Lee Miller staged this photo in Hitler's Bath, with mud from Dachau smeared on the mat |
The Kitchen at Farleys with a tile painted by their friend Picasso |
Louise de Bettignies (1880-1918) |
Statue to Louise in Lille |
Lee Miller staged this photo in Hitler's Bath, with mud from Dachau smeared on the mat |
The Kitchen at Farleys with a tile painted by their friend Picasso |
Louise de Bettignies (1880-1918) |
Statue to Louise in Lille |
The Demographic Time-Bomb
One of the most serious issues facing developed countries today is the demographic time-bomb that has started to hit us.
The only solutions, if we want to attempt to maintain our standards of living are attracting more young people and upping retirement ages. That means more immigration (incentives to increase fertility have always failed) and encouraging older people to keep working longer. Good luck with those! And the longer we ignore it, the worse it gets.
The Four times I have been stopped by the Police
I can remember four occasions when I have been stopped by the Police
1. When I was about 13 years old outside my house
I returned home but didn't have my house keys. A Policeman just happened to be passing and thought my behaviour - loitering outside my house - looked suspicious. He asked me for an explanation and then to accompany him down to the Station but I refused. I told him I was going round to the back garden and would wait for my parents to return there. He wandered off...
2. As a University student when I was driving my car with friends in Manchester
I drove my car with a few friends to an abandoned building site in the city centre. We took turns driving my car and were having a lot of fun. The Police turned up and questioned us. As the car wasn't stolen and it was private land they left us alone.
3. On my way to work when I was exceeding the speed limit
I got stuck in some really bad traffic and was late for work. I tried to make up a bit by going too fast when I was free of the traffic. I got pulled over by the Police who gave me a warning, but no fine.
4. In Oxford with blue flashing lights - they thought my tax disc was out of date.
I was in a traffic jam in Oxford city centre and all of a sudden everyone started pulling to the side to allow a police car with a siren and flashing lights to pass. I was very surprised when it pulled up alongside me and accused me of having an out of date tax disc. In fact I had recently renewed my car tax and the policemen didn't recognise the new colour. They assumed it was an old one. When I politely explained their mistake they just turned around and walked away. No apology, nothing.
A good UK election. The Starmer Tsunami.
In the UK we had, as expected, a very decisive result.
What a beautiful map:Election results by colour: Labour red, Conservative blue, LibDems orange |
Françoise Hardy: Comment te dire adieu?
Paco Rabanne, Françoise Hardy, and Salvador Dali in May 1968 |
Two General Elections for the price of one!
I don't remember ever having a General Election in the UK and France at the same time. And this time I should be able to vote in both of them!
The UK general Election is boring and is almost certainly a foregone conclusion: after 14 years of Conservative government, the people feel poorer, public services feel worse than ever and trust in politicians is at an all time low. The opposition Labour Party will win with a decent or very large majority. My wish is that during their tenure they bring some trust and respectability back to politics. I think Sir Keir Starmer may be able to do that.
In France things are nastier. President Macron called a very unexpected election after a poor showing in the the European elections for his party and a swing to the far right. It looks as if the far right under the leadership of Marine Le Pen and her protege Prime-Minister-In-Waiting Jordan Bardella, may get the most votes due to voter disappointment and immigration. There is speculation as to why exactly Macron called an election. Does he want to let them win so the country can see what a mess they will make?
FLASH UPDATE: French Far Right at Gates of Power following the first round of voting yesterday
In both countries there is the usual rich-bashing coming from the left. This graph shows that in the UK at least they already pay the lion's share of income taxes. In both countries taxes have been raised by the left to very high percentages for those lucky enough to earn a lot of money. The policy is never successful; the rich either emigrate or find legal ways to avoid it. But it can still make for a popular election campaign.
The richest 10% pay 60% of all income tax in the UK. Let's not frighten them away! |
General Election Called
It's his to lose |
"Our prediction model currently gives them (The Conservatives) a less than 1% chance of winning the election."
