Saturday 1st & Sunday 2nd November 2025

[refitman]

Morning all.

[Frog222]

Here you go then

JK Rowling attacks Glamour magazine over trans ‘women of the year’
The writer and women’s rights activist said that naming nine trans women was a message to girls that ‘men are better women than they are’

https://archive.ph/8S2JG

I wonder what JKR would have to say about the late Jan (formerly James )Morris ?

" Farewell The Trumpets " 1979

I'm only into the first hundred pages, but it's a very fine read indeed on the reality of and the passing of Empire .

[Frog222]

LOL?

[Frog222]

The tangled story of Gill and Voloshyn raises questions about how Russia has attempted to cultivate contacts across British political life.

David Coburn and Jonathan Arnott, two other MEPs who were part of Farage’s Ukip bloc in Brussels, visited Ukraine with Gill on an October 2018 trip. During the visit, Coburn, Gill and Arnott appeared on camera in interviews with 112 Ukraine, a pro-Russian channel affiliated with Medvedchuk.

Six weeks later, the three would make similar statements during a debate in the European parliament on 11 December that touched on press freedom in Ukraine and the question of whether it should be allowed to join the EU.

[refitman]

I love this for him. He deserves nothing less (you can choose who I'm referring to).

[Frog222]

Knocked out by the flu jab early bed with a pill !

[Frog222]

25 miles from Imperial Russia.

[Frog222]

For those hesitating about a flu jab, the extreme tiredness was gone this morning and headache also since then !

I had a quick delve into the ex-prince/late Giuffré saga, it does appear that she was an unreliable witness , but will the wider questioning of all the alleged other punters go on, or be silenced ?
Times article on another in the 'harem' -- https://archive.ph/DxjeQ
Unherd has a series of articles, going back to her first 2011 book --
the latest https://unherd.com/2025/10/should-we-be ... a-giuffre/

PS I was feeling so much better that I was going to do some work in the garden , obviously the signal for a cloudburst ...

[Frog222]

I was looking for hope in the one on the Dutch election --

"" 3. Take off the gloves when you need to
One thing stood out during the debates. While other left and centrist leaders sought to sound prime ministerial, Jetten took off the gloves. He relentlessly confronted Wilders on the detail of the PVV’s policies, from the climate crisis to migration.

Many leaders have a fear of heated exchanges poisoning the political atmosphere. “When they go low, we go high” remains a mantra for many liberals.

But elections are meant to expose policy differences – all the more so in a parliament with 15 parties. Jetten avoided needless squabbles with ideologically adjacent parties and focused instead on his polar opposite.

4 Tell an unapologetically left wing economic story
Given how many people vote for the right on cultural issues, polling data from the Netherlands reveals how leftwing many are on economic questions.

Most voters across nearly all Dutch parties support taxing labour less and capital more.

Accordingly, D66 campaigned for a more progressive inheritance and gift tax, the abolition of a regressive mortgage interest deduction and, above all, higher rewards for work.

The party even proposed a millionaires’ tax. And it worked. Voters are not afraid of such policies – they want them.

No anti-capitalist posturing, no talk of degrowth – just straightforward, good-old social democratic ideas. Liberals misread the public if they think voters fear such policies.

5 Make a big tent
Progressives who agree among themselves on 80% of issues often fixate on the 20% where they differ. Jetten broke that habit, opting instead to triangulate on major issues, including immigration, by building a broad, if imperfect, voter coalition. ""

Now wondering what UK politicians might learn from that ...

[Frog222]

I am seeing large amounts of pro-Russian propaganda on 'BillionaireTV' here, and it's the same in Italy where the Lying professor Jeffrey Sachs appears to be permanently on TV too, ( according to Italian youtube and twitter commenters) so was curious to see where Jetten stood on Ukraine --

LEIDEN, Netherlands wednesday29/10 —

" Europe must defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Rob Jetten, leader of the progressive-liberal party, which exit polls on Wednesday night projected to win the Dutch election.

Asked by Euractiv whether he would back Ukraine no matter what, Jetten replied: “Absolutely – and there’s a very broad majority in this new chamber to support the Ukrainians no matter what, because we have to defeat Putin. We will always stand with the Ukrainian people.”
https://www.euractiv.com/news/rob-jette ... eat-putin/

No whimpering about the military-industrial complex , unlike poor Zara .