Woke as a career move

It’s a commonplace that schoolteachers are left-wing. The truth can be more sordid.

In the 80s I worked as an English teacher in a large, well disciplined secondary school. Proportionately there were fewer promoted posts - you can only have one Head of Department and one deputy and both of those knew when they were well off and had no plans to move on.

The other ladder out of the classroom was the pastoral side. There was a comfortable office with several staff, one for each House (Slytherin etc) and they too were in no hurry to leave. It was good, well-paid fun shooting the breeze and listening to children’s problems. Fewer classes on one’s timetable, less dull old marking.

When women English teachers went to another school they sometimes used their leaving speeches to mention the lack of career opportunities especially for females. The headteacher was aware of this as a general problem irrespective of sex but this was before schools had the freedom to manage their budgets as they wished. He had turned his school from an underperformer to a leader and there was an impermeable layer of heads of subject who could not contemplate shifting to one of the dump establishments.

So a couple of my colleagues hit on the idea of using politics to get noticed somehow. One who hadn’t a drop of Celtic blood in her got the department to order a class set of a play about the Irish potato famine. Not many laughs in that and not particularly well-crafted, but you don’t have to be a very skilful and entertaining writer provided the subject is such that we all know what face to pull and attitude to adopt.

Another - white - got onto the anti-racist bandwagon, using what might be a drama slot to divide the youngsters into blue- and brown-eyed and then pretending to play favourites.

English is a fertile hot bed for these shenanigans because aside from grammar (which for a long time was almost verboten) it isn’t a subject. Back in 1857 the Cambridge wit Charles Stuart Calverley set his friends a faux examination paper on Dickens’ ‘Pickwick Papers’ but it took until 1910 for his alma mater to set up a real department in this field (several London universities broke the ground far earlier but they were redbrick, don’t you know, old boy.)

The Gramscian assault on education as a vehicle for cultural transmission succeeded in replacing e.g. Milton’s Lycidas with, well, look at set texts over the last decades for British exams at 11, 16 and 18. At one point radicals were suggesting Shakespeare should be scrapped to which the working-class critic Richard Hoggart replied they “needed their heads read.”

Now whether the hijacking of our culture in the interests of private profit ultimately rewarded these two teachers in the way they wished, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

But I suggest that corruption often spreads less from political conviction than from bending with the wind and using it to steer towards one’s personal goals.

Sunday grab bag

 Our out-of-door relief cat - a slim and handsome black model with white feet - came into the kitchen to rob the resident’s plate but seeing only crunchies uttered thin pleading cries. We caved in and put a packet of superior meat on the outside dish and he laid into it lustily. “He’s eating in a way that makes his ears waggle,” I said to my wife. “So do you,” she replied. I’d never noticed, but then you wouldn’t, would you?

Who wants to be a millionaire an ex-pat? Gambling sites are missing a trick: they should say something like “WIN ENOUGH TO GET OUT OF BURNHAM’S BRITAIN!” As we are becoming poorer we are betting more - £17.5 billion in the year to March 2026. Maybe the Chancellor’s plan to balance the budget is to distress us so much that our vices supply a robust tax base. But landing the jackpot may not be necessary: this video looks at five countries that don’t need visas and could be affordable on a State pension. That said, warm weather, clean seas and seafood lunches can’t make up for losing our family, friends and culture. Nothing left for it but to stand and fight, then.

Comedy post: Dave Barry recounts what happened when he got his AI assistant to call his friends - using a clone of his voice - to tell them he was too busy watching football to do it himself…

Dave Barry’s Substack

Bernice and My Friends

A few months ago I was boarding a flight out of Detroit, standing in a long line of passengers behind a woman who was with two boys aged maybe 10 or 11. As we approached the aircraft door, the woman turned to the boys and said five words. I contend that these are five words no adult has ever felt the need to say, in any language, to two girls…

Read more

a day ago · 980 likes · 304 comments · Dave Barry

The first UK storm this season is called Austen, after a meteorologist apparently but by coincidence the authoress Jane Austen is due to be replaced on British £10 banknotes by some animal as part of the general airbrushing out of our culture. It doesn’t seem fair to sully people’s names with destructive associations (though I could understand if the eleventh was called Karen.) Instead why not extend the wildlife theme to gales, from Aardvark to Zebu; if the latest was christened Binturong rather than Boelo I’d feel more positive about it. Or if you prefer to vent, how about terms of abuse? I’m sure you can come up with the first few.

Finally, this post claims guinea pigs have different voices. Can you tell? https://www.facebook.com/reel/1134419255934184

Why the British State is “dysfunctional”

The Lords Constitution Committee is looking at constitutional safeguards and on 14 October questioned Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to Boris Johnson when the latter was PM.

