- “The ‘anti-racists’ want me to hate Britain” – This country is one of the most tolerant in the world. But there is a limit to how much a society can take before it breaks, says Dia Chakravarty in the Telegraph.
- “‘I refuse to be complicit in baptism dishonesty’” – Reverend Matthew Firth tells how he wanted to hit stop button on the “conveyor belt” of asylum seekers converting to Christianity, reports the Telegraph.
- “Were lockdowns ethical?” – The lockdowns are frequently defended as “following the science”, but were they? ask David Paton and John Keown in the Critic.
- “Joint Open Letter to the Secretary of State” – When will the Secretary of State order an investigation into vaccine harms? ask the good folks at HART.
- “Liberal U.S. media downplays Biden’s poor memory after bombshell report” – Federal prosecutors say Joe Biden struggled to recall when he was Vice President or when his son died, reports the Telegraph.
- “The world can see that Biden is finished. Why can’t the Democrats?” – Prosecutions are bad, but being deemed too old to stand trial is worse, according to Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
- “The climate scaremongers” – We pay China billions to shaft our own car industry, says Paul Homewood in TCW – Defending Freedom.
- “The political class is only just realising that voters prefer prosperity over climate jingoism” – Labour’s green U-turn reflects the reality that voters prefer prosperity to green virtue signalling, says Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
- “Parkrun event director quits over ‘inclusive policy’ as CEO pleads to ‘turn heat down’ on trans row” – All records were erased earlier this week, after allegations that some women’s ‘bests’ were held by biological men who identify as women, reports the Telegraph.
- “Kemi Badenoch: ‘I’m on top of my brief. I will not be tripped up’” – What does the woman tipped to be Rishi Sunak’s successor as Conservative leader really think? asks Janice Turner in the Times.
- “Rishi Sunak’s tax bill rises by more than £75,000 in a year” – The Prime Minister filed his personal income details late on Friday showing he paid some £508,308 in taxes on earnings of £2.2 million in the 2022-2023 financial year, reports the Mail.
- “Firms forced to recruit overseas staff as 9m Britons quit jobs market” – A growing number of firms are scrabbling to fill 900,000 U.K. vacancies as Britons refuse to go back to work, says the Mail.
- “Raising concerns about the MHRA” – A ‘we-the-undersigned’ letter to the Health Select Committee sent by email on October 24th 2023. Signatories include Danny Kruger, Graham Sringer and Miriam Cates.
- “How Shahrar Ali beat the trans inquisition” – The gender ideologues in the Green Party have been cut down to size, says Jo Bartosch in Spiked.
- “U.K. Government secretly shuts down NHS Pride programme” – The NHS Rainbow Badge scheme has been adopted by hundreds of hospitals and hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers, yet it’s being discontinued, reports Vice.
- “Tony Abbott: West may need national service to boost army recruitment” – Former Australian PM says many civilians are still labouring under the illusion that peace is inevitable and are “sleep-walking through lotus land”, according to the Times.
- “What did Putin say in Tucker Carlson interview? His claims fact-checked” – The Russian President’s interview with Carlson included a number of familiar allegations, none of which were challenged and some of which are false, says the Times in a ‘fact check’ of the interview.
- “Jewish university chaplain forced into hiding following death threats” – Pro-Palestinian campaigners have accused Rabbi Deutsch of ‘genocide’ after he returned to Israel after Hamas’s October 7th terror attacks to serve in the Israeli Defence Force, reports the Mail.
- “Biden can no longer hide from the appalling truth about his irresponsible presidency” – Accusations that he was in decline were dismissed as smears. Now the evidence is too huge to ignore, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “Ireland is fast becoming Europe’s nastiest nation” – Its image is changing fast thanks to its cheap shots against countries like Israel, Britain and Taiwan, says Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Telegraph.
- “Conversion therapy ban is threat to free speech, warns Tory peer” – In the Telegraph, David Frost points out that many of the ‘conversion practices’ that proponents of a conversion therapy ban want to stamp out in the U.K. are already illegal.
