"As Deep and Clammy As The Grave"

Were Holiday-Wrecking Quarantines Worth It? 

The Government Haven't a Clue!

Peter Hitchens
The Mail On Sunday

As the [UK] Government wrecks another few thousand holidays with sudden quarantine, you might assume that it takes this sort of thing seriously, and keeps close track of it.

After all, you don’t force people to abandon holidays they have saved up for all year, and stampede them into dashing for the nearest port or airport, or expect them to spend money they haven’t got on cruelly inflated ticket prices so they can meet a 4am deadline, just on a whim, do you?

You don’t lightly demand that, if they miss that deadline, they remain under house arrest for 14 days, unable to go to work, do you?  Surely you do those things because you genuinely believe that there is a grave danger if people remain in the affected countries, which must be severely contained? I thought so too. But is it so?

Students Under Chinese Government Threats

Red Guards in Britain

Chinese Students Under The Command of Communist Government

"We are Watching You: Serve The Motherland!"

Kurt Zindalka
Breitbart London

Harkening back to the rhetoric of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution, China’s ambassador in London has called on Chinese university students studying in the United Kingdom to “serve your motherland”, amid growing concern about the influence of Beijing on Western campuses.

In recently unearthed comments made to the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad, Ambassador Liu Xiaoming said: “I hope you will carry on the glorious tradition of patriotism. I hope you will always live your personal dreams in the greater cause of striving for the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.”

“I hope with what you have learned here and now, you could serve your motherland and people in the future. And I hope your youthful vigour will drive you on as you work harder to realize your dream,” Liu added.

In response to the comments, Professor Christopher Hughes of the London School of Economics told The Times: “The idea of patriotism, in the Chinese context, means supporting the Communist Party. It means wanting unification with Taiwan. It means completely crushing Tibetan aspirations for autonomy. It means crushing Hong Kong. It challenges a lot of our principles of academic freedom.

“The more Chinese students there are, the more they are controlled and used by the Chinese embassy. There are various groups that are set up to monitor their behaviour. So they don’t feel secure. That means you get creeping self-censorship.”


Currently, there are an estimated 120,000 Chinese students in the United Kingdom.

UK Gone Burger?

One Law for Black Lives Matter, Another for the Rest

James Delingpole
Breitbart London


Here is a message which should send a shudder down the spine of anyone who believes in the concept of equality before the law: a British police department openly admitting that it intends to give special, favourable treatment to Black Lives Matter.

Northumbria Police
✔
@northumbriapol
We'll be in attendance to facilitate a planned Black Lives Matter vigil at Keel Square in #Sunderland tonight.
A Section 14 order is in place forbidding any other public assembly, including counter-protests, to ensure the public's safety. Anyone with concerns should ring 101.

Note the use of that weasel word “vigil”. Presumably this comes from the same dictionary of politically correct excuse-making that led the BBC describe a violent Black Lives Matter violent demo in London — in which 27 police officers were injured — as ‘largely peaceful.’

It’s a lie and an insulting lie at that. Vigils are what angels keep. Vigils are what servicemen keep over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Vigils are honourable, solemn, ancient — and have nothing whatsoever to do with a bunch of mostly white, middle-class “uni” graduates and Marxist agitators causing mayhem on the public streets under the pretence that they fighting against “structural racism”.

Note also that Northumbria Police are effectively declaring a two-tier policing system. Protest gatherings — even ones pretending to be “vigils” — are illegal under the draconian legislation which was rushed through by the British parliament in response to coronavirus. Yet here is Northumbria Police explicitly — and unilaterally — announcing to the world that they consider Black Lives Matter are exempt.

Why?

Deliberate Focus to Kill The Innocent and Defenseless

Selective Abortion

State Murder of Down Syndrome Babies Rises in UK

Dr Thomas Williams
Breitbart London

The number of Irish babies with Down syndrome aborted in England rose by 60 percent in just one year, from 17 in 2018 to 27 in 2019, the Iona Institute reports.

Since abortion was legalized in Ireland in January 2019, the number of abortions performed on Irish women in the UK in 2019 dropped by over 650 percent last year, but this did not curb the number of Down syndrome babies being aborted. On the contrary, that figure rose, mainly because British law allows abortion up to birth of babies suspected of having Down syndrome.

