DUFF & NONSENSE!

There's always a good side to any crisis!

For example, this latest Covid pandemic has shown the almost utter uselessness of the EU as a governing body.  People will suffer as a result of their bumbling, and probably corrupt inefficiency but if it opens people's eyes to the true nature of the 'European dream', then it will be a price worth paying.  Most revealing of all was the almost instant decision of the French government to use the supply of vaccines as a weapon against the British - why am I not in the least surprised?

Surely it must be clear by now that they detest us!  I have known this for decades which is why I have always been against attempts by our dimwitted 'ruling classes' to join this flagrantly anti-British 'junta'!  I do not necessarily blame the continentals, they are free to judge us as they see fit, but it is almost criminal for our politicians not to see "the bleedin' obvious"!

Socialism at work in the "Bony" City of Angels

I thought Blighty might have set an unassailable lead in the global competition of demonstrating the utter fecklessness and incompetence of the state, when food parcels for the poor costing £30 were opened by their grateful recipients only to reveal a mere £5's worth of food therein.  A collosal 83.3% simply missing, gone, vamoosed, skedaddled (That's enough Americanisms to keep the cross-pond dwellers in the picture, comprendo? ... Ed).

No explanation, no sacking, no-one jailed, just airbrushed over by the statist MSM and we "move rapidly along, nothing to see here".

It had Fluffbun remarking a feeling of unwelcome nostalgia and deja vu from her times living under Ost Bloc Socialism when the supermarket shelves were empty, even in years when the harvests were good.

Well, not anymore, there's a challenger: Uncle Sam has thrown his hat in the ring (Will they be ok with that one, do you think? ... Ed)...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/la-homeless-officials-paid-white-house-cabinet-members-crisis-rise

Phewee, salaries skyward of $150,000 for 20% of LA state's staff in the homelessness team, yet cardboard cities everywhere!

I just ran that one by Fluffbun and it reminded her of the "state officials only" supermarkets in Socialist Czechoslovakia, called "Tuzex" (pronounced "Too-zex"), and the "state officials only" parallel currency they had just for the state officials to spend therein, called "Bony" (pronounced "Bon-ee").  The "Tuzex" were always well stocked, as were the state officials salaries with "Bony", just like the state officials' salaries in LA and no doubt their sumptuous residences afforded thereby.

Well here's a Funded Libertarian take on it: -

Why not sack the state officials and give their "Bony" salaries to the homeless, and instead let the homeless go shopping in the "Tuzex" of the LA accommodation market?

$55,000,000 / 40,000 (salaries of state officials / number of homeless inside city limits) = $1375 per annum for each homeless person.

Then add to that the $1.2bn decade budget the state officials misspent so badly each apartment cost $559,000 ...

https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-virus-outbreak-homelessness-faa231cbfa0176b17c5373928475061b

$1,200,000,000 / 10 / 40,000 (decadenal budget divided by 40,000 homeless) = $3,000 per annum for each homeless person.

So a total of $4375 per homeless person per annum, or $365 per month.

Looks like rooms in a shared house and shared rooms in a shared house go for this kinda money ...

https://mobile.roomster.com/en-GB/rooms-for-rent/los-angeles

Filtering that site for $365 or less rent per month yielded 46 rooms.

Giving social buying power in the form of vouchers under-writes the rent for the landlord, thereby demand will create its own supply as landlords convert multi-room properties into what we call "HMO's" in Blighty (Houses of Multiple Occupancy) for the more secure rental income.

Shall I throw my hat in the ring and run for governor of the City of Angels - the only official's job left in the state come the Funded Libertarian revolution?

SoD

10 nil up and you fkd up, doo-dah, doo-dah!

Yet another positive for Brexit Blighty, this time a blunder by the EU rather than a result by Blighty, but nevertheless, "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" and all that! ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-55865539 

Now the EU is chastened by its churlish actions in trying to trigger article 16 to put a border between ROI / NI and to restrict exports of vaccines generally from the EU, perhaps Blighty could announce some of those "Singapore of Europe" edicts under the cover of the EU's retreat? ...

