Tag Archives: Parliament

Diary Blog, 11 August 2026

Morning music

Tweets seen

[“A glorious day for opponents of transparency in public life.

MPs have removed the names of their parliamentary staff from a decades-old public register – meaning we do not know who these people are and are left to accept the word of their employer when they say (as in the case of the prime minister, here) that said staff do not have any outside earnings or private interests.

“All staff have confirmed they have no registrable interests”: oh, well that’s that then.

No way of determining if true; no way of finding out if MPs employing family members; no way for anyone other than MPs themselves to uphold standards or examine who is operating in the Palace of Westminster on their behalf.

The decision was driven by … you guessed it … MPs themselves, following behind-closed-door consultations with staff trade union representatives – not media or anti-corruption organisations.

Echoes of the time that decided among themselves – with nil meaningful debate – to exempt themselves from the centuries-old system by which those arrested would be named before the Commons.

Parliament being sovereign it is always free to take such steps without consultation or engagement with the public – the hope is they decide not to abuse their positions and proactively seek criticism or counter-views.

In this instance, sadly, MPs have demonstrated they cannot be trusted to do so – they have put us out of step with comparable democracies without anything approaching scrutiny.“]

The corrupt and near-useless Westminster monkeyhouse.

Allister Heath is, I believe, fully or part-Jew, though Wikipedia says nothing on the subject. In fact, there seems to be nothing easily-available anywhere in the public realm about that aspect. May be a “crypto”.

Born and brought up in Alsace, he only came to the UK aged 17: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allister_Heath.

It is not for him to make such statements. He has no locus standi.

Someone who completely appears to disregard the value of race and culture, substituting for it a dollar bill. His main foray into international relations seems to have been support (according to Wikipedia, “vocal“) for the recent Israeli war of near-annihilation in Gaza.

Such are those who are given public platforms (and money) in our society.

More music

More tweets

There is little discussion about the necessity to preserve the familiarity of the mental landscape in relation to the high streets. Bank branches, post offices, police stations. For example, banks should be compelled by law to maintain at least one branch in every city or town; God’s sake, they make enough profit to be able to give a little back to society.

“Buffoon” seems to me the more accurate term. An ex-Guards captain posing as statesman and quasi-field marshal; he wants war with Russia, apparently. So “crazy (and/or drunken) buffoon”, maybe.

Perhaps ex-Guards captain Wallace would like to lead his company “over the top” and into battle on the side of the crumbling Kiev-regime army?

[“Trump Secretly Flees Turkish Airport in a Catering Truck

The American newspaper The Washington Post reported that after the NATO summit in Turkey, Donald Trump, due to security concerns and a possible threat of assassination by Iran, left the airport in an unusual way as part of a deception operation.

According to the report, Trump initially boarded the presidential aircraft Air Force One to create the impression that he was leaving Turkey on that plane.

Then, Trump secretly disembarked from the plane and was transported to a military transport aircraft, the C-32A, in a special vehicle used for transporting and loading catering supplies.

Meanwhile, Air Force One, carrying journalists and some members of the presidential team, took off towards the United Kingdom to maintain the impression that Trump was on board.“]

Sounds serious. When Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met in Teheran in 1943, there was a developed German plan to kill all three, but it never took flight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Long_Jump

[“Israel has informed the U.S. about Turkey’s increasing military presence in Syria, including air-defense systems that could threaten Israeli operations.

Syria recently conducted its first aerial exercise involving fighter jets and a Turkish helicopter, near the Turkish border.

Turkey has reportedly urged Syria and Lebanon to make agreements with Israel to gain time for military buildup ahead of potential confrontations.

This follows the creation of a new defense pact among Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.”]

In the long term, Israel is doomed. It may be that all of the present Middle East, even the Near East as well, will face massive devastation.

The bringing into existence of the State of Israel, together with Arab/Muslim nationalism, and the oil discoveries of the 20thC, have created a bomb just waiting for the right fuse.

Multiply by 10-20x to get the true or full picture (and don’t forget about the real British people who, in despair, are now leaving).

