The slow, inevitable death of Labour as it used to be.

I have always had a deep, not admiration, more a respect for the old time Labour Party. It was peopled with men of integrity, men of substance. If an opponent, one could always rely on the stances of the Party, of the leaders, never bending to suit the prevailing winds, never to sacrifice their principles for cheap political advantage. I used to live in a mining village, many of my friends had parents who worked in the mines; and one had to observe that the men who came from the underground into daylight were the true salt of the earth. I too have worked underground, and, I suppose, that experience gave me more understanding of people who took the Labour ideal; than many a news article, political speech or ‘vision’ from some ‘special advisor’ whose nearest experience to coal was to use the electricity generated from a coal-fired power station.

Labour’s problem stems from its earliest days, when, short of funds, the Party voted to accept political donations to help get its men into Parliament. There was one judicial decision banning the funding of MPs by the Unions, and a further Act in Parliament to overcome this decision, and thus allow Unions funding of the Party, and its MPs.

So we now see the situation where the People elect and pay a Labour MP, but he or she is funded and indeed supported by a Labour Union. The question then arises; to whom does he or she or she give his loyalty? To the Party whose banner he or she stood under when canvassing for, and gaining votes, and to his Constituency; or to the Union whose creature he or she has become, because of the vast financial support these same Unions spread around?

As a final query, and in an individual point, we must ask ourselves who’s creature is now the Deputy Leader of the Party. Once looked upon as a king-maker, he is reduced to a silent shadow of his former authority; whilst ‘singing’ the Party dirge, which consists of repeated chants of the Party’s leader’s name. And the Party which once commanded respect, if little else? What sort of a Party is it when a BBC reporter has to be given a bodyguard as she attended the Conference? The same Party which introduced the flying pickets which hounded staff who would not support a strike by another Union entirely? The same Party which supported the massed actions of the miners during that strike of 84-85? The same Party which, when in power in the Seventies, gave in time and again to the demands of those same Unions; because they knew that if they did not bend the knee to their paymasters; the Unions would quickly find someone who did.

The young of today have not the benefit of a good memory, as the likes of my generation have. We can remember the bin strikes, with rubbish bags piled so high, and for so long; that the rats were thinking of paying rent; so good were the pickings. We can remember the power cuts, the three-day weeks, the impassive strike pickets who denied the very right to a decent burial, because they claimed it would mean crossing a picket line!

Corbyn’s Labour may be in the swing right now,  with the Hard-line Left of the Momentum faction powerful;  but the Labour Party will regret that silly vote which empowered Corbyn, along with his Hard-Left Trotskyite ideals, of a pacificism which reeks of betrayal of everything which Britain has stood for for centuries, and of the regret which has brought the Deputy Leader of the Party to a literal irrelevance!

(Not much) Peace: (Not much of a) Process (either!)

If I may digress before writing this particular essay, I am reminded of the tale of a swarthy foreign-looking man, possibly a seafarer; who was walking down a road in Belfast, when suddenly he was surrounded by a gang of tough young men; and the question thrown at him was, ‘Are ye a Protestant; or a Catholic?’

The swarthy gent thought he was on somewhat safe ground as he replied ‘I’m a Palestinian Arab’.

The instantaneous question again:- ‘Ah, but are you a Catholic Palestinian Arab, or a  Protestant Palestinian Arab?

Sadly, I read that even that small piece of humour is out-of-date; as I now learn that the Catholic Republican communities fly Palestinian flags, and the  Protestant Unionists? They opt for the Star of David.

When the Northern Ireland Assembly was mooted; when the first stirrings of what later was to be called either ‘Good Friday Agreement (GFA) or Belfast Agreement  came chanting down the freeways, a certain number of sceptical commentators amongst us shrugged and muttered ‘As long as the killings, the threats, the punishment beatings, along with all the paraphernalia of two, three or more groups of terrorists cease; we’ll see how it goes.’

Hundreds of prisoners, of various degrees of murderous inclinations, from both sides of a sectarian mindset border were freed, the Police were virtually neutered, and the politicking began; and that has never ceased. One side proposes, and the other side disposes in the political arena; and that has again continued for a long time. But certain propositions were both put forward and accepted; to many on the mainland these same proposals would have raised a forest of eyebrows: but Norn’Ireland has a logic and a manner all its own.

Can any Englishman, home-grown or imported, expect, when being told that there is a Council House available yet unavailable; that they cannot live in that house, despite that house being both empty and available: because they are of the WRONG RELIGION? I have lived in my own home in a small estate in Durham City for over thirty-odd years, and I do not know what God any of my neighbours prays to, and nor do I really care! Its really a simple as that. Its none of my business! As long as they keep themselves to themselves, keep the noise down after ten in the evening, pay the rent if either private or Council tenants, only bother me when an emergency crops up: they’ll do me fine!

But we read of the quartet who used to live in Cantrell Close, a shared housing area off the Ravenhill Road. The Police arrived, presumably in force, and ‘advised the four families that ‘credible threats had been made by the UVF’ and those families ‘had to leave’.

I would now point you towards a truly wonderful publication from the Northern Ireland Executive Office entitled ‘Together: Building a United Community Strategy’, and I would encourage you to read it all. You will not learn anything from it, because as long as there are ‘credible threats’ from one group of shadows, and ‘equally credible threats’ from another; all those fancy phrases, all those wonderful ideas, all those high-flying theories about how we can crush the life out of ‘sectarianism’ if only we stand together; are simply not worth a bucket of piss!

When even the ‘Strategy’ cannot be honest, and call hatred and true hostility what they are, what chance does the rest of that well-meaning booklet have of being able to tell those four Catholic families that they are safe, they can relax, because the Criminal GodFathers ON BOTH SIDES have been quelled?

 

I wrote a few weeks ago of the dormant Assembly,  when discussing, for those who don’t understand what is so different about their NornIron fellow Brits, all about the cancer of the Peace Walls, those sadly mis-named excrescences which are so necessary to stop random bunches of thugs from one side of the sectarian fringe, to go attacking, burning and spreading their fear towards those on the other side of where that THIRTY FOOT-HIGH FENCE now stands,  which comes along with reinforced steel netting, to stop the petrol bombs, the rocks and the rest.

 

 

Red Army History, and Rochdale

When  Russia’s Culture Minister and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church unveiled their new memorial statue to Mikhail Kalashnikov which came along with millimetrically-accurate outlines of all of Kalashnikov’s world-class killing machines, it was soon pointed out that the sculptor had included, in amongst all of the AK-47’s variants, a perfect replica outline of a German StG 44 machine gun, designed in 1944.

Moscow-based military historian Yuri Pasholok revealed Thursday in a Facebook post that the rifle diagram etched into the plate is an exact replica of the diagram for the StG rifle. “Just don’t say that this was an accident,” Pasholok wrote. “One should be beaten, painfully and publicly, for something like this. These are boy-sculptors, dammit!”

Scherbakov acknowledged the discrepancy the same day, admitting that it was a mistake. “This is a very small background thing,” the sculptor was quoted saying by the RBC news outlet. “I even wonder how they noticed it. We took [the image] from a source where it was written ‘Kalashnikov assault rifle.”

So, the grinding wheels came out pretty quick, the sculptor was suitably advised to get his weaponry library overhauled; or something very similar; the offending StG machine pistol disappeared, the mistake was acknowledged, and the world shrugged and moved on.

