About Jess Phillips' 'two-tier NHS' story

In a widely-reported story, Jess Phillips MP says she received preferential hospital treatment from a Palestinian doctor partly because she had voted for a ceasefire in Gaza last year.

In my view the ‘media’ has seized on the wrong aspect. What Ms Phillips is doing is fighting the next General Election. What should have been a predictably rock-solid majority in her Birmingham Yardley constituency two months ago was nearly wiped out altogether by a newcomer who is a white Muslim convert.

The challenger ignored Phillips’ 2023 ceasefire vote (and her subsequent resignation from Labour’s Opposition front bench) and craftily drew attention to her continuing membership of Labour Friends of Israel:

At the count there were fewer than 700 votes between Phillips and McIntyre.

Admittedly this was on a low turnout, and as a 2022 Parliamentary briefing on political disengagement noted ‘People from minority ethnic groups were less likely to be registered to vote, turnout to vote and be elected.’ However now that minorities have seen that their ballot can make a difference they may be more likely to take part.

There will be much more of this in the years to come. ‘The UK's share of Muslims in the population could rise from 6.3 percent in 2016 to 17.2 percent by 2050.’

If there were a fresh General Election now we might see a defeat for Phillips, not only because of Muslim voting momentum but also on account of Sir Keir Starmer’s lamentable first few weeks as Prime Minister. Many of the 20.2% of the electorate that gave him a thumping Parliamentary majority must be experiencing buyer’s remorse already. How long has he got? How long has she got?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Daniel Lanois, by JD

Daniel Lanois is a French/Canadian record producer as well as being a singer/songwriter in his own right. He has produced records for Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, U2 and many others.

I first became aware of him after hearing him sing Jolie Louise on the soundtrack of the TV series Northern Exposure during the early 90s. The incidental music in the show was a very eclectic mix and was chosen to fit in with and reflect the storylines. I later bought his first solo albums, Acadie, and it was worth every penny especially the song 'The Maker' (Last video below) Acadie has its own Wiki page for some reason, I'm not sure why but it is in fact very informative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lanois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadie_(album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Exposure

Daniel Lanois Black Dub Live at Michele Clark's Sunset Sessions

Jolie Louise - Daniel Lanois - French and English subtitles.mp4

DANIEL LANOIS - Lotta Love To Give (Video)

Daniel Lanois - Acadie (Unreleased)

Willie Nelson, Daniel Lanois, Emmylou Harris - The Maker

Starmer's Coup

New New Labour has only been running for six weeks, four of them on holiday, but it looks as though it is on a mission to piss-off as many sectors of the British population as possible.

Here are some:

• Pensioners - no winter fuel allowance except for those on income support
• The rich - reportedly planning to leave the country
• Parents (not all of them rich) putting their children through private education
• Drivers - facing more 20 mph zones (which will also increase CO2 emissions per mile)
• Smokers and vapers - facing more outdoor bans (no mention of cannabis users?)
• Homeowners - facing rises in council tax or some other property-related cash grab
• Residents in areas where more armies of dangerous young men are foisted on them under the guise of asylum seekers (and the asylum-granted)
• Those (and it will be many) who will be affected by Starmer’s new bilateral treaty with Germany’s ‘bomb ze Russians’ Scholz
• Everyone facing the planned proliferation of quangocrats, mayors and other high-handed gauleiters

… have I missed anything?

It reminds me of wacko comedians Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson when they talk about ‘running into off-licences and seeing how much we can drink before the police arrive.’ 

Does the Change Labour team feel it is on limited time?

Or is this a rerun of Covidian arrogance - ‘let’s see what we can make the people do?’

Starmer has had validation from only 20.2% of the electorate, but the whole democratic system means nothing to an autocrat. It’s game on, between the people and the new Lord Protector:

In January 2023, Emily Maitlis asked Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, ‘You have to choose now between Davos or Westminster?’

Starmer replied, ‘Davos… Westminster is just a tribal shouting place.’

FRIDAY MUSIC: Merle Haggard, by JD

Merle Haggard will forever be remembered as a true American treasure whose work often reflected his complicated life – his problems with the law, five marriages, six children and the complexities a life in the music business yielded.

Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, they said about him:
“Merle Haggard stands, with the arguable exception of Hank William, as the single most influential singer-songwriter in country music history.”

Upon his death, The New York Times agreed: “In Mr. Haggard’s case the sound defined a body of work as indelibly as that of any country singer since Hank Williams.”
Rolling Stone said Haggard: “composed and performed one of the greatest repertoires in country music, capturing the American condition with his stories of the poor, the lost, the working class, heartbroken and hard-living.”

And also at that time, The Tennessean called Haggard “the working man’s poet, an architect of the Bakersfield Sound and a fiercely independent artist who influenced country music like few others.”

Needless to say, much has been written about the importance of the singer-songwriter. But If nothing had ever been reported about Haggard and we only had his music, we would still know the man, his loves, his pains, his demons and his life.
https://merlehaggard.com/pages/biography

Merle Haggard - New San Antionio Rose (Live)

Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)

Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson "Okie from Muskogee"

Merle Haggard: "Sing Me Back Home"

Merle Haggard "Silver Wings"

Has Boris Johnson lost his mind?

Writing in today’s Daily Mail Boris Johnson says Starmer should stop ‘pussyfooting around’ and let ‘heroic’ Ukraine use British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russian territory. Apparently they are ‘bunker busters.’

Speaking of which, does Johnson have a bunker underneath his Oxfordshire home? He may need it, since Russia has made clear it reserves the right to retaliate against third parties who lend their military resources to Ukraine. Does Boris’ first-class brain comprehend what he and his Green Goddess will face when they finally open the airtight hatch and climb out into an ashen landscape?

Or will he and his family be on a plane halfway to New Zealand when the ‘99 red balloons’ go by? They have no bolt-hole there yet, as far as I know.

By contrast, Rishi already has a second home in California, having signed a perilous ten-year 'security agreement’ with Zelensky in January, warned of nuclear escalation in May and, allegedly not wanting to be a war leader, called an early General Election he was certain to lose. The Sunaks will be okay, if they move in time.

It’s not just the British who have gone mad… or rogue: the G7 declared joint support for Ukraine a year ago, France signed a UK-style security agreement with Ukraine six months ago, and the US another in June.

It’s coordinated.

Do European leaders carry burner phones dedicated to messages from Washington, like husbands conducting furtive affairs?

Does the US think there will be no use of nuclear weapons in Europe? Or do its war planners believe the escalation will stop there and America will be safe?

FRIDAY MUSIC: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra by JD

The orchestra was jointly founded in 1999 by Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, who named the Orchestra and workshop after West-östlicher Divan, an anthology of poems written by the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - a central work for the development of the concept of world culture ( as distinct from 'world government' you will notice which is not the same thing at all).

In 2016, the Barenboim–Said Akademie was established in Berlin, Germany, as a state-accredited music conservatory offering Bachelors of Music and Artist Diplomas. The Akademie, for which Barenboim serves as president, is based on the founding aims of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra.

In 1999, Barenboim and Said, who had become friends in the early 1990s, founded the West—Eastern Divan Orchestra in order to foment a feeling of sympathy and co-existence, chiefly between Arabs and Israelis, through Middle Eastern musical ensembles. Shortly after it was founded, the first workshop was opened in Weimar, Germany, after the organization had received over 200 applications from Arab music students. Barenboim has also expressed interest in musicians from Iran, allocating three chairs for Iranian musicians to play in the orchestra each year; though Iran is not an Arab country and therefore has not been a belligerent in the Arab–Israeli conflict, that particular environment exists in light of the Iran–Israel proxy conflict, which began a few years after Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.

In 2016, Ban Ki-moon, the erstwhile United Nations Secretary-General, designated the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra as a United Nations Global Advocate for Cultural Understanding, praising the organization's push for peace and unity, particularly between Israelis and Palestinians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West%E2%80%93Eastern_Divan_Orchestra
https://west-eastern-divan.org/

Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 | Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 - Eroica - BBC Proms

WEEKENDER: The degrading of the Olympic Games, by Wiggia

 

My original thought was I felt sorry for the organisers and participants at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in gay Paree. After watching for some time my mood changed to one of NGAF based on what I saw.