- “Barnstorming speech against the conversion therapy ban in House of Lords” – Lord Forsyth have an excellent speech against Baroness Burt’s private member’s bill seeking to ban conversion therapy in the Lords last night.
An absolutely barnstorming speech by Conservative peer Lord Forsyth in the House of Lords debate on the Conversion Therapy Bill. We agree, the ‘world has gone mad’ and this Bill ‘undermines the family and free speech’.
— Family Education Trust (@FamEdTrust) February 9, 2024pic.twitter.com/NRVQkXAKTR
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak38ak/uk-government-shuts-down-nhs-lgbtq-diversity-program-rainbow-badge-scheme
Good riddance and not before time!
I have fond memories of Thames TV children’s programme Rainbow, with Zippy, Bungle, George and Geoffrey. The lovely, jolly catchy tune:
Rainbow up above the streets and houses rainbow climbing high
Everyone can see it smiling over the sky
Paint the whole world with a rainbow.
My children loved it, I enjoyed watching it with them.
…and now, the term rainbow has been forever tainted – commandeered, practically weaponised – by the pride brigade and I, for one, am now sick of the sight of anything with a rainbow insignia. So many things covered with the dratted thing – clothes, lamps, rugs – even police cars!
Something lovely and amazing – who can fail to see a rainbow in the sky and not be heartened at the sight – has been demeaned in my eyes.
I reiterate, good riddance to the badge scheme and all the associated palaver.
Great post. It needed saying.
What did Putin say in Tucker Carlson interview?
‘The West reneged on a deal not to enlarge Nato’
Nope
‘The Final Settlement on German unification, ratified by the Soviet Union the same year, had no clear prohibition on Nato adding more members.’
‘The overthrow of Ukraine’s President Yanukovych in 2014 was a CIA-instigated coup’
Nope
‘No evidence of CIA involvement has been presented.’
‘Kyiv started the war in eastern Ukraine’
Nope
‘Igor Girkov, a Russian former intelligence officer, brought Russia militants from Crimea to fight the authorities.’
‘Ukraine and the West were to blame for the failure of peace talks in March and April 2022’
Nope
‘The revelation of Russian troops’ massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha……..removed any desire to negotiate.’
‘Boris Johnson demanded that Kyiv abandon negotiations with Russia’
Nope
‘Johnson: ‘I could not see for the life of me what the deal could be, and I thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.”
‘…one of Russia’s key aims is to “de-Nazify” Ukraine’
Nope
‘….such groups are peripheral. President Zelensky is Jewish, and a coalition of nationalist, right-wing parties took only 2.15 per cent of the vote at parliamentary elections in 2019.’
But well done anyway……..not.
For a balanced journalistic approach you may be interested in comparing the Times article with the item from the Global Times, written in characteristic sanctimonious style but nonetheless worth a read.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202402/1306963.shtml
Sitting here in the boondocks of North Devon I am really in no position to comment on the veracity of the facts that Putin presented. But to mind mind what we all have to do is decide on what we feel is the best way forward? My analysis is that even now it is possible to engage in negotiations with Russia that will give a better result than if we press on and try and win a military victory.
Much has changed over the last 2 years, can we trust Putin if we entered negotiations? To my mind over the last 2 years the whole geo-political position with regard to Russia, China, The BRICS and other Asian Countries has changed so much that whatever Russia may have thought in the past, the current geo-political position means that Russia sees that its future lies in that direction and could thus be trusted in any Ukraine peace negotiations. even though given the current military position those agreements would be very much on Russian terms.
Agree, bar/but:
The real issue is: Can he trust the West?
The West which broke its promise on NATO enlargement and which expressive confirmed that the Minsk agreements were a ruse.
Nope. There was no promise on NATO enlargement.
