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Sadly, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, died on Friday, April 9, 2021, exactly two months short of his 100th birthday:
The Queen has lost her best friend. My deepest sympathies to her for the unimaginable loss of her long-time husband and daily confidant. My condolences also go to the Royal Family in their grief.
Young love
The couple first met in 1934, and began corresponding when the Prince was 18 and a cadet in the Royal Navy. Princess Elizabeth was 13 at the time.
She was smitten with him from the start.
Prince Philip served with distinction during the Second World War in the Mediterranean and Pacific fleets.
After the war ended, he could have had a stellar career in the Royal Navy. His superiors praised his clear leadership skills.
However, love intervened and the rest was history.
Born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, he renounced his foreign titles and took British citizenship before he and Princess Elizabeth were engaged. He took the surname of his maternal grandparents: Mountbatten.
He and Princess Elizabeth were engaged in July 1947. They married on November 20 that year. Shortly before the wedding, George VI gave him the titles of Duke of Edinburgh (created for him), Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich.
Prince Philip remained in the Royal Navy until July 1951. He retired with the rank of Commander.
Royal succession — and surname
In January 1952, he and the Queen began a tour of the Commonwealth countries. They were in Kenya when news reached them that the Queen’s father, George VI, died on February 6 that year.
Although she became Queen immediately upon her father’s death, her coronation took place in 1953, as it had to be planned meticulously.
On Coronation Day, he knelt before her, clasped her hands and swore an oath of allegiance to her:
He also had to touch her crown and kiss her on the cheek.
He never had a constitutional role, nor was he ever formally given the title of Royal Consort. The courtiers did not like him, nor did they trust him. They believed his personality to be brash and unbecoming of the Royal household. They shut him out of as much decision making as possible.
When Elizabeth became Queen, the question about her family name arose. Prince Philip suggested that the Royal Family be known as the House of Edinburgh. Upon discovering that suggestion, Queen Mary, Elizabeth’s grandmother, wrote to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who advised the young monarch to issue a royal proclamation saying that the Royal Family would continue to be known as the House of Windsor.
In his inimitable style, Prince Philip complained privately:
I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children. [57]
The Queen did nothing until eight years later, in 1960, 11 days before she gave birth to Prince Andrew. She issued an Order in Council declaring that the surname of her and her husband’s male-line descendants who are not styled as Royal Highness or titled as prince or princess would be Mountbatten-Windsor.
Pater familias
Prince Philip had to carve a role out for himself. He became the pater familias and, through the years, his role expanded to cover not only his four children but his grandchildren. He listened to their concerns, shared their joys and gave them advice. He knew everything that went on in their lives.
Although the public knew him for speaking as he saw — rather bluntly, on occasion — behind closed doors Prince Philip was known to be a warm, loving man.
He also favoured a more transparent Royal Family. According to the BBC, it was he who encouraged the Queen to make a multi-episode documentary on their daily lives, including those of their four children. It was broadcast in the late 1960s. I remember seeing it in the United States.
When Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997, Prince Philip was the one who kept an eye on the public mood that fateful week. He, the Queen and Princes William and Harry were at Balmoral in Scotland for their summer holiday. When the young princes wanted to attend church, their grandparents took them to the Sunday service on the day of their mother’s death. Later in the week, it was Prince Philip who encouraged the boys to walk behind the funeral procession the following Saturday. He said:
If you don’t walk, I think you’ll regret it later. If I walk, will you walk with me? [93]
One cannot imagine what he thought of Prince Harry’s departure for the United States to live a life separate from his closely knit family. I did read that the Royal Family shielded information about the Oprah interview from him.
John F Kennedy’s funeral
Prince Philip was in Washington for John F Kennedy’s funeral in 1963.
He had a friendly encounter with John Jr, who was still a toddler and known as John-John at the time. The child wondered where his father was, as he had no one with whom to play. The Prince stepped in to fill that gap. In 1965, the British government gave an acre of land at Runnymede to the United States for use as a memorial to JFK:
Funeral arrangements
Prince Philip was self-effacing and did not like a fuss to be made over him.
Therefore, the funeral arrangements will respect his wishes, which is rather convenient, as coronavirus restrictions are still in place. Up to 30 people will be allowed at his funeral, in line with legislation across the nation:
The funeral is scheduled to take place on Saturday, April 17:
It is interesting that Prince Harry will be able to attend when we have a 10-day quarantine in place for arrivals into the UK under coronavirus regulations.
The Sunday Mirror reported on Prince Harry’s return to the UK:
He could also be released from quarantine if he gets a negative private test on day five, under the Test to Release scheme.
Given his status as a member of the Royal Family travelling to support the Queen, Harry might be considered exempt from travel restrictions.
Wow. It’s nice to know we have a two-tiered quarantine system in place /sarc.
A championship boxer remembers the Prince
Former WBC Heavyweight Champion Frank Bruno MBE posted his memories of meeting Prince Philip. He is at the top left in the following photo:
An Anglican priest remembers the Prince
The Revd Peter Mullen, an Anglican priest, recalled his encounters with Prince Philip for Conservative Woman on April 10 in ‘A personal recollection’.
He first met the Prince during his schooldays:
The first time I met the Prince was in connection with his Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme which gave a leg up to youngsters from what would now be called the less privileged parts of the country. He paid a visit to the Leeds branch of the Church Lads’ Brigade of which, aged fourteen, I was a member. We were in the church hall making things. My task was to make a table lamp. I was hopeless at it.
The Duke got hold of my half-finished creation, held it up to one eye and said, ‘I suppose this hole is where the flex goes?’
‘I think so, Sir.’
‘You think so? I was never any good at this sort of thing either!’
And he was off . . .
As an adult, Mullen met him on more than one occasion thanks to the Honourable Company of Air Pilots. The Prince was its Grand Master. Mullen served as chaplain.
He recalls:
The Company gave a lunch for him to mark his 80th birthday and I recall how jovial he was, making light of his years: ‘I believe I have lasted so long because you people are always toasting my good health, but I don’t want to live to be a hundred. Things are dropping off already!’
At another luncheon one of our Liverymen who had his own port wine business presented the prince with Bottle Number One, the first fruits, so to speak. As he left, the duke handed the bottle to me: ‘You have this, Peter. Our house floats on the bloody stuff.’
‘Well, Sir, now I don’t know whether to drink it or frame it.’
‘Gerrit down ya neck!’
Prince Philip on MPs
Guido Fawkes came up with a good quote from one of the Prince’s trips to Ghana. It concerns MPs. His Ghanaian hosts told him the country had 200 MPs. Prince Philip replied:
That’s about the right number. We have 650 and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.