Difficult to know what was the intention of all this but it has nothing to do with sport unless of course Paris is being lauded as some sort of capital of perversion.

 
https://x.com/i/status/1816931037055775055

As a young child in simpler times I used to love the Olympics and remember my father taking me one day to watch the games at Wembley. The only person that sticks in my mind was the ‘Flying Housewife’ Fanny Blankers – Koen winning one of her four gold medals, but that was in more enlightened times when an Olympic gold really meant something other than an opening to wealth creation.

But inevitably the games became professional as the eastern block and others did not play fair and actual amateurs stood little chance against government sponsored athletes and government approved drug programs, not just the eastern block either.

As a track cyclist in the late fifties and sixties I was more than aware of the drug problem my sport had then and still has, though to be fair the testing in the sport today is almost non stop which is more than can be said for many other sports.

I did compete abroad a couple of times, and in those days even Olympians had to pay for travel in some sports, but few minded as the fact one was representing the country was reward enough. Not a lot of support then in fact virtually none; today for the current background team:

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/getinvolved/article/20181114-about-bc-static-British-Cycling-Talent-Development-Team-0?c=EN

The above was non existent in those days, never mind nutritional experts and help in all areas of mind and body on hand. It was as with so much a very different world.

Yet looking back I have more respect for the few successes we had then as they were against the odds, very much a case of surmounting difficulties that today would not be countenanced..

The going professional era changed all that in the Olympics and world championships in all other sports. Sponsorship pulled in money and the world of sport changed. Much was good as the artificial amateur was confined to the dustbin of history and everyone knew where they stood.

But back to the Olympics. This edition as with all has had its downsides, probably more than others recently, apart from the dreadful, on so many fronts, opening ceremony. Whole teams have been seeking hotel accommodation to avoid the cardboard beds, the supplied vegan meals have been supplemented with supplementary foods flown in in some cases, the Australians had a ton of meat flown in for instance, and several triathletes have become ill after competing with the merde in the Seine, and we have a boxing competition that has been totally hijacked by a couple of men fighting women, a ridiculous situation that should have been sorted in all sports long ago, only the woke agenda in some hierarchies of sporting institutions keep this nonsense alive.

There have been reams written about this subject, but in the end in a contact sport particularly, it is not only an advantage but dangerous, and of course you never see the reverse with women wanting to compete in male sport, I wonder why .

And to top it all the IOC seem determined to dilute the games by expanding into areas that are difficult to see as legitimate sports, such as break dancing? Strange rock climbing competitions, surely no rope should be allowed for realistic reasons, skateboarding at a time when the craze for skate parks for kids is waning and they become white elephants, BMX cycle racing which does not involve a lot of pedalling and the riders should grow up and ride proper bikes, downhill racing known as ‘gravity’, Golf, please, kite surfing where the only physical attribute is to gain weight that gives more speed, pie eating medals, trampoline etc etc.

There have and still are sports that have little in the way of promoting inclusion and diversity as is so popular these days. The equine events are hardly likely anytime soon to be seen in African countries are anywhere else, they are hugely expensive and confined to mainly rich western societies. They have their own championships anyway, so called new team events that involve numerous mixed men and women events by nature favour countries that have a depth of talent like the USA, smaller countries can never put together a team of equals from such limited resources.

They seem intent on diluting the games so a gold medal is within reach for all regardless of worthiness. Many will disagree with me but I would like the games to get back to basics, it is primarily a track and field event and so it should be.

I am not anti Olympics, far from it but it is straying far away from the original ideals and including what many would call ‘mickey mouse’ sports or what were recently leisure activities does the organisation and sport no favours.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Grappelli / Menuhin, by JD

Continuing our musical journey with an unlikely combination:

In 1971, British chat-show host Michael Parkinson, a longtime jazz fan, came up with the idea of including Grappelli on his show Parkinson, where he would be joined by the classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, with the two musicians performing a duet. Although Menuhin had no jazz training and a distinctly classical style of playing, the result went down very well with the British public. The pair went on to record three collaborative albums between 1972 and 1976, with Menuhin playing parts written out by Grappelli while the latter improvised in a classic jazz fashion. During their appearance on Parkinson's show, Menuhin played his prized Stradivari dating from 1714, while Grappelli revealed his instrument was made by Goffredo Cappa in 1695.

