Suppose there is a flood…

… Water levels are rising. Maybe a dam has burst up the valley. Maybe it has just been raining a lot.

The government tells you to stay at home. It tells you to shut all of your windows and doors. It even tells you that you have to padlock your doors.

If your house is next to the river bed, or in a meadow, such a lockdown is not going to work. It might delay the floodwater getting into your house for a little while, but not for long. And if it’s a really bad flood, staying locked inside your house is the very last thing you really should be doing.

If, like most people, your house is on higher ground, above the high water mark of the flood, then of course the lockdown order is even more pointless.

Analogies have their limitations, of course. But the evidence we have so far suggests that

The Fight against Censorship

Toby Young’s contribution to the the lockdown debate has been censored by YouTube. They say it offends their “guidelines”.

So here it is on another platform: https://www.bitchute.com/video/P7qJBIVOPoBs/. Judge for yourselves.

As it happens, I agree with Toby Young, and indeed Lord Sumption (a great lawyer, who makes Baroness Hale look like an annoying feminist student), on this issue. But more to the point, legitimate commentary should not be consored. Not by YouTube. Not by Twitter. Not by the BBC or the ABC. Not by the State. Oh no. We are not

Undubbed

Being locked down has meant that I can’t fly interstate or internationally for work. And I have had a nasty virus. I have been practising my lockdown skills.

I.e. watching Netflix.

I can’t watch Outlander any more. It is wholly unrealistic. In the real world, someone would have drowned the ghastly, whingeing Brianna ages ago.

And so I have been watching Money Heist, also known in its original Spanish as La Casa de Papel. It is refreshing to see something stylish from Spain, instead of the usual Hollywood pap.

But it comes with a problem. It has been dubbed into English. Well. Actually it is worse than that. It has been dubbed into American English. Multo queso, as they say in Spain.[1]

But for advanced Netflix users, there is a solution. It is possible to set the language to “European”. Which means Spanish in this case, it seems. And if your Spanish is a bit oxidada[2], you can turn on the subtitles. Much

The White Cat

 

“All happy families are alike. But each unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way”.

So wrote Leo Tolstoy. But in Russian, obviously.

Similarly, all who hope that Dominic Cummins will ride out the current storm are alike in thinking that he is that rare example of someone pulling the levers of power who is clever, imaginative and determined, and who is not trying to turn the United Kingdom into a sludge of pallid subservience. And, it turns out, someone who is prepared to do something brave and useful to protect his wife and child.

In contrast, what an awe-inspiring and colourful array of spite and vindictiveness we see from those trying to pull him down! Here are a few attitudes:

Greta Thunberg; Climate change activist

The cost of his trip to Durham is that people are DYING! Whole communities are being WIPED OUT! All he can do is to give EXPLANATIONS! In WORDS! How dare he? How DARE he?

Lord Adonis; Remainer

He had it coming. We told people how to vote in the EU referendum, and he conspired to encourage people to think for themselves. The little shit!

Baroness Hale, Judge

Off with his head. (Blah blah blah). For the foregoing reasons, we find that the defendant, in looking after his wife and child, had failed to observe the human rights of other members of the European Community, who have a legitimate interest in the United Kingdom placing itself in a comparative economic disadvantage. Accordingly, he and everything he has done is a nullity.

Steve Baker, Conservative MP

Two Saw Life

I never thought that I would be the sort of person that would end up with two chainsaws. So how did this happen?

The explanation for the first one is perfectly straightforward. I bought it a while ago to do some tidying up in the garden when I lived in Adelaide. It’s black and yellow. And had never previously given me any grief. Not that I had needed to use it very often.

Now I live at Myponga Beach, the world is different. For a start, there is no mains gas. There is a stove, which keeps the house warm, and that requires firewood. Normally, I buy firewood from Ken. It’s easy. I ring up Ken, ask for some firewood, and he delivers it. Nice red gum, usually. It burns very well.

So, it’s May now. Nearly June. Winter is icumen in. I was starting to run low on firewood, and so I rang Ken. To ask for some firewood. “Are you feeling patient?” he asked. That was bad. On enquiry, it turns out that people around here have been buying firewood as fast as they have been buying lavatory paper. Panic buying. Because of lockdown. Pointless, of course. But there you are. Ken said that it would be about four weeks before he would be able to catch up, and deliver some firewood for me.

How to survive for four weeks with precious little firewood left? With winter icumen in?

Well, as it happens, I was able to look around my small 4 acres. And I was able to see that

Flopsy Killer Chart Topper?

There are of course numerous ways in which the flopsies kill people.

• Among the most recent are the efforts of NGOs funded by the European Union to prevent the use of insecticides in Africa. This has caused a massive plague of locusts, and hence famine.
• Coronavirus lockdown inevitably causes massive damage to economies, and will inevitably mean that, in the years to come, governments will inevitably be less able to afford to offer free healthcare.
• The antinuclear power movement means more expensive domestic electricity. In Japan, for example, the shutdown of the nuclear industry following the Fukushima incident has caused massive electricity price increases, and hence cost many lives of those who have been unable to afford to heat their homes properly.
• Similarly, the climate change lobby is especially damaging to Third World regions in stifling the deployment of affordable power generation. People die, not least, because they are forced to continue to cook their food indoors using dung and other unsuitable materials as fuel sources.

The common factor, of course, is that the deaths are always indirect consequences; the flopsies rarely have to watch their victims suffer and die. And when they do, they will persuade themselves that someone else is to blame. Take the first example, the flopsies who cause the plagues that would otherwise have been prevented by the use of insecticides might see starving children, but they are highly unlikely to

Two-Tone Steps to Fascism?

Early in the last century, there was a regrettable passion for two-tone shoes. Rightly derided by the discerning, they nevertheless insinuated themselves into 20^thcentury culture.

And what was the result? I will tell you what the result was. It was totalitarianism, and the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany. Which was a bad thing. You might remark that another result was the rise of communism, but if you will forgive the exercise of the vulgar expression, these are but different ends of the same turd.

And now it’s back. We see it in shirts, where there is a fashion for the insides of collars and cuffs to be made from a fabric different from the main body of the shirt. And in two-tone socks. And in those suits where the buttonholes are made with red fabric, like miniature swastikas. So should we expect the same results over again?

There are signs of it. Millions of people have become willing, like sheep, to submit to the will of governments and NGOs who increasingly want to dictate what we may think, what we may say, and where we may go (if anywhere). Do not tell me, if you please, that