Incidentally, Parliament will be recalled one day early from Easter recess. On Monday, April 12, MPs and Lords paid tribute to the Prince in their respective Houses:
That afternoon, the House of Commons reconvened to pay their tribute — from 2:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. (good grief).
Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle spoke first:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had this to say:
Boris Johnson, who was invited to the funeral but declined so that another member of the Royal Family can attend, said that he would forego a pint when pub gardens reopen on April 12, out of respect for the Prince. Guido Fawkes, however, thinks that the Duke of Edinburgh would have wanted us to toast his memory, especially at a pub that bears his title in Brixton, south London:
Guido had a second tweet on the subject with another quote from the Prince:
Agreed.
Prince Philip on Australia
This is too funny. For those who are unaware, Australia was established as a place where Britain could send convicts. That was a long time ago, but the nation’s original purpose was to serve as a prison:
Prince Philip on civil liberties
On a serious note, the 12-minute interview below from 1984 is well worth watching, especially in the coronavirus era.
Prince Philip firmly supported the rights of the individual and believed that the state should serve the individual, not, as in our times, the other way around.
This is from a Thames Television programme originally broadcast on ITV:
I have posted the video below in case the tweets are deleted:
The Prince also said that certain subjects are out of bounds, such as the media and the NHS.
He said that the media are incapable of taking a joke about themselves and, as for the NHS, well, one cannot say anything against it. He didn’t necessarily dislike the NHS but thought it was held in too high a regard. Nothing is perfect in this world.
We have been travelling a long road towards the point where we are at present: ruled by the media (they clamoured for coronavirus restrictions) and worship of the NHS. This is how Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and SAGE have been able to rule our lives. It’s been at least 40 years in the making.
BBC coverage on Friday
I was watching BBC Parliament early Friday afternoon, around 1:15, when the programme was interrupted by a broadcast from the BBC News Channel.
I checked the schedule an hour later, which said that the programme would last until 4 p.m. It was still going when I was preparing dinner at 5 p.m.
The final of MasterChef was to have been broadcast that night on BBC1. This was a clip from Thursday’s programme:
Pictured are the hosts and judges, chef/restaurateur John Torode on the left and former greengrocer, now television presenter, Gregg Wallace on the right:
BUT:
The BBC News channel was simulcast all afternoon and all night long, not only on BBC Parliament but also on BBC1, to the dismay of MasterChef fans (myself included), and BBC2. BBC4 was suspended for the evening.
I read on social media that the BBC also broadcast continuous coverage of Prince Philip on their radio stations, including Radio 2, knocking out Steve Wright’s drive-time show on Friday afternoon.
A friend of mine said that most of the BBC’s employees were probably rubbing their hands with glee because it meant an early weekend for them. It’s a cynical perspective that could well turn out to be true. We’ll find out when someone writes his or her memoirs.
Everyone with a television set receives the BBC News channel. It comes into our homes at no extra charge. There was no need for the BBC to take over every channel for hours on end. By the way, if one had watched two hours of the Prince Philip coverage, as I did, one would have seen and heard everything in its entirety.
The BBC braced themselves for a plethora of complaints; they took the relevant page down on Sunday. Good. I am sure Prince Philip would have objected, too.
As much as I love the Queen, I hope they do not try this when her day comes. God willing, may it be long into the future.
Record-beating prince
Prince Philip established two records as consort to the Queen. He was the longest-serving royal consort in British history. He was also the longest-lived male member of the British royal family.
May he rest in eternal peace with his Maker.
May our gracious Lord grant the Queen, Defender of the Faith, His infinite peace and comfort in the months ahead. May He also bless the Royal Family during this difficult time.
President Trump has given three interviews in mid-March. More on those below.
Americans clearly miss him and his clear-cut, sensible policies. Joe Biden’s administration is reversing many of them. Remember the manufacturing plants that were going to stay in the United States? Ford has now reneged and is going back to its original plan of moving one of its plants from Ohio to Mexico:
In other news, it took more than two months for the media, led by the original source, the Washington Post, to retract the story about Trump’s phone conversation with Georgia’s secretary of state about the election. WaPo finally retracted their false quotes attributed to the former president on Tuesday, March 16:
RedState has an excellent article about this further example of fake news (emphases mine below):
The alleged contents of this conversation had been part of the national conversation ever since January 9 when Washington Post reporter Amy Gardner published a story claiming, based on a single anonymous source, that President Trump had attempted to pressure Ms. Watson into creating evidence of fraud where all right-thinking people know that all voting in Georgia, especially in Fulton County, was totally on the up-and-up. The story blew up. It slid neatly into the Pantheon of Evil Acts By Trump worshiped by the left, the media, and NeverTrump. Through the miracle of journalisming, something we lay folks can’t be expected to understand, the anonymously sourced story was quickly and independently confirmed by NBC, ABC, USA Today, PBS, and CNN.
When President Trump was impeached after leaving office for giving a speech on the National Mall on January 6, this unsourced, though now multiply “corroborated,” allegation found its way into the “impeachment brief” submitted by the House “impeachment managers,” see page 10 if you care to wade through this dross. And, they, relying upon that integrity and sense of fair play for which progressives are famous, even used it in their impeachment arguments …
One final note. If the Daily Caller or Free Beacon or even the Washington Examiner had pulled a bullsh** stunt like this, they would be out of business (read The Washington Post Doesn’t Deserve to Exist After Making up Trump Quotes to Own the Orange Man). Facebook and Twitter would have de-platformed them by now (read Based on Brian Stelter’s Own Arguments, CNN and Washington Post Should Be Deplatformed). They would be ritually sacrificing staffers to try to keep advertisers from fleeing, and they would still fail. The Washington Post and Amy Gardner will simply move ahead. They will continue to sling wild conspiracy theories based on uncorroborated single sources, and they will continue to be treated as though they are serious newsgathering organizations.
Trump quickly compiled quotes from all the journalists condemning WaPo — including one from Glenn Greenwald, not a fan of his by any stretch of the imagination. When clicking that Telegram link, click on ‘Context’ to view in its entirety. It is easier just to visit his website’s announcement with all the quotes.
On Saturday, March 20, at Mar-a-Lago, he made reference to Joe Biden’s tripping on the airplane stairs and quickly added that he himself won the election by more than 75 million votes:
That Trump won is very likely to be true. On March 19, Howie Carr interviewed Jonathan Allen, one of the authors of Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won The Presidency. At the 8 minute point of the interview, Allen tells Carr that Trump lost within 43,000+ votes in three states. Peter Navarro, who wrote three reports for Trump on the 2020 election results, maintained that only six counties needed recounts, yet the swampy advisers around Trump said not to pursue the matter. After all, they have careers to preserve.
