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Covid-19 Vaccination
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Freedom Day – The Day After….

by John Mills

Covid-19 Vaccination

Well, here we are, 24 hours after ‘Freedom Day’ in England, and where does Britain stand in the overall picture of Covid-19? From what I’ve read, seen and heard, back to the exact same position we were 18 months ago. Growing pressure on a beleaguered NHS, massive rises in infected numbers a general public that seems to be sleep walking in to yet another lock down, and a floundering Government led by a man so far out of his depth it’s embarrassing on a world stage.

Have the public become so dumbed down they don’t realise what fools they are being taken for? I guess not, as an example, there was a ‘protest’ in London yesterday about Lockdown, on the day that England came out of restrictions, and wasn’t even in Lockdown anyway? All this against the background of leaders who apparently are physiologically different to us, so when they get infected, they don’t have to follow the rules ‘commoners’ have had dictated to them. To be honest, this has been the story through history, so we shouldn’t really be surprised of the ‘Them and Us’ culture, but it’s becoming clearer by the day that the public focus on anything except the truth of matters and react accordingly.

It’s also amusing in a somewhat cruel way to read and hear some the younger elements of society refusing to be vaccinated, as Covid is seen as an older person’s problem (even though the long-term damage to their own health will become evident as they age), and so flock like sheep to nightclubs and parties, spreading infection with no care in the world, and dreaming of their next holidays to the Balearics. What they should be thinking of is that such holidays will no longer be possible, as the British Isles becomes the plague ship of Europe, and all the other countries in the world where Covid is being controlled and reduced refuse to let them visit. And whose fault will that be? Everyone’s but their own, a standard mindset for the modern generation.

To top it off, the fear from the Government to actually be decisive, to have a path forward that makes logical sense, is basically destroying us. Where is the logic of introducing a ‘pub passport’ in September, two months after everyone has been let lose? I’m all for personal choice in life, but my personal choice should not be forced on others, nor damage them in any way. So, if you don’t want to be inoculated and contribute to the elimination of Covid-19, that is your choice, but having made that decision, you should not expect the same gains anyone that does want to eliminate this curse benefits from. If you become ill from Covid, you should be at the back of the queue if you’ve refused vaccination. If you carry Covid, you should not be allowed to visit places where you can pass it on, self-isolation should continue.

I understand how businesses have, and continue to, suffer because of restrictions, but having customers shouldn’t come at the cost of lives. I see people like Andrew Lloyd Webber complaining because he’s had to cancel performances, I would say is the price worth the risk? At some point, inevitably, we will need to open up society before it falls apart, but piecemeal ‘planning’ and knee jerk reactions are useless. Unfortunately, because of Boris and his cronies, we have wasted 18 months during which we could have led the world in breaking out of this cycle of variants and lockdowns, but incompetence, greed and downright corruption have dragged us down in to a morass of despair, depression, rebellion and fear.

So, what is coming? Personally, I think once again we’re heading to another winter lockdown, which will undoubtably finally cost Boris his job, there are fewer cronies to sacrifice these days to save him. The hospitals will once again be full of Covid 19 victims, but I foresee a much higher percentage being younger than last years as the consequences of abandonment of responsibility by the Tory government become apparent. At some point, vaccination will need to become a requirement, whether you accept that or not. The consequences of not taking that path will mean that we will be forever in this fixed cycle. And remember, Covid 19 is in addition to the usual attacks on our health, Norovirus has once again reared its head. It may not be as deadly, but in combination with a weakened immune system, the death rates will undoubtedly rise.

You have a choice, get vaccinated, be part of the concerted effort to eliminate Covid-19 and bring back real freedom, or don’t get vaccinated, and contribute to making certain we end up locked in our homes watching Government controlled pap on TV while our minds and freedoms are eroded away. Freedom Day was actually Acceptance Day, acceptance it’s every man ( and woman) for themselves, and the washing of hands by a Government of any acceptance of blame for a car crash of monumental scale.

