Tag Archives: relationships

Diary Blog, 6 July 2025

Morning music

Reminiscences: temps perdu, and thoughts about mortality

When one is well over 60, as I now am (68; b. 1956), thoughts may naturally turn to mortality, life and death, and questions larger than the everyday concerns of life. That may be so when one notices that many people one has known in life are now defunct.

Some of the people I have known, or have merely met briefly or peripherally in the past, are still alive; many, however, are not. Some of those who are no longer alive have died from various natural causes (and are too numerous to list), others expired from unnatural causes (such as a Nigerian princess I knew, shot dead in Lagos in the late 1990s) or from causes or reasons unknown (such as the ex-husband of a lady I knew in the 1980s, which ex-husband apparently drowned in the Thames at London). A few, friends of friends rather than people I knew well, sadly died via suicide many years ago.

These thoughts came again to mind yesterday when I noticed information online to the effect that a former American colleague, a major-league American lawyer called Tim Scrantom, died some time ago, in 2021, apparently of a brain tumour. He was diagnosed in April 2021, and died 6 months later.

[Tim Scrantom, 1956-2025]

Tim Scrantom was a couple of months younger than me, a fact which sharpens my reminiscence.

I met Scrantom after a headhunter in New York suggested to him and his two main colleagues, in 2001, that I might suit his niche law firm (based in Charleston, South Carolina). I was telephoned in Turkey, where I was then resident, and we arranged to meet in London at one of my usual haunts, the Churchill Bar at the Hotel Russell in Russell Square.

I drove back to England via Greece, Bulgaria, Romania (the latter two then not EU states, and very ramshackle), Hungary (excellent country), Austria, Germany (calling in at Berchtesgaden), Luxembourg, and Belgium.

The upshot was that Scrantom and I became colleagues, he based mostly at Charleston (the office was at East Bay Street, in the conservation zone of the city), I mostly in London, though we both visited various offshore jurisdictions, once or twice in tandem, as when we went to Liechtenstein one day (well, I did; Scrantom had left his passport at the Mayfair Hotel, and only discovered that fact when we met at Heathrow, prior to flying to Zurich…).

Scrantom was a genial host. He invited my wife and me to dinner in Charleston in August or early September 2001 and, on a later solo visit, I visited his home on Sullivan’s Island, by Charleston, where he lived with his then wife (I believe they divorced later) and young daughter.

Scrantom, though a graduate from American law schools, an attorney in several states, and a professor of law as well, was also a barrister of Gray’s Inn in London. I was a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, though many years later (2016) wrongfully and unlawfully disbarred at the instigation of a pack of malicious and politically-motivated Jew-Zionists.

Scrantom, incidentally, was a modest fellow, very much a “Southern gentleman”, born in Georgia and from a wealthy background. I liked him. I never knew (until yesterday) about some of his earlier adventures, such as sailing around the Bahamas on his yacht, exploring the Himalayas, or visiting edgy places in Cambodia and elsewhere in South-East Asia, though he did tell me that he knew several of the people portrayed in the famous book and film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_the_Garden_of_Good_and_Evil_(film)], the events of which occurred in Savannah, Georgia, where Scrantom’s family members were largely based.

In September 2001, I was with Scrantom in a taxi in the Strand, London, when his wife called to say that New York was under attack. We interrupted our journey (to the Berkeley Square area of Mayfair) to get out at a Dixons store to look at the TV screens.

I well remember him later fuming that Iraq “must have” been behind the attack on the World Trade Center (that was the neo-con and American msm line at the time, of course) and that “Israel has the right idea” (i.e. bomb the hell out…). Well, he was wrong, of course, and we disagreed about that. Like most Americans, and despite his intelligence and education, he was influenced by the pro-Israel propaganda so pervasive in the msm in the USA (though his main colleague, Ron, a hard-driving former USAF officer, was more alive to the menace of Jew-Zionism, and he was, as one might expect, also pro-USA to the hilt).

