Tag Archives: privatization

Diary Blog, 3 August 2026

Morning music

[Aldo Balding, Lily Orange]

British justice in 2026

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/violent-north-east-youths-subjected-34385476

“Violent youths subjected a man and a woman to a shocking unprovoked city centre attack over a “harmless” comment. The victims walked past some teenagers sitting in a doorway and the woman remarked that they had a nice cool place to sit on a hot night.

Some of them took umbrage at that and it quickly escalated into violence, with then-16-year-old Thomas Courtney and two girls attacking her and leaving her injured. Courtney and then-15-year-old Lincoln Hudson then subjected her friend to a brutal attack in which he was repeatedly punched and kicked, including to the head after he fell to the ground, leaving him unconscious

Newcastle Crown Court heard both victims have been badly affected by the attack, with the man having become so depressed he tried to kill himself. However Courtney and Hudson have now been spared immediate custodial sentences after the court heard they have turned their lives around in the three years since the attack.

[Chronicle Live]

Regular readers of the blog know that I am not a “hanger and flogger” (usually). Is that result justice for the victims, and/or for society, though? I think not.

Even if, as their Counsel claimed —and which I doubt— those youths have “turned their lives around” in the (absurd delay) three years since the attack, the court should have ordered them both to pay ongoing compensation for life to the victims. £10 per week to each victim, and from each defendant.

Admittedly, it is now 18 years (2008) since I was in active Bar practice, I was never really a serious criminal practitioner (though I did a number of Crown Court trials and many many magistrates’ court ones in my early days, meaning the early 1990s) and I concede that I do not know whether the courts even have such a power, in those exact terms, but if not they should have.

Well, there it is. Britain 2026, in which people are still being prosecuted and even imprisoned for tweets and other online comments…

Incidentally, I was just looking at other sentences handed down by the Crown Courts of the North-East. One was a man who shook his own child, a baby, so violently that it suffered “catastrophic and lifechanging injuries“. He had taken cocaine, and drunk no less than 11 cans of lager. He failed to summon timely medical help. Sentence? 4 years (so out in 2 years, or less). This is not justice.

Tweets seen

Water supply, on the large scale, should be a nationalized industry, and the chief director of it should certainly not be paid more than half a million pounds gross (pre-tax), if that.

The featured woman fat cat was not even the director of all UK water supply, just that of one region of the country.

I think that there is a case for capping all salaries at some level to be determined, which might be something like £200,000 or £300,000 net (i.e. post-tax etc). That includes other kinds of remuneration.

Here she is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liv_Garfield.

[“In the 26 companies that operate a third of all of the care homes in this country, 200 MILLION pounds leaks out of that sector in the form of management fees for private investors. That’s an astronomical sum that is not going to improving care or paying workers a fair wage, but is instead lining the pockets of wealth investors, often from overseas.

Social care is not a cash cow. It is a critical public service, limping along as its lifeblood is drained by private interests. Getting profiteers out of care is not a nice-to-have measure. It is a crucial starting point that any meaningful reform of the sector must build from.”]

As the Americans say, that surely is a “no-brainer”. I featured, some time ago, on the blog, a news report about some inept armed robbers who targeted the house, in the wealthy Sandbanks neighbourhood of Dorset, of a director/owner of a number of care homes.

The robbers threatened the man’s wife and daughter (he was at work) and, though unable to force the women to open the safe, still got away with about £300,000 in cash and jewels. They were caught not long after that, and had left enough evidence behind them to ensure a conviction and long sentences of imprisonment.

What interested me about that report, apart from the great ineptitude of the criminals, was the fact that despite having been unable to access the safe, they still escaped with hundreds of thousands of pounds, much of it in cash. Does that not raise a number of red flags?

These exploitative private care homes, that charge the elderly or their families huge amounts yet pay their staff peanuts (and often offer residents poor food and care), are a social crime as far as I am concerned.

More British justice (?) in 2026

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/machete-thugs-jailed-intimidating-violence-11079872

Two men who attacked a frail 82-year-old antique weapons collector in his own home have been jailed. Andrew Paull and Nathan Flower burst into the home of the pensioner, who is now 85, as he slept in bed.

Truro Crown Court heard Paull, 49, and Flower, 33, struck him multiple times with a machete as he tried to get out of bed. The pair demanded they wanted his safe keys, believing he had gold and cash in it.

In fact, the safe was empty and the elderly man was pushed down the stairs at his property in Penrice Park, St Austell, in April 2024. They fled with £350 in cash, bank cards and some keys.

