[note: some occasional commentators have noticed that they cannot comment today (so far) on the blog; this must be a technical problem at WordPress which will probably be resolved, eventually]
Morning music
[Thomas Cole, 1833, The Titan’s Goblet]
Good Friday thought
I have no idea whether Keir Starmer-stein has said anything about Easter; I have seen and heard nothing, yet I saw on Twitter/X that he invited a load of Jewish children to Downing Street a week ago in commemoration of the Jewish festival of Passover.
“The world is not without kind people” [Russian proverb].
Sheep biology can be strange. A ewe just coughed and this fell out. He’s so tiny. However, she’s still pregnant with another one that’s not ready to come out yet. This one can’t reach the milk bar but I’ll keep him near her as she’s quite fond. Good chance she’d sit on him! pic.twitter.com/gQBUGTSxB0
"It's hugely exciting. I very much hope that President Trump does come to the UK in September and meets the Royal Family and meets the Prime Minister."
You do not have to be a Labour Party supporter to see that Labour Friends of Israel member Liz Kendall is a disgrace.
[“How is this possible?! I voted Labour in 2024! but I am not going to vote Labour at the Runcorn and Helsby by-election on 1 May 2025, if I live until then!”]
Mass immigration is making us poorer and reducing wages for working people. The expert class, who said it would “lift all boats”, are lying to you. https://t.co/lep3DWHbuS
'Where is it? Where's the growth? Where's the productivity?'@GoodwinMJ challenges Professor of Economics Jonathan Portes on his claim that migration is beneficial for economic growth. pic.twitter.com/7ELQQFkTiJ
Three years ago I would walk across town and see a couple of Africans now and again who have been here for years. Now there are dozens. More each week it seems. Why? Wouldn't they be happier in places like Little Lagos Peckham? Or Bradford or Birmingham? Why are they in small…
Britain has been invaded and is being occupied: “legal” immigrants (supposed spouses, fiancees, students, work-visa holders, then illegal immigrants on “small boats etc”, then births to those non-white women already in the UK, and also to stupid white/British women impregnated by blacks).
Again, Reform in the top two places of an opinion poll. I think that all opinion polls for the past 6-9 months have had Reform either top or second.
The “Conservatives” have no chance after their 14 years of appalling misgovernment 2010-2024, especially now that their idiot MPs and ordinary members have (for the second time) chosen to be led by a non-white, non-British “leader”.
On the Opinium figures, the Commons would have both Reform and Labour on 228 MPs, Cons with 97, and LibDems with 43 (taking LibDems and Green as each having a 10% vote-share). https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html
As with so many other recent polls, a Reform/Con government would be the only possibility, on those numbers, or a minority Reform government.
Very different figures, but same basic story. On those numbers, though, Reform UK would have about 325 MPs, one short of an absolute majority, but enough for a very thin working majority, without the need for support.
On the numbers there, Labour would have 154 MPs, Cons 58, and LibDems 45. If that were to happen, the Conservative Party would be utterly irrelevant, and likely to decline to near-zero over time.
Not sure whether that likely Con terminal decline would be the best result, or whether the best consequence of such an electoral result would be that Labour would have only 154 MPs instead of 403 (as now). A loss of 249 MPs. 249 upset System drones (plus 63 equally-upset Con ex-MPs; wonderful again…).
German courts say: cope. British courts say: coddle.
Germany: ‘You’re young, healthy, and male? You’ll manage.’
The IMF: a surge in immigration LOWERS wages for low-paid workers in Western states. Pay growth for low-skilled native workers slows by 1-point with big immigration, confirming what we showed in the Stackhttps://t.co/YfJLepuIUk
Russian troops liberated the community of Kalinovo in the Donetsk region over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported:https://t.co/3eesEPCG7kpic.twitter.com/cCuWDnmp2I
During the fighting in the Kupyansk sector of the frontline, Russian forces have established a foothold near the locality of Figolevka in the Kharkov Region, military expert Andrey Marochko told TASS:https://t.co/RVO6wWAlalpic.twitter.com/zKKdHTTyWy
Twenty-seven children have been dying daily in the Gaza Strip since the start of Israel’s military operation in the enclave in fall 2023, a representative of UNICEF in Palestine reported:https://t.co/TVSsRn7iXepic.twitter.com/djOohFk2xW
EXCLUSIVE. The man who the UK just banned from entering the country —French novelist, philosopher and critic of mass immigration Renaud Camus—will be joining me on State of the Nation @GBNEWS tonight at 8pm to give his reaction. You do not want to miss this.
