Chris Whiteside's Blog

"We are facing one of the most dangerous periods in Ukrainian history, a choice between losing our dignity and freedom and losing US support. We choose dignity. My answer is my oath of office. I did not betray Ukraine in Feb 2022 and we won’t betray it now." President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

 Congratulations to newly elected Conservative councillors Natalie Shalom and Julie Currie

Whether and when Ukraine signs a peace deal with Russia should be a matter for the Ukrainian people and their elected government. It is not for us to tell them to fight on if Russia offers a peace deal which they find acceptable. However, I think it would be both morally wrong and incredibly foolish for the West to pressure Ukraine to accept a peace deal which they regard as unacceptable while they are still willing to fight. The worst part of President Trump's new "peace deal" is that it appears to have been cooked up without input from Ukraine. There are those in the West who will tell you that Russia is winning the war. This is absolute nonsense. Putin thought he could conquer Ukraine in a few days. Three and a half years later Ukraine still exists and is still fighting. In one sense, every day that there is still a free Ukraine is a victory. In another sense nobody is winning and the war is a disaster for both countries. Russia has probably lost more than a million ca...

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme" Milton Friedman  

  Kent council report £46.5m overspend following Reform takeover Needless to say the response of Reform UK to this report is to blame the previous Conservative administration or the national Labour government. However, the overspend seems to have got worse since Reform took control. A new report from the council about their revenue position states that the “current working budget for 2025-26 is £1,531.9m,” which would represent an overspend of £46.5m for the year. The report says the overspend “presents a risk to the Council’s future financial sustainability. And that overspend is significantly up - in quarter one of the year, the council had an overspend of £27.9m, which had risen to £47.2m for quarter two. The current budget projections assume some clawback by the end of the year.

Janan Ganesh in the FT is not the only person expressing a less than stellar view of the competence of the Labour government. This is the view of the analysts at Shore Capital, an investment firm:

Janan Ganesh eviscerates  Starmer and Reeves in a devastating piece in the Financial Times. I don't agree with everything he writes - one or two of his side-swipes at the previous Conservative government are the opposite of the truth, such as his characterising as "unfunded tax cuts" the tax policy of an administration which actually imposed some of the largest peacetime tax rises and what was then the highest tax burden since World War II - until Rachel Reeves raised taxes even higher. But what he had to say about the present PM and Chancellor was dead right. On the Chancellor On the PM and the government in general: He then makes the aforementioned side-swipes at Brexit and the previous government, some more justified than others, before continuing: "None of this ever added up to a case for Labour, let alone a landslide. Its ruling duo are inadequate and remain preferable to their likeliest usurpers. Britain has another three years or more to reflect on this Hobson...

 

I am deeply concerned about the increase in anti-Semitism from an already worryingly high level since the 7th October Hamas attacks. It is wrong to blame any community in Britain for the actions of foreign powers or terrorist groups thousands of miles away. And be in no doubt that Anti-Semitism is like the canary in the coal mine - it's the type of racism which very often shows itself first. But other types of racism, be it against black people, Muslims, or other group, soon follow. In March of this year a music venue in Bristol cancelled a gig by the Jewish band Oi Va Voi because of objections from activist groups. In a statement, Oi Va Voi said the " intimidation of the activist groups who wanted Strange Brew to cancel our gig would never be tolerated against any other minority ", adding that " this episode has had an immense personal and emotional impact on us ". " It has also led to financial loss, reputational damage and a barrage of hate, the like of ...

Another comment by Cato the Elder made more than two thousand years ago which seems particularly appropriate to today's politics in the social media age ...  

 

  Unfortunately true.

The Oxford Union has a very long tradition for voting for propositions so utterly and completely daft that you wonder whether the members were having a laugh, had temporarily lost their minds, or were so dim that they should never have been admitted to a university, let alone of of the most sought-after in the country. The month after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, and two or three weeks before the infamous Reichstag Fire gave him the opportunity to consolidate complete control of the country and turn the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, the Oxford Union debated the motion " That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country. " This was carried, by 275 votes to 153, and helped give Hitler the impression that Britain had lost the will to oppose any moves he might make to increase Germany's power, contributing in a small way to the events leading up to the ghastly war in which fifty million people, lost their lives. (It is widely understood that...

