Tag Archives: Princess Diana

Diary Blog, 20 May 2021

A reminder of mortality

I happened upon a notice from a well-known London criminal law set: https://www.farringdon-law.co.uk/news/farewell-to-our-true-gentleman-franco-tizzano. I then saw a Twitter announcement dated a few months ago to the same effect:

I was once slightly acquainted with the deceased. I had a few short conversations with him when we were both law degree and Bar Finals students (in the then terminology). I also encountered him a couple of times when I returned from the USA in 1993 and was doing my “second six” months of pupillage, when the fledgling barrister can earn a little money by appearing in court.

I recall that we happened to meet at Thames Mags not long after I had shaken the dust of New Jersey and New York off my shoes. I was doing the first appearance of a Jamaican accused of smuggling cocaine dissolved in rum.

Thames Magistrates Court, Tower Hamlets, London
[the not very beautiful Thames Magistrates’ Court, East London]

Tizzano was some years younger than me but was ahead of me at the Bar, I having spent a few years or part-years in the USA.

I recall that, on first meeting in 1984, Tizzano had explained that he came from Naples but that (if memory serves) he had been at an English boarding school. I understand that his father was a judge in Naples.

I remember that I remarked that “Naples is the warm heart of the world“, according to Shelley, to which Tizzano retorted, “was he mad?“!

Tizzano was a rather serious young man, in the grave Italian way. Someone with a certain dignified presence. Jet-black hair and a black moustache. I see that, in later life, that was complemented by a beard.

I understand that he had a busy criminal practice in later years: I would sometimes see his name in newspaper crime reports, though I think that the last time I saw Tizzano in person was in 1993 or 1994.

A reminder that we are all on Earth for a limited time, and must do what we can while we are here.

Tweets seen

Talk about adding insult to injury! James Cleverly, proud possessor of a degree in “Hospitality Management” from the University of West London.

Martin Bashir

What is not generally known about Bashir is that, in 2018, he stalked persecuted singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz. That was around the time that Alison Chabloz was convicted of posting her songs online, after a lengthy and very morally-dubious campaign (both overt and covert) by Jewish Zionists of the so-called “Campaign Against Antisemitism” or “CAA”.

Bashir stalked both Alison and her aged parents, with whom she was staying at the time. Bashir travelled to the small village, in the Peak District of Derbyshire, where they lived, and after failing to be granted an interview with anyone, hung around the village and the house itself. He was seen trying to hide in the garden of the house, standing in flower beds etc. He even peered through firmly-closed windows.

Bashir is not the only very sleazy person to have effectively headed the BBC’s virtually God-free religious output. There have been some very dubious characters in the past too.

Bashir followed the now-usual BBC “religious” agenda: sanctify Jewish things, normalize Muslim things, ignore or twist anything Christian.

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

As for Alison Chabloz, at time and date of writing she is still in prison (having been sentenced on 31 March 2021) for having made some more or less true remarks about Jews on an internet “radio” broadcast. If not released earlier, she will be released next week, having by then served about 8 weeks (half of her 18-week sentence minus 4 days).

[Alison Chabloz]

Other tweets seen

Hitchens overrates his influence (and the extent to which his opposition to the “panicdemic” was tainted by association). The anti-lockdown and anti-shutdown side lost the argument with the public not because “lizardist” and other people also opposed the shutdown, and not because the opponents of “lockdown” were mistaken, but because the bulk of the British people have become spineless serfs of the “woke” police state. That applies even more to the retirement-age Middle Englanders than it does to the young and middle-aged.

The “lockdown” shutdown has also been promoted by massive propaganda campaigns, utilizing whipped-up and unnecessary fear as a driver.

Then there is the fact of the huge amount of public money thrown at the “furloughed” employees and also some businesses. Hush money?

The fact is that only 1 in a thousand UK residents has been killed (even on doubtful statistics) by the Covid-19 virus. Yet the campaign continues. In the rural, semi-rural and semi-suburban part of Southern England where I live, there are over 180,000 inhabitants (in a rather large and dispersed population and area). In the past month, there have been 8 deaths of people who have been tested and confirmed as having this virus, and who died within 28 days of testing (even if later killed in road accidents).

Still, even on the face of the absurd statistics, look at the proportion! Only 8 out of 180,000+…

About 1 out of every 22,500 local residents.

