In the dark days of the early 1970s, Britain was obliged by a coal-miners’ strike to go on to a three-day working week (our power stations were then mostly coal-fired, and hence there was a shortage of power). Strictly speaking, production should have declined by 40 per cent, but instead declined only by 20 per cent. This surely meant that, on average, people spent one day at work completely unproductively, which will come as a surprise only to those who have never worked in an enterprise or organisation of any kind.
In other words, at least a fifth of our working time is spent doing nothing, or rather nothing productive. Most people are incapable of doing nothing, in the strict sense that a meditator does nothing. Moreover, much of their activity may not merely be unproductive but positively counterproductive, in so far as most people at work feel obliged to do something, and by far the easiest thing for them to do with their superfluous time is to obstruct others, to have unnecessary meetings and so forth.
If taken seriously, not only offices, but millions of journeys to offices, would become unnecessary, pollution would decline and leisure time would increase. This latter would be a disaster, since most people do not know what to do with themselves as it is. It is for this reason that work is not arranged as efficiently as possible, but its productive aspect is diluted by myriad unnecessary tasks — unnecessary, that is, from the narrow point of view of production. Except in the factories of the East, where production is all, a great deal of work is designed to keep us occupied while we produce nothing. It ameliorates boredom and prevents the bad behaviour in which boredom results.
Anthony Daniels, “The Pleasant Embrace of Fear”, Quadrant, 2020-05-06.
August 31, 2025
QotD: The “working” world
August 30, 2025
Flagging hopes
The English have been told by the transnational elites who happen to use London as one of their bases of operations that pride in the nation is, at best, old fashioned and at worst, racist/sexist/homophobic hate embodied. You could easily imagine Keir Starmer quoting Justin Trudeau that “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada England” [and consequently that] “makes us the first post-national state”. I’m certain that’s very close to Starmer’s actual views, but it’s very far from the views of a lot of ordinary English people:
Suddenly flagging has become a big thing in England. Out of nowhere a social media driven grassroots movement of flaggers has emerged. Throughout England groups of newly emerging activist are hanging flag on lamp posts and painting red crosses on roundabouts.
Even in my sleepy town of Faversham, Kent the English flag of St. George could be seen one pole after another waving in the wind. One flagger tells me that “we want to make sure that our town becomes proud of its national heritage”. Another tells me, “raising the flag helps make us feel at home”,
There is little doubt the people supporting Operation Raise the Colours are not just in the business of confining their activities to one-off stunts. At the very least this grass roots movement is determined to challenge the nation’s local councils to value the English flag of St George and to cease being hostile to the flying of the Union Jack.
The movement of flaggers took off in Birmingham. Probably this movement would not have gained such prominence if it hadn’t been for the reaction of Birmingham’s Labour dominated Local Council to the sight of England’s flag flying of the city’s lamp post. The Council reacted by ordering the removal of the flags on the ground that they put the lives of pedestrians and motorists “at risk” despite being up to 25ft off the ground! It was evident to all that this Council applied a different standard of judgment in relation to the Palestinian flag, which are flown all over the City.
Birmingham’s flaggers, who call themselves the “Weoley Warriors” stated that their goal was to “show Birmingham and the rest of the country of how proud we are of our history, freedoms and achievements”. One local resident, Mrs Owens, a former police officer told the media; “I think there will be trouble, even riots if they take them down”. She added: “We are sick of having to apologise for being British. The flags have had such a positive impact on the community – people love them. There is nothing political about it.”
There is little doubt that Mrs Owens message has resonated with wide sections of the public. Supporters of the movement indicated that they were fed up with the situation where local councils were happy to fly the Palestinian and LGBTQ flags but not that of their nation. The movement of flaggers quickly spread from Birmingham to towns and cities throughout England. “Let’s bring back patriotism once and for all”, stated the Facebook page of Operation Raise the Colours, It urged members to post images of the assorted national flags of the four British nations “being raised around our great towns and cities”. In response groups individuals decided to form groups who took it upon themselves go out and do what they call “flagging” around their town.
There is also no doubt that the flaggers have provoked a hostile reaction from large sections of the British Elite, who regard the flaggers with contempt and never use an opportunity to issue warnings about the threat post by far-right conspirators lurking in the background. This alarmist rection was personified by Nick Ireland, the Liberal Democrat leader of Dorset Council who insisted that some residents found the sudden appearance St George’s and union flags “intimidating”. He added that it was “naïve” to suggest that these emblems had not been “hijacked” by some far-right groups.
German politicians in Cologne come up with a bold strategy … let’s see if it pays off for them
Whenever I think I’ve got a vague idea of what’s going on in German politics, eugyppius can be counted upon to show me I still don’t have the first clue:
From BILD:
Bizarre muzzling agreement in Cologne’s local election campaign!
The CDU, SPD, Greens, FDP, Die Linke, and Volt have signed an agreement initiated by the Cologne Round Table for Integration to refrain from speaking negatively about migration during the election campaign …
In consequence: the only relevant party in the Cologne campaign that will address the negative aspects of migration is the AfD.
