In other (German) news: he’s lost a wife ….
It’s the ‘day after’ the three by-elections and the result is simply a-ma-zing: the Uniparty won! Yes, the people have spoken and blue-red-yellow got a new MP each. A non-paywalled report is in the DM (link), the broadsheets also have their paywalled reports. That’s all I’ll say on this issue because getting three fresh players strutting the stage that is the House of Peacocks is irrelevant: that stage will close next year anyway.
Meanwhile the customary compilation of the MSM print editions’ front pages shows nicely that print can no longer ‘compete’ with online editions when it’s about providing ‘breaking’ news to their readers. This is reflected in Auntie B’s title: “Newspaper headlines: Farage gets apology and King Charles gets ‘pay rise’” (link). However, this headline shows the bias of the BBC, always working hand-in-hand with the grauniad. Yon paper is the only one which leads with the royal pay rise. The report is as woolly and full of envy as can be (link). Why it is a scandal, worthy of a revolution, that the Crown gets a rise after an income freeze: dunno.
The Times, despite their increasing push for regime change to Labour, is still reasonably ‘royal’ to avoid the envy-dripping screeches from the Guardian, writing:
“The King has agreed to give up his share of multibillion-pound windfall profits from Britain’s offshore wind farms in a deal with the government that will effectively see the royal family’s day to day spending frozen for another two years.” (link, paywalled)
I’ll not delve further into this murk, I’ll only ask how come that the conglomerated ‘Left’, always screaming to ‘tax teh rich’ and to take away their possessions, never demands that the BBC drastically lower the salaries for their employees, especially the ‘star presenters’. Don’t ‘the workers’ still pay the telly tax? Neither do they demand that the obscene salaries for other ‘stars’ like footballers be reduced. Aren’t footie fans who pay for that spectacle generally of the ‘working class’? I’m sure you can add to that list of ‘rich people’, for example mandarins come to mind …
Meanwhile, the DT reported that the ‘leader’ of the BMA’s consultants group – they were on strike yesterday and are today as well – made a claim which is beyond the pale:
“A British Medical Association (BMA) leader has accused the Government of letting migrants “drown” at a rally alongside Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, in support of the consultants’ strike. Dr Jackie Applebee, who sits on the union’s governing council, also said on Thursday that ministers were seeking to blame migrants for the plight of the NHS.” (paywalled link)
Words fail me! I wonder, given the obvious political bias of the BMA’s members, if we can expect the NHS to do a ‘reputational risk triage’ and refuse patients treatment for their opinions expressed on social media. In view of the increasing backlog of NHS patients waiting for treatment, doctors surely must do some triage to see who can be treated first!
Staying with medicine, there’s a new ‘drugs shortage’. Apparently there are now so many rich, fat people using ‘private clinics’ (how dare they!) to get the new slimming drug injections that the NHS isn’t getting all they need:
“A national patient safety alert warns of “very limited, intermittent supplies” in the UK of Ozempic-style medicines used by slimmers […] The alert says supplies are not expected to stabilise to meet full market demand until at least mid-2024, […] It adds: “The off-label use of these agents for the management of obesity is strongly discouraged. Existing stock must be conserved for use in patients with diabetes.” (link, paywalled)
Just wait for a lovely new outcry from Lefties: ‘stop fat rich from using a drug needed by (fat) diabetic poor people’. Oh, and let’s get rid of any private health companies and surgeries while we’re at it, to save the NHS which can use the money spent in private healthcare.
I leave you with a report from Germany, from a small suburb of Berlin, which has made it into the DM:
“Armed police in anti-terror vehicles surround Berlin forest where lioness is feared to be roaming but suspend hunt until first light – as force insists ‘this isn’t like reports of a crocodile in a lake that turns out to be a big duck, this is totally real’ – Hunters and helicopters have been looking for the lioness in southern Berlin” (link)
Do read the whole piece – it’s as good and up-to-date as the German news sources at the time of writing. The strange thing is that no zoo, circus or private household misses one of their big – not fat! – cats. Still, it’s at least a good training exercise for the Berlin anti-terror squads.
That’s all I have for today. It’s a hogde-pot of ‘news’, I know, but frankly, I’m beyond bothering about the by-election ‘success’ of the Uniparty. I’ll keep an eye out for the fate of that Berlin lioness though. Have a good day.
Stout Yeoman on 21/07/2023 at 11:08 am:
The support for Rejoin EU is worrying; clearly too many traitors in that constituency, hopefully not typical of our country as a whole.
Oh Great & Mighty War rior Viv- We all know you are ‘big into’ hanimals – especially skwirrils and doggies. So if you want to cheer yourself up, take a look at:-
https://sonar21.com/dogs-squirrels-the-west-and-prigozhin/
Just look at the first yootoob – a couple of minutes! It shall make you larf (maybe even Colin H might larf!!).
