel Farage and others in Reform UK to boost their social media popularity has suggested that Britain would be better off had it stayed neutral in the second world war instead of fighting Nazi Germany.

Jack Anderton, who ran Farage’s hugely successful TikTok account before helping Luke Campbell become the Reform mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, also said the UK should not support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression.

Alternative history is interesting; if Britain had not fought in WW1 and WW2, it would not have had to rely on America for economic support, and it would have had the independence to act accordingly. Britain could have developed India, Cyprus, Fiji, Malta, Saint Lucia, Seychelles, the Bahamas, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand. In the coming meritocracy, perhaps Britain could regain some of these nations.”

The same post also argues against providing support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion: “We are sending billions of pounds (that we cannot afford) to prop up a country that we have no allegiance to. Russia is not our enemy, they have not attacked Britain.

[Guardian]

Good to see that some young people are starting to think outside the box.

Au contraire. The young man is on the right track.

As the opinion polls presently stand, that Hollinrake idiot [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Hollinrake] has every chance of losing his seat to Reform UK. As to the lady tweeter, she seems to think that a pointless and terrible war (on the Western front etc) which destroyed half of Europe and lost us the British Empire, as well as making Brits poverty-stricken for 15-20 years, was something good.

More tweets seen

99% bad…

More music

More tweets

There really is something disgusting about all the System “shills”, such as Jukes, ganging up on Lucy Connolly, an ordinary provincial woman without wealth or power, overwhelmed by the fake “counter-terror” juggernaut running her down and crushing her.

Yes, she probably did squirm and try to escape her unmerited fate by inventing this or that story, but she pleaded guilty (I think mistakenly) and, instead of issuing her with a conditional discharge and allowing her to return home (no doubt grateful and chastened) to her unwell husband and two little daughters, the legal system or “justice” system (?) imprisoned her for not far short of 3 years (even if it now seems that she may soon be released after having served just over 1 year).

Erudite, narrowly but expensively educated appeal judges have pronounced upon her, dissected her legally, and put System control above individual justice.

Lucy Connolly can, in my view, certainly be regarded as a victim of the emergent UK police state and what the Chinese used to call “running dogs” of the same. There is something of bullying and concerted victimization about the way this woman has been treated.

It is easy to be wise after the event(s). Lucy Connolly should, of course, have refused to be interviewed by police, or given a “no comment” interview. I do not know whether she had a solicitor from the beginning.

I can see (based on what I think were the facts) that she was not well-advised. In the event, she was not (I believe) even given bail pending trial; if so, a ridiculous, very harsh, totally unnecessary, and totally political or politically-aware decision.

It is clear that Starmer-stein’s Cabinet were all panicking a year ago. They could see the possibility of their beloved vision of a multikulti “non-racist”, non-white England or Britain literally going up in smoke, and in flames. Hence the Draconian penalties visited upon some unfortunate and (as the “liberal” Observer/Guardian etc types no doubt saw with enjoyment) plebeian protesters and tweeters.

Well, the protests were, temporarily, stopped, but the migration invasion has continued, and at a pace even greater than in 2024.

What has gone up in flames, along with the multikulti “refugees welcome” fantasies of the likes of Jukes, Jonathan Portes, Zoe Gardner etc, is the popularity of the Starmer-stein government of incompetent “Friends of Israel”. Only about 20% of potential voters at the next general election are presently intending to vote Labour, and I doubt whether that will increase by very much.

The above clowns typify the System view of the Ukraine conflict. EU bureaucrat/politico Verhofstadt wants EU taxpayers to fund Zelensky’s war and shambolic dictatorship endlessly, while that Greek wants EU states to take an active part in the war, sending troops to fight there.

Some people in Western Europe just have a death wish.

Incidentally, as far as British troops are concerned, how long does would-be statesman and pathetic incompetent, Starmer, imagine that our soldiers would last, even under the “peacekeepers” label? Not long if and when any ceasefire ends. The Kiev regime is losing 1,000-3,000 soldiers (pressganged civilians kidnapped off the streets) daily (killed, badly wounded, or captured). Britain’s whole —front-line and battle-ready— Army seems to number about 15,000. If that. About 2-6 weeks’ supply, then…

Starmer is a complete idiot to want to get further involved in Ukraine, a fake state, completely corrupt, and with which the UK has effectively no commonality of history or interest.