That’s right:
Everybody from the rebranded ex-communists in Die Linke to the centre-right Christian Democratic Union have agreed to give Alternative für Deutschland a political monopoly over the most important issue of our era ahead of municipal elections in Cologne on 28 September.
Specifically, the dumbass signatories have agreed “to respect the diversity of our society”; “to promote … tolerance and peaceful coexistence among people of different origins, cultures, and religions”; “not to campaign at the expense of people with a migrant background”; “not to stir up prejudice” and “not to blame migrants and refugees for negative social developments such as unemployment or threats to domestic security”. They have done this because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside even though it is plainly and objectively retarded.
Should any signatory violate this agreement, the other signatories can cry to teacher by contacting designated “arbitrators”, in this case the chairman of the Cologne Catholic Committee or the superintendent of the Cologne Protestant Church Association. These people will then … I don’t know, have a sad and the tell the press about it, I guess.
Amusingly, the CDU already stand accused of violating the agreement for circulating flyers in which they critique state plans to establish a 500-spot refugee intake centre in Cologne. Their transgression has given the spokesman of the Cologne Round Table for Integration – the excessively named Wolfgang Uellenberg-van Dawen – occasion to publish the following
fatwapress release […]
August 29, 2025
Memories of Bournemouth
It’s nearly sixty years since my family emigrated, but I still have golden memories of the family trips to the seaside, although my family went to Scarborough, Whitby, and Redcar rather than the Bournemouth of Pimlico Journal‘s childhood:
“Harvester at Durley Chine” by David Lally is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
.
At every possible opportunity in the summer weekends of my childhood, my father would take our family down to the coast. Our route to the sea was normally through the medieval city of Salisbury, across the chalk downs of Hardy’s Wessex, and into the piney moors of the New Forest. The destination would nearly always be Bournemouth, the prim, stately model of the British seaside town, perched magisterially on Dorset’s sandstone cliffs, above a long golden strand lapped by the warm waves of the Channel.
Our favourite beach was at Durley Chine, where we could park (for free, greatly appealing to my father) among obscured mansions in the shade of thick-smelling conifers, and make our descent to the shore, where the chine gives way to the rows of huts that line the promenade, and a reassuringly lower-middle class Harvester restaurant. We would while away the hours on the sand until the sky was orange, my mother reading, my father swimming, and my brother and I playing whatever games we could devise, mostly involving the throwing of sand. The day would end with fish and chips under the pines, watching the sun sink over the jurassic cliffs past Poole harbour, the gateway to King Alfred’s stronghold at Wareham.
These were among the most precious times of my early life, and the sights and sounds and smells of that part of the world and the accompanying hazy, worriless bliss are cherished sensations. Though the beach is public, it was one of those places that felt special and individual to my family, as if we had somehow carved out our own summer fief on the crowded shore.
It was on Durley Chine beach, on 24 May 2024, that two innocent women, Amie Grey and Leanne Miles, were attacked by Nasen Saadi, a criminology student from Croydon of Iraqi and Thai heritage. Saadi murdered Grey and left Miles in critical condition, and was sentenced this year to thirty-nine years in prison for his crimes. The incident was part of an escalating pattern of violence, particularly sexual violence, in the Bournemouth area over the past few years, with the beach as the focal point, a pattern which had begun in July 2021 with the brutal rape of a 15-year-old girl by Gabriel Marinoaica, a young man from Walsall who dragged his victim into the sea to commit his attack. Another notable incident occurred eight months later. Afghan asylum seeker and convicted killer Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai (he had shot two fellow Afghans while living illegally in Serbia in 2018, before fleeing to Norway, where his asylum claim was rejected, then travelling to Britain and successfully claiming asylum by pretending to be an unaccompanied fourteen-year-old, despite being an adult) stabbed Thomas Roberts (a local man and qualified precision engineer who had recently applied to join the Royal Marines) to death outside a Subway in the city centre, in a dispute over an e-scooter.
The news stories become relentless from that point. Among many depravities are the sexual assault of a 17-year-old boy by a group of Asian males on 17 June 2023, accompanied the same day by an attempted assault on a 16-year-old girl outside the fish and chip shop on the seafront. A week later, two girls, aged just 10 and 11, who would have been in primary school at the time, were sexually assaulted while swimming in the sea. As far as I can tell, none of these crimes have yet been prosecuted.
Two months after the murder of Amie Grey, on 19 July 2024, a day of delirious warmth culminated in violent clashes between youths, many coming in from London, on the seafront — clashes which were filmed and circulated on social media. In the chaos, a teenage girl was sexually assaulted. Jessica Toale, the freshly-elected Labour MP for Bournemouth West, a seat which had been Tory since its creation in 1950, said after the events of 19 July that crime and anti-social behaviour had become a ‘huge issue’ in contrast to the safe Bournemouth she remembered as a girl, stating that ‘… parents had told [her] that they are concerned about letting their daughters go to the town’. These are almost reactionary words from a Labour MP, and reflective of the mood of anxiety and decline that seems to have enveloped the city, a mood founded on the series of despair-inducing events plaguing residents and visitors. On 30 June, disorder similar to that witnessed in July last year returned to the seafront, with police making arrests across the country in the aftermath.
