- “Wales to keep free Covid testing for three months longer than England” – Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister, criticises ‘cliff-edge’ approach in England and says tests will be phased out gradually, according to the Telegraph.
- “Working from home is a productivity disaster, warns Sir James Dyson” – The entrepreneur is interviewed by the Telegraph.
- “Official mortality data for England reveal systematic undercounting of deaths occurring within first two weeks of COVID-19 vaccination” – Dr. Clare Craig, Professor Martin Neil, Professor Norman Fenton and colleagues report the discovery that over 26,000 Covid and non-Covid deaths within two weeks of vaccination are missing from the ONS dataset, concluding that the dataset is corrupted and should be withdrawn.
- “Twitter staff can work from home FOREVER” – Twitter has told all its staff they can work from home forever if they wish, but says its offices will reopen for those who prefer that business environment, according to the Mail.
- “NHS scraps free flu jabs for millions of over-50s and school children” – A letter on the NHS website confirmed that the flu vaccination programme for 2022/23 will be only offered to patient groups eligible in line with “pre-pandemic recommendations”, the Mail reports.
- “COVID-19 vaccine roll-out and excess deaths: causation or correlation? Australians deserve to know” – Mortality in 2021 was in line with 2020 in all states, before increasing after the vaccine roll-out commenced, writes Nick Holt on his Substack page.
- “Public Health Scotland and the misinterpretation of data” – HART takes a closer look at the questionable nature of Public Health Scotland data.
- “Sir Gavin’s gong is a national embarrassment” – “I wish I was surprised at his knighthood, but we have developed a habit of honouring people who have failed disastrously,” says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “Sir Gavin’s knighthood is an insult to children” – Why is the ‘worst education secretary ever’ being rewarded for failure, asks Joanna Williams in Spiked.
- “The vaccine-damaged ballroom dancer whose story didn’t make the news” – Maxwell Harrison’s story is told in TCW Defending Freedom.
- “Why your swanky EV is more likely to break down than your banger” – Being at the forefront of the electric vehicle revolution isn’t quite the seamless experience a new generation of cars is supposed to offer, with the copious software faults and the range being the chief problems, according to this piece in the Telegraph.
- “Putin’s energy shock is broadening into a world food crisis, so brace for rationing” – A billion of the world’s poorest people will go even hungrier thanks to Putin’s deranged misadventure, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph.
- “Make younger generation pay Net Zero bill, say peers” – It is fairer to put the burden on those who will live in a carbon-neutral world rather than those paying bills now, says committee, according to the Telegraph. You what? It’s not a benefit or a privilege, your lordships, it’s a cost which, under alarmist narrative, has been imposed on the next generation by the recklessness of the previous ones.
- “Tony’s Chocbaloney” – Tony’s Chocolonely is an edible virtue signal that claimed to be 100% slave-free but has now had to admit it isn’t because it doesn’t believe in monitoring and is “realistic”, writes Roger Watson in the New Conservative.
- “Trans swim champion speaks out: ‘I am female and deserve respect’” – Lia Thomas has dominated women’s collegiate swimming in America since transitioning from male to female, and is calling on critics to respect her as female. Except, er, you’re not really are you, and that’s why you’re winning.
- “Ukraine coverage reveals West’s inherent racism” – Kit Knightly in OffGuardian with an interesting take on the West’s response to the war.
- “The Online Safety Bill is an extreme danger to free speech” – Who defines “offensive material” or “misinformation”, asks William Parker in Bournbrook.
- “People have been lied to for two years… Bullying is locking kids out of school, which they did. Bullying is forcing kids to wear masks for eight hours a day… Bullying is kicking people out of work because of vaccine mandates” – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t hold back when he speaks to Tucker Carlson on Fox.
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DeSantis for President.
Pointless when half the US population is so dumb it voted in the Biden-Harris experience and live in Democrat areas with bad housing, bad schools, high crime rates, high unemployment and have voted Democrat at all public office levels every time for decades. They have what they want.
USA needs a confederation (the original intention) of Red States, then DeSantis at the helm makes sense.
The parallels keep coming. Just as we were constantly told by the hysterics and their apologists and propagandists that the costs we suffered were “caused by the covid pandemic” when in reality they were caused by the insane response to covid, so we are now constantly told that we are bearing costs “caused by Putin”, when in fact we are enduring costs created by the insane responses to Russia’s action in the Ukraine.