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Articles

The City of Wrexham?

by John Mills

Once again, after losing out to St. Asaph last time, and Newport the time before, Wrexham Council are again pushing the concept of cityship for the town. Basically, in order to be part of the selection process, or rather ‘competition’, the town will need to demonstrate it fits within a set pattern of criteria;

A record of culture, history and heritage

  • A distinct identity
  • A record of innovative advancement, in particular widely recognised
    significant contributions to society and cultural infrastructure
  • Civic pride and an inclusive community
  • A solid governance and administrative infrastructure
  • Associations, past and present, with Royalty

If the Council do press on with a bid, a budget of tens of thousands of pounds will be committed to developing an initial working group prior to submission of the application.

Surely it’s the people of Wrexham that should be driving the cityship agenda? And from my experience and talking with a lot of fellow ‘Townies’, the thought of Wrexham as a city is the last thing on their minds. Potholes, uncut, dangerously overgrown verges, littered streets, derelict shops and buildings, large swathes of the town looking like a post-war bombed out landscape etc., get these issues solved before any vanity projects are even considered. In the continued days of austerity under the dark shadow of Covid-19, why spend money on something that has in reality no provable value?

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canada 1
Articles

Cultural Genocide

by John Mills
1937 Kamloops residential school

1937 Kamloops residential school

In the current mood of sensationalist news stories around European football, lost amongst the events of the real world was a haunting reminder of the deadly cost to indigenous populations of colonial growth in Canada, and undoubtedly throughout the rest of world in what has been in effect cultural genocide.

751 unmarked graves have found at the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan, which follows 215 children’s graves were found at a similar residential school in British Columbia. It was one of more than 130 compulsory boarding schools funded by the Canadian government and run by Canadian religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries with the aim of ‘assimilating’ indigenous children, whether their families wanted it or not. Between 1863 and 1998, more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken, some without knowledge or consent, from their families and placed in these schools and were often not allowed to speak their language or to practice their culture or religions.

The Roman Catholic church, responsible for the operations of up to 70% of residential schools, has not yet issued a formal apology. The church has also faced widespread calls to release all records related to residential schools, to augment the incomplete government record and at least give closure to some families. How there could be no record of these deaths? Given their past history, this is unsurprising, I guess.

The reason these schools existed is straight forward, if unpalatable. Based on how the Americans used similar institutions as a means of ‘nation-building’, one of the main purposes of the schools was to hold the children hostage against the good behaviour of their parents using their children as insurance to counter any resistance attempts by armed Indigenous nations sand to establish control over territory, no tribes would give trouble of a serious nature to the Government who had their children completely under control.

After these unmarked graves were finally found using ground-penetrating radar, it has emerged that as a result of destroyed records, the true number of children who died while attending such residential schools may be as high as 6,000, due in large part to the squalid health conditions inside, and lack of parental care and contact. Students were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and unsanitary facilities, with little or no health care. Physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school ‘officials’ led some to run away, many never returned to their home communities. Others died of suicide. Some of these schools had a mortality rate as high as 69% — most of the children dying within the first year of attendance of starvation, malnutrition, disease, and violence.

A “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” convened by the Canadian government concluded that the Canadian government had pursued a policy of cultural genocide against indigenous people. You don’t say. The victims of colonialism are many, but it’s on occasions like this that you realise just how wide spread and shameful the practices used to decimate indigenous populations were, and still remain in use to this day, take a look at China’s vocational school program in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in this region. Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls “re-education camps”, and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms. There is also evidence that Uyghurs are being used as forced labour and of women being forcibly sterilised.

The past is always with us. On one hand we condemn such practices, yet our recent, and not so recent ancestors invented it. We can’t change the past, perhaps we can influence the future?

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UFO2
Articles

Aliens?

by John Mills

As with many, I’m waiting with intense interest a report due to land with the USA Congress in the next few days from the Government Intelligence arm on what is being referred to as “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena”, basically information on UFOs with extensive content from American military pilots.