A week later, on 6 July, a young woman was raped in a public toilet adjoining the beach. The police have charged Mohammed Abdullah, a Syrian asylum seeker living in West London, with the crime.
Poetry corner: “Norman and Saxon” by Rudyard Kipling
“My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for share
When he conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:–
“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.
“You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears;
But don’t try that game on the Saxon; you’ll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They’ll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.
“But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs and songs.
Don’t trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale of their wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they’re saying; let them feel that you know what to say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear ’em out if it takes you all day.
“They’ll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark.
It’s the sport not the rabbits they’re after (we’ve plenty of game in the park).
Don’t hang them or cut off their fingers. That’s wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-at-arms you can find.
“Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish priests.
Say ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘ours’ when you’re talking, instead of ‘you fellows’ and ‘I’.
Don’t ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell ’em a lie!”
The History of Hungarian Goulash
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 25 Mar 2025Hungarian goulash with beef, paprika, potatoes, and tomato
City/Region: Hungary
Time Period: Late 19th Century, written down in 1935The development and history of goulash mirrors the history of Hungary in a really interesting way, and the story goes something like this:
800s: A group of people from the Ural Mountains called the Magyars settled the area. Being herdsmen, they brought with them a dish of boiled meat or stew.
1400s: The Hungarian king imported Italian ingredients, like onions, and hired Italian chefs to please his new wife, who was from Naples.
1500s: Hungary becomes part of the Ottoman Empire, and thus ingredients like coffee and paprika enter Hungarian cuisine.
1800s: Two brothers invent a machine to remove the seeds and ribs from hot peppers in order to make sweet paprika.
This recipe from the late 19th century reflects all of these developments, with the meat, onions, and sweet paprika. It is so delicious and really easy to make. If you’ve never had real Hungarian goulash (which is a soup, not a thick stew), give this a try!
Bográcsgulyás
1 kg (2 1/4 lb) beef
80 g (5 Tbs) lard
300 g (1 3/4 cups) onion
20 g (4 tsp) paprika
salt, caraway seeds, garlic
1 kg (2 1/4 lb) potato
140 g (1 cup) green pepper
60 g (1 small) fresh tomato
6 portions of soup paste (csipetke, Recipe 14)
Use meat rich in gelatine (shin-beef, blade or neck). Cube the meat into 1.5-2 cm (1/2-3/4 in) pieces. Fry the chopped onion in the melted lard (shortening) until it is golden yellow. Lower the heat, then add the paprika, stir it rapidly, add the meat, keep on stirring, add salt. When the meat is browned and all the liquid is evaporated, add the caraway seeds, finely chopped garlic and a small amount of cold water, cover, and braise the meat slowly. Stir it occasionally and add small quantities of cold water, cover, and braise the meat slowly. Stir it occasionally and add small quantities of water if necessary. The meat should be braised, not boiled. While the meat is cooking, cube the potatoes, green pepper and tomatoes into pieces 1 cm (1/3 in) in size and prepare the dough for the soup pasta (csipetke). Just before the meat is completely tender, reduce the pan juices, add the cubed potatoes, let them brown slightly, add the stock, green pepper and tomato. When the potato is almost cooked and the soup is ready to be served, add the pasta (csipetke), and adjust quantity by the addition of stock or water.
— Károly Gundel, late 19th century
QotD: The early “Motte and Bailey” castles
But as noted, the personal manor home of a significant noble (the rank in this case is often a “castellan”, literally the keeper of a castle, so entrusted by one of the more powerful nobles who holds sway over a larger territory; the castellan has the job of holding the castle and administering the countryside around it) is also an administrative center, managing the extraction of agricultural surplus from the countryside and also a military base, housing the physical infrastructure for that noble’s retinue, which again is the fundamental building block of larger armies. Which means that it is going to need more structures to house those functions: stables for horses, storehouses for food, possibly food processing facilities (bakeries, mills) and living space both for retainers (be they administrators or military retainers) and for the small army of servants such a household expects. Those structures (to the degree they can’t exist in the keep) are put in the bailey, a wider enclosed part of the settlement constructed at the base of the motte. As with the motte, the bailey is typically enclosed only by a wooden palisade; naturally that means the most valuable things (the physical treasury, the lord’s family) go in the keep on the motte, while the more space-demanding but less valuable things go in the bailey. There is a lot of room for variation in this basic type, but for now the simple version will serve.
