Death of Virginia Giuffre at 41.

 

Virginia Giuffre

We still don't really know how Virginia Giuffre died at 41, but already conspiracy theories are being circulated online. We have been told that it was suicide and that suspicious circumstances have been ruled out.

If what Virginia Giuffre said is true, it would seem that for most of her younger life she was subjected to physical and sexual abuse. She claimed to have been molested by a family friend when she was aged seven. At 14 years of age, she said she was shacked up with a 65-year-old sex trafficker in Miami called Ron Eppinger. She claimed to have been sexually abused by Eppinger who pimped her out to paedophiles, but she lived with him for six months.

She met Epstein when she was aged 16 and left at 19 because she said he lost interest in her because she was too old. He then paid for her to do a course in Thailand where she met her future husband, Robert Giuffre. Virginia claimed that she had been physically abused throughout her marriage to Mr Giuffre, but she had three children with him.

What I find curious is why she hung around for three years being sexually abused and being pimped out by Ghislaine Maxwell and why did she help to procure other girls, to have sex with Epstein? If that photograph of Virginia and Prince Andrew is authentic, then why does she have such a beaming smile on her face? Andrew claims to have no "recollections of having ever met her”, so why did he fork out millions of pounds to settle a case against a person that he'd never met?

Kemi Badenoch says Starmer-oid has "no balls."

Kemi Badenoch

The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, told the House of Commons that Sir Keir Starmer-oid is a "weathervane that twists in the wind" and that Labour under Starmer-oid, "bend the knee to every passing fad" because it's "cool to do so."

Sir Keir Starmer-oid has said that the recent Supreme Court ruling has brought much needed clarity to what it means to be a woman. Most British people weren't in any need of clarity because they already knew that a woman is an adult female human being. It was Starmer-oid that told the British public that 99.9 percent of women don't have a penis and that we shouldn't say that only women have a cervix. Kemi Badenoch told the House of Commons that Starmer-oid has "no balls."

When the Labour MP Annalese Dodd, was once asked in the House of Commons, what a woman' was, she said it all depended on 'context'. When Yvette Cooper was asked the same question, she refused to say but added that she "wouldn't be going down that rabbit hole." Belatedly, Starmer-oid says that he and the Labour Party, now accept the Supreme Court ruling that a person's sex is biological and immutable.

Starmer says Supreme Court judgement has "given much needed clarity" to what a woman is.

 

Starmer the Clown

I can't think of a better example of how the lunatic asylum called Britain, has been taken over by the inmates of the lunatic asylum. Why was it necessary for the UK Supreme Court to tell us what the definition of a woman was? Sir Keir Starmer-oid, has now said the Supreme Court judgement has "given much needed clarity" to women and service providers. What a clueless hypocritical twat we've got for a prime minister.  Do you remember that it wasn't long ago that this biologically illiterate moron and politically correct dipstick, told us the 99.9% of women didn't have a penis?

When the "TERF BITCH" (Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminist), Rosie Duffield, said that only women had a cervix, she was ostracized by many Labour Party members. There were even calls for her to be expelled from the Labour Party. The trendy left Guardian journalist, Owen Jones, said that he'd never share a platform with Duffield ever again. Starmer-oid said it wasn't right to say that only women had a cervix.

This sort of twisted and bent reasoning by some British politicians, is what the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, would have called "nonsense upon stilts." Recent press reports have suggested that the Supreme Court judgement has led to death threats against some feminists who deny that 'trans women' are women.  

Living in Britain has come to resemble the final scene in the story Peter Pan. At the end of the story, the children are told that if they don't shout out loud that they believe in fairies, then Tinker Bell is going to die. I think we all have a duty to resist the tyranny of fashion and to defend reality. If an idea is fashionable or de rigueur, it doesn't mean to say that it's correct. Personally, I couldn't care less whether a person thinks they're a centaur or a minotaur, but don't expect me to believe that or to buy into it.

Orwell & the English pew renters.

 

George Orwell

George Orwell was not of the English working-class. He described himself as having been born into the 'lower-upper-middle class’. He was a King's Scholar at Eton. Orwell said that as a young boy, he'd been a frightful English snob, who often berated impudent bus conductors. His aunt Nellie who lived in Paris, was a socialist and suffragette. When Orwell lived in Paris, Aunt Nellie helped him financially and introduced him to important people.

Ida Blair, his mother, was a Fabian Socialist and suffragette, but she stopped young Eric playing with the plumber's daughter. Ida reminds me of Lady Chatterley's sister Hilda, who is a socialist, but couldn't possibly mix with the working-classes. Her sister Connie, is not as squeamish.