1. Reduce corporation tax to 1/2% below ROI's (ROI being the lowest corp tax in the EU).

2. A bonfire of unnecessary rules and regulations.

3. Unilateral zero tariffs and quotas at the borders for all imports from first world friends and allies.

4. A Multi Market: Acceptance of the standards of our first world friends and allies in Blighty.

In other words, make the whole of Blighty a freeport.

The magic money tree forest can surely yield up a bit more for those tax cuts short term, and when all the capital and assets of Europe and the rest of the first world pile into Blighty the Exchequer will be able to replant the magic money forest with real greenback trees - Laffer curve, anyone?!

SoD

'Ich bin ein dummkopf'

So here I am sitting indoors, huddled round the gas fire whilst outside the sparrows are dropping off their twigs with the cold - or possibly because of the weight of birdseed they scoffed off my bird-table earlier - greedy buggers!   There's nothing on the 'telly' and the 'Memsahib' has retired upstairs for a nap, so, I decided to do something I haven't done for a while - I picked up a book!  For a man who, on average over the past 70 years, has usually read two books a week, my sudden decline in reading is a disgrace.  

Anyway, I determined that my low morale needed bucking up so I reached for my Kindle and got stuck into the first book I came across.  Within ten pages I was more depressed than when I started!  Why would I be surprised given that the book is: The Hitler Years by Frank McDonough!  No, not exactly a bundle of laughs but I am determined to persevere and if I am indeed a 'dummkopf', then just how 'dumm' were those millions of Germans 'back in der tag'?

 

 

 

Holocaust Memorial Day and the 126,100,000

20th century class socialism - 120,000,000.

20th century race socialism - 6,000,000.

21st century democratic socialism (UK only) - 100,000.

From incompetence and criminal negligence to mass murder, and everything in between.

The relentless atrocity marches on.

SoD

Is Perfidious Albion back again?!

It's a dog-eat-dog world in the Anglo-Saxon globalised market, isn't it?!

There was BoJo, right in there, duelling his quill pen like Excalibur against the Euro shield-wall, up front and personal with your and my cheque book, and our children's cheque book, and our children's children's cheque book, and our children's, children's, children's cheque book, splashing out top money to Pfizer-BioNTech!  Then flying through Blighty's post-1970's updated 'elf and safety approval process ("Has it got thalidomide or asbestos in it? No?  OK, sell, sell, SELL!!!"), and cleaning out the Euros of their first-out-the-door homegrown vaccine before you can say "Jab!"

And in the opposite direction, there's the Euros, patiently dotting the i's and crossing the t's of EU approval, ready and waiting for their dose of Blighty's cheap-as-chips Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccines - but no!  What's this?!  BoJo sneaks in and nicks their stock from the warehouse while they queue in a neat socially distanced line outside leaving them with the square root of bugger all!

Here he is, caught red-handed in the act, staggering away with the swag! ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/26/eus-coronavirus-jabs-may-have-ended-britain/

 

AstraZeneca vaccines meant for and paid for by the EU could have ended up in Britain, diplomatic sources in Brussels claimed today.

The suspicion is that the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company supplied the UK from the EU vaccine stock because Britain paid a higher price for the dose and approved it sooner.

By George and all the Saints, what can one say but "this looks promising"?

SoD

Putin shows his 'Thuggist' tendencies - again!

The question is just how far is he prepared to go to enforce his gangster regime?  I suspect it will be all the way!  In which case, not for the first time, very many Russian people will be tested to the point of extermination - as they have been over and over and over again in the last century - and again in this one.  It really is time that the West copied the Soviet system and lowered an iron wall around Russia.  Enough is enough!

"I know thee not, old man!"