As we face ever greater economic consequences of the insane over-reaction to the Russian action to clean up the situation created in the Ukraine by the US, we need to remember who the real culprits are – the US movers and shakers who pushed against Russia, and the liars who pretend the Russian response is somehow incomprehensible except as a sign of Russian aggressive intentions and must be confronted by crazed, hysterical escalation.
I’m beginning to actually ***really*** believe the “conspiracy theories” ( which I hadn’t dismissed outright until now but had seen as somewhat extreme/improbable ), that say we’re in just the first couple of years of a 10 year plan to redraw the world and that the Covid story and the international vax/health passports etc that it provided justification for was preparing the “crowd control” measures that will become necessary as food and gas prices double and triple and then quadruple etc.
I’m continuing to stock up on tinned fish, among other things.
I also can’t help remembering the ( “surely impossible”/mysteriously mad ) 2025 world population figures at the Deagel site showing the population of the UK reduced to 16 million ( from the current 68 or so ) and many countries in Europe, plus the US, similarly reduced.
“We are bearing costs caused by
a).The Covid Pandemic
b).Putins Actions in Ukraine”
When, as you infer, those costs are generated by our own ‘insane responses’, to both.
I think it was you, Mark, who yesterday posted the military budgets of the main armed forces spenders showing that Russia comes in at lowley #10, has no significant allies to back that spending which is surpassed several times by the USA alone, is barely equal to the EUs 3 primary spenders, UK, France and Germany with China and Islam uncommitted in the wings.
Combining that with comparing the size of our economies (which decide wars generally) makes it clear that Russia is no threat to ‘us’ at all so any spending other than for the immediate defence of Ukraine is utterly pointless but it does give local politicians and media (of whatever stripe since this is not a Left V. Right confrontation) something to shout about in the hope of boosting their readership or electoral popularity.
It isn’t how much you spend, but how well you spend it. The West comes way down the list in that regard.
Governments spend money wastefully, corruptly and incompetently – that’s an iron universal law. Generally, the more vital military spending seems to the rulers the better it is spent. The US has been so militarily dominant for so long that its spending is very inefficient and misdirected, as far as actual military defence is concerned, but that doesn’t even begin to make up for the huge difference in resources between the US and its satellite states and Russia.
Three of the things that did for the Roman Empire
1. Over reliance on plunder through ever expanding borders which came to an abrupt end when that expansion halted.
2. Over reliance on mercenaries as a opposed to Citizen Army, parallel with US dependence on its underclass for recruitment.
3. Over reliance (total reliance) on third party Allies who turned out to be unreliable (post liberation Iraq and many others).
Nowt wrong with ensuring equality between normal people, trans and gays even if it does cost a fortune
Spending on defence / armaments is relative – Russian costs of production may well be half ours.
And rest assured we will be paying way over the odds for our weaponry .
This interview of Putin gives a useful counterpoint to the MSM perspective.
https://t.me/lawyersoflight/7754
Thus us like ‘the damage to the economy caused by Covid’. No! It was caused by the idiots in charge, just as rising prices are caused by the West incapable of minding its own business led by such stalwarts of freedom as Biden, Johnson, Macron and that vile Trudeau creature.
This is a good interview on the Ukraine situation with Scott Ritter – former US Marine Intelligence Officer who famously got it right on Iraq. He’s no fool, and he knows what he’s talking about here.
English language interview starts at 1 minute in.
https://youtu.be/wNtxriq0O0A
Is there a tl;dw synopsis?
Not that I’m aware of, but if you’re familiar with Ritter and don’t need to hear his background, the talk about Ukraine starts at 5 minutes.
Yeah, EU, UK & NATO (inc US) have slimmed down their military capabilites so much we all don’t stand a chance combined if it went to WWIII. Russia & China have signed a joint agreement to work togther. China will take Taiwan, as they said recently on NPR, US doesn’t have the capability to defend it.
He gives Ukraine a month at most, then it depends if the Nazi element can slink off to Western Ukraine under some “humanitarian” zone type situation, or remain to be slaughtered.
I think the mop up will take at least a year, by then economics of the west will be in dire straights (we ain’t seen nothing yet) and China kicking off will relegate EU & UK to 3rd world status economically comparatively to now. I expect food rationing starting by/during 2023. Think venezuela during the currency collapse.