This is the agrrement that Putin was referring to:
‘The agreement on not deploying foreign troops on the territory of the former GDR was incorporated in Article 5 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which was signed on September 12, 1990 by the foreign ministers of the two Germanys, the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France. Article 5 had three provisions:
When one reads the full text of the Woerner speech cited by Putin, it is clear that the secretary general’s comments referred to NATO forces in eastern Germany, not a broader commitment not to enlarge the Alliance.
…..a very authoritative voice from Moscow (confirms) this understanding. Russia behind the Headlines has published an interview with Gorbachev, who was Soviet president during the discussions and treaty negotiations concerning German reunification. The interviewer asked why Gorbachev did not “insist that the promises made to you [Gorbachev]—particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East—be legally encoded?” Gorbachev replied: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”
“I was in those meetings, and Gorbachev has [also] said there was no promise not to enlarge NATO,” Robert Zoellick, former Undersecretary of State.
I must say, I don’t think much of ‘The Global Times’ as a source.
‘The Global Times is owned by The People’s Daily, which is the largest newspaper group in China. The paper is an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’
Your reference ends:
‘This is undoubtedly a display of the close strategic partnership between Russia and China’
There is no ‘We’ here regarding negotiations. Ukraine will decide its future for itself.
I am no fan of ‘Bunter’ Johnson but he was spot on in this case:
‘….any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid’
Negotiations, to both Putin and Ukraine, are only a matter of expediency.
As Putin himself has pointed out, this war goes back hundreds of years.
But don’t listen to me, listen to one of the world’s greatest authorities on Russia and Russian history:
‘If civil war break outs, if Crimea demands reunion with Russia or easterners demand protection, Russia may intervene or annex Crimea.’ Simon Sebag Montefiore 26 Feb 2014
The following day: Russian special forces seized and blocked the Supreme Council of Crimea and the Council of Ministers of Crimea. Russian forces purporting to be “Crimean militia” seized other administrative buildings, airports.
Today, Montefiore says, of Putin, simply this:
‘“I don’t think he’s a madman at all and everyone always says that about leaders whose motivations and culture they don’t understand,” Montefiore said.
“He’s not crazy at all, he’s projecting a vision of Russia that he was brought up with that many people in Russia still adhere to – a vision of the Russian state as an empire that has to expand, and expansion is how you judge leaders,”
It really is just as simple as that.
So forget negotiations…..just so much hot air. There is no trust, only expediency…and Putin is aiming for Odesa……..then Moldova……….
05b Farming Under Siege From Net Zero
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online
https://twitter.com/famedtrust/status/1755958402453250559?s=48
Thank goodness that common sense hasn’t completely left the building. Is there still hope?
“Firms forced to recruit overseas staff as 9m Britons quit jobs market” – A growing number of firms are scrabbling to fill 900,000 U.K. vacancies as Britons refuse to go back to work, says the Mail.
Refusing to go back to work, eh? Not the ones who:
are jabbed damaged & can’t work even if they wanted to
got sacked/forced out for refusing the jab
got sacked/forced out for being ‘transphobic’
got sacked/forced out because of opinions on [pick current war]
got sacked/forced out for making [pick latest thing] jokes
got sacked/forced out because of DEI/ESG policies
can’t be recruited because of DEI policies (wrong colour skin & gender)
…am I missing any?
made redundant due to government policy (lockdown)
decided to stop working due to government policy (being paid not to work)
became disillusioned due to government policy (working to support a corrupt regime)
are dead due to government policy (lockdown, vaccination, NHS, poverty, war – remember that call for mercenaries?)
What they mean is the state pays enough in benefits that the very poor salaries offered for grinding, boring work is not enough to tempt the Brits. In an efficient labour market wages would rise. Instead the government imports ever more cheap, unskilled labour, almost all male, which will work for little because it is better than at home.
Even better for the employers and immigrants, the tax payer tops up the immigrants income with in work benefits and we provide all the social infrastructure they did not hae at home for nothing, zilch, no charge to them.
Result, the original UK poplualtion gets poorer and our country gets deeper in debt.
Thank you governments for the past three decades. You have made us less safe at home and abroard and you have impoverished us financially and culturally.