The victim suffered cuts to his face, hand and wrist and was left in what a judge called a “quite pathetic state” and a “broken man”. Paull, of no fixed abode, and Flower, of Basset Road, Camborne, admitted wounding.

The court heard drugs had blighted the lives of both defendants. Judge James Adkin jailed them both for 27 months and said they used “intimidating violence against a vulnerable individual in his own home”.

[Cornwall Live]

Can anyone reading that report think that a mere 27 months was a suitably severe sentence for having broken into the home of an 82-y-o pensioner as he slept, hit him repeatedly with a machete, threatened him, robbed him, then pushed him down a flight of stairs?

Frankly, that sentence is a travesty, a disgrace, and that Judge Adkin, whoever he is (I had not previously heard of him), should be ashamed of himself.

I have no idea what the defendants’ “previous” might have been, but odds-on they both have records as long as the arm of the law [used to be].

What makes that wholly inadequate sentence even more disgraceful is that the convicts will actually serve no more than half of the headline time, so about 13 months, and very likely even less than that.

I have, as previously noted, never been a “hanger and flogger” but, as far as I am concerned, such vicious crimes deserve a flogging, and a mercilessly harsh one. (yes, of course I know that our laws do not now provide for such a sentence; they should do, in cases of such viciousness).

More?

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/man-rams-another-car-beats-11068072

A thug driver lost it and rammed another man’s car before proceeding to beat him up repeatedly during an unprovoked attacked, court papers have revealed.

Paul Scrafton used his black Seat Ibiza as a weapon to ram his victim’s vehicle three times.

During the unprovoked incident in Mountlea Drive, Par, near St Austell, on December 17 last year, Scrafton, “savagely beat the victim with eight blows”.

At a sentencing at Bodmin Magistrates’ Court on Friday (July 17) of the 50-year-old from The Mount in Par, magistrates described the attack as a “brutal and sustained assault” leaving the victim with broken glasses and his car shunted across the road.

Sentencing Scrafton to 52 weeks in prison, suspended for two years, the magistrates said: “This was an unprovoked attack of a serious nature. It was a horrific incident, where a vehicle was used as a weapon to ram the victim’s vehicle three times.

“The defendant then savagely beat the victim with eight blows, breaking his glasses, which was a brutal and sustained assault and the victim’s car was shunted across the road with a vehicle being used in dangerous manner.

“The victim suffered physical and psychological harm and has been impacted dramatically and continues to suffer anxiety.

[Cornwall Live]

A suspended sentence, for that? Unbelievable.

Not that I believe in over-sentencing, though. In fact, over-sentencing is the major cause (apart from this poor country being swamped by non-Europeans) for the serious shortage of prison space. Time after time I see (in the newspapers) people getting 2, 3, even 4 years for crimes which really merit months not years (if any time at all); and that is so regardless of the fact that most prisoners now serve only 50%, 40% or, in some cases, 30% of the headline sentences.

Tweets seen

[“CABINET MINISTERS’ CRIMINAL RECORDS TO BE KEPT SECRET FROM THE BRITISH PUBLIC. Good morning to the millions of everyday, hardworking Brits waking up on this Monday! You honestly cannot make this level of establishment cover up up!

A legal tribunal has just ruled that the British public will be banned from knowing which Cabinet Ministers declared past criminal convictions during their vetting process. This secret ruling comes after Louise Haigh was forced to resign over a hidden fraud conviction for making a false police report, only for Andy Burnham to bring her straight back into Cabinet as his right hand woman! Everyday British citizens are subjected to ruthless criminal background checks just to get a basic job in teaching, healthcare, or security. Yet the politicians wielding immense power over your life get special legal protection to hide their criminal convictions from the very voters who pay their salaries. They demand total transparency from you while running a secretive two tier system to protect themselves.”]

As previously said, neither side should be directly targeting civilians. The Kiev-regime side is at least as culpable in that regard as is the Russian side and, moreover, has been doing it for far longer, since 2014 in fact.

[“What is happening in the Middle-East around Palestine, and its knock on effects in Europe, are overwhelmingly a direct consequence of Zionism.

Zionism is not simply Jews existing. Zionism is a political force that exists to further the interests of the state of Israel, and works to impose a world order based upon the supremacy of that state, and the enslavement or destruction of everything else. It is an inherently genocidal force in the same way that ISIS and its vision of a global caliphate cleansed of unbelievers was genocidal.

It is not a political force that British people, or any other people, can co-exist with and it cannot be permitted to organise here.“]

Quite right.

You heard it first here. I have been blogging for years about how Labour would “solve” the small boats invasion by rubberstamping entry for the fake “refugees” either in France or even in their home countries.