Former Democrat — now proud Republican — Georgia state congressman Vernon Jones was a guest of President Trump’s at Mar-a-Lago twice in one week:
On Monday, March 22, Harris Faulkner of Fox News interviewed Trump. They discussed the border situation and Biden’s reversal of his policies:
Trump is clearly concerned about the Second Amendment (guns), packing the Supreme Court and the weakness of Mitch McConnell, now the Senate Minority Leader.
There was also this:
On Tuesday, March 23, Trump gave an interview to Greg Kelly of Newsmax, wherein he discussed the ‘gross incompetence’ of the border situation, Operation WarpSpeed and more:
Biden’s fall also came up for discussion. Trump said he had ‘expected it’:
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas was Trump’s guest at Mar-a-Lago on March 23:
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina), elected in 2020, was Trump’s guest the following day:
And, finally, on Thursday, March 25, Laura Ingraham of Fox News interviewed him. This interview, which is 26 minutes long, is excellent. It covers the recent policy changes that have happened since Biden took office, including his first press conference that day, and ends with a discussion about Trump’s social media plans. Trump seems less sure about a new social media platform, saying that it would be rather complicated and that he enjoys his current communication streams on his website and Telegram.
The former president says he has been relaxing, yet keeping busy. It certainly looks like it.
Those of us who read about former President Trump’s impeachment trial hope that his lawyer Michael van der Veen is having better days.
I’ll recap later in this post.
He did a great job for his client and had a gimlet eye on the facts.
He had to correct Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) for misquoting Trump:
His closing argument was excellent.
In one of these clips, he says that House impeachment managers sent him evidence on the first day of the trial, rather than before. Proceedings had already started by the time they sent van der Veen the email with the evidence.
Trump’s accusers did not make reference to any laws or the US Constitution:
Van der Veen spoke about the six months of civil unrest that preceded what took place at the Capitol on Wednesday, January 6. Last year’s unrest was actually encouraged by a number of Democrats:
He rightly condemned all the unrest, from last year to January 6, but asked how the United States could find itself in such a position:
He concluded that President Trump said nothing that could have incited a riot on January 6:
In fact, the mêlée had already started before Trump encouraged his rally goers to walk to the Capitol. With so many people in the nation’s capital that day, it would have taken about a half hour to walk to the Capitol building from the Ellipse, where Trump was speaking.
In any event, Trump was acquitted.
That was partly because someone on the impeachment managers’ team doctored the evidence. Two pieces of tampering that emerged in the news were 1) a tweet which was doctored so that 2020 read 2021 and 2) a blue tick mark added to a Twitter user’s account.
Van der Veen said there was more falsified evidence.
A CBS News interviewer, Lana Zak, was mystified that van der Veen would find falsified Twitter evidence egregious and unethical.
He was clearly displeased with her reaction and told her so (start at 2 minutes in):
Howie Carr made some excellent observations about this on Monday, February 15 (emphases mine):
What set van der Veen off was when this anchor cupcake by the name of Lana Zak (never heard of her before, how about you?) tried to pooh-pooh the falsification of evidence by the so-called House managers.
In case you missed it, and you probably did, they put blue check marks on Twitter accounts that didn’t have them (to somehow add credibility to meaningless, stupid comments). They also changed the dates on various postings, and they doctored video.
In other words, the Democrats falsified evidence, just as the FBI did on Carter Page in the application for search warrants in the secret FISA court.
And the Democrats (including of course See BS News) act like it’s no big deal, to try to frame somebody. I get it, it wasn’t a criminal trial so technically you don’t have to worry about niceties like due process, hearsay, Sixth Amendment rights to confront accusers etc. But still, is it proper to falsify evidence, and then, when you get busted red-handed, shrug it off because you were only doing it to a Republican?
Whatever happened to the American Civil Liberties Union?
Unfortunately, things were hotting up at the van der Veen residence that same day.
How horrible:
Fox News asked the lawyer about it during a post-acquittal interview that Saturday. He said that he didn’t want to talk about it. His office was also ‘under siege’, as he put it. The Gateway Pundit has more on the story, along with the video from Fox News.
I hope things have calmed down for him and his family.
What an appalling state of affairs.
The Left, including the media, should be ashamed of themselves. ‘Shame’, however, is a word and a concept unknown to them.
In case you’ve missed the earlier posts in this series, here they are: parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The best known of the minority MPs from David Cameron’s premiership — 2010 to 2016 — is Rishi Sunak, who is Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He represents the Richmond constituency in Yorkshire.
Early years
Rishi Sunak’s grandparents moved from the Punjab province of India to East Africa. Rishi’s mother Usha was born in Tanzania. His father Yashvir was born in Kenya. Both are Hindus.
Both sets of grandparents migrated to the UK in the 1960s.
After marriage, Usha and Yashvir settled in Southampton, on the southern coast of England. Usha worked locally as a pharmacist. Yashvir was a general practitioner.
The couple have three children: Rishi, another son Sanjay, who is a psychologist, and a daughter Raakhi, who works on COVID-19 strategy for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Rishi Sunak went to the renowned public (private) school Winchester College, founded in 1382, where he was head boy and editor of the student newspaper.
He then went to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First in 2001 in PPE, which is nothing to do with hospital gowns, rather Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Whilst at Oxford, he did a brief stint at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.
During summer holidays he worked at a curry house in Southampton.
Sunak began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he worked as an analyst from 2001 to 2004.
He then decided to study for an MBA at Stanford University in California, where he met his wife, Akshata Murthy, the daughter of the Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy, the man behind Infosys. The couple married in 2005. Sunak, a Fulbright Scholar, completed his MBA in 2006.
Sunak and his wife settled in England and have two young daughters.
Prior to entering politics, Sunak worked for two hedge funds and was also the director of one of his father-in-law’s companies, Catamaran Ventures.
Political career
Former Conservative Party leader William Hague represented Richmond, which has been a safe seat for the party for over a century.
Rishi Sunak was elected comfortably to his first term with a majority of 19,550 (36.2%). Once in Parliament, he was appointed to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.
Sunak was also committed to Brexit and was an early advocate of free ports, having written a report on the concept in 2016, the year of the referendum.
In 2017, with Theresa May as Prime Minister, Sunak won re-election with an even greater majority of 23,108 (40.5%). In Parliament, he continued to support Brexit, voting for Theresa May’s deal and against a referendum on a final withdrawal agreement in 2019.
That year, Theresa May stood down as PM. Sunak supported Boris Johnson in the ensuing leadership contest.
That autumn, during the general election campaign, he appeared on a television debate, representing the Conservatives:
I am sure Sunak did better than Iain Dale gave him credit for:
He also participated in a seven-way debate on ITV.
On December 12, Sunak further increased his margin of victory at the polls to 27,210 (47.2%).