I bet Rochdale Council wished it could as easily erase the past events which spread over two decades with the allegations of abuse at Knowl View School and Cambridge House Hostel: allegations which, despite the mounting list of allegations against both staff members and the late Cyril Smith MP, the CPS decided that there would be no further actions, and the case files were closed: a decision which even the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd called ‘shameful’. Rochdale Council have ‘apologised’; but Richard Scorer, a solicitor for some of the the victims, claimed the independent inquiry which opens on 9 October and will examine abuse allegations about Cambridge House and Knowl View, is the real reason for the apology.

So Rochdale adds yet another place-name to the sordid list; upon which one commentator stated:- If the List gets any longer, Prof. Jay will probably be the first Centenarian Inquiry Leader.

‘Standing Room’ only!

There are messages, and statements aplenty, on the efficacy, content and outcome of the ‘kneeling’ protest against America’s Flag, Anthem and indeed ethos of the America which I have come to understand and respect for more years than I can either count or indeed remember. I have written of the ‘Sounds’; I have written of the ‘Warriors’, men who fought their B-17 bombersacross the death-laden skies of Occupied France, and the other Nazi-held nations of Europe, and into the enemy bastion of Nazi Germany; to deliver yet another message to Berlin: a message with just two words. Those words? Unconditional Surrender. I give a link to a blogsite which holds one man’s reply to the swaggering bloated millionaires as they kneel in a disrespect which goes against everything that I believed America stands for. True, they are perfectly entitled to protest against anything and anyone, they are perfectly at liberty to do just that; but to state that ‘Your Country is not Worthy’! This action is beyond parody, and is itself unworthy.

I would finish this short (for me) statement by posting a YouTube  video from a group who holds views which many acclaim, many abhor, but deserve to be heard: because this is where they stand on ‘Kneeling’!

Today; versus Yesterday

A disturbing photo (and comment) Tweeted by a gentleman named Mark Collet says it all really.

But much more disturbing is the reply photo, complete with inset comment.

As an aside; although living only some twenty-odd miles from Seaham, I have never seen this remarkable statue. The best that I can offer is a view of the DLI bugler sited in the Market Place.

Or, alternatively, a read of my Last Novel.

Wrong I am Picture in!

 

Never mind Qatar, or Iran, or Israel, or indeed anything else: the paramount question before Saudi today is simply: will Yoda be allowed to drive himself; must he be accompanied by a relative: or should he just use the Force?

 

I began with phone taps, but end with guns, and death in Dallas

WikiLeaks has just dropped a whole pile of documentation detailing how the Russians tap, and spy on mobile and computer devices alike. They have always been fairly open about it, so I don’t really understand all the fuss. I mean, Soviet Russia did it the old-fashioned way, through bribery, force, intimidation and of course; the KGB. Russia has continued the practice without some, but not all, of the blood and terror. The onlooker might ask, ‘So what else is new?’

The reply might worry many in the West. That reply? Russia has always done it, but more openly now than in the past. But the real difference is the fact of the discovery that America was using exactly the same means for long enough, until the Snowden leaks made transparent the invidious existence of the FISA courts, the secret intercepts approved for mass trawling of phone and email conversations; and all of course, for the greater good.

What I would like to see and hear is, from the vast amounts of data hovered up by the likes of the NSA under apparently fully-legal mass surveillance techniques, how many people were actually prosecuted for any criminal activity at all! I was checking through the ACLU pages on this, and, whilst they actually know of ONE case, the former Attorney General Holder (he of the Contempt of the House of Representatives) had stated that the Justice Department was ‘thinking’ about telling people that they were being investigated or charged on evidence gathered by covert means; which is against everything that America actually stands for.

So, Russia condemned for being ‘as usual’, the Obama bunch just kept Schtum! I wonder when Trump’s attack dogs will ferret around, and start unearthing more of the dirty deeds from the days of ‘Fast and Furious’? You remember ‘Fast and Furious”, don’t you? Nope, it wasn’t a bunch of films about fast cars; but instead a typically shady deal between Holder’s DoJ and the ATF, positioned so that guns would be ‘Gun-Walked’ or placed on the open market, and tracked towards Mexico, and then the furore would commence about the easy access of Americans to buy long guns, sniper as well as semi-automatic rifles, with a view to side-swiping the NRA, and bringing gun-control in by the back door.

So, over two thousand weapons, large and small, were trafficked across the border; but someone forgot to maybe read the memo, and the guns were not fitted with tracking devices; and away they went, straight into the hands of the cartels. From their bloody hands those weapons went to fuel, amongst many others, the death of the brother of the former attorney general of the state of Chihuahua, when Fast and Furious weapons were found at the scene. But the ATF, Holder & Co.’s horrendous judgment continues to take a toll. By the time of the House’s contempt vote, some 300 Mexicans had been killed or wounded by Fast and Furious firearms, and that number has surely risen. In December 2013, a ‘walked’ gun was found at the site of a gunfight at a Mexican resort that left five cartel members dead. The guns have found their way north, too; with one American, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry dead from the gunfire of ‘Fast and Furious’ weaponry. In amongst the weaponry ‘walked’ across the border were thirteen long guns similar to a .50 Calibre Barrett, which, given the right shells and a steady aim, will down a helicopter, never mind a car. One was retrieved when El Chapo was arrested, so there are only twelve missing, which is kinda’ comforting: but only kinda’!

Strangely enough, after an investigation by Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) uncovered a paper trail a mile long, Obama claimed ‘executive privilege’ over that portion of the documents which Holder’s merry men had withheld from the House Investigation. The Obama Administration later claimed ‘victory’ when fourteen ATf officials were disciplined, whilst stating that the 1,300 pages withheld from the inquiry reached Holder’s desk, but somehow he never got around to reading them!

Oh, and just by the bye; a weapon owned by Nadir Soofi, one of the two Muslim terrorists who tried to shoot up Pamela Geller’s “Draw Muhammad” contest in Dallas, Texas last May, was acquired through Fast and Furious.

 

Like a preacher in an empty, echoing hall

May might, or indeed May might not, understand how the world looked at the foolish manner in which she chose to speak like a headmistress of a school in ‘special measures’, rather than the Prime Minister of a Country which decided, by itself, not to take this woman’s advice by voting ‘Leave’!

The image at 4.42 of the reception of Theresa May’s turgid speech in the UN’s great hall speaks volumes without uttering a word. The rows upon row of empty seats spoke volumes about not only her ideas of a being a world leader; but also about the stupid, silly and, in the end, disastrous policies she has chosen to lumber this Nation with, within her time as Prime Minister, and also when Home Secretary.

Burbling on about bloody Gender Equality and terror, when she can’t even give any money out of the £13 billion quid available through DfID to fix the damaged British Overseas Islands in the Caribbean because she’s signed it all away through the bloody OECD, is but typical of this woman who only became Prime Minister by default, and then squandered her precious majority away. Terror? Yes, let all the Fuzzies-wuzzies and Dervishes in, they are all deserving, even if they preach of Jihad, and of the necessity to plant bombs and kill people! Two strongly Right-wing commentators? Nope they are not conducive to the public good!

I have written before of supporting the Prime Minister, but now? Let’s have a true contest, and get someone who lives and speaks as a Patriot, not as a self-serving drone!

…and who censors the Censors?

I have never viewed RT on a news cycle time, as I am listening to the BBC in the morning; but had to visit my daughter this morning: she had the tv on, so I tuned in to RT. Fair enough, the news items were, of the ones I viewed, a tad sarcastic to the West, but, strangely enough, a lot more balanced that I might have expected.