Unusual for such intelligence and security obsessed agencies, the Pentagon has in recent years actually released video showing ‘unidentified’ flying objects exhibiting speed and manoeuvrability exceeding known aviation technologies. This has been interpreted by many as being a tacit nod in agreement that there is indeed something out there beyond human control and they cannot definitively rule out extra-terrestrial origins. Indeed, if this report is to have the expected content, it marks a critical change in reality for the U.S. military after decades of debunking and discrediting stories of unidentified flying objects, even with so many such occurrences not only in the USA, but on a global basis. In fact, the US Air Force investigated and catalogued over 12,000 sightings under its Project Blue Book program, categorising 700 cases as “unidentified” before the project ended in 1969.

I guess the real question that this report, and the many, many theories that have been put forward over the years, is that does intelligent extra-terrestrial life actually exist? Obviously, we don’t know for sure, but it seems we want to believe that it does. Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”. The basic human need not to be alone isn’t just about the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life, but even before space travel and the discovery of other planets, François-Marie d’Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, stated (obviously in French!) ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him’, substituting in this case religion for science.

In reality, if life can exist in some of the harshest conditions on Earth, there is an extremely high probability that other interplanetary lifeforms have evolved and possibly escaped their places of origin. It seems likely that primitive life forms on the planets of other stars, evolving over many billions of years, would occasionally develop intelligence, civilization and a high technology. We are, after all, talking about immense periods in time, when species, civilisations and even planets and stars have come and gone. The odds in favour of other living inhabitants of the universe are extremely high, the only thing seeming to limit any contact being time and distance. Indeed, at a rough estimate, there are a million civilizations in our galaxy at or beyond humankind’s present level of technological development. If they are distributed randomly through space, the distance between us and the nearest civilization should be about 300 light-years. Hence any information conveyed between the nearest civilization and our own will take a minimum of 300 years for a one-way trip and 600 years for a question and a response. But these civilisations may also have a different concept of time and timescales, and lifespans well beyond our three score and ten.

Given the immense strides humans have made in technologies in such a limited life span of the species, it seems to me unescapable that we have had ‘visitors’ who would have had much more time to develop and will continue to receive them, it is almost certain that our mortality means they will come to us before we can find them.

UPDATE:  And here’s the Report. Make of it what you will.

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Buxted
Articles

Scum

by John Mills

Where are the morals of today’s teenagers? In fact, where are anyone’s morals? Although I’m not tarring everyone with the same brush, there seems to be more and more stories circulating these days about animalistic behaviour and the complete disregard for what we used to call morals. In the latest such incident, a 17-year-old boy has just been arrested after two people were caught on CCTV vandalising a defibrillator kit at Buxted football club.

Although the second person, a female, has not as yet been caught, I just can’t get my mind around why they should do such a thing, especially in view of the previous days on the pitch cardiac arrest of Danish footballer Christian Eriksen during his side’s Euro 2020 game against Finland. I really hope that for once the book is thrown at this scum, far too many times they are let off with a slap on the wrist, and wander off laughing at the parody that used to be justice.

What will it take? Deaths as a result of their actions? Well, even that seems to cut no ice with the judiciary. In fact, you get bigger sentences for theft of money that the theft of a human life.

We’re all responsible for allowing the broken morals of a few to dictate the degeneration of our societies, when will we make a stand and make a statement of intent?

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TS1
Articles

The Tiananmen Square Massacre

by John Mills

On June 4th and 5th 1989, there were pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in the city centre of Beijing, China. The Tiananmen Square protests were mostly students’ demonstrations calling for democracy, free speech and a free press in China. They were halted in a bloody crackdown by the Chinese government, and these peacefully conceived protests are now known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.

The image of an unidentified man standing alone in defiance and blocking a column of Chinese tanks on June 5th remains a powerful statement of the human spirit and it’s need for justice and freedom for much of the world. In a speech to the President’s Club in 1999, Bruce Herschensohn, former deputy special assistant to President Richard Nixon, alleged that ‘Tank Man’ as he became known, was executed 14 days later; other sources alleged he was executed by firing squad a few months after the Tiananmen Square protests. In either case, he was presumed murdered by the Chinese Government.