 

"If Reeves breaks her promise and comes back for more taxes, she is making a political choice.  She shouldn’t take more money away from hardworking people, to cover up for her mistakes.  Labour should take our plan and cut wasteful spending, so they can lower taxes instead."

Cato the Elder - a man so wise he produced a perfect quote for the social media era more than two thousand years before the internet was a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eyes.

 "Sir Keir Starmer is a prisoner of the politics he pledged to end." That's the conclusion of a piece in this week's Economist called " When Rigmarole becomes reality. " Here are a few extracts. "Of all the distortions and deceits that Sir Keir Starmer deployed in order to reach Downing Street, one stands out. "It was not the promise of free tuition fees offered to left-wing Labour members, ditched after the leadership contest was over. It was not the solemn pledge to forego tax rises on income, VAT or national insurance made at the last election, which will be smashed in the budget on November 26th." "It was the promise of stability.     Sir Keir promised to ' stop the chaos .' Britain, he argued, was a prisoner of Westminster rigmarole." "A Labour government would bring serenity, he pledged. ' We're all stuck in their psychodrama ,' said Sir Keir. ' All being dragged down to their level. ' "Sir...

"After the police have finished with that guy who pretended to be a Rear Admiral can they check in on whoever’s pretending to be running the Treasury." (Dan Hodges, on X today) 

 

 

  Cato the elder had a point!

I have re-posted this previous "Quote of the day" from Marcus Porcius Cato because it has been the most popular post on this blog over the past three months. " Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise. "  (Cato the Elder, who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.)   Cato came out with a remarkable number of sayings more than 2175 years ago which seem surprisingly appropriate today and I will be quoting a few more of them in the coming week.

Below are extracts published on "The Critic" website from a piece by Robert Hutton after an extraordinary 24 hours in which the Labour government decided to tear itself apart in public. Downing Street accused Labour cabinet members of plotting to oust the PM and Chancellor. We learned that the PM thinks his backbenchers are "feral" and don't understand the markets. Actually, he's absolutely right on that second point, but it wasn't very clever of him to let them find out he believes it. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch was presented with an open goal at Prime Ministers' Questions today and slammed the ball into the back of the net. This is what Robert Hutton had to say about it. "It was a day of dazzling incompetence. Stunning ineptitude. Astonishing uselessness. How do we even begin to plumb the depths of daftness of this Downing Street operation? With Labour MPs grumpy and Cabinet ministers anxious to let people know that they are available for...

Lizzy Buchan, political editor of the Daily Mirror, quoting a Labour MP who (probably wisely) preferred to remain anonymous, about the Number Ten spin operation "They've fired their own starting pistol and shot themselves in the face."

Here is an extract from what Labour MP Barry Gardiner said on a BBC panel discussion this week. I have to wonder if someone at Conservative HQ managed to feed him a truth serum! “Number ten circled the wagons. “Why are they having to defend themselves? Well the answer is very clear. Because this government, from the beginning, actually from before it was a government, has cared more about extirpating the people who disagreed with it than they have about setting out a clear programme and policy.” “And quite honestly, you know, every day people looking at this tonight are going to say, ‘For God’s sake, what do these politicians think they’re doing?’ You know, you circle the wagons and you end up in a circular firing squad! That’s what they’re doing. And people want a government that’s going to say ‘This is what we’re about.” They don’t know. That’s why our poll ratings are so low.” “People are looking to this government, saying ‘What are you giving us?’ You had ten pledges when you start...

Robert Peston on X last night, after someone at 10 Downing Street gave selected journalists a briefing accusing Health Secretary Wes Streeting and unspecified other Labour cabinet ministers of plotting against the Prime Minister. "We are witnessing full-on Downing Street chaos tonight - which has led the official spokesman for the health secretary Wes Streeting to give me a formal statement denying that Streeting is plotting behind the scenes to oust the PM.  So many aspects of this are comic. But my favourite is that Kitty Ussher, who used to be a Labour Treasury minister and is now a senior director at Barclays,  gave a presentation to all Labour special advisers, at the invitation of Downing Street officials, in which she said government bond prices were depressed because investors fear that Starmer and Reeves would be ousted.   The message from Ussher was “be loyal or government borrowing costs will go through the roof”.   So what has happened in the la...