“EU, UK & NATO (inc US) have slimmed down their military capabilites so much we all don’t stand a chance combined if it went to WWIII.“
Ritter overstates his case here. In reality there’s more to conducting modern warfare than boots or tracks on the ground and the Russians probably could not conduct any effective and sustained large scale offensive into NATO territory. They could probably overrun the Baltic States. But the converse also applies, NATO cannot conduct meaningful ground offensive operations against Russia.
And in reality, the nuclear peace overshadows all.
The Taiwan situation is rather different. The Chinese could probably take Taiwan (they couldn’t have a couple of decades ago), but they surely don’t want to unless they are pushed into it by Taiwanese nationalists egged on by the US. Sound familiar?
There are at least three distinct populations in Taiwan, each with different aspirations.
The Han Chinesev ‘indigenous’ inhabitants; added to which the million or so Han Chinrse mainland Nationalists, or their descendants, who imposed themselves upon the originals as part of the Communist victory settlement and thirdly the offspring population of those two groups as nature took its course over the past 70 years.
The latter group is probably the larger, or soon will be.
Why would Russia be interested in expansion? There’s no strategic value to it. Ukraine is a necessary buffer zone, I can’t see them going further, tho further NATO expansion will see more proxy wars, there’s been no need for NATO since 1991, it’s only relevance is provided by expansion.
Indeed. Nobody wants to see that, but with psychopaths controlling everywhere behind the scenes, who knows, they certainly don’t care about “democracy”, “freedom”, or anyone outside their club.
ImpObs, you are unduly pessimistic about the state of The Wests economies (although the obscenely wealthy might lose a bit/win a bit in the event of genuine conflict) but there are some interesting parallels with 1930’s Europe.
China getting a free hand with regaining her province of Taiwan compares to Germany and Russia sharing Poland again before confronting each other.
American does have the capacity to defend Taiwan but, perhaps learning the lessons from Vietnam and Iraq, it just ain’t worth it.
I hope you’re right, I really do. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
The elite have been broadcasting btl their pivot to the East for at least 2 decades. It started with offshoring, exporting all the western manufacturing capabilities Eastwards, this started in the 80’s, at least that’s when I noticed it as a young apprentice at GEC in Trafford Park, all that remains of that HUGE site is the facade of the listed building.
Western economies run on debt, the time to pay the old money IMF/BIS piper is well overdue, they can pull the plug at any time, I believe WWIII will be the cover for the “final solution” they’re just squeezing the blood from the stone at this point, with no manufacturing base, and all the dollar worthless, what will the interest be paid with?
Freedom of screech.
University students were once considered to be the next generation of leaders. The West is truly f*****..
Growing up in the 1970s large chunks of the Daily News would be about students protesting or striking (LoL) about this or that or in support of some cause they considered worthy of their attention.
Pointless that might have been (but probably fun), at least it was for a party other than themselves.
I cannot recall a repeat of that for at least 40 years. Students as a body are now entirely self-centred. The last time their protest actions reached the news was 10-15 years ago in response to the imaginary imposition of enhanced University Fees by the floundering Libersl Democrats.
Blair wanted 50% of school leavers to enter University; they can’t all be f*cking leaders.
There was an interesting little article in the T’graph yesterday about the GCSE Ancient History being described by students as ‘elitist’ and out of touch. This is the course that I’m working on with my kid, and its really interesting, especially as the primary focus of the early bits of the Persia stuff seems to be on how to read sources, how to interpret when you have scarce data, and how to build arguments to support theses. So basically, my feeling is that the course is about how to THINK. Which is good.
However, it was interesting how many of the comments on the T’graph article said that it was not an important subject for GCSE study as it was too ‘specialised’ and not relevant, and that it was the sort of thing to do as a hobby, with dismissive comments about ‘kids don’t read these days’ and ‘embroidery GCSE’. They had no real idea what the course was about.
It reminded me of the old Charlie Brown panel where someone (Linus maybe?) says to Charlie Brown ‘No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.’
Anything pre about 1890 is all about white blokes and therefore not worthy of consideration.
Haha yeah. Cos Alexander the Great was such an ethnic white guy….
Yeah, I missed ‘old’ but Alex didn’t make ‘old’.
“it was not an important subject for GCSE study as it was too ‘specialised’ and not relevant, and that it was the sort of thing to do as a hobby, with dismissive comments about ‘kids don’t read these days’ and ‘embroidery GCSE’. They had no real idea what the course was about.”