The item which I took most notice of was of the row between Tech. giants such as Google, Facebook and the like; and the US Congress. Seems as though Congress wants to push through the ‘Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act’, which intends to allow an exception to the blanket protection given to online platforms over what their users get up to. The Act is built around the workings of websites such as Backpage.com, which offers its services to post jobs, shopping, holidays, but also dates and offers of sex, albeit at second-hand.

The websites operate under the protection of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, and Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who publish information provided by others: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. The Tech Guys like this section, because it gives them blanket cover against nasty intrusive citizens who wish to sue the hell out of one of ‘the big guys’, along with the offending websites, for whatever reason under the sun; and they definitely don’t want to see change: except change on their terms!

RT also broadcast the other side of the same coin, which shows a slightly different type of thinking when the Tech Guys want to shut someone down, remove pages and indeed complete websites because they promote ‘Hate Speech’, which, I think readers might appreciate, covers virtually everything which earns the disapproval of the ‘straight-laced’ Facebook, or Google, who famously stated ‘Don’t be evil’ as a core belief. There’s plenty out there which would suffer the instant ‘Death by Removal’ from their Search Engines or Algorithms if the likes of of Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page had those pages brought to their attention; but hey; they can do that because they’re both private companies, and also because they’re definitely ‘holier than thou’; and they have the muscle to do it; but they strangely don’t want to give the Government the power to do exactly what they are doing every frikkin’ day! They fiercely chant ‘First Amendment’ when it suits them, but kinda’ forget the whole goddamn Constitution when they decide to close off access to some blogsite or website through their Search engines, because it just doesn’t fit their idea of what is, and isn’t, acceptable.

When I view such activities, when I read of the power of such as that which the Tech Guys wield, I am reminded of only one set of actions, one set of philosophies, and one terrible outcome! Some may state I am totally overboard in my summations; but  remember that a whole, well-educated Nation followed, believed in, and ultimately suffered a terrible defeat; for Time Magazine’s Man of the Year 1938!

Lord Dubs has got an awful lot to answer for.

It has been suggested that the ‘Authorities’ had been warned of the actions of the teenage Parson’s Green bomber weeks ago; including the “Prevent” bunch which is supposed to check radicalisation of young muslims.

Here we see a picture of the ‘Authority’s answer to the queries:-

A classic case of bolting door AFTER the ‘effing Horse has not only bolted, but delivered the ‘effing bomb. It was through sheer luck, and the inexperience and incompetence of this Muslim Maniac, that we are not watching multiple funerals in the days and weeks to come; along with dozens maimed in hospital.  The Manchester jihadi followed a (for him) better pattern, and he delivered his mass murder with precision and glee.

‘Prevent’ has cost this Nation tens of millions; and what do we see for our cash? A murderous thug allowed to walk and cycle freely, even after he was picked up and questioned! He was probably allowed to walk because he was a ‘Child Refugee’ Muslim, and therefore incapable of the mass murder he was so inevitably drawn to.

Could it: Would it possibly be that the ‘Bucket and Lidl Bag Bomber’ is one of those ‘ever-so-special Child Migrants’ who were bussed in behind draped scaffolding some fifteen foot high? The drapes were there because of the outrage caused by the MEN who were pictured walking, grinning, towards the gates in Dover!

Campaigners wanted  3,000 Syrian and other ‘Children’ in Europe to be found homes in the UK, with Lord Dubs sitting cheering from the House of Lords. It was all about the ‘Child Migrants’.

Lord Dubs has got an awful lot to answer for.

Smart meters?

We who live in the United Kingdom have been bombarded with t.v. adverts, leaflets, special offers (time-limited), all in the sacred name of the so-called Smart Meters: to be offered and fitted into every UK property on both grids.

• We are told that they are free.They are most definitely not free, the cost is to the customer, but spread over ten years (I think) so the apparent cost is allegedly minimal.
• We are told that it is a UK Government initiative. This again is incorrect, as the push comes from European Union requirements and secondary legislation, on the slippery grounds of both Harmonisation, and battling ‘Climate change’.
• We are told that, with a ‘smart meter’ fitted, you will be able to check your energy usage at a minutes’ notice; and that you will ‘save money’ if a smart meter is fitted.

Now let us examine that last statement very carefully. You will be able to check your energy usage? Yes you will. I have no problem with that statement. But the second phrase: ‘you will save money if a ‘smart meter’ is fitted? Now folks, the only way or manner to save money, with or indeed without one of these small ‘gizmos’ is to switch things off, so the electrons and energy stop flowing through the circuit. You can, if you wish swap to another supplier, but the ‘true’ savings are minimal, at best.

So, are we being ‘lied to’ in order to get a truly dodgy piece of kit switched int to your home services? Yes, is the answer, the ONLY way to pay less cash for the same electricity is to switch the damn thing off, and; when the washing machine is half-way through its’ cycle because it is ‘costing’ too much, all you are left with is a bundle of sopping wet shirts etc. which you cannot get out of the machine because the programming is telling the machine that there is still a heap of water in there, along with the half-washed shirts.

The ONLY people to benefit from ‘Smart meters’ are:-

• The Meter manufacturers, having been handed a multi-million contract to fit gear which will be only of use to:-
• The Power companies. Why? Because they can cut your supply off at the touch of a computer mouse if they need to ‘shed load’ for frequency-matching purposes; or
• Because if you are late paying your bill, they can chop your supply off without hesitation; and:-
• They don’t need to employ expensive meter readers, because; when the kit is working correctly, the total bill is available automatically at the power company’s monitor screens, computers and printers.

Into the bargain, because of the insane way in which Government thinks of ‘high-tech’ equipment; which is to believe that electronic, computer-controlled and software operated bits of kit will work perfectly straight out of the box: when any half-aware computer-literate bloke will tell them that this never, ever happens. The ONLY way to introduce gear like this on a National basis is simply to approach it on an area test case, where the technicians who are supposed to stick the gear into your power switch are trained to accept all areas of the technology: and then to run things on a three-month basis, wheedling out all the screw-ups, logging same and cataloguing them so the technicians know what to expect when the system goes National.

And then someone pops his head around the corner, and tells you that its all gone wrong, because the first ship-load of kit is being superseded by another, and you have to start all over again!

I have built and commissioned Water and Sewage pumping stations, sections of a Nuclear Power Station, Defence installations, Electrical substations and high-rise buildings, and they all are the same: you check all and every interlock forwards and backwards; you always either see it done yourself, or hand over to trusted subordinates; and when the Client shakes your hand: then you know it is accepted.

 

FAB: but not exactly Fabulous.

We here within the borders of the British Isles have, mostly, always considered one area to be above all sacred, to be preserved for posterity; for the purpose of Remembrance, and for relatives, friends and seekers after knowledge of their forbears. I speak of Cemeteries, of the anguish of losing a loved one, of the sheer relief of being able to visit the place that holds their loved one’s remains. I have written of the anger when a ‘yob’ desecrates a National Memorial.

I have also written commemorating the loss felt when my own sister died so tragically young, so long ago. There is a small North-Eastern town in England which I used to call home, despite working far away so long ago. In that town there sits a small Catholic church, with cemetery adjacent. Within the confines of that Cemeterylie the mortal remains of my beloved sister, who died at the age of sixteen from leukaemia. Her death shattered my Dad, who never completely recovered from her loss, and my Mum wasn’t much better in her grief. There is just a green sward where she lies; no stone, no winged angel, no border resplendent with flowers; because her face is before me as I write these lines. We three remaining brothers need no chiselled granite to remind us of our sister, and so it is.