The even more depressing thing about this is you could make such a list for almost every high street in Britain. Another example of how mass immigration is exploiting and hollowing out our country. https://t.co/gp3kkKyeEM
3. One from left field actually. A bag shop in a premium location staffed by exactly who you’d think it’s staffed by, and the stock hasn’t changed in months. Prob 3k+ in rent and rates, flagrant. Lovely stuff. pic.twitter.com/5TVCbWkGLF
5. This one will be hard to beat. A barber closed down due to lack of business, obviously these gents snapped up the site so 6 of them can sit on the chairs on their phones all day. Terrific pic.twitter.com/eqAbzBFiOS
This was very tough to narrow down to 6 faves as there are plenty of other barbers and vape shops. Honourable mention to this one which sells vapes, phone repairs AND poppers and bongs. Something for everyone. Obviously 2 staff and never seen a customer in it. pic.twitter.com/XJYWpabsRo
Throwing in a few extras to highlight how phenomenal the competition is make the top 6. Some all time great crime, somehow invisible to our council, police and MP. pic.twitter.com/IHAIwva9rC
… or any so-called “democratic” (System) political parties or their “elected” (selected) idiot-drones.
The time will probably come when very harsh measures will have to be implemented.
Look at what’s happening in Runcorn. Nobody voted for this. Nobody wants this. Nobody deserves this. Send Westminster a message on May 1st 🇬🇧👊 pic.twitter.com/PKtGsvvP4n
In a worrying development, the ICJ @CIJ_ICJ has granted an extension to the Israeli regime, delaying the due date for the regime’s response to the genocide case to January 2026, even as the genocide rages on. Israel, which has one of the highest populations of lawyers in the…
If that is representative of the proportional losses of the Ukrainian and Russian forces, then the Kiev-regime is losing perhaps 20 soldiers for every Russian soldier killed.
🇺🇦 The Kiev regime has dismissed the Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Ivan Gavrilyuk, who since May 2024 was in charge of procurement for the Ukrainian forces. pic.twitter.com/Dy89hHaJQg
Did he steal too much even for Zelensky’s cabal to accept?
An American M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launcher, supplied to Ukraine by the US, was reportedly destroyed near Druzhkovka in the Donetsk People's Republic by a Russian Lancet kamikaze drone pic.twitter.com/218fW8ZRlA
Trump, who promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, now says:
"If either side, for whatever reason, makes things difficult, we will just say, 'You're foolish, you're stupid, you're terrible people,' and we will ignore you." pic.twitter.com/hTQmLXlcES
French leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon came to Canada and declared at a rally in Quebec that “the French language, or so-called French, has no future […] without a fundamental human process of creolization” pic.twitter.com/IUyiOkoshV
Trump: US will leave talks if sabotage occurs, military aid to Ukraine suspended "If we see anyone trying to sabotage the negotiating process, the United States will withdraw from the negotiations," Trump stressed. He also announced that the United States would no longer provide… pic.twitter.com/6aziqZoHjv
[“Trump: US will leave talks if sabotage occurs, military aid to Ukraine suspended “If we see anyone trying to sabotage the negotiating process, the United States will withdraw from the negotiations,” Trump stressed. He also announced that the United States would no longer provide military support to Ukraine.”]
Looks as though the matter is moving towards the endgame, at least as far as American aid to the Kiev regime is concerned.
“Ukraine will suffer heavy losses this summer.” – American journalist David Ignatius.
“Trump, Rubio and their team seem to be preparing to step back from this issue and leave it to the Europeans.” pic.twitter.com/PKNQmXfnzY
I was going to talk about the mob rule which is being nourished and encouraged in the UK, but I have already said a lot about that (yesterday and also the day before), so I am going to talk about something else.