The UK’s Department for Health and Social Care released its official abortion figures for 2019 on June 11, revealing the highest number of abortions in the country’s history. According to the report, 209,519 abortions were performed in England and Wales during the 2019 calendar year, the highest number ever.

Commenting on the report, Dr. Angelo Bottone noted that of Irish women who terminated their pregnancies in England and Wales in 2019, 64 percent were single and 17.3 percent had had a previous abortion.

While abortions performed on Irish women for reasons of the “physical or mental health” of the mother decreased from 97 percent of the total to 83 percent, reasons of a child suspected of being seriously handicapped increased from three percent to 17 percent. The reason for this, Bottone notes, is that later term abortions (after 12 weeks) are still illegal under Irish law, and non-life-threatening conditions (such as Down Syndrome) are often discovered later on in a pregnancy.

The Destructive Dangers of Marijuana

My New Best Pal in the Drugs War? Stormzy!

Peter Hitchens
The Daily Mail

I don’t suppose the rapper Stormzy is a keen reader of my articles, and I have no idea what sort of hideous noises he makes, but we are now shoulder to shoulder, brothers in arms and hand in hand.

For Stormzy, whose real name is Michael Omari, says he has stopped smoking marijuana, after realising the drug was harming his mental health. And because of who he is, his message is likely to reach a lot of people who urgently need to hear it.

He said: ‘I have suffered with mental health problems for the past few years… When I used to feel depressed, I would lock myself away and smoke weed and I would just get worse and worse and worse.’

Professor Sir Robin Murray, a psychiatrist who has warned for years of this danger, thinks the singer’s admission could have a significant impact on young marijuana smokers.  He says: ‘The evidence is very clear that heavy cannabis use can cause mental health problems including anxiety, depression, and psychosis. Young people may be reluctant to believe this when a psychiatrist like me says it but are much more likely to accept it when a star like Stormzy says it.’

It is interesting just how little coverage Stormzy’s confession has had.

The Curse of Rising National Debt

Rishi's "Free Furlough" Billions 

Just a Giant Payday Loan in YOUR Name 

Peter Hitchens
Mail on Sunday

Think of Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a smiling salesman of payday loans, and you will begin to get the picture.   ‘Yes, of course you can have the money. Happy to help!’ he says as he hands over the wads of notes.

But it will not be the cheery face of Mr Sunak that you see when the time comes for repayment, but the hard and relentless agents of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

We cannot know the exact details of what lies ahead, though I would not rule out a sudden raid on savings as well as severe local and national taxation, direct and indirect, and inflation of the currency.

And don’t think that the repayment boys will only be going after those who have accepted the various forms of government handout during the throttling of the economy.   Even if you have yourself kept working and stayed above water, they’ll still be after you.

It is time the media began to ask Mr Sunak exactly when he plans to announce his first emergency budget (the first of many, I fancy) to a stunned nation.  As my much-esteemed Daily Mail colleague Alex Brummer, a man who understands the national finances better than most, said last week: ‘The hugely expensive decision to turn an emergency measure, designed to see UK Plc through the peak of Covid-19, into a commitment that could stretch to six months suggests a public health crisis and economic meltdown far worse than first imagined.’

Britain At Its Worst

At the Anti-Lockdown Rally I Saw the Best – and Worst – of Britain


James Delingpole
Breitbart London

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

That’s how it felt at the anti-lockdown rally in Hyde Park, London, yesterday, where I was threatened with a fine and arrest for the crime of doing my job. It’s also where I got to see Britain at its best – and worst.

There weren’t many protestors but those who were made me proud to be British. We were a very mixed crowd, very representative of the melting pot that London has become – and definitely considerably less white and middle class than the crowd you’d find at an Extinction Rebellion rally.

I met a black working-class couple who were both bus drivers; several smartly dressed, well-spoken elderly people; an American former US diplomat and former Democrat voter; a very distressed French-sounding girl distraught that she’d been harassed by police simply for remaining in the same area for more than 45 minutes; a woman who had grown up in 70s Czechoslavakia and recognised the symptoms of Communism all too easily. There were anti-vaxxers, yes, and people who felt that all the world’s current ills could be traced back to Bill Gates, yes. But mostly this was a rally about freedom, where everyone present could not quite believe just how easily so many British people had surrendered willingly to the most flagrant assault on liberty in centuries.

This ought not to be a weird, eccentric thing to want to protest.

Roiling and Boiling in the UK

Going Through the Motions

Has our mad mass house arrest during Covid-19 saved even a single life?