So it is perhaps fitting that I write of the planned and proposed desecration of a grubby, slightly overgrown patch of land in Alderney, in our Channel Islands. Seems as though a consortium has received approval to shuttle electricity from France to the United Kingdom via the tiny island of Alderney, and that route goes straight through the place where many, but certainly not all victims of island-based Nazi ferocity were laid to their rest after brutal treatment at the hands of their Nazi overlords. Are we to stand silently by while ‘Progress’ towards a project which boasts of Energy Security, of Environmental protections, and of Economic Benefits: rides roughshod over the place where unknown and unnamed victims of the Nazis lie, in place which is soon to be trenched, excavated and built upon? The story is present in the pages of the Sunday Times, but, being paywalled, offers no link.

 

Do as I shall do, which is write to your MP, write to your local newspapers, and lets see if we can stop the Behemoth which is Europe before those graves are disturbed forever.

There is nothing quite like a Dame!

At times of tragedy, such as the latest attempt to attack British people going about their business, we should not forget the other aspects of life in Britain today. Because some Muslim mecca-facing head-banger gets his explosive mixture wrong (again) many residents of London are alive today. Some may be badly burnt, some worse than others, but the hope is that all will survive. But the best news so far is the possibility that the outer casing, some kind of white plastic bucket, partly survived the fire, and hopefully will provide vital clues to the perpetrator.

As I stated, we should not forget the hum-drum patterns of life in Britain, inclusive of, yet again, Dame Helen Ghosh’s activities in attempting to turn the National Trust into a hot-bed (geddit?) of homosexual and bendy-wendy gender friendliness and fervour. The Trust’s, and of course Dame Helen’s latest gambit is to send out the annual Trust’s volunteering survey.

Well there’s nothing wrong with finding out what sort of person actually saves the Trust a large fortune in salaries, pensions, National Insurance and all the other things which large employers have to cope with; by their use as virtual slave labour (without the compulsion, whips, shackles and beatings as enforced by some other evil so-called Travelling bastards whom I shall be writing about when I have a chance). Some may baulk at my description of these volunteer as slaves, but they do their work for the love of the great houses which the National Trust was set up to look after, they are not paid a penny; and now they find that they are the latest target of Dame Helen’s homosexual-friendly fervour.

Seems as though the Trust’s survey is slightly different from last year’s. This year’s questions include queries not on how many roses the volunteer has dead-headed, or how much gorse and bracken has been cleared in one week; but instead concentrates on queries such as :-

• Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned at birth?”
• Whether volunteers are “Trans” or “Non-binary”.
• Respondents are asked to signal whether they are “Female”, “Male”, “Trans”, “Non-binary”, “Intersex”.
• On sexual orientation, they are asked if they are “Bisexual”, a “Gay man”, a “Gay woman/lesbian”, “Heterosexual/straight”
• The Trust defended its questions, saying they helped the organisation “understand who volunteers with us so that we can make the Trust a more relevant and accessible place to volunteer”.

Seems to me, that the only time these questions would be valid is if the aforementioned volunteers were about to take part in some massed weird sexual ritual before opening the gates and welcoming in the unsuspecting guests. Just so they could be paired out together, obviously, as we would definitely not wish to see the upheaval when, say; a lesbian was paired with a bisexual who was about to transit into, well, something else on the list.

Dame Helen, who is remembered for stating that  wind turbines were “rather beautiful things”, is  leaving the Trust to become Master (Mistress, Mattress ) of Balliol College, Oxford. Dame Helen, was accused by Sir Roy Strong, 82, who said: “If you go to a National Trust house or property, you’re being almost told what to think, and how we ought to react. “They’re obsessed with children, play areas, fun things at Easter and Christmas, and so on. The signs are that the National Trust is being turned into a branch of the leisure industry.  It’s ticking the boxes against the disabled, the aged, LGBT, the ethnic communities and the rest of it, and something gets lost along the way.”

She will be remembered (boy, will she ever be remembered) by the Trust for removing the ‘Easter’ from the Easter Egg Hunt, barring any volunteer from visitor duties at Felbrigg Hall if they did not wear some ‘rainbow’ ‘effing ABCX-supporting badge; along with ‘outing’ the former owner of the Hall, an ‘intensely private man’, on the grounds that the public had a right to know! As far as I can remember, she will pull down a salary of +/- £400,000. Nice wad for not doing very much beside attending the formal dinners, cocktail parties and pressing the flesh (as long as it is compliant, of course).

Unlike Joseph, Jacob’s coat has only one colour: Tory Blue!

Consider the following:-

• Theresa May, at the urging of her ‘inner’ circle, chose to call for an Election when there was no need for such a nationwide turmoil.
• The Election was supposedly to centre around Mrs. May, as the leader who was trusted to deliver a Brexit.
• The Tory Manifesto, upon which the Election would be fought, proved to be a mish-mash and a complete disaster, as it was compiled virtually in-house, no consultations on specific policies was even requested, and, as a result of the suddenly not-so-strong Leader; politics, from a Tory point of view, went downhill rapidly.

So, the Election was fought, and both won, and lost. The Tories remained the Party most numerically strong, but had to ask for the D.U.P.’s help to form a Government. Politics dragged along, until the summer recess, when political commentators had nothing else to do but ‘appoint’ various so-called heavy hitters into a position whereby they would attempt to unseat a weakened Prime Minister. Various names were conjured out of the thin air, including Boris, Liam, Hammond, along with all the other runners and riders; but absolutely no-one took the bait, pushed himself or herself forwards, because the appetite simply was not there for either a new contest, which would tear the Party apart: and the certainty that there would be a call for another General Election, and the Tories were uncertain if their message, as amended, would prove popular; letting Corbyn’s rag-tag Lefties, Marxists and crypto-Communists in through the back door, fuelled by a young electorate who had not lived through either the threat of a hard-line Soviet Communist Empire, complete with a nuclear arsenal: or the chaos and turmoil of a hard-line-Union dominated Government.

So those same commentators swept their gaze around, and fixed upon the studious, old-fashioned Tory gentleman named Jacob Rees-Mogg. Along with their sudden interest in Jacob, came a campaign slogan with the title ‘Moggmentum’. Suddenly they had a Tory to push, make lots of headlines with: and all, unfortunately, for nothing. With his upright personality, his repeated statements that he had no further ambition than to represent his Constituency, and look after his burgeoning family; he just wasn’t playing ball.

So he was invited on to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, and was promptly ambushed with repeated questioning over his deeply-held religious beliefs. Why the ambush?His name had ‘come up’ as a Tory Candidate’ and ‘the public has a right to know’. His answers, which were that ‘these were personal matters which were voted on a ‘free vote’ in Parliament’, although perfectly correct and truthful, were the trigger for more ambush questions.

Jacob then appeared on the BBC’s Daily Politics, where the acid-lipped Jo Coburn accused Rees-Mogg of not being ‘impartial and balanced’. Rees-Mogg, standing in front of a Number 10 image which he then proceeded to puncture by stating that he was in another studio a few yards from Coburn; replied that, unlike many at the BBC, he was both impartial and balanced. As Coburn attempted to skewer Jacob by asking which Ministerial job he would like, Rees-Mogg replied once more that he had no further ambition than to represent his Constituency.