That was indeed smile~ and giggle inducing! Clearly that squirrel was playing, it could’ve gone up that tree in no time. I’ll not say anything about that dog … I know Jack Russell terriers who’d have had that squirrel in no time. Also, I’ve seen a collie actively climbing a tree, smaller than this one, so the tree trembled and the collie thought it wiser to get back onto the ground …
Oh btw – it’s lovely to see a red squirrel having fun …our grey tree rats are so uninspiring …
Biscotte…………I did find all the Squirrel videos funny, especially that German Squirrel out squirreling that Labrador by dancing around the tree trunk. Yep, definitely funny, and infinitely more funny than Chris’ attempt at stand up comedy. Sea Shells and Sea Shores indeed…..
Yes very good, gave me a good larf which I sure need. . But -er- I got the impression that the squirrel’s movements were computer-generated? I never saw one moving sideways like that?
Aww – what a pity! I said I’d keep you informed about the Berlin lioness saga … well, the police has closed their hunt, people can leave their homes and kids can play outside: the lioness was a wild boar. Heh – they finally got some zoologists and other wildlife experts who told them what’s what. Why it took the authorities so long to ask experts, why they needed a police helicopter, anti-terrorist squads with machine pistols and shields: who knows!
Meanwhile the public has more to laugh about – the lates quip was that Berlin now only needs Nessie in the Berlin river Havel, to complete the new wildlife where wolves, bears and this phantom lion are ‘welcome’.
Still, I enjoyed the hilarity this story created!
More fun facts. In Uxbridge, UKIP’s Rebecca Jane (61 votes) was beaten by Piers Corbyn (101 votes) and by Rejoin EU (105 votes).
Stout Yeoman…………and don’t forget Count Binhead as well who got over 100 votes believe or not. You really do realise it was a bad day at the office so to speak when you get beaten by a joke character in an election, and was probably the main reason why Rebecca Jane was not present at the declaration. It would have helped UKIP’s cause if they had selected a candidate who lived within or nearby the constituency, who was not parachuted in, and was able to devote a bit of time to the election by at least delivering leaflets to all residential addresses and knocking on a few doors. And it would have helped a tiny weeny bit if they had selected a candidate who used their real name. Devoting one Saturday as a day of action and even then only 2 1/2 hours is really not good enough. And it would have helped if they had selected a candidate who had some electoral experience under their belt, or at the very least had someone in charge who had a bit of electoral experience under their belt and was aware of what needed to be done. I offered to help out at this election and was only notified of this by solitary day of action which lasted the 2 1/2 hours with 2 days notice, and which occurred in the last two weeks of the campaign. By that stage I had something else arranged and so couldn’t attend. The party would have had to shelve out the £500 deposit which was subsequently lost, so at the very least it should have put in some effort into the election rather than what appeared to be a half hearted approach. The performance was not good enough, and not good enough by far. So no surprise so ever that the total amounts of votes accrued was the lowly figure of 61.
C H. @3pm. Ouch!!!
Jake……and its a big Ouch as well. I am seriously unimpressed with UKIP’s performance and the way in which the election campaign was obviously approached. Seriously not good enough. It just goes to show how far things have slipped from the party’s heyday. Not a good advertisement for UKIP to be honest, who have a hell of a hill to climb to get back to some level of respectibility.
UKIP used to have active branches that competed in local elections. The parties without established branches engaging locally are the ones that fail to make inroads in general elections.
SY…….my guess is that there is no functioning branch in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, but years ago the UKIP London Region was very proactive to the point that they ran a hustings for the UKIP leadership election in 2017 which was chaired by Freddy Vaacha. I personally don’t know whether that is a viable Region in London any longer or indeed whether there are any members left, but I assume there must be a rump of members remaining bearing in mind the total national membership is around 4000 members and rising slowly. All it would have taken was for somebody involved at a higher level to appoint a campaign organiser and get things moving on the ground in Uxbridge and South Ruislip insofar as doing the basic things like organising the delivery of leaflets to residential addresses. However, that would have cost money to produce the number of leaflets required to deliver one to each residential address and perhaps the party’s finances no longer extend to that type of expense. Insofar as my own county is concerned, there were at one time 17 branches which have all folded and been dissolved and now there is only a County committee which organises everything and this situation is not sustainable. The long and short of it, is that if a political party such as UKIP is going to contest a parliamentary election and fork out the required £500 deposit then at least it should make half an attempt at the delivery of leaflets before the postal votes are sent out to get as many votes as possible to stand any chance of saving the £500 deposit . As it is that £500 has been lost forever, and the party has nothing to show for it apart from 61 votes and coming well behind a non entity called Count Binface, which is nothing short of an embarrassment.
Spot on!