Even today, 23 years later, the continued grip on the freedom of their citizens’ is apparent, with Hong Kong activists being detained on ‘suspicion’ of promoting an unauthorised assembly to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The ban on the vigil and at least six arrests came amid growing concern internationally about the suppression of the semi-autonomous city’s traditional freedoms, including a national security law imposed by Beijing last year.

When you moan about slow internet, being unable to visit the beach either in the UK or Europe, or any of the other petty things that seem so important to you, remember those that died for simply peacefully protesting the lack of freedoms we take as expected.

And never think that such atrocities are unthinkable here, it is a short distance between public acceptance of Government corruption to that of fascism and the suppression of public speech and rights.
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BigBrother
Articles

Big Brother isn’t Fiction!

by John Mills

One headline that caught my notice amongst the other detritus of the day’s news was the ruling handed down from The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights which ruled that the UK’s mass interception programmes unlawfully breached citizens’ rights to privacy and free expression. This follows on from disclosures by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden in 2013, and a number of campaign groups challenging the legality of state sponsored surveillance on a massive scale.

This wasn’t the first challenge to the legality of the UK Governments activities. In September 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK’s mass interception programmes breached the European Convention on Human Rights as they lacked adequate safeguards. However, this judgment did not declare the mass surveillance program unlawful, which would have moved the case up to the Grand Chamber. Today’s judgment means that such surveillance in the UK and across Europe will require prior independent or judicial authorisation, checking for adequate “end to end safeguards”, from the initial collection of data to the selection of items for storage to protect fundamental civil rights.

Information provided by Snowden highlighted that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ was conducting “population-scale” interception, capturing the electronic traffic of almost the entire population of the UK. These mass spying programmes included (but not limited to):

  • TEMPORA, a mass data store of ALL internet traffic;
  • KARMA POLICE, a catalogue including a “web browsing profile for every visible user on the internet”;
  • Black Hole, a repository of over 1 trillion events including internet histories, email and instant messenger records, search engine queries and social media activity.

The UK Government admitted that the purpose of mass surveillance “is not to search for the communications of identified targets” but to gather mass data and decide “who should be a target” which goes against the grain of a (supposed) democratic society and “treats everyone as under suspicion”. Mass surveillance damages democracy under the cloak of defending it, by moving the emphasis from targeting a potential criminal via investigation and intelligence gathering who can then be identified to treating everyone as a potential suspect. This paranoic, secretive in nature approach lays the foundations of a police state.  

I think we all recognise that the world has changed dramatically over the past few years, with technology and its availability becoming the new highway for not just legal, legitimate interactions on a world-wide basis, but also for those with intentions beyond what constitutes our safety and the (normally democratic) aspirations to which we aim. But mass surveillance itself then becomes a weapon if those using it are not acting in the best interests of those they are supposed to be representing. It also leads to what amounts to an arms race, with those with the best surveillance dominating, and information being shared across countries with similar ideologies, for example, GCHQ continues to share technology platforms and raw data with the USA in some places in the face of existing regulations of data transfer.

Most people in Britain have a concept in their mind that their personal data is just that, personal, and under their control. Today’s ruling has illustrated that this is a misconception, our data, information, internet communications (including this one!) are being monitored harvested and possibly being used against us. This judgment reaffirms that the British government’s bulk surveillance practices have violated our right to privacy and our right to freedom of expression and now must take action to ensure our rights are protected.

These dangerous, oppressive mass surveillance programs do not make us safer; they make us more vulnerable. As digital footprints grow and technologies that enable mass interception of personal data develop, our laws and safeguards should continue to adapt at the same pace, all systems need to have safeguards and measures in order for acceptance.

And the reason for their existence MUST NOT be at the sacrifice of civil rights.