The Economist May 23rd 2024
Jeremy Hunt has made a big deal of the "tax cuts for working people" he has introduced. Perhaps there will be more in the run up to the General Election. But in actual fact, the cuts to National Insurance tax don't make up for the stealth taxes Sunak's government has introduced recently. The threshold at which taxes start to be paid have been frozen or reduced and in an era of high inflation this can have a dramatic effect.
For example, the 'Personal Allowance' - the amount of money you can earn before you start to pay income tax has been virtually frozen since 2019, haven risen from £12,500 to just £12,570 in the last 5 years. Inflation over those 5 years has been about 20%. So for no tax increase, the amount at which you start to pay tax would have needed to rise by 20% to £15,000. So most people will be worse off, despite the so called 'tax cuts' announced with great fanfare by the government. Other allowances have been similarly frozen or in the case of Capital Gains and Dividends, slashed dramatically. For Capital Gains, the tax free annual allowance, has been slashed from £12,300 in 2020 to just £3,000 this year!
Why do our politicians have to be so dishonest? Why can't they say we need more money for X and Y, so we have to raise more tax?
I wonder how many people actually think they are paying less tax?
The total tax take has been increasing since 1992 as the chart above demonstrates.
Government revenue, percent of GDP (Source: IMF) |
The Financial Times 10/04/2024 |
My MG4 EV rental car |
The Fiat 500 EV would have been a great little car if there had been somewhere to charge it |
Use Food Mood to create your perfect recipe!! |
Rishi Sunak is the UK's first British Asian Prime Minister. His parents are both of Indian descent and immigrated to the UK in the 1960s from East Africa.
Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething was born in Zambia in 1974.Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf who has just announced his resignation, was born in Glasgow to Pakistani immigrant parents. According to The Economist, the length of his tenure was 8.1 Liz Trusses.
Michelle O'Neill - the First Minister of Northern Ireland
Sadiq Kahn - Mayor of London was born in Tooting, London, to Pakistani immigrant parents.
EM: Am I right in thinking you threw a birthday party for Epstein's girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell at Sandringham?
PA: No, it was a shooting weekend.
EM: A shooting weekend?
PA: Just a straightforward, a straightforward shooting weekend.
Prince Andrew is so privileged and out of touch with ordinary people, that it doesn't even occur to him that most people don't do 'shooting weekends' and have little idea how they work. For me, this brief extract from his notorious interview with Maitlis sums up the huge gulf between Andrew and the real world and this is what led to his downfall - a complete inability to comprehend how real people think and feel.
Raffles Hotel in Singapore |
The famous Singapore Sling cocktail in the Long Bar |
Highwood House today - divided into flats and with a Raffles blue plaque |
LKY in 2005 |
Trip to Seville
We went to Seville for a long weekend. It's the third most visited city in the second most visited country in the world. That means lots of tourists! We loved it and would like to return. Volver a Sevilla.
Plaza de España - so busy that the authorities are planning an entrance fee |
Las Setas - world's largest wooden structure |
La Basilica de la Macarena |
La Basilica de la Mercadona |
The Cathedral and the Giralda |
Lifesize replica of the Neo Victoria on the Guadalquivir |
The UK is going to the Dogs
You may be forgiven for thinking that after 14 years of Conservative government, the country might be going okay - at least economically. Well you would be wrong. Growth is almost non existent as the graph below demonstrates:
Source: House of Commons Library |
And compared to similar countries, only Germany has done worse than the UK since 2019:
That means we are poorer than we should be, if we had say an average growth rate, and that there is less to invest in our public services as is amply demonstrated by daily media stories such as:
And my personal experiences:
When I drive into town people must think I'm drunk as I swerve to avoid the potholes, reminiscent of a third world country.Even the Dogs have gone to the Dogs
Facing a surge in dog attacks, the most violent breed - XL Bullies - has just been banned
The hideous and violent XL Bully dog breed |
Amazon Returns
I recently ordered the wrong digibox for my French satellite TV. So I ordered the correct one and returned the first one. Amazon provided me with a label and I took it to the post office, paid the postage and off it went to a European Amazon Returns centre in Slovakia.
