Chris Whiteside's Blog

"I think my algorithm has decided I don't need Ed Davey in my life because he just has not come across my screens at all" Comment by a London voter called "Hannah" to a "More in Common" focus group, quoted in a piece in "The Economist" called " The Liberal Democrats are Britain's pointless party. " After a brief period of relevance which roughly coincided with Nick Clegg's leadership, the Lib/Dems do indeed appear to have become astonishingly irrelevant and pointless for a party with 73 MPs in parliament. A little concerned however, that this is being seen as the result of a computer algorithm. One would like to think voters would have some agency in the matter. 

Three Conservative wins in by elections yesterday, a gain from the Green party on Cotswolds District Council and seats held on South Staffordshire council and on Windsor and Maidenhead council.

 

Thanks to Neil Stone for drawing my attention to one of the best posts ever put up on X:

"When truth becomes offensive, lies become comfortable."  Thomas Sowell  

This is what the UK had to say in response to the Argentine government's ridiculous posturing at the United Nations about the Falkland Islands.

 "Anyone willing to trust Putin is either an idiot or complicit in his crimes. Possibly both." Gary Kasparov on X, formerly Twitter. Garry Kasparov on X: "Anyone willing to trust Putin is either an idiot or complicit in his crimes. Possibly both." / X

"I don’t pretend debt is just the fault of the current government, but they are unquestionably making it worse. The next generation will pay the price. There’s only one way out of this crisis - a government willing to make tough choices and get Britain’s finances under control." Andrew Griffith MP Shadow Chancellor

J.S. Bach took Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto for four violins, which provided yesterday's music spot, and tranposed it for four harpsichords. Here is the Bach music as performed with two of the harpsichord parts actually played on that instrument, and the other two on pianos.

 

 

 Conservatives will always be on the side of British Business.

 

 Quote by former PM Rishi Sunak in tomorrow's Sunday Times:

Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5      Allegro  Affettuoso  Allegro Performed by the New York Baroque Incorporated Harpsichord: John Scott Violin Solo: Owen Dalby Flute: Emi Ferguson Violin Tutti: Katie Hyun Viola: Bryony Gibson-Cornish Cello: Ezra Seltzer Bass: Wen Yang

Congratulations to Councillor James Poland on gaining the Wreake Valley ward in Charnwood from the Greens  Wreake Valley (Charnwood) Council By-Election Result: 🌳 CON: 48.2% (+8.0) ➡️ RFM: 31.2% (New) 🌍 GRN: 16.4% (-34.3) 🌹 LAB: 3.1% (-6.0) 🔶 LDM: 1.1% (New) Conservative GAIN from Green. Changes w/ 2023.

"Macron and Tusk are speaking and acting with an urgency that makes the latest reports about Russia violating Lithuanian airspace even more concerning. It is not clear that the Government is taking the threat from Russia seriously enough. Its own intelligence assessment says an attack on NATO could come by 2030, while repeated smaller-scale incursions are already taking place.  It comes only weeks after CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow, reportedly to warn Russia against attacking a NATO member. Our European allies are responding with growing urgency, yet the Government still will not say what it intends to do on defence. The NATO Secretary General was in Britain only yesterday calling for that path to be set out, and I agree with him. The Conservatives set out two weeks ago both our route to higher defence spending at 3% of GDP and how we would pay for it. The Government should now explain what it knows about the escalations in Eastern Europe, how it...

Kemi Badenoch on the news that inflation has risen to 3%: "Inflation is rising again. Labour’s tax and spend addiction is making the problem worse. Labour has made it more expensive to hire people, run a business and produce the energy our country needs. Those costs have to go somewhere. They end up in the prices you pay at the checkout, in higher energy bills and in fewer jobs and opportunities. Conservatives would make the tough choices: cut wasteful spending, cut taxes and bring down the cost of energy. That’s how we get prices under control and build a stronger economy."

'Steerpike' writes in the Spectator: " In a cringeworthy bid to woo Muslim voters across the country, Polanski this week released a campaign video for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election in which he butchered Pakistan’s national language. Fewer than 200 people in the constituency use Urdu as their main language, but the Green leader evidently thought his linguistic gymnastics would establish him as a better voice for Muslims than the actual Muslim Labour candidate running for the seat. Today, the Mayor of London decided to put Polanski’s newfound proficiency to the test. During Mayor’s questions, the Green leader asked whether City Hall would ban new data centres and underperforming water companies. "  Mayor Khan began his answer in Urdu, presumably with the intention of giving the leader of the Green party a opportunity to demonstrate whether his command of the language extends beyond reading from a prepared text. Khan's Urdu reply translates as: " Peace ...

Dan Hodges has a very interesting piece in the Daily Mail on the likelihood of Andy Burnham calling and winning a general election in the spring - and how Kemi Badenoch may by the only person who can stop him. Hodges points out the similarities to the position just after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, when he nearly called a snap election which he might well have won - and didn't because David Cameron and George Osborn's policy of raising the Inheritance tax threshold so that " only millionaires should pay inheritance tax " was cutting through. (By the way, when Cameron and Osborne gained office in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and in a very different fiscal climate three years later, their coalition partners would not agree to the full implementation of this promise, but they did manage to introduce a property-specific allowance that allowed qualifying married couples to reach a £1 million tax-free threshold.) The Present Prime minister, Andy Bur...

Key extract from a Spectator article by Tim Shipman. The article also explains that Miliband and Starmer were advised how damaging the policy would be to British interests and objectives, but chose to ignore that advice:

"It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it." (Maurice Switzer.) I had always believed that this quote, in a slightly shorter form, was from Abraham Lincoln, but this afternoon a friend mentioned it to me and attributed it to Mark Twain, so I decided to check where it actually comes from. There are attributions to both Lincoln and Twain going back a long way - Golden Book magazine attributed it to Lincoln nearly a century ago, in 1931, in the form which I remember, and in 1953 a newspaper in Canada attributed it to Mark Twain. However, neither the Yale Book of Quotations or the Quote Investigator website were able to find any attribution to the former US President or the author earlier than 1931 or 1953 respectively, and the saying was in use for several decades prior to 1931 without any attribution to either. The Bible does contain an idea very similar to the first part of the quote above, in  Proverbs 17:28. ...

I am not the world's biggest ABBA fan but they did have a few very catchy tunes which were absolute earworms, and "Lay all your love on me" is definately one of them.