Britain in 2026

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16043785/Drunk-diversity-rep-crippled-Afghan-veteran-police-officer.html

Drunk diversity rep who crippled Afghan-veteran police officer by dragging him along road with her Range Rover during traffic stop avoids prison

Candace Desilva, 37, of Anfield, drove off with the officer clinging to the side of her Range Rover in an attempt to flee after being stopped for traffic offences. She caused PC Simon Ward serious injuries and placed his life in danger, before moaning ‘I just wanna go home to my children’ when she was finally stopped. Desilva had told him: ‘See, there is nobody else coming. You’re not f***ing searching me. I’m going. You can’t stop me.’

[Daily Mail]

How can a half-caste “diversity rep” (whatever that is) afford a Range Rover anyway? The police should pick up on clues like that to catch those who are probably up to all sorts of criminal activities (but whether that is so or not, we do not want untermenschen of that sort in this country in any case).

[defendant]

More from Britain in 2026

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16044069/Student-police-officer-23-allegedly-bundled-woman-car.html

A student police officer ‘bundled’ a woman into his car before raping her and then driving off at 125mph with her still inside, a court heard today.

Mohammad Hassan, 23, was arrested on the M62 motorway in West Yorkshire on Saturday after a police pursuit which followed a 999 call from the Manchester area.”

“Hassan, who has been suspended by Greater Manchester Police, is described by the force as being of Asian-Pakistani ethnicity.”

[Daily Mail]

Can anyone deny (honestly deny) that this country needs a massive purge, carried out by a real social-national government?

Jess Phillips MP (Labour Friends of Israel member)

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16044337/Ex-minister-Jess-Phillips-admits-pulled-sickie-avoid-having-defend-Peter-Mandelson-Commons.html

Former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has admitted pulling a sickie so she wouldn’t have to defend Peter Mandelson in the House of Commons.

The Labour MP, who quit her Government role earlier this year, revealed how she once pretended to be ill in order to avoid being quizzed about Britain’s then-ambassador to the US.

Horrible woman: see

See also:

More music

[The Wicker Man (1973 British film)]

Late tweets

Falter is not only a proven liar, but also a proven perjurer as far as I am concerned, albeit that he has not actually been convicted of perjury. The fact that he is invited to write his Jew-Zionist propaganda in the once-weighty Daily Telegraph says much about the state of this country.

https://twitter.com/sophiemeaden/status/2087290260690481484

Burnham is just one more enemy of the people.

Ignorant and overpaid TV talking-head, Kay Burley, says that Andrew Windsor was “a war hero“. Really? He was in the active war zone in the Falklands for about 6 weeks and apparently never in real danger, though admittedly only those there at the time can really assess that correctly (arguably).

Anyway, that was 6 weeks out of 65 years of freeloading and silver-spooning and, moreover, those 6 weeks were 44 years ago now.

Late music

[Arno Breker, the Hanover Lions; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Breker]

Diary Blog, 12 June 2026

Morning music

[Roman Catholic penitents in southern Spain]

Tweets seen

I was slightly hopeful that Al Carns might turn out to be a little better than the usual System drones in Parliament. I prefer to be an optimist rather than a pessimist, generally. However, it seems that, once again, a former officer has proven to be a disappointment as a politician.

There is no threat to the UK from Russia; more exactly, the “Russian threat” is a response to NATO (NWO/ZOG) actions, and one constantly stoked by the continual NATO incursions in the Baltic, the Black Sea, and shipments of arms, ammunition, and taxpayers’ money to “Ukraine” (the shambolic, corrupt, and brutal Jew-Zionist/Ukrainian-thug regime in Kiev).

Starmer-stein’s misgovernment is beyond lampoon.

Incidentally, that Kyle person has not only been involved with some allegedly near-fraudulent financial activities, but is tied-up, or friendly with, at least one Jew sex criminal in the Brighton area.

Tice is just a puppet of the UK Jewish lobby and Israel. A nasty little man.

Never forget “the men (and women ) behind the wire”.

It often seems that way…

Smersh Never Sleeps!