Stephane Grappelli & Yehudi Menuhin - Autumn Leaves

Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli - Minor Swing

Lullaby of Birdland

Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin

Menuhin (violín) & Grappelli (teclado)

‘Golden’ Brown’s cattle raid on pensions

Reposted from ‘Wolves of Westminster,’ 5 August 2024
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The new Labour Government plans to use our pension money to fund infrastructure and clean energy, but there are some major problems with this idea.

We can see the attraction for a cash-strapped government. The total value of British pension investments is over £1,800 billion. Taken together with the near £2,000 billion assets of UK insurance companies, there is enough to pay off the national debt and still have a trillion left over. A goldmine! Why not put it to use for the nation?

The idea is in the Brown Commission’s comprehensive plan for Britain’s future, as tasked by Sir Keir Starmer and issued in 2022:

‘We see scope for greater private investment in our infrastructure from careful, long-term investors, like some of our large pensions and insurance companies, who need stable long term assets to support pensions in payment. The regulatory framework which governs those investments should not discourage it, and government and local leaders should work with the industry to devise the best mechanisms to attract private capital into these long-term public projects.’ [p. 83]

It was then included in Labour’s 2024 General Election manifesto:

‘Britain’s world-leading financial services industry has a major role to play in mobilising trillions of pounds in private capital to address the greatest long-term challenge of our age. Labour will make the UK the green finance capital of the world, mandating UK-regulated financial institutions – including banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers – and FTSE 100 companies to develop and implement credible transition plans that align with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.’

The late, great Frank Field MP foresaw the temptation offered by juicy pension funds when he set up the Parliamentary Pensions Reform Group. The 2002 Civitas discussion document stressed [pp. 37-38] the importance of trustees in protecting the assets from outside interference:

‘Because it is desirable to curtail the influence of the government in running the pension, the trustees will be invested with quite considerable powers. These will also be established in the Act and will include:

• the power to appoint and dismiss fund managers and decide on the number of fund managers the scheme requires;

• the setting of investment strategy;

• the power to make changes in contribution rates.’

The primary responsibility of pension funds is to provide pensions. Using their assets for political objectives, e.g. to boost investment in the UK, risks compromising fund performance and thus the financial security of the pensioner.

Here are three drawbacks to Westminster’s proposed tinkering:

Over-investment in the UK. Writing for CapX, Tim Worstall says that UK pension schemes already allocate too much to the domestic market, when they should be seeking higher returns abroad from more dynamic economies. This is especially important now that many schemes have moved away from final-pension ‘defined benefit’ arrangements to ‘defined contribution’ plans, thus shifting the risk onto the beneficiaries, who will not know until retirement how much money they have, and what annuity or other form of income based on it they will receive.

The use of funds to develop ‘clean energy’. So far, most of the alternative energy provision is nowhere near cost-effective compared to oil, gas and coal. Without government subsidies and revenue guarantees, even nuclear power might falter. Besides, the supposed progress we have made in cleanness has been achieved by transferring industrial production to countries that press ahead with polluting power plants as they continue to catch up with our standard of living.

The ability of the market to front-run official initiatives. We saw this when Gordon Brown announced (on 7 May 1999) that he was going to sell half Britain’s gold reserves:

‘The advance notice of the substantial sales drove the price of gold down by 10% by the time of the first auction on 6 July 1999. With many gold traders shorting, gold reached a low point of US$252.80 on 20 July.’

If the Labour pension/insurance initiative proceeds, look for pinstripe suits buying into the boost – maybe even forming start-up green energy companies, then exiting as soon as they sniff a policy change coming. Exploiting pensions and other investments for political and eco-fantasy ends may result in hobbling fund performance, hitting pensioners and savers while enriching smart hedge fund managers.