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail

We will not escape from this misery until the Government has been forced to admit that it made a foolish mistake and over-reacted wildly to Covid-19.  The Prime Minister is like a man who sets fire to his own pyjamas, while he is wearing them, to cure himself of hiccups.  Now he stands naked and scorched, as his house burns around him, and exults that his hiccups have indeed gone away. This is what I mean by getting things out of proportion.

Above all, he must stop pretending that his actions saved us from deaths that never happened, and people must stop believing this evidence-free bilge.  Till that moment comes, months and perhaps years of costly, painful stupidity will follow.

The belief that the Panic Policy worked means it can never fully end. If, and when, you go back to your job – if you still have a job – you will be compelled to abide by ludicrous, impractical rules. You will be forced to wear pointless muzzles on trains and buses.  Normal life will be virtually impossible. Previously simple actions will be endlessly complicated and expensive. And while this farce continues, businesses will continue to close and jobs continue to vanish, visiting misery and sickness on millions.

I have seen this before in the old Communist world, a mad, fixed idea pursued by dense men relentlessly and without opposition or thought, until the whole thing collapses or explodes. Now I see it here.

Weaponised Expectorate

London Railway Worker Dies

'Infected’ Man Spat in Her Face

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London

A 47-year-old mother died weeks after a man who claimed to have the Chinese coronavirus spat and coughed at her while she was working at a railway station in London.

On March 22, Belly Mujinga, a railway ticket office worker, was assaulted alongside her colleague by a man while the two were on duty at London Victoria station. The two women fell ill with symptoms of the coronavirus days after the attack.

Describing the horrific attack, her husband, Lusamba Gode Katalay said per ITV: “The man asked her what she was doing, why she was there, and she said they were working. The man said he had the virus and spat on them. They reported it to their supervisor. Belly came home and told me everything.”

Mujinga was hospitalised on April 2 and was put on a ventilator, yet tragically died three days after being admitted to the hospital.

A Petulant Would-Be Despot

Matt Handcock Is Trying to Run the UK Like a 50's Prep School


Peter Hitchens
Mail on Sunday

Until I started travelling in the Communist world, my main experience of living under tyranny was my time at a boarding school on the edge of Dartmoor, 60 years ago.  The headmaster, an enormous, booming man, had many fine qualities. But he was given to dreadful rages, which tended to strike late on Saturday afternoons.

He would throb with fury because some of the more loutish boys had left their games clothes on the changing room floor.   For some reason, he viewed this as a terrible crime closely related to murder. So he would summon us into the assembly hall, and harangue us as darkness fell outside.  The more we stood mulishly in front of him, saying nothing and with our eyes downcast, the angrier he became.

Sometimes he would hold up a pair of muddy football shorts as horrific evidence of the latest atrocity. Collective punishments – a ban on eating toast, or the cancellation of a promised film show – would follow, along with more shouting and angry notices in red ink, threatening worse to come.  Most of us were guiltless of wrongdoing. But we were small, and he was huge. The staff seemed more scared of him than we were.

We were on a windswept hilltop miles from anywhere. We had no escape.  We assumed our letters home were censored, so we put up with these ludicrous exhibitions and waited for the storm to pass.
Oddly enough, the terror did not work. People carried on leaving their clothes on the floor, just the same.

I had thought such childish things were long over in my life. But a week ago I found that I was, once again, living at the mercy of an equally petulant would-be despot.

No More Chinese Propaganda in the Telegraph

Enough Said

British Newspaper Finally Stops Publishing Paid Propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London

A leading British newspaper has decided to stop running paid propaganda articles from a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) amidst a global effort by the regime in Beijing to influence Western opinion on the Wuhan virus pandemic.

The Daily Telegraph has removed its longstanding ‘China Watch’ section, which the paper has run for over ten years. The segment featured propaganda articles from the Chinese state-sponsored media outlet China Daily. Another part which ran articles from the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has been removed as well.

According to The Guardian, some examples of articles that have since been deleted by the paper include: “Why are some framing China’s heroic efforts to stop coronavirus as inhumane?”; “Traditional Chinese medicine ‘helps fight coronavirus'”; and “Coronavirus outbreak is not an opportunity to score points against China”.