[“It has emerged in the Telegraph that Reform’s Jenrick and Braverman’s fast-track asylum scheme meant that illegals completed a TEN PAGE ‘questionnaire’ rather than a proper face-to-face interview.

Their scheme applied to six countries.

Afghanistan.
Eritrea.
Libya.
Syria.
Yemen.

And of course, Sudan.

As we know, the Sudanese monster was handed a visa after going through the Reform MP’s asylum scheme.

These are backward countries that make medieval England look sophisticated and forward-thinking.

They treat women like dirt and are generally entirely incompatible with our standards, culture and way of life.

I will make a firm Restore Britain policy commitment here today.

Every single individual handed a visa under Jenrick and Braverman’s fast-track asylum scheme will be deported under a Restore Britain Government.

Except one. He won’t be deported. A far more permanent fate awaits him.

Not only that, we will end immigration from those six countries. Entirely.

In addition.

Afghans, Eritreans, Libyans, Syrians, Yemenis and Sudanese men currently in our country living off the taxpayer, unable to speak English, committing crime, failing to work, claiming benefits?

They will be deported.

Any of those nationalities who arrived illegally will be removed.

That will mean a vast amount of deportations. I mean vast.

Restore Britain will repair just some of the damage caused by Reform’s Jenrick and Braverman.

Evidently not all, tragically.

A Restore Britain Government will mass deport the fake asylum seekers, illegals and freeloaders that these Reform politicians welcomed into our country.

That is my pledge to you all.”]

[Rupert Lowe]

Well said.

Reform, with its would-be System near-“centrism”, non-European candidates, and pro-Jewish-lobby, pro-Israel stances, is getting left behind, but the opinion polls have not quite caught up with events, and do not have Restore on their lists of options, in most cases, so a true picture of the public mood is not presented, as yet.

Sinn Fein has become a bad joke, a parody of itself, just like the Scottish and Welsh “nationalists”.

Notice how the same basic propaganda is always pumped out.

Even Hereford…

I have not been there for 20 years, maybe longer. Now invaded and occupied, like everywhere else, pretty much. Sad.

Any stupid ex-officers, retired generals, System MPs and/or newspaper scribblers and/or TV/radio talking-heads wanting pensions and State disability payments slashed in favour of “Defence”, or indeed claiming that Britain now even exists as more than a geographic space housing non-white invader-occupiers and (((cosmopolitan))) exploiters, should be ignored or, better, ridden out of town on a rail.

Frankly, as a nation and country worth “defending” from Russia (as usually claimed, despite the fact that Russia has no such intent anyway), Britain no longer exists. It can exist again, but only when the rootless cosmopolitans are removed, along with the non-European invaders and parasites.

Talk about building up armed forces once we have a nation-state again, and not before that happens.

Rachel Reeves— Jewish lobby/Israel lobby puppet.

Quite. Why reshuffle, when the pack consists entirely of jokers?

Stray thought

Just saw an old episode of The Chase Celebrity. One “celebrity” I had never seen nor heard of. Utter cretin. Apparently on morning TV (as all four were or are). I have already forgotten his name.

As for the others, there were two pretty ignorant careerist-type women, something-maybe-Susanna Reid, and Kate Garraway. The prime spot for ignoramus of the day goes, however, to Piers Morgan. He really embarrassed himself, but he wore his utter lack of basic general knowledge like a suit of armour, and evidently thinks himself extremely intelligent.

These are the types to whom the public are expected to look for guidance on current events etc. Look at Piers Morgan, who was a System TV mouthpiece for the “Covid” scamdemic/panicdemic and called those doubting the “approved” narrative, “Covidiots” etc. Not that he was alone. A weightier voice, that of Andrew Neil, was no better.

Irritating to think how well-remunerated those morning TV idiots are, when they really know nothing.

More tweets

A social-national government needs to eliminate most forms of parasite landlordism.

Whatever…

The main thing is that the Overton Window has moved, and will move further.

Late tweets seen

Ursula von der Leyen is an evil little sprite, and entirely under the control of NWO/ZOG.