I recall the same things being said about Latin, but we paid for our oldest two children to learn latin to GCSE privately, with a couple of friends’ children, because we felt that the benefits were clearly worth it, and I’ve seen nothing since to make me doubt that decision.
Without going into “history repeats itself” perhaps those Students should look at the course title, “Ancient”.
Of course it’s out of touch.
Don’t forget Blair’s mantra at the time:
Indoctrination. Indoctrination. Indoctrination.
Did I get that wrong
?
Don’t think so. Do you know about the ‘edit’ button on this page in case you get it wrong first time ? Gog wheel at 4 O’clock, down there to the right
Works for 15 minutes after posting
Thanks KV, I am aware of the edit button. Just sarcasm on my part.
Maybe. More like, “dumb down, dumb down, dumb down” to me.
For those who remain rightly sceptical of the insistence by the proven liars of our US sphere media and political elites that “Putin bad/Putin mad”, from by and large the same people who insisted that Trump was some kind of reborn Hitler figure and that Russiagate was real and not a concocted, cynically manipulative lie from start to finish, it’s worth watching this 10 minute speech by Putin in 2016 carefully, and forming your own judgement.
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/putinspeech2016.html
He’s speaking to the US sphere media, and he’s fully aware of what liars they are. He knows that they will ignore his warnings and go back to telling their US sphere targets about the “Russian threat” etc. And he knows that they know that he knows:
“Listen to me, we are all adults at this table, and experienced professionals at that. But I am not even going to hope that you are going to relay everything, exactly how I said it, in your publications. Neither will you attempt to influence your media outlets. I just want to tell this on a personal level. Neither will you attempt to influence your medial outlets.”
This is a competent and experienced world leader trying desperately but with little hope to make people listen to warnings about the dangers of the course of action their leaders are embarked upon and they are flacking for. Everything he says in this speech was correct, and his warnings were basic common sense. But they were of course ignored and we carried on being lied to by our mainstream media and our political classes, to this day.
Worth watching in full.
Definitely, it’s only 10 minutes plus a bonus 2 minutes of Putin in 2007 at the end.
{Sphere? media}.
As is usual these days Some One or Some Body has decided that there is a bandwagon to jump on and so almost everyone with a public face has jumped on it in an amusingly transparent way. Same words, same body language, same conclusion with no evidence.
I’m not sure what point Mr. Putin is trying to make (it is very early just now). The current Ukraine situation is not about who has the best weaponised toys which is all he seems to be interested in. Both sides (and others) have plenty to destroy the other, together with the world, but have refrained from doing so.
We can assume that Modern Money Inspired China, no longer led by ideologues, also wishes to avoid MAD but for some elements within Islamism that scenario is precisely Gods plan and is so to be encouraged.
One problem towards the end of the last extended European peace (1815-1914ish) was shortages of the latest gadgets but now all have plenty. Might be a bit dated but they’ll still work.
Shortly after 9/11 I predicted on another forum that The West would turn its attention to that later Non State, disjointed (therefore extra) Islamist threat probably successfully in the long run but ignoring the stealthy transformation of China from Second Rate into the Second Great Power to replace the decaying USSR/Russia.
This is how things have turned out. Islamism has shot whatever bolt it had (a few non existentialist bombs here and there). X-USSR, now Russia, of no great consequence, Islamists hoping for prayer inspired revival.
We should be focusing in China thanks to Nixon.
Got to go, breakfast calls.
Agreed.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-03-03/civilian-casualties-rise-in-ukraine-249-dead-553-injured-un
Remarkably low civilian casualties for a war on the scale I described earlier – shows the Russians really are doing it with kid gloves.
As I noted, the Russians are operating on a colossal scale. Ukraine is vast, and the front the Russians are actively fighting on (intended to stretch the Ukrainian defenders, undoubtedly) is immense: Kiev-Kharkov-Luhansk-Mariupol-Odessa, nearly 1500km. The equivalent of a front stretching from John O’Groats to Land’s End and then back to London.
And cities like Kiev and Kharkov are not villages, but vast metropolises. Nearly 3m in Kiev, 1.4m in Kharkov – more than Birmingham. Even Mariupol is nearly the size of Sheffield.
Given the Ukrainians have been supplied over the past few years with large amounts of modern AT and AA weapons by NATO, and modern drone tech, you don’t operate carelessly on such scales!