The recent political demise of [Sir] Donald Trump reminded me of Act v, scene 5 from Henry Vth:

• Henry V.  I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.
  How ill [yellow] hairs become a fool and jester!
  I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,
  So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;
  But being awak'd, I do despise my dream.
  Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
  Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
  For thee thrice wider than for other men—
  Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;
  Presume not that I am the thing I was,
  For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
  That I have turn'd away my former self;
  So will I those that kept me company.
  When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
  Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
  The tutor and the feeder of my riots.
  Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,
  As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
  Not to come near our person by ten mile.
  For competence of life I will allow you,
  That lack of means enforce you not to evils;
  And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
  We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
  Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
  To see perform'd the tenour of our word.
  Set on.    Exeunt the [President] and his train
• [Long, shocked pause, then ...]

• Falstaff.  Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.

 

 

God! How I hate the cold!

Well, of course I do!  Despite my Scottish blood, I am by upbringing and by nature a 'soppy Southerner', as my 'Yorkie' friends would put it!!  Consequently, I loathe cold weather, as I warned 'Her Maj' when I volunteered for the Army.  I actually dropped her a note - as you do! -  when I joined up to ensure that I would only be sent to warm climes.  Where was the first place she sent me?  Bloody Narvik in the Norwegian Arctic Circle!  Anyway, it's now nearly as cold as Narvik down here in so-called 'zunny Zummerzet' and I'm fed up with it!  The only good news is that so far there has been no snow BUT here is the headline from The Mail:

"Now for the Big Freeze: Met Office warns up to FOUR INCHES of snow will sweep UK from today, with temperatures set to plunge to -10C this weekend"

Such fun!

 

 

 

 

The Don's gone but I'm back!

Sorry for going a.w.o.l. - again! - but that's old age for you and until they find a cure for it we just have to put up with it - or die!  Anyway, we bid farewell to 'The Don' and I for one will sorely miss him.  He was such a preposterous 'plonker' of a President but, unlike some of his allegedly more intelligent predecessors, he never led America into a futile war!  Of course, his ego was monstrous but then again not much different from 'Obamarama's or the poisonous Clintons!  Anyway, now we have the 'machine-men' back in charge and does that make any of you feel much better?

The remarkable thing about 'The Don' was that in a city packed full of enemies, as every President quickly learns, he succeeded in becoming his very own worst enemy!  All politicians need a fairly hefty ego but the Donald's was 'yuuuuuuuuuuuuuge'!  It blinded him to almost everything else in his personal universe.  Alas, he is now sentenced to dwell in misery in his favourite, bloated and ghastly resort with nothing to do but ponder on his humiliation - odearwhatapitynevermind!

So, now to Biden and weshallseewhatweshallsee!

 

Roger Daltry: a total James Blunt

Having said Brexit won't impact Blighty's music industry and its touring market in Europe, for example, asked if Brexit would be “bad for British rock music”, he replied: “No. What’s it got to do with the rock business? How are you going to tour in Europe? Oh dear. As if we didn’t tour Europe before the fucking EU. Oh give it up!”, the plank is whinging about not being able to tour in Europe without complicated visa requirements, and blaming the very Brexiteer government he supported ...

https://www.nme.com/news/music/people-are-calling-out-the-whos-roger-daltrey-for-his-previous-brexit-comments-2860916

And of course, like all aggressive authoritarians, it's one rule for him and another for everyone else ...

The frontman continued: “I do think our government should have made the easing of restrictions for musicians and actors a higher priority. Every tour, individual actors and musicians should be treated as any other ‘Goods’ at the point of entry to the EU  with one set of paperwork.

Musos should be privileged with frictionless borders, but the ordinaries, nah, they can go hang.  And as far as James Blunt is concerned, even ordinary musos can go hang ...

Then you’ve got James Blunt saying it doesn’t matter and won’t affect him – and you know what? He’s right. With the amount of money he makes from touring, he won’t even notice.”

“This is basically a tax on new and emerging musicians. It’s not a tax that will have any impact on your James Blunts and Roger Daltreys. Someone will sit in an office and fill in all of their paperwork.”