The coronavirus Chancellor — and some inside scoops
Then, in February 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson replaced Sajid Javid with Rishi Sunak as Chancellor:
He gave his first budget less than a month later, on Wednesday, March 11, which I wrote about at the time.
The following Monday, March 16, Boris announced social distancing rules and the closure of pubs, restaurants and events venues. Rishi spoke at one of Boris’s televised coronavirus briefings with news of a generous financial package:
Guido Fawkes posted the full video and remarked (emphasis in the original):
You wouldn’t guess he’s only been in the job for five weeks…
Full details are here. Sunak also issued a Twitter thread with a summary:
Then lockdown came a week later on Monday, March 23.
A few days later, Boris was struggling with his bout of coronavirus, as was Health Secretary Matt Hancock:
The Conservatives soared to record approval ratings in the polls:
Early in April, Boris was quietly rushed to St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Rishi did another coronavirus briefing to reassure an anxious nation:
The well-spoken, gentle Sunak appealed greatly to the folks at home. The Independent did not like that one bit.
Society magazine Tatler began running articles on Sunak in March. They could see he would quickly become a cult personality.
On March 18, the magazine posted an article by Annabel Sampson, ‘Everything you need to know about Britain’s new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak’.
It begins with this (emphases mine):
The virtues of 39-year-old Rishi Sunak have been extolled many times over; for his charming demeanour, his razor sharp brain and his acute financial sense. Now the man who has come to be recognised as the ‘Maharaja of the Dales’, thanks to his Indian ancestry and Yorkshire home, has been appointed to the highest office in the country, to Boris Johnson’s Cabinet in the role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second biggest government job; and the second youngest person ever to take the position.
The appointment follows the ‘Cabinet Reshuffle’ that occurred in February when Savid Javid, the former Chancellor, resigned when he was asked to get rid – reportedly a request linked to Dominic Cummings – of his closest aides. Rishi Sunak’s star has been rising for some time now, so his appointment to the position will have baffled few.
The article has several photos, including one of Sunak in the Yorkshire countryside and one with his dog, which resembles Boris Johnson’s Welsh rescue pup, Dilyn.
Sunak and his wife had a traditional Indian wedding:
Rishi and Akshata were married in her hometown of Bangalore, in a two-day ceremony attended by 1,000 guests.
Akshata is a working mother:
Akshata runs her own fashion label Akshata Designs and is also a director of a venture capital firm founded by her father in 2010. Her designs are wonderful; she’s been profiled by Vogue India and been credited for creating clothes that are ‘vehicles to discovering Indian culture’ – comprised of chic silhouettes with bold, Indian design.
Did we know that the Sunaks throw great parties? We do now:
With their combined wealth, they understandably have a generously sized home in Northallerton, North Yorkshire (in Sunak’s constituency). The Daily Mail reports that their annual summer garden party is a county highlight; where uniformed staff loft around serving ice cold champagne and canapés (no doubt prepared by the prestigious Yorkshire Party Company).
Sunak is a natural at politics:
According to the Daily Mail, ‘While many MPs stutter and trundle their way through their maiden speech in the Commons, Mr Sunak’s at-ease manner provided a glimmer of what was to come’. One ally in parliament told the Telegraph: ‘He’s ferociously intelligent and thoroughly decent at the same time’ …
He was one of the few Conservatives who were let loose on the air waves (14 times in total) and allowed to make public appearances during the election campaign last year. He has even been dubbed the ‘Prime Minister-in-waiting’, we’ll see. His first big challenge was the March budget; and now he is juggling the unprecedented complexity of the impact of the coronavirus on the economy. The UK are in safe hands.
The article also has a photo of him supporting Yorkshire County Cricket at Edgbaston.
Early in July, Tatler‘s Ben Judah travelled to Sunak’s home town of Southampton and reported his findings in ‘Inside the world of Rishi Sunak’.
Naturally, Judah went to the curry house where Sunak worked during his summer holidays:
The kitchen at Kuti’s Brasserie, not far from Southampton docks, was not the sort of place, in August 1998, you would have gone looking for a future hedge funder, son-in-law of a billionaire and Conservative chancellor.
That summer – the summer of the France 98 World Cup and the Omagh bombing – Kuti Miah, the eponymous restaurateur behind the curry house, went to have a word with one of his waiters. ‘You’re going to be someone, Rishi,’ he said. The future UK chancellor flashed his famous smile. He was, adds Miah, ‘a brilliant talker’. Rishi Sunak, then 18, was about to go to Oxford, but that holiday he waited tables for Miah, a close family friend, to earn some pocket money. ‘I saw him grow up,’ says Miah. ‘His father used to bring him in his carry cot.’
Miah was fast friends with Yashvir and Usha Sunak, both Hindu Punjabis born in colonial Kenya and Tanzania respectively, whose parents had migrated from India. After India’s independence, both families left East Africa for Southampton in the mid-to-late 1960s. Yashvir and Usha met in Britain and married. He became a local GP and she ran a pharmacy. They were ‘brilliant conversationalists’ and ‘very strong believers’ who ‘worked very, very hard’, according to Miah, who also recalls that they were ‘passionately British’.
Rishi, the eldest of their three children, was cut from the same patriotic cloth. Not only did the young Sunak fall in love with the game of cricket, he fervently supported England over India at any opportunity. His career, too, has followed one of the most traditional and storied of England’s paths to power. Like five chancellors of the exchequer before him, Sunak was schooled at the ancient and distinguished Winchester College; and like three of those same Wykehamist chancellors, he went on, as was expected, to study at Oxford.
The article includes a photo of Sunak with his wife and in-laws.
Ben Judah had met Rishi Sunak before, in 2015, just before the general election that year. They met up in Northallerton, North Yorkshire:
We were a long way from London – from where Sunak had been ‘parachuted in’ for the seat. During the interview, I had a distinct sense of being the only person in the cafe who knew that this slight man in a Barbour jacket was running for parliament. ‘I tell this story when I’m out and about,’ he said, coffee in hand, ‘that you can come to this country with very little… My grandparents came with very little from a village in northern India, and two generations on, their grandson has this enormous privilege of running as a candidate for parliament. For my family, the route was education.’
Well said.
Sunak’s candidacy in 2015 raised some eyebrows:
He was vying for a seat once presided over by Tory grandees William Hague and Leon Brittan. But I had spent days in Richmond and the surrounding area, reporting on the resentment his sudden arrival had stirred up among certain local Tory notables, who felt the seat in the Dales was rightfully theirs. ‘There was a very acrimonious constituency battle,’ claimed one source, with a lot of hostility to an outsider coming in.
Sunak’s wife had also met with some resistance on the campaign trail, says Judah.