Scrantom, even when I knew him, was a multimillionaire, and later become a major player in the field of “litigation insurance”, once called “champerty” and historically not lawful in most jurisdictions (including England): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance#England_and_Wales. Now, it is considered more acceptable.

I do not much like the concept (and Jew-Zionists in England use “litigation insurance” to pursue pro-Israel “lawfare”), so maybe it is just as well that our professional connection was mainly severed in 2002, when I decided to return to the ordinary practising Bar in England. I then moved to a large country house in Cornwall, and was based professionally at Exeter.

As already mentioned, I liked Tim (though not his then wife, to be frank; I only met her once), though I should say that he and his two main colleagues had no idea at all about how to run a law firm.

Life is short, something few if any really understand when in their twenties or thirties. We all have to try to accomplish something, not in a careerist sense, but for the future of the Earth, while in any particular incarnation.

[180 East Bay Street, Charleston, South Carolina; offices of Tim Scrantom in 2001-2002]
[painting of conservation zone, Charleston, South Carolina]
[painting of the conservation zone or “French Quarter” of Charleston, South Carolina]
[The Battery, Charleston, South Carolina; a couple of my colleagues lived near there]

Tweets seen

That idiot, a (?) 30-something wannabee or occasional scribbler, tweeted something about me quite a while ago, I think in 2023 or 2024. He seems to be very pro-Jew-Zionist and pro-Israel, and his msm scribblings (it seems as part of teams, not sole bylines) were 6-11 years ago. A few more recent scribblings have been for online outlets (of which few have ever heard). https://muckrack.com/colin-cortbus/articles.

Apparently, that Cortbus person was once a UKIP activist (when a student, about 12-14 years ago).

I notice that that individual has only about 2,500 Twitter/X followers. When a pack of Jews had me expelled from Twitter in 2018, I had 3,000 followers (and that had been artificially lowered); by now I would have had tens of thousands of Twitter followers. Ah well…so much for “free speech” in this country…

Incidentally, I was unaware about that event in Zagreb. Looks as though parts of Europe are waking up.

…but look at that dishonest little Pakistani, Sajid Javid. Wrong once again. Remember his denial of the link between the migration invasion of tens of millions into the UK, and housing shortages?

Make that nearer to 10-15M, though…(plus births).

Starmer-stein is a total idiot. No idea about how to run the UK. Clueless. I predicted it, about 3-4 years ago, on the blog.

Scotland is even worse than England. Some of the idiots up there even claim to welcome being invaded by backward hordes!

The Labour Party in Scotland is actually headed by a Pakistani; so was (how ludicrous can you get?) the Scottish “National” Party, until recently.

As for that rapist, he will be out in 5-6 months. Shocking. The woman victim must be devastated and feel totally unprotected and unavenged.

Economic sanctions rarely work. When I was in Rhodesia in 1977, the roads outside the capital, Salisbury (now Harare) were empty, but that was not because of sanctions (fuel rationing only lasted 1965-1971). New cars were often seen in the city, though none were of British manufacture; French, I think Spanish, or other. Sanctions had limited effect— things such as books, Scotch whisky etc. Nothing really major. Tobacco, oranges, chrome etc were still exported (often under false flags).

Compare Putin to pathetic and dishonest Starmer-stein, or that truly ridiculous “diversity hire”, Lammy.

Not so much “wild geese” as Muscovy ducks…(only joking).

Unsurprising. Why should the peoples of Central and Western Europe (and USA) risk nuclear war for the sake of Zelensky’s brutal, shambolic, and very corrupt cabal? Most Ukrainian men are themselves trying to avoid serving in the Kiev-regime forces.

[“Israeli publication Haaretz reported that the US military used 93 THAAD interceptors in 11 days to defend Israel, revising previous cost estimates from $800 million to about $1.2 billion. With an annual production rate of about 36-48 THAAD interceptors, the US used up nearly two years’ worth of the missiles during the war.“]

Horrible. I hope they suffer for committing such crimes against the natural world. Barbarians.