I like Jacob because he oozes integrity, he doesn’t waltz around the barnyard with the political winds. He opposes all abortion, as I do; he is strongly opposed to the very idea of homosexual marriage; as I am, and he gives me the impression that he doesn’t even notice the expressions of ‘abhorrence’ and ‘disgrace’ regarding his long-established ideals and principles. He probably will never see a Ministerial red box, and that is a sad thing to state; but it is a reflection of a principled man, a man who will not tack to the prevailing winds because he sees opportunity; as so many of his Parliamentary colleagues, from all Parties have done, because they seek preferment!

So you’re planning your honeymoon?

Great, so you are thinking of Cuba? Fair enough, so are thousands of others, tourists, holiday makers, no worries. You ignore the fact that the brutal Castro Communist Regime rules the island with a velvet glove concealing the Iron Fist within; because the urge to lie in the sun on a cheapo holiday overwrites all possible scruples against the forty years of a terror-wielding bunch of Communist thugs?

So you make all the arrangements, the white dress (Like a Virgin, eh?); the wedding service in a church which you have probably never visited since being baptised, the super-duper spread in the hotel or fancy stately-home of your choice,,,,and all the rest! You did check out the Weather where you plan your dream honeymoon? Of course you did, you aren’t daft! You just missed the warnings that, at this time of the year, there just might be what is known around the Caribbean as ‘The Big Wind’? Of course you missed those warnings, printed categorically in every advisory from every Island in the whole Caribbean and America.

So you fly in just as what will become Hurricane Irma heats up into a small circle of death out in the Atlantic. Charlotte and Ricky Goffe were in Varadero when Irma skated past, where Cuba only felt the lash of 120 m.p.h. Hurricane-force winds, and the tons of rain deposited; as Irma passed by on her route towards Florida.  The couple, who had married in Britain a week earlier, slept on the bathroom floor when the storm hit their hotel and  son Jason was in the bath lined with pillows and blankets.

Mrs Goffe, who is from Solihull, posted photographs of their battered resort in Varadero and said Thomas Cook should be ‘ashamed’.

In a message on their Facebook page she added: ‘Thomas Cook your “crisis” staff have been terrible. One rep at our initial hotel popped in for 5 minutes to tell us “it would all be ok” and to have a nice day then left as it was his day off’.

Describing the ‘worst 24 hours of her life’ when Irma hit Cuba she said: ‘We spent the evening sleeping on the floor in the bathroom of a room where we had already seen 2 cockroaches as the hurricane lashed down. The situation has been handled so poorly by Thomas Cook’.

2 Cockroaches eh! The End of the World is, indeed, Nigh!

I am Music, who with sweet accents

My wife, when she was still sound of limb and mind; used to accuse me of giving preference to classical music over my family. I will admit that to queue for four hours in the rain outside a booking office (this being in 1970) before heading on to work might seem, to some, to be just a tad over enthusiastic; but in reply I said that we did get the tickets we wanted, there were over four hundred other people in the queue, and I wasn’t first in line. My life has been lived with the rarest of accompaniments, my mind has been filled with glorious sounds. Even in the darkest hours of our marriage, when parted by an illness which knows no cause or cure; we had, besides our children and our love for one another; a shared wonder at what the mind of Man can produce. As anyone who reads my words can maybe understand; classical music has been, to my wife and myself; a soothing sensory balm which can overcome mountains. Those sounds have been a small part of the whole which has sustained us so that we can celebrate fifty years of marriage in 26 days time.

But enough of us,  Cunningham!

I write of a desire, from musicians both unknown and famous, as well as many others who claim an affinity with music in the Classical sphere, for a brand-new Concert Hall, to be known as the Centre for Music, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to provide a place in which Sir Simon Rattle will get the London Symphony Orchestra to make music. The previous Chancellor, along with Boris Johnson, pushed this scheme for all their worth; inclusive of the words ‘but its only £278 million!’

The ‘great and the good’ having been thwarted of their ‘Bridge over Troubled Waters’ by the sensible decision of London’s Mayor to state ‘enough is definitely enough’ after the spending of £39 millions of public money by his predecessor, but before a single penny of the promised sponsorship funds appeared; have moved away from their desire to commune with Nature whilst walking over a bridge with toll gates and time slots; and aimed instead at ‘Culture’, in the proposed form of the ‘Centre for Music’. They have persuaded the City of London to cough up some £4 millions so that the ‘Business Case for the Centre’ may be completed; and presented the Government in the hope that their minds may be changed. With the completion of the ‘Business Case’, they hope to change the Government’s mind, and get started on the Centre for Music.

I have a great admiration for the musical talents of Sir Simon; I was present when the Birmingham Symphony played at St. David’s Hall in Cardiff, and it was a revelation to watch and hear an orchestra playing as one, with deep feeling and perfect timing; conducted by the Maestro himself.

We have a world-class concert venue in the Sage Centre in Gateshead, there are many other centres where music, of all types, definitions and character can be enjoyed. But, and it is a big ‘but’ of which I write, surely we have many more pressing things which must be attended to before a massive concert hall, music and rehearsal rooms included, can be built so that Sir Simon can create his own magic inside that hall. London holds many concert halls, large and small, and if Sir Simon doesn’t like the Barbican, base of the LSO for now, maybe he can get the acoustics corrected to his taste by means of computer studies; or he can drum up the balance of the cash himself to build his dream; after all, its only £278,000,000: chicken feed to his mates in the City, the über-rich, and the hedge funds, and we can allow our wonderful, caring Governments to throw our cash away in DFID projects all across the globe.

America’s Reply

Before

After

‘Effing idiotic female …..

…Dies of a massive drug overdose.

Her mother, fighting back tears, said her daughter would not have willingly taken the pills because she was unable to swallow tablets. Mrs Brock revealed how her daughter had openly talked about experimenting with cocaine in the past but did not think she would’ve taken so much ecstasy in one go.

Giving evidence, she said: “She tried cocaine with people she knew and people around her she knew. “She said to her sister afterwards that she didn’t like it so she didn’t have to worry. She was very clear about what she let into her body and what she didn’t.  

And  She also told an inquest how she believed her daughter may have been forced to swallow the bag of drugs. ***************

As well as

Coroner states:-

“In July when she attended with her sister, Anika, she did try cocaine – this was not unusual for young people going to Ibiza.

I honestly do not know which of the three is / was the stupidest (I believe that is truly an English word) examples of a moronic attitude towards drugs of any kind!

• The mother, for not lighting up like a roman candle the first time she heard her ‘effing idiot of a daughter had taken cocaine.

• The Coroner, for making totally silly and outlandish comments on the death of a moron acting like a human being; or

• The bloody stupid, silly, totally uneducated tramp who thought she was ‘in control’, and who also thought she could ‘get away’ with carrying a lethal package of ecstasy back to Britain: the silly, stupid, dead cow!

“We believe the attack was that of a ‘Lone Wolf’.”

I have never claimed to be able to tell the future. I would be laughed off any stage or web-site for even hinting at such powers. But it is indeed a strange coincidence to state that I foresaw the responses of both European and British politicians to the murderous depredations of Muslim ‘Jihadi’ terrorists on the streets of European Capital cities; within the pages of a novel which I wrote a few years ago.