Worth remembering here how the US wages war:
“On 6 July 2008, many Afghan civilians were walking in an area called Kamala in Haska Meyna District of the eastern province of Nangarhar.[6][7] When the group stopped for a rest, it was hit in succession by three bombs from United States military aircraft.[8] The first bomb hit a group of children who were ahead of the main procession, killing them instantly.[8] A few minutes later, the aircraft returned and dropped a second bomb in the center of the group, killing many women.[8] The bride and two girls survived the second bomb, but were killed by a third bomb while trying to escape from the area.[8] Hajj Khan, one of four elderly men who were escorting the party, stated that his grandson was killed and that there were body parts everywhere.[8]
Relatives from the groom’s village stated it was not possible to identify the remains, and buried the 47 victims in 28 graves.[8] An investigation ordered by President Karzai and led by a nine-man commission of the senate found that 47 civilians including the bride had been killed.[3][5] Burhanullah Shinwari, a member of the commission, told the BBC that there were 39 women and children among those killed, and that eight of those who died were between the ages of 14 and 18.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_airstrike
“More than 40 reported killed by ‘US air strike on Iraqi wedding’
BY AP IN BAGHDAD
Wednesday May 19 2004, 1.00am, The Times
A Unite States helicopter fired on a wedding party in western Iraq today, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/more-than-40-reported-killed-by-us-air-strike-on-iraqi-wedding-l5bp5z6x26z
Gheez Ron, we love you. I wish you’d be my MP, Alan Mak @ Havant Borough council is twat-nobby useless.
In fairness, such a move may not be a step up or sideways even …
I’ve lost track of the progression of woke totalitarianism – is that currently a non crime hate incident, or an outright hate crime in English law now? Or is it currently the former but soon to be the latter once the laws currently being brought in by our “Conservative” regime are in place?
You have to have a functioning economic system to lock up the rising tide of anti-woke dissent.
Andrew Bacevic points out the nakedness of another Emperor of the US sphere’s globalist elite, Thomas Friedman:
“The frequently heard charge that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine violates ostensibly sacred international “norms” holds no water. No such norms exist — at least none that a great power will recognize as inhibiting its own freedom of action. For proof, we need look no further than the recent behavior of the United States which has routinely demonstrated a willingness to write its own norms while employing violence on a scale far exceeding anything that Russia has done or is likely to do.
Nothing that Putin has done in Ukraine pursuant to securing what he defines as vital Russian interests should be cause for surprise. Implicit in the shock expressed by observers such as Friedman is a belief that Europe has become an eternal “zone of peace” in which the triumph of liberal democracy had made the “end of history” a reality.
Preserving this illusion requires imagination. It means classifying the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s as an anomaly — forgotten as soon as the shooting stopped. But it also requires sustaining the pretense that Europe matters more than the rest of the world — that developments there possess greater significance than developments in, say, the Middle East or Africa.
This intellectual framing according to which events occurring in proximity to the Rhine and the Danube possess greater inherent importance than events near the Tigris or the Nile dates from the age of Western imperialism. It underwrites the inclination of observers such as Friedman to treat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as utterly beyond the pale while events such as the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 and America’s various post-9/11 military interventions are either forgotten or written off as unfortunate lapses in judgment.
Russian actions in Ukraine deserve universal condemnation. But as crimes go, Putin’s aggression pales in comparison with the human toll exacted by Saddam Hussein’s US-supported war of choice against Iran. As for the calamitous results of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the impact of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine rates as trivial by comparison. The point is not to measure relative iniquity in a balance, but simply to note that while the ongoing events in Ukraine may be tragic, they are not all that unusual. The professed surprise of pundits and politicians stems either from wishful thinking or willful ignorance.”
The Ukraine invasion is nothing compared to Iraq
The point not being of course that the Ukraine invasion is fine – Bacevic condemns it. (I would argue that it’s actually probably the best, least costly resolution available of the problem created in the Ukraine by US neocons and Ukrainian nationalist fanatics, but Bacevic doesn’t) The point is the hypocrisy of those howling about the Ukraine attack as some kind of uniquely evil threat to some fantasised but non-existent “rules based order”, whilst being intensely relaxed about similarly illegal and far more murderous wars.
“What Friedman ought have written is this: “By invading Ukraine, Russia has demolished what little remained of the lucrative line of bullshit that I have been peddling for the past twenty or so years.” But don’t count on any such admission to be forthcoming.”
After outrage over the illegal and poisonous gene therapies and calls for the perpetrators and enablers to brought before a Nuremberg II, we suddenly have the following headline in the Daily Fail Online:
What an obvious case of distraction via projection.
