More than 80% of #Bakhmut, including all the administrative centers, factories, plants, are under the control of Russian forces, said the PMC "Wagner" mercenary head Prigozhin. pic.twitter.com/MonQ7uqHb1
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Fighting raged in eastern Ukraine's frontline cities, as Russian forces launched attacks. The battle for the largely ruined city of Bakhmut, on the edge of Russian-controlled territory in Donetsk, has been the bloodiest of the war https://t.co/25IGf4cBiUpic.twitter.com/nY92DAq2iw
Its all too easy to forget that Liz Truss was only recently considered the brightest and the best to lead the Tories and be the PM. It's mind blowing. https://t.co/ePF6Xu81hO
Typical BBC cretin. Has no answers. A complete deadhead. Eventually has to say that various (unnamed) organizations talk about “hateful content” (on Twitter). One gets you five that the BBC cretin is referring to the troublemaking and constantly demanding Jew-Zionist orgs in the UK and USA.
Elon: "You can't give me a single example of this 'hateful content.' Name a single example"
The overarching problem today, as compared to the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and up to the 1980s, is that there are few real journalists. Instead, there are, to use the Japanese word, “salarymen”, pushing a System agenda. Most of them are, also, extremely poorly-educated (despite their paper “qualifications”), and some near-illiterate (as can be seen in the online newspapers, especially the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, and Sun, and even the Times.
Anyone asking for donations to themselves rather than send money direct to the people who need it, should be avoided. Jack Monroe made a very profitable career out of other people's genuine poverty and misery. Her whole backstory was a lie. She comes from a middle class family
This apple farm in the south of England has been growing apples since 1882, but the fruit that helped give the ‘Garden of England’ its name hundreds of years ago is no longer making money https://t.co/D52cq4p70Xpic.twitter.com/Ucxm1tEZ5U
Pretty sad. The continuation of a process or trend that started in the decades after the Second World War, and accelerated in the 1980s and thereafter, with horrible housing developments of various kinds often covering what were once fields, woods, and orchards.
“A pub landlady today defied authorities and put more of her golliwog collection back on display just days after 20 of them were seized by police as part of an investigation that she and her husband had committed a hate crime.
Benice Ryley proudly placed five of the controversial dolls behind the bar of The White Hart pub in Grays, Essex, which she has run for the past 17 years with her husband Chris.
Read that article. The Essex Police clowns are still claiming that the golliwogs they seized are “part of an investigation” into a so-called “hate crime“, which is complete nonsense. It is not unlawful to own or display a golliwog.
One of the alarming aspects of contemporary Britain is the degree to which the police are (wilfully?) unaware of the limits to their power and, indeed, jurisdiction.
“Today’s revelation that suspected terrorists have entered Britain posing as small boat migrants brings a whole new context to the Channel crisis.
It was already known that hundreds of criminals had been identified among arrivals from France – raising huge questions about Britain’s porous border and the Government’s ability to protect its citizens.
Now we know that the problem is far, far worse.
The 19 terror suspects who camouflaged themselves as would-be refugees to enter the UK are known to be affiliated with some of the most murderous groups in the world, including Islamic State and the Somali Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab.
The security services were already under pressure keeping tabs on thousands of individuals who pose an active threat in the UK.”
“Ukraine’s air defence could crumble ‘within weeks’, according to leaked US intelligence documents.
The New York Times reported that newly leaked Pentagon documents and US officials suggest that a huge influx of munitions is needed to keep Russia’s air force from changing the course of the war.
According to one leaked document, missile stocks for Soviet-era S-300 and Buk air defence systems, which constitute 89 per cent of Ukraine’s protection against most fighter aircraft and some bombers, could be fully depleted by May 3 and mid-April.
One leaked document reportedly assessed that Ukrainian air defences designed to protect troops on the front line will be “completely reduced” by May 23.”
[Daily Telegraph]
There it is. The air defences of the Kiev regime may have “crumbled” and will be “fully depleted” and “completely reduced” within 1-5 weeks from now.
At the same time, the Kiev-regime infantry still living is suffering poor morale and huge losses.
The conclusion must be that Russia can press its advantage in the warmer weather expected soon.
Tweets seen
Russian troops are simply razing to the ground the fortified area in the west of Bakhmut, created by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in high-rise buildings, heavy casualties pic.twitter.com/65Zc9KbDEH
A brief conclusive summary of the Ukraine war by Scot Ritter: "Russia has broken the back of the Ukrainian military.. the battle of Bakhmut is over, so too is the chance of Ukraine coming out of this war with any semblance of victory." pic.twitter.com/KT5u4jYm1X
Zelensky will have to stop pretending to be a great (or any) statesman and/or great (or any) military leader, and go back to clowning on TV comedy shows. Either that, or retreat to his USD $40M villa in Florida.
Putting up the Russian flag east of Bakhmut, now that the Ukrainians aren't just going to try to shell it out of spite.
Though I wouldn't mind seeing them try. Its a waste of their dwindling shell supplies. pic.twitter.com/yhCY6xrEhd
“I don’t know if Ukraine will even exist as a nation state by the end of 2023,” McGregor said. Douglas McGregor, a retired US Army colonel and former White House adviser, expressed uncertainty about the existence of a country called Ukraine on Stephen Gardner's YouTube channel.… pic.twitter.com/w3pvsLBxc9
Assault detachments of PMC "Wagner" continue fighting for quarters in the central part of Artemovsk, pushing the enemy to the western outskirts – Russian Defense Ministry
Western-made armored vehicles supplied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to be successfully disposed of by Wagners in Bakhmut pic.twitter.com/JbaqDfDp1g
NYT: Leaked US Documents Reveal Ukraine's Plans to Move Elite Troops to Bakhmut According to US intelligence, the situation in Bakhmut is "catastrophic" for Ukraine pic.twitter.com/qeMdBrDTHE
We invaded Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and each time we survived the consequences of the war because we had the global monetary reserve currency. Today's war with Russia and China is not like those wars" … Details about the future of the dollar in the video pic.twitter.com/VvEcXqsKuW
The above analysis is very weak re. Weimar hyperinflation. The Weimar Republic did not collapse because of hyperinflation.
The Weimar hyperinflation period was 1921-1923, but mainly summer 1922 to November 1923. In other words, hyperinflation really only existed for about 18 months.
The hyperinflation did not “collapse” the Weimar Republic, though it did destroy the savings of those who had savings, thus making the whole political situation in Germany, already unstable, more unstable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic. It did rob the Weimar Republic of authority, to be sure. People distrusted it.
The final collapse of the Weimar Republic, which stabilized to some extent in the mid/late 1920s, came about more because of the Depression, which was born outside Germany, in the USA.