As it is, 80% of “asylum” applications are approved. Burnham and his cabal will raise that to 95%. The rest will either be deported, or not, but will probably return down the line with different cover stories.

Same goes for the “asylum hotels”. They are being shut. Fine, but to where are the migrant invaders being transferred? To private rental properties, and to social housing which should be for British people only.

Even beyond that, 90% or 95% of the migrant-invaders are here superficially legally, as “tourists”, “family members”, or as “students”, or on work visas (mostly granted on fraudulent applications), and/or as fiancees, spouses etc.

Another aspect of the invasion consists of births to non-white women and to stupid white women impregnated by non-whites.

Diary Blog, 27 February 2024

Morning music

[Sukhumi, Abkhazia]

Tweets seen

Grotesque.

I never see boring Newsnight now, so had missed that.

More grotesquerie.

Talking point

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

I had not previously heard of this person or of his crimes. It does beg the questions around Nature v. Nurture, in that the subject had been brutalized from an early age, firstly by his own parents, then by the juvenile “reform” system, then by other experiences, and finally by the state and Federal adult prison systems.

In other words, someone evidently monstrous, but at the same time someone made monstrous, arguably. It would be interesting to compare the life-stories of his several siblings.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13127193/Elderly-patients-denied-life-saving-cancer-care-NHS-major-study-warns.html

Still clapping?

Having said that, there are, I think, still many good people in the NHS, but the structure and management of the Service is obviously unwieldy and inefficient.

More tweets

If a black hits a white, especially a white woman, the penalty should be… [COMMENT REDACTED BECAUSE THERE IS NO LONGER ANY FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN THE UK]…

I have a shrewd idea (or maybe not so shrewd— we shall see…) that “30p Lee” Anderson may have jettisoned the Conservative Party rather than the other way around. After all, the Con Party is staring down the barrel of an electoral meltdown which may finish off arguably the longest-surviving political party in the world.

The Conservative Party was looking at quite likely defeat in Anderson’s constituency, but now maybe not (if Anderson is reinstated). If Anderson is not reinstated, he may well be able to stay on as MP either as an Independent or, more likely, after having stood as Reform Party candidate. He now has real national profile.

I blogged about this a few days ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2024/02/24/diary-blog-24-february-2024-2/: see below

Lee Anderson, and Ashfield (Derbyshire)

The maverick MP has been suspended from being under the Conservative Party whip.

Naturally, I do not agree with his statement that London is “run by Muslims”. Sadiq Khan is from a Muslim background, but has been pretty much in the Jew-Zionist pocket for many years.

It would be more accurate to characterize Sadiq Khan as “anti-white”.

As to Anderson himself, I suggest that he is trying to bolster his position vis a vis the General Election expected later this year.

Until 2019, Ashfield had always been won by Labour since its inception in 1955, with one closely-run by-electoral exception in 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashfield_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s. “New Labour” and Gloria de Piero changed all that.

David Marquand, a former MP for Ashfield (1966-1977; he is still alive, at 89): “Originally a tentative supporter of Blair’s New Labour, he has since become a trenchant critic, arguing that “New Labour has ‘modernised’ the social-democratic tradition out of all recognition”, even while retaining the over-centralisation and disdain for the radical intelligentsia of the old “Labourite” tradition.” [Wikipedia]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marquand.

Marquand defected to the SDP and then was honourable enough to step down as MP, not contesting the by-election.

In fact, Marquand was himself rather intellectual:

“Marquand addressed Britain’s relative economic decline in The Unprincipled Society (1988) and The New Reckoning (1997). He argued that this decline was caused by Britain’s failure to become a developmental state like France, Germany and Japan. In those countries state intervention had encouraged industrial development and had facilitated the necessary adjustments to competition. Britain, however, was wedded to an economic liberalism which prevented the state from undertaking the necessary measures to meet the country’s developmental needs.[7] In The New Reckoning Marquand claimed: “The economies that have succeeded more spectacularly have been those fostered by developmental states, where public power, acting in concert with private interest, has induced market forces to flow in the desired direction”.[8]” [Wikipedia].

In fact, Ashfield is not quite as “safe Labour” as the history might suggest superficially. Gloria de Piero won in 2010 by a majority of under half a point (0.4%, 192 votes) from a LibDem.

While de Piero’s majority increased in 2015 (as the LibDems imploded), in 2017 she beat the Conservative candidate by less than one point (0.9%, 441 votes). An Ashfield Independent came third with over 9% of the vote.