Well this makes a refreshing change. A Palestinian writer calling out Hamas and wishing for their extermination. A Palestinian putting the blame for the devastation of Gaza squarely where it belongs. Good on them;
“Anyone who sees the destruction in Gaza, in terms of human lives, buildings, and on the economic, financial and psychological levels, cannot but pray to Allah and ask him to curse all those who caused this destruction. How can we not curse the people who caused this, given this complete devastation? How can we not curse Hamas and its leaders after they have destroyed every element of dignified existence in the Gaza Strip?!
“When Hamas carried out its attack [on October 7] and invaded the [Israeli] localities on the Gaza border, did it expect Israel to refrain from retaliating in force and from delivering blow after blow to the Gaza Strip, given its desire for revenge and given the international backing it receives, and in the absence of any power that can force it to stop its war against Gaza?
Wouldn’t it have been appropriate for Hamas, which has already proved its [considerable] planning abilities, to invest these abilities and energies in building up the Gaza Strip and completing the growth that had been achieved there – [growth] that was the envy of many Arabs and Muslims living in Yemen, Somalia or other countries, [whereas today] the Gazans wish to achieve the level of those [countries] and see them as a safe haven?!
“Thanks to Hamas for turning us into a new refugee enterprise – providing we even manage to survive after it has destroyed our souls. Does Hamas not deserve all these curses, now that it has led the Palestinians to perdition and turned them into fuel for the flames [of war]?!”
https://www.memri.org/reports/palestinian-writer-hamas-invested-all-its-resources-hopeless-war-against-israel-and-brought
He’s recognising the outcome was completely predictable so who or what was the attack intended to benefit?
“given its desire for revenge”, what would the Israeli regime have done without Hamas? Nothing like they have been doing since Oct 7th.
Tony Abbott: West may need national service to boost army recruitment
‘…….many civilians are still labouring under the illusion that peace is inevitable.’
Pretty much everyone in this country wants peace.
Defence companies do not need wars to make their money. Defence products, like motor cars, require replacing, modernising. And defence of the realm is the first duty of government.
Putin is not going to invade Western Europe but our friends and allies of longstanding (many a great deal closer to the action than we are. They may know what they are talking about.) believe that, just as he did not stop after Crimea, he will not stop after Ukraine.
Why else would he, in 2019, have set up a government department: the Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation, a subdivision of his own Presidential Administration. The directorate’s task is to exert control over neighbouring countries that Russia sees as in its sphere of influence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova i.e. to set up an enlarged Russian ‘Union State’. And, by the way, Belarus has already been absorbed into that ‘Union State’
So, although we all want peace and we are not interested in war (India’s President Modi: ‘It is not a time of war’), unfortunately war is interested in us.
It will be, as it always is, a great deal less interested in us if we are well prepared.
After all, we won the Cold War.
We can be proud of that.
So we know what to do.
A look at the transformation of Sweden thinks to uncontrolled immigration over the years. The forecast does not look good economically going forward either as highly skilled workers do not want to relocate there and their native counterparts are moving out;
”Present-day Sweden carries the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of gangland killings in Europe. It boasts the lowest average age of serious offenders, with children in their low teens being arrested for murder. Increasing segments of suburbs are officially classified as “especially vulnerable areas,” where it is “hard, bordering on impossible” for the police to operate. In layman’s terms, these are no-go zones, where local clans rule and where first responders will not enter without flak jackets and police escort.
The heavy influx of migrants from countries with Muslim populations could lead to a situation in which Sweden elects a radical Islamist party to parliament, potentially as early as the 2026 election. (The Swedish name of the party is “Nyans,” which translates, interestingly, into “Nuance.”) While virtually all Swedes were Christians from the 12th to the early 20th centuries, that share has fallen to less than 60 percent today. It is not inconceivable that Sweden will have a majority Muslim population sometime this century. The trend is bound to energize Islamist circles that are calling for a divided legal system, where Sharia law applies for Muslim citizens.