Tom Tugendhat, part-Jew member of Conservative Friends of Israel, and former “chocolate soldier”. Such individuals, and the Con Party generally, offer nothing to the British people.

There is no “Russian threat” to this country. On the contrary, we should be cultivating close relations with Russia, taking cheap energy from Russia, and selling our goods and services on the Russian market, which is huge and, now, almost closed to the EU states (by their own foolish choice).

Late music

[St. Petersburg, winter]

Diary Blog, 7 February 2026

Morning music

[Bruch memorial, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany]

Saturday quiz

Well, this week another narrow victory over political journalist John Rentoul— 4/10, as against Rentoul’s 3/10.

I knew the answers to questions 1, 4, 7, and 9. I could not remember the answer to question 6, did not think long enough to get question 3, and had no idea about the most of the others; question 5 has several possible answers (though one stands out, I now know); the instrument I guessed was one of the (4 or 5) musical instruments Marie Antoinette played, though not the one wanted by the quizmaster, it seems, so I have not awarded myself that one.

A few extra thoughts about Mandelson, Epstein, and the whole Jew-lobby scandal at and around Starmer-stein’s government

First thought: saw Gordon Brown on TV news lamenting about it all, and excoriating Mandelson. Well, OK, but you, Brown, you loony and hypocrite, knew all about his general sleaziness, his sexual proclivities, his activities in London youth clubs etc, going back as far as the 1970s, and his willingness to cheat and scheme to make money, as with his mortgage and loan and property activities in the late 1990s, which activities in fact attracted the attention of the police at the time, until their investigation was interfered with, and they were warned off.

Second thought: how useless is MI5, that they seem either to have been unaware of the Mandelson and Epstein connection or, far more likely, were unwilling to rock the political boat? Same goes for SIS, incidentally.

Third thought: so Jews conspired to make money illicitly? Quelle surprise… oh, no, wait…

Tweets seen

Amazing. It took humanity unknown ages, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years to come up with that. Now it is known, it must not be forgotten.

See also:

As I blogged years ago, about 5 years ago, Starmer (to my then slight surprise) turned out to be utterly clueless.

Not many lawyers in the modern era are much good as politicians, though I suppose one could reference Lenin. Or Castro [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro#Career_in_law_and_politics:_1950%E2%80%931952]. A few others too, maybe.

Some might include Mandela, but he was never really a lawyer, just a “gopher” in a law firm for a while, until awarded a law degree on the nod while a celebrity prisoner in the 1980s, and aged about 70. He had failed his law degree three times in the late 1940s, when about 30 years old.

As for Starmer-stein, Matt Goodwin and Reform UK must be loving this heady mixture of cluelessness and corruption in the present fake “Labour” government. Only 17 days until the Gorton and Denton by-election.

Many will later turn to social national politics.

I blogged previously that all three leading contenders might score around 30%, leading to a very close result. Were Labour to win by a small margin, that would still be a negative sign, because Labour scored 50.8% there only last year.

Anti-Reform tactical voters will have to decide which party is more likely to be able to defeat Reform. Either Labour or the Greens. Polls presently put Labour ahead of the Greens, but that may not reflect feeling among those actually going to vote.

Reform is still slightly ahead in the opinion polling at Gorton and Denton, but it is hard to say where the voters will be by 26 February, the polling day. I begin to think that the Labour vote might collapse, by reason of abstention as much as via defection. That might or not boost the Green vote, but would probably lead to a Reform triumph.

I blogged about Carns yesterday. Someone who would go down well with the public, on first showing, and because of his background, but who is an unknown quantity ideologically.

Ex-officers usually disappoint as MPs. Examples from recent years would include Dan Jarvis and Johnny Mercer.

Well, we shall see.

Trump is all over the place, from one day to the next.

The very slow but inexorable advance continues along much of the overall front. There are no Kiev-regime advances, and have not been for at least a year or so.

