Best Of

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/20/covid-inquiry-set-cost-208m-most-expensive-british-history/

Almost a quarter of a billion quid spent on this "lessons will learnt" farce..🧐🥴

Well 300,000 people died, almost as many as died in WW2 so maybe it’s worth a go?
There are some very important lessons, which sadly, I doubt will really make changes. But it needed doing.

They could have investigated the obvious origin in the Wuhan lab, but when the great Michael Gove brought that up - and he is truly a great man, editor or politician - then he was very briskly hushed and told NOT to talk about it. Weird, that. Almost like they were all worried the lan origin might become obvously true after about two minutes of scrutiny, along with the fact that the science establishment in the UK conspired with their equivalents in the USA to cover up this fact, for at least a year

The origin is irrelevant to our response. Issues such as running very efficient hospitals (e.g. occupancy into the high 90’s) meant there was little surge capacity for instance. The sticks of PPE that never got rotated into use. Lots of lessons to be learned. Avoiding betting the house on the wrong mode of transmission. Taking other factors into account when considering imprisoning the country in their homes.
Sadly I doubt that we will implement much of the findings.

Jeremy Corbyn fans please explain

An angrier response to Britain sending missiles to Ukraine than we got when Russia sent assassins to murder British citizens on British soil

Corbyn has Tweeted

The Prime Minister should make a statement to Parliament, immediately, to confirm whether UK missiles have been fired into Russia.

He must tell the British public if this means we are now at war with a nuclear power, what risk this poses to people in Britain, and why this action was taken without any approval from Parliament.

I have consistently condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and called for a diplomatic solution to stop the endless bloodshed.

As we edge closer and closer to catastrophe, we should be doing everything in our power to bring about de-escalation and peace. Instead, our political leaders have added fuel to the fire and gambled with people’s lives for political gain.

Presidents and Prime Ministers must know that in the event of nuclear war, nobody wins.

I’m not interested in bombs. I’m interested in peace – and I will continue to campaign for peace in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, the DRC and beyond.

https://x.com/BenKentish/status/1859309594729943266

He has never agreed that people should be able to fight back, or be helped to do so. He would deny it, but the only practical measure his views accept seems to be that people should just surrender, since that leads to peace the fastest. Whilst there are obviously serious issues to consider for world leaders around escalation, it's hard to see how this marks a severe example of that. If anything, given Russia has gone so far as to essentially hire North Korean state mercenaries as an escalation, the Ukrainian allies doing nothing additional in reaction would appear to be an acceptance of Russian escalation.

It’s clear there are people on right and left who think that big injustice was done to Russia, when parts of the USSR became independent.

Their beliefs are essentially that there are first class people who should have agency (Russians, for example) and second class people who should not.

It's a pretty insidious form of racism.

Jeremy Corbyn fans please explain

An angrier response to Britain sending missiles to Ukraine than we got when Russia sent assassins to murder British citizens on British soil

Corbyn has Tweeted

The Prime Minister should make a statement to Parliament, immediately, to confirm whether UK missiles have been fired into Russia.

He must tell the British public if this means we are now at war with a nuclear power, what risk this poses to people in Britain, and why this action was taken without any approval from Parliament.

I have consistently condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and called for a diplomatic solution to stop the endless bloodshed.

As we edge closer and closer to catastrophe, we should be doing everything in our power to bring about de-escalation and peace. Instead, our political leaders have added fuel to the fire and gambled with people’s lives for political gain.

Presidents and Prime Ministers must know that in the event of nuclear war, nobody wins.

I’m not interested in bombs. I’m interested in peace – and I will continue to campaign for peace in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, the DRC and beyond.

https://x.com/BenKentish/status/1859309594729943266

He has never agreed that people should be able to fight back, or be helped to do so. He would deny it, but the only practical measure his views accept seems to be that people should just surrender, since that leads to peace the fastest. Whilst there are obviously serious issues to consider for world leaders around escalation, it's hard to see how this marks a severe example of that. If anything, given Russia has gone so far as to essentially hire North Korean state mercenaries as an escalation, the Ukrainian allies doing nothing additional in reaction would appear to be an acceptance of Russian escalation.

Can't think who he might be thinking of.

There really are a lot of people in the West who have been making it very clear for many years now that their preferred outcome in this war is to see Ukraine broken and subjugated, and I’m here to tell you that it’s absolutely morally justified to tell them to shut the fuck up...

People are literally being slaughtered over here while the nasty jam man is arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to defend themselves. That's not an anti-war position, it's an appeasement of fascism position.
https://nitter.poast.org/OzKaterji/status/1859286863250702742#m

Sadly I do think we are not far off Ukraine having to move to a ceasefire which will become the de facto boundaries for some time. The world gets used to frozen conflicts.

Ukraine needs to get its own nuclear weapons if it wants to secure its sovereignty

One expert even says Trump will give Ukraine nuclear weapons if it stays out of NATO

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1978193/donald-trump-ukraine-nuclear-weapons-vladimir-putin

The lesson, very sadly, that many countries will feel they have to learn from Ukraine, should it be allowed to lose, is that it never should have given its nukes up when Clinton was around in mid 90s.

Jeremy Corbyn fans please explain

An angrier response to Britain sending missiles to Ukraine than we got when Russia sent assassins to murder British citizens on British soil

Corbyn has Tweeted

The Prime Minister should make a statement to Parliament, immediately, to confirm whether UK missiles have been fired into Russia.

He must tell the British public if this means we are now at war with a nuclear power, what risk this poses to people in Britain, and why this action was taken without any approval from Parliament.

I have consistently condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and called for a diplomatic solution to stop the endless bloodshed.

As we edge closer and closer to catastrophe, we should be doing everything in our power to bring about de-escalation and peace. Instead, our political leaders have added fuel to the fire and gambled with people’s lives for political gain.

Presidents and Prime Ministers must know that in the event of nuclear war, nobody wins.

I’m not interested in bombs. I’m interested in peace – and I will continue to campaign for peace in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, the DRC and beyond.

https://x.com/BenKentish/status/1859309594729943266

He has never agreed that people should be able to fight back, or be helped to do so. He would deny it, but the only practical measure his views accept seems to be that people should just surrender, since that leads to peace the fastest. Whilst there are obviously serious issues to consider for world leaders around escalation, it's hard to see how this marks a severe example of that. If anything, given Russia has gone so far as to essentially hire North Korean state mercenaries as an escalation, the Ukrainian allies doing nothing additional in reaction would appear to be an acceptance of Russian escalation.

He’d support any group that was fighting the British or US, however.

My daughter's school has classrooms named after various historical figures: Lincoln, Mandela, Twain and the like.

While it's a slightly wokier list than I might go for, the names are basically unobjectionable.

Except one: Chomsky.

I keep meaning to write to the school and complain. Because he is a total piece of shit, who shills for essentially any enemy of the West.