I always thought musos were thick as chair legs, but these two fell out the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.

SoD

 

HG Wells, the Liberal Fascist monster whose time has come

A ZeroHedge post caught my eye ...

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/orwellsian-purge-why-hg-wells-shape-things-come-has-arrived-today 

Wow.  So thence to the wiki ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_H._G._Wells

A re-animating monster: every degradation of the 20th century visited, and with each atrocious failure a turn to the next: race socialism, class socialism, the psychotically arrogant authoritarian with a psychopathic lack of empathy,  not one mention of Liberty, his spinning needle finally coming to rest on Liberal Fascism.

If the New Dark Age ever needed a founding father.  Tomorrow belongs to HG Wells.

SoD

 

Russia investigation "incompetent and corrupt", but you wouldn't know it

Before google and the other Big Tech companies airbrush it off the search engines, here's the news ...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/graham-to-release-russia-probe-docs-slams-probe-as-one-of-the-most-incompetent-corrupt-in-fbi-doj-history

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9153493/Lindsey-Graham-releases-transcripts-Senate-review-Crossfire-Hurricane.html 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13761403/lindsey-graham-trump-russia-probe-fbi/

The Russia investigation: confirmed as totally incompetent, corrupt, and a political assault using the resources of the state, with no conviction of the Don, as we already knew.  It is its own story, but this is about the total lack of coverage in the left MSM.

Here's a screenshot of my google search for "graham russia investigation" ...

Where's CNN, WAPO, NYT, BBC et al?  No where to be seen.

The US election was a fake before the votes were cast, let alone counted.  That level of media manipulation voids any election.  70% of Russians voted for Vlad because the Rooskie media is a stitch-up and the opposition suppressed.  It's a phoney democracy.

People are entitled to rise up with violence when democracy has failed and becomes re-elected tyranny.

Go do that voodoo, Uncle Sam.

SoD

 

 

The psychotic NHS

In the middle of the Covid pandemic, the NHS calls up young and middle aged people to have flu jabs, in such numbers it overwhelms the GP's administering the Covid jabs, and in spite of flu being trace this year due to the lockdowns ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/15/exclusivegps-warn-chaos-healthy-patients-urged-get-flu-jabs/

GPs are warning of growing chaos after NHS chiefs urged millions of healthy middle-aged people to demand flu jabs in the middle of the Covid crisis. 

They said switchboards have collapsed under the weight of calls from those who received a letter from health chiefs telling them to come forward now even though flu levels are very low. 

The latest figures for England suggest that more than 13 million people – including around 1.7 million healthy people aged 50 to 64 – have received the flu jab this winter. Meanwhile, just 2.5 million people have received a Covid jab against targets for 15 million to get one by next month. 

And then the NHS urges GP's to dispose of any surplus Covid vaccines they have, rather than give them as the second dose to NHS staff or others, because HMG told them not to give second doses ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/15/exclusive-doctors-told-throw-away-leftover-covid-vaccines-rather/

Local NHS leaders are forcing GPs to throw away vaccines rather than give second doses, medics have revealed.

Doctors who are organising clinics at short notice and find they have several injections left are being warned that they cannot use them on staff or any patients who have already received their first jab.

While it is understood some are refusing to comply, others are said to be fearful that their supplies will be cancelled if they do not follow instructions.

I feel physically sick to my soul.  The relentless insanity and cruelty, the atrocity of 91,000 dead, the loneliness of being surrounded by people brainwashed to cult status, the agony of watching America tread down the same path to the slaughterhouse.

Not sure I can do this much more.  Maybe you will be pleased to know.

SoD

God bless America!

Perhaps, just perhaps, 'The Donald' has succeeded in providing America, in general, and future Presidents, in particular, with an invaluable lesson.  From now on, Presidents will know with absolute certainty that there are limits to their power.   Delusions of grandeur, of course, will continue because they are all part of the toxic atmosphere of presidential politics in the USA but from now on, the political ghost of Donald Trump will haunt the corridors of the White House and act as a reminder to new incumbents that there is a power greater than themselves which will, if required, act with crushing effectiveness.