The facemask nonsense also continues, with a push now to continue it indefinitely, despite the fact that the medical effect is minimal. There again, the real reason the System wants facemasks has nothing to do with any virus.

Late music

Diary Blog, 19-20 October 2020

19 October 2020

Happened to hear Lord “Gus” O’Donnell, former head of the Civil Service, on BBC Radio 4 PM, a show that became so pathetic and self-indulgent over the years that I stopped listening (in common with, I suspect, almost all of its one-time audience).

Switching over from Radio 3, I heard O’Donnell say something quite striking: churches, said he, had become “community hubs”, along with other places. He added that, instead of being the House of God, they were now the House of Good, by which he meant communitarian good works and societal cohesion.

It could be argued that the two are almost synonymous. “God, or whatever means the Good...”, as Louis MacNeice wrote in one of his poems, Meeting Point [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91396/meeting-point]. Another analogous substitution might be “Common Era” instead of Anno Domini, along with “Before Common Era”, BCE, instead of Before Christ (B.C.).

Having said that, and however good the motives for turning churches into combination coffee shops, cafes, souvenir shops, therapy centres, food bank outlets and concert halls (or village halls), the inevitable result of all the social and cultural noise is that a certain spiritual peace is lost. To put it in a more sensationalist way, God is squeezed out, though squeezed out, of course, for the best of motives…

I wonder whether Lord O’Donnell was ever connected with Common Purpose? I should not be surprised.

Some tweets seen this evening

Chris Bryant, one of the most obviously “dodgy” MPs in the Westminster monkeyhouse: pro-Israel, pro-Jewish lobby, very tied up with Common Purpose too. An expenses cheat. Sleazy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bryant; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bryant#Expenses_claims_scandal; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bryant#Personal_life.

Not that his radio interlocutor above has the moral high ground, as a scribbler for the Sun “newspaper”…

The “lockdown” and facemask nonsense is largely being driven by people (MPs and others) getting generous pay and expenses from public sources, and who are unaffected by the trashing of the economy.

Remember remember the 5th of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot,

Life is short but memory long,

And traitors deserve to be shot!

Unexpected.

Completely expected. The troupe of clowns pretending to be “our” government will do whatever they want to do, lie about it, weasel about it, and laugh at the people they pretend to govern.

Image

The hypocrisy is ingrained. I have only ever seen one episode of The Simpsons, when I lived in New Jersey in the very early 1990s. I cannot recall the storyline, but the show ended with Bart Simpson sitting down and starting “…so, kids, now you know that war is always wrong...” before reconsidering…”oh…except the war against Saddam Hussein…oh, and the Second World War… and the First World War, and of course the War of Independence, and…” You get the idea.

Human beings are often hypocritical, and rarely totally congruent. The hypocrisy and incongruity rises to 99%+ in politicians of the type we have, those Adolf Hitler called “dirty democratic politicians”, though the UK versions are rarely even “democratic” in any real sense.

More “cultural enrichment”…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8856287/Pervert-37-jailed-three-years-having-sex-CHICKENS.html

Untermenschen. As things stand, they cannot be executed, pro sano publico, unfortunately.

Coronavirus ghost towns

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8853201/More-MILLION-hospitality-retail-jobs-vanish-end-year.html

More accurately, government-created ghost towns. This madness is now totally out of control. Hardly anyone under 40 is at real risk of both becoming infected and suffering serious effects, yet the whole country is still more or less shut down.

In fact, even most people over 40, but under 70, are only at low risk.

20 October 2020

Saw this: “New documentary suggests that Martin Bashir forged bank statements in order to persuade the Princess to be interviewed” [Daily Telegraph] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/19/princess-diana-insisted-not-coerced-bombshell-panorama-interview/

When Alison Chabloz started getting seriously persecuted by the pack of Jews known as the “Campaign Against Antisemitism”, manipulating compliant or suborned police, a few years ago, Martin Bashir [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bashir], then recently-appointed BBC Religious Affairs Correspondent, was observed creeping around the garden of the house in the Derbyshire Peak District belonging to Alison Chabloz’s aged parents. In fact, “creep” seems to be the best description of the bastard.

Tweets seen

I would define (((the problem))) more directly…

True, but ditch the outdated and almost meaningless “Right”/”Left” stuff.