However, Sunak’s father-in-law enthusiastically flew to England where he helped to campaign:
Sunak’s billionaire father-in-law, NR Narayana Murthy, however, has been so enthusiastic about Sunak’s parliamentary career that he’d flown in, and had even been leafleting on his behalf, wearing a Rishi sweatshirt. ‘To be honest,’ said Sunak in Costa Coffee that day, ‘I think it’s patronising to assume minorities should only run in minority seats.’
The article discusses Sunak’s property profile:
On 7 May 2015, Sunak won, with more than 50 per cent of the vote (a Ukip vote of 15 per cent had appeared from nowhere). He put down roots in his new constituency of Richmond, North Yorkshire, augmenting a £10 million property portfolio (metropolitan digs in London – a Kensington mews house, a flat on Old Brompton Road – and a place in California) with a £1.5 million Georgian manor in Yorkshire set across 12 acres, including an ornamental lake. Here, he now entertains the constituency membership with lavish summer parties at which uniformed staff serve champagne and canapés. He has been repeatedly dubbed by newspapers the ‘Maharajah of the Yorkshire Dales’.
The general public know less about those details. Nonetheless, Rishi Sunak has become a household name:
In a swift few years, Sunak has become known as many things: Dishy Rishi to the tabloids; one of the richest MPs in Westminster; the second-youngest-ever chancellor of the exchequer, presiding over a £350 billion package to boost the economy (the largest ever recorded in peacetime); and a former hedge funder whose profile has risen faster than stocks in a vaccine manufacturer.
However dazzling all of this is now, things were very different when Sunak entered Winchester College as an adolescent:
… Winchester would come at a price for the Sunaks. No sooner was he accepted than Rishi’s good fortune immediately foundered: he missed out on the expected scholarship. Desperate not to let the opportunity go to waste, his parents decided to take on the high fees themselves, picking up extra work and making what the chancellor has called considerable ‘sacrifices’. His brother would later follow.
One of his classmates discussed Sunak and described Winchester in the mid- to late 1990s:
Tim Johnson, now a lawyer, was in the boarding house next door. ‘Rishi was a good chap, in boarding-school idiom,’ he recalled. Sunak, he said, was a ‘reasonable cricketer’, who stood out in friendliness; and he was a solid, but never number one, student. ‘Rishi was always expected to do something,’ Johnson remembered. But exactly what, beyond Winchester, was vague. ‘He was always expected to be head boy as he was clever enough, reasonable enough and well behaved enough.’ This became Sunak’s thing – hard work and attainment, becoming the first Winchester head of school from an Indian background.
Sunak was different to other sixth formers in Winchester: a lifelong nondrinker, he wasn’t distracted by the allure of the pub. But there was something else that marked him out from the herd. He was a conservative in every sense: not only in his outlook and demeanour but in his religious attitudes, too – a practising Hindu who avoided beef. At school, where few boys were political, Sunak was clearly ‘associated with the Tories’, said Johnson. It was 1997, The Chemical Brothers were topping the charts and the mood was rebellious. Counterculture, New Labour and ripped jeans were in; the Conservatives were out. ‘That wasn’t his intellectual jam. Rishi didn’t play that game,’ Johnson explained.
‘Everyone was chipper about it when Blair won,’ Johnson said. But not Rishi. His family’s story was closer to Margaret Thatcher’s than that of his bourgeois Labourite classmates. Watching the early results of the landslide on election night 1997, Sunak sat down to write a gloomy article for the school magazine, The Wykehamist, lamenting the news. His main complaint: Europe. ‘He revels in the label of a patriot,’ he complained of Tony Blair, ‘but has plans for the possible break-up of the United Kingdom and membership of an eventual European Superstate.’ The seeds of Brexit were already in his mind.
‘Already,’ fretted Sunak, ‘the New Labour rhetoric sounds worryingly pro-European and avid pro-Europeans are being sent to Brussels’ …
Later, at Oxford, Sunak had a low profile, unlike his predecessor as MP, William Hague:
He was nothing like the young William Hague, who arrived at Oxford fêted and almost a Tory celebrity, or the young Boris Johnson, the blond beast who tore apart the Oxford Union. At Oxford, Sunak was a nobody, much like Tony Blair.
He continued to eschew strong drink:
Oxford acquaintances remember him as a nerdy teetotaller who was ‘just very clearly going into business’. He would ‘make this big thing’ out of drinking Coke in the pub. ‘Rishi was unknown to the student politicians, that gossipy overlapping world, who all knew each other,’ said Marcus Walker, then-president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, now a clergyman. Sunak was never a member.
It is hard to remember how irrelevant and demoralised Tory circles felt after 1997, but some do recall Sunak as a ‘Thatcherite’ and ‘Eurosceptic’. ‘That was absolutely par for the course,’ said Walker. ‘If you were still a Tory after 1997, you were a Eurosceptic. That was all you had left.’
Nevertheless, Sunak did develop a network from his Winchester College and Oxford days. Graduates from Winchester are called Old Wykehamists:
These days, socially, Sunak has been placed by some in Westminster’s Spectator set. He was best man to his lifelong friend and fellow Old Wykehamist James Forsyth, political editor of The Spectator, at Forsyth’s politician-studded wedding in 2011, to Allegra Stratton, the national editor at ITV News – and gave what one guest recalled was ‘one of the most touching best man’s speeches I’ve ever heard’. (In fact, Stratton has recently announced she’s leaving ITV News for a job with Sunak at the Treasury. Some have seen this as very Cameron-esque in its ‘chumocracy’.)
Allegra Stratton, also a good friend of ITV’s Robert Peston, now works for Boris Johnson as his notional press secretary, although she has not yet begun to give press briefings, probably because of coronavirus.
Imagine the son of immigrants having ties to Britain’s two oldest — ancient — magazines: The Spectator and Tatler. Wow.
Tatler‘s Ben Judah also spoke with people who had worked with Sunak during his hedge fund days. They painted a similar character portrait of the Chancellor:
After two years in California completing a CV-topping MBA, he returned to London and Mayfair in 2006, where a new type of boutique finance was booming: hedge funds. He was hired by Sir Chris Hohn at The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI). It was a dream job: a big role at an activist firm off Berkeley Square at the peak of their fame. ‘He appears to have been trusted,’ said a source. Indeed, Sunak was made a partner two years later. Contemporaries remember him ever-ready to meet and greet; a mixture of a junior, deputy and a bag carrier; the perfect foil to Hohn’s bolshy swagger. ‘Ridiculously nice.’ ‘Affable.’ ‘Approachable.’ ‘Charming.’ These are the words that come up again and again among Mayfair types who knew Sunak. The charm was of a particular kind: ‘There are two kinds of people at hedge funds,’ said one source. ‘Handsome and thin smooth-talkers who are always on the phone or going out to lunch with clients, getting them to part with their money. And then quants in the back room with their shirts buttoned up badly.’