Stray thought

It made me laugh to read that the ludicrous one-time, would-be, Scottish “national leader”, Nicola Sturgeon, is thinking of relocating to, of all places, London, the centre of the (SNP fantasy) “Sassenach” oppressors! Reminded me of when stupid Honecker eventually fled from the collapsed DDR to, of all places, hated post-“fascist” Chile, and was granted asylum there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Honecker.

More music

[All Souls College, Oxford]

Diary Blog, 14 March 2025, with latest opinion polling and comment on the Runcorn and Helsby by-election

Morning music

Starmer-stein is out of his depth. Useless in every way. Personally, I do not care whether Trump comes to the UK or not, but (as with Tony Blair and others) it is just pathetic to see what poodles British prime ministers are when it comes to the USA (and Israel).

[“No, wait! I voted Labour in 2024!” cried the poor mug as Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves, and Keir Starmer-stein ordered the execution by stealth of the old, sick, and disabled]

Not sure I agree with all of that, but certainly agree about the net zero and mass immigration aspects. I wonder whether Matt Goodwin is positioning himself to become leader of Reform UK and, therefore, potentially, Prime Minister by 2028 or 2029?

As to the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, it is now surely Reform UK’s to lose, looking at the utterly disastrous Starmer-stein Labour Friends of Israel misgovernment. I have already covered the by-election on the blog:

Incidentally, Lord Ashcroft or his employees should learn to spell: “likelihood” is not spelled “likelyhood“.

That opinion poll is interesting, though. Labour support in the constituency seems to have almost halved since the 2024 General Election. In a way, however, the fact that a third of Runcorn and Helsby voters are still inclined to stick with fake “Labour” despite both the thuggishness of the former MP and the actions of Starmer-stein’s useless and unpleasant government says something, arguende, about the intelligence or nous of the average voter!

The fact is that the Conservative Party has no chance in that constituency anyway, so the way for Con or former Con supporters to stick it to Labour and/or Starmer-stein is to vote Reform.

As for disenchanted Labour or former Labour voters, they can protest against Starmer-stein’s and Rachel Reeves’ (and Liz Kendall’s) utter betrayal of everything for which “Labour” used to stand by voting Reform or, failing that, or if they cannot countenance that, by just staying home, abstaining from voting.

Talking point

A revolution without firing squads is not worth much” [Lenin]

More tweets seen

Incidentally, I just saw a Daily Mirror report about Kiev-regime drone strikes on Moscow yesterday or overnight. It included the classic error that one Ukrainian drone had hit an oil refinery near Moscow, “only 55 miles” from Putin’s palace on the Black Sea. Well, the nearest place —let alone palace— on the Black Sea from Moscow is about 865 miles away. The “British” msm is just full of absolute bs.

I agree with that tweet, but I also agree with this:

At present, the UK is importing about a million so-called “legal” immigrants every year, as well as 50,000-100,000 illegal ones. There is no indication that Starmer-stein, “Rachel from Accounts” Reeves, or Liz Kendall see any of that as the existential peril for our society that it is.

As for Rachel Reeves’ idea of building millions of hutches for people (many of them migrant-invaders): first of all, who will build those “houses”, in a situation where even poorly-trained artisans are in short supply? Secondly, few will be able to afford to buy or even rent the dwellings. Most will be subsidized. How will that save government money, or much stimulate the general economy?

More pathetic System-drone bs, in other words.

That photo of Lewis must be 12-15 years out of date. He is now a shambling wreck, both physically and mentally.

See also:

Berke? Woolf? (((****)))…

The above half-dozen tweets all relate to the libel action won by the tweeter, James Wilson, an academic from the North East of England, who won against a swamp of dishonest Jew-Zionist lawyers and perjuring or “unreliable” witnesses (every last one a Jew-Zionist).

Simon Myerson was a witness for the defence in that case. Myerson, a barrister based in Leeds, was later sacked as a part-time judge for other reasons, at least officially (his malicious and vituperative tweets and other social media comments). In the case in question here, Myerson’s testimony was given very little, if any, weight by the trial judge.