Yes. Putting the clocks back and forward is one of those things that are implemented for doubtful good reasons, but then get stuck and carry on for years, or decades, because society is too lazy to bin them. Other examples would include dog licences, radio licences and having only a ludicrously small amount of foreign currency purchaseable in person, the amount being written in your passport! All of the foregoing were in existence, though the licences were mostly ignored, until Mrs. Thatcher junked them in or about 1980.

We sometimes think that societal progress or change is automatic, when in fact, often, things do have to be actually disposed of actively.

Which will be a perfect get-out for Boris-idiot and SAGE (“DUMB”— Department Under Matt and Boris). “Coronavirus flaring up? Oh, it’s because all those dissidents and Covidiots are not complying with our rules…”. Forgetting that France and Spain have had far stricter “lockdowns” etc and yet have a far worse death rate per 100,000 from (with) “the virus” than has the UK.

The “virus” in the UK peaked in early April, and has been falling ever since, but only in the past couple of months has the population been forced to wear facemasks…Absurd. They make no difference at all.

Latest conspiracy theory

What follows is the latest conspiracy theory about “the virus”. I know that it is the very latest, because I have just made it up. I have no evidence at all for it. Not that it might not just be true…

My instant theory is that an international conspiracy has decided to reduce both the world population and world economic activity by releasing a virus which, like multiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), will take multiple forms, killing some people, creating long-term infertility in others, and mutating to return in ever more deadly forms for years. Meanwhile, those behind the facade of national governments will keep both political and economic control, repressing dissent, preventing mass gatherings and even small conclaves.

Well, I make no claim as to the accuracy of the foregoing, but it may be correct all the same…

Poem

All too true both then and now…

Treason is a Matter of Timing

ds5

“Treason is a matter of timing”, Talleyrand is supposed to have said. A remark which perhaps goes down better in some countries than others, though really it has universal application. I suppose that it has two basic elements: treason; timing.

We all think that we know what “treason” means, but in fact there have been various definitions throughout the world and throughout history. We hear, in Robin Hood films and the comments columns of newspapers, the term “high treason”, for example, but outside the ranks of (some) lawyers, linguists and historians, the “high” seems just hyperbole to most people. The meaning, to most, can be said to be “caviar to the general”, above their heads.

In Germany and other Germanophone countries, there were traditionally two types of treason, Landesverrat [“Country Treason”] and the more serious Hochverrat [“High Treason”].

In fact, in the past, the main difference between the two, from the point of view of the captured perpetrator, was that he would be put to death in a somewhat less unpleasant manner for “Landesverrat“! Cold comfort, perhaps.

High Treason was doing such acts as to take over the State, or place the State under the rulership of another state; the lesser kind of treason would be to do acts such as helping the enemies of the State, giving secret information to those enemies, fighting on their side etc.

I suppose that one could, cynically, add the word “attempt” before the above “to take over the State”, inasmuch as a successful attempt to take over a state is not regarded as “treason” by the successful new rulers, and so the State itself, but as merely an incident of history. Only unsuccessful (“high”) traitors are punished; the successful ones punish others…

Other countries have other definitions of treason.

The British law of treason is entirely statutoryย and has been so since theย Treason Act 1351ย (25 Edw. 3 St. 5 c. 2). The Act is written inย Norman French, but is more commonly cited in its English translation.

The Treason Act 1351 has since been amended several times, and currently provides for four categories of treasonable offences, namely:

  • “when a man doth compass or imagine the death of our lord the King, or of our lady his Queen or of their eldest son and heir”;
  • “if a man do violate the King’s companion, or the King’s eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the King’s eldest son and heir”;[28][29]
  • “if a man do levy war against our lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King’s enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere”; and
  • “if a man slea theย chancellor, treasurer, or the King’s justices of the one bench or the other, justices in eyre, or justices of assise, and all other justices assigned to hear and determine, being in their places, doing their offices”.

Another Act, theย Treason Act 1702ย (1 Anne stat. 2 c. 21), provides for a fifth category of treason, namely:

  • “if any person or persons … shall endeavour to deprive or hinder any person who shall be the next in succession to the crown … from succeeding after the decease of her Majesty (whom God long preserve) to the imperial crown of this realm and the dominions and territories thereunto belonging”.