Cummins gave three main reasons why our political system is failing:

1. Public service no longer attracts elite talented people, who instead have gone into money-making private enterprises.

2. Government ministers have ceased to be masters of their brief and personally accountable to Parliament for the performance of their departments. Their answerability has become a “fake charade.”

3. The Cabinet Office has grabbed political power it should never have had. It was set up during WWI to deal with crisis but at that time it was agreed on all sides that the Office should not be responsible for making government policy or for personnel and public appointments. Now it is.

We are lacking elite talent, ministerial responsibility and speed of execution (cutting through bureaucracy). All three have become “more or less unlawful”!

The problem are interconnected. “If you have duff people you will have duff institutions and it will become hard to attract talent.” Young talent becomes disillusioned and the ablest look for a way out.

Asked whether he thought the constitution was under serious threat Cummings replied that there is “a general collapse of trust in the competence and integrity of institutions” including political parties, the media, Parliament and the civil service. “Because of the internet people can see many of the lies they are told and a fundamental lack of responsibility for things.”

These difficulties are not limited to Britain but are found in other Western countries.

Russia’s President Putin is only a minor threat compared with our own Ministry of Defence (e.g. hundreds of billions wasted in procurement, resistance to learning about drones from Ukraine) and the lawyers in the Cabinet Office pursuing “lawfare” against the SAS.

Are there too many arm’s-length institutions (quangos etc) checking ministerial power? Yes, said Cummings, and it started under the Thatcher government with the idea that these bodies could run like businesses with CEOs; instead their decision-making tends to be opaque. He has been told by civil servants that the quality of MPs is rubbish and they don’t want the responsibility; ministers and MPs have become “infantilised” and are “largely happy with this process.” Fewer arm’s-length bodies would be welcome but ministers need to be made personally responsible as once they were.

…………………………………………………

A couple of thoughts:

Labour plans for decentralisation/regionalisation extend this process and the intention from Blair onwards has been to set bureaucratic socialism in concrete and so make a Conservative recovery impossible; even if it ruins the country.

The exact opposite of sclerotic managerialism and failure can be found in the way Elon Musk runs his businesses. I read recently the account of an engineer newly joined who was amazed and delighted that he could suggest an idea and see it modelled and trialed in days rather than bogged down in layers of committee approval.

Gas flare-up in Parliament

Yesterday the Speaker of the House of Commons furiously reprimanded the Government for telling the news media about the North Sea “Jackdaw” gas drilling approval before announcing it in the House. This is not the first time that Hoyle has taken Labour to task for arrogantly sidelining Parliament and therewith the electorate. The Mail’s Quentin Letts described the telling-off as volcanic. Watch the explosion from 12:48 here: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/cbcb29bd-5303-42c8-97de-a2cd2fc79386?in=12:48:19

As a result of this breach of protocol environmental activists were protesting outside the Department of Energy even before the official announcement in the Debating Chamber:

That was a bit quick, wasn’t it? Interesting demographic, too.

At least they weren’t setting fire to the city, unlike in France - so polluting!

But don’t they realise that there is more than one path to Net Zero? While we hope to power the nation one day solely with “clean” energy we have to keep the lights on and fossil fuels are needed during the changeover.

Perhaps they truly don’t understand. And why should we expect them to, when much of the news media and the Government fails to make that case?

Is yesterday’s policy announcement a tacit admission that however imperfect our democratic system may be it does matter after all? A population sitting in the cold and dark eating bread sandwiches and baked beans straight out of the can is unlikely to vote for a Labour Party that put them in that position.

Unfortunately this unlikely to be much of a boost for the Conservative Opposition. When they were in power they had ample opportunity to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act and chose not to. Kemi Badenoch said in March last year that Net Zero by 2050 is not achievable and in the following October the Party finally pledged to ditch the Act. Too late? And they have still not been forgiven for other matters; they may wait in vain for “Buggins’ turn.”

Is the Jackdaw gas decision a signal that Labour is growing up and becoming commonsensical, or is it a misleading flirt preparatory to going to the polls while the parties of the Right are inadequately prepared and fighting each other?

Public Execution and Public Unrest

The mass murderer Nidal Hasan is to be executed by firing squad on 3 December. It is likely to be a swift and certain death unlike the recent botched administration of lethal injections to Christa Pike, now discharged from hospital and returned to Death Row.

The controversy in Hasan’s case is the proposal to livestream the shooting, though President Trump is said to be having second thoughts about it.

Journalist Peter Hitchens advises us against watching, because of the (im)moral effect on spectators. He quotes Charles Dickens’ witnessing a double hanging in 1849 and the shameful behaviour of the public.

Blood lust seems to be part of the human psyche; it is the basis of much of our entertainment. How many fictional violent deaths do we see and read about? Does that increase our homicidal tendencies? Yet even in societies that did not have books movies and TV there was plenty of war and murder in real life.