Hitler and the NSDAP did not attain full State power until 1933, a decade after the end of the hyperinflationary period.
I was just looking at the memoirs written (actually, ghost-written) by some “senior” (so-called) politicians. Liz Truss’s Out of the Blue, which came out too late, after she had already been deposed, is at present selling about 200 new copies monthly on Amazon. Not very impressive, but better than Andrea Leadsom’s effort, Snakes and Ladders, which is managing a mere 20 per month.
More tweets seen
Heard about this on the radio this morning. Apparently one of those involved is a Ukrainian refugee, who is back there over the Easter break, for a holiday. Who leaves a war zone as a refugee and goes back as a holiday maker while the war is ongoing?
“A newly-leaked top-secret Pentagon document reveals American planners doubt Ukraine’s ability to launch an effective counteroffensive against Russian invaders this spring.
Outlining the developments of the war since February, the document picks up on ‘force generation and sustainment shortfalls’, predicting Ukrainian forces will fail…“
Morris dancers perform with blacked faces despite bans from ancient tradition's governing body https://t.co/zDhfhOCpNP England is a Free Country, so well done to all the Morris Dancers with Blacked Faces for standing up to all the Woke Madness🏴
“The Home Secretary has scolded a police force for sending five officers to a family-owned pub to seize a collection of golliwog dolls, it was revealed yesterday.
An anonymous complaint was made about the White Hart Inn in Grays, Essex, and 15 dolls were seized because their presence was a suspected ‘hate crime‘.”
[Daily Mail]
The same Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who is married to a Jew, and recently appeared at the Jewish-Zionist snoop and strongarm squad, “Community Security Trust” [“CST”], vowing to crack down on any (free?) speech that mentions Jews or Jewish behaviour…
“Jewish communities are to be better protected from vile antisemitic attacks with a £1 million funding boost and a new dedicated police taskforce.”
Note the vituperative and not very “official” language.
“The new funding will bring the total amount allocated through the Jewish Community Protective Security Grant to £122 million since 2015.”
The simple and harmless pleasures of the past, such as the 1960s Black and White Minstrels (not my usual kind of entertainment but that is not the point), are now the target of brainwashed and joyless “wokes”, some of whom inhabit the remnants of the (?) all-but-useless police forces.
head of the DPR Denis Pushilin visited Artemovsk/Bakhmut “The city is being liberated by the Wagners, the enemy spares neither the city nor his own,” said Pushilin. pic.twitter.com/4yHBN3LKRf
Wenn diese Derivatenblase platzt dann ist Deutschland und die Europäische Union am Ende, gefolgt vom Rest der Welt. Dies könnte die Supernova sein, die das gesamte globale Finanzsystem detoniert. Dann sind eure Einlagen auch nicht sicher. pic.twitter.com/MmHL4lXzFX
The whole Western finance-capital model, as it has existed since the late 1980s, is a house of cards ready to collapse.
Since Ashley Biden’s diary is now confirmed as authentic, we can safely conclude that Joe Biden is something very close to an incestuous pedophile. Or is there another way to look at it? pic.twitter.com/PGxc4N5kjE
The Macron visit to Beijing has been wildly misrepresented in the Western media. The Ukraine lobbying was always going to be a dead letter and the French knew that. The real purpose of the trip was to position Europe for the new multipolar world. https://t.co/UYzyU03Int
I would love to see warmongering one-time soldier Ellwood [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_Ellwood] removed from Parliament. An unpleasant character altogether, and one who not only seems to want war between the UK and both Russia and China but also has a Reserve role in the notorious online propaganda outfit, the 77th Brigade, in the rank of Colonel or at least Lt.Col., rather higher than the rank he held as a Regular officer (Captain). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom).
His parents’ origins and work overseas seem to be slightly mysterious; he himself was born in New York City, and was educated in both Bonn and Vienna, at the time (1970s/1980s) both major centres for Cold War intelligence and espionage activity.
Looks as if that “grifter”, Amanda Solloway, may have to return to working in Sainsbury’s or somewhere. Incredible that someone like that could even be an MP; she even made it briefly —for a couple of months— onto the lowest rung of the Government ladder as a PUS [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Solloway] under that clown, “Boris” Johnson.
Amanda Solloway’s Wikipedia entry has been heavily massaged over the years to delete damaging material. I see that any mention of her “controversial” husband (maybe now ex-husband or “partner”…I forget) has been expunged. Other material about Amanda Solloway herself has been removed.
— UK Polling Report (@PollingReportUK) April 8, 2023
Looks as though former Labour MP (and total ignoramus), Claudia Webbe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Webbe] will also be heading to shelfstacking or the dole queue…
So both Truss and Woollyhead Trussbanger (Kwarteng) seem likely to stay on as MPs. There really is no justice in this world.
Of course, his every action shows that Jewish-lobby puppet Keir Starmer would (probably will) make a rotten Prime Minister, but then look at the last half-dozen.
Russia has taken Bakhmut. When the admin centre (town hall) is taken the town has fallen.
Right now we have a mop-up exercise against stiff resistance.
To get the town back, Ukraine has to conquer the town hall again.
— Make Peace Now; alternative news (@AlternatNews) April 10, 2023
Simplistic, but it is clear that the Russian forces, spearheaded by the Wagner Group, are now very much in the ascendant in the Bakhmut/Artyomovsk sector of the overall south-eastern front.
More than 75% of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) is under the control of Russian units as stated by the head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin. 🇷🇺
— Польский Казак 'Z.O.V' 🇵🇱❤️🇷🇺 ☭ (@pktr_Ruski) April 10, 2023
A Russian🇷🇺 Lancet loitering ammunition hits another US🇺🇸 155mm M777 howitzer heading towards Bakhmut. Ukrainians 🇺🇦 flee upon realizing the fate of the Howitzer. pic.twitter.com/5KIvvfAxFd
In 1989, when the Soviet crew of the Whitbread Round-the-World Race contender, Fazisi, were in the yachting hub of Hamble (Hampshire), I was also there for a couple of days. I was, with my then girlfriend, an Anglo-Russian (the Russian part being from pre-revolutionary White Russian origins), visiting my parents, who lived in Hamble at that time. In fact, they lived in a small private road, Crowsport, built upon in the 1920s, and only a stone’s throw from the marina where the Soviet yacht was being made ready. You could see the tops of the masts of the yachts in the marina from their house.
Having heard about the Soviet yacht (this was about 2 years before the official end of the Soviet Union in 1991), we decided to walk down to see the yacht and maybe say hello to its crew.