The resulting fortification seems almost paradoxically vulnerable. The bailey, after all, is protected only by a ditch and a wooden palisade which a determined work-party could breach with just iron axes and an afternoon to kill. The core defensive motte with its keep adds perhaps only one more palisade and a steep climb. But in fact, these relatively modest defenses have greatly increased the cost of attacking this settlement. The motte and bailey castle, at least in its early wooden form, won’t stand up to a determined assault by a large and well-coordinated enemy, but that isn’t its purpose. Instead, the purpose of the motte and bailey castle is to raise the cost of an assault such that a potential opponent must bring a significant force and make a careful, well-planned assault; this the motte and bailey accomplishes quite well, which explains the long durability of the basic design, with stone versions of the motte and bailey persisting into the 15th century.
The quick mounted raid is now impossible; precisely because it will take a solid afternoon to breach the defenses, there is little hope of surprising the defenders. At the same time, the ditches will make any such work party vulnerable to missile fire (arrows, yes, but also javelins or just large rocks) from the palisade. And most of all, taking the place now demands you coordinate a work party, with some of your attackers splitting up to suppress the defenders, some making sure to block the exits so the defenders don’t rush out and attack your work party directly, and still more of your attackers in the work party itself. These very basic defenses have suddenly taken you from a position where a bit of surprise and rough numerical parity was enough to contemplate an assault to a position where you need several times as many attackers (for each of those divisions needs to be large enough to confidently win against the defenders if assailed).
Perhaps most importantly, the basic structure of this defense demands that you do this multiple times in sequence. We’ve already discussed the value of defense-in-depth, but in brief, every attack is at its strongest in the moment after it jumps off: everyone is alive, in the right positions, at the right time, coordinated and at least in theory clear on their objectives. Every movement and action beyond this point diminishes the power of the effort as coordination breaks down, attackers are killed and things break; this is what Clausewitz terms (drink!) friction – the unpredictable interaction of probabilities takes their toll on any plan, no matter how carefully designed. This is, by the by, more true in real warfare, where coordination is limited by communications technology, than it is in film or video games, where armies appear to mostly communicate by some form of instantaneous telepathy (it is amazing just how many clever sounding movie or game assault plans fall apart once you imagine trying to coordinate them with nothing more than shouting, or even a radio). As more and more things turn out unexpectedly or have to be improvised, the plan slowly shakes apart until eventually all of the momentum is lost.
The basic structure of a motte and bailey castle exploits this feature of warfare, forcing an attacker to overcome a series of obstacles in sequence, all while in contact with the enemy. Recall that this is a defense which really doesn’t envisage enemy artillery (because armies with lots of effective siege artillery were not common in the often small-scale warfare of the period; that’s not to say they didn’t exist, but if your motte and bailey castle forces the enemy to only attack with a big, expensive army that can build catapults, it has done its job, not the least because most possible enemies won’t have that capability at all), so an attacker is going to have to breach each layer in sequence while in contact with the defense and to pierce them all more or less “in one go”. Consequently, taking the castle by storm means crossing (and probably filling in) at least one deep ditch, breaching a palisade under fire, then moving up a steep hill under fire, then breaching another palisade, at the end of all of which, the attacker must arrive at the keep with enough force and cohesion to take it. All of that is going to take a substantial attack and a lot of coordination and most potential attackers, the defender may hope, will lack either the resources or the determination to go through so much effort, especially as they are likely to have to do it multiple times: being entirely wooden, motte and bailey castles were fairly cheap and so a large territory could have quite a lot of them (note on the Bayeux Tapestry how William has to take several such castles in order to capture Conan II of Britanny). Each motte and bailey castle thus raises the cost of trying to seize control of the territory; collectively they make that cost prohibitive.
Of course our principle of “antagonistic co-evolution” is not done and the vulnerabilities of a wooden motte and bailey castle are fairly clear and easy to exploit. For one, the wooden palisade is mostly a blocking element, rather than a fighting position; attackers that reach the wall can actually use it as cover while tearing it down or setting it on fire. The entire setup, being made of wood, is vulnerable to fire but also to any kind of even-quite-modest catapult. And quite naturally, any military leader (which is to say, the military aristocracy which was emerging at the very same time as these castles) is going to want to build the kind of capabilities which will allow for successful castle assaults because, as we’ve already noted, castles function more or less as the “nails” on the map which hold down the canvas of revenue extraction and military power.
Which in turn means evolving castle design to resist the methods by which a motte and bailey castle might fall. The most immediate change is in building material: wooden walls can only be so high, so thick and so resistant to fire. Stone, though far more expensive, offers advantages on all three fronts. And so, already in the late 10th century, we start to see stone keeps and gatehouses (supporting still wooden palisades); full stone castles would soon follow.