[Wikipedia]

These “heads of treason” are now largely of historical interest, and the acts commonly charged via other laws, but it will be recalled that, after the 1994 book, Princess in Love, by the Jewess Anna Pasternak, about the affair between Princess Diana and the (by then, ex-) Guards officer James Hewitt, was published, an enterprising reporter from the Sun “newspaper” tried to make a citizen’s arrest of Hewitt for treason, for “violating the wife of the King’s eldest son and heir”! That would have made for an interesting incident, but Hewitt kept his front door firmly shut.

Treason. Were the officers involved in the 20 July 1944 plot to kill Hitler “traitors”? Hitler thought so! German law (as it was in 1944) also said yes. In fact, I am not convinced that German law as it now is would acquit the plotters (though I concede that my knowledge of German law is at best fragmentary). I blogged once or twice about those events:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/07/20/the-20th-of-july-2019-thoughts/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/the-20th-of-july/

These matters have been discussed more in Germany and France than they have in the UK. Nuances of loyalty have been tested more on the European mainland. The events around the Reich and the Second World War led to shades of meaning not always understood in the UK. In France during WW2, there was a spectrum of loyalties ranging from monarchist (!) and extreme conservative, through Gaullist and moderate conservative, to social democrat, to socialist, to Communist (pro-Stalin) and Trotskyist. Not all were hostile to Vichy and/or Germany. To give just one example, Francois Mitterand was supposedly both a “resistantand part of the Vichy government, peripherally.

Some Frenchmen were not only pro-Vichy but pro-National Socialist. A relative few, perhaps 11,000, volunteered for SS Charlemagne:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33rd_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_Charlemagne_(1st_French)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_de_la_Mazi%C3%A8re

Honourable pro-German Frenchmen such as Christian de la Maziere were not, in their own eyes, “traitors”, any more than were, in their own eyes, German officers such as von Stauffenberg.

Of course, the masses like simplicity. In the UK, they were told that Mosley was a traitor (though of course never tried as such), and I suppose that a number of simple people still believe what they have heard based on that wartime propaganda.

Take another case: “George Blake” (born Behar, a half-Jew). Traitor? Many would say so, on the basis that he was in British service and even had a British passport:

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

Blake himself would say not a traitor, his allegiance being to the Communist ideal.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/dec/08/cell-mates-a-good-traitor-the-extraordinary-life-of-george-blake-the-spy-who-went-into-the-cold

These nuances seem rather un-British, but they would not perplex the spymasters of the 16th Century, such as Walsingham, used as he and his opponents were to ideological allegiance crossing national or state lines; in that era, allegiance based, usually, on religion.

What about timing? Well, of course, sometimes timing, as Talleyrand expresses, is what makes treason, treason. The officers who plotted against Hitler and survived became acceptable in postwar West Germany.

Timing is important in so many things. I was rereading a book I had not seen for about 25 years, In the Gunsight of the KGB. A quite compelling story of how a professor of Marxism-Leninism, Ushakov, was arrested for anti-Soviet agitation (being a dissident), released by administrative error, then fled to avoid re-arrest and certain long imprisonment. The half of the book that deals with his flight and then escape across the heavily-guarded Soviet-Turkish border is a good read; the rest, which deals with his views about Sovietism and upcoming events, is rather poor.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gunsight-KGB-Alexander-Ushakov/dp/0394562844

Timing is especially instructive here: Ushakov fled in 1984, if memory serves. Now, today, we know that had he avoided arrest in some lawful way, he would have been able to travel freely in about 7 years. Had he been imprisoned, he would have been released by the late 1980s if not before. He, however, did not know that!

How could he have guessed that the whole Soviet system (which he still fears in his book, regarding it as almost all-powerful and able to hoodwink the West easily: the Golitsyn syndrome) would crash to nothing after 1989, the State itself being dissolved by 1991?

In fact, Ushakov was unlucky also in that his book came out in August 1989, only a couple of months before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, followed by that of socialism across Eastern and Central Europe and then in the Soviet Union itself. Ushakov’s book was therefore obsolescent by the time it hit the bookshelves (though the adventurous first half is still, even today, of interest). Ushakov therefore fell into obscurity, whereas he might well otherwise have followed, in a minor way, in the footsteps of more famous dissidents, escapees and defectors, such as Bukovsky.

We all stand within the bounds of time and space. At present, our world seems almost immutable, but beware the hubris of thinking that our Western society will continue forever (“The End of History” fallacy). In fact, I should say that there is every chance that the world we know will not be around in its present form for much longer.

Forget treason. Concentrate on timing.