Judicial Tyranny in the UK

The Opinion That, ‘Men Cannot Change Into Women’ Is Now Illegal

Such an Opinion ‘Not Worthy of Respect In a Democratic Society’:  It is Therefore Verboten

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London


In a blow to free speech protections in the United Kingdom, a judge in an employment tribunal has ruled that there is no right to question whether a transgender person is a man or a woman.

Maya Forstater, a former tax expert, who was fired from her job at the Centre for Global Development after tweeting that “men cannot change into women“, lost her legal challenge against her firing.  The ruling found that the Equality Act 2010 did not protect Ms Forstater’s right to express the philosophical belief that there are only two genders and therefore her firing was legal, reports The Telegraph.

In his ruling, employment Judge Taylor said that Ms Forstater’s gender-critical position “is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.   Judge Taylor argued that the legal rights of a transgender person override Ms Forstater’s right to express her opinions, saying that she was responsible for “enormous pain that can be caused by misgendering a person”.

“If a person has transitioned from male to female and has a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), that person is legally a woman. That is not something [Ms Forstater] is entitled to ignore. [Ms Forstater’s] position is that even if a trans woman has a GRC, she cannot honestly describe herself as a woman. That belief is not worthy of respect in a democratic society,” Taylor said.

“Even paying due regard to the qualified right to freedom of expression, people cannot expect to be protected if their core belief involves violating others’ dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for them,” he concluded.

In response to the ruling, Ms Forstater said: “I struggle to express the shock and disbelief I feel at reading this judgment, which I think will be shared by the vast majority of people who are familiar with my case.”

The Velvet Coup d'Etat Taking Place in the UK

Don’t Blame Boris for the Remainer Establishment Coup

James Delingpole
Breitbart London


Apparently there’s been a breakthrough in the Brexit talks…two senior EU sources say the main stumbling block to a deal has been removed with the DUP accepting the latest proposals on consent... Optimism a deal can now be done...

I’d say that till any deal is done and dusted there’s almost no point in discussing the latest Brexit shenanigans, let alone in attempting to make any predictions of what will happen next.

Why?

Because the Remainer Establishment — that liberal elite which is determined to kill Brexit at whatever cost — is making up the rules as it goes along.

Maybe, Just Maybe . . .

A Marmite Figure

One of our favourite UK shows is "Yes, Minister" and then, latterly, "Yes, Prime Minister".  A common theme throughout was the ability of senior bureaucrats to blind-side and steer their political masters. 

However, as time passed real life began to imitate art.  The sprawling, inefficient UK bureaucracy has come to exercise just the same kind manipulation of its political masters that was so well represented in the TV series.  Into this mess, we welcome the new PM, Boris Johnson. 

Johnson's playbook does not at first sight fill one with a great deal of confidence when it comes to disciplined thinking and action.  He has a history of flip flopping, of making things up as he goes alone, and of putting on a good show rather than exercising a Thatcher-like control of those working under him.  Things become considerably more positive, however, when one considers some of his colleagues.  In particular, one thinks of Dominic Cummings. 

The odds are that all but a few of us in the Antipodes have heard the name.  That is likely to change.  James Delingpole explains why.

Cover Up?

A Horror Chamber

This country is slowly being choked to death by the ‘rights’ of wrongdoers and the refusal of authority to protect the innocent

By PETER HITCHENS

MAIL ON SUNDAY

+6

Dr Barry Hounsome, 54, was violently killed in his own home on October 29 last year 

Don’t the authorities want to prevent crime? See what you think about this case. Once, the terrible, lonely death of college lecturer Barry Hounsome, like something out of an obscene horror film, would have been so shocking and unusual that it would have occupied national newspaper front pages for days.

But you probably have not heard of it, since such things are far too common in civilised modern Britain.

Dr Hounsome, then 54, was at his modest home in the Hampshire town of Gosport (where I once lived, in another, gentler age) on October 29 last year. He had worked for Southampton and Bangor universities and carried out research into dementia and Parkinson’s disease. He was the sort of person who might have expected to be safe, in the sort of place where he might have expected to be secure.

As far as can be told from the published evidence, he was disturbed by an intruder breaking in through his patio door. But this was no ordinary burglar. The 16-year-old who entered his home was wearing a stab vest and goggles.

His assailant had also equipped himself with electric drills, hammers and knives. An account of the trial describes what happened:

MI5's Greatest Spymaster

Recalling Recent History

We recently read M--Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster (London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017), written by Henry Hemming.  It is well worth a read.  