As an aside, one solution to this problem which doesn’t much appear in the Middle Ages but was very well-used in Iron Age Europe was what the Romans called the murus Gallicus, a hybrid wood-and-stone wall system. Gallic hillforts (called oppida) were built on hills, as the name suggests; their outer walls could be built by using earth fill to construct what was essentially a retaining wall, faced in stone, with transverse reinforcing wood beams every few feet. That created, in turn, a vertical stone surface, supported by the hillside itself, on which could be additionally built a wooden palisade for added height. The result was a very formidable fortification, assuming one had the hill to work with initially. You couldn’t knock it over or really undermine it effectively and the stone face was nearly vertical; the height of the hill meant that effective escalade meant coming up with a mole, tower or ladder taller than the hill (a thing, naturally, that the Romans ended up doing). That this style of fortification didn’t really reemerge in the Middle Ages speaks to the degree of path dependence in fortification design. Because fortification design tends to be evolutionary, it is possible in similar conditions to get very different responses as different designers try to meet the same threats by modifying different preexisting systems of fortification.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Fortification, Part III: Castling”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-12-10.
August 28, 2025
A civil society can’t allow young Scottish hellions to brandish weapons at immigrants harassing them
At least, the headline expresses how the sky people probably frame the situation where a young girl felt she needed to scare off a threat to herself and her friend. This is from an X post which claims to be describing what actually happened rather than what the media has been reporting:
One of many, many images posted to X on this incident.
I spoke with the mom of one of the girls (Mayah) and got the entire story that the media is covering up and lying about.
So first of all, the reporting got the names of the girls mixed up. There were 3 girls who were there who were accosted and attacked by the migrants.
Lola – Lola is the hero from the video. She’s the one with the axe defending her sister from the migrant attackers
Ruby – Lola’s older sister who was attacked and hospitalized
Mayah – Ruby’s best friend who was with them and went to call the police after Ruby was attacked by the migrants
Here’s the summary of what happened from Mayah’s mother:
“Yes. So what happened was the girls where out just walking and the man in the picture made comments to lola(the younger girl) calling her sexy and other sexual remarks then the girls started to tell this man to leave them alone and stop following them and making sexual remarks to them. After that the man’s sister (also in the picture) came around the corner and physically attacked ruby(the older sister) she grabbed her hair dragged her to the floor started to punch her then both the man and woman where kicking her in head while she was on the floor. At this point my daughter (mayah) called the police so my daughters account after that is all abit blurry. But that is when lola had the weapons she pulled them out to protect ruby. After that the man came back at lola recording her making sure she showed the weapons to the camera and antagonising her. Ruby was hospitalised after the attack with a severe concussion a tennis ball sized lump to the back of her head aswell as lots of bruises.”
John Carter reacts to the original image, also on X:
This should be a turning point, but god knows how many such the British elites have ignored so far. Another graphic from X expresses what may happen if this is also ignored:
Even the Brits can be pushed too far and we can’t be very far from that point now. And the way the British media is handling this and pretty much every other confrontation is not helping:
You can’t have missed her, if you’re on social media at all, the dual-wielding 14-year-old Scottish lass raising two blades in defiance of the “migrant” seemingly intent on assaulting her and her 12-year-old friend.
The name of this hero won’t be released due to her age, and police were right on the scene to arrest the violent attacker.
That’s right: the little girl is in jail, charged with possession of a bladed weapon. Two weapons, actually — what appear to be a large santoku-style blade and a small hatchet.
In the widely-circulated clip, her would-be attacker (with the non-British accent) can be heard taunting her to show the blades on camera. Why? The answer is obvious: he’s well aware that self-defense is illegal in Britain, and he also knows she’ll be the one the cops take away.
And he was correct on both counts.
[…]
Culturally, things are so crazy that the BBC didn’t just blur out our heroine’s face, they even blurred out her blades. And now you understand the screencap at the top of this column. Mustn’t ruffle any feathers, you see.
How about pepper spray and the like? Sorry, mate, but pepper spray was banned as a “prohibited weapon” (!!!) in 1968.
In Britain, the only legal defense against rape is a whistle — which is to say, no defense at all.
That 14-year-old girl found it necessary to possibly defend herself and her friend against two possible assailants: would-be rapists and the British criminal justice system. The day came, and she proved herself a hero.
She warded off the former, but God only knows what indignities she’ll suffer at the hands of the latter.
What’s the next little British girl’s defense against that?
History of Britain VII: Fall of Roman Britain
Thersites the Historian
Published 23 Feb 2025After its efflorescence during the 2nd Century, Roman Britain entered steep decline during the 3rd Century and the benefits of Roman civilization had all but vanished by the time that the Romans withdrew their forces and support.
August 27, 2025
Operation Raise the Colours
Gawain Towler on the groundswell of quiet patriotic display in England, against the active attempts by local governments to suppress any and all flag-waving or even flag-flying by the plebs:
It was a seemingly innocuous tweet during the 2014 Rochester and Strood by-election that exposed a deep cultural rift. Emily Thornberry, then Labour’s shadow attorney general, a paragon of establishment elite thought, posted a photo of a terraced house in Strood adorned with multiple St George’s Cross flags, a white van parked outside.