 

 

The television news had moved straight to saturation coverage of firstly the bombing which had, it had been confirmed, killed the Home Secretary, the constituency M.P., four members of his team, the three Asian founders of the Harmony centre, fifty-nine children and forty-two parents; a further fifteen were in either intensive care or on critical life support. Pictures were also coming in of the eight confirmed bombed coaches, complete with the extra carnage wrought by the other vehicles caught up either in the blasts, or the collisions following the buses’ fiery fate.

One set of pictures caught Charlie’s eye; they were of the only coach and passengers where the bomb had not detonated properly. The pictures caught the blood on the hands and clothing of around ten men who had beaten the failed bomber into a bloody pulp in the bus, before they had been pulled away by police. All the men were smiling broadly, and three of the ten were Asian.

The hero visits a friend who is both a Peer, and an active politician, to seek counsel after seeing the inertia of his own Government after a huge terror attack across both the motorways of England, and a community centre in Salford.

The Earl’s chair moved slowly beside Charlie as he strolled on the terrace beside the huge frontage of the mansion, as he waited for his political protégé to make his mind up as to what he was going to say.

Finally, the tall politician swung around and asked, “Harven, do you believe that this bunch in Downing Street are capable of trying to brush these Muslim atrocities under the carpet? Are they capable of deciding not to go all out for bloody revenge?”

The old face smiled sadly back at his visitor, “Not only are they capable, Charlie, they might find it politically expedient to just conclude that these killers were just acting on their own. They might publicise that, instead of having a guiding hand at some high level in one of the Islamic nations. You are after all speaking of political minds; surely you must have known that this bunch, just like the ones before them, are in this for themselves first, and the good of the Nation comes fairly well back in the queue.”

“But Harven, those fanatics killed over five hundred people, mainly British. Doesn’t that register with them? What could be holding them back?”

The elderly peer swung his head around to gaze straight at the big politician’s eyes, “Charlie, because I’m old, and people long since decided that I can keep my mouth closed, they tell me whispers, theories, sometimes facts but more often guesses; sometimes they tell me State Secrets so that I in turn can advise them which path to follow, or not as the case may be. You are young, very young, and unversed in the ways of political expediency; so what I about to tell you may influence your planning, your actions and your statements. I have it on what can only be described as ‘good authority’ that while the planning and backup for the two sets of suicide attacks was carried out by fundamentalist mullahs and preachers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the funding and ultimate authority was in fact Saudi Arabian. Not only Saudi Arabian, but very closely linked to one of the junior and distant members of their Royal Family; who of course rule the Kingdom with the help and willing fists of the Wahabbi sect of the Islamic religion, and the preachers and mosques of that Kingdom. Wahabbi Preachers and mullahs, cousins incidentally of whom took over the mosque in Manchester where the Salford bombing was spearheaded from.”

I would refrain from further comment, except to point towards the existence of an as-yet unpublished Government report on the funding of Radical Ideology in the UK; a report which might never, ever, see the light of day because of the embarrassing conclusion it arrives at; embarrassing from the viewpoint of the source of the funding.

 

It is a puzzlement!

I commenced reading my Saturday Telegraph, and turned the page over to page eight, but immediately was faced with a full page 9 advert featuring Omega watches, one of which is being worn by some bloke named Eddie Redmayne.

 

Am I supposed to be impressed by this bloke’s choice in watches? Is he a horologist? Can he fix a watch; or does he just ‘look good’ with some expensive hardware strapped to his wrist? Has he always worn an Omega, or was it just borrowed for the occassion? Is he an expert in watchmaking, or is it just that, because he is, presumably, a celebrity, we should all show our adoration for the calling, and either save up and buy one, or else add to the National Debt Crisis by slapping down some plastic, together with the words, ‘That’ll do nicely!”

 

Should I immediately dash out to Durham City centre, and buy one?

 

But the most pressing question is, naturally, without reverting to Google, or even Bing: who the hell is Eddie Redmayne: and why am I supposed to either recognise the name, or even to know this?

Two sides to every story

I write of two Nobel Laureates. One deserved of everything commendable ever said about her: the other; not so much.

We acclaimed Aung San Suu Kyi at Westminster Hall in June 2012. Check the video, but you can safely ignore the first five minutes and forty-nine seconds; that’s just Big Mouthed John Bercow (Speaker of the House of Commons) blowing his own trumpet and making noises, but enjoy the rest, she is worth every second!

She consciously did not seek the opportunity to become the Burmese (Myanmar) President after the election; partly because she did not think it appropriate, but mainly because the Burmese military, who wrote their (Amended) Constitution; ensured that she did not qualify, as she had children who carried a foreign passport. So she took the title of State Counsellor. Despite the tremendous win at the polls, she must always remember that the military still holds enormous sway in that Nation, and although Aung San got the votes, the military holds the reins of power; and to a large extent, the military is still popular to large numbers of Burmese. She has come in for much veiled criticism because she does not speak out against the harassment and exiling of the sect known as the Rohingya.

They have been a troubling minority in Burma for many years, the Burmese look upon them as Bengali, or outsiders; but their main problem is, of course, they are predominantly Muslim. They, or the militants amongst them, have attacked Police and Army outposts, during a long and dirty guerilla war against the majority Burmese. The main worry of the Burmese military? They are concerned that the Rohingya will import some of the deadlier ways of their murderous religious compatriots, as evident in the capitals of Europe, and, in the ways of military men the world over; reckon they have the cure, which is to make things so unpleasant for the Muslims that they go, willingly or otherwise; into Bangladesh. If one is to believe the stories published by the aid agencies who have leapt to succour the ‘refugees’, their treatment has been terrible: but do we also remember how we were told of the  desperate ‘child refugees’ waiting to be allowed into England, and what actually arrived on the ferries!

Aung Sang Suu Kyi is a seasoned politician, and must know that she holds a mighty power, out of all proportion to her diminutive frame. Should she speak out, and earn the wrath of the generals: or attempt a middle way, and possibly disappoint some of her more vocal critics, who were of course so pleased to watch her in amongst the ‘den of thieves’ in Westminster Hall?

The second Laureate? That would be the prancing prelate Desmond Tutu, who popped up from seemingly his grave to castigate Aung San Suu Kyi for disappointing him personally, by not speaking out against the military and their actions against the Muslim Rohingya. It’s a bit rich, castigating a Burmese politician for not speaking out: when he kept hidden, and never ever spoke out, of the true terror unleashed by the ANC and their militant ‘Spear of the Nation’ against the South African population, black, white and coloured during their ‘struggle’ and of course the equal ferocity against ANC members who dared question orders and decisions made by the ANC Council. I point the reader towards a video named Tainted Heroes, which was produced by AfriForum; a South African Civil rights group. It is a long, hard film to watch; some of the things which are pictured in graphic detail, such as the results of ANC-organised ‘Necklacing’, which, to the uneducated amongst my readers, was the lashing of the accused traitor’s arms and legs; then a tyre is forced down across the shoulders, the insides of the tyre is filled with petrol, and the leader of the group then strikes a match………. The resulting images are terrible to behold, but what is worse is the dancing and singing of the mob as they surround the remains as it lies shrivelled, smouldering and smoking on the ground; the remains of what was once a human being who has been accused of ‘collaboration’ with another Black faction. No court, no trial; just an accusation with, usually, no proof ever shown, Just a straight-forward lynching, ANC Africa-style. If you watched the scenes, you probably saw the ‘JURY’ as they danced, and grimaced, and celebrated their small ‘victories’.