Sands at least can claim to have been consistently antiwar. Based on the headline, that’s disappointingly hysterical, though.
Noticeable that implicit comparisons with Nazi Germany that were cynically accused of being disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust when they related to intolerant discrimination against vaccine dissenters, are perfectly acceptable when they are aimed at the Putin demon. It’s all about the utility.
Of course there would be a few others at the head of the queue – e.g. Blair and Straw, Cameron and Hague.
Ah, Sky News’ reporters were attacked and shot at by someone in Ukraine.
When the cretin Zelensky released convicted criminals from prison and gave them AK47s, then unwarranted attacks such as this are to be expected.
Or perhaps it was actually Russians that fired on them, which might be a signal to Sky News that when they continually lie and propagandise against a nation, it’s best not to do it in the nation’s front yard.
Anyway, it’s good to see a Sky News crew being on the blunt end of something they played a big part in starting. Now, I wonder about the whereabouts of BBC news crews in Eastern Europe?
BBC news crews are “working from home.”
Yeah, they scuttled out of Ukraine likes fleas off a dead dog, and left the native Ukrainian “journalists” they were training to promote Globalist lies and propaganda to face the Russian wrath.
“Why your swanky EV is more likely to break down than your banger”
I have actually seen an advert for a hybrid car bigging up the fact that it can run for a full 30 miles on a charge, saving you the trouble of having to search for one of those elusive petrol stations. I wonder how much they paid some goon for dreaming up that one.
I ran hybrid EVs for four years, well beyond service schedules, with almost* no problems at all. They are good on fuel consumption but not as good as advertised (50+or -mpg).
*The main Hyptid EV battery on my first Hybrid EV failed without warning (car still moved on petrol but 25mpg). Fortunately still under warranty or it might have cost a few grand to replace, “not fit for, purpose” ? Might otherwise have sued.
It isn’t the president of Russia who is deranged (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard), it is the response of western leaders which merits that adjective.
It sure looks as if the white nations of Europe, north America and Australia-NZ which are going down the self mutilation route while the non-western/third world etc which is lining up behind Russia.
It’s not as if we are self sufficient in matters of fuel, food and fertiliser production.
I don’t think I’m the only one on here who is going to struggle to pay next quarter’s electricity and gas bills while food soars beyond reach.
Meanwhile, MPs get another £2k pay rise since there’s an obvious shortage of applicants to fill Westminster seats.
Personsy I would rather not return to Mercantile Capitalism; the White Nations have not been self sufficient in almost anything for a couple of centuries which is as it should be and why getting rid of Empire was so lack difficulty.
“and why getting rid of Empire was so lack difficulty.”
Run that past me again in English, please…
Roundup: Ukraine coverage (UK media ?) reveals Wests racism. OffGuardian.
How is it be possible to he ‘racist’ vis-a-vis a ‘race’, “Ukranian”, that doesn’t exist ?*
Yes, I know what they are harking on about but up until the late 19th Century there was simply a geographic area known as The Ukraine (as, for comparison, UK Salisbury Plain) inhabited roughly 70% by people with what we now call ‘Russian’ ancestry/DNA and a wide variety of others from Rutheninians, Gypsys, Gaslicians, Poles, Jews, Hungarians, Turks, Romance and others making up the balance of the population we now call Ukrainians. That area battled over for centuries by those wanting control over its primary and defining feature: Wheat.
Together these people formed the Country we now call Ukraine but they were never a single ethnic entity and certainly not a Race. That country is, of course, perfectly legitimate as is Belgium.
*This sentence does not unmask me as a supporter of Putin or his actions. We just happen to agree on this particular issue just as, on the whole, believing that Hitlers continued expansion of Weimer Germany’s autobahm programme does not make me a Nazi.
Since they bring the subject up later; as a 12 year old reading LotR I generally thought Orcs to be a manifestation of militant Muslims; sinister encroaching Morder to be the Islamic world battling against declining Christiandom in the shape of Constantinople with Rohan (USA) as its only hope for survival.