Sunak was one of the smooth-talkers, his charm honed on calls to investors, getting them on board with whatever drastic moves the fund wanted to make. The kind of charm that prizes clarity and persuades people to part with their money. It worked: but hedge-fund charm is designed to hide as much as it reveals. The atmosphere at TCI was buccaneering and bold; it both led and profited from a controversial banking raid that eventually meant a £45.5 billion public bailout of the Royal Bank of Scotland. (The Treasury and TCI say Sunak was not involved in the deal.) He left when TCI split in 2009, and joined the breakaway hedge fund Theleme Partners. His new firm’s reputation took a knock when its founder was revealed to have used a notorious tax avoidance scheme. The Labour Party researched Sunak’s past during the 2019 election. ‘But he was too little known for us to use it,’ said one source …
His reasons for entering Parliament are equally obscure. Those who know him have different opinions as to why. One thing that everyone agrees on is his penchant for order:
Many in Westminster see his motivation as status. ‘He’s not an ideologue,’ said one Tory source. ‘He wanted to enter politics in that old-fashioned way, because it was seen as the good thing to do.’ Good, as in socially ambitious. Whether that’s true is another matter, because first came a stint at Policy Exchange, leading a unit researching black and minority ethnic attitudes. The scruffy but influential Conservative think tank world is seen as a de facto holding pen for future special advisers, but it was nonetheless an unexpectedly technical way into Westminster for someone with means.
Sunak quickly made an impression. ‘He’s got that Blair-like ability to hold your eye,’ says Nick Faith, who worked with him there. Sunak cut a snappy figure amid slovenly suits. ‘He’s into his clothing.’ His is not the fusty establishment Rees-Mogg or Nicholas Soames style, but more the wiry Emmanuel Macron look. Everything Sunak wears, many remarked, is immaculate, even at the end of a Treasury work day, and fits perfectly. Faith says that ‘everything, from how Rishi dresses to how he structures his life, is very well organised’. Sunak’s elegant house in London, with a touch of Indian decor, reflects that. ‘Nothing is out of place. For someone with two small kids, that’s quite an achievement.’
Having learned from his background in finance, Sunak also knows how and when to place his bets:
‘His mind works in Excel,’ said one City contemporary. But like all hedge funders, it also works in bets: and the two biggest bets that Sunak has made in his career have paid off spectacularly – Brexit and Boris. David Cameron knew the gravity of his predicament when Sunak came out for Leave. ‘If we’ve lost Rishi, we’ve lost the future of the party,’ he reportedly said. The same thing played out in reverse in June 2019 when Sunak came out for Boris in The Times with two other MPs during the party leadership elections. This was widely seen in Westminster as a decisive turning point: the one where Johnson won over ‘the sensibles’ and pivoted the backbenchers. The PM seems to agree: all three have been handsomely rewarded.
In Parliament, he keeps a low profile but, to those who know him, is loyal:
‘He’s unknown in parliament,’ said one MP. ‘He doesn’t play the parliamentary game at all.’ Tory Remainers are sceptical of him. ‘It’s Star Wars,’ said one MP, referring to the chancellor’s strange and classically ‘geek-chic’ hobby for minutely detailed models of spaceships and video games. ‘Most of his political philosophy comes out of the Star Wars trade wars that are about the independence of various kingdoms from the Empire. He’s not someone intellectual.’ Loyalty has been his strongest suit. Sunak is a No 10 man. ‘He’s a grown-up,’ said one MP. ‘The only grown-up in Downing Street, despite him being 20 years younger than them.’
… At the height of tensions over Brexit last year, he was cheerfully going around Westminster saying he would back ‘no deal’ if push came to shove. He struck the right note, in the right place, at the right time. Tensions between Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid’s teams exploded in February, when the then-chancellor resigned after refusing to fire his own special advisers and submit to an unprecedented joint team with Downing Street, effectively under the stewardship of Dominic Cummings. It was Sunak, with high skills and no clear agenda or faction behind him in parliament, whom Downing Street turned to. He quickly agreed to the joint team, once again becoming the perfect foil for an outsized boss.
Even now, it’s still too early to say whether Rishi Sunak will become a future leader of the Conservative Party and, as such, a possible prime minister. A week is a long time in politics.
When Boris’s erstwhile special adviser Dominic Cummings broke coronavirus rules in travelling from London to Durham and back during Boris’s time in hospital, Sunak tried to calm the ever-turbulent waters surrounding Cummings, who was never popular with the Remainer media. He tweeted this after Cummings’s lengthy press conference in May:
In June, Sunak was tactful about the reopening of shops and businesses in Britain after the first coronavirus lockdown:
He also warned that his generous financial package could not go on indefinitely:
A few weeks later, in early July, pubs were allowed to reopen:
The Government launched the Enjoy Summer Safely campaign. Pictured below is Piccadilly Circus:
On July 8, he issued a Summer Economic Update, with financial help continuing (more here):
This included the launch of his Eat Out To Help Out plan, which lasted to the end of August:
A lot of Labour MPs didn’t like the plan. I don’t know why. Leftists own restaurants, too.
He cut VAT for the hospitality industry, too.
He also issued a detailed jobs plan, including an apprentice scheme:
Some men in the media were taking a shine to Dishy Rishi, including the leftist Owen Jones of The Guardian and Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine:
At that time, the attention being given to Sunak and Boris Johnson got the better of Conservative MP Caroline Dineage, a Culture minister, who was questioned on masks, which were strongly suggested (mandatory only on public transport) but still optional in what now look like heady days. This was from a BBC interview:
… asked why the Prime Minister and Chancellor Rishi Sunak had not worn one in public, she snapped: “You’d have to ask the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that, with respect.
“But it is something that is advised and we keep it under review.”
At the end of September 2020, the coronavirus crisis dragged on. Talk intensified about a winter lockdown.
On September 24, Sunak issued a Winter Economy Plan, about which I wrote at the time. When he presented it in the House of Commons, he advised all MPs to live ‘without fear’.
By October 6, Sunak was being blamed for an uptick in coronavirus ‘cases’ (positive test results, not necessarily hospital admissions) for the Eat Out to Help Out scheme:
A US study, which did not cover Britain, showed that hospitality venues were shown to be responsible. However, the study did not cover workplaces or hospitals. Nonetheless, it is still a contentious point even to this day.
The Sun‘s Harry Cole rightly, in my opinion, defended the Chancellor’s restaurant promotion.
Then talk of hospitality curfews emerged. Fellow Conservative MP Matt Vickers defended the Chancellor’s Eat Out to Help Out programme, which had come to an end five weeks earlier.