As for the defendants, one, a vicious pro-Israel social media troll called Pete Newbon, committed suicide before the trial had ended, he having failed to inform his wife that the libel case was happening, and that their family home might be on the line.

Another defendant, one Cantor, was (as it appears) either negligently or, quite likely, deliberately misled by the Jew-Zionist solicitor and Israel-lobby political fanatic Mark Lewis. It seems that Cantor will now lose his family home by reason of Lewis’s default(s), in order to satisfy the court-ordered legal costs of the successful claimant, Wilson. Not that I personally have the slightest sympathy for Cantor or any similar individual.

I do not know, but it seems not unlikely that, the defendants or surviving defendants having now a legal obligation to pay Wilson’s costs (though they are but a fraction of those that would have been claimed by the lawyers of the defendants, had they succeeded at trial), those surviving defendants will almost certainly end up suing Lewis and probably also Patron Law, the mainly Jewish law firm (based in a mews side-street in Notting Hill, West London), which is Lewis’s legal foothold in England (he is now, and has been since 2018, an Israeli citizen supposedly living in Eilat, Israel).

More tweets

Good grief! Can you imagine that drunken and/or drugged and/or crazed shambles negotiating with Putin, or Zelensky, or Netanyahu?

There really is something wrong with the allegedly “democratic” process, both in the USA and the UK, when some creature like Kamala Harris can become Vice-President, and nearly become President, of the USA. In the UK, look at David Lammy, Angela Rayner, and most of the rest of Starmer-stein’s Cabinet.

Even after the past 15 years of chaotic mismanagement, the government of Starmer-stein is something else…Look at them! “Rachel from Accounts” Reeves, Liz Kendall, Angela Rayner (!), David Lammy (!), Yvette Cooper etc. Starmer-stein himself. What a crowd of cretins!

As frequently said on this blog, immigration affects everything when it is on the present Biblical scale— housing, pay, benefits, pensions, traffic, rail travel, crime, the environment, culture. You name it.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad“…

As Katie Hopkins puts it, “Batshit Bonkers Britain”…

Can you imagine?! That is a “judge”, according to the UN! “Lydia Mugambe”…

We cannot afford to be too complacent, though. How long before we get something similar here, sitting in judgment over native Brits? When we look at the Bar, the lower ranks, and some at higher level, are in part already like that…

See also: https://news.sky.com/story/lydia-mugambe-un-judge-convicted-of-forcing-woman-to-work-as-slave-in-uk-13327897.

Good news. I hope the Kazakhs are following suit.

There are some enterprises, some kinds of economic enterprise, that should be in public ownership: water companies, major rail services, large-scale electricity production and distribution, large-scale domestic-use gas production and distribution; some other activities.

Some other things, relating to the State and/or wider society, should also be run by the State itself, or by a quasi-State authority: Royal Mail, prisons, National Lottery; some others as well.

Talking point— a “free speech” thread on Twitter

GB News, looking at its output, is very obviously permeated by “the usual suspects” (((“them”))) and paid puppets.

Also, I only noticed today that reply by what purports to be a Twitter/X account of persecuted satirist and singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz. If so, good to see her back on Twitter/X.

[Alison Chabloz at the piano]

Incidentally, her remark about Lord Hamilton [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Hamilton] relates to this: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/05/conservative-peer-accused-of-using-antisemitic-tropes-in-lords-debate.

What a difference a year makes…

Alert regular readers of the blog may have noted that it is exactly a year (14 March 2024) since I was sentenced as a result of my free speech trial in November 2023.

Amazing. A whole year has elapsed since the sentence, and about 16 months since the trial itself. I repost my accounts of the trial, sentence, and aftermath here below:

I was able to continue blogging right through the process, and am still blogging almost every day, about 25-30 times per month.

As previously explained, I am under no greater legal constraint now than I was in 2024, 2023, 2022 (etc).

I have no doubt that the malicious Jew-Zionist element will continue to try to destroy the freedom of speech and expression not only of me but also of all British and other people. However, one must stand up for free speech and expression.