One motive for the State to worry about carrying out judicial killings in public is self-preservation. The people might begin to question the State’s right to kill.

The last woman to be burned at the stake was Catherine Murphy in 1789, as France exploded in revolution a few miles away. Less than four years later the captive French King was guillotined, together with his wife. It gave rulers pause for thought.

Five decades after Murphy’s execution Parliament rejected the Chartists’ first petition for democratic representation in July 1839 and arrested local leaders of the movement in Newport. A mass uprising there three months later was put down with lethal force, resulting in scores of civilian deaths and casualties. The three ringleaders were convicted of high treason and sentenced to the prolonged and grisly penalty set for that offence. However the British Government feared a political backlash and widespread popular unrest so the penalty was soon commuted to transportation for life to Tasmania. That was the last time hanging, drawing and quartering was used as a form of capital punishment.

But now a State agenda of war, costly energy and disruptive levels of mass immigration is being imposed on a resentful populace and tensions have increased once more. What will make the Crown in Parliament listen?

"History has taught me, that RULERS are much the same in all ages & under all forms of government: they are as bad as they dare to be," said the poet Coleridge in a letter to his brother George (c. 10 March 1798).

War and the Big Picture 2: The Map Man

In the previous post on this subject we saw how Britain was keen to join in the great conflict of 1914, despite General Foch, then chief of France’s War College, rejecting (in 1910) our offer of military assistance and Germany looking for our neutrality (in 1912) in return for their not enlarging their fleet to rival ours.

Pace Foch’s stubborn pride, when King Edward VII toured Europe in 1908 the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau told him

“When the time comes when France needs help, England’s sea power will not be enough... Napoleon was beaten at Waterloo, not Trafalgar.”

The King went on to visit the Russian Czar and the German Ambassador reported to Kaiser Wilhelm that Edward desired peace. The Kaiser wrote on the report:

“Lies. He wants war. But I have to start it so he does not have the odium.”

The 1839 Treaty of London provided that excuse.

As early as 1906 Colonel Repington, on behalf of our War Office, met the French military attaché in London, Major Victor Huguet and sought a confidential assurance that France would not be the first to violate Belgian neutrality as such an act would force Great Britain into the field to defend its obligations under the Treaty.

Eight years later on July 31, 1914, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey dispatched identical notes to both France and Germany asking if they would engage to respect the neutrality of Belgium. The French agreed the same day but the Germans declined, their Foreign Secretary stating that a reply would reveal their military campaign plan.

Bingo.

But why? Why did we want to pitch in?

It was going to be about more than historic Franco-German rivalry.

Clemenceau saw it as not only an issue for wider Europe but an existential issue for his country. On 5 May 1914 his newspaper l’Homme Libre stated in an editorial

“One would have to be deliberately blind not to see that the [German] lust for power, the impact of which makes Europe tremble each day, has fixed as its policy the extermination of France.”

Gallic excitability and overstatement fogs the lens: Berlin’s real objective was an invasion of Russia and Germany needed to secure her western border first and fast; crossing Belgium was to be the quick way. With France not annihilated but subjugated Germany could then turn East.

So the big picture as we saw it was, as when we had fought Napoleon, stopping anyone becoming master of Europe.

But the even bigger picture was the struggle for, or prevention of, mastery of the whole vast Eurasian landmass.

Which leads us to a damp and dreary day in London, at the Savile Row headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society. There, on 25 January 1904, a distinguished geographer called Halford Mackinder gave a lecture that some say established him as the father of geopolitical theory.

The next post will discuss this in detail.

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As before, here we have drawn on early chapters of Barbara Tuchman’s meticulous study “The Guns of August.” 

War and the Big Picture

As we skitter towards another Continental war that may finally see the end of our country let us look back to the start of our ruin. If enough can understand what 1914 cost us then perhaps we can turn back, even now.

There are over 100,000 war memorials in the UK erected in memory of our soldiers killed in WWI. They were paid for by local communities not by the Government.

Each name on the stone cross is someone who might otherwise have lived a humble and productive everyday life. Moreover, someone who was fit enough to fight, which in some places put them in a minority: AI says we discovered how Britain had been failing the people at the call-up for the Second Boer War (1899–1902):

Roughly 30% to 40% of British recruits—and up to 60% to 90% in impoverished industrial cities—were physically unfit for military service due to malnutrition, rickets, and poor health.

Across the nation locally we grieve on Remembrance Sunday and important people lay wreaths on the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Yet one British PM after another bangs the drum for Ukraine - that and abandoning the strategically important Chagos Islands are two of the few early significant commitments made by our current, Brezhnev-eyebrowed Andy Pandy. Who takes our Premiers aside and gives them their starting orders?