[“I was born in Woking, Surrey, less than a mile from the site of the Shah Jahan mosque, the first built in Britain. Growing up in Woking my friends and I soon learnt that the Pakistani community acted differently to us. They operated like a clan, like a gang. If you crossed one, you would find a dozen brothers and cousins waiting for you outside the school gates. As English people who had small, quite independent families, this clan loyalty and mindset was nearly impossible to contend with. ‘Turn the other cheek’ my mother used to say. Never easy though when you’ve seen your friend have his teeth kicked in by a mob for a minor instance of perceived disrespect. We used to play pool at the Planets in Woking town centre after school, however it wasn’t long before this was taken over by the Pakistani clans from Maybury. They’d pelt us with pool balls and intimidate us to leave. It was their territory now. So spare me your victimhood @sajidjavid.”]

I blogged, years ago, about the attack in New Zealand carried out by Brenton Tarrant in 2019. In that blog post, I mentioned, in passing, that mosque in Woking (which you can see from the train):

Ah. Just what I wondered about earlier in the day.

Starmer-stein is a real office-politics tiger, isn’t he? Useless at anything else.

I see many tweets and other online comments about the supposed “Ukrainian rent boys”, their alleged connection with Starmer-stein, and their delayed trials. I wonder what might be the truth about all that…

…and the same [kind of] police pretend to be terribly shocked when tasked with bothering social-national bloggers such as myself, or satirical singers such as Alison Chabloz, or public speakers such as Jez Turner (etc).

One begins to wonder whether there is much point in even having a police force of the kind the UK now has. Like so many long-established UK institutions (Monarchy, the Bar, the Church of England, the ancient universities, SIS, MI5, Parliament, the NHS etc), the police need “a revaluation of all values“.

Late tweets

It’s almost as if Adolf Hitler and others were right after all…

As for sleazy Alastair Campbell, what his tweet tells me is that he, and all the other Labourite drones, are getting very desperate. As if it really matters that Reform in Gorton and Denton may have sent out a few leaflets without the correct labelling.

The Jew Mandelson “very greedy” and “always looking for money“? Well, who would have thought it?

Maybe I should relocate to Hungary, which at least will not be directly targeted in any nuclear exchange. I rather liked the lakeside suite I had in 2001, with its direct access to the gardens and lake (Balaton). I swam in the lake, and enjoyed an evening palinka (or two).

[“Iran has prepared a large-scale plan to counter the US armed forces and pressure on the global economy. According to the Tasnim agency affiliated with the IRGC, within a few hours after a possible US attack, Iran will launch massive strikes with ballistic missiles and drones on US military facilities throughout the region, expanding the conflict zone beyond its borders.

Tehran also relies on its cyberwar capabilities – attacks on US logistics, disruptions in the command and control system, and creating chaos among countries hosting American forces. The IRGC’s naval forces have been practicing the “swarm” tactic – attacks by small boats equipped with missiles and torpedoes to overload and suppress large warships. Blocking the Strait of Hormuz could lead to an increase in oil prices above $200 per barrel, which would cause serious damage to the global economy and increase pressure on Washington.

Hossein Shariatmadari stated that Iran could block the passage of American, French, British, and German ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s strategic goal is to create an unstable multi-front confrontation for the US, forcing American forces to simultaneously face pressure in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and potentially in Syria, while protecting its allies in the Persian Gulf and ensuring the safety of sea routes.“]

Were I the Iranian leadership, I should think that all Iran’s missiles should be targeted on Israel, focussing on a few main targets— Dimona, Ben-Gurion Airport, central Tel Aviv and affluent areas in that region, such as Ra’anana and Herzliya.

Still, it’s their party…

Late music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hanson]

A great American symphony by a composer much underrated.

Diary Blog, 9 December 2025

Afternoon music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C5%ABcija_Gar%C5%ABta]
[Baltic Sea coast]

Tweets seen

Britain is in danger of becoming a police state, but one where the usual benefit of a police state (public safety from crime, especially street crime) is absent.