Happily on this occasion, the threat to America and everything it stands for was mostly individual and in no way backed by military forces or overwhelming masses.  Even so, it could so very easily have qualified under the heading of 'A damned fine thing, the finest thing you ever saw' in which, of course, the word "fine" is used in the early 19th century sense as meaning 'close run'.  I will use some more 'olde worlde' English to provide Donald with a parting message: "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

 

 

 

Brexit Bacon Butty border ban shock!

By George and all the Saints, if anything's gonna turn the minority of Brits who are still Brextiteers to throw in the towel, it's this ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/welcome-brexit-confiscated-ham-sandwich-highlights-new-reality-u-k-n1253879

How could Bojo forget the bacon butties in the negotiations last year?  He eats enough of them by the looks of things, serious Covid and 7 mile cycle rides in breach of lockdown rules make no dents on his spare tyre(s), no Sireee!

This is a disaster, how am I gonna survive if I can't take my Branston pickle and Tetley English breakfast teabags to Czech Rep when we start flying again - oh Gawd, and the half a pig, sausages, and Slivovice we bring home on the way back!  And no more Czechie mustard, num-nums!  You bastards!

And now the supermarkets are empty of fresh fruit and veg at home as well! ...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9132689/Supermarket-shelves-hit-Brexit-port-chaos-staff-shortages-stores-run-low-fruit-veg.html

And the state has started to get into food distribution, with the predictable rip-off and shambles that makes the former Soviet Union and Ost Bloc look good! ...

https://news.sky.com/story/i-could-do-more-with-30-angry-mum-criticises-free-school-meals-hamper-12185627

£30 turned into £5 by the state's incompetent procurement teams!  Jeez, it's only their first day in this new market, imagine what they'll be like after 75 years of decline like the NHS.

Fluffbun has a message for y'all:  She didn't apply for her Brit passport to be transported back to Czech Republic circa pre-1989!

You've managed to create an incredible new unique and peculiar blend of national socialism, a sort of Captain Mainwaring meets Adolf and VI Lenin.  The sheer fascinating horror of the new records in the realms of state clusterf**kery this one is going to break might make Brexit worth it.

So, good call 23rd June 2016.  I am going to enjoy ramming it down your throats until oblivion puts us all out of our misery!

SoD

I'm sinking in a sea of books!

I remain as addicted to books as I have been for some seventy years but, alas and alack, my actual reading of them has fallen away - bit like my sex life, really!  Consequently the pile of 'waiting to be read' books is actually blocking out the light round my armchair!  This old-age lark really is quite insidious as the energy cells empty themselves and defy replenishment.  Even as I tap this piece of non-news out on my computer-thingie, sitting on the desk before my eyes is a book by Kenneth Macksey entitled: Why the Germans Lost the War: The Myth of German Military Superiority.

The title really intrigued me because I have long believed that when it comes to the art and craft of warfare the Germans far exceed any others.  Actually, thinking about it, I suspect that it is the art of tactics at which they excel, strategy is beyond them - thank God!   For example, apart from loonies like Hitler, did anyone in the German High Command really believe they could conquer the entirety of Europe?  True, they did come close but when it comes to war, close is never close enough!

Anyway, I must give myself a kick and get reading again!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 10.1.21

Some good news - for a change:   Courtesy of The Mail I bring you these glad tidings:

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will never return to social media after claiming to have dealt with an 'almost unsurvivable' amount of abuse, a source has claimed.

Ohdearwhatapitynevermind!  Don't worry about being missed - you won't be!

 

Three cheers for 'plucky little, er, Taiwan', actually:   'The Donald', in a last mischievous throw of his Presidential dice, has lifted all previous American restrictions on Taiwan - and about time, too!  'Xi Ping-a-ling' will not be amused!