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WorldCupQatar
Articles

Yet More Greed in Football

by John Mills

Following on from the European Super League debacle, the latest attempt by football authorities to destroy fans love of the game is a proposal to study whether the World Cup could be held every two years instead of 4. In this case it’s FIFA who are seeing petrodollars in their collective greedy eyes following their selling out of the tournament to Qatar and their slave-built stadiums and in a challenge to the financial power of Europe and UEFA.

The only motivation for this is pure greed, both on the organisers, FIFA, and the main supporters, the African confederation. Basically, the idea is that the tournament would move around like a circus, with each country\continent sharing in the supposed wealth it would generate. To illustrate the financial rewards, the World Cup is the main source of income for FIFA, accounting for around £4.5 billion of revenue it expects to earn in the current four-year financial cycle. They look with envious eyes at UEFA, who in the same four-year period brought more than £10 billion in revenue.

However, there are many arguments against this continued striving for more and more revenue, especially in Europe where there are already too many fixtures. The fact that it’s the African nations who are most in favour of this reform is telling. They are looking at the riches football generates in Europe and think that they should get a piece of the action. The idea was put forward by the president of the Saudi Arabia football federation Yasser Al Misehal, who suggested it was crucial for the global development of the game, and, of course, the Saudi contribution was immediately endorsed by the Confederation of African Football.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino raised concerns over the financial and sporting inequalities in football on a global basis, and emphasised the dominance of European football. In effect it was a not-so-veiled attacked on UEFA, highlighting that the world’s top 20 clubs are from just five European countries and that World Cups from the semi-finals onwards are dominated by just two confederations – Europe and South America. What he failed to mention was that the vast majority of the monies generated by football via advertising, sponsorship, online and TV subscriptions and attendance revenue originates in Europe, which funds the development of world football as a whole, and by alienating this construct the idea of disrupting EUFA tournaments would have the complete opposite effect of what is intended.

Obviously, rich countries, such as Qatar, can buy tournaments, albeit at a grave human cost, but the rest of the 53 or so African nations who are pushing for changes do not have this cash reserve, and are basically hoping that the proposed changes will bring in money from other countries. In effect, having too many games will devalue football, losing, eventually, the source of such wealth, the fans, who will become very bored with tournaments that no longer have that magic ingredient of achievement. The very sparseness of international tournaments is their main selling point, winning a World Cup is the pinnacle of a footballers, and even a country’s, football aspiration. Just look on how England have dined out on one World Cup win over half a century ago!

Whether the proposal comes in to place is probably a distance off should it get the number of votes necessary once the research has been completed. However, apart from UEFA putting up a resistance to anything that effects its money generating machine, at some point the players themselves will say enough is enough. Currently, top players (and those lower down the leagues) are finding that football is no longer just an August to May season, but extended to a full year, with international fixtures, tour and promotion matches and other representative matches now filling what used to be time for recovery. Will Clubs want to risk their ‘assets’ in such a schedule? Or will they stop releasing players for international duty at some point, which would then devalue the international tournaments. We forget sometimes that our players are actually human beings, not money generating machines, and much more prone to breakdowns than players on FIFA 21 on the Xbox!

As for the fans, the greed of FIFA, UEFA and ‘some’ (you know who you are!) clubs will eventually drive them away, and what then? Without the fans, football is nothing. Keep that in mind Infantino, Čeferin (UEFA President), and the chairmen\owners of ALL football clubs.

Football is ours, not yours.
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Swansea Riot
Articles

‘Riots’ in Swansea

by John Mills

Having watched with complete disgust the various video snippets available across social media and news channel websites, all I’m thinking now is that what you have here is a mob of feral animals who have no regard for human life, just their own satisfaction and entertainment. And if you think its justified (as some idiots on social media platforms apparently do), it’s morally bankrupt people such as you who are causing this. There is no justification for these attacks on normal people and society in general.

Make no mistake, the next step for any of these feral sub-humans that perpetrate such violence will be murder. They have no regard for the safety of anyone, with ordinary families being trapped in their houses, police pelted with rocks as they tried to break-up the violence, and the use of explosive missiles of burning cars being sent barrelling down hills towards occupied houses.