This is what you get when an utterly incompetent Chancellor puts a £40 billion extra tax on jobs.  

 

 I took part in the main commemoration of Remembrance on Sunday, but like many people around the world, I will also be keeping a minute's silence at 11am GMT today, exactly 107 years after the guns finally fell silent in what those who lived through it called "The Great War" and our historians mostly call the First World War.

 

 A tweet today from President Zelensky of Ukraine: "It is not Europe that is at war with Russia; it is Russia that is at war with Ukraine – and potentially with many in Europe. We understand what they are capable of and what they might do, but Europe fears the word “escalation.” And Europeans always assume that, because they are developed states that respect law and values, Europe’s steps – any response from them – will be an escalation. And I believe the opposite: Russia does not like weakness. Any intellectual responses – precisely the kind Europe finds – read as weakness to Russia. Weakness creates a certain Russian flavor. The Russians sense that weakness, and they want, while no one is strong enough yet to pressure them, to inflict damage and take some extra gain for themselves. In Ukraine’s direction, that gain looks like preventing Ukraine’s development, destroying our identity, and taking our land – in short, political gains. In the energy sphere – Slovakia, Hungary, East...

The people sitting with me at a dinner this evening, none of whom are very political or known for strong views, all thought that the BBC has blotted it's copybook very seriously in a number of areas. They didn't approve of the way the Trump speech had been edited, and were even less happy with the way Martine Croxall was treated for saying "Pregnant women" instead of "pregnant people." I suspect those views are likely to be representative of what millions of people in Britain think, including people who don't necessarily have a high opinion of Trump or support hostility to trans people. So I may be taking a risk here by posting extracts from the account put up on X this morning by BBC insider Nick Robinson. I do regard Nick as a good guy and one of the best journalists at the BBC. Which does not mean that I agree with his views on every subject. I think the BBC has a serious problem with institutional arrogance and "groupthink" including a tend...

The Jewish shopkeeper in this picture from Germany in 1933 is called Richard Stern - and he's wearing an Iron Cross awarded for serving in the German Army in World War One as a Nazi thug stands guard outside his shop as part of a boycott of Jewish businesses. . You can see from the wry smile of Richard Stern's face that the man had incredible guts. It's the brown shirt, not the shopkeeper, whose demeanour radiates fear and tension. This post is taken from a tweet by  Archaeo - Histories on X here  which reprinted an article in the Jewish Observer. After being awarded the prestigious Iron Cross for his service in the German army during World War I, Richard Stern was driven out of his home country by the Nazi regime. MyHeritage’s Research team discovered records of him arriving at Ellis Island at the age of 40 in May 1939 — narrowly escaping the beginning of the war.  In 1942, when Stern was 43 and not yet an American citizen, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to join the war ef...

 

The following is an extract by a piece by Harvey Jones in the Express. Referring to Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, Harvey Jones writes .. . "This is a man who can't even book a taxi without turning it into an international incident. A former foreign secretary whose undiplomatic response   to a malfunctioning cash machine was to curse the "f***ing French" . As justice secretary, he's presiding over our disastrous prison system, where inmates come and go as they please,   and has been called a "coward" by his own ministers . Calamity Lammy commits career suicide every time he steps out in public. Last week, he strode into Parliament without a poppy, then lectured us about the importance of Remembrance Sunday. To cap it all, he covered his embarrassment   by taking a poppy from an actual veteran . He also presided over  what's been called the worst PMQs in living memory , hurling abuse across the chamber, arms flailing, fingers jabbing. Yet even a ...

All around Britain millions of people have been remembering those who died in two terrible world wars and other conflicts since. I have just returned from the ceremony at the Egremont Town Centre war memorial, where I laid a wreath on behalf of the Conservative party. I shall also shortly be going to the 1pm Moor Row ceremony about a hundred yards from my front door. I was struck this morning by how many people came along to pay their respects despite the poor weather - discussing it with other Egremont Town Councillors, we were all agreed that there were even more people present this year than last year, which had already been a good attendance. Postscript - there was also a good turnout at the community event on Moor Row, and I am told alxso in Selby in Yorkshire and at Whitehaven. I think people are ever more determined that the sacrifices of those who died should not be forgotten. In the words of the Kohima Epitaph, " We will remember them. "

  From "For the Fallen" by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21 September 1914. Image posted by the Royal Family in their Remembrance Sunday message.