Several years ago, there was a plague of flying ants where I lived. They were the kind of fairly large insects that seem to emerge from cracks in walls etc, crawl for a while, then later take to the air. They bite (or sting) too, sometimes. They bit or stung our cats, I seem to remember.
There were, at first, thousands of them. An army of insects.
I hate killing things, for ethical or spiritual reasons, and also because I am not by nature violent, callous, cruel or bloodthirsty.
Had there been some way of capturing, and later releasing, the insects, I should have taken that path. As it was, there was no alternative. They had to go. They had to be eliminated. They were. It was not pleasant, but it had to be done. It was done. My modest residence was saved from being taken over by the creatures.
Well, there it is. An anecdote, perhaps not very interesting, but one which I wanted to relate, because those events happened at this time of year.
I suppose that those events were in my mind because of that, meaning because they happened at the same time of year, in early Summer…
More censorship…
“ Little Britain has been removed from Netflix, BBC iPlayer and BritBox amid concerns that the use of blackface characters on the series is no longer acceptable.” [Daily Mail]
I am not very familiar with Little Britain, mainly because I was living mostly in France when it was popular on TV (also because I am not a big watcher of comedy), but there is nothing wrong with so-called “blackface” anyway!
Where will this self-flagellating nonsense end?
Something like The Black and White Minstrel Show is now regarded as bad or even evil! In fact, it is just lighthearted entertainment. It might not be my own favourite kind of TV show, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it!
This is not an isolated act. It is part of a global plot by sinister forces:
“I’m going to bring down the U.S.A. by funding B.L.M. We’ll put them into a mental trap & make them blame the white people. The B.L.M. community is the easiest to manipulate.” – George Soros, September 2014.
Now add to that “and subvert the cultural and historical foundations of their society...” (and, in the UK, the police force!)
Coronavirus
At last, some reality from a Government spokesperson: “a child has as much chance of dying from Coronavirus as of being struck by lightning.” Quite. Until now, there has been the lie officially spread that “everyone can get it”, which, though true in itself, is disingenuous, inasmuch as a child certainly might get infected but if so will almost certainly be entirely unaware of it, completely asymptomatic, whereas a 90-year-old has at least some chance of requiring hospital treatment and possibly even dying, especially if he or she has “co-morbidities” (other health problems).
Bristolian and other statues
In fact, I do have one thing to add.
Happened to see a brief minute or two of some dim black woman, apparently the founder of “Black Lives Matter” in the UK, being interviewed by Kay Burley on Sky News this morning. It was asked as to whether she thought that it would be OK to leave controversial statues but put an explanatory plaque nearby. The black woman answered that it might be better to remove the statues but still have a plaque. So have a plaque explaining a statue which is not even there…
When you see many black people interviewed, or just talking, you realize why black-ruled countries are always in a state of complete chaos. They just cannot organize their thoughts properly, in almost all cases.
So the censorship gathers pace. Superficially, the discontent of some blacks may seem to be at the root of it, but in reality the Jewish element, or part of it, is behind this.
If you still think the government or its cowardly bully cops are on our side in the ongoing anti-British revolution, take a look at this last night:
House of Commons minute's silence for George Floyd.
'Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost'. The New Statesman (!) finally says about universities ( and exam inflation in general) what I have been saying for decades, and have been denounced as a reactionary brute for saying: https://t.co/pmlGQwoFF6
“This summer, a department at the University of Sheffield sent an email to students. A group of them had complained about their marks for an end-of-year essay. While a few had received Firsts, these students were given 2:2s and Thirds. “Thank you for raising the issue,” began the email, “and thank you also for your patience.” After reflection, the head of department and the director of “learning and teaching” had decided that, “our normal procedures… failed us. For this we apologise unreservedly”. The department had decided to “uplift all the marks… less at the top and more at the bottom”. The poorly performing students had their marks raised by nearly 40 per cent. The few who had done well saw their marks barely change. “Again, our apologies,” the message concluded, “but we hope that this is a satisfactory resolution.”