“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”
With that thought I will try and link 2 impossible things from the above articles, electric cars and trans gender swimmers; with both these issues we are being conned and asked to believe the impossible. The reasons why electric cars will never be able to provide the wide spread, egalitarian, low cost, freedom of travel that petrol/diesel cars have given the world have been well aired by articles linked from this site and yet we press on with a transport future based on this impossible dream. The trans-gender swimmer proclaims that they are female because they have managed to reduce their testosterone level. My understanding is that female means a human born with the potential to produce eggs, give birth and suckle young, can the trans swimmer do any of those things? Human biology creates huge biological differences between male and female the more so as you go through puberty and yet we are being asked to believe the impossible that somehow this swimmer has thought themselves away from those huge biological differences.
By all means adopt a more feminine gender persona if you feel more comfortable that way, indeed I think society should be far less rigid with it it’s accepted male/female stereotypes. But we should not be forced into trying to accept that by adopting a more feminine person you have magically transformed your testes into ovaries, that is impossible. But then I guess that is why we are a Sceptics site, in so many ways we are being asked to accept the impossible and we just keep calling it out.
I don’t have a Telegraph account so I can’t read Dyson’s article about working from home being a productivity disaster. But in my line of work I have not found it so, neither for me nor my firm.
Some people have been hugely more productive because they are less tired and get less interrupted. Others, those who have less intrinsic motivation and maybe leaned heavily on help from colleagues when in the the office, have been less productive. I think it depends enormously on the type of work, the type of person, the firm.
There are significant benefits and also downsides. Some firms will use it as a way to cut costs (or try to) or outsource more. Those who rely on the office for a large part of their social lives will suffer. But it also offers huge opportunities for a more relaxed and pleasant life. Some will not have the appropriate working space at home.
I think the ideal would be for firms to allow workers to choose based on their preferences and circumstances, always taking into account the needs of the firm (as long as those needs are evidence based and not just the dogma of the bosses one way or another).
I’ve seen a lot of comments over the months and years of this scamdemic and most of them from sceptics have been fairly dismissive of working from home. My natural instinct is that nothing good can come from the nonsense that has been imposed on us, but the evidence of my eyes is that working from home is not all bad.
I understand your argument but I disagree with it. My employer has started to try coaxing people back into the office. So far they have not been successful, with most senior staff doing at most one day per week in the office. The business has seen a gradual impact to their productivity and turnover, dropping steadily as some people realise that they can get away with being lazy.
However, even for the people that are being productive at home, I don’t believe working from home for five days a week is fair on junior employees. Junior employees need the office environment to learn from their colleagues. Less extraverted people also need to be put in an environment where they meet people. I have seen several new-starters who are left adrift with no guidance or supervision, and often no work to do, who are pretty depressed. They come into the office every day, but all their colleagues are working from home. Half of my time in the office now seems to be spent supporting junior staff in other teams and trying to settle them in to the job, taking them to lunch so they can at least talk to a real person for a few minutes.
I’m sure a hybrid approach would be adequate with home-working a couple of days per week, but staying in a comfy home in a distant retreat is ultimately selfish. You get paid for work to compensate you for the inconvenience. If your commute is terrible then maybe you should have factored that in to your decision about where you live or work (not you personally Julian, just people in general).
Thanks for your comments. As much as it might be selfish to stay at home, it’s arguably selfish to expect people to come to the office to provide lonely people with company. In any case, the outrun is going to be that there will be people in offices, just not as many. I believe in freedom of choice, and don’t think firms should close their offices to force people into isolation.
As far as training people goes, we trained an intern from scratch, online, and she was extremely productive. It’s not impossible – just requires effort and correct use of the tools available. If that’s not happening in your workplace then the senior management ought to be addressing that. It’s a question of balance and what works for a given firm or team.
As far as terrible commutes go, people living near big cities especially London face tricky choices. Spending three hours a day in unpleasant, expensive, tiring travel isn’t right for everyone, and the firm benefits by having a wider pool of talent to choose from, which is ultimately a benefit.
Dyson was saying much the same, here at DT from memory, 18 months ago but his main complaint was that WFH stifled creatively in particular not being able to bounce ideas off colleagues which, of course, is impossibl to measure.
Yes I would agree that WFH may impair spontaneous, casual communication, overheard conversations that spark things. I think it very much depends on the type of work.
I’m not sure that designing vacuum cleaners requires much creativity but Mr. Dyson will be the expert.
Well he would probably argue that his products were all inspired creations. I don’t know enough to agree or disagree. But I would certainly agree that the loss of casual workplace conversations, both work and non-work related, is a disadvantage of the general move towards remote working. I just happen to think it is compensated by other gains. I would also say that I would be keener on going to the office if all my colleagues were sceptics, but sadly that’s not the case so avoiding the office is a good way to avoid listening to people talking crap about covid (and Ukraine for that matter).