The yacht was there, crew aboard, and we started talking to one of the sailors, a handsome blond giant who was very taken with my girlfriend and, in a polite way, said at the end that we (it sounded more like she —not sure that I was included!) would be welcome to visit any time (she didn’t, though).
The crew spoke Russian language only, apparently.
I remember that the blond sailor said that he was from “Novgorod by Moscow“, more or less a suburb, to distinguish it from the large and historic town halfway between Moscow and the then Leningrad.
We were briefly introduced to the captain, who was carrying a rope, and who seemed stressed. He was going ashore, presumably to the marina office or repair sheds. He nodded to us, maybe shook hands (I do not recall), and trudged away.
The article above, written in 2008, mentions “tragedy” during the race, but does not mention the fact that the captain of the Fazisi committed suicide on the journey round the world, hanging himself in a wood in Uruguay: see https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-10-13-sp-245-story.html.
In the end, the Fazisi, which had been delivered to Heathrow in one main piece (minus masts) in an Aeroflot cargo plane, the largest in the world, then on a road transporter, did not win the ocean race but still put in a creditable performance, including a one-day run of 386 miles which may have been a world record for a monohull.
That was a more hopeful time for Russia and the world. Sovietism had collapsed in all but name, all the chatter was about Russia becoming partner to the West, rather than enemy, and no-one was thinking about nuclear war any more.
This was before the horde of Western carpetbaggers hit Russia in the 1990s, and before the pack of Jew “oligarchs” got their claws into Russia’s money and natural resources during the Yeltsin years.
It was also before it became publicly known, in the 1990s, that the USA had a “secret” game plan to keep Russia down, and the USA as “world’s only superpower”.
Another, and even less-likely, scenario in 1989 was that Ukraine would break away from Russia, and then much later be at war with it. The captain of the Fazisi was himself of Ukrainian origin, judging by his name (Gryshenko).
Russia has advanced further inside Bakhmut in recent days, capturing areas along the west bank of the river with Ukrainian troops perhaps pulling back as far as west of the railway pic.twitter.com/Ioj5dMM40s
The paved T-506 Highway Ground Line of Communication into Bakhmut via Khromove remains open and clear – there is one new van that is disabled from the last video
⚡️🇷🇺🇺🇦According to sources, Russian forces have joined Wagner in Bakhmut street fighting. Not just VDV Paratroopers but also SOF units.
No clear visual proof of this has come out. The Russian troops don't carry their phones with them to the front.
— Тоби айоделе -Tboy🇳🇬🇷🇺 (@TobiAyodele) April 5, 2023
Soledar fell because the VDV and Russian SOF was able to keep Ukrainian forces from regrouping and captured and held the high ground. Wagner is not working alone contrary to popular belief.
@antinatocoalition
— Тоби айоделе -Tboy🇳🇬🇷🇺 (@TobiAyodele) April 5, 2023
Map of situation in Bakhmut City from MiltaryMaps….yellow line is the extent of Russian advance according to latest field reports pic.twitter.com/PnTiTChUdy
For once, I can agree with at least some of what Owen Jones has written. Not his pro-“diversity”, pro-immigration stuff, though. Those and other factors have to be included in the reasons why western societies are decaying, declining, and not unlikely to collapse.
“Musicians” seems to be the self-designation of Wagner Group contract soldiers, as I noted recently on the blog. Presumably a reference to Richard Wagner.
How shallow. Immigration is a key factor in dragging down wages, and overwhelming the NHS and other services. It is not a discrete or a side issue unconnected to the others.
The Tories are also heavily distrusted on immigration among key target voting groups (between -53 and -76)
“You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time“… [Abraham Lincoln].
As a voter, you can vote for the misnamed “Conservative” Party, which at times has talked a semi-good game on immigration but done little or nothing to fulfil the big talk talked, or you can vote equally-misnamed “Labour”, which does not even bother to pretend that it would slow (let alone stop, or reverse) mass immigration, but weasels about “managing” it better, meaning automatically allowing most applicants for asylum or visas of various kinds to enter the UK.
A very shocking case, and unusual in the ethnic background of the defendants. Still, it would not be right to turn a blind eye just because most of the defendants appear to have been white.
Not quite the usual fact matrix as in the Asian/Pakistani cases, in fact. As bad, though.
Same reason the U.S., Canada, Australia, France, and everywhere else haven't. You have a large enough brainwashed leftist domestic population who holds power and will use it to terrorize anyone who doesn't tow the line – those who change their minds is too gradual/too late.
"a substantial section of whites have become Black, a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture. along with the wholly false Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England. This is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country" pic.twitter.com/yb7PsNJepc
Canada's Envoy to the UN @BobRae48's justification of terrorist act killing Russian war reporter Vladen Tatarsky (Maxim Fomin) is both disgusting & shocking.
Does this mean Canada supports terrorism? If Amb Bob keeps his job, then apparently that is exactly the case.#cdnpolipic.twitter.com/313V12935h
I once met a fellow, boyfriend of a girl I knew slightly, whose work was as a balloon pilot based in Bristol, which I believe is one of the main UK centres of such activity. I was a belated Bar Finals student then (late 1980s), and being a balloon pilot seemed a wonderfully carefree way to make a living.
“In practice, the Worker Protection Bill is a sinister threat to our freedom of speech. It will impose on employers a responsibility to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent their staff being offended.
That can only lead to bosses trying to impose pre-emptive forms of censorship to avoid being dragged to a tribunal. Do we want to see our lively pubs reduced to a state of silent sterility, as if they were public libraries rather than public houses?“
“The total collapse and break-up of Vladimir Putin‘s Russia has begun and the West must be prepared to deal with the potentially catastrophic aftermath, a top official in Volodymyr Zelensky’s Government has warned.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said the West must be on high alert, having in the past failed to be ready for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He said Kyiv [Kiev] believed Russia was about to fall apart in ‘spectacular’ fashion within the next few years.
But he warned that China currently holds the upper hand over the Kremlin’s imminent capitulation. He said if the West allowed China to take territory in Russia, a new grave problem would be created.“
[Daily Mail]
Normally, I would discount anything said by members of the corrupt and dictatorial Jew-Zionist regime in Kiev, but in this case the prediction may be accurate, at least in part.
Russia today has no ideology beyond pro forma Great-Russian shadow nationalism and chauvinism, mixed with a pathetic 1930s/1940s pseudo “anti-Nazi” propaganda campaign (re. Ukraine), which campaign fell flat as soon as it was introduced a year or two ago.
In the past (pre-Russian Civil War, and pre-1917/18), there was Tsarism and the Russian Orthodox Church; in the formulation of Pobedonostsev, “Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality” (Правосла́вие, самодержа́вие, наро́дность).