As far as I am concerned, “one human soul is a big audience“.

Late tweets seen

Late music

[https://terryheimat.com/taraskutsenko]
[painting by Roman Bozhkov]

Diary Blog, 21 January 2022

Morning music

[Hermitage (formerly, Winter Palace), St. Petersburg, Russia]

On this day a year ago

In that year-ago blog post, I saw a few things that now make me laugh all over again, like the very true assertion, contained in a tweet from one of the huge number of Twitter accounts now closed down by the online censors: “Leftism is when you think the best way to stick it to your boss is to ensure he has an unending supply of cheap imported labor..”

Quite. In a nutshell. That Twitter account was American, but it applies just as well here in the UK. Those (eg the “refugees welcome” dimwits) who think that you can have unlimited or almost unlimited mass immigration, yet still have a high-income, high-skilled economy (and also a properly-funded Welfare State), are just completely wrongheaded.

I myself never use “Right”, Left” terminology in any sense which confers legitimacy upon it.

The only extra point to add (and only necessary because there is so much deliberate misinformation around, especially on Twitter) is that many of the migrant-invaders entering the UK will never enter the UK workforce as such, because they not only have no usable skills, meaning skills useful in an advanced economy, but also either speak no English at all, or only at the most basic level (and in many cases never will).

In other words, mass immigration creates a huge drag on the society and economy; you could even call it a millstone around our collective neck.

Of course, the self-describing “Left” have pretty much given up any struggle to create a better society. They have no ideology (beyond vague “anti-racism”, “anti-sexism” etc) which might underpin such a struggle. Socialism in the old sense more or less died in and after 1989, the last significant year of the 1956-1989 ~33-year cycle. What is left is effectively worthless, a farrago of mixed-up nonsense, not only ideologically vague, but practically confused.

The above example about mass immigration is just one example of the confusion. Another is about free speech online. The virtue-signallers of the self-describing “Left” almost all celebrate the removal of social-national Twitter accounts such as mine (rubbed out in 2018 after a conspiracy by a pack of Zionist Jews); the same virtue-signallers celebrate equally the removal of Twitter accounts belonging to so-called “alt-Right” figures such as Katie Hopkins, and those of dissidents such as David Icke.

The “online fora” (Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, ebay etc) are of course all run and actually owned by hugely wealthy companies (and individuals, mostly Jews), but the self-describing “Left” has nothing to say about all that, still less any plan to change the structure; for them, all that matters is that “fascists” (those with whom they disagree) are removed from having any online “platform” (where they might enjoy freedom of expression).

They just do not see that what has happened is that they, and those like them, are now contained in a big gilded cage, where they can squawk endlessly about “racism”, “sexism” etc while having not the slightest real impact on the world.

The same kind of dissonance as over immigration is seen in the attitude of the same people about Palestine, Israel, and the Jewish situation in the world. They (most of them) oppose Israel as a state, and go halfway toward such ideas as “BDS” (economic boycotts of Israel, and avoidance of Israeli products etc), but the majority of them are still brainwashed by the whole “holocaust” farrago, and almost all of them no doubt think that the disastrous and destructive war against the German Reich was A Very Good Thing. Few would see a problem in the fact that exploitative Jewish control of economies, legal systems, political systems permeates what might be called “the Western world”, our world.

Even when they see fraudulent Jewish exploiters such as Philip Green, Robert Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein and others, those self-describing “Left” people see only finance-capitalists…

As Goethe put it in Faust, and from the mouth of Mephistopheles, “the good folk do not see the Devil, even when he sits on their shoulder.” The “Leftists” see only the part of the narrative that fits in with their pre-1989 ideology.

You saw all of the above in the UK Labour Party’s Corbyn and McDonnell double-act: Corbyn with his skeletal “ideology” composed of elements taken, half-baked, from 20thC history, such as the so-called “Battle of Cable Street”, selected and half-understood bits from the Spanish Civil War (“!No Pasaran” etc), anti-Israel support for Palestine, yet at the same time his lip-service to the “holocaust” farrago, and of course “anti-fascism”. As clunky as a Trabant.

Both “sides” of the Labour Party offer nothing to the British people (though neither does this shambolic “Conservative” government, of course).