[“What you are witnessing in the UK –the daily rapes, the assaults, the loss of control–is not simply about mass immigration. Be clear about the cause. It is the logical end point of suicidal empathy. Today’s ruling class believe that true virtue lies not in protecting our own people and children but sacrificing them on the altar of showing empathy to outsiders. If you do not want to live like this then you need to replace the ruling class. There is only one party, one vessel, that you can use to do just that. It is currently number one in the polls. And it terrifies the ruling class which is why they are now constantly attacking it and its leader. Do not lose focus. Register to vote. And Vote Reform.“]

First Reform, to get rid of Labour and equally fake Conservative Party. After that, Reform itself must go so that real social nationalism can triumph.

Translates to a Commons with about 336 Reform MPs (a smallish but absolute majority), 96 Lab, 72 LibDems, 45 SNP, 36 Cons, 27 Greens.

The Greens will benefit both from Labour’s collapse and from the inability of squabbling Corbyn and Zara Sultana to organize anything.

Cons on 36 MPs, fewer than a third of their present complement.

Stray thought

Can you imagine what jubilation and relief there would be among the British people if a couple of hundred Afghan and other non-European rapists and other sex offenders etc were to be put up up against walls by the (future) social-national state apparat, and then shot? Huge.

Stray thought

I was just musing (again) on the pretty obvious fact that so many large British institutions are now either useless or largely useless, badly-administered, and just not doing their job.

NHS, armed forces, Border Force, court system, police, BBC, Parliament, the educational system, and the whole political system including all System parties and the Houses of Commons and Lords, to name just the most obvious defaulters.

They provide, at best, a kind of skeleton service. Look at the NHS, for example.

It may be that we shall have to go back to basics in some respects, to build a system that works for people, for the British people.

More tweets

We may be slowly moving toward the endgame. Were supplies of arms, ammunition, training, intelligence, supplies, and money to be cut off from the Kiev regime, the war would fairly quickly come to an end. Russian forces might then occupy all Ukraine east of the Dnieper, as they should.

More music

[Shishkin, Before the Storm]

More tweets

Typical. In the same box as charging people not-petty sums just to park a car in the street, at hospitals, at railway stations and airports. Exploitation of the public for the benefit of private profiteers and county councils etc.

Labour Friends of Israel member, Yvette Cooper, another pro-Israel/pro-Jewish lobby fraudster and expenses cheat.

[Yvette Cooper listening to Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi of England]

Nick Griffin blog

https://nickgriffin544956.substack.com/p/why-did-the-mirror-break-the-griffin

Late tweets

They should suffer the same fate that the migrant-invader criminals will suffer.

The BBC is now a negative factor in national life, and offers nothing.

Must be. Very (((typical))).

Finkelstein, who used to tweet to people, quite a few years ago, asking them not to retweet my tweets (in the end, meaning 2018, a pack of Jews had Twitter expel me anyway).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Finkelstein

Late music

Diary Blog, 5 February 2023

Afternoon music

[painting by Joyce Norwood]

On this day a year ago

Tweets seen

That idiot is such a hypocrite that he probably does not know that he is a hypocrite.


Incidentally, reading Clooney’s entry in Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clooney], I realized that I have seen not one film or TV series featuring him. That must be why I was puzzled, many years ago, when I kept hearing things about him on the TV; I was thinking “George Clooney? Who’s that?“.

He has good taste in domestic property, though. His house on a river island at Sonning, Berkshire, is very classic (Georgian), and in a beautiful location across the Thames from some of the grounds of the school I unwillingly attended in the nearly 4 years 1970-1973; and his house on Lake Como, in the Italian Lakes region, is also beautiful and in a beautiful place.

The evil and yet idiotic “SAGE” “scientists”, msm “me too” groupthinkers, and UK “health” bureaucrats would have been right at home in early Renaissance Italy, insisting that the Sun goes around the Earth and describing the truth as “heresy”.

State “quiet killing” of hundreds of thousands of elderly people thought of, by the State, by ministers and by most MPs, as simply “surplus to requirements”.

I examined some of the history of “democracy” a few years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/15/has-parliamentary-democracy-as-we-have-known-it-until-now-had-its-day-in-the-uk/.

“Jack Monroe” attracts the very worst supporters on Twitter, perhaps even worse than the “FBPE” loonies. Her core “constituency” is not “the poor”, but the unpleasant and/or mentally-disturbed.