Strange to think that, when I drove to the end of the almost-empty Karpas Peninsula in Northern Cyprus in early 2000, I was only 60 miles from Latakia in Syria. 60 miles, but a different world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpas_Peninsula.

[“Few people noticed why exactly Israel launched a war against Iran on June 13. Here are three hidden reasons: 1. Just days earlier, the country was rocked by its largest pedophile scandal in history—one involving several high-ranking politicians. 2. Before the war, Iran hacked three terabytes of files from Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, which is known for collecting compromising information on global politicians. 3. Israeli PM Netanyahu risked losing power due to the unpopular proposal to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israeli military“]

I wonder what there is in that about Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Dershowitz, Clinton, Trump etc.

If MOSSAD or AMAN had that stuff, does the SVR now also have it, or some of it? About Trump, for example?

“The Consolation of Philosophy”?

Allison Pearson is a remarkably stupid woman.

I presume that Lewis is hiding out in Israel. He has or had a flat in Eilat, a fact that he concealed from the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal when he was found guilty on several charges in 2018. Indeed, his Counsel told the Tribunal that Lewis should have his fine greatly reduced because Lewis’s only assets were his clothes, a mobility scooter, and a private pension worth £70 a week.

Ecce the supposed “top defamation lawyer”!

See also:

Mark Lewis is little better than a confidence trickster.

Incidentally, Lewis was an abusive husband when married briefly (one year) to the Z-list “celebrity” and, briefly, Sky News newsreader, Caroline Feraday (amusingly, best-known for having been sacked by text message by BBC local radio about 15 years ago).

Not that I care at all about Lewis’s abusive behaviour to his then wife, who now lives in a “nowheresville” in the outer regions of Los Angeles (see my blog posts).

The Feraday woman joined with Lewis in attacking me viciously on Twitter (about my opposition to the Jewish fake WW2 “reparations” scam); in fact she initiated the attacks, with which Lewis then joined in. Until then (many years ago, about 2012 or so), I had never heard of the bastard, or her.

Mark Lewis was (maybe still is) a “patron” of that evil and squalid organization, the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” or “CAA”, working with its main characters, such as Gideon Falter (a proven liar and, arguably, perjurer) and the Jew-Zionist Israel fanatic, posing as “Head of Investigations and Enforcement”, whom we can call “Slitherman”.

An example below of Lewis’s abusive social media activity, which (after several years) got him into trouble (though not via me— unlike the Jew-Zionist troublemakers, I do not waste time making endless complaints to police etc):

(in fact, in 2018, it was revealed that Lewis constantly abused people on Twitter etc, even a young Jewish boy; Lewis blamed his medications for his abusive behaviour…).

Ecce Allison Pearson’s solicitor (apparently)…

My own Twitter account, as explained, was deleted by Twitter itself in 2018 at the instigation of effectively the same pack of Jews, while Caroline Feraday deleted her original Twitter account a year or two ago, mainly because it was too embarrassing for her in various ways. She has another Twitter/X account now (with only 115 “followers”, despite she herself following 166 Twitter/X accounts).

Caroline Feraday’s now-deleted Twitter account had, at one time, tens of thousands of “followers”, all fake, all bought by her and by “Mark Lewis Lawyer”, who himself bought nearly 80,000 in an attempt to seem important, popular etc. Legal business news outlets even commented, cautiously, about the dishonest fakery of Lewis and his then wife.

Caroline Feraday now works for local public radio station KCLU in Ventura County, California, a subsidized radio station (National Public Radio network) with (putting it jokingly) about half a dozen listeners.

A few years ago, Caroline Feraday was publicly begging on GoFundMe, in an attempt to raise a mere USD $5,000. Sic transit gloria mundi…(and “celebrity”)…

From last month; I missed that one.

Cor, ‘ee’s well ‘ard!” (when arresting a woman of 83 doing basically nothing; the police are, shall we say, “not so hard” when confronting, if they ever do, predators and scavengers, such as those usually found living in caravans…).

Pathetic.