The key question is whether the rule of law will prevail against forces that are intent on creating a parallel society that is ruled by gangs and clans and infused with the values of radical Islam.”
https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/sweden-immigrants-crisis/
Parallel for now !!…
Tony Abbott: West may need national service to boost army recruitment
‘…many civilians are still labouring under the illusion that peace is inevitable.’
I am amazed, shocked, at the complacency on show regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Maybe it’s a generational thing.
I remember well Russian tanks invading Czechoslovakia, Prague; Czech civilians hurling bricks impotently at Russian tanks; just like Tiananmen Square but only a few miles away from Vienna, Munich.
We certainly do not need national service, but we do need a decent defence budget.
Well, I’m old enough to remember tanks in Hungary in 1956. But I also remember that the Communist regime that perpetrated it fell over thirty years ago (whereas Nazi Germany had only fallen 11 years before Hungary).
On the other hand, the regime that invaded Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and so on remains in power, and furthermore without even anyone knowing who runs it. Nobody from Doocy to Putin knows who is running US policy – and it certainly isn’t the man who’s beyond the age of legal accountability.
Correct , Anyone & I mean Anyone who thinks JB makes even the smallest of US political decisions is deluded !!
The regime may have fallen, but Putin was part of that regime. Plus ca change etc.
This is what one of the world’s greatest experts on Russia, past and present, had to say on 26 Feb. 2014, published the day before Russia seized Crimea:
‘Ukraine, which has demonstrated how quickly it can degenerate into bloodletting, is today a powder keg involving not just its own internal contradictions but the potential to unleash civil war – and with it world conflict. At its heart is the noble wish of Ukrainians, some speaking-Russian, some Ukrainian, Orthodox and Catholic, to live in a just democracy more like that of Western Europe than the autocracies of Russia or Kazakhistan.
That is complicated by a real split between its Russophile, Orthodox, industrialised east like Kharkov, where statues of Lenin embellish squares, and its mitteleuropean, Ukrainian-speaking, Catholic west, like Lvov. But its global significance lies in its tangled relationship with Moscow: Ukraine has an essential role in Russia’s vision of itself just as Russia is omnipresent in Ukraine’s own traumatised consciousness.
A week ago, President Putin’s Russia stood higher in prestige than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis: dazzling in the panoply of Olympic splendour, gilded with oil riches, triumphant in Georgia and Chechnya, in command of Syrian crisis, with Ukraine cowed under its creature, the bovine bungling ex-convict Yanukovych, whom Putin never trusted or liked. Kiev has changed everything.
Russia must avenge this blow.’
Montefiore saw it coming.
What does he see coming now?
“I don’t think he’s a madman at all and everyone always says that about leaders whose motivations and culture they don’t understand,” Montefiore said.
“He’s not crazy at all, he’s projecting a vision of Russia that he was brought up with that many people in Russia still adhere to – a vision of the Russian state as an empire that has to expand, and expansion is how you judge leaders,”
That is what is really going on………
I remember US invading Afghanistan, Iraq and UK and French forces bombing Libya and destroying that country.
If you’re going to go that far back, at the time of the Soviet tanks going into Czechoslovakia, the US was invading Vietnam, killing hundreds of thousands and a few years after bombing Cambodia mercilessly, countries that had done nothing to them.
And kicking off with a false flag in the Gulf of Tonkin, much as a dodgy dossier kicked off Iraq, and staged murders at a maternity unit kicked off the first Gulf War, and at best doubtful attribution of shelling kicked off the bombing of Serbia.
What on earth has any of that got to do with Putin’s criminal behaviours, displacing millions, hundreds of thousands killed?
It was Chinese backed communists from the north who were trying to take over the whole of Vietnam. The fact the US did not do well and failed to stop them does not turn it into a US invasion.
No activities by anyone else justify a brutal and barbaric invasion perpetrated by a totalitarian despot intent on distracting his long suffering citizens from his and his cronies pillaging of the national coffers.