Another small segment shows an ANC ‘activist’ as he calmly speaks of the decision to carry on murdering white farmers and with them, their wives and children. Why, because by the ANC standards, the very fact that the farmers organised a self-protection system made them accomplices to the Police and the Army, and they had to suffer, because, in this ‘activists’ words, they were in our way, and they had to be got rid of; that is why we planted the landmines on the farms, even though the wives and children were along with the farmers! Those same remaining farmers, incidentally, who have suffered almost 4,300 murders and attacks since that same ‘Independence’.

 

Yes, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a loud voice in the fight against the Nationalist’s apartheid system, but, strangely enough, although he was vociferous when the so-called ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ sessions were proceeding, you never, ever heard him speak out about the corruption, the internal violence, which was, and still is, endemic in the South Africa of today. So, when he speaks on derogatory terms of Ang San Suu Kyi’s silence on the  Rohingyas, and of the Burmese Military’s treatment of those people, just remember to take his words with two pinches of salt!

 

Its all about Imagination

Wandering through the byways of the web, I sometimes pause, and decide that this is a good example of sheer, unadulterated showing-off, but then I wander further, and find something else which intrigues, stimulates and fascinates.

We have all seen web pages which make us think, some which can appall, but it is a sign of our humanity which makes us pause, and consider what a man or a woman, by their own imagination, can build, manufacture, from a dream to a reality, whether a coding application, a speedway game, or simply poetry in motion.
Maybe its hokey, but this, as I have maybe stated before; I really like; especially when I watch how it is actually built!

The Un-Noticed, and Un-Questioned Immigration

As the interminable #FreedomofMovement arguments drone ever onwards, position papers on the same subject litter the floors of the Brexit offices, and ever-louder statements gush forwards on ‘will we: won’t we: can we: should we’ adopt this or that strategy regarding the people who want to come to the United Kingdom after Brexit; and how they should be treated: either our way or Brussels’ way (ECJ involvement to the tenth generation); not many are looking at the other side of the coin.

The coin’s side which is hardly mentioned is immigration from the ‘Commonwealth’ (Not much in Common, very little Wealth), whose figurehead is the saintly ‘Baroness Scotland’ (No, I did not spend my cash on fripperies, I spent Taxpayers’ cash on fripperies!).

In the year ending March 2017; 266,000 migrants, overwhelmingly from the Commonwealth arrived on our shores. These could be divided into straight forward migrants, but a fair proportion could also be labelled ‘family members’; cousins, second cousins, family friends who have given the visa office bloke the requisite bribe to get around the niceties; etc. Having been to many of these countries, and witnessed a tiny fraction of the shambles which is their Governance, as well as ‘Governments’, I can hardly blame them for wishing to depart their individual cess-pits for the life of an immigrant in the United Kingdom.

I have no problem at all with Hindu India, similarly with the Sikhs, whom I would also welcome. The Canadians, Australians and the old members of the Commonwealth should also come without question, because they are as us (excepting bloody Trudeau, because he is a Pillock). As I have posted previously, I do fervently object to any incomer from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, any of the ‘Stans’, and all of those who inhabit the Muslim Crescent countries; for only one reason. Their skin colour is immaterial to me; what I do object strongly to is their Religion. They enter, they do not assimilate, they ghetto-ise themselves, they live according to the rites and abominable culture and Religion which threatens us all.

When the Government finally issues the ruling documentation which governs those who can enter our borders after we leave the European Union; a straight break should also be made with any individual, group or Nation; Commonwealth or not;  which professes Islam as its ruling culture, which states that Muslim beliefs come before any, and the Caliphate is just in the immediate future!

Voices silenced; and Mountains reverted!

“ Twitter informed us all that in order to keep using the service, I had to agree to new terms of service, including their right to determine what that speech was and to expunge my account if there was any hint of “hate speech”, meaning of course anything said against the Muslim reconstitution of our society. Ditto Google and Apple.” Statement by a Twitter user.

One of our more outspoken blogging colleagues, a man by the name of Paul Kersey, wrote on matters racial in America, under the blog title ‘Stuff Black People don’t Like’. He wrote from a right-wing perspective, he was bitter, angry about what his Country had been forced to accept under (his term) ‘Black Ruled America’. But he wrote on matters in the public domain, items published in both local and national newspapers; he did not make things up: he only commented upon those things which, to him, amounted to a lessening of America’s freedoms, especially towards white people.

HIs blog disappeared, overnight. He didn’t even get time to sign off, his website was closed down, his blog posts have disappeared from the very search pages of all the big browsers, and the only way you can read former posts is by going on to archived web searches. Of course, the removal was made even easier by the fact that his blog was on Blogger, and Big Google doesn’t like any speech which doesn’t accord with its interpretation of what is, and more importantly, what is not; acceptable to Google.

His work can now be read again, on a different platform

I believe that Mr. Kersey should not have been silenced, even temporarily, because of his viewpoint!

p.s. The Mountain? Surely you don’t need reminding that Mt. Denial (sorry) Denali was formerly Mckinley?

 

But you swore it couldn’t happen again!

Recall, if you would, the giant news headlines which erupted when the Stafford Hospital Saga unfolded. Patients attempting to drink water in vases with flowers in them. Patients screaming in agony, but left to the tender care of receptionists, and of so-called nurses who switched off health-diagnostic and -treatment machinery because they did not understand the workings. The two enquiries, one internal, one public, exposed the dreadful defects of a NHS organisation which was pushing for Foundation Trust status, a promotion which does not mean much to the wider public, but to the senior management of Stafford Hospitals, it meant only one thing; Loads and loads of bloody MONEY. They could run their own systems, they could depend upon a distinct lack of supervision, and they could set their own Rates of Pay and Pensions!

Robert Francis QC, chairman of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, heard that at Stafford, NHS targets ruled supreme. NHS managers staffed the hospital so thinly that there were never enough consultants to properly supervise junior doctors, who took many of their instructions from the senior nurses and matrons who enforced the targets. Orders were cascaded down the management hierarchy, from the executive board, to the operational managers, to the senior nurses and matrons; nurses and doctors who failed to meet them were threatened with the sack.

It led to junior nurses and doctors abandoning seriously-ill patients to treat minor cases who were in danger of breaching the four-hour Accident & Emergency (A&E) waiting time limit. For the same reason, patients were often moved out of casualty covered in their own waste because the target – to admit or discharge patients within four hours – was under threat. Meanwhile, nurses were instructed by senior nurse colleagues to falsify waiting times, and to claim that patients had been seen more quickly than they were.

But after the scandals were uncovered, and they began to count up the dead, a strange silence settled over the entire institution. No one was set before a Court; no-one was fired, or dismissed with cause. Many senior staff either moved on to bigger and better posts; indeed one, Sir David Nicholson; the boss of the Strategic Authority who actually ran the hospital, went on to become the chief executive of the NHS; and you simply cannot get less an effort at condemnation than that.

So, one would believe that all the ‘lessons have been learned’ eh? All the anodyne statements were placed on record, the Care Quality bunch of bureaucrats swore on the huge pile of signed ‘target compliance’ forms that this would never happen again, bloggers such as we at ATW prodded the NHS corporate bodies just to ensure that there was still life present; some newspapers pushed as well; and it all slowly subsided into the mists of time, the mists which also obscured the lists of the dead and the maltreated.

And then we get the first stirrings of a scandal which could be even worse than Staffs: when the Mail produces this story, which reads like the first chapters of a murder mystery, complete with its very own Doctor Death!