No one can seem to stand up to them, the police, who’s response has been criticised, with some residents, who were faced by violent scum outside their homes, saying no one came to their aid. Local, law abiding people are understandably angry that children were terrified after seeing this happen, but they do need to understand that it was just too dangerous for the police and fire service to attend or stay at the scene because of the danger to their own safety and are afraid of using ‘excessive force’ for fear of being pilloried by a hostile press and public. They’re between a rock and a hard place, but in my opinion, the actions of last night now justify any reaction to preserve the rule of law. If the perpetrators of this wanton destruction get away with soft sentences such as Community Service orders, it gives licence to similar ‘riots’ throughout the country. They need to be punished to the full extent of the law. Jailed, fined, and kicked out of the local community. They don’t deserve any of the benefits hard won through the blood sweat and toil of others through history.

And where are their parents? It was a mob of over a hundred teenagers (or even younger), throwing bricks, and setting cars on fire. They haven’t just appeared from nowhere; they have families of their own. How would they feel if suddenly a howling mob turned up at their parent’s house and started throwing bricks through their windows, smashing up their parents’ cars, showering sleeping babies with broken glass? The gradual decent in to barbarism will eventually lead to this, possible revenge attacks and the breakdown of society.

The day after, the clean-up begins, with the charred remains of cars with melted plastic, broken glass, and molten metal on Waun-Wen Road. I truly hope this will be the last such event of this kind, but sadly, this will not be an isolated incident. Given the mindless nature of many these days, copycat riots will inevitably start across the country under the guise of some form of social comment, when in fact the only reason for this Swansea riot was basically boredom after a supposed vigil for someone who had recently passed away.

Some memorial. That person’s name will now be forever associated with destruction.
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steam train victorian
Articles

The return to Victorian ‘standards’

by John Mills

Having just watched the BBC promote the reintroduction of ‘classes’ on trains, it made me think why they just don’t actually bring the current standards up to a decent level across the board and don’t treat normal working folk as cattle in overpacked, under scheduled tin cans on wheels. Maybe providing people with actual seats would be a start (a luxury for anyone who currently commutes from Wrexham!).

Third-class travel on the railways apparently came to an end in Britain on this day in 1956, when it was renamed by British Railways as “second class”. Yet the class system continued to haunt the railways, and in 1987, British Railways renamed second class as the more acceptable to modern thinking standard class. In reality, the conditions experienced on rail transport has not improved a great deal since then, in fact, it has gone backwards in most areas with many services, especially in Wales, running on out of date rolling stock.

Britain is notorious for its ingrained class system and nowhere was the division between the well-to-do and the less well-off more visible than on the railways during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The upper class would enjoy the comforts of first-class travel, with middle classes having less comfortable surroundings in second, and for the workers, there was third which was originally little more than an open wagon.

In 2013, a leaked document, which drew a furious reaction from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union, appeared to suggest the Department of Transport at that time were considering a form of it on the East Coast Main Line who were forced to deny it was planning to require a “third-class service” after a three-tier system was included in a leaked franchise prospectus ahead of a return to private ownership.

Now these divisions are being re-introduced as a new “Premium Economy” service has been launched in the UK by Avanti West Coast, offering customers three classes of travel for the first time since 1956. This ‘class’ gives customers access to more seats, more foot space and guaranteed tables. The new travel class sits between first class and standard services as a middle rate tier. AWC has replaced Virgin Trains on the West Coast Main Line and runs lines from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with routes to Manchester, Liverpool as well, so expect these classes to be introduced across the network.

The ‘commoners’ will be riding in open trucks at the back of trains before long, with the intimation that if you don’t have a company expense account, you shouldn’t be travelling 1st class. It looks like the arrogance with which the Tories now regard the country’s populations has now reached the stage whereas they can show their true colours and widen the ‘Have and Have Nots’ gap, dividing society once again.

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