Morning music
Saturday quiz
A poor week. I scored only the same as political journalist John Rentoul— 3/10. I knew only the answers to questions 1, 2, and 5; had I thought a bit more, I should also have recalled no. 9 and no. 10.
Talking point
As David Starkey says, Starmer is (along with others and, particularly but not exclusively, in “the party formerly known as Labour”) attempting to institute a kind of “woke” and multikulti police state.
Where I differ from Starkey is in having no faith in the idea that a different ethos of national identity can suddenly emerge or be fostered, not without a homogenous population. The UK population is going the other way, becoming ever-more heterogenous, and spinning out of control.
I also differ from Starkey in that he thinks, or hopes, that, if he or someone else puts forward a reasoned and reasonable argument, eventually people will accept the propositions put forward. The credo of the traditional or classical academic.
All very well, as far as it goes, but Mao put forward the credo of Realpolitik, that is “political power comes out of the barrel of a gun“.
Not that that I agree wholeheartedly with that Maoist quotation either. The —by any other name— “revolution” in the DDR/East Germany in 1989 was not violent. There were vast, though peaceful, demonstrations in several major DDR cities (Dresden, Leipzig etc). The Lutheran Church was part of all that.
The East German state was still arresting some dissidents even in 1989, but the heart had gone. I recall the strange feeling I had when spending a couple of days in the DDR in 1988. Like a stage set of a state rather than a real one, an impression made stronger by the seemingly almost-depopulated southern parts of East Germany through which I travelled by car. I have blogged once or twice previously about my impressions of the place(s).
As a matter of fact, the slightly contrived “revolutions” of the late 1980s in Romania, Czechoslovakia etc were mainly non-violent, as they were in the pribaltika (Baltic states). I myself saw Czechoslovakia briefly in 1988, just before it all happened, and was in Poland several times in 1988 and 1989.
In Poland, even in 1988, one got the impression that the state there was going through the motions of being a “socialist” state but that, just under the surface, the whole population, pretty much, was “dissident” in one way or another; a kind of vast, non-violent anti-socialist conspiracy of a whole people.
Even in the Soviet Union, a huge “revolution” happened over several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, mostly though not entirely peaceful, and including (as in Romania and elsewhere) many elements of the socialist-state structure.
Starkey is or was a Conservative, politically. He seems at least slightly taken with Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. Why? The first is a Nigerian (though born in London) and so, in my opinion, unfitted by that fact alone to be a British political leader, let alone Prime Minister. I have, also, never heard anything worthwhile from her.
As to Jenrick, I have several problems with him too. He appears to be at least partly English, but his full provenance is not in the public domain; at least, I myself have never seen it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jenrick#Early_life_and_non-political_career.
Born 1982, qualified late as solicitor, aged 26, but was in legal practice for only about 4 years (with two of the leading American law firms, sequentially; presumably quite junior), and was then (somehow; how?) a director of Christie’s auctioneers (though only until he became an MP a few months later).
Jenrick’s provenance interests me. It also disquiets.
Jenrick, yet another member of Conservative Friends of Israel, is tied up with Jewish businessmen and property-developer sharks, and pushed for the ruination of the small park by the Palace of Westminster by the proposed construction of a hugely-ugly “holocaust” “memorial” and propaganda centre.
In addition, Jenrick ordered, as minister for immigration, murals for children of migrant-invaders to be painted over because the colourful murals might give them pleasure and comfort.
No-one, I think, could accuse me of being either pro-immigration or in favour of granting privileges to migrant-invaders, but that mean-spirited targeting of any small children of such invaders by Jenrick felt morally wrong to me.
Like Starmer, Jenrick is married to a Jewish woman and has had children with her.
Jenrick just feels wrong to me. He’s a bad apple.
As to the Starkey interview, while I can agree with much of what he says there, he is too much in the ivory tower in the end.
Ironically, for someone “cancelled” by the System for making “racist” remarks, he seems to me insufficiently so. How does he imagine this country will recover in the way that he hopes when 20% of the population is already non-European, and with another ~million coming in every year at present? Make that, conservatively, about a 2% increase annually.
It seems to me that Starkey knows in his heart that I am right (even if, as is quite likely, he has never heard of me), but fears to say so; don’t forget that he “apologized” and tried to retract after he was “cancelled”. Never pretend to apologize to either the mob or to “them” (((them))).
The video is worth watching, though.
Further talking points
Good grief.
Listen to that “muppet” (on the second video clip), one Benjamin Butterworth. Complete idiot. Complete traitor to this country’s people and their future, too. Former (?) Chairman of Young Labour (in London). Scribbled a few times for the Guardian some years ago, apparently. https://www.theguardian.com/profile/benjamin-butterworth.
Poor thinking skills. Very poor, in fact. A fanatic, but one with nothing of interest to say. Claims that “legal immigrants” (the vast majority of all immigrants) all “come into the country with a job“. A straight lie. Huge numbers enter as supposed “fiances”, “fiancees”, “spouses”, “students”, “family members”, “asylum seekers” etc; and even those supposedly entering “with a job” (on work visas) are often not bona fide at all.
I fear that much of Starmer’s strongest support comes from semi-educated and anti-British fanatics of that sort.
I rather think that GB News had that Butterworth on because they knew that he would create a kind of petty storm among the discussion panel.
Tweets seen
Labour’s master-strategy for industrial peace: throw money at the (unionized) groups in society that shout the most (train drivers, junior doctors etc).