Turnout:
Uxbridge & South Ruislip 46.1%
Somerton & Frome 44.1%
Selby & Ainstey 44,7%
Quite high for by-elections.
“Still, it’s at least a good training exercise for the Berlin anti-terror squads…”
The terrorists of course being anyone who doesn’t like TPTB.
Wikipedia in 2019 called such people “terrorists” with particular reference to those who called a spade a spade and referred to TMay’s WA a Surrender Treaty (that’s us !).
IMHO the police like to play with their expensive new toys, helicopters etc . They like to go into overdrive with them for the fun of it, enjoying their new power trip which took off really big time during “Covid.”
The other day in my area the official story was that a nutter was loose. A number of helicopters swarmed in and possibly a drone. (one story going round was that the drone belonged to the nutter).
My attitude is probably coloured by an incident during the lockdown: I was dealing on the doorstep with a fish merchant .We were chatting for quite a long time as I’m a regular customer. A helicopter intimidatingly hovered over my head really close for about 5 minutes without moving, the occupants obviously staring at us and probably filming us. I was and still am incandescent with rage about it. especially since I knew the whole Covid farce was a criminal wicked scam. and its OUR money they’re using .
This is beyond hilarious! I’ve been checking out the ‘lion’ reports from yesterday evening, one about many people calling the police because they’d heard lion roars.
The police checked this out and found that some lads had played a practical joke, playing lion roars on their smartphones, sound turned up to the highest level. So: no lion.
Oh my giddy aunt … well done, lads!
Help! I’m dying with unstoppable laughter! I said I’d keep you informed about that Berlin lioness … the latest news is that two actual, life hunters – yes, Germany has them, strictly regulated – have now pointed out that the video of that lioness is actually a wild boar! One hunter is a young Berliner and he knows the vicinity and knows that Berlin isn’t just surrounded by wild boars but that they invade gardens in the suburbs.
And that’s why I’m dying with laughter: anti-terrorist police now on a wild-boar hunt – because of an amateur video.
My weekend is saved, thanks to excessive hilarity!
Oink! Oink!…………
Colin H: You are priceless. didn’t you say the other day that you only wanted intelligent comments about serious stuff. (Oh the irony !!!!)
Please note I’m only teasing here and cant resist a smile at others’ expense !!!!!)
BTW I don’t think the forum should be all serious, without light relief !
Mary…….yeah, you’ve got me there, hook, line and sinker. I did say that. I don’t mind jokes, but there has to be a punchline for it to be funny, and the sea shore and sea shell joke, if it was a joke had no punchline that I could detect, and I read it over and again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Even Chris didn’t explain it out, so I’m still none the wiser. Getting back to the Wild Boar, I ‘m not that sure whether they make the same noises as farm pigs like oink oink etc. I came across one in woodland a few years back as I was doing a guided walk and it growled a bit like a dog and ran off.
I sometimes wonder if the left need ‘the Tories’ or ‘the rich’ to hate. Having someone to blame avoids taking responsibility for their own mediocrity as people. Exploiting this with targets for envy the BBC and Guardian can deflect from a real source of inequality: public sector pensions. These unfunded liabilities, currently around £2.5 trillion, now equal in size the entire economy. Interest payments on public debt are approximately £100 billion and PFI in the health service costs several billion a year. The UK is a huge ponzi scheme and the Treasury’s only answer is immigration ( in lieu of growth) the burden of which is part of the ponzi scheme in a doom loop. Net zero just brings closer the day of collapse.
As to the uniparty winning three by-elections, the real news is the poor performance of Reform UK, thought by some as the insurgent party with the best prospects. The reality is that it is not even being chosen for a protest vote. UKIP’s 2015 GE result was foretold by the Heywood and Middleton by-election in October 2014 when UKIP came second by 600 votes. Reclaim, Reform, Heritage, UKIP have no hope for next year. The uniparty has increased its grip on the electorate which means we have no hope. What will it take for the uniparty to lose?
The three constituencies have overwhelmingly voted for more immigration, high taxes, corporatism, lower standards of living, big government, the end of cash more woke and Net Zero madness.
The 3 candidates are I have no doubt carefully selected for being globalist stooges. Pretty Polly, a TCW (Conservative Woman) commenter singled out one of them Keir Maher with his Soros connections.
All the parties you have mentioned have no hope whatsoever running campaigns singularly. As for Reform UK, it is not hitting anything like the numbers of votes accrued and vote share percentages at elections which UKIP was achieving in its heyday before the EU referendum. What’s more it never will do either, especially under the present excruciatingly inept and ineffective leadership. There is only one person who can turn this around, and he is presently wasting his time at GB News.