What were (some of) the (social) consequences of the Great War?

Over 700,000 British servicemen dead, with another couple of hundred thousand from the wider Empire. Add in the prisoners, wounded and crippled and the toll rises to some three million, for our side alone.

So many widows and bereaved mothers. So many with disabled and disfigured husbands. How many who never even had the opportunity of marriage and family life?

As common soldier Michael Williams tells the incognito King Henry V:

But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all “We died at such a place,” some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

Henry replies that it is for men to sort out their own lives so they can if need be, die with a clear conscience. There, that was easy! You won’t out-talk a politician.

But surely there had to be some compelling reason for us to declare war on Germany in August 1914?

Mmmm… not exactly.

Germany wanted to expand into Russia whose naval/military weakness had been highlighted ten years earlier when beaten in a war with Japan. To avoid having to fight on two fronts the German strategy was first to defeat France within a few weeks before Russia could mobilise sufficiently to resist an invasion by the Kaiser’s armies.

France had been defeated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and fear of France had helped persuade southern Germanic States to join what then became a large unified Germany.

The French were heavily fortified along their common border with Germany, so the latter’s Schlieffen Plan was to cut through Belgium instead and then head for Paris. The French thought they could halt German forces in Belgium and counter-strike through the French-German border with Berlin in their sights.

What did this tussle have to do with us and our global, sea-based empire?

We had to cast around for a justification, a casus belli. We found it in the multinational 1839 Treaty of London that guaranteed majority-Catholic Belgium’s independence from the Protestant Netherlands.

Not all the British Cabinet was aware of the determination of certain parties within and outside the Government to get involved. But the military correspondent of the Times, Colonel Repington was okayed by Lord Esher and Sir George Clarke at the War Office to open negotiations with the French Government, seeking an assurance from the French that France would not be the first to violate Belgian neutrality and telling them that whoever did so would “automatically” bring us into the field in defence of our treaty obligations. This had never previously been officially confirmed.

Nor was the prospect of British assistance initially welcomed by the French. In 1910 the future Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch was asked what minimum size of force we would need to send to help and he replied “A single British soldier - and we will see to it that he will be killed.”

In 1912 Viscount Haldane went to Germany to secure an agreement that they would keep their navy smaller than ours; for that they demanded a guarantee of British neutrality in the event of a Franco-British war, which was not offered. Haldane came away convinced that

“once the German war party had got into the saddle it would be war not merely for the overthrow of France or Russia but for the domination of the world.”

So all our stone crosses mark the consequences of a geopolitical strategy first systematically described by a British geographer in 1904; about which more anon.

………………………

The latter half of this post draws on Chapter Three of Barbara Tuchman’s meticulous study “The Guns of August” - thanks to Peter Hitchens for the lead.

Modern echoes of Roman Britain

Robin Fleming’s “Britain After Rome” begins with a sketch of our pre-410 AD history as a colony of the Roman Empire.

For a couple of centuries we had a disproportionately large share of Rome’s imperial legions. To support it there were massive imports of basic supplies but also a privately-run trade in luxuries carried (for free?) in the same ships. Towns sprang up, complete with public amenities such as baths and basilica.

Then in the third century the Empire had increasing problems with barbarian tribes on its borders. The armed forces in Britain were scaled back and redeployed on the Continent. Less wine and olive oil here, more beer and butter; less foreign pottery, more locally made Samian ware.

Things stabilised in the fourth century but did not return to the prosperity of old times. Towns withered and their population declined; the baths and basilica available to the better sort of Romano-British ceased to operate.

But disparity in wealth grew. Fine big villas were built, some within the areas vacated in the towns. A fortunate minority had private bathing pools in their mansions, and reception rooms designed to impress visitors and business associates with their classical mosaics, pictures and fabrics. This was the age of bureaucrats and administrators, living in a bubble protected from the great unwashed outside.

Until the Empire fell.

“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” 

Cooking Fat: cats being disgusting

The fat item who has been sponging off us for years has rewarded us with a technicolour yawn not once but twice in recent days.

First I came down to the kitchen to make the morning brew and there along the fortunately wipe-clean floor were what you might call “islands in the stream.” Much kitchen roll and antibac, floor mop after. Perhaps cats were sent to make us houseproud.

Yesterday I’m shaving upstairs and hear a rhythmic hoicking down in the hallway. Shouting from a distance stops nothing. This time the gift was on the mat under the radiator, so a paper towel scoop-up and the mat flung into the washing machine sorted it. That was easy, hey?

This morning it’s tea time again and I am about to check the shower in the garden room so put my feet into the worn old deck shoes I keep under the stairs and use as slippers. Or rather, my right foot. Squelch. Round Two. There it is, inside and outside, on the carpet offcut and a bit on the vacuum cleaner hose. Scoop scoop, wipe wipe, spray spray. Shoes now bumping in the washing machine; we’re still uncertain whether we can launder the offcut.