 

The Scottish Play - no, not that one, the real one!  Yet more obscurity from me - sorry, sorry!  I refer to the current claymore fight going on in Edinburgh between the Sturgeon clan and the Salmond clan.  It is always amusing to learn, yet again, that the smaller the territory the more vicious is the fight.  Let us hope that neither party applies that favourite Scottish ploy and 'puts their heed in wi' their bonnet on!'

 

That Starmer fella' is beginning to impress me!   I am grateful - again! - to Guido for informing me of this:

Starmer Rejects FoM and Re Joining EU

Jolly good show, Keir, old chap - ooops, sorry, I mean 'Comrade'!

 

 

 

            More Rumbles later . . .

 

 

 

You have to laugh

Of all the chortles going round social media, this one whacked me squarest on the funny bone! ...

SoD

 

The tyranny of the majority

Twitter bans Trump for risk of incitement to violence ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/01/08/donald-trump-permanently-banned-twitter-due-risk-inciting-violence/

Meanwhile, AOC's incitement to violence, which she herself wants removed because it could be "misinterpreted", remains ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.thepostmillennial.com/aoc-appears-to-encourage-rioting-and-looting-with-instagram-post

Blatant double standards by an unaccountable authoritarian power.

Twitter then removes all of Trump's previous tweets and destroys the meaning of the free discussions that had embedded them.  Google removes Parler, the right wing social media network, from the app store.

Airbrushing history in our faces.  Shutting down freedom of speech and association in plain view.

Democratic authoritarianism has reached out to the statist monopolies of the private sector and received succour.

Democracy has failed through over-reach in the US.  It is no different to Zimbabwe or Russia.

Time to press the reset button and restate the supremacy of Liberty over Democracy.  Bring your AR15.

SoD

'A E-P' is spot on!

I refer, of course, to Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and his article today in The Daily Telegraph.  It is summarised in his opening two paragraphs:

The Putsch has failed. The US military has refused to acquiesce. It has become impossible for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act or resort to force in a final throw of the dice.

The Pentagon and the National Guard are already answering to a chastened vice-president Mike Pence, acting in concert with leaders of Congress. Effective power has passed. The Trump presidency no longer exists. Trump has been forced to accept an “orderly transition”. He had no choice!

Thank God and praise the Constitution!  Also, praise the American political 'club', normally buried in insults, which almost unanimously revolted against Trump's criminal stupidity!  All great nations have their testing times and this has been one of America's greatest.  They passed with flying colours!

Phew. what a relief!

 

 

 

The greatest disaster in the USA is Donald Trump!

I have hoped, in fact I nearly prayed, that Donald Chump Trump would never, ever, have to face truly serious pressure exerted on the very foundations of the United States.  I hoped that he would 'stumble-bum' his way through the choppy waters of American politics providing us all with a chuckle or three as he did so and then simply - GO!  Well he nearly made it but now on the very last laps he is steering the ship of state straight towards the very rocks which could sink the whole edifice.  That, of course, is exactly and precisely the outcome desired by the extreme Left lurking in the shade of the once responsible Democratic party.

With the other global threat hovering over us all, who the hell needs an American crisis?  The smile on the face of Xi Ping-a-ling grows broader by the day!

 

 

 

Err, wtf is going on with Uncle Sam right now?

It seems to have degenerated like a Napoleonic battle, where at dawn there are shoulder to shoulder formations, all smart and lively, and by dusk it's like a bar room brawl spread all over a couple of miles of countryside!

If anyone could write an overview of what just happened, where we are at now, and what happens next, to get me up-to-date, please do, because I haven't got a bloody clue!

SoD

Blighty's excess deaths in 2020 exceed WW2 annual deaths

Well that ruffty-tuffty generation of WW2 just got pipped at the post by today's generation in 2020.

WW2 total deaths over 6 years, 450,000 ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_casualties_of_war#1900_to_1945

So 450,000 / 6 = 75,000 dead in one year.