What happened at Sheffield is one part of a national story: the great university con…” [The New Statesman]
Well worth reading. This has been a developing scandal for over 20 years, if not 30 years. Huge numbers going to “uni” (often to the Uni of Nowhere), racking up student debt which will, in most cases, never be repaid, wasting national economic resources, the proud graduates then often being unable to find jobs beyond the most basic.
“The proportion of students getting “good honours” – a First or 2:1 – has leapt from 47 to 79 per cent: at 13 universities, more than 90 per cent of students were given at least a 2:1 last year. And Oxbridge is leading the charge: 96 to 99 per cent of its English, history and languages students get “good honours”.“[The New Statesman]
Those are inflated grades fromalready-inflated grades. As recently as the 1980s, it was the norm for most students to get a 2:2. Tony Blair did…
Among the most culpable? Tony and indeed Cherie Blair, who promoted all this by making it easy to get McDegrees.
“This supposed university miracle can only have happened in one of three ways. The first is that schools have, over the past 30 years, supplied universities with students of a far higher calibre than in the recent past. This would be a notable achievement, as the university students of the past were the select few –In the 1970s and 1980s between 8 and 19 per cent of young British adults went on to higher education, whereas 50 per cent now do. The second is that universities have taken historically indifferent students and turned them into unusually capable graduates. And the third is the reality: the university miracle is a mirage.” [The New Statesman]
And see here:
“As schools have become ever more rigid and exam-driven, the contagion has spread. As one Russell Group professor, wary of being named, puts it: “In schools now, students are being virtually spoon-fed, and that is feeding through.”
“Students are not taught to read, quickly and critically, and to communicate their ideas,” seconds Jones. “These most fundamental things are not being taught in schools. When we ask them to write, they are incredibly disorientated. And the students who are prepared are incredibly frustrated.” [The New Statesman]
and
““Ideas that students readily understood ten to 15 years ago, they struggle to understand today,” Peter Dorey, professor of British politics at the University of Cardiff, told the Commons inquiry in 2009. “Many of them are semi-literate.” Dorey described seminars in which students sat listlessly, waiting to be told how to “pass our exams”. “They will brazenly admit to having read nothing…” [The New Statesman]
You see that on Twitter, in the outpourings of the younger “journalists” even in mainstream newspapers, on TV too and in the legal profession as well: people unable to think, who just want to be told, for example, “This is Good, That is Bad, and Ian Millard is a ‘Neo-Nazi’ who (therefore…) is Very Bad.” And so on. I noticed it after I was disbarred for socio-political reasons in 2016: the tweets from ignorant little law student and pupil-barrister wannabees, all wanting to be seen to be condemning me. In fact, all that they have done is to condemn themselves.
“According to their study, one in five graduates in England could not handle literacy tasks more complicated than understanding the instructions on a packet of aspirin, while the numeracy level of 28 per cent was limited to estimating the fuel left on a petrol gauge.” [The New Statesman]
I doubt that this terrible situation will be sorted out any time soon. It suits too many people:
the students (“she is a straight-A student who got a First from Oxford”…not so impressive when you know that 50% of all the students get “Firsts” and 95%+ get either Firsts or Upper Seconds…) (and I deplore the “straight-A” Americanism, but that too is legion, now);
the parents;
the schools from which the students have come (“X% of our students go on to university”…);
the universities themselves (which can —and do— pretend that their results and standards are ever-improving);
the government (“our policies are working in education! 101% of students are now getting First-class degrees!”…etc).
Scandal, and the country is the poorer for it.
Aye @BenIrvineAuthor and where are most supposed 'conservatives' now it is clear that Johnson made a disastrous mistake? Still sipping Waitrose Chablis in their gardens, giggling. Yet the real character of the mistake, making possibe an actual revolution, grows clearer by the day https://t.co/G8gauT4YFY
The word ‘ Please’ has disappeared already from railway station notices urging the wearing of muzzles, though not legally required till Monday. pic.twitter.com/kDet7ew5G9
I see that Rory Stewart is trending on Twitter (not that that means much). I blogged about him over a year ago. I started off rather impressed, but (see all the updates) my view of Stewart became less and less approving the more I discovered about him. Read below about the journey on which I embarked: