Tag Archives: Sir Patrick Vallance

Diary Blog, 12 July 2024, with more about who really voted for what at GE 2024

Morning music

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Ippolitov-Ivanov]

Tweets seen

Back in the mid-1980s, I sometimes enjoyed Spitting Image [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitting_Image]. The sort of real cutting satire that would simply not be allowed today, much of it. In any case, with the sort of events we now see (eg Biden’s funny but also sad descent into the fog), any similar show today would have to fight hard to compete with what is actually happening in front of our eyes.

True, Reagan was not the most-obviously intelligent world leader, but the satirical treatment of him was deliberately “over the top”; whatever his flaws, he was not in the grip of a dementia-related condition plainly visible whenever he spoke in public.

I have not seen the more recently remade Spitting Image but I doubt that it pokes fun at the kind of non-political targets the 1980s original did, e.g. black “rap” performers. I admit that I am guessing, though. The remake is not broadcast on mainstream TV.

The regime of that evil little bastard has only one main chance— to drag NATO into the war. That might mean a slide into a nuclear confrontation before very long.

If the Kiev regime starts to attack Russian cities far from the front line, the response might be that Ukrainian cities in the western part of Ukraine, west of the Dnieper, might be attacked and even destroyed.

So far, Russia has not launched all-out attack on Kiev, partly because of its role in Russian history, but if major Russian cities start to be bombarded, that may change.

I predicted, a couple of years ago, on the blog, that Russia would start to degrade the electrical production and distribution network across Ukraine. That is now being intensified, and is a far more intelligent way of waging war than the more brutal and harsh —and less effective— choice of attacking directly the homes and neighbourhoods of the Ukrainian civilians.

If the Kiev regime starts to badly damage Russian cities away from the front line —especially Moscow, Petersburg and surrounding territories— the Russian response could be devastating enough to bring NATO into the war on some pretext such as Poland suffering damage. Were that to happen, all of us would be but a step away from a Russia-NATO war, which is being pushed by secret circles within the West. Such a war, which would quite likely go nuclear within weeks, would change Europe and the world forever.

More tweets

Incredible, when you think of the historical hardships of the Irish people. Now, unwanted non-European migrant-invaders demand this, that, and the other…

Forget the “Conservative” Party. Social nationalism can provide the right policies and administration.

Starmer-Labour has surprised even me by its evident ineptitude. We are only one week into what looks like being a disastrous 5 years.

Talking point

I do not follow football at all, but it seems to me that both domestic and international matches are now, in effect, a situation where people put “national” or team labels on a group of players and say to each other: “my blacks can beat your blacks“.

More tweets seen

Another example of the undemocratic and quasi-dictatorial nature of the Starmer-Labour government. 411 MPs from whom to choose, yet Starmer is appointing ministers at will from outside the Commons, elevating them to the Lords first.

Sophie Corcoran fails to point out that her comment might also apply, absolutely exactly, to the past 14 years of Conservative Party government.

Reform UK, GE 2024, and the Twitter twits

I was just looking at Twitter/X, which is alive today with Twitter-twits attacking Reform UK and, particularly, belittling Reform for, as it were, pretending to be a serious political party when it “only” has 5 MPs.

As recently as June 2024, the LibDems only had 11 MPs, and had only 8 from 2015 until 2017.

The forerunner of the LibDems, the old Liberal Party, at one time the party of government with hundreds of MPs, fell to having only 6 MPs during the 1950s and again in the early 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)#Electoral_performance.

As for the SNP, from its foundation in the early 1930s and until 1970, about 37 years (!), the SNP had no MPs at all; in 1970, the SNP managed to have elected 1 MP. The MP-cadre of the SNP then varied from 2 to (1974 to 1979) 11 MPs in the years 1974 to 2015, but mostly stuck at 2 or 3 MPs until 1997, when the SNP bloc increased its numbers, this time to 6 MPs. When the FPTP tipping-point was reached in 2015, the SNP mushroomed from 6 MPs to 56 (out of 59 Scottish MPs) overnight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Party#House_of_Commons.

Apart from those comparisons, the Twitter-twits might like to consider what this blog has been saying for the past week, as have some others (though not enough) even in the msm: Labour did not win by some kind of popular “landslide”, but only in terms of seats conferred by a totally unfit-for-purpose electoral system.

As noted on the blog in past days, at GE 2024 the Conservative Party only got (just over) 1.5x the number/percentage of votes of Reform UK, and even Labour only got (below) 2.5x the Reform UK vote-share.

As put on the blog the other day, out of every 20 eligible voters, only 12 even voted.

In very rough terms, out of that eligible 20 voters, 8 voters abstained, 4 voters voted Lab, 3 voters voted Con, 2 voters voted Reform, 2 voters voted LibDem, and 1 voter voted Green.

Not exactly, and “other parties were available”, but 90.29% of UK voters voted for one of those 5 parties. In England specifically, about 97% of voters voted Lab, Con, Reform, LibDem or Green.

The Twitter-Twits tweeting about Reform UK are mostly Labour supporters who belittle Reform because only 2 out of every 12 voters who voted voted for it, yet only 4 out of 12 (4 out of 20 if you count the abstainers) voted Labour.

I happened to notice one particular Twitter/X account, one “@RobBaron10”, who today (as of 1430) has already managed to put out about 29 Twitter/X “replies”, almost all angrily insulting, and all or almost all completely brainless. I have to say that I am loath to give much credence to someone whose Twitter/X profile says “Retired lecturer in philosophy trying to live a low-impact lifestyle. Despises the far-right and social injustice. Responds in the tone responded to.” Especially when said “retired lecturer in philosophy” thinks that “toe the line” is spelled “tow the line“…

Indeed, looking at the tweets copied below, it may be that “RobBaron10” deserves a place in my updated essay on the links between “antifascists” and/or Zionists, and mental illness: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/07/18/theyre-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha/

More seriously, if Starmer-Labour MPs and supporters think that the absurd result of GE 2024 gives Starmer the right to impose a “woke”, and also Israel-lobby, tyranny on the people of the UK, he and they are very much mistaken.

Remember those figures— only 4 out of 12 who voted (<34%) voted Labour; only 4 out of every 20 eligible voters (~20%) voted Labour.

American citizens stand with Russia, not Ukraine. Russia is an orthodox Christian nation, a sovereign nation, doesn’t pander to illegals aliens, was lied to by Ukraine, the U.S and NATO and had forces put on their border, a violation of previous promises made. Ukraine is in bed with the illegal covert bio weapons laboratory facility’s doing gain of function. Ukraine is the most corruption country in Europe, a money laundering hub, a child trafficking hub and a live organ black market dealing hub. Fuck Ukraine and punk ass Zelensky!

That stupid woman must have the mother and father of all social connection address books…incredible.

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

Talking point

Twitter hashtag #JustChangeItBackToHowItWas

Some interesting posts on there.

More tweets seen

Also most railways, most electricity, and most other energy production and distribution.

…and no professional pretend-“offended” nuisances, such as the malicious “Campaign Against Antisemitism” cabal.

All part of the “blacks with everything” mass media cultural cafeteria (non-)”choice”.

…or the jungle.

Late tweets

That visage puts me in mind of some kind of lizard.

Along with the “gift”, he also sent an accompanying written appeal, in which he called on American politicians to stop supplying the Ukrainian armed forces with weapons and money in order to stop the bloodshed and the escalation of the conflict.

Late music

One of the great American symphonies.

Diary Blog, 22 September 2022, including some personal memories of New York and Vienna, and a comparison of Sergei Lavrov with James Cleverly

Morning music

[New York, a city of contrasts: 5th Avenue in the snow, with St. Patrick’s Cathedral on one side, Victoria’s Secret lingerie shop on the other]

I took (and passed, for what little it matters now) the New York Bar Exam when the city was under heavy snow; over 30 years ago now.

On this day a year ago

Tweets seen

So Vallance has morphed from being a “Covid” scaremaster and “vaccine” cheerleader to being a “climate change”/”net zero” propagandist. That fits, as one would expect. I wonder what he thinks about “Black Lives Matter”, Ukraine etc.

…or as Wellington put it, saying that someone born in a stable must be a horse.

At least they have not yet learned from the Jews the conceit that they are somehow essential to European culture and civilization.

Yes, wake up, English “conservative nationalists”! The Indians are not your allies, any more than are the Pakistanis; incidentally, neither are the Jews and/or Israel. Don’t be fooled.

So speaketh the “Levelling Up Secretary” and, prior to that (incredibly), Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

When you look at the pack of cretins now running this unbelievable bad joke of a government, you realize anew how truly unfit for purpose our political system has become.

Sparks a few memories.

The UN Centre in Vienna (actually on the edge of the city) is an odd place; at least that was my impression when I saw it in the mid-1980s. A concrete fortress or “island” (not literally, though actually on a large island in the Danube), set in quite a green area between the old Vienna and a newer section.

I used to swim, almost every day during my visit, at the not-far-away Alte Donau Strandbad, a closed-off section of the Danube that is either an “oxbow lake” or an artificial version of one. Superb place. Clean river water, a green park, properly-run facilities for changing etc and, best of all, few people. I was there on weekdays, when even in high summer the bulk of the hardworking population were at their jobs.

You cannot just wander into that UN Centre. Even in those days you had to have a pass issued by the security kiosk there. I did not have to get a tourist pass because someone I knew who worked there got me a different kind of visitor pass. The difference was that tourists get a guided tour, whereas I was fairly free to wander around.

A large collection of buildings.

I remember trying to get a sense of what is quite a confusing set-up. I remember seeing a noticeboard with ads for various kinds of local staff. The rates of pay, as far as I could see, were far better than the same people would get in Vienna itself, and were of course not taxable (UN employees do not pay national income tax but only a kind of UN tax, which is far lower).

Another thing that struck me was the Commissary, which no doubt had its origins in the immediately postwar 1940s days when almost everything was unobtainable, but what is odd about that is that the UN Centre in Vienna was established only in 1980, a mere few years before I visited! So a mystery. Maybe there was an earlier, smaller mission.

That Commissary, about the size of a medium-level convenience store, sold duty-free food and drink (including booze) to anyone who was a UN employee or, I think, accredited diplomat. A strange “boondoggle”, in the American phrase. I noticed (I think on a Friday), a couple of (from their stature and looks) East African women, buying Scotch.

[UN Centre, Vienna]
[Alte Donau from the air; UN Centre in distance]
[Alte Donau, Vienna; when I swam there, far fewer people were around]

Not sure I would call them “happy days”, but not very unhappy, anyway.

Comparison

The Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation is Sergei Lavrov.

[S.V. Lavrov]

Lavrov, half-Russian, half-Armenian, is a graduate of the prestigious MGIMO or Moscow State Institute of International Relations [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_State_Institute_of_International_Relations].

Lavrov worked as a diplomat in Sri Lanka and the USA before being appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2004. He has been in post for 18 years.

Lavrov speaks 5 languages: Russian, English, French, Dvihehi, and Sinhala (the latter two being the languages of the Maldives and Sri Lanka).

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Lavrov.

Now let us examine his present opposite number in the UK, James Cleverly, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs.

[James Cleverly]

Cleverly, a “half-caste” (in the old term), with a British father and a mother from Sierra Leone, seems to have wanted an Army career.

According to Wikipedia, Cleverly “trained in the Army“, whatever that may mean (no detail of whether he was training to be an officer or as an enlisted soldier, presumably the latter, nor of where he trained, nor in what regiment or corps), but suffered a leg injury in 1989 and had to drop out. He would have been 19 or 20 at that time.

Cleverly then obtained a degree of sorts in “Hospitality Management” from the then Polytechnic of West London [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_West_London].

Cleverly was involved, not terribly successfully (one can surmise) in business and executive activities during the years up to about 2008, but by then was involved in two side-activities which proved more fruitful for him— politics, and the then Territorial Army (now, Reserves).

Cleverly’s leg injury had obviously been resolved by the time he was commissioned in the TA as 2nd lieutenant in 1991. He stuck at that for the following 14 years, reaching the rank of Lt. Col by 2015.

In politics, Cleverly was a London Assembly member for 8 years from 2007. Cleverly then benefited from the scandal around the ineffectual Jew sex pest and pervert Brooks Newmark, who had to stand down as MP for Braintree (Essex). Cleverly replaced Newmark.

Cleverly’s time as MP has not been distinguished, but the upheavals within the Conservative Party led to him being appointed as a Minister of State in 2020 and now, under Liz Truss, as Secretary of State. His appointment dates from 6 September 2022, about two weeks ago.

Cleverly speaks no language other than English.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cleverly

Well, there it is. Sergei Lavrov’s background, languages, and 18 years of experience (and many successes) in post, as against James Cleverly’s background, lack of success (other than in narrow career terms), two years of arguably relevant experience, and time in post as Secretary of State five minutes (putting it flippantly).

It will be recalled that when (also absurdly) Liz Truss was Foreign Secretary, Lavrov easily made a fool of her, inducing her to say that quite well-known cities in Russia should be given “back” to Ukraine (the stupid woman had no idea that they never had been part of Ukraine; one was not far from Moscow).

Liz Truss was an embarrassment as Foreign Secretary; she is just ludicrous as Prime Minister. Now someone even less educated is Foreign Secretary. This country is screwed.

Sergei Lavrov will win no plaudits for his kindly good nature, but on whom would you bet your money?

Late afternoon music

[“The Golden Wheat”]

More tweets

While it may seem cruel to mock someone who, quite obviously, is not always compos mentis, that person, Biden, heads the most powerful country on Earth, with enough nuclear weaponry to send us all permanently into orbit. It is all very well to say that he is not really in charge, but that simply raises the question, “who is?” or “what cabal is?“, and what is the real agenda?

More music

Late tweets seen

Late music

[Eighteen Years]
[Snow-white Cherry Blossomed at the Window]
[The River is Running]