Tell me all about it…
Ostalgie
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More tweets
Interesting to note that the msm always applauds “resistance” (including violent “resistance”) in, for example, historically, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, Italy, Spain, and in various other parts of the world; in South America, even in contemporary North America and Europe, so long as Jews, non-whites, or sometimes Communist partisans, are doing the various forms of “protest”, but as soon as contemporary white people do the same, they must, apparently, be shut down, “cancelled”, even prosecuted and, indeed, even imprisoned. Not even because they have been violent, in fact. Look at Jez Turner, imprisoned for making a speech, Alison Chabloz, for singing satirical songs and posting cartoons; more recently, Sam Melia, for having published stickers the subject-matter of which was not even unlawful.
Remember “two-tier Keir” and thick-as-two-short-planks Angela Rayner being photographed literally “taking the knee” (bowing down before) the fraudulent “Black Lives Matter” nonsense?
Carol Vorderman thinks that Nigel Farage is a snake-oil salesman. Well, not much argument from me on that, but wait until La Vorderman discovers the truth about Starmer, Yvette Cooper, Rachel Reeves etc…
Of course, the main reason that Farage recently distanced himself from the English protests, and especially their riotous offshoots, was because he does not want OFCOM to pressure GB News to cut off his work (and money).
Well, I certainly hear what tweeter Paul Embery is saying there, but look at the alternative— Kamala Harris, a hugely-ignorant non-white who will be but a figurehead while the “Deep State” around her, and really running the show, foments war with Russia, a war they think they can “win” but which —if it happens— will leave Europe, as well as North America and European Russia, in irradiated ruins.
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Dead men walking looting.
The only question is whether Putin will simply utilize conventional military methods to push the Kiev-regime forces out of that part of the Kursk region which they have recently invaded, or whether he will do something entirely unexpected by the Western msm, such as use very powerful bombs and missiles (even tactical nuclear ones) to blast clear the whole of the occupied area. There is an outside chance that he might even launch a massive air bombardment on Kharkov or even Kiev.
Whatever the Russian response is, the Kiev-regime forces will be unable to hold the recently-invaded territory. Zelensky himself has admitted as much, though saying that Kiev “is not interested” in doing so. If that is so, why invade that territory in the first place? Clearly, as a public relations exercise to keep Western arms and money flowing in.
Meanwhile, in the Donbass region to the south, Russian forces are steadily advancing at present. About a mile per day. Not spectacular, but the Kiev-regime forces, short of —most of all— soldiers, will have no chance of regaining those areas, or of stopping the Russian advance, all the more so now that some of the better Ukrainian detachments have been re-deployed to assist with the Kursk incursion.
More tweets
Life in remote Western Siberia
A simple and, in many respects, hard life. Not completely isolated, though. I see that they seem to have electricity (“Socialism means Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country“— Lenin) , and that their milk comes from a carton rather than from their one cow.
The old lady is cooking (I think) manti [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manti_(food)] or pelmeni [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelmeni], foods quite similar inter se, and not dissimilar to ravioli. Cuisine is not really my forte, so I had better say no more. As for what she is frying, maybe cubes of bacon, maybe pork fat.
The old man is seen mending his fishing traps (there is a nearby small river).
Retired people in Russia now get a pension of about £200 a month. Not much (under Yeltsin, it was only about £25, and not always paid), but it must go quite far in a Siberian village. Milk, tea, bread, flour etc.
It occurs to me that, were the world to be hit by nuclear war, and depending on how severe that would be, people of that type might survive better than those who live, as most of us do, in Western (or Russian) cities, towns, suburbs, or partly-suburbanized countryside.
As someone once said of the Louisiana Cajuns living in and around the Mississippi Delta, “when the rest of the world is starving, these people will still be eating.”
Late tweets
Starmer-Labour is clueless. The time for a National Wealth Fund would have been in the 1970s and onward, using North Sea Oil revenues, but the System parties gave most of the benefit to oil companies and foreign speculators.
Again, clueless. Mad. Crazed. Would-be dictator Yvette Cooper, who is closer to her evil dream than ever before, is even more of a police-statist than Starmer. She must be stopped. Starmer must be stopped.
Where is real journalism in this country?
I mean by that, journalism that points out loudly and often that the Starmer-Labour regime was “elected” on the votes of only 33.7% of those who voted, i.e. a third of the actual voters, and only 20% (if that) of all eligible voters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election#Full_results.
This government has no real popular mandate.
Already, people who have nothing to do with “terrorism” (even taking the term at face value) are being snooped upon and sometimes raided by the police, under (some of them) their new-ish Stasi-lite grand title of “the Anti-Terror Command”. I think that even the satirical singer and entertainer Alison Chabloz was arrested by them one day, several years ago.
“Wow. The tide is turning.
Is immigration good for UK economy? Good 31% Bad 40%
Is it positive/negative for public services? Positive 40% Negative 49%
Is it enriching/undermining UK’s cultural life? Enriching 30% Undermining 44%
Is it too high, too low, about right? Too high 66% Too low 4% About right 18%
Source: Opinium, tonight.
Starmer Labour’s extreme immigration policy is going to be REALLY unpopular. among the British people.”
https://mattgoodwin.org/p/why-labours-extreme-immigration-plan
The fake “Conservatives” had to be binned, and were not binned enough. Fake “Labour’s” turn now. Get rid of the System as a whole.
Terrible. I drove through, or very close to, that area in 2001 (having driven from the UK).
Talking point
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 