Of course since the 1950's onward spy thrillers have been pretty standard fare in the UK.  Authors like Ian Fleming and John Le Carre have become standards.  A common frame of reference in these spy novels (and in many others) has been the Spymaster--the boss, the head guy (or gal) who ran if not the spy agency itself, then a group of spies.

These novels, particularly those written by Le Carre, have always been seen as reflecting in some way, shape, or form the real world of real life spies in the UK in the twentieth century.  (Le Carre used to be a spy in MI5.  His real name is David Cornwall.  In the years he worked for MI5, his boss was "M" which stood for Maxwell Knight.)

There have been more and more de-classifications of UK secret papers, including the files and dossiers of the various secret services over the years.  M-Maxwell Knight draws upon recent declassified information.  It demonstrates the craft of the real-life spy--essentially a watcher, a listener, and a reader.

Most of the spies recruited and "run" by M were ordinary folk.  They were trained on the job.  M was a superb teacher and mentor.  He was the first to see that often the best spies were "nobodies".  They were secretaries, clerks, receptionists.  So low-level that they were often overlooked.

The Gift Horse Now Inside Troy's City Walls

Conservative values? That now means forcing your children into sex lessons

By PETER HITCHENS

Mail on Sunday

PUBLISHED: 12:40 AEDT, 3 March 2019 | UPDATED: 13:34 AEDT, 3 March 2019

Revolutionaries love to indoctrinate children. You can look up yourself who said these words: 'When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side', I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on.  Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.' '

But it does not really matter who it was. It is horribly true, and it is what all these meddlers think and why they are all so keen on getting control of schools and youth movements.

+6

Revolutionaries love to indoctrinate children. You can look up yourself who said these words: 'When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side'

This week, they took a great step towards their goal, which is the eradication of all that is left of conservative Christian opinion in this country.

Secularist Hate-Religion

Modern Wars of Religion

In the UK, the government, run by increasingly militant secular humanists, is insisting that everybody support and participate in the promotion of homosexuality and trans-sexuality.  The front line of this ideological and political war is the school.

The same conflict is already playing out in Australia.  It can be expected to unfold in New Zealand as well.

Here is a UK orthodox Jewish perspective:

Boris Johnson Beats the Drum

The EU Is Treating Britain’s Constitution with Contempt

Oliver J J Lane
Breitbart London

The European Union is working to violate the very basis of the United Kingdom and even annex part of the country as an economic colony, high-profile Tory rebel Boris Johnson has said, in his continued assault against the Prime Minister’s soft Brexit plan.

Although one-time Foreign Secretary and former Mayor of London Johnson was widely seen to have bottled his chance of challenging Theresa May’s leadership when he stepped back from the brink at the Conservative Party conference where he even gave a craven message of support for the Prime Minister, he has continued sniping from the sidelines since.

In his latest intervention into the Brexit negotiation process — published in the Daily Telegraph even as latest talks between British and European Union negotiators collapse — Johnson blasted the EU for offering the UK nothing but humiliation. Contrasting the humiliation of having Northern Ireland — Ulster — remain in the EU while the home nations of Great Britain leave and the humiliation of the whole United Kingdom being forced to remain in the Single Market against its own wishes, Johnson wrote:

It is a choice between two exquisitely embarrassing varieties of humiliation. It is an entirely false choice. It must be rejected, and it must be rejected now… In that sense it would mean violating the Act of Union of 1800, and the very basis on which this country is founded.

Jeremy Corbyn Is Worse Than His Press

The UK Labour Leader is an Antisemite


Peter Walker
The Guardian


The former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks has called Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite, saying the Labour leader’s comment about Zionists at a 2013 conference was the most offensive statement by a senior UK politician since Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech.

Labour dismissed the comparison with Powell as “absurd and offensive”.

In an interview with the New Statesman, Sacks, who was the UK’s chief rabbi from 1991 to 2013, said Corbyn had “given support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate who want to kill Jews and remove Israel from the map”.

He said: “Now, within living memory of the Holocaust, and while Jews are being murdered elsewhere in Europe for being Jews, we have an antisemite as the leader of the Labour party and Her Majesty’s opposition. That is why Jews feel so threatened by Mr Corbyn and those who support him.”

Sacks condemned Corbyn’s 2013 comments, which resurfaced last week, in which he said that a group of Zionists had “no sense of irony” despite “having lived in this country for a very long time”.