No caption, just “Image from #Rochester”. To Thornberry, the image spoke for itself: a symbol of backward, flag-waving patriotism, the domain of the “white van man” she and her metropolitan peers presumably viewed with quiet derision. She expected her audience to share the contempt, to chuckle at the vulgarity of overt Englishness. But the backlash was ferocious. The public saw snobbery, a sneering dismissal of ordinary lives. Thornberry resigned from the shadow cabinet that day, rebuked by Ed Miliband for disrespecting hardworking families. I played a modest role in that storm, forwarding the tweet to Guido Fawkes and The Sun, which amplified the outrage and forced the reckoning.
That episode, now over a decade old, feels eerily prescient as I contemplate the “raising the flag” phenomenon sweeping Britain in recent weeks. What began as scattered acts of defiance has blossomed into a nationwide movement: St George’s Crosses and Union Jacks hoisted on lampposts, motorway bridges, and public spaces from Birmingham’s Shard End to Tower Hamlets in east London, Southampton to Brighton, and even Cannock. Roundabouts painted red and white, zebra crossings marked with the cross, symbols of England asserting themselves in the urban landscape. Last night I cycled through London’s Labour stronghold of Lambeth, and road markings have been transformed with the St George’s Cross, a quiet but bold reclamation in one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Dubbed “Operation Raise the Colours” by organisers (though it is hard to describe the phenomenon as organised), it has seen thousands of flags raised, with fundraising efforts like Birmingham’s £16,000 drive sustaining the effort. I support this gentle uprising, for it breathes life into symbols long marginalised. Yet I acknowledge the disquiet it stirs: in a polarised society, such displays can evoke unease, linked in some minds to far-right agitation or the riots of summer 2024, that and deeper darker memories of NF marches in the 1970s.
Why is this happening now? The timing aligns with the anniversary of last year’s Southport tragedy and ensuing unrest, where misinformation, both from the state and other bad actors, fuelled anti-immigration protests that spiralled into violence. Many participants frame it as a response to “two-tier policing”, swift crackdowns on native demonstrations while pro-Palestinian marches proceed with apparent leniency. It’s a broader reclamation of national pride amid economic stagnation, unchecked migration, and a sense of cultural dilution. For the overlooked, those Thornberry’s tweet mocked, this is a way to say, “We belong here”. and stronger yet, but uncontroversial in any other land than our own, “This is our land”.
It’s contemplative defiance: not riots, but ribbons of red and white asserting identity in a nation where Englishness often feels like an afterthought.
August 26, 2025
Plunder does not explain western prosperity
Lorenzo Warby digs deep into the “mountain range of bullshit” over the issue of plunder, as in the claims that the First World got that way by stealing everything they could from what became identified as the Third World:
I am using mainly European examples because it is the genetically (and archaeologically) best mapped continent. But these grim patterns are normal in the history of Homo sapiens. Consider, for example, the Bantu expansion across Africa that mirrors the march of Anatolian farmers across Europe.
The development of farming and animal herding led to the y-chromosome Neolithic bottleneck: a massive harrowing of male lineages that only about 1-in-17 male lineages survived. The development of farming and pastoralism created much higher populations plus plunderable assets. Folk developed much more coherent kin-groups. Teams of male warriors wiped each other out, taking the land, animals and women of the defeated as their spoils.
Plunder was thus endemic in farming and herding societies. The harrowing of male lineages came to an end via the development of chiefdoms and states. That is, the technology of exploitation — keep defeated males alive so they could breed more payers of tribute and taxes — overtook the technology of aggression (kin-groups).
States were both ordering and predatory. This process worked less well among pastoralists, as the need to defend the mobile assets of animal herds generated highly effective warriors who were harder to control or extract surplus from. Pastoralist states tended to be super-chiefdoms rather than full states and the harrowing of pastoralist male lineages continued, just at a lower level.
Africa was the continent of slavery because, being where Homo sapiens evolved, it was full of pathogens, parasites, predators and mega-herbivores that co-evolved with Homo sapiens, so could cope with them.1 This kept population density down. This meant that labour was more valuable than land. There was more potential wealth in grabbing able-bodied people than in grabbing land.
This made slavery endemic in Sub-Saharan Africa long before the Islamic, then the Atlantic, slave trades developed. Sub-Saharan African states were overwhelmingly slave states. Even those that were trade states traded in slaves.
The Atlantic slave trade looks like the most extreme pattern of Europeans plundering others — in this case, Sub-Saharan Africans. It was certainly true that the Atlantic slave trade was horrific and had multiple adverse effects on African society. But those adverse effects were to intensify patterns that already existed. Moreover, the original plundering of people by turning them into slaves was done by … Africans.
The life expectancy of a European who left the African coast was about a year: it was not practical for Europeans to do the original enslaving. They bought the slaves from Africans. This enabled the slave trade carried on by Catholics to conform to the Papal Bull Sublimis Dei (1537) which banned Catholics from enslaving the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas (and, by implication, elsewhere), but did not ban trading in, or owning, slaves.