 

 

"Don't drag black people into the mess you made of yourself this afternoon. Proud moments come from performance, not pigmentation." Kemi Badenoch responds to a tweet from the Deputy Prime Minister who congratulated himself for being the first black person to answer questions at Prime Minister's Question time on Wednesday.

 

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy took Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) today as "Never here Keir" is abroad. He forgot his poppy and had to borrow one from an RAF veteran, refused five times to answer a question from the Conservative shadow defence minister about whether any more prisoners have been wrongly released (it was revealed shortly afterwards that two had) and looked to be on the verge of losing it for much of the session. This is what former Labour and Trade Union staffer Dan Hodges (now a journalist) had to say about it: "David Lammy could have had a worse PMQs session. But only if he'd fainted at the despatch box, got up, punched the Speaker, then seized the Mace and attacked Angela Rayner with it."

My favourite versions of "Windmills of your mind" are the oscar-winning original sung by Noel Harrison for the film for which it was written, the 1968 Steve McQueen & Faye Dunaway version of "The Thomas Crown Affair," and the King's Singers arrangement which I posted on my blog on Monday. There are a lot of other versions, which range from the pretty good (Petunia Clark, All Angels, Barbra Streisand) to the frankly disappointing. This year the song has been brought back into the public consciousness when it was used in the Season II finale of "Severance." Interestingly, the version they used is a classic which is nearly as old as Harrison's original - it was performed by Mel Torme a year later, in 1969. While I certainly remember hearing "Windmills of your mind " in my childhood, I am not sure which versions I heard at the time, but I only discovered or rediscovered the Mel Torme version as it has begun to reappear recently after bein...

I usually put up a quote about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot on November 5th, but this year I think instead it's more important to repeat an extract from a speech Boris Johnson gave yesterday at the site of the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. ‘When Jews in Western Europe are being berated just for how they look or dress, when synagogues are being vandalised and Jewish worshippers killed: when unmistakably anti Jewish sentiment is spilling from the lips of people who normally think of themselves as kind and decent, and when kefir wearing mobs of middle class intellectuals are taking to the streets of Western capitals to chant that Israel must be wiped out from the river to the sea.  ‘We are being warned again, as humanity has been warned in the past.  ‘And to all those who are still apathetic or so foolish as to think this outbreak of prejudice and hatred will be confined to Jews. I say, look at history.’  

Coined by Kemi Badenoch, referring to the Chancellor's statement: "What we saw from the Chancellor today was a waffle-bomb. Rachel Reeves must stop blaming others & admit she’s made a mess. Fairness means living within our means so our children don’t pay for her mistakes."

I have not always agreed with the Adam Smith Institute but this summary of today's speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer is bang on.

 

 

"Whatever one might think about Rachel Reeves’ misdemeanours, the real scandal is that property owners have to pay off the council to rent out their own homes. Unlike Reeves, who had been tweeting in support of this legislation at the same time she wasn’t complying with it, I’d hardly heard of the landlords licence she should have acquired. It turns out neither had many landlords, who I suspect will be furious to learn that they owe even more money to the state. For what it’s worth, while I do think that deliberately breaking the law is a sackable offence, I don’t think Reeves – or anyone for that matter – should go for a minor accidental infraction such as this. I know we all make mistakes. But I also won’t apologise for pointing out what Keir Starmer used to say. Indeed, I confess to a bit of schadenfreude watching this Prime Minister, who promised a “whiter than white” Government, dealing with sleaze ranging from undeclared freebies to stolen mobile phones and unpaid property t...

From an FT article bv Charlotte Ivers. 

  "If one is remembered by a Friend, one is never truly gone." (Grand Admiral Thrawn: the passage below from which this quote is taken forms the first words of the  the Epilogue of Timothy Zahn's novel "Thrawn." In context these words are clearly about exile, not death. Thrawn himself had been exiled from the Chiss Ascendancy to the Empire: he had written these words in a journal he gave to his friend Eli Vanto who was going into exile in the opposite direction, from the Empire to the Chiss Ascendancy. However, I find the comment to be equally relevant to All Soul's Day. For what is death if it is not an exile from the world of the living?)