Later, there was Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism, which from the early 1940s mixed elements of the previous “Holy Russia” into the mix. Post-Bolshevik messianism mixed with geopolitical expansionism and the other bits and pieces.
After 1989, Russia and many of its people signed up to Western materialism and the largely but not entirely (of course) fake “liberal democracy” Schauspiel. That, in its very active phase, lasted for only about a decade. The Russian people soon discovered, like the cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that the “freedom” promised by the semi-Americanism under Yeltsin included some unwelcome “freedoms”, such as the “freedom” to be homeless, jobless, cold, and hungry (though, to be sure, Sovietism itself had produced plenty of most of those, especially before the 1960s).
This lack of overarching ideology is Russia’s primary problem, the one which underpins all the others (e.g. the poor morale of the Russian Army and intelligence services).
Russia has to find an ideology which is both intellectually coherent, and able to inspire the Russian masses emotionally.
Looking at the situation now, Russia has only one indisputable trump card— its strategic nuclear arsenal. In all other respects, Russia has few if any cards to play. So far, its military machine has proven so poor that it has had to be stiffened by the mercenary Wagner Group. As for the SVR and GRU, Stalin would have shot half of them by now. The same goes for much of the senior officer corps.
Russia does seem to be reprising its historical role of the “colossus on legs of straw“. Judging from the outside (I have not been there since 2007, and now have no connection with Russian laws, business, or people), it seems to me to have only limited internal stability, though at the same time little significant political opposition to the present Putin government.
I doubt that there will be a split into separate countries, if only because Russians remain one people (albeit with hundreds of minor nationalities alongside), with one language (ditto), and a shared history. What might happen, and has happened since 1991, is increasing autonomy of various far-flung territories.
Ukraine was always almost one country with Russia. The present war is almost a civil war, which may explain its bitterness, and its sometimes barbaric standards.
In the end, Ukraine will probably be devastated and then repopulated with Russian settlers, at least east of the Dnieper. We shall see.
One thing is for sure: if Putin does not do something to break the static situation that now exists in eastern Ukraine, he will follow the Soviet Union and DDR, and Nikolai II, into history, and sooner than he ever imagined.
Tweets seen
#Bumblebee queens emerge in early spring from #hibernation and immediately need to feed – that’s why early flowering plants are so important. Apart from feeding their mission at this time is to find a suitable site to establish a nest. Hence you will observe queens flying low 2/8 pic.twitter.com/f3sAzBcCmg
These between flight stopovers can last for up to an hour and #bees are not always careful about where they take them – sometimes the middle of a footpath can be the ‘ideal’ spot! So if you see a big #bumblebee chilling on the ground don’t always presume she needs rescuing! 4/8 pic.twitter.com/U4FnJFYt16
In this case preference is to move her to a nearby source of #nectar – a #flower! If no flowers are nearby she can be offered a 50/50 mix of white sugar and water. NEVER offer her honey as although it would seem to be the obvious action honey can contain pathogens that may 6/8 pic.twitter.com/1psryPDnMl
Thanks for reading/caring. PLEASE #retweet this forward. The more informed, the more queens survive and the more #bumblebees we have. Simple. Our native wild #bees are in trouble and we need to be there for them every way we can. Thanks again for helping! Have a great one. 8/8 pic.twitter.com/1fiGIG2OlN
Reminder that the excellent blog by AwfullyMolly on antics of uber-grifter Jack Monroe is still available to read on the archive of the web. Read it & then see how @LegalGengar is getting on with CCJ that started with being owed £10 and is now around the £600 mark with costs. https://t.co/ngPTbmqfmL
Carol Vorderman is a rather uninteresting careerist “celebrity”, who left university with a third-class degree (which was poor even in the days of the 1970s before award inflation took hold; effectively a fail): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Vorderman#Early_life_and_education.
It might be said that Carol Vorderman is to mathematics what “Jack Monroe” is to cuisine…
More music
I happened to see the YouTube video below: DDR (East Germany) in 1988. I was there in the summer of that year, though in the south of the country, and only for a couple of days. I have blogged before how, though there was no sign of imminent collapse, yet the DDR seemed to be a kind of stage-set of a state rather than a real one. Just impressions here and there.
About 14 months later, in 1989, the whole system collapsed and, in a final irony, the President, Honecker, sought political asylum in Chile, the government of which the DDR had for years called “fascist” etc. I recall having been very amused by that.
Anyone watching such a parade in 1988 would have thought that the display exuded statist stability and permanence. So much for that.
Does our own system in 2023 present even the appearance of stability? I think not. Perhaps the difference is that, in 1988 and 1989, the East German population could look to the West, to —immediately— the wealth and relative freedom of the Bundesrepublik and then, beyond German borders, to the rest of the EC (as the EU then was), and to the Americas.
To what, to where, can our people look for a potentially better life? Nowhere.
Incidentally, here is another DDR ceremony, this one in 1979, utilizing marches that include old German ones and at least one from 1920s Bolshevism (slightly pre-Soviet Union):
The marching steps could also have been seen in both the Second and Third Reich.
I looked today at Amazon. The “Jack Monroe” book Thrifty Kitchen, which bombed on release a couple of months ago, is now no. 26,957 from the top of the bestseller list. This indicates sales of about 160 copies per month at its new reduced price of £8.50 (original price was nearly £20, but that was immediately reduced to £9.99), out of which “Jack Monroe” may be getting between 50p and £1 per copy. New or near-new copies can be had on Amazon for as little as £5.
No wonder that she wants to keep going the Patreon scam, which must still be providing several thousand pounds each month, presumably taxfree as well.
After over a trillion dollars given by global citizens to the #ClimateChange movement, how many rainforests have been replanted? How many rivers have been cleaned of their plastic and rubbish? How many third-world dictators have been forced to give up war and fix the environment?
Another (Chinese?) social control measure. How long before that sort of control arrives in the UK? The police of today, often politically-correct/”woke” automatons, would enforce it— we saw that during the “Covid” “panicdemic” and “scamdemic”.
The similarity between the technocratic authoritarianism of the lockdowns & the anti-car movement is no mere coincidence. ‘The Future of Mobility’, a 2019 government report that championed a ‘behavioural science’ approach to transport policy, was edited by https://t.co/YsbYq6gVi6…
If only that could be a matter of selection, affecting only certain groups.
When blacks say they want to kill all white people, we should believe them. That is not a joke. And how disgusting was that old Jewish lady that was supporting this antiwhite hatred? She was smiling. Every single time!
I propose that both men and women regain our private spaces. As I have been saying for long, the greatest civil rights issue of this century is the right to freedom FROM association. We must be allowed to live without Other/s inserting themselves into our lives by force.
Regardless of the source, the side that maintains abundant, affordable energy will win.
Forcing a premature transition away from fossil fuels is literal economic suicide, not an opportunity.
— often uncommon 🏴☠️ (@oftenuncommon) April 4, 2023
Even GPT-4, as coherent as it is, can feel a bit dreamlike. It can answer most of your questions, it can write silly little poems, it feels like the lights are on when you talk to it pic.twitter.com/LTEZGwJbKU
We also get the distinct sense that a lot of human labor, especially in white collar fields, is superfluous. We can think of how Twitter works fine after Elon made deep cuts to the staff
If you have AI, do you really need project managers and middle managers whose main function is organizing and propagating data through the organizational hierarchy?
Most of what one does, in any given occupation, is a waste of time from the point of view of the individual’s own utility or satisfaction.
For example, it is hardly a new idea that, in many ordinary, modest, occupations, one almost works in order to pay out to be able to work.
Leave aside highly-paid professional or other activity and focus on modestly-paid work (let alone minimum-wage activity). The employee, say an office bod, needs to spend out in order to get clothing for the office, say a few suits.
He (or she) needs to pay out for daily travel (which can be very considerable in cost), for luncheon food (even if only a roll and coffee, which might amount to £10 a day in Central London), and for various other things as well.
All so that the employee can work at all. Then there might be occasional or regular socializing, in which said office bod is more or less expected to participate. The resulting remuneration, after tax and “National Insurance” (more tax), is scarcely enough to do more than pay for the costs of having a job, plus food and basic shelter. Maybe not even that.
Likewise, look at someone who wins on a lottery, say £50,000. People say “like a year’s (or two years) pay” within the usual range in the UK. Not so, though. In terms of real pay, even a relatively modest sum such as £50,000 is huge, because most people, after all their taxes, costs, and expenses, have almost nothing left at the end of a month, or even year.
It’s not ‘puritanical’ to say that everyone should have upheld the most fundamental & universal ethical values we have as a society during the last 3 years.
This was not a great mystery that only a few were capable of solving. It was a basic and obvious test of decency.
— Russia's MFA in Crimea🇷🇺 (@PMSimferopol) April 4, 2023
FM #Lavrov: West was using #Kievregime not only to destroy everything Russian which existed in modern Ukraine throughout history of these lands, but also to create in #Ukraine a direct threat to #Russia’s security, incl by setting up #NATO military bases & other infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/g1LBK4c1R7
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) April 4, 2023
Former adviser to the head of the Pentagon, Douglas McGregor, said that, according to his sources, Russian troops completely surrounded Artyomovsk (Bakhmut).
According to McGregor, the city has practically fallen, since now it is impossible to reach the Ukrainian units in the… pic.twitter.com/0UIMEEVakw
Ukraine is the best place for religious freedom, Zelensky said.
Is that why Bishop Pavel must wear an electronic tag /tracker on his leg?
The bishop endures it. He is happy that Zelinsky has not yet executed him. His flock needs him now. pic.twitter.com/8LF37snGiY
— Make Peace Now; alternative news (@AlternatNews) April 1, 2023
The Jew Zelensky is somewhere between dictator and figurehead, or between figurehead and puppet, and his regime has shot or imprisoned its political opponents, closed down trade unions, and repressed free speech.
Ukraine kids in Russia that Russia removed from the danger zone, the other is Yemeni kids. Who is being mistreated? The Ukraine kids are well clothed, housed and fed, good medical care the Yemeni kids begging on the streets being bombed with US bombs and no proper medicine pic.twitter.com/fbLEDDvgx2
— Gilda Morkert ❤️🫶🙏☮️ 🇾🇪🇵🇸🇮🇷🍉 (@g_morkert) March 31, 2023
It is noticeable that, in Western news photos and footage, the Ukrainian children repatriated to Ukraine, after having spent time in Russia, always look happy and well-fed.
In 2014 Ukraine attacked the city center of Luhansk … as a reminder -> A small thread on how it started …
Bush lied the American people into supporting invading another country killing about a million people, including our own troops and ran an illegal torture program
The British army couldn't fight in Ukraine, either, which begs the question: why is the British government pushing so hard for a confrontation with Russia. I for one think they have created an existential threat to our existence because of their bellicose policies and actions.
Why on Earth would Russia, which left Marxism-Leninism behind 30+ years ago, want to invade Western Europe (inc. UK)? How could it even try? The whole idea is ludicrous.
In 1967 israel occupied the western section of Syria's Golan Heights, expelling 130,000 residents & leaving only a few thousand Arab inhabitants clustered in several villages. Sometimes characterised as the 'forgotten occupation'… pic.twitter.com/RRAlPxKKim
WATCH: Far-right lawmakers walked out of the Austrian parliament to protest Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's speech. They claimed it violated Austria's neutrality. pic.twitter.com/apMtxg3dKz
It really is just that🇬🇧👏 Virtue signalling, WEF, etc is divisive, destructive and everything WOKE. pic.twitter.com/tshTGWk1WO
— Billy-Joe Salsbury Merritt (@SalsburyBilly) April 1, 2023
We know the way all of that is probably going to end, somewhere down the line…
What is it when, like —and yet unlike— those souls noted in Gray’s Elegy, some “wade through slaughter“, not “to a throne“, but simply “pro bono publico“? Duty? Higher law? “For the welfare of the people is the highest law“: salus populi suprema lex esto [Cicero, De Legibus].
More music
[Eton College Chapel]
At this point I’ll vote for anyone who will just leave me alone to live my life (and isn’t a pedophile). Apparently that’s too much to ask for these days.
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 30, 2023
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 30, 2023
We have to stop letting them normalize the abnormal. These are demonic forces at work.
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 29, 2023
That comes out very strongly in certain recent msm/System campaigns, including (but not exhaustively) the “trans” nonsense, pro-“Ukraine” (Zelensky regime), “Black Lives Matter” (etc).
They are destroying everything on purpose. Nobody wants their New World Order. When you're cold, hungry and desperate, they can offer you their "solution" and they're hoping you'll gladly accept it.
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 29, 2023
We're as British as you" so wearing westernised clothing, picking up a regional twang and also having that all important UK passport is all one requires to be English, Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish nowadays! pic.twitter.com/rSoUQfZuN0
Idly “surfing the net”, I came across a brief obituary of a lady I had met a few times between late 1989 and early 1993, during which years I spent about half my time in the USA (mostly in New Jersey and New York City). I shall not name the lady or her family.
In 1989, I travelled with my then fiancee from New Jersey (near the Jersey Shore) to Fox Chapel, an affluent semi-rural area near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we having been invited to spend Thanksgiving with a family there.
The couple who owned the large, comfortable house were in their fifties, and their daughter, aged about 25, was a friend of my then fiancee. The father of that family was a nuclear scientist, and his wife what the Americans charmingly call a “homemaker”, a much more respectful term, I think, than the Anglo-German terms “housewife” or “hausfrau”. American to the core, they had both been born and brought up in the Mid-West, but had also lived in Belgium, and had travelled very widely, to dozens of countries from Mexico to the Soviet Union.
The house, though on a semi-rural, semi-suburban road with a few other similarly-large houses, had a large hinterland, mostly not so much a “garden” as a tranche of forest; I think they said about 40 acres, where some of Pennsylvania’s millions of deer were often seen.
The lady’s husband was a tough but very decent type, very solid (in both senses), rather like a more intelligent version of John Wayne (to my European perception). He was a fan of American football, and I think that he had played football himself at college (university) level.
I admired the lady’s collection of Palekh lacquer boxes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palekh_miniature], and also their very American cars, his a Cadillac (I forget the model), and hers a Lincoln Town Car, probably my own favourite at the time, though I myself did not have a licence then (I only held a driving licence —a foreign one— from 1999, and a UK one from 2002).
The couple were very hospitable to me; I have always remembered them with good feelings.
I last saw the couple in Maryland, in (I think) 1992.
The lady mentioned died a few years ago, it seems, aged 85 (at that time, at least, her husband was still living). I was unaware until today, not having kept up with any of those I knew or met so long ago.
I have been struck recently by renewed realization at how transient life is in any one incarnation. We must do what we can while we are still on the Earth.
“As a former senior British military intelligence officer and Nato planner, I spent 26 years preparing to counter Soviet-style manoeuvres during the Cold War. I’m all too aware that whether Ukraine survives as an independent nation will depend on how each side copes with multiple factors.
One of these, as anyone with rudimentary knowledge of European history knows, is the weather on the Eastern Front.
Russia’s much-anticipated ‘spring offensive’ this year has failed. The calculations behind it were flawed. The frozen ground has thawed quickly, turning large tracts of the country into a quagmire. We saw last year what happened when tanks try to advance over Ukraine’s mud. Despite their caterpillar tracks, the weight of Russia’s 45-ton T-72s meant many were quickly bogged down and had to be abandoned. Ukrainian farmers gleefully looted the wreckages.
This means Russian tanks are, for the moment, largely confined to tracks and roads, making them easy targets for ambush. But the same restrictions apply to Western tanks, which are even heavier.
[by June 2023], ordnance supplied by the West will be pouring into the battle zones. President Zelensky asked for 300 tanks: it is estimated his allies, including other former Soviet states, will provide 700 or more.
Already 350 infantry fighting vehicles and more than 1,000 armoured personnel carriers have been promised, as well as at least 320 self-propelled guns, most of them 155mm artillery.
Training to use this disparate kit will prove time consuming. In peacetime, the Army reckons to spend two years readying a tank brigade for combat. The Ukrainian crews are attempting to learn everything in just a few months.
It’s a mammoth undertaking and that applies to every aspect of the war. After its rapid advances following the invasion last year, Russia held 51,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory.
Since the counter-attack began last summer, the Ukrainians have recaptured about 11,300 square miles — pushing the enemy out of Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv. Some parts of the operation were relatively straightforward: for example, trapping the Russians on the western side of the Dnipro river, which cut off their retreat.
But Russia still holds 40,000 square miles (17 per cent) of Ukrainian territory, including the 10,425 square miles of Crimea, which Ukrainian naval commander Vice-Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa this week vowed to retake.
[Ukraine: overall state of play as of late March 2023]
Liberating Crimea [“Liberating”?] might be possible in the long term, but it would require a massive amphibious assault on the scale of D-Day. Even if a bridgehead could be established, the Ukrainian army would have to win back the peninsula mile by mile — and many of the inhabitants are pro-Russian.
Crimea was regarded as Ukrainian territory only after Stalin’s death in 1953 and it has been under Russian control again for nearly a decade. Victory would never be guaranteed, even if that gigantic campaign could ever be mounted.
Yet even that prospect is dwarfed by the scale of conflict on the mainland. The battlefront in eastern Ukraine is over 700 miles long, the distance from London to Barcelona. Moscow has committed virtually the whole of the Russian army to the invasion.
Its forces are organised into battalion tactical groups [BTGs], which consist of up to 40 tanks with artillery, armoured vehicles and engineering support. In total, Putin has 168 BTGs, each one a self-contained fighting force with full autonomy — and 115 of them are now in Ukraine.
Latest figures show the Russians have 1,330,900 men on the ground, compared with just half a million Ukrainians. They have 4,182 aircraft, including 1,531 helicopters and 773 fighter jets; Ukraine is far behind, with 312 aircraft, including 113 helicopters and 69 fighters.
Russia has 12,566 tanks, 151,641 armoured vehicles, 6,575 self-propelled guns and 3,887 mobile rocket launchers. In every case, that’s at least four times as many as Ukraine possesses and sometimes six.
Against a smaller but highly motivated army intent on repelling invasion, all the Russians can do is try to hang on to occupied territory. The Ukrainian forces will try to punch holes in the front line, but unless they can sever the supply chains, it’s unlikely their enemy will be routed. Putin will not permit his forces to pull out, however much punishment is inflicted.
Instead, he is playing for time, waiting for elections in the U.S. and Britain next year…“
[Colonel (retired) Philip Ingram, in the Daily Mail].
Russia is certainly not about to “lose” this war, but cannot now win it (however “victory” be defined) without a gamechanging event or tactic coming into play.
The Kiev-regime soldiers and civilians are, at present, more motivated than the Russian side. Like Antaeus, they draw strength from being on their native soil.
In the absence of any coherent ideology, even the flawed past ideology of Sovietism and/or Marxism-Leninism, the Russian government has fallen back on WW2 motifs and on the ludicrous assertion that the corrupt Jew-Zionist dictatorship in Kiev is “Nazi“. Few believe that, even among the ranks of the self-describing “Left” “useful idiots” in Western Europe, the UK, or beyond.
That ideological lack on the Russian side means that it has nothing with which to stiffen morale.
The Daily Mail assessment mentions the upcoming elections in USA and UK. The US Presidential one is the important event. Without American arms and money, Zelensky’s troops must stop fighting.
Looking at that map, the areas in green are those where the Kiev-regime has regained ground over the past months. However, my guess is that much of Eastern Ukraine (east of the Dnieper) is almost open territory. If the Russians are stretched to the limit, so are the Ukrainians. If the Kiev-regime line were to be breached seriously, or if Russia were able to score a decisive victory in the Bakhmut/Artyomovsk pocket, there might be little to prevent most of Eastern Ukraine falling to Russian forces.