 

“..the mere primitive doctrine that might is right!”

We honour our most important anniversaries quietly, as is correct and proper. Today, September 3rd, is the 77th time those of us who were both alive and able to comprehend, on that fateful day shall remember those steady, if at times somewhat halting tones, as His Majesty King George the Sixth began the speech which informed the Nation that we, the British, had informed the German Reich that they would not be allowed to run riot as they wished, and the British government, on our behalf, had declared War against the Nazis in Berlin.

We did not have many insights about the Nation which we had decided to go to war against, but the nature of the beast, as shown by the ten thousand child refugees who came care of the Kindertransport, was surely evident. The far-sighted parents who removed themselves and their families from both Austria and Germany before the heaviest clamp-down on Jewish ancestry, literally beggaring themselves in the process were just one of the signs that the outside world was dealing with a hidden evil, but slowly showing the signs of what was to come. The parents of the small travellers on the Kindertransport trains could not rescue themselves, but they ensured, on the word of a British Foreign Office official, that their children would survive.

We did not know the true horror of that which we fought against until nearly the end, when the gates of Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz were breached, and the ghosts of the dead millions were suddenly freed. We did no wrong, we fought the fight which had to be fought; on their terms, of total war, and it was an honourable fight, against a monstrous Regime which attempted Genocide.

We live in different times, where the enemy is, for some, home-grown. Carrying a home-assembled bomb, detonated against defenceless children leaving a pop concert, or driving a van or a car against equally defenceless pedestrians; all in the name of an alien Prophet, a prophet whose religion demands obeisance by unbelievers; obeisance, acceptance or death. As their own Book states, and as many of its believers relate: ‘It is written’.

But the simple truth, which is that our own politicians, our own neutered police, our own so-called Elite, who pull the strings of Government from behind the curtains, deny that we are at war with this Radical Islamic Muslim Terror. The attacks are the actions of ‘lone wolves’; or he has ‘mental issues’ (a firm favourite with the fuzz and with Governments). That itself is plainly obvious when, in the very minutes after a serious terror attack on Westminster Bridge, the first words out of a very senior police official’s mouth were reassurances towards whom? Why, the very Muslims whose brother had been killed when the police finally opened fire INSIDE the precincts of the House of Commons! Time and time again, across the Capital cities of Europe, no words of condemnation for the hidden Army whose outriders have committed yet another atrocity.

True, not all Muslims are Terrorists. But, now that the IRA has been appeased; virtually all recent terrorist attacks were Muslim in origin, in belief that the Kuffar are unclean, and all those unclean must die. When will our pusillanimous politicians grasp the nettle, and sweep up into the nets of either a long-term internment or a deserved deportation those who plot to change, to kill and maim, to unnerve; or to convert?

As the song goes, ‘Until the Twelfth of Never’ is about the right date!

…and the purpose of education is….?

I have often considered the very Left-Wing bias of the vast majority of teachers, certainly in England and Wales, as being unfortunate but benign. They are taught to believe that anything remotely Left as coming straight from the Fountain; and everything apart from the Lefty gospel as ‘verboten’, unclean and disgusting, and attempt to pass on their beliefs straight into the unquestioning minds of their young charges. I always assumed that, like my own three kids, the kids of today were imbued with a healthy scepticism from the word ‘go’, especially when it came to things outwith the strict curriculum; as they have access to literally a whole world of facts, essays and argument care of, natch; the Internet.

When my own kids were still at school, after a chance conversation with one of my brood, I wandered down to the school, and had a quiet discussion with both the headmaster, and the lecturer in question on the subject of the supposition that school was supposed to be about unbiased thought, the law, and of course a warning that my kids weren’t to be indoctrinated by a communist sympathiser. If memory serves, the words ‘block’, ‘knock’ and ‘your’ were in use during that discussion. No threats, no promise of physicality were mentioned except in purely hypothetical terms. If memory also serves, the subject matter was never discussed during school hours, certainly with my son, ever again.

So imagine my perplexity when I learn that a new Channel 4 documentary shows British teachers telling pupils there are “a lot of similarities between Hitler and Trump”, and suggesting the most important people to look after following the Manchester Arena terror bombing are Muslim pupils.

One scene shows a woman who appears to be a teacher asking her class: “Hands up if you were born elsewhere?”

She goes on to say, “Just because some of us is (sic) an immigrant, I don’t get why people put a negative slant on it.”

I have not watched the documentary yet, but after remembering that the Sec. State for Education has placed a control freak in charge of Ofsted, is also a person engaged in the furtherance of a  left-wing agenda for the LesbianBentWeirdies, and is in a same-sex relationship, what else can one expect?

Failure: he doesn’t even know how to spell the word

I don’t know how good your individual memory banks are, but do readers remember this idea where the ‘explorer and adventurer’ Pen Hadow got all excited about sailing to the North Pole.

He stated “ “I’m very conflicted,” he said. “If we do reach the North Pole by sail, I think the image would be iconic for the rest of the century and a call to action,” he said. “If 50ft yachts can do this, imagine what commercial shipping can do.”

For his new record attempt, Hadow and his nine-strong team will take two yachts on a 3,500-mile round trip from Nome in Alaska to the pole, using satellites to find a route through the ice and avoid getting stuck. He will fly to Alaska to join his team members on Saturday.

If all goes to plan, he will arrive at the pole between August 15 and early September, about 510 miles further north than anyone has sailed before.

Naturally, the expedition will have a strong scientific flavour, taking samples, making observations, and all the rest of the concentrated bullshit which now takes the place of the old-time explorers statement, which at least had a ring of truth about it: ‘Because It’s There’.

So everyone was rather discomobulated to read that the expedition had turned back to to a high concentration of an unexpected substance which impeded the forwards navigation of their ice-hardened yachts……SEA ICE.

‘No, we didn’t fail, no ways’, stated the expedition leaders; ‘ we Adjusted our Parameters of Success.’

…….now Germany must pay the price

In her quieter moments, Angela Merkel must rue the second she made the statement which has ‘broken’ the idea of One Europe. She must have considered the consequences of making the ‘broken’ promise, she is an experienced and practiced politician not to have taken all possibilities into account: but then she spoke those words, and Germany will never be the same again.

The words’; that ‘broken’ statement, that foolish promise? Germany’s doors are open!

With that one decision, the floodgates were literally torn apart, and from Turkey onwards, this shows what happened in the modern version of The Long March; but the aim was to reach mainly Germany and Sweden; or finally, the country which for long enough has retained the title of #‘TheMigrant’sGravyTrain; namely Great Britain. But, the source of all the problems, Germany, where now over nine hundred thousand ‘refugees’, ‘migrants’; call them what you will; have come to rest are now making noises; but those noises are not, as one might expect, words of thanks, or gratitude, or even of understanding that not everyone in Germany is as welcoming as Merkel. No, these noises are expectations that these 900,000-odd are demanding that the FAMILIES join them, and pretty quick too, otherwise those 900,000 mainly YOUNG MEN will demonstrate that they are a force in modern Germany, and they outnumber the German Army.

But when Europe harbours Nations such as Poland, Hungary, Czechs and indeed Austria who are determinedly anti-Muslim, and anti-Migrant, from both long memories and political will: will she allow the families to pour in, in the knowledge that, unless they fly in, they WILL be blocked at the borders which have grown from hasty-thrown barbed wire to fully-protected Border installations, with a bunch of guards who seemingly are partial to doing their jobs enthusiastically?