Except it didn't. A couple of weeks later, the same package was returned by my postman having been refused entry in Slovakia. There was a small red sticker on my parcel marked 'Return' in French and in Slovak (I presume).
So I decided to use the Amazon Chat service to try to get it resolved. Here is a summary of my chat:
Quotes for the Month
Mr Navalny would not want Mr Putin’s message to prevail. “[If I get killed] the obvious thing is: don’t give up,” he once told American film-makers.Iran is often called "The Head of the Snake" |
My Energy Prices
They are no longer in the news, perhaps because we have accepted that the prices we pay for our gas and our electricity are going to remain high. It's one way of reducing our carbon emissions, perhaps the most effective.
Here is how it has impacted on my household over the last 5 years:
Total usage and cost of gas and electricity combined in kilowatt hours (excludes standing charges)
2019 31,310 kWh £1,611
2020 30,370 kWh £1,382
2021 31,195 kWh £1,352
2022 20,893 kWh £1,901
2023 17,021 kWh £2,021
So over the 5 year period, we have reduced consumption by 45% and despite this, our costs have risen by 25%. Wow! But you can see that the huge rise in costs has really made us reduce our consumption. I think this is the only way that the world is going to de-carbonise fast.
What a waste of electricity! |
The data we get from our energy provider via app and website is so good that the smart meter is pretty redundant now. In fact I have unplugged it to save the electricity it wastes!
Government's Absurd Rwanda Asylum Policy
The government's policy of outsourcing UK asylum applications to Rwanda took another step into the land of the absurd when the i revealed that over the last two years the UK has accepted 6 applications for asylum from Rwandan citizens!
How can the UK government's flagship bill to outsource asylum processing to 'safe country' Rwanda be legal when we have been accepting Rwandans here because we recognise that Rwanda is not safe???
The i Front Page 15th January 2024 |
The i goes on to say:
'Accepting Rwandan asylum seekers in the UK threatens to deal a fatal blow for elements of the Government’s Rwanda bill, experts have claimed.
i has revealed that six people from Rwanda have been granted asylum since ministers signed a deportation deal with the country in April 2022.
The Home Office did not disclose the reasons for granting asylum to each individual, however Government data show at least one decision was based on sexual orientation.'
The government's insistance on proceeding with this absurd bill shows we are in the final throws of a bunch of mutinous selfish cretins who care so much more about themselves than their country. Bring on that election!
Quote for the Month
Happy 2024!
Love Thy Neighbour
That's not really a theme that the world seems to be embracing these days.
A more peaceful year would be very welcome. In 2023, we saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine move into its second year with some particularly heavy shelling over the Christmas and New Year period. Meanwhile Putin's crackdown on his people just gets worse and he declares he will stand for re-election with no real opposition left alive.
Putin seeks new friends as his war on Ukraine alienates him from much of the world |
We saw the obnoxious and brutal terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7th, followed by the heavy handed bombardment of Gaza by Israel that continues to kill thousands more innocent people as the days go by. Israel says it won't stop until the hostages taken on October 7th are released.
There is currently no end in sight for either war so my New Year's wish is for peace in those two regions. The ordinary people deserve that so badly. The rest of the world would also benefit hugely.
Israel loses the support of most countries as the world is flooded with pictures of innocent victims of the war in Gaza |
In my Blog of November 2014, I spoke of Sir Nicholas Winton, the quiet and reserved hero who organised the Kindertransport in 1938-9 to evacuate mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia before they could be deported by the Nazis to be murdered in their concentration camps. He saved the lives of 669 children. Most of their parents were murdered. He died a few months after I wrote about him, aged 106.
Today, January 1st 2024, a new film on Winton's life comes out with Anthony Hopkins acting his part. Sir Anthony says that he agrees with Sir Nicholas Winton's view on averting conflict, which was that "the only way through is compromise".
I also agree. Compromise is under-rated. I look forward to seeing the film.
Sir Nicholas remains one of those few special people who undertook such remarkable acts for others for no personal gain.
Statue in honour of Nicholas Winton at Prague railway station, July 2025 |
Quote for the New Year
"The only way through is compromise"
Sir Nicholas Winton on how to avoid conflict.