“A militant transgender activist who has quickly become one of the most high-profile ‘faces’ of the radical movement is a former soldier and Antifa member, it has been claimed.
Kayla Denker, who runs a YouTube site with videos dedicated to explaining Marxism and guns, posted a video of herself with an assault rifle after the Nashville school shooting.
The Nashville attacker, Audrey Hale, 28, was described by police as transgender.”
“Starmer then said; “If I am privileged enough to get into government at the next election I will work with CST and others to tackle it (hate) head on, with all of you.”
The dinner, which took place at a central London hotel was also attended by Ed Balls and wife Yvette Cooper, Dayan Gelley, Lord John Mann and JLC chair Keith Black.”
[Jewish News]
Starmer— a complete puppet of the Jewish lobby. Yvette Cooper no different.
Of course, when the puppet talks of “hate“, he means any criticism of Jews and their behaviour.
Tweets seen
Low-grade @RobertJenrick confirms that the Home of the Dambusters will now house undocumented, young males who crossed the Channel illegally. Our history is being trashed and they don't care.
We are about to get a new gas boiler fitted. A heat pump won’t work in our old house/garden. The plumber says it’s crazy. Campaign of resistance begins if they foist this unevidenced nonsense on us. https://t.co/MionZDZhuZ
We needed Energy Security to be prioritised a decade ago. Instead, we became dependent on imported fuel and vulnerable to crippling price increases. https://t.co/SGvmBAF0Sc
Energy security— yes, OK, but (in the meantime) Russia would offer the UK cost-price fuel (gas especially) if the UK were to trade unrestrictedly with Russia and, also, stop funnelling arms, ammunition and money to the regime of the Jew dictator, Zelensky, in Kiev.
If you see an MP, charity or journalist bemoaning the lack of UK cancer infrastructure, please politely ask them what they have said/done on reopening the three world-class proton beam therapy centres in Newport, Reading and Northumberland.
I'm happy to talk to anyone about it.
— Professor Karol Sikora (@ProfKarolSikora) March 30, 2023
Who knew that healthy children and teenagers don’t need a Covid jab? Only all of us who have been shouting that for two bloody years. Well done, @UsforThemUKhttps://t.co/HEL4iHjClm
This is a special Planet Normal featuring some amazing lockdown heroes. Lord Sumption Professor Pat Price @prof_price Laura Dodsworth @BareReality Lord Frost @LukeJohnsonRCP Sir Graham Brady “George” NHS whistleblower. Do listen. It’s fabulous! https://t.co/IFPh3tCgRi
The United States, the self-appointed global dictator, will once again [at the the "Summit for Democracy"] declare itself the defender of international law and is sure to claim that the world must live by its rules.
Incidentally, the “academic”, Tema Okun, whose crazed ideas are noted in that Daily Mail report, is —as is (almost) inevitable— Jewish. Every. Single. Time (almost).
Ireland is every bit as crazy as the UK now. A country of about 7M now faces migration-invasion on an unprecedented scale. Even as it stands, foreign-born nationals in Ireland comprise somewhere close to 15% of the population. If you add in births to foreign elements, make that ~20%.
Having said that, the Labour Party of Ireland has only 6 out of 160 members of the lower house (the Dail), a mere 4 out of 60 in the upper house or Senate (the same as Sinn Fein and the Greens), and no longer any MEPs at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(Ireland).
We're likely headed for a massive reset in a global, probably nuclear war. Empires are at their most rotten just as they fall. Stockpile kids' how-to-read books, as far out back as you can get. And hope that not every university library goes up in smoke.
Quite. One of those who persistently tweets the rubbish about how “freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences” is the part-Jew academic (incredibly, a professor of laws in East Anglia), Paul Bernal.
According to that definition, people had “free speech” in Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, even Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Idiot.
You are an utterly ignorant man to make this assertion, and I say this as a non-Christian but a person deeply interested in the history and topography of the UK, including its cathedrals, churches and other material evidence of Christianity in these islands
What’s astonishing is the sheer, crass stupidity and avarice. You go on a zoom ask for 10k a day(not sure about whether in $ or £), and don’t even bother to check whether company is for real or not. #stitcheduplikekippershttps://t.co/ZBIIoZMVY4
Woollyhead Trussbanger (aka Kwasi Kwarteng) seems to believe that some business enterprise would pay £10,000 a day for his services, after all that he has done (or failed to do). What a complete yet “entitled” waste of space.
It’s time to declare an all out war on woke.
They will not debate. They will not discuss or accept different points of view. They have ruined society with their ridiculous climate/gender/race hysteria.
Interesting story, though weakened by the authoress’s perceived need to call South Africa, in the days before it was ruined, as “apartheid South Africa“. “Woke” box-ticking.
Presumably part of the mass media barrage of support for the Kiev regime.
Hard to know what to make of Bear Grylls. I have only seen one episode of one TV show he did. I disliked it, and his attitude. Very full of himself. Also, he killed a small and harmless animal entirely unnecessarily.
As I say, I do not have a developed view about him. One hears about him having been selected for the TA SAS thirty years or so ago (at age 20, younger than f/t SAS personnel), though that was the (then) part-time TA version (now called The Reserves), and he was in it for only 2 years actively (3 officially).
Plainly not a “fake”, but whether (as with Rory Stewart) the sum of the parts seems to add up to more than the whole, hard to judge. The TV image may or may not fully reflect reality.
As far as I can judge “survival experts” (perhaps not greatly), I think that I prefer Ray Mears [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Mears], despite disagreeing with some of his views about the Second World War etc.
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 26, 2023
That may be. If we ever have a real government, an investigation can be carried out by some equivalent of the Gestapo and SS, in order to ascertain the truth.
This Globalist POS pretending to be our Prime Minister was installed despite not receving a single vote from anyone.
Don't ever talk to me about how we're defending "freedom and democracy" by warmongering in Ukraine while our own country has become a Banana Republic. pic.twitter.com/55dfg3B4rP
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 26, 2023
Rishi Sunak, the globalist Indian money-juggler.
Modern life as we know it depends on oil and gas. I’m completely in favour of taking reasonable steps to protect the environment, but this promised utopia of a world that runs on windmills is not based in reality. Your children have no future without traditional energy sources.
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 26, 2023
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”.
and she screenshot part of our pm messages and shared them, calling on her “Flying Monkeys” to attack. I published the entire conversation to show what had really happened and she got angry, blocking me.
@DevilsAdvo1971 has gone a bit quiet. It's amazing what you can learn when you stop and listen rather than yelling "Troll" and running away. This isn't a pile-on. It's a genuine concern over missing funds and inappropriate begging from somebody who claims to be a campaigner.