In 2019, Lee Anderson won convincingly: 39.3% of the vote, followed in second (27.6%) by another “Ashfield Independent”, Jason Zadrozny [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Zadrozny], who has had a chequered political and personal history. In third place came Labour, with only 24.4%.

Zadrozny is going to contest the seat at GE 2024.

So far, apart from Anderson (who may or may not be standing as Conservative Party candidate, depending on whether he gets back the Conservative whip), only the Ashfield Independent and Reform UK are presently known to be likely to stand at GE 2024, but a full field is almost guaranteed. There may be a dozen or more candidates.

At first, I thought that Anderson could probably be written off as post-GE 2024 MP, but now am not so sure. He has now (whether by design or not) distanced himself from the unpopular Conservative leadership —and possibly from the equally-unpopular Conservative Party— is anti-EU, anti-migration invasion etc, and is now known nationwide. He must have at least a chance of retaining his seat. If he does, and if he also retains it as a “Conservative” MP, he might be one of 100 or even as few as 50 such MPs. Who knows what might then happen?

[from this blog on a previous day].

It may be that Anderson would be better off electorally standing either for Reform UK or as Independent than he would be as a Conservative Party candidate. Voters like “celebrity”; look at how Caroline Lucas has built up her constituency vote at Brighton Pavilion over the years, and that despite Green Party candidates elsewhere generally losing their deposits with votes under 5%.

More tweets seen

How ironic it would be if, one fine day, a kind of “Nuremberg” trial were to take place, with Netanyahu and others tried, convicted, and even hanged.

Take away his rice bowl. The Kiev regime has scarcely even the facade of a genuine state. Everything is being propped-up by aid monies from the USA, UK, EU etc.

Sam Melia

I happened to see the communique below from Laura Towler of Patriotic Alternative:

Morning all. Bit of an update about Sam as he’s still under direction not to talk about his trial on social media.

He is being sentenced on Friday. There is a chance he will get a custodial sentence, but there is also the possibility he won’t. We are preparing for the worst but hoping for the best. It’s a weird feeling right now because we don’t know whether this will be our last week together for a while, but despite this Sam is in a good place. When you can hold your head up high and honestly say your intentions were good, and when you have the truth on your side, you can take whatever is thrown at you.

Sam has recorded a video that will be uploaded after Friday, sharing his thoughts and a message for you all. If he gets a custodial sentence, that will be how he speaks. If he walks away a free man, he will be able to post again.

Pictures are from last week when we went away for a few nights as a family and it was really lovely to spend that time together.

[Laura Towler]

[Sam Melia with one of his children (I believe that he has two, though am unsure)]

Good luck to Sam Melia and Laura Towler.

See also: https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/29/even-the-far-right-must-have-the-right-to-free-speech/.

Even the far right must have the right to free speech...”

[Spiked magazine].

I recall having met Professor Tettenborn in 2002, when we were both “Lords Justices of Appeal” for a day, judging a moot for his students from Exeter University at the Guildhall (in the High Street at Exeter). My one and only appearance as a Lord Justice of Appeal.

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13130819/Putins-Nordic-nightmare-strategically-Baltic-Sea-NATO-lake-Sweden-alliance.html

The strategically important Baltic Sea is being dubbed NATO’s lake after Sweden was cleared to join the military alliance – strengthening its power in the region in a nightmare development for Vladimir Putin.

[Daily Mail].

The Scandinavian states and Finland must be mad. They have just made themselves targets for possible nuclear attack.

Worth hearing.

I imagine that, in the medium term, before 2035, the Jews will be driven out of “Israel”/Palestine, and will flee to the USA and Europe etc. The destruction of the Israeli state will weaken the power of the Jewish lobby worldwide.

Diary Blog, 25 March 2023

Afternoon music

On this day a year ago

Saturday quiz

Well, I only scored the same as political journalist John Rentoul this week— 5/10. I did not know the answers to questions 4, 7, 8, and 9; in the back of my mind, I knew the answer to question 1, but could not bring it to mind, so counted that as a “did not know”.

From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/mar/25/garden-multilayer-forest-biodiverse-tom-massey-rhs.

Tweets seen

Yes, tweeter “@DevilsAdvo1971” certainly did shut up when confronted by not only facts but also evidence directly from one of the many people scammed by “Jack Monroe”. So many people are desperate to believe in something, or someone.

More tweets

Yes. I recall talking about similar issues in 1976 with a couple with whom I was then friendly, a (supposedly ex-) getaway driver-turned-limousine service-owner, and his wife, both in their thirties (I was 19 at the time). The discussion was about the relative merits of the Western way of life as compared with the Soviet socialist system.