SY……..a leader whoever he or she is who has a degree of charisma and presence about them who is fully in charge of their brief and who can articulate a message in a way that the ordinary person in the street can understand, and who believes that the many centre right challenger parties out there cannot do it alone and need to unite in some way under one banner and one overall leader. Who is that person? well they do exist, and I say they because there is more than one likely candidate who might fit the bill, but will they want to do it that is the problem. And should they want to do it it will take perseverance and patience as the road ahead will undoubtedly be bumpy and will not be plain sailing.
If you can stand it, look at generation Z at it’s best and wonder where the west is heading. No wonder net zero and climate change is so popular with younger people if these are an example, May your god help us all.
What the by election results do show however, is that the centre right parties like UK Independence Party, Reform UK, Reclaim and Heritage Party need to unite under a loose coalition in future elections otherwise they are on a hiding to nothing. Reclaim achieved just over 2% vote share yesterday in Uxbridge with 714 votes, whilst UKIP got 61 votes which represented 0.2% share of the vote, and in Somerton and Frome, Reform UK achieved just over 1300 votes with just 3% vote share whilst UKIP got just shy of 300 votes with 0.7% share of the vote and the number of votes accrued and vote shares were broadly the same in Selby and Ainsty, where Heritage Party achieved 0.5% of the vote. How many times has it been said before that these parties need to fight elections under one candidate. UKIP have tried to get all parties on board with regard to this but were re-buffed when approached. None of the centre right parties will cut through to any meaningful vote share and vote numbers until they do unite, and under one leader who is able to articulate a message that will appeal to the electorate. Without doubt Reform UK achieved the best set of results in these by elections but their vote shares of 3.4% and 3.7% show that their messaging is simply not resonating with the voting public, and which is considerably less than the 7% figure that is frequently bandied about by them, and with the other parties it is even worse.
Reply to Colin: You are right about the centre right needing to be a single unified party. Alas, Tice the snob would rather fold Reform than unite with UKIP, David Kurten will never, ever go back to UKIP (unless they can afford to pay him a salary) and Fox’s self-love will focus on his media channel rather than realistic politics.
My thoughts too, Colin. Viv is right, this was a good result for the Uniparty. Very sad situation with not a glimpse of hope anywhere for a centre right revival for the run up to the 2024 GE.
CH Maybe one or two of the smaller centre right parties know a thing or two about one or two of the others, which is why they won’t unite with them.
(I’m not insinuating anything, otherwise I’ll have one or two of you down on me like a ton of bricks: I’m just stating that this is a possibility).
You may well be right Mary. Also, we should remember that Reclaim, Reform and Heritage are basically owned by their leaders. UKIP is the only challenger that has a national executive, with members having a leadership vote. I sometimes think that Farage and Tice, in some ways, use the Reform Party as means of projecting their own media careers. They don’t seem serious to me about wanting to replace the Tories.
Stout is right about David Kurten he would need a salary if he folded his party into UKIP and led the party. Can they afford it? I still maintain that it was only the MEP salaries that kept UKIP afloat and in the public eye.
I remain a member of three challengers in the hope sense will prevail.
Jake
On slightly different topic, AfD’s Alice Weidel I read somewhere , is a bit iffy having worked for Goldmans or some such? If so, an inevitable downside that happens when minor parties get successful.
Very true Mary! Let’s hope she doesn’t do a Farage. – bad mouth his old party, dismantle his new party sacking his candidates to give an 80 seat majority to the enemy whilst dismantling the populist movement for them as a bonus!
Jake……you make a good point here about a leader needing a salary, especially one like David Kurten who is of working age. However, I somehow doubt that as leader of the Heritage Party he is drawing a salary from his party as they simply do not have the membership numbers to support this. And of course unless a political party has donors pumping money into the party’s bank account, the money they receive from membership subscriptions has to finance everything, and I think David Kurten has said that his party doesn’t have any donors. The leaders of UKIP in its heyday before the 2016 referendum were all MEP’s and relied on their EU salaries to support themselves and their families, and Batten by the time he became leader was receiving an MEP’s pension in addition to other income that he may have had. When Henry Bolton was elected leader of the party he wasn’t receiving anything to the best of my knowledge. That is why the rest of us who remain in the UK Independence Party who want to see the party succeed have to do our best to recruit potential new members and entice old members to return to the fold to create sufficient funds to perhaps pay a leader a salary and fund other activities. Without sufficient money coming in a party can do very little.
In Uxbridge Reform asked its supporters to vote for Fox, and this was reciprocated in reverse in one of the other seats. If none of the small parties can prevail in by-elections FGS, what price in the GE when things are even more polarised into two corners. They are just noise, ripples on the electoral sale. Beekeepers use a smoker to pacify the bees when they want to invade the hive; I feel like the media has puffed so much smoke and trash over the electorate for so long that despite the blatant disinformation and driven narratives across the board screaming their clear falsity in people’s faces, the now permanently brain-numbed drones fail even to notice let alone react.