Isn’t nature wonderful?

War with Russia: before the bullshit tsunami hits

It’s only the other side that does propaganda and our government is stepping up to protect us from it. So PM Burnham has just told the UN that we are setting up a new National Centre for Information Defence.

Already some are dubbing it “Mini Truth” after Orwell’s corporate fountainhead of lies in “1984” and so Defence Secretary Wes Streeting insists that it will not be used for “policing domestic political dissent.” He doesn’t say that we do that already by other means including plodettes rapping your front door merely for viewing a social media post.

That doesn’t go far enough for Paul Richards, Labour commentator, speechwriter, erstwhile Parliamentary candidate and currently the treasurer of the subversive-socialist Fabian Society. Richards says:

“The British will rise to greatness against Russia. We would have to lock a few people up….pro-Russian voices, people who say there isn’t a threat, don’t fight for your country, that don’t go to war for Burnham.“

“Rise to greatness”… authentic meaningless bullshit. But then he’s a speechwriter.

We’re not yet at war with Russia, formally. How, I don’t know, given what we’re already doing for and in Ukraine. Time was we had the decency to declare a war before we started fighting it.

But once it’s “game on” what fun will the Government have with us! Decades of starving our armed forces have left us unable to tackle a paw-shaking kitten abroad but woe unto any placard-waver who protests at home.

Perhaps this is why so many prisoners have been released early; the authorities say it is because of overcrowding and yet we have found space for 38,000 illegal immigrants in the twelve months to June 2026. Make my hotel a three-star, please; no allergies but I prefer not to eat shellfish.

Forewarning: if Burnham, Richards and the rest of our neo-Brownshorts decide to get seriously tough on dissidents and I can’t get to the airport in time, look out for my jingoistic support for any appalling crime HMG chooses to inflict on our people. My codeword to tell you that I don’t mean a word of it will be “Eulalie” meaning “up yours, Spode-Burnham, Spode-Richards…”

… and, tragically, Spode-Rees-Mogg. Surely this sober Catholic Conservative grandee cannot have fallen for the murderous war hysteria - “Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?” But he has:

“In the next few years we may face a war. And if we face a war, we will need people who will join the armed services and who will go out and do their duty (...) people have to die to save their country as they did in the First and Second World Wars.”

Ah now, that opens a can of worms. In each of those cases we were the ones to declare war on Germany and in neither case had the Germans been previously intent on destroying us; their eyes were turned eastwards.

Our twentieth century wars have brought us to our present sorry state, close to collapse even before the “intermittent drizzle of malignant robots” begins. And for why, this inhuman destruction of human happiness and prosperity?

Geopolitics.

I shall trace the history of this cartographers’ slaughter mission in another post.

Unless I am prevented, in which case “Eulalie!”

AI advice for doomscrollers

Here are some AI thoughts for a less than cheery scenario. Don’t blame me!

Q: We are British pensioners. In the event of a European war with Russia and economic disaster in the UK in which foreign country are we likely to be accepted and safe? And where should we invest what is left of our savings?

Ans. 1 (from Google’s Gemini):

In the event of a large-scale European war and a severe domestic economic crisis, the safest and most legally accessible foreign countries for British pensioners are geographically isolated nations outside of Europe that offer structured retirement pathways, while the optimal investment strategy focuses heavily on global safe-haven assets decoupled from the UK economy.

Navigating such a severe scenario requires balancing your physical safety, immigration pathways, and financial preservation.

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🔎 Part 1: Where You Are Likely to Be Accepted and Safe

A direct war with Russia would heavily impact continental Europe, eliminating traditional British retirement havens like Spain, France, or Cyprus due to their proximity to the conflict zone and NATO alignment.

To achieve maximum safety and a realistic immigration pathway post-Brexit, look to the Americas or specific insulated regions:

1. Panama 🇵🇦 (Top Recommendation)

• Safety: Geographically distant from European conflict, strictly neutral, and outside any missile ranges.

• Acceptance: Offers the Pensionado Visa, globally recognized as the most accessible retirement visa. It requires a guaranteed lifetime pension of just $1,000 USD (approx. £760) per month.

• Perks: Grants steep, government-mandated discounts on healthcare, utilities, dining, and entertainment. [1]

2. Canada or New Zealand 🇨🇦 🇳🇿

• Safety: Exceptionally safe, stable democracies with massive geographic insulation.

• Acceptance: Neither country offers a simple “pensioner visa” for ordinary retirees. However, they are highly viable if you have direct family ties (children or siblings) who can sponsor you through family reunification pathways.