That fellow’s comment has stayed with me: “what matters to me is not the detail about how it works but what way of life comes out the other end.” Like many —more-or-less— “villains”, he was basically quite “Thatcherite” in his views (though this was three years before Margaret Thatcher actually became Prime Minister).

Indeed. In the late 1970s, the inefficiencies of the subsidized industries, and the (neo-Luddite) power of the trade unions, were the stuff of legend, but the “Thatcher Revolution” went far too far in various ways. All the same, people realized that some change was needed.

I have blogged previously about how the ~33-year cycle works. In 1989, old-style socialism died, but that did not happen overnight. In the UK, the change had been in preparation for many years, starting notionally with the Thatcher governments.

Telecoms policy illustrates the point. The State-owned British Telecom was privatized in 1984: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Group. Even in the mid-1980s, it could take a long time for the average customer/consumer to be supplied with a telephone. It sounds ludicrous now, of course.

I knew someone from my schooldays who owned a couple of houses in South London, rented out by the room. He wanted the tenants to have a coin-operated telephone, and arranged with British Telecom to have one installed. After several months, he was getting angry that the telephone had not been installed. He was fobbed off with various reasons (excuses) until, finally so exasperated at the lack of action, about a year after he had asked for the installation, he called British Telecom to say that he was cancelling the order, only to be informed that the telephone was going to be installed a couple of days later. Which it was. Still, a whole year just to get a telephone!

That kind of rationing did not affect people equally. I remember being told, in the late 1980s, at dinner in Lincoln’s Inn, and by (now-deceased) Lord Justice Parker [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Parker_(judge)], that when he was first appointed a judge in, I think, 1969, that appointment had co-incided with his moving to a country house in a rather out-of-the-way part of Essex. There was no telephone.

Parker had then contacted the manager of the (then) GPO for the area to request installation of a telephone. He was told that it might take several months, if not longer. He then said that he needed a telephone for his work. The telephone manager had asked what work. “I have just been appointed a judge“. The manager then apologized, and said that a telephone would be installed that week. It was.

I imagine that the later Lord Justice of Appeal put his case quite forcefully. I certainly found him a rather unpleasant person, that one time that I spoke with him.

It sounds antediluvian now, when anyone can buy a basic mobile telephone for a small amount of money, and get it from a supermarket or other outlet in a matter of minutes.

The point is that the heavily-subsidized nationalized industries of 1945-1980s had become sluggish and a drag on economic efficiency. However, the privatization trend went too far in the late 1980s and 1990s. Now, the taxpayers fork out huge sums to notionally private enterprises, from railways and offshoots of the DWP and NHS, to the farming industry and others. We are getting neither proper service nor value for money.

The same is true of the “tax credits” payments put in place by Blair and Brown, and also the current “Universal Credit” low pay boondoggle. It subsidizes poor-paying employers out of public funds. That cannot be right.

More music

More tweets

To my mind, the loss is $30 cash plus the cost price of the goods minus the profit margin on the goods. I admit that I am no economist (or mathematician)…

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

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/property/article-11899481/The-property-owning-couple-bought-ENTIRE-Welsh-village-raised-rents-unaffordable-prices.html

Put a beggar on a horse and he rides it to death” [German proverb].

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11901377/Asylum-seekers-say-like-living-jail-hotels-taxpayers-footing-bill.html.

The number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers in the UK is about to reach 400 as migrants continue to cross the Channel in small boats, MailOnline can reveal.

Currently 395 hotels in the UK are understood to be being used to accommodate more than 51,000 people at a reported cost of £6.8million a day – but the number is constantly increasing as the Government battles to start moving some asylum seekers to Rwanda while their applications to stay in the UK are processed.

[Daily Mail]

The continuing cross-Channel migration-invasion will put the final nail in the Conservative Party coffin, even though Labour will be no better re. the problem.

More tweets

The “democratic” pseudo-statesmen who feel the need to be heavily protected from those they claim to represent. Adolf Hitler never needed such measures, certainly not in the six years of peace 1933-1939.

What a contrast.

Late tweets

Just as one cannot see a single TV ad now in the UK, nor any drama series, even one set in 1950, and even one set in 1590 (!), that does not have numerous blacks in it.

It’s a start, no more.

Whatever happens in and around Bakhmut/Artyomovsk, the war in Ukraine has all but solidified. We see ever more detailed maps and reports about ever-smaller areas. Russia needs a massive gamechanger in order to retake the initiative on the large scale.

Late music