My occupation requires no creativity but loads of data/information interpretation.
While not office based, since being heavily computerised a few years ago colleagues’ ability to help each other with such interpretations has been reduced to zero.
Do any of these working from home types actully make anything tangible, something with real value?
What’s a “working from home” type?
Speaking as one, yes I like to think I make things of real value. They are of value to someone, anyway.
How would you define “real value”?
Aren’t you going down the same road as governments who spuriously divided businesses and spheres of human activity up between essential and non-essential?
When a field sales worker (company to company) for a US manufacturing outfit I could not function without spending a couple of hours each day at home doing research (pre-internet) and making appointments by telephone.
I suppose I could do all of that on this, my Android, without leaving the car these days.
I would still need to be face to face with potential clients to progress any sale.
Aynyone who works from home
Producing something, a physical product, as opposed to the “service” ecomony.
I hope not, just that I’ve never understood the pivot to the “sevice ecomony” when the globalists started exporting all our industry, I can’t understand how the country is going to make any money to service our debts without actually making stuff to sell.
When the financial system implodes we’re going to need produce something something with real value, maybe I’m old fashioned.
I watch some clcikbaity youtube interview with some billionair investor type, he was talking about a railroad car rental company he bought, during the due dilligence he went to head office, a huge office block with hundreds of workers, he kept asking them to explain what he did, never understood it, so he got the guy at the yard to explain it, he could explain it either, he bought the company because it was still profitable, then sacked the whole office building and sold the lease, made million on the lease deal. You’d expect osme blowback from an action like that, he didn’t get a single repercussion from it, nobody noticed. It sums up the “service economy” for me.
The use of the word “type” in this way usually implies some set of common characteristics, beyond the one stated.
I love physical products and think there are good arguments for the UK making more of them than we do, for lots of reasons, but dismissing the entire service sector as not being of “real value” is somewhat extreme and not really how I understand economics to work. I find it a bit weird that we can have all this stuff made for us and pay for it by cutting each other’s hair, but it seems to be working OK.
Anyway, offices are full of people who do service jobs, as are shops, hospitality etc. The fact is we simply don’t need everyone to be making stuff any more.
Writers work from home, often. Do they produce anything of “real value”?
the point it we’re living in a debt economy that looks like it’ll implode, writing books and cutting each others hair ain’t going to get us out of it, making stuff to sell, or adding value to other real products, some sort of “real value” product based economy seems prudent.
It’s not like we have natural resources, or access to other peoples natural resources, to sell (or exploit) like the “British Empire” was built on.
Only by printing more money. Which is commnig home to roost.
A Letter to Andrew Hill | Dr Tess Lawrie
https://rumble.com/vwfia3-a-letter-to-andrew-hill-dr-tess-lawrie-oracle-films.html
Shocking, but not the least bit surprising.
That trans swimmer needs a bloody good kicking.
More of a nightmare, really.
Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain, Episode 16 “Please Explain The Progressive Dream”
“Make younger generation pay Net Zero bill, say peers” – It is fairer to put the burden on those who will live in a carbon-neutral world rather than those paying bills now, says committee, according to the Telegraph”
to committee,
pay for it yourself you greedy funts,
yours sincerely
ANDREW NEIL: Boris’s woes are ancient history. Net Zero is dead in the water. Nato is united as never before. Germany has stopped sucking up to the Kremlin – and is busy re-arming. Why things will never be the same again
Andrew Neil, clearly in his dotage, lurches from covid hysteria to Russia hysteria.
“Yes, the sheer might and barbarism of the Russian war machine is still likely to have its brutal way, as it pummels Ukraine’s towns and cities into so many Stalingrads.”
The starkness of the contrast between this description and the truth, as set out in my earlier comment about the remarkably low civilian casualties for such a huge military operation, tells you all you should need to know about this issue. The hysterics cannot rely on the truth, so they have to make up lies.
As it was with covid panic, so it is with Russia panic.
“But whatever the outcome, the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine “
Another outright lie, as demonstrated beyond honest doubt in so many btl comments here, and even a couple of atl posts.
If the arguments of the anti-Russian hysterics have any force, why do they turn so quickly to outright, barefaced lies?
I read those headlines and just one of them would have brought down a government in 2019.
Systematic under-reporting? Don’t they mean over-reporting?