• Risks: New Zealand will freeze your UK State Pension at its current cash value (no annual Triple Lock increases). [1, 2]

3. Costa Rica 🇨🇷

• Safety: Known as the “Switzerland of Central America,” it has no standing military, a deeply peaceful culture, and zero involvement in European geopolitics.

• Acceptance: The Pensionado program requires a stable retirement income of $1,000 USD per month.

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📊 Part 2: Where to Invest What is Left of Your Savings

In a UK economic disaster, Sterling (£) would likely plummet in value, and UK-centric banks or property markets would face severe distress. To protect your purchasing power abroad, your capital must be diversified out of the UK and into global safe havens: [1]

1. Hard Safe-Haven Currencies 💵 🇨🇭

Do not hold your wealth in Pounds. Convert liquid cash into currencies traditionally resilient to geopolitical collapse:

• US Dollar (USD): The world’s primary reserve currency and the official currency of Panama and Ecuador.

• Swiss Franc (CHF): Backed by a fiercely neutral nation with a history of weathering European conflicts intact.

2. Physical Gold 🪙

• Why: Gold has zero counterparty risk and cannot be inflated away by a central bank during economic ruin.

• Execution: Hold physical gold or invest via physically backed Gold ETFs (such as iShares Physical Gold) stored in secure, non-UK vaults (e.g., Zurich or Singapore). [1]

3. Globally Diversified, Non-UK Index Funds 📈

• Why: Avoid domestic UK equities (FTSE). If the UK economy crashes, global corporations will still generate revenue elsewhere.

• Execution: Move your investment or brokerage accounts into a World Index Fund (Ex-UK) or an S&P 500 ETF denominated in US Dollars. This ensures your wealth is tied to the performance of global mega-corporations rather than the British economy. [1, 2]

4. Short-Term US Treasury Bills (T-Bills) 🇺🇸

• Why: Backed by the US government, these are widely considered the safest debt instruments in the world during wartime. They provide a reliable, low-risk yield paid out in US Dollars. [1]

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⚠️ Critical “Order of Operations” for British Pensioners

1. Expatriate Your Capital First: Open an international or offshore bank account (such as in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man) that allows you to hold multiple currencies (USD/EUR/CHF) outside the immediate UK domestic retail banking system.

2. Secure Private Healthcare: If you leave the UK, you lose access to the NHS. Ensure any destination you choose has a high-quality private healthcare network, and ensure you factor international health insurance into your budget. [1, 2]

3. Audit Your Pension Mechanics: Check whether your private or state pension providers pay out to foreign bank accounts, and be aware of the “frozen pension” rules depending on your chosen country. [1, 2]

Ans. 2 (from Grok):

Ireland stands out as the most practical option for British pensioners seeking acceptance and relative safety in a European conflict involving Russia, combined with UK economic turmoil. Switzerland is another strong European neutral candidate (though harder to access), while distant options like New Zealand or Canada offer geographic isolation but face significant residency barriers and often freeze the UK State Pension.

No place is risk-free in a major European war. NATO involvement would pull in most of the continent; economic shocks, supply disruptions, energy issues, and refugee flows would affect neighbours. Pure military neutrality is rare and imperfect in practice (Switzerland and Ireland maintain policies of military non-alignment/neutrality, but both apply sanctions and face strategic pressures). Geographic distance helps more than formal neutrality alone for pure physical safety from conventional fighting.

Why Ireland ranks highly for British pensioners

• Acceptance and ease of move: Under the long-standing Common Travel Area (CTA), British citizens can live, work, and access many services in Ireland without a visa or residency permit. This is uniquely straightforward post-Brexit—no points system, income thresholds for entry, or complex applications. You can relocate relatively quickly.

• Safety and neutrality: Ireland ranks among Europe’s safer and more peaceful countries (high Global Peace Index scores). It is not a NATO member and maintains a policy of military neutrality. It is geographically somewhat peripheral (island nation). Crime is low in most areas; it is culturally familiar, English-speaking, and has established British communities.

• Practicalities for pensioners: UK State Pension continues to be paid and is uprated annually (as in EEA countries and those with reciprocal agreements). Access to healthcare and certain social supports is facilitated under CTA arrangements (though you should verify habitual residence rules for full benefits). Cost of living is higher than southern Europe but lower than Switzerland; proximity to the UK aids family visits and logistics.

• Drawbacks: Not the cheapest; weather is similar to the UK; healthcare has waiting lists (private insurance is wise); Ireland is still European and could face secondary effects (energy, trade, cyber, refugee pressure).