Ha. Soon “we shall all be (called) terrorists”…

I have seen the odd thing over the years from Rod Liddle with which I have agreed; quite a lot with which I disagreed. Also, my impression (I have never met him) is that he is rather an unpleasant person.

I could suggest something, but would not want some Jew-Zionist troublemaker making yet another contrived complaint to the police “service” about me.

The Israeli Jews are so brave, when firing at unarmed and defenceless civilians…

Late music

Diary Blog, 24 April 2025, with a few thoughts on “it’s a small world” and “six degrees of separation” etc

Afternoon music

[Oleg Lamakin, Laboratory Assistant]

It’s a small world

I was just perusing the online newspapers, looking at a few current crimes and trials. While doing that, I noticed the continuing trial (in fact, retrial) of one Constance Marten, whose retrial has been in progress for a month or so (the original trial stopped in summer 2024).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78e1yq6d2eo

Obviously, the present retrial is in progress and so I cannot say anything by way of comment about the material facts or subject-matter. In any case, I do not know anything of the case, beyond what little I have read in newspapers or seen on TV news from time to time.

No, what struck me was something peripheral to the case.

On reading some accounts of the trial and retrial, I saw the photograph of one of the accused:

[Constance Marten, defendant]

I happen to have very good facial recognition skills. The picture reminded me slightly of someone I encountered a few times in the mid-1980s.

At the relevant time, about 40 years ago, I had a girlfriend who worked as an interpreter at a high level, working —inter alia— with people such as the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (eg when Gorbachev visited the UK), and with organizations such as the U.N. Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) and various Soviet dance groups, including the Bolshoi.

Thus it was that I encountered a young woman, 20-something, who was also interpreting, but on a lower technical level. More general or social interpreting.

The Bolshoi touring ensemble was, appropriately, large, well over 300 in all, everything from dancers to costume people and even a few persons from the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Culture, i.e, KGB minders etc. The job of the last group was not really, or primarily, to prevent defections of the kind seen in the 1960s and 1970s, but to guard against anti-Soviet (mostly Jew-Zionist) protestors (re. Shcharansky and other refuseniki) and to stop people getting into trouble. For example, the famous choreographer, Grigorovitch [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Grigorovich] once got into a lift in Dublin (I was already there and just about to push a button) when a harassed fat bully KGB type stormed into the lift and rudely took over, pushing the button required to get his (well-drunk) charge back to the right floor.

Such a large ensemble required several interpreters.

Incidentally, I never met Grigorovitch (as such), but always used his wife’s laminated Bolshoi Ballet clip-on lapel pass to get past the security lines and get in to see the shows (fortunately, the individual name was on the other side of the pass, and there was no photograph!). His wife was the prima ballerina, Natalia Bessmertnova [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalia_Bessmertnova]. She was too grand to actually wear or carry her laminated pass.

Incidentally, and incredibly, Grigorovitch is still alive at age 98, despite the abuse his liver must have suffered over nearly a century.

So I met that young woman mentioned, who had the unusual name Amabel (apparently one more common in both the Middle Ages and the Victorian period). I cannot now be sure, but thinking back, I think her surname was Marten or Martin; I had forgotten that until now.

Amabel was a pleasant young woman, I think probably quite a nice person generally, and was from, I was told, a wealthy landowning family who had houses, including large country houses, here and there, both in England and Ireland. In fact she and her —I was told, rather socially unacceptable to her family— boyfriend spent much of their time “looking after” (as she told me) a family-owned country house in some obscure part of the Irish countryside. My own girlfriend’s take on that was that it kept the boozy Irish boyfriend away from the family’s social circle.

I met the boyfriend once, in the large hotel in Dublin where the Bolshoi were all quartered, and where I was (unofficially) also staying (in my case for free). He was all right, and bought me a pint of Guinness, but I could see why her family may have preferred to keep him at arm’s length. I am not good at guessing ages, but anyway some years, several years at least, older than Amabel, with heavy black spectacles, and plainly drunk at three o’clock in the afternoon. In his thirties, maybe late thirties.