The calls for a winter lockdown grew. The Chancellor rightly opposed them:
By then, more areas of England had moved into tiers, indicating more coronavirus cases. Sunak increased financial support to those cities and counties. He also offered more help to businesses, including the self-employed.
By November, some thought a storm was truly brewing between Boris and Rishi. Despite all the talk from the Government about people being able to meet loved ones at Christmas — for the first time in months, for many — a pessimistic undercurrent, which turned out to be accurate, seemed to be part of every news cycle.
Rumours circulated that Sunak was ready to resign. However, on November 1, the Daily Mail reported:
A source said there was a ‘collective decision’ to back a second lockdown, and that Mr Sunak ‘accepted it’ – and he did not threaten to resign, as some whispers around Westminster were suggesting yesterday.
The November lockdown was supposed to prevent a Christmas lockdown, but that was not to be. There was a brief re-opening before Christmas, and on December 19, the hammer fell once more.
Interestingly, the minority MPs in Cabinet shared Sunak’s concerns.
By the middle of December, Sunak was clearly worried about how long the borrowing could go on. On Saturday, December 19, the day when Boris announced Christmas was cancelled, The Spectator reported what the Chancellor said about borrowing and quantitative easing (QE):
‘Are you or anyone else going to guarantee me that, for the duration of this parliament, rates might not go back to 1 per cent?’ he asks, pointing out that this almost happened in March, before the Bank of England started printing money to bring rates back down. ‘There is this very large QE thing that’s going on. No one has done that before. There are plenty of smart investors who are also thinking about the risks of inflation over the next 12 months. Because we are now so levered, small changes have huge cash implications. If I have to come up with £10-£20 billion a year in a few years’ time because things have changed — well, that’s a lot of money.’
To Sunak, it’s not just an economic problem but a political one. ‘If we [Tories] think borrowing is the answer to everything, that debt rising is fine, then there’s not much difference between us and the Labour party,’ he says.
The media criticised him for going to his constituency of Richmond for Christmas. To be fair, he did work while he was there, visiting a local hospital and a vaccine centre. He did not rush back to London.
On February 3, 2021, Sunak rightly accused scientists advising the Government of shifting the goalposts regarding lockdown:
This might be causing a rift in Boris’s Cabinet:
On a brighter note, Time magazine has included Rishi Sunak on its list of 100 ’emerging leaders’. On February 17, the Daily Mail reported:
Under the ‘leaders’ category, Chancellor Rishi Sunak landed a spot on the list, being described as the ‘benevolent face of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic’ by Times reporter Billy Perrigo.
The Chancellor’s profile piece discussed the furlough scheme, describing how he approved ‘large handouts’ for people whose jobs had been affected by coronavirus.
The piece also paid respect to Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme, which the magazine described as an attempt to ‘revive the economy’ by subsidizing dining out at restaurants.
Although his profile acknowledges that Sunak bears more responsibility than most for his calls to ease lockdown restrictions, Time’s profile for the Chancellor admits he has earned himself a ‘legion of fans’.
Sunak’s accompanying profile points to a YouGov poll showing him to be the nation’s most popular politician and even tips him to be the bookmakers’ favourite as the next Prime Minister.
Again, a week is a long time in politics. We shall see about the future as and when it happens.
For now, Sunak is focussing on the budget, to be delivered on March 3. He is asking industry leaders for their thoughts.
Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsay was one of those leaders:
If Rishi Sunak ever tires of being an MP or Chancellor, a job in media awaits.
He is an excellent interviewer and researched Gordon Ramsay well. The 15-minute video is worth watching.
The list of minority Conservative MPs continues. All being well, more tomorrow.
Shortly after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Fox News posted two interesting videos.
The first was one I never thought I would see. In fact, I hadn’t even imagined it.
Laura Ingraham managed to get an interview with Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Intercept, which he co-founded. Not so long ago, the publication told him to take a hike. They did not like that he opposed ‘their’ editorial line. Greenwald, although hardly a conservative, questioned current leftist narratives.
Glenn Greenwald is not a fan of Donald Trump, but even he can see that Big Media have clearly overstepped their bounds.
Laura Ingraham begins the segment with three minutes of Inauguration Day coverage contrasting 2021’s with 2017’s. Even Greenwald says he could barely stomach it:
He said that the media react in three ways: a) basic whining, b) complaining that the public can see through media lies and c) downright censorship.
Greenwald said that the public’s
lack of trust will continue to worsen, undoubtedly.
Ingraham asked about the militarisation of Washington, DC. Greenwald posited that the media had to create a story that invoked fear — domestic terrorism — because talking about Joe Biden would have been too dull.
Ultimately, he said that the media want the people to be subservient to the elites and that is why they are
spinning these stories.
He also said that the Democrats want to bring in a
new War on Terror bill.
It would deal with what is perceived to be domestic terrorism:
all designed to entrench powers in their hands that we would otherwise agree they should never have.
Too true.
Tucker Carlson also discussed this on his show around the same time:
Glenn Greenwald said that Adam Schiff (D-California) has been trying to bring in a domestic terrorist threat bill since 2019.
Tucker Carlson introduced another Democrat legislator with the same intent in mind. His name is Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Illinois). No one outside of his constituency or state has ever heard of Brad Schneider. Tucker wonders who put Brad Schneider in charge of the First Amendment.
Tucker’s video goes on with video clips of two other legislators who want to restrict the right to free speech and freedom of assembly, because Americans doing so — Americans with conservative values — are ‘harming’ other Americans.
Unbelievable.
Both videos are worth your time: 13 minutes in total.
Please watch and circulate.
Dems and their water carriers in the media do not have the Constitution in mind with these proposed laws.
Tucker, in particular, makes a valid and impassioned defence of the First Amendment. He read history at university, so he’s not a ‘media studies’ kind of journalist.
America has always been the freest country in the world.
May the Great Republic always be so. May these censors and charlatans cease and desist from removing fundamental American rights from the people.
Thanks to James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, Michael Beller, who was at the time Principal Counsel — head lawyer — for the partly publicly funded PBS network in the United States, freely aired his views about America and Donald Trump supporters.
This video was filmed before the November 3, 2020 general election. Gosh:
One of his statements was particularly snobbish. Beller is grateful for being able to live in Washington, DC, because (emphases mine):
Could you imagine if you lived in one of these other towns or states where everybody’s just … stupid?
An aghast Howie Carr, who hails from Maine, Boston and Palm Beach, played that clip on his talk radio show on Tuesday, January 12.
Beller thinks the only solution for Trump supporters is to confiscate their children and put them in re-education camps.
You cannot make this up.
He also advocated circling the White House and throwing Molotov cocktails in the event that Trump stays in office:
Good grief.