Unusual travelogue

That YouTube account, though slightly irritating at times, is usually quite interesting. The subtitles are rubbish, but you don’t need to know Russian: mostly English commentary.

As for BAM (Baikal-Amur-Mainline), it was once said, by dissidents, that every Soviet generation had its large and, they claimed, not very useful, engineering project: inter alia, the White Sea Canal, the Turk-Sib railway, the Virgin Lands scheme, and BAM. True, but some of those are at least not useless, and some are also very impressive.

“Thought for the day”

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools
:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

[Kipling, If]

Image
[“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same
…”]

Tweets seen

Further information on this for UK readers: https://www.gov.uk/home-education.

More music

Tweets seen

Once again, we see the impact one individual can have on a large-scale problem. The newspaper report is well worth reading.

Both major System parties are basically, and putting it politely, two faces of the same coin.

Only social nationalism has even a chance of saving anything worthwhile in Britain, but there is no social-national party worthy of the name, let alone any social-national movement.

If the State, controlled secretly by inner ruling circles and cabals, turns against the people, then the people have the inherent right to fight back, using whatever methods are expedient.

For “the welfare of the people is the highest law” [Cicero].

A few more thoughts about Ukraine

Any Russian incursion into Eastern Ukraine would have been bloodless, but will now not be, partly because the corrupt Kiev regime will probably try to resist, despite the vast bulk of the Eastern Ukraine population favouring Russia.

The arms and money (and “advisers”) from the UK and —mainly— USA being sent to Ukraine contain the seeds of a wider conflict, because any large-scale resistance by the Kiev government will probably result in retaliation against it by Russian forces. That might include massive attack on Kiev itself. Whether that will result in American direct involvement remains to be seen, though I doubt that the USA has the will to fight Russia directly, on the ground.

Eastern Ukraine was part of the Russo-Slavonic polity for over a thousand years. It was under Muscovite control for hundreds of years. The present corrupt, and basically Jew-dominated, Ukraine, has only been around for 29-30 years as a (failed) state. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Ukraine.

Without interference from outside, Eastern Ukraine would fall under Russian control as willingly as Austria joined with the German Reich in 1938.

As for the USA, does it have the will to put its own safety on the line for the Kiev regime? I doubt it. Biden’s recent statement was a nod and wink to Russia that this will not cause a superpower conflict (if Russia still counts as a superpower…perhaps not, but near enough!).

Yes, the USA probably does have many times the military-destructive power of Russia, but the fact is that Russia could still annihilate most if not all American cities if it so chose, albeit at a like cost. You can only wipe out a city once, no matter how many and how powerful are your nuclear weapons.

As for political leadership, Biden seems to have some form of dementia. If he had to resign, the government of the USA would be, at least nominally, in the hands of part-black, part-Indian, part (small part) Irish, Kamala Harris, but one can assume that the “deep state”, i.e. the secret cabals and ruling circles, would continue to pull the strings. NWO, if you like, and “ZOG”.

Russia looks like it is about to make a big move on the geopolitical chessboard.

Late tweets seen

Yes, the “panicdemic” has only partly succeeded in corralling the public worldwide, and only partly in the UK as well. Suddenly, “Covid” “restrictions” are going to be stood down, only weeks after the latest scam propaganda over “Omicron”, and how hundreds of thousands would be filling NHS hospitals. All lies.

However, the repressive laws will mostly still be there, ready to be used and indeed repurposed, any time that the “secret state” decides.

Yes, Gates was investing in vaccines over a year before the “panicdemic” started (or was started)…

In looking at recent UK governments, it is always a battle between malice and sheer incompetence…

“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad“…

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jan/18/loud-academic-awarded-more-than-100000-for-unfair-dismissal.

Absolutely typical. “They” are very often bullies who, however, when people stand up against them, suddenly present themselves as the whining Jewish “victims”.

Anyway, there it is; she has bitten the hand that fed her for 29 years, and can now pocket £100,000 extra.

Late music

Use and Abuse of the UK Welfare State

I am in favour of the Welfare State, in principle, but that just begs the question. Even the Iain Dunce Duncan Smiths and Esther McVeys of this world go that far, at least in public utterances. The devil really is in the detail here.