In short, ‘Golden’ Brown’s idealism and naïvety could cost the country heavily – again!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tuba Skinny encore, by JD

We have featured Tuba Skinny a couple of times so far. Well here they are again with their interpretation of Country Music. It seems they are regular guests at the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival.

https://delawarevalleybluegrass.org/

Tuba Skinny- Any Old Time, Jimmie Rodgers song, “Bluegrass adjacent” Del. Valley Bluegrass Festival

Tuba Skinny- It Hurts Me Too, Tampa Red song from 1940

Tuba Skinny- All Night Long at the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival 8/31/19”

Tuba Skinny - "Blue Moon Of Kentucky"

Tuba Skinny - Hank Williams New Orleans Style - Your Cheatin Heart

Tuba Skinny plays "I'm Going Back Home" from their album "Some Kind-A-Shake".

Rishi's Green Light For War

Can we stop the cross-party lurch towards Armageddon?

I love Quentin Letts’ cheeky wit but in describing last week’s PMQs as ‘a bore’ he missed this explosive moment from Rishi Sunak:

‘I know at first hand how important it is that our Prime Minister can use his prerogative power to respond quickly militarily to protect British national security, sometimes without giving this House prior notice. These are perhaps the most difficult decisions that a Prime Minister can take, and I welcomed his support when I made them. I want to take this opportunity to assure him of the Opposition’s support if he deems it necessary to take similar action in the future.’

Done in plain sight: the Opposition handing carte blanche to the Government to declare war. Not that the royal prerogative needs it, and that is another issue.

In the first instance we assume this refers to Ukraine/Russia, though other countries are also swimming into view. In their exchange, both Sunak and the PM approvingly said, reporting from Starmer’s attendance at the NATO summit two days earlier, that Ukraine was on an ‘irreversible path to [NATO] membership.’ Given Russia’s red lines, the implications are umistakable.

In my view, the direction of travel is insane.

Also, what happened to our adversarial Parliament, a system designed to thrash out the truth and restrain acts of folly by the Executive? We have seen with the Covid fiasco how multi-party consensus has its dangers; how much more so, with the prospect of atomic Mutually Assured Destruction.

If only the fiery left-wing orator George Galloway had been re-elected to Parliament, so that he could raise his dissenting voice. Instead he is reduced to using YouTube to interview former weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the risk of nuclear conflict. UK Army head General Sir Roly Walker has told the RUSI Land War Conference that our armed forces are under-resourced and we need to double them by 2027. Ritter says the crisis may come sooner, for the latest START Treaty, limiting the use of strategic nuclear weapons, is due to run out on February 4, 2026. After this, both sides may rush to reinstall intermediate range nuclear missiles close to Ukraine’s border with Russia.

Ritter thinks NATO stupidly believes it can continue to push on and call Russia’s bluff, but because of technological development the time for leaders to make rational decisions in an emergency has shortened. Russia might have as little as six minutes to follow protocols and decide whether to respond with atomic weapons; and there is, he says, no such thing as a limited nuclear war.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has now set its ‘Doomsday Clock’, an indicator of their assessment of potential global disaster from various threats, to ‘90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been—in large part because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.’

Would a Trump victory in the coming Presidential election ease back the hands on the clock? Not according to Ritter, on his Substack site:

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has proffered rhetoric which has led many to believe he would end the conflict in Ukraine, and thereby open the door for better relations with Russia. But this policy is predicated on the concept of the “perfect phone call” between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin where the Russian leader accedes to American-dictated terms regarding Ukraine which would fall far short of Russia’s stated goals. Trump has made it clear that if Putin fails to bend the knee on Ukraine, he will then flood Ukraine with weapons.

Ritter is proposing a mass US voter movement telling Dems and the GOP that their November ballots will go to whichever side pledges a commitment to peace and the prevention of nuclear war. Surely we in the UK, too, should urge our MPs to turn back from impending disaster.

We must also hope that Sunak’s replacement as Party Leader will offer a modified position on Ukraine. As Churchill said in 1954, ‘Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.’

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Also published at the Bruges Group blog