The dignity of labour, is a lot of bourgeois Puritanical bullshit, but it's alive and well in the Labour Party of Sir Keir Starmer-oid. The English middle-classes always looked down their nose at anybody who wore a pair of overalls. That's why Orwell's mother stopped him playing with the plumber's daughter.

The trades unions in Britain were formed by the workers themselves. They were never revolutionary organisations but some British trade unionists, like Tom Mann, were influenced by French revolutionary syndicalism and they imported this into Britain. They knew that as workers, they wouldn't get anywhere if they didn't combine.

The early 'coffin club' or craft trade unions in Britain, were mainly comprised of skilled men and probably owe their origins, more to craft snobbery, then class consciousness. They saw themselves as 'labour aristocrats' or more precisely, beggars on horseback. Trade unions representing the unskilled came much later.

I have worked in engineering and I remember one day hearing a fitter dressed in greasy overalls say that labourer's shouldn't be able to buy their homes but should live in council houses. I thought he was rather stupid and politically backward. Orwell always said that there was a pew renter who sleeps in every English workman. 

Death of Anne Scargill at 83.

 

Anne Scargill

Anne Harper, the former wife of the miner's leader Arthur Scargill, has died at the age of 83.

I think I much preferred Anne Scargill to her husband Arthur. I think she deserved a VC for being married to him for long as she did. Anne was head and shoulders above many women MPs in today's Tory-lite Labour Party. She wasn't afraid to be seen on a picket line and was a co-founder of 'Women Against Pit Closures'. Anne said that the only thing that she had in common with her husband was a love of dogs and their politics. She said her married life with Arthur Scargill had been rather boring. She admitted: "I suppose I should have known what I was letting myself in for. On our first date he took me to a Young Communist League debate with the Tories."

In 1996, Anne was made redundant from her £7,000 a year clerks' job at the Co-op, but, finding that the business had advertised for 50 more workers, she took the Co-op to an employment tribunal and won her job back and stayed until retirement.

The late Yorkshire miners' MP, Mick Walsh, recalled meeting Anne on a train in the early 1980s. During the journey, she said to him, "Arthur needs to loosen up. Can't you and the lads take him out one night and get him drunk." The couple separated and divorced in 2001 when Anne reverted to her maiden name of Harper.

Democrats demand probe into whether Trump manipulated markets.

 

Donald Trump

Congressional Democrats are demanding to know whether President Donald Trump, manipulated markets and tipped off friends and family about a reverse course on global tariffs just hours before the decision was made to suspend tariffs for 90 days. The suspension on tariffs sent stock prices soaring.

On the morning of Wednesday April 9, 2025, Trump posted on his website ‘Truth Social’, at 9.33 a.m., “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before.” At 9.37 a.m., Trump subsequently posted: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME BUY!!! DJT.” At 1.18 p.m., Trump announced on ‘Truth Social” that he was imposing a 90-day pause all virtually all tariffs in put in place days before.

According to press reports, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday April 10, Trump met with financial industry executives and joked about how much money they had made in the past 24 hours from the market turmoil. “He made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million”, the president said to laughs, pointing to billionaire Charles Schwab and others in the Oval Office.

Stock in Tesla, the electric car company owned by Musk, increased by 18% following the president’s announcements to suspend most tariffs.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said that it wasn’t just White House employees or Trump’s family members who may have partaken in market play. She said: “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now.”

Shelter says one bedroom flats have become unaffordable for teachers and nurses in 45% of English local authorities.

 

Children's nursery - Dewsnap Lane - Dukinfield

As of 31 March 2024, 1.3 million households in England were on local authority waiting lists for rented social housing. According to the housing charity Shelter, renting a one-bedroom flat is deemed unaffordable for newly qualified nurses and teachers in 45 percent of English local authorities.

There's housing construction taking place in Tameside, Greater Manchester, but it's expensive private homes that are being built. The Warrington-based H&L Investment Group are now seeking to build four expensive four-bedroom detached houses on the site of the former children's nursery (see above) off Dewsnap Lane, Dukinfield. There's a children's playground adjacent to the nursery and playing fields. This area has been a green space since they demolished Astley Mill in 1935.

How much affordable housing is there going to be on the site of the former Heyrod power station or the Godly Green market village project? I believe that developers are required to provide 15% of affordable rented housing on market sales sites.

A number of Tameside Labour councillors are rentier landlords who declare an interest in a portfolio of properties. They're not short of homes to live in. Eleanor Wills, the appointed Labour leader of Tameside Council declares an interest in four homes in Tameside. Eleanor's mother and father were also Tameside Labour councillors.

Reform Party UK – an assessment.