I was told that Amabel had told my girlfriend that when she, Amabel, was in St. Petersburg (then still Leningrad), she had been touring the Hermitage [https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/?lng=en; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermitage_Museum] when she saw some old English china. Some pieces had a representation of a large country house on them and, as she excitedly recounted to my girlfriend “...it was our house!” (pronounced “ower hice“…), referring to the family’s main seat, in rural Dorset.

Well, I got on rather well with Amabel on the very few times we met (I think only on that tour), and may have occasionally gently mocked her “upper class” background and social circle. Her (I think younger) sister, whom I met once somewhere, in England, I think, was a rather cold formal person (I thought), supposedly a one-time girlfriend of Prince Andrew (she eventually married a merchant banker).

When the Bolshoi ballerinas were relaxing, some were taken to Stratfield Saye, the seat of the Dukes of Wellington, halfway between Reading and Basingstoke, where a former schoolfriend of Amabel happened to be either the Duchess or the wife of the son of the then Duke, and who later succeeded to the title. I think the latter, thinking about it. A favoured few were allowed to ride some of the horses from the stables there.

[main entrance to Stratfield Saye House]
[part of Stratfield Saye House, Hampshire]

After 1985 or 1986, I never saw Amabel again, and I have no idea at all how her life went. The only time I even heard of her was when she and her sister were mentioned (c.1989) by a forthright and wealthy lady who was helping (with others) to save the Rudolf Steiner Bookshop in Museum Street, near the British Museum, in London (that bookshop had to close, but the Rudolf Steiner Book Trust, which I established, and of which I was an unpaid director (with anthroposophist Nelson Willby and his American wife Melissa) for a couple of years, established Wellspring Books, which had premises in New Oxford Street for many years, and which still exists online. https://www.wellspringbookshop.co.uk/.

I remember that forthright lady partly because she would refer to her husband, a Jewish businessman, as “a six-pointer“, as if he had been bred from an unusual breed of animal.

Even that was 35 or 36 years ago now.

It was only today that I thought to see whether Amabel was related to that defendant. Turns out that she almost certainly was or is. The Dorset “hice” seems to be Crichel House (or “hice”):

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

[Crichel House, Dorset]

The house was owned by one Napier Marten or Napier Sturt Marten [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Marten], born about 2-3 years after me, in 1959. He has or had no fewer than five sisters, one of which is or was Amabel Marten. He also has four children, one of whom is Constance Marten.

The house and 400 acres of the estate land was sold in 2013 for £34M to an American billionaire hedge-fund operator, one Richard L. Chilton.

Chinese artworks were also sold, for over £12M.

See also: https://laracon0.blogspot.com/2015/10/crichel-house.html.

See also: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2001464/Chinese-ornaments-sell-12-5m–double-value-stately-home-in.html#ixzz1OpqLK0We

Well, there it is. Looks like the Amabel I encountered a few times in the mid-1980s is or was (I assume she is still around, but who knows?) the aunt of the accused, Constance Marten. Small world.

Latest trial news: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/constance-marten-old-bailey-trial-manslaughter-baby-b1224018.html.

Update, 14 July 2005

(scroll down until you reach the bit about Amabel Marten and her husband, one Kieran (or Ciaran) Clarke etc; he apparently died in 2004 at the age of 52, and may or may not have been the person I met in Dublin in or about 1985 or 1986. It seems that the above house was only bought in 1990 or 1991).

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/man-of-harmony-in-music-and-in-landscape-1.1142634

“Diverse” Britain

https://www.mylondon.news/news/transport/man-punched-piccadilly-line-after-31491200

A man was punched in the face on the Piccadilly line after asking a fellow passenger to move his bags from a seat and a buggy blocking the aisle. British Transport Police are now appealing for witnesses following the attack on board the carriage between 8.20am and 8.40am on Monday, March 31.

The attacker is described as black, with dreadlock hair, wearing a grey tracksuit and was accompanied by a woman with a buggy and suitcase.”