Wikimedia Commons
Plunder was endemic across human societies: including turning fellow humans into plunder — aka slavery. It was sadly ordinary. It was not a European pattern, it was a Homo sapien pattern. The Islamic slave trade was on the same scale—given it operated for centuries longer — as the Atlantic slave trade, the Saharan passage was every bit as horrific as the Atlantic passage, and the Islamic slave trade had the extra horror of the castration of male slaves. Hence, there is not an ex-slave diaspora in Islam as there is in the Americas.
Just as plunder was endemic, so was poverty. Mass poverty was the norm across farming societies. While there were economic efflorescences across human history, and evidence of periods of sustained growth, the dramatic shifts to mass prosperity since the 1820s — since the application of steam power to railways and steamships — is utterly without precedent. Moreover, it started in precisely one society — Great Britain. None of the other Atlantic littoral societies of Europe showed any sign of such a take-off.
- The megafauna outside Africa — which did not co-evolve with Homo sapiens — almost all died out when Homo sapiens turned up.
“One of the top tips for having a decent country is never, ever, allow the fuckwits to gain power”
If you need to drop someone off at London’s Gatwick Airport, you’ll find yourself facing a £7 charge for the privilege, no matter what day of the week or time of day you choose. Tim Worstall explains why:
“Gatwick Airport, North Terminal” by Martin Roell from Berlin, Germany is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .
It’s sod all to do with congestion and everything to do with the tractor production statistics the fuckwits have imposed upon the airport.
The conditions attached by the transport secretary included national landscape provisions as per the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, more consideration for sustainability in buildings design and additional pollution-related mitigation measures.
The government said in its formal response to the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendations on the Gatwick DCO that it wanted more detail on how it would achieve its commitment of 54% of passengers arriving at the airport via rail within the first year of dual runway operations, which could be by the end of this decade.
The government has a target. That 54% of the arrivals at an airport — yes, an airport, where people get on jet planes — must be by public transport. Therefore the airport is charging for car drop offs in order to decrease the number of car drop offs. There is no more reason than that. Or, as up at the top, the reason there’s a £7 drop off charge at Gatwick Airport is because we are ruled by the fuckwits who have a target for public transport to an airport where people then get on jet planes.
London Gatwick has also accepted a requirement to have 54% of passengers using public transport prior to bringing the Northern Runway into operation and has reiterated the need for third parties, including the Department for Transport, to support delivery of the necessary conditions and improvements required to meet this target. This would include, for example, reinstating the full Gatwick Express train service.
Given the reliance on other parties to achieve this 54% target, should it not be achieved then London Gatwick has also proposed an alternative cars-on-the-road limit to be met before first use of the Northern Runway to address concerns about possible road congestion. Furthermore, if neither the 54% transport mode share or the cars-on-the-road limit are met, then use of the Northern Runway would be delayed until £350m of road improvements have been completed. This would make sure any additional road traffic flows can be accommodated and any congestion avoided.
It’s all fuckwit targets set by fuckwits.
Of course, there are those who think that fuckwit targets set by fuckwits are a good idea. For one of the problems of life is that there are always fuckwits:
When we talk about airport expansion, we often focus on runways, terminals, and the physical infrastructure. But what about how people actually get to the airport?
The journey begins long before passengers step foot in a terminal, and their choices about transport can have a significant impact on congestion, carbon emissions, and overall passenger experience.
One of the conditions set for Gatwick’s expansion is a legally binding guarantee that 54% of passengers will travel by public transport, up from today’s 44%. On the surface, it sounds like a simple shift. But transport isn’t just about availability — it’s about behaviour, convenience, and incentives.
One of the top tips for having a decent country is never, ever, allow the fuckwits to gain power. But we have done so therefore there is this £7 charge for a drop off at Gatwick Airport. That’s it, there is no other reason. There are fuckwits buried in the belly of the British state and they’re making the rules now.
When Jagdpanther Fought Churchill
The Tank Museum
Published 18 Apr 2025Jagdpanther vs Churchill. Tank destroyer vs tank. New technology vs proven veteran. Who will emerge victorious?
It’s 6pm on 30th July 1944. Outnumbered 6 to 1, a platoon of 3 German Jagdpanthers is about to go into action for the first time. Facing them will be a squadron of 18 British Churchill tanks. Within 5 minutes, 11 tanks will be knocked out.
The Jagdpanther is the latest German armoured vehicle to arrive in Normandy. With a devastating gun, and a heavily armoured superstructure, this tank hunter is quick, reliable and deadly.
The Churchill has been fighting with Allied armies in North Africa, Italy and on the Eastern Front. The early marks struggled with a range of issues, but by 1944 it is an essential part of the British and Canadian tank force.