Switzerland is the classic neutral (permanent armed neutrality since 1815, high safety rankings). It is stable, wealthy, and well-defended, with excellent healthcare. However, post-Brexit UK nationals are treated as third-country nationals. Retirement residency (non-lucrative permit, typically for those 55+) is discretionary, requires proof of sufficient independent means (well above social-assistance levels), and usually “special personal ties” to Switzerland (prior stays, family, etc.). Quotas and cantonal approval apply; it is expensive. Pension uprating continues.

Other European options popular with British retirees (Portugal, Spain, Cyprus, Greece, Malta) offer easier visas (e.g., D7 passive-income or equivalent), lower costs, sun, British communities, uprated State Pensions (EU/EEA), and good healthcare access via S1 forms in many cases. They score highly in retirement rankings for lifestyle and value. They are not neutral, however, and would be more directly exposed in a continental conflict.

Outside Europe for greater distance:

• New Zealand or Canada: High safety, political stability, English-speaking, Commonwealth ties. Geographic isolation reduces direct war risk. Residency is difficult for pure retirees—no straightforward retirement visas; pathways often require family sponsorship, substantial investment, or skilled-work routes with age disadvantages. UK State Pension is typically frozen (no annual uprating). Australia is similarly hard (retirement visas closed; parent visas costly and slow) with frozen pensions.

• Lower-cost non-European spots (Thailand, Malaysia, Panama, etc.) appear in retirement lists for affordability but freeze the pension, have variable long-term visa stability, and different healthcare/safety profiles.

Realistic caveats: Acceptance depends on individual circumstances (income, health, family ties). Wars create chaos—borders can close, transport disrupt, currencies swing. “Safe” is relative; prepare contingency plans, multiple residencies if possible, and monitor official advice. Economic disaster in the UK could involve inflation, banking stress, or capital controls—diversify early.

Investing remaining savings

This is not personalised financial advice. Rules, taxes, and markets change; seek regulated independent advice (e.g., via a UK-regulated adviser familiar with cross-border issues, or local equivalents). Consider your risk tolerance, time horizon, healthcare needs, and currency exposure. Past performance is no guide to the future.

Core principles for retirees facing uncertainty (geopolitical + economic stress):

• Diversification across asset classes, geographies, and currencies is the main defence. Avoid concentrating everything in UK assets or sterling.

• Preserve purchasing power and liquidity: Keep emergency cash (or near-cash) in stable currencies covering 1–3+ years of spending. Inflation and currency depreciation are key risks in economic turmoil.

• Defensive and real assets: A modest allocation to gold (or other precious metals) is commonly discussed by analysts as a portfolio diversifier and crisis hedge—historically low correlation to equities/bonds in stress periods, and a store of value when currencies or confidence weaken. Typical suggested ranges from various sources are low-to-mid single digits up to around 5–10% (sometimes higher in more aggressive views); size it so a sharp drop is tolerable. Physical bullion, ETFs, or allocated accounts each have storage, liquidity, and tax trade-offs.

• Quality equities and income: Broad global equity exposure (especially non-UK/European) for long-term growth, tilted toward quality companies with pricing power. Dividend or income-focused holdings for cash flow. Bonds (especially short-duration or inflation-linked in stronger currencies) for ballast, though real yields and sovereign risks matter.

• Other real assets: Some exposure to property (carefully, given local markets and liquidity) or commodities can help, but property abroad adds complexity (taxes, maintenance, currency).

• Currency and location: If relocating, align investments with living costs (e.g., euro assets for Ireland). Use multi-currency accounts or specialists for transfers. Be aware of tax residency rules, double-tax treaties, and reporting (UK still has interests in many overseas arrangements).

• Pensions specifically: State Pension can usually be paid abroad (uprated in Ireland/Switzerland/EEA; frozen in many others). Private/workplace pensions can often stay in the UK and be drawn internationally, or considered for QROPS transfer (complex, potential charges, limited options, HMRC rules tightened). Professional advice is essential—transfers can trigger tax and lose protections.

• Avoid: Heavy concentration in any single asset, speculative bets, or products you do not understand. High fees erode returns. Scams proliferate in uncertain times.

Practical next steps: Review total net worth, spending needs, and risk capacity with an adviser. Stress-test portfolios for inflation, currency falls, and equity drawdowns. Keep documents (passports, pension details, wills) accessible and consider dual residency or contingency locations early. Monitor official sources (gov.uk, foreign ministries) rather than speculation.

Circumstances change; the most resilient approach combines practical mobility (Ireland’s ease is a major advantage), diversified real assets, and professional guidance tailored to your situation.

Raving at St Paul’s, by Sackerson

The management of St Paul’s Cathedral have signed a four-year deal with a nightclub called Fabric to use the premises for entertainments.

On Twitter/X the Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan welcomed this decision:

Fabric. St Paul’s Cathedral. Name a more iconic duo.

Bringing together these two institutions will create a one-of-a-kind experience, pairing world-class music with one of our most special landmarks.