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/

Notes

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landesverrat

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochverrat

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason#United_Kingdom

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9812978/Anna-Pasternak-I-met-my-Wizard-ina-yurt…-sobbing-my-heart-out.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257828/Anna-Pasternak-The-ridiculed-writer-linked-Dianas-lover.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francois-Mitterrand

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ashes-Honour-Christian-Maziere/dp/0855230398/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gunsight-KGB-Alexander-Ushakov/dp/0394562844

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

http://antisoviet.imwerden.net/bukovsky_v_to_build.pdf

Mass Hysteria

I was just reading the blog of some Mancunian of whom I was unaware until today. I found his blog interesting despite his (to my mind, rather silly) pro-EU and (evident from his Twitter output) pro-immigration views.

His blog tells of how he and his family were immune from the mass hysteria all around after the death of Princess Diana. I found that interesting, partly because it echoes what I heard from people who were in London when it happened, in 1997 (the actual death was on 31 August 1997). I heard tales of pubs full of blubbing drinkers (days after the actual death), people who did not smile or even look normal in the streets, crowds treating Harrods department store (owned by Mohammed Fayed, the father of the last of Diana’s known lovers, Dodi Fayed) as if it were a shrine, taking flowers there etc.

In fact, I had seen the evidence of that last, because I had been to Harrods to buy a raincoat. I myself was not in England at the time of what I call the Diana Death Hysteria. I was then living in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Only about 70 English/British people lived in Almaty in 1997 (I know that because I had quite close contact with the small British Embassy and in fact visited the Embassy fairly frequently).

I did not have satellite TV and was unaware of the fact that Diana had died until 2 days later, when a colleague told me about it on Monday morning (the death having occurred on the weekend). I was later told that I was pretty much the only British person who had not gone to the Embassy to sign a book of condolence opened by the staff there.

On my return to London a few weeks later, I needed to buy a raincoat (it scarcely ever rains heavily in Almaty), so headed to Harrods in a taxi. When we approached the store, I noticed what seemed to be piles of trash outside Harrods, piled against crowd barriers. I asked the driver what that rubbish was doing there (to me it was reminiscent of the scenes seen during the 1979 “Winter of Discontent”, when rubbish went uncollected) but the driver replied, “that isn’t rubbish, Sir, it’s flower tributes for Princess Diana”. Well…

The phenomenon of mass hysteria or collective grief and/or jubilation has tended to pass me by. I also missed the mass celebrations for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 because, again, I was at the time overseas and incommunicado (in Rhodesia). Those who experienced either or both have found it hard to explain what exactly happened to (other) people (I can only assume that my own connections and associates are a hard-bitten lot!).

I am no psychologist (or psychiatrist) but have some tentative theories, revolving around emotional triggers in the population. I have wondered whether such mass emotionalism could be harnessed for the public good in future. In the past, a usually more restrained type of emotionalism bound the British people together. In the 20th Century, that involved devices such as the Union flag, shared “experiences” (even if in reality never actually experienced by many of those emotionally affected), such as the two World Wars, the Poppy Day commemorations, noted historical events and people (such as Nelson, Trafalgar, Wellington and Waterloo, Richard the Lionheart, Florence Nightingale, Robin Hood), music such as “For those in peril on the sea“, the National Anthem, “There’ll Always Be An England” etc. A patriotic and historical pastiche, certainly, neither comprehensive nor even particularly accurate in parts, but true enough and simple enough to bind a people together.

Today, the UK population is so fragmented in terms of race, ethnicity, language, age, (what passes for) “ideology”, culture, even sexual orientation or display, that it is hard to imagine them coming together in collective grief (false or otherwise) or jubilation today. I suppose that some would point to football or cricket games, the Olympics etc, but these are minority interests, despite the large number interested.

If one talks to people, or watches the often incredibly ignorant TV quiz contestants, it is realized that many (and by no means always the “blacks and browns”) know next to nothing of British history, literature, music, or even basic geography. Their world is not even a post-1945 one, but a post-2000 one of X-Factor persons, “soaps”, “celebrities” of whom I at least have never heard, music which is either banal or simply noise.

It may be that the Diana mood of 1997 was an elegiac lament for a Britain —or more accurately an England— which was on the point of disappearing (and now has disappeared).

The blog post which I have been reading:

https://heterocephalusgabler.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/this-is-hysterical/

Almaty when I lived there

 

Music