It’s during Operation Bluecoat where these two machines would come face-to-face for the very first time. The Churchills of S Squadron, 3rd Battalion, Scots Guards, have captured Hill 226 – a strategically important area to the south of Caumont. They are preparing for a German counterattack, but their infantry is yet to arrive – leaving their left flank dangerously exposed. And a platoon of Jagdpanthers is ready to take full advantage of their vulnerable state …
00:00 | Introduction
00:35 | The Jagdpanther
02:38 | The Churchill
05:43 | Operation Bluecoat
07:46 | A Turkey Shoot?
12:25 | Aftermath
17:40 | Roll of Honour
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August 25, 2025
George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London
Down and Out was one of the first Orwell works I read as an adult, having encountered Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as school texts. I would not say that I enjoyed the book so much as it gave me a very different view of both cities between the wars and encouraged me to seek out more of Orwell’s work. On his Substack, Rob Henderson considers the book and its author:
I was in high school the first time I read Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) by George Orwell. A memoir about his time in the slums of France and England.1 Orwell, while in Paris, worked as a plongeur — a person employed to wash dishes and carry out other menial tasks in a restaurant or hotel. Plongeur sounds much better than “bus boy”.
Because, at the time, I was also working as a busboy and dishwasher, I enjoyed Orwell’s description of employment in a busy restaurant. He wrote that the work itself was simple, like sorting a deck of cards, but when done against the clock it became exhausting. That captured exactly how I felt on my Friday and Saturday evening shifts.
Later I was disappointed to learn that Orwell had come from privilege. The guy went to Eton, a prestigious all-boys school. The book recounted his experiences with slum tourism. When he was penniless during the periods described in Down and Out, particularly during his return to London, his well-to-do family could and did take him back in for temporary periods so he could eat well and shower. At first this made the story feel less authentic.
Over time, though, I came to see it differently. It took someone like Orwell to write about life in the slums in a way that other educated people would pay attention to. I had to go through something similar. Only after spending time around the upper middle class did I understand how to describe my life in a way that would actually make them pay attention.
[…]
In the second half of Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell describes living rough in London’s East End, staying in lodging houses and casual wards. He worked alongside the city’s laborers to understand poverty from the inside.
Down and Out in Paris and London was Orwell’s first published book, written when he was in his mid-twenties. It is striking is how little he romanticized the idea of being an impoverished bohemian in world-class cities, the way so many others of his background might have done. Instead, he treated his immersion in the Parisian and London underworlds as an attempt to strip away the prejudices he had inherited as an upper-middle-class Etonian.
The book is restrained in its politics. Orwell rarely pauses for commentary, preferring to tell the story as it happened and saving his more general conclusions for a couple of chapters at the end. This is more or less the same approach I took with Troubled; describe the world as it was, or at least as I remember it, and let the meaning emerge on its own.
One of the strongest features of Down and Out is its focus on the psychological effects of petty humiliations. Orwell describes kitchens where people from every corner of Europe are screaming at each other in different languages, frantically trying to keep pace with the chaos. If you have ever watched one of those Gordon Ramsay shows, you have some idea. He admired the strange order that somehow emerged from the chaos.
This voyeuristic quality is part of the book’s appeal. We all go to restaurants and see only the polished surface, knowing almost nothing about what happens behind the doors. Likewise, we all encounter homeless people in daily life and know little about how they live. Back in the 1930s, you didn’t have to make many mistakes to find yourself in a tough spot. My guess is that because society today is wealthier, there are more social services available, and powerful recreational drugs more accessible, the typical homeless person (he uses the word “tramp”, which was a prevailing term at the time) Orwell encountered nearly a century ago is very different from those we see today.
During his year and a half working menial jobs in Paris, Orwell wrote a few books, all rejected by publishers in London. None of this appears in Down and Out. He never dwells on his literary ambitions or his many failures. He does not even treat “writing” as a subject worth mentioning. For him, sleeping on a bench along the Embankment was a detail that mattered more than discussing proofs with an editor. Struggle is more interesting to read about than success. Sometimes people ask me if I’ll write a follow up to Troubled. No way. No one wants to read a whole book about a guy who went to elite universities and then blathers on about his subsequent prosperity. The thought of it induces a feeling in me of both amusement and nausea. Even if I focused on the unexpected struggles and costs of upward mobility, the stakes are so low that I can’t bring myself to take it seriously.
- It just occurred to me that this was in 2005. Around once a week I’d stop by my high school library after class and browse the shelves. By 2006 and 2007, I noticed fewer and fewer students actually reading in the library and more and more of them on the desktop computers, watching videos on a new website called “YouTube”. Can’t help but wonder how much streaming videos have reduced interest in reading among young people.
Vietnam 1950: Giáp Crushes France on Route Coloniale 4 – W2W 41
TimeGhost History
Published 24 Aug 2025Viet Minh forces shift to the offensive, attacking French troops up and down the country. As guerilla war reigns in the southern half of Vietnam, more organised attacks begin in the north up near Hanoi. France cycles through multiple new commanders, trying to stem the tide. But do they truly have a hope of turning this around? Or are they just delaying the inevitable?
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