But it wasn’t his call and although one suspects that as a Muslim he may have enjoyed seeing how easily the kuffar can be bribed into desecrating one of their houses of worship, answerability lies with the Christians alone.

The public offence it has caused is for two reasons.

Firstly, St Paul’s is a national monument sacred to the memory of many of our great people - naval, military, scientific, literary and so on. As such it is a special place and there are things you simply do not do.

A similarly “iconic” site is Lutens’ Cenotaph, built in 1919-1920 to honour those who fell in the “war to end all wars.” In 2011 when Charlie Gilmour swung on a Union Jack from the Cenotaph his adoptive father’s fame as a rock musician did not save Charlie from a prison sentence. Nor did his claim - as a 21-year-old Cambridge student - not to know what the Cenotaph was; nor his attempt to recruit the war dead as his political allies (“Those who are commemorated by the Cenotaph died to protect the very freedoms that allow the people of Britain the right to protest.”)

But St Paul’s is also a sacred place for Christian religious worship. Secular activities are literally profane - “away from the temple.” All four Gospels in the New Testament describe how Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem and drove out the merchants and those who exchanged money for coinage that was ritually acceptable as offerings.

An American bishop states the central issue here:

“This development simply shows that the leadership of the Church of England has lost any sense of the crucial distinction between the sacred and the secular.”

If that is so then the people drawing salaries and accruing pension rights as religious functionaries and their assistants need to reconsider their positions. As Jesus told his followers:

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”

Another X commentator tells us the secularism is not new: “They rent out the crypt containing Lord Nelson & Duke of wellington graves for corporate drinks parties on top. They claim building itself needs more than £60 million of repairs over the next decade.”

If St Paul’s is nothing more than an entertainment venue requiring physical maintenance then we cannot deplore Osama bin Laden’s remark “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

As Milton said, “The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed” and they will turn elsewhere: other religions, magic, millenarian socialism or various kinds of self-destruction.

In this as in other matters, we seem to be approaching a moment of decision.

Ukraine: Empire wars, by Sackerson

What’s been going on in Ukraine is an extension of a scheme of imperial conflict outlined in a 1904 talk by a man called Mackinder: “The geographical pivot of history.” More on this later.
Meanwhile here is something I wrote back in 2014 about plans to develop Eurasia for the benefit of Russia, Iran and other powers.
…………………..
Russia’s big plans?If we are to understand them, we have to look behind the horrible events in Ukraine - for which the West may turn out to be be partly responsible, if Peter Hitchens is right about the CIA’s Director being spotted in Kiev a couple of weeks ago.

What’s the big picture?

How about, Russia’s future as a non-EU European country?

For all its vastness, the land is far more heavily populated in the West, as hardly anyone wants to live in the cruel cold of the Siberian winter:

(Source)

Then, how about the customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan that started in January 2010, which could be the seed crystal of a sort of eastern EU?

And the massive blue-sky concept, mooted in 2008, of a Trans-Asian Corridor of Development? Here’s a map of how it could look:

(pic source)

On a less gigantic scale, there is the long-proposed Eurasia Canal project, linking the Black Sea to the Caspian via Georgia:

(source)

This was reportedly delayed in 2011, pending the development of cargo facilities in Kazakhstan.

A company called Yaconto LLC had ambitious plans along the same lines, with a naval base at Tuapse (two hours’ drive from Sochi, on the Black Sea):

Yaconto (founded by a Sergey P Yakunin) appears to have ceased trading, but it’s interesting to note that further up the same coastline is the port of Novorossiysk, which has indeed been developed, as I noted in an earlier post:

(pic source)

As part of his integrated plan, Yakunin also proposed the construction of a second waterway parallel to the Bosphorus, to ease shipping between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The last couple of paragraphs refer darkly to potential interference from the corrupt elite in Russia and perhaps this is what has happened after all. (Nevertheless, last year Turkey announced its determination to continue with its own similar plan for a “Kanal Istanbul”.)

And three days ago, President Putin told officials to come up with a plan to develop Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Like China, Russia is under pressure to maintain economic momentum, like a fox with its tail on fire. Her aim - perhaps unattainable - is to achieve 7% pa GDP growth to 2020: have a look at these briefings from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. There’s a long list of challenges to be overcome, including corruption and ineffective law and regulation.

As with China, a rapidly-growing economy is needed to tackle a host of problems, not least demographic challenges. There’s a danger of collapse if their economies stall.

We can only hope that this is not the West’s intention.

Some previous BOM posts on Russia:

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/battle-for-black-sea.html

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/ukraine-belarus-gets-message.html

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/ukraine-never-mind-fascism-taunts.html

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/ukraine-is-it-just-business-plan.html

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/from-sochi-to-sevastopol.html