Whereas Blighty's incompetent, criminally negligent state and NHS just managed 81,000 excess deaths in one year, 2020 ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-55411323

So if you feel a tad knocked about, you have every right to be.

Meanwhile, here's the Covid scores on the doors of SE Asia ...

Taiwan 7

South Korea 962

New Zealand 25

Australia 909

Thailand 64

Malaysia 483

Vietnam 35

What a bunch of pussies, eh, not one above 1,000?!  Or was that a bunch of competent states with a disciplined people?

Indonesia makes an attempt to spare their blushes, but still doesn't touch Blighty ...

Indonesia 22,555

And Indonesia's got a population of 268 million, 4 times that of Blighty at 65 million, so actually borderline pussy-zone.

There'll be no Nuremberg Trials.  No criminal negligence investigations.  No-one will go to prison.  There won't even be any sackings.  Dido Harding and her ilk will march on, ploughing Brits into the earth.

There's a point of no return in tyranny.  When the education and media industries have indoctrinated all living generations, nothing will stop the death camp until external actors intervene.

And now the only external actor Blighty had resides outside the Brexit Curtain, so it's straight line decline until fall.

SoD

Will the EU break-up this year - or next?

Before you dismiss my title as wishful thinking - think about it!  There are hard times - no, seriously hard times! - approaching and the structure is not sound.  There are two main fault lines running through the structure, the north/south one which divides the 'Scandies' and the 'Meds', and the east/west one which divides the impoverished eastern bloc from the more affluent west.

John Keiger, at 'The Speccie' site spells it out:

By June 2020, according to EU statistics, Greece’s national debt to annual GDP ratio stood at 187.4 per cent, Italy 149.4 per cent, Portugal 126.1 per cent, France 114.1 per cent. The battle to mutualise a small part of the debt has again pushed to one side the fundamental structural problem with the EU, the Euro: undervalued for some (Germany and the northern states) and overvalued for others (Italy and the southern states).

Needless to say, the Germans and the Scandies just 'lurve' operating on world markets with a falsely lowered exchange rate.  Not sure what the Italians make of it because no-one asks them!

Thanks to the common-sense of the Brit 'peeps',  we're out of it!

 

 

 

Happy - no, really, I mean it! - New Year!

So, "Off we go again, happy as can be; all good friends and jolly good company"! - who snorted?  I don't quite know why I am so cheerful?  After all, it's freezing cold, everything is shut down and the misery is mounting!  In some - many? - cases, I mean real misery!  For many this last year has became apocalyptic and there are precious few indications of any improvements.  It's a bit reminiscent of those endlessly long 't.a.b.s'* we had to do in the army loaded down with full kit.  They just seemed to go on and bloody on and then on a bit more but, of course, in the end they did finish and it was time for a 'brew up'!

I have no great confidence in Boris and his accomplices doing the right thing at the right time but, to be fair, I'm not all that sure exactly what is the right thing to do!  I must confess immediately that, fortunately, the 'Memsahib' and I live comfortably in a warm house and whilst we are far from being mega-rich we do have the means to keep things going.  Looking back on my earlier life when I was totally dependent on a single working mother with only her weekly wage to keep us, I do have a rough idea how some people must be feeling the strain.

Good luck and best wishes to you all for 2021!

 

*t.a.b. - tactical advance to battle

 

 

 

Maggie T's legacy slips beneath the waves

Well, unusual for the BBC to be on the ball, but here's the truth about how Blighty just kissed goodbye to the last, and best, vestige of the Iron Lady's legacy, namely, the Single Market, Four Freedoms, and State Aid Rules ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-55494101

Made in Blighty, laid to rest in Blighty.

The final paragraph sums it up ...

The Prime Minister has succeeded in taking the UK out of the Single Market created by his heroes. The UK now stands outside a system that it helped invent. For now its new single market is not the size of the country. The test of all of this, is to make the UK's new single market, the size of the globe.

My advice: Don't hold your breath waiting.

Happy New Year!

SoD