 

Nigel Farage

By: Andrew Wallace

Arguably the distinctive peculiarities of British politics have been nurtured under the so-called First Past the Post electoral system which means a single winner at constituency level by virtue of the highest individual tally irrespective of a majority. This has historically proved particularly advantageous to the Conservatives who have been able to achieve something of a monopoly regarding a reliable 40% plus voting bloc for the right, whilst the liberal left conversely proved more factious with a newly assertive centrist wing that had formally seceded from the Labour Party.

It now appears that Conservatives have fallen prey to a mirror trajectory of Labour’s fate in the 1980s, facing a credible independent flank to their right courtesy of the Reform Party. But what is this curious beast and just how serious a political challenge does it pose? Perhaps the Reform Party’s greatest strength also happens to be its greatest weakness, for this is but the latest iteration of Faragism to come down the line of the anti-federalist UK Independence Party to the Brexit Party. Faragism alludes to the charismatic figure of Nigel Farage who has proven adept at inserting himself into the national conversation concerning the perceived failures of mainstream politics. Farage has cannily weaved a heterodox line of nationalist dissent into the otherwise uber-internationalism of hegemonic free market economics, whereby protectionism is invoked if only in terms of the migratory flows of labour across nation-states. This distinctive antinomic premise had already been invoked by Enoch Powell and had put him at odds with fellow free market ideologues like Ralph Harris and the Institute of Economic Affairs (Heffer, p445).

It would seem like Powell; Farage’s cultural nationalism gives a potency which would otherwise be hard to envisage in proselyting for a deregulated small state to a blue collar audience. Regular opinion polling suggests a ceiling for Reform UK, with their best percentage share to date at 25% (Coates, 2025), suggesting Faragism is another overegged electoral phenomenon akin to Cleggmania (Kampfner, 2010). Whilst it seems quite possible that Reform could go on to bag a few dozen more MPs come the next election, it does seem ridiculous to suggest Farage can go on to win an electoral majority from his current 4 MPs or so (Lowe having been suspended). A more realistic scenario is Farage as a kingmaker in a future hung parliament. It just seems a matter of time before the Conservative Party comes to terms with Farage and unless Reform are lucky enough to latch onto another compelling populist figure, Conservatives have no choice but to dig in and wait it out.

References:

Coates, Sam (2025) ‘Reform UK tops landmark poll for first time’ Available at: https://news.sky.com/story/reform-uk-tops-landmark-poll-for-first-time-13302531

(Accessed 04 February 2025)

Heffer, Simon (1998) “Like The Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell” Faber and Faber

Kampfner, J (2010) ‘The lessons of Cleggmania and Lib Dem losses’ Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/may/07/nick-clegg-liberal-democrats-cleggmania

Consultant suspended by GMC for condemning genocide in Gaza on X.

 

Dr. Rehiana Ali

We don't have an absolute right to freedom of speech in Britain and never have done.

The case of Dr Rehiana Ali illustrates this. Having worked as a consultant neurologist in the NHS for twenty years, she got suspended by the General Medical Council (GMC), for 18-months because she condemned on X, formerly Twitter, the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Her suspension arose after a complaint was made by the pro-Israeli body called UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).

There are UK laws that seek to restrict or constrain what we say. People in Britain have been jailed and arrested for expressing opinions on social media. Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights which protects freedom of expression, is not an absolute right, but a qualified right, that can be restricted under certain conditions.

What I find particularly worrying, is the trend among some self-righteous lefty woke types, to want to silence debate or prevent people from expressing an alternative point of view or by cancelling and no platforming them or expecting them to self-censor. We saw this in the case of the philosopher, Professor Kathleen Stock, who was hounded out of her job at the University of Sussex, for her views on gender. The university have just been fined £585,000 by the Regulator OfS, for failing to uphold free speech and academic freedom.

This type of censorship is a kind of creeping totalitarianism. Britain's obsession with banning things is also very worrying. We really are a nation of people who are under the thumb of authority. George Orwell famously said that "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people things they don't want to hear."

We understand that Dr Rehiana Ali asked the Free Speech Union to support her, but she says that her appeals were ignored. If Toby Young, a supporter of Israel, can't accept Orwell’s dictum, then he shouldn't be leading the free speech union.

Tesla & Space X say Trump's tariffs will damage their business.

 

Elon Musk

It looks like Elon Musk might be on his way out of the White House and Tesla.

Since joining the Trump administration and the department of government efficiency (Doge), Musk has become toxic to the brand image of Tesla which is seeing falling sales and profits. Tesla showrooms have been vandalised and Tesla cars set on fire. Tesla electric vehicles are also being boycotted.

The Financial Times recently reported that in an unsigned letter to the U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer, Tesla said it would be "exposed to disproportionate impacts' from retaliatory import tariffs by other countries."

Space X which is also owned by Musk have also written to the U.S. government asking for an exemption from tariffs on products it buys from China. Trump's erratic policy making on the hoof seems to be giving everybody the jitters including Musk.