Just to say that I endorse the HART letter to Victoria Atkins MP. https://www.hartgroup.org/joint-open-letter-to-the-secretary-of-state/
Victoria Atkins will, from here on in be complicit in any further deaths that might be attributed to the “vaccines.”
End of.
There was nothing that came out of the Putin interview that wasn’t already known. Absolutely nothing. When the West is in its death throes, as a global elite engineer a controlled demolition of society and the economy, isn’t that odd? The bombshells that could have been dropped weren’t. I’ll say again: Putin’s silence on the great reset can only mean one of two things 1) we’re all barking mad, and the catalogue of lockstep events, carried out over a very short period of time, destroying the West, is merely coincidental 2) he is complicit. I know where my money is.
He did make some comments that were globalist in nature. Globalism in itself is not an issue, it’s the implementation, mindset and track-record of those promoting it that is the concern. Maybe Putin is complicit and plays the role of “bad guy”. He was the candidate of choice for Tony Blair and MI6 but there’s more than one conclusion that could be drawn from that.
Regardless of their worldview or motives, why is it the Russians can field leaders and diplomats such as Putin, Lavrov and Zakharova who come across as professional, serious and intelligent yet capable of making humorous observations and we have a bunch of clowns?
He only inferred what everybody now knows (excluding the moronic Guardian readers and BBC followers of course), which is that the people seemingly in power are not the people actually in power. Shock. Yes, he appeared more statesman-like than any of our muppets, but that just makes him a better actor; he just took his rehearsal time more seriously. The whole thing felt staged to me, and achieved nothing other than to get the lefties hot under the collar about allowing Putin airtime. Expect further restrictions on free speech, particularly in the alternative media, to be justified shortly.
I think that they opposed the airing of the interview so vehemently for one reason: It made it painfully obvious to the plebs that he is in a totally different intellectual league than our pathetic leaders and ‘elite’.
Which is also the main and real reason why they hate him so much and sabotaged all of his sensible approaches to the West during the last 20+ years.
Stupid public leaders seem chosen to do the bidding of clever (though not wise) hidden puppeteers. In other words, they hate Putin not just because they are his intellectual inferiors, but because the clever people with real power sees that he threatens their ambitions for power and wealth.
His tax return might finish him off.
The plebs will only see the low 23% tax rate, not how it came about.
I was intrigued about that, too.
“Biden can no longer hide from the appalling truth about his irresponsible presidency”
Shuush! Leave him be, better the old shambling dimwit stands again rather than a new runner to reinvigorate the Democrats!
Biden’s mental state is irrelevant. He was incapable even during his election campaign, but that simply left the hidden powers free reign to execute their own policies without any kickback from the “elected” President. No other candidate on their list would exercise much more will, nor in fact would most of the Republican candidates.
This explains, of course, the hatred of Trump the wild card: he threatens the whole duck-shoot not because he is necessarily that astute, wise or powerful, but simply because (like Putin*, in my opinion) they cannot control him by bribes or threats.
*Putin: the reason Yeltsin elevated him and trusted him was that, alone amongst the people surrounding him, Putin could not be corrupted. He actually did want to rebuild Russia.
PS – the most worrying thing is the low-key Democrat election campaign. They may now be ousting Biden, but they’ve known he was a liability from the start.
If they’re not trying hard with their campaign, it is likely that they intend that Trump will not win despite his landslide poll ratings. Since their plans to discredit him or jail him appear unsuccessful, the Kennedy solution seems their only solution.
This time round, any “strange accident” would be known by billions around the world to be assassination – but by whom, when nobody from Doocy to Putin knows who’s actually running the US?
Was it right for Tucker Carlson to interview president Putin?
Uptick for yes. Downticks for no.
(I can’t vote but mine would be yes)
“The political class is only just realising that voters prefer prosperity over climate jingoism”
Kier Starmer changes his mind dependant on the direction of the wind on a particular day!
“Ireland is fast becoming Europe’s nastiest nation”
Because of its WHO and WEF led puppet leaders, NOT its people!
So it is, to be sure.
Potatoes!