[My London]

“Diverse” Britain

https://www.mylondon.news/news/north-london-news/north-london-rapist-who-licked-31494904?int_source=nba

A terrified woman woke up to find a rapist licking her feet. Ahmed Fahmy, 46, raped and sexually assaulted women in hotels where he worked for over 16 years between 2008 and 2024.

Other reports also heard Fahmy fondled women’s toes. Cops first investigated him in January last year after reports of rape and sexual assault by two women who had been staying at the hotel in West Heath Drive, Barnet, where he worked.

[My London]

“Diverse” Britain

https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/croydon-machete-gang-brought-knives-31495746

A Croydon machete gang, who ‘brought knives to a gun fight’, got more than they bargained for during a raid on an Albanian cannabis farm, a court heard. Seven men and one boy – aged between 17 and 32 – were were armed with knives and machetes, while wearing balaclavas and construction gloves, when they faced off with gun-toting Balkan weed farmers, it is alleged.

[My London]

Late tweets seen

Note that Labour, even then, would still have 119 MPs, because the vast majority of non-whites in the UK vote Labour. There must come a point at which this form of “democracy” ceases to be legitimate.

See my previous comment…

Late music

[Chicago by night; lakeside view]

Diary Blog, 5 October 2024, including a few thoughts about the reality of the 1970s (as distinct from the usual “fake history”)

Morning music

Saturday quiz

Well, this week my 6/10 trumped political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10. I did not know the answers to questions 3, 5, 6, and 8.

Tweets seen

https://irvingbooks.com/product-category/books/

Accurate… I spent 9 months in East Africa. It’s very hard to pinpoint exactly why it’s such a mess.

They have an infantile mentality and absolutely no commercial sense.

I once went about 10 miles down the road, in the middle of nowhere on the way to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and every 50 meters there was someone selling watermelon. I said to the driver, “Everyone is selling exactly the same product. Why don’t they try making watermelon juice or something different to stand out?” He replied, “But why would we do that? We like melon!”

That attitude was everywhere. In fact, I would sometimes meet Westerners who would say, “Isn’t it amazing how they’ve kept this piece of junk car going for 30 years?” And I’d reply, “It’s more amazing that we have automated car factories with robots.” They literally only focus on the immediate need. “Car not go today, car fixed with string and tape.

The only two factors preventing Britain and other European countries from retaking direct control of Africa, of all of Africa, are 1. socio-political will and 2. the fact that the (((globalists))) find it more convenient to exploit Africa’s resources via corrupt tiny “elites” in each fake African “state” (and to hell with the environment, the forests, the wildlife, and the African people themselves).

The fact is that European rule would benefit all, not least the ordinary Africans.

Incidentally, it would be a great deal easier than many imagine for Europe to reconquer Africa militarily. Only the two factors already noted make it at all hard.

Illiterate travel

I have just read this, https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/sarajevo-guide-balkans-bosnia-and-herzegovina-b1176081.html, a travel piece in what I still call the Evening Standard, and written by well-known columnist Suzanne Moore. Not hugely interesting anyway, but then absurdly badly-written. An essay by a 10-year-old, at best. Or is the sub-editing to blame? Maybe someone pushed a few of the wrong buttons. Extraordinary. Read it and see.

I have read other pieces by Suzanne Moore which were written properly, so maybe it was the fault of the Standard.

More tweets

Pretty accurate summing-up of “Starmer-ism”, in my opinion, “Blairism without the good bits“, though I do not recall many good bits then either, speaking personally.

As far as assisted dying is concerned, I see it as a generally well-meaning attempt to be kind, which however, put into policy and law, is the start of a slide to, eventually, somewhere down the line, killing people for convenience or money.

HS2 was a vanity project that never should have been approved. As far as I know, though, the other rail projects are or were useful.