Jack Monroe still has a devoted following that believes her cries of *abuse*. It's her only defence now that the truth is out. A huge number of people have been hoodwinked by her. Even with the evidence laid bare, people don't want to admit that they might be wrong about her.
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.
Interesting point here: a lot more people rent. Why? Well, at 18% of your salary that's affordable. Secondly, if you're retiring on 70% of your wages, you can afford to keep renting. Also tenant rights are superb compared to the UK.
If its sounding socialist (which it isn't) rest assured there's plenty of rich people. There's still more than 100 billionaires. There's still heaps of millionaires.
Things are just organised to ensure the average person has good wages, heslthcare, affordable housing etc.
In the UK we have low wages, which are then topped up with in-work benefits. Which means taxpayers are subsidising employers. Which means taxpayers money isn't used on things taxpayers need. This system is a direct transfer of public money to private hands.
Britain is definitely, and has been for a long time, failing to deliver on this. The economic system doesn't work for most people. And while its obviously gone nuclear in the last 13 years of Tory rule, it didn't begin there.
The centre of the British system since I can remember has been profit. Squeezing the profit out of anything and everything- from selling off council houses to buy to let mortgages to privatisation and the way we do everything.
Interestingly: in the UK, despite a much smaller population, more than 700,000 earn over that amount. So roughly speaking it looks like the UK has 9-10x more people earning super big pay packets. Which presumably they can afford after paying terrible wages 🙂
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).
They sold everything didn't they. Even our welfare services are outsourced so someone's making maximum profit!
Agree entirely. I get she boosted industry but I feel like she set us off down a path of profit over people and its become ridiculous now. I just called up to get a new national insurance card and bits of HMRC are private now. I think they'd privatise the moon if they could.
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.
Todays thread, colours! I’ll start with this European Bee Eater taken in Cyprus, hopefully I’ll get to see another this week on my Cyprus adventure pic.twitter.com/NncJIZAByI
— Jeff’s Wildlife Photography (@sykesjeff) March 25, 2023
The West and, in particular, the United States are "pushing" Kiev to launch a counteroffensive, Denis Pushilin.
The reason for this, according to the politician, is the need to explain the colossal injection of funds into Ukraine against the backdrop of demonstrating results.
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)…
Back in October 2014 #Ukrainian President Poroshenko made it clear what fate awaited the Ethnic #Russian population of #Ukraine
His Army had already begun to assault its own people. Their Crime? Resisting the illegal Coup that ousted the democratically elected government. pic.twitter.com/SLA4x39Gqq
“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
President @JoeBiden and I drove from Rideau Cottage to Parliament to discuss climate change and reducing emissions.
That's why we used 75 vehicles including several ambulances and military style armoured personnel carriers for a five minute trip.
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.
There is basically no public place in America where you opt out of hearing of black voices.
Rap, r&b, pop with black characteristics, even when it’s a white woman singing, this incessant negroid warbling on every speaker system in every mall, shop, bar, restaurant, enough!
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.
This is psychologically very important. Forcing them to sleep in a barracks and eat in a mess helps them to understand they're not a privileged class of elites, but unwelcome and unwanted guests in a country growing weary of their relentless arrivals and scandalous misbehaviors.
Situation south of Bakhmut city: VSRF took full control over Budenivka district and made new advances in Samolet district taking control over Donelektrosetstroy adjacent to Avangard Stadium; and new positions within the market area Avtosvit pic.twitter.com/tSbWixxYGS
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.
FM #Lavrov: Our relations with West are at lowest since end of bipolar confrontation. West declared total #hybridwar against #Russia, aims to defeat 🇷🇺 on the battlefield, destroy our economy, undermine our internal political stability. There will be no “business as usual” again. pic.twitter.com/kuRZVaipGO
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 24, 2023
We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of understanding the sheer evil that permeates this world..
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 23, 2023
Perceptive, from someone as young as that.
On the other hand, do not forget that there is also good in this world, and that, in the Russian proverb, “the world is not without kind people“.
They don’t care how much debt they rack up because they have no intention of paying it back.
The global financial system is on the verge of collapse and it’s the average working person that will be left to pick up the pieces while the rich get richer.
— David Morgan 🏴 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) March 22, 2023
Eddie Izzard says trans people will get through ‘tough times’ as he blames right-wing for ‘stirring things up’ – in short, Eddie is annoyed that many people aren’t just immediately submitting abjectly to his demands | The Independent https://t.co/DkT0XwQP8D
I'm so sick of people like Eddie Izzard trying to slander pple for knowing the difference between men and wmn. No matter the political beliefs, this topic affect so many groups: women, gay/lesbian, parents, teenagers, did they really think we would all just step back, insane.
Why is it so many of these gender activists say they want an open debate but then immediately vilify & condemn anybody with an opposing view worthy of debate as a transphobe. To have a debate you need to allow the opposing viewpoint to be openly discussed https://t.co/Ay9UQaQMfp
The whole thing, the “trans nonsense”, has mushroomed from being a situation, or problem, affecting a tiny handful of people, to now being an absurd fad supposedly affecting millions and, also, a way in which the transnational conspiracy can close down free speech in a specific area and generally.
It has become a building block of the “New World Order” [NWO], as can be seen by the way in which trans nonsense propaganda has been used against, inter alia, Russia and Putin.
As for Eddie Izzard, another very negative factor in British society.
✍️ 'We may be too British to protest, but an unfair rise in the pension age calls for resistance' | Writes @sambrodbeck
All very good, but most people in the UK have nowhere in which to grow their own food, not even a small garden. A half-acre garden is a relative rarity. Still, a worthwhile enquiry.
That “Boris” Johnson could become an MP was ridiculous, that he could become a Cabinet minister was almost unbelievable, and that he could become Prime Minister was a disgrace. The whole present Parliamentary system is a bad joke.
As for Nadine Dorries, what can one say? A stupid “ho” with a brain the size of a pea, but not so stupid that she could not tear the **** out of her Parliamentary expenses; she even gave her daughters non-jobs using her expenses: £60,000 a year for one of them alone.
More tweets
"Russian forces attacked northern and southern stretches of the front in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Friday, pressing on with their offensive despite assertions from Kyiv that Moscow’s assault was flagging near the city of Bakhmut."https://t.co/Kw3lG6sLqx
The more I look at the way the “West” is going, that is in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, UK etc, the more it seems to me that, somewhere not far down the line, a kind of civil war, a kind of culture war, a kind of race war, a kind of (new-style) class war, all mixed together, is almost inevitable.
Stop being so tolerant and non-judgmental. It's been an absolute disaster.
Ian Robert Millard 