I think that there are at least half a dozen regular “Jack Monroe” Twitter “sock accounts” regularly posting while she pretends to be “taking (another) rest from Twitter”.

It took me a while to realize the extent of it, but my opinion now is that “Jack Monroe” is, or has become, an outright fraud.

Incidentally, the new book by “Jack Monroe”, Thrifty Kitchen (which seems to consist, judging from what one reads in the msm and on Twitter, of recipes from the BBC and other sources already available for free online), is not selling.

At present, according to the Amazon Book Sales Calculator, only a few dozen copies a day, if that (about 600 per month) are being sold on Amazon (which must be the major outlet). In fact, nearly new copies (the book was only released a few weeks ago) are available on Amazon for as little as £7.

I was interested to see the reviews on Amazon. The 5* ones (about 70%), may or may not be genuine, and have only a handful of up-votes each, suspiciously, whereas the 20% of reviews awarding only 1* (with some wishing that they could award zero stars) have hundreds of up-votes: 400, 500, or more. Telling.

All the same, 498 utter mugs are still signed up on Patreon to send her a total of between £1,743 and £21,912 per month (probably in the region of about £5,000, realistically). The very silly, or outright loonies, I should imagine.

More music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Bortkiewicz]

That composer, of whom I had never heard until today, seems to have been one of the millions displaced by the large-scale disruptions and dislocations of the 20th Century.

Stray thought about the NHS

I suppose that, as usual, I have to preface my remarks by repeating that I do favour the core principle of the NHS, i.e. that it should be free at point of use.

Beyond that, I was just trying to think of any other service or product which is defended mainly on the ground that it is free or cheap. Air travel using “low-cost” rubbish airlines, such as Ryanair? I suppose that that is one.

I understand that what people do is pay a ludicrously-small amount (eg £50, £20, or even £10) each way for the flight, but then have to accept that everything usually provided gratis is charged for, and that the flight will land a long way from where you really want to go, such as “Paris Beauvais” airport (Beauvais is 55 miles from Paris) or, I think in the past, even “Paris Amiens” airport (Amiens is 160 miles from Paris by road or rail).

Still, I see the point. Hard to complain about £10 each way London (Stansted) to/from La Rochelle, even if the service etc is near rock-bottom (though I concede that I myself have never used Ryanair). Incidentally, La Rochelle Airport is right by the city.

Ryanair is very successful, so people obviously buy into the concept at the prices on offer. See also: https://www.ryanair.com/flights/gb/en/flights-to-france.

What else do people accept almost purely on the basis that it costs little? Not much, I think. State primary and secondary education? Possibly.

Still, Ryanair flights do arrive as promised, much of the time. Can the same be said of the NHS? I fear not, or often not, these days.

No-one (except perhaps the ultra-wealthy) wants to swap the NHS for an American-style system, but there are alternative systems that might be examined. What is not helpful is for people to shout out meaningless slogans about “our NHS” etc, to refuse to see what a poor service it is often —not always— offering now, and to refuse to think about how (beyond simply funding it better) the NHS might be improved.

More tweets

Interesting. Is that a ploy to get “Boris”-idiot back? Or maybe some of them want sinister “let’s bomb Russia” candidate Tobias Ellwood as PM. That would solve all our problems— permanently…

While it is true that Labour are only popular by default, in a basically unfree and binary system, they are still well ahead at present.

I am not so sure that the Conservative Party might not be electorally better-off ditching the Indian money-juggler, and even going back to “Boris”-idiot, but better not that latter; they really need someone relatively untainted, and someone British/English, i.e. not non-white. That might not save them completely re. the next general election, but it might be enough to produce a hung Parliament.

I sense that Labour is, even in these conditions of shambolic incompetence in government, not truly “popular”, but many people are becoming desperate for something. If only there were a proper social-national party, credible and organized, but there is none.

A new Conservative Party leader would mean yet another unmandated or unvalidated PM, the fourth since 2015 (or fifth, if you include the first two years of “Boris”-idiot). What price “democracy”?

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Late music

[outside Reichskanzlei, Berlin, May 1945]