The famous economist, Milton Friedman, once said that you can have open borders, and you can have a welfare state, but you cannot have both. That it is even necessary to posit that shows how far the more socialist-minded people in the UK (and elsewhere in Northern Europe) have travelled from reality. Many “refugees welcome” dimwits actually believe that an almost endless number of “refugees” or others can enter the UK without affecting State benefits and services (as well as road and rail congestion etc). This seems to be based on the idea that the immigrants will work, pay taxes, in short become normal citizens or quasi-citizens. Angela Merkel thought the same, only to find that most “refugees” were

  • incapable of any but the most basic work (such as fruit-picking) because of their linguistic and/or educational levels;
  • unwilling, in many cases, to work, in a situation where the State provides free accommodation, free utilities, free transport for some, free food for some, as well as pocket money on quite a generous level.

CgFqWSRXEAICTlz

The UK does not provide social security (or, in our new Americanized speech, “welfare”) benefits on the generous scale offered by Germany or Scandinavia etc, but the fundamentals are similar.

A personal story: when I was much much younger, in my early twenties, I became acquainted, via a lady I then knew, with a friend of hers (more accurately a woman who had attached herself to her like a limpet). Now this other woman was not British in any sense except that she had married a New Zealander who had (presumably because taken there from the UK as a child) a British passport. The woman was in fact a Jewess from Moscow, who had somehow got to know the New Zealander while he was on a holiday trip to the Soviet Union. We need not examine motives and reasons, but that couple married and went to live in New Zealand. They had two children. After about four or five years, the woman left her husband, left New Zealand and flew to the UK.

When I met the woman in question, I believe that she had been in the UK for a couple of years. She washed-up in Downham, an obscure suburb in South-East London, where the local council provided her with a council flat. I have no exact idea of what other benefits she was granted, but they would have included child benefit and some form of income support. She never had to work, though at first she did a couple of evenings a week teaching Russian at some place or other which I forget (possibly Morley College in Westminster Bridge Road, or the City Literary Institute in Drury Lane, both of which adult education centres I myself frequented at the time).

Scroll on a few years. This “Russian” Jewish woman, with no real connection to the UK at all had been given a quite decent house with gardens in Grove Park, a better part of the same borough. She had been impelled to move, apparently, by a visit from her father, a nuclear scientist (which sounds impressive, but the Soviet Union had legions of them) who had told her that she would have a better flat were she to return to Moscow! Of course, there she would have had to work…anyway, I visited the new house once (out of duty rather than choice)  and so saw it, despite being not much liked by the woman. The woman had been diagnosed with a kidney complaint (though I never saw her looking unwell) and so no doubt managed to claim some form of incapacity or disability benefit; and had also acquired a car (almost certainly also funded by the State). In addition to all of that, the woman and her children also had all the usual UK benefits of free education and health. I do not think that she bothered to do much work after that, maybe a little part-time teaching or occasional low-level interpreting.

Now it might be said, perhaps especially by people more naturally drawn to socialism than capitalism, that she was entitled to these things because lawfully resident in the UK. Perhaps, but look at it from the wider point of view: she had never contributed anything to the UK, just taken. The small part-time jobs here and there can be discounted as having been de minimis. She leeched off the UK’s people since about 1979 and, the last I heard (a couple of years ago), that situation remained unchanged, probably to this day. In fact, she would now be “entitled” to a State pension and Pension Credit. Call it 40 years of being a millstone round the neck of the British Welfare State.

Now multiply the above by millions, the millions of often completely useless people from the backward hordes imported into the UK for decades. For example, it is reported that only 20% of the huge numbers of Somalis in the UK (how? why?) are employed at all.

I repeat, I do favour a decent Welfare State, but it can only exist if

a. the economy can support it;

b. it is not swamped.

The above two conditions really come down to the same thing now, or very nearly so.

For me, the answer to the work and income challenges of robotics, computerization, Internet shopping, AI etc is the Basic Income concept, but Basic Income, like the existing Welfare State, will decline and may fail unless it is restricted to those who are at the very least, genuine citizens.

ClVU6MSWgAAmfK6