Chris Whiteside's Blog

‘For a country to hand over its territory to another country free of charge could be construed as misplaced benevolence. To insist on paying for the pleasure suggests some sort of international humiliation fetish.’ Stephen Daisley , in a Telegraph article this week on Labour's Chagos Islands surrender deal.

"My apprenticeship changed my life. I gained real skills, earned a wage, and was building a future without debt. That’s why Conservatives will create 100,000 new apprenticeships a year with our New Deal for Young People backing choice, skills, and opportunity." Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch , Conservative leader.

 

 

(Lord) Dan Hannan had this to say today: "The Green Party, for the sake of a by-election campaign, risks igniting the sectarianism that blows countries apart. We do not sufficiently appreciate the extraordinary and, in its fashion, beautiful, way in which British communities of South Asian heritage avoided the lingering feuds which still influence Indian and Pakistani politics. I read several eye-witness accounts of the 1947 intercommunal violence some years ago, and don’t like to think about, let alone write about, what happened. Nirad Chaudhuri was one of the most expressive writers of his generation, but he could find no language for what he had witnessed: “ I have weighed nearly all the words and phrases which the murderous ferocity of man, as distinct from his warlike ferocity, has contributed to the vocabulary of European peoples: massacre, pogrom, lynching, fusillade, noyade, St. Bartholomew, Sicilian Vespers, Bloodbath of Stockholm, Bulgarian atrocities, Armenian massacres...

 

The passage below is another extract from one of his articles tweeted on X by Stephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard on X: here ,  this time from his Daily Telegraph piece on today's Prime Ministers' Questions. Is there a more pathetic sight than Sir Keir Starmer? "Is there a more pathetic sight than Sir Keir Starmer, the Black Knight of politics, at PMQs?   Every week he arrives for his joust with Kemi Badenoch, and every week he leaves after doing his impression of the character from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As one deadly Badenoch barb after another slices limb after limb off, on he ploughs: “Tis but a scratch.” It’s a truism that Badenoch has found her voice at PMQs but, in recent months, she has been presented with a weekly Michelin three-star menu of topic choices, all of them lethal. The obvious choice this week would have been Peter Mandelson, whose downfall Badenoch has both hastened and deepened with her expert cross-examinations of the former director of public...

 

"I am grateful to each of the 107 countries that stood with Ukraine today in defense of life at the UN. The General Assembly adopted our resolution in support of a lasting peace, with clear calls for a full ceasefire and the return of our people. These are the right and necessary steps. And we will keep working actively to achieve peace, together with our partners." President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine Below is how the UN's member nations voted.  

Stephen Pollard posted the extract below on X from an article he has written in the Jewish Chronicle. You can find the full article at Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has built a career on the back of being an ‘anti-racist’. Say no more - The Jewish Chronicle - The Jewish Chronicle A couple of days ago Yasmin Alibhai-Brown published a tweet attacking the appointment of Margaret Hodge to follow Michael Grade as chair of the regulator Ofcom on the grounds that they are supposedly both "Uber-Zionists." Like Michael Gove my initial reaction when I saw the tweet was was to wonder if it was really from the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown or from a parody account. Yes, it really was from her. Yasmin alibhai-brown on X: "Uber Zionist Margaret Hodge will, we hear, become Ofcom chair after uber Zionist Michael Grade steps down. A two step solution to ensure the Palestine & Palestinian suffering are denied proper coverage. And the Israeli state gets away with atrocities." / X This is...

  Four years on from Putin’s illegal invasion, we stand united with the people of Ukraine. Now and always.

 

Continuing the "Pink Panther" theme, the song " Meglio Stasera, " known in English as " It Had Better Be Tonight " was performed by Fran Jeffries in the original 1963 "Pink Panther" film. The music was composed and performed by Henry Mancini and his orchestra with Italian lyrics by Franco Migliacci and English lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Although Fran Jeffries steals the show and holds your attention with her superlative singing and dancing in this clip, if you look carefully at the background you can also see some excellent acting from the film's protagonists, David Niven (suavely enjoying the song) and Peter Sellers (bumbling along as Inspector Clouseau.)

"Student loan repayments have become a scam. You work hard but you get "rewarded" with high interest rates. How is that fair? Conservatives will reduce interest rates for hundreds of thousands of graduates. That's just Step 1 in our New Deal for Young people." Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch

 Rishi Sunak says Zelensky showed him real-time casualty data from the front in Munich. - 80% of Ukrainian kills are from drones - Russia is losing 1,000 soldiers a day. His conclusion: Europe is not ready for this kind of war.  This was Frazer Nelson's summary of a piece Rishi Sunak has written for tomorrow's Times which I a certainly going to read. I think he's right Our soldiers, sailors and aircrew must never again be put in the position of trying to fight the next war with the weapons and tactics of the last one. War has changed and our defences must be updated to reflect the new reality.

Joani Reid MP, Char of the All-Party-Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, and a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, has issued the statement below about the ban by West Midlands Police preventing supporters of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C attending the team's match with Aston Villa. It is now beyond reasonable dispute that the process West Midlands Police followed to arrive at this decision was egregiously flawed and that they made a whole serious of factually incorrect statements about it, including some given in evidence to the Home Affairs select committee by the then Chief constable, such as a false statement about the extent to which Birmingham's Jewish communities had been consulted and the release, presented as fact, of AI-generated details of a supposed Maccabi TA match involving crowd trouble which had never actually happened. West Midlands police also gave an account of a violence associated with a match in Amsterdam, which was seriousl...

" A shot in the dark " was the first of the sequels to " The Pink Panther " in which Peter Sellers reprised the character of the bumbling policeman, Inspector Clouseau. The theme music was written by Henry Mancini and performed by Manchini and his orchestra.  

 

 

 Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski : @sikorskiradek "In Poland, we think that if Putin succeeded in conquering Ukraine, we would be next, and the cost of deterring him on the Polish border would be much higher. We are paying for Ukraine's sustenance both as a state and in the defensive war. I personally believe that gives us the right to have a voice in these negotiations. Of course, we wish luck to the US, but it has to be a fair peace that respects Ukraine's red lines and respects Europe's security."

Host:  "Do you think that this issue of territory, Donbas region, is a solvable one?" General Ben Hodges : "Yeah, Russia could leave and recognize this as Ukrainian sovereign territory."

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a season of reflection inspired by Christ’s forty days in the wilderness. We wish everyone a Lent filled with reflection, prayer, and service.

I must confess that I do not always agree with President Trump. Indeed, that is probably the biggest understatement I have ever posted on this blog. However, here is something he has got right. The Labour government had been briefing that the US president had come round to supporting their plan to give away the Chagos Islands to a country which never owned them, against the wishes of the Chagos Islanders themselves, and pay £35 billion for the privilege. Well he hasn't. This is what President Trump said on the subject today: The Labour government has been telling us, wrongly, that international law requires us to give away the islands. This is not, and never has been true. And in fact, because of treaties we have signed with the USA, it is against international law to give them away without US agreement. Which means this terrible deal cannot proceed.  Kemi Badenoch said: " As I've said before Starmer’s Chagos deal is an act of great stupidity.  Paying £35bn to surrender ...

I attended the funeral today at St Peters' Kells and at Distington Hall of Ronald Fox, a true gentleman, who was born in Whitehaven in 1944 and died earlier this month just before he would have reached the age of 82. Ron was an immensely kind man who liked nothing more than helping people, and he had a great many friends in Whitehaven and the surrounding area, many of whom were there today. Rest in Peace.