She seems to have difficulty identifying the “J” problem…

Again, look at the “usual suspects”…

The “fake history” of the 1970s

That’s because you, “Steve Zodiac”, are apparently telling your grandchildren a load of old hooey…

I have blogged in the past about how very many people (including, weirdly, many who were at least in their teens then, and so actually of an age to remember) say, and even perhaps believe, that the 1970s in the UK were some kind of dark age in which the electricity was off most of the time, in which bodies were left unburied by reason of industrial action, in which trains and buses rarely ran, in which rubbish piled up in the towns and cities, in which there was a “three day week” when offices and factories were closed for four days each week, and in which life was generally miserable (for example, food was terrible, they say).

The above-noted fabled dystopia was, we are told, the result of overreaching trade union power and Labour misgovernment.

Where to start?

First of all, the party in power for the first 4 years of the 1970s was the Conservative Party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_Kingdom_general_election, and of course Mrs Thatcher won again for the Conservatives in 1979: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_United_Kingdom_general_election.

In other words, out of the 10 years, Labour was in power for about 6 years. Labour government was in place from the early 1960s until mid-1970, then from early 1974 until mid-1979.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_1974_United_Kingdom_general_election; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_1974_United_Kingdom_general_election.

One interesting fact is that, in the 1966 General Election, the “two main parties” (Lab/Con) got exactly 98% of Commons seats on just under 90% of the popular vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_United_Kingdom_general_election#Results.

Compare to 2024: 81.8% of seats based on 57.4% of the popular vote.

In 1966, the winning party (Labour) got 48% of the popular vote, the losing Conservatives 41.9%.

In 2024, Labour got 33.7%, and the losing Conservatives only 23.7%.

The electoral system has become not just unfair but also illogical and ridiculous. It no longer reflects reality.

Reverting to the general situation in the 1970s, the much-talked-about “Three Day Week” only affected, directly, commercial operations (which were banned from using electricity on the other four days). The Three Day Week only lasted for two months. Out of 10 years (120 months).

I saw the Three Day Week firsthand. I was working, aged just 18, as supposed assistant manager in a very small commercial intelligence outfit based in the Strand (London). The office only had 5 people including me, though we did have a network of mostly ad-hoc agents all over the southern and eastern parts of England (anywhere south or southwest of The Wash). Much of the work was in Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Essex. The agents were often retired Army officers who, on being contacted, would —eagerly— say something such as “right-oh, old boy. I’ll fire up the Rover and get onto it.”

I must do a blog post sometime about it.

There were, in the early 1970s, strikes by coal miners etc, resulting in a few brief power cuts (“outages”, as the Americans say), but they lasted for a few hours a day, for a few days. Out of 10 years, again.

In the “Winter of Discontent” (1978-79), there were, for a few weeks, situations in some towns and cities whereby rubbish piled up, yes; that much of the “fable” is true, but only for a brief time. As for the “bodies left unburied“, that only applied in Liverpool and Manchester and only for 14 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent#Gravediggers’_strike.

In fact, though the 1970s had its problems political, social, economic, Britain still had possibilities. The population was still almost entirely white Northern European, new ideas and projects were around or developing (the Milton Keynes conurbation, the Open University, new express trains, cross-Channel hovercraft etc), and the absurd and damaging house-price madness, though it had started, was still in its early stages.

Britain still had a functioning Army, Navy, Air Force (etc), and a police force that mainly did its expected job and was not usually the sort of poundshop Stasi we now see, snooping on or “monitoring” the expression of views and opinions.

Incidentally, the food was OK back then on the whole. Slightly less cosmopolitan, yes, but in the South of England at least, foreign foods such as hummus, taramasalata, olives, Indian, Chinese, etc were ubiquitous. In fact, some food was better and more available back then.

What I find worrying is not only that people who were not there, or were small children, are convinced that England in 1970-1979 was a dark and gloomy place; more that people who were there seem to have substituted, for what actually happened, a kind of folk-tale.

As for Jewish-lobby puppet Robert Largan, who was parachuted into the constituency of High Peak (Derbyshire) and served as MP from GE 2019 to GE 2024, he was only born in 1987.

If people cannot recall accurately the 1970s, how much less accurate must be the “memories”, often publicized, of the 1930s and 1940s.

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