Beller has no respect for those who partly fund the PBS network:
Americans are so f**king dumb. You know? Most people are dumb …
That was nice (not).
James O’Keefe managed to track Beller down in DC earlier this week. Before Beller slipped into a restaurant, he claimed that his reference to Molotov cocktails meant a new ‘drink’. Sure, pull the other one. We all know what they are:
Fortunately, shortly after Project Veritas released their videos, Michael Beller lost his job:
Well, I hope so for America’s sake.
James O’Keefe said that this was the quickest reaction ever to a Project Veritas exposé.
Well done, PBS:
The news made the Associated Press:
I wish Project Veritas many more successes as the year unfolds.
What a week. It’s been full of coronavirus news here in the UK.
Vaccine
The UK was the first country in the world to distribute a coronavirus vaccine.
A 90-year-old grandmother, Margaret Keenan, was the first person to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock wept. He’s never openly cried about those made unemployed and destitute during the coronavirus crisis for which he is largely responsible. Sickening:
Good Morning Britain‘s physician, Dr Hilary Jones, explained that Mrs Keenan could still get COVID-19 and transmit it:
It seems to work the way that a flu vaccine does. If one gets the virus, the effects won’t be as bad as if one weren’t vaccinated.
I wouldn’t advise thinking about that too much, because it could lead down a rabbit hole:
The great scientists of SAGE also said life would not return to normal (see Select Committee section below). We are likely to be in the same situation well into next year, probably the autumn. This is what the ex-barrister and co-editor of Conservative Woman says:
Continuing down the rabbit hole re the vaccine:
Wales
Meanwhile, in Labour-controlled Wales, coronavirus hospitalisations are higher than they were early this year — despite a short, sharp lockdown, ‘firebreak’, that recently ended:
Guido Fawkes opined (emphases in the original):
Lockdowns, even short ones, evidently temporarily drop cases. Yet selling them on the promise that they enable more things to open once they end, as Welsh Labour did, appears to turbocharge case numbers far more than having simple, predictable and steady rules. The psychology of re-openings could well mean that in the long run, Wales’ “short sharp firebreak lockdown” – modelled on Keir Starmer’s demand – did more harm than good…
The Prif Weinidog — that’s First Minister in Welsh — Mark Drakeford blamed his own countrymen for the failure of his ‘firebreak’:
I couldn’t agree more. Lockdowns, firebreaks — whatever one calls them — do not work.
Why would anyone trust a government to dictate their lives? This is a photo of Grenfell Tower (public housing) in London, which burned in June 2017 because of faulty cladding:
And that brings me neatly to the next topic.
PCR versus Lateral Flow testing
The UK Government rejected a petition about PCR (swab) testing because they said they are not responsible for it. Hmm:
This is the nub of the problem. The Government absolves itself of responsibility. So do the scientists. People actually believe this guff.
Where do Government ministers get the idea for lockdown and excuse potentially faulty test results if it weren’t for the scientists and health organisations working with them?
But I digress.
Returning to testing, a few weeks ago, nearly all of Liverpool’s residents took the Lateral Flow test in a pilot programme. The Lateral Flow test works similarly to a pregnancy test and could be used on a daily basis as an ‘all clear’ strategy to give people more freedom and certainty to go about their lives. If successful, its use could allow visits to patients in care homes.
Very few of the Lateral Flow results were positive. If I remember rightly, the figure was 0.3%.
No doubt if those same people had taken the PCR test, the results would have been very different.
Therefore, this is interesting:
I’m just posting it to show there is a huge question over which test is more accurate.
PCR could work, provided the cycle thresholds were lowered from 40 to 35. But that is not happening.
The scientists of SAGE: Susan Michie
Anyone who reads Guido Fawkes regularly will know that SAGE has some questionable members, including this woman who appeared regularly on BBC News during the first lockdown. She might still be appearing on the BBC. I only watched between March and June to watch the spin they put on the Government’s coronavirus briefings:
Michie’s mother was worth a fortune:
The Daily Mail said the owners of the painting were a mystery, until all was revealed (emphases mine):
The painting was in fact sold by 30-year-old Ms Murray’s mother, Professor Susan Michie. She and her two siblings had been left the picture by their mother, the celebrated IVF pioneer Dame Anne McLaren.
When she died in 2007 she left an estate valued at £52,105,910. The vast bulk of that sum represented the value of the painting.
In her will, the Mail can reveal, she stated that if her children chose to sell then ‘if possible it should be sold to an art gallery or museum in the United Kingdom’.
According to a source, family members were ‘disappointed’ at the decision to put the painting on the market. While the sale attracted a tax bill of £20million, that would have left the trio about £10million each — more than enough to share around other members of their extended family.
Three SAGE members appear before Select Committee
Moving on to other SAGE members, Sir Patrick Vallance, Prof Chris Whitty and Dr Jenny Harries appeared once more before the Science and Technology Select Committee on Wednesday, December 9, for a year-end review of lessons learned during the pandemic. Greg Clark MP, who heads that Select Committee, and MPs from both Conservative and Opposition parties asked probing questions. You can watch the three-and-one-half hour session here.
Unfortunately, Vallance, Whitty and Harries were no clearer about lessons learned. In fact, they were vaguer than they were in earlier sessions:
– The vaccine will not be a fix for coronavirus. Not everyone will be able to take the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine because it will not be suitable for them.
– Human behaviour (Harries’s speciality) is very hard to predict. Harries admitted that.
– Hospitality has been the scapegoat because that is where alcohol can be consumed.
– Conclusions on BAME communities’ susceptibility to the virus are unclear.
– Lockdown restrictions will be with us well into next year.
– The worst admission — and I have been saying this to my far better half for at least a month — was when Vallance said that self-isolation is better for the person who has a steady job and can work from home. Self-isolation, he said, is not suitable for someone in precarious employment who has to show up to work every day! (Who knew?) Good grief!
They have no real answers, yet they’re still ruling our lives via the Government!
Sky News suspends newsreader
Kay Burley, one of Sky News’s star newsreaders, celebrated her 60th birthday on Saturday, December 5, in London.
Unfortunately, the celebrations did not take place in an entirely COVID-compliant way.
Ms Burley was suspended until early January 2021. (See update below.)
Guido Fawkes has the story:
Some people won’t see that as big news, but it is.
It points out the hypocrisy of the media, who were clamouring for a lockdown in March then flout the rules when we are still in one via the tier system. London is in Tier 2.
This was Kay Burley’s apology:
The Guido Fawkes team delved deeper. This is what they discovered (emphases in the original). Guillaume Depoix (point 5 below) owns the Folie restaurant:
The trouble for Kay is that this statement does not address the whole story, and contradicts what the owner of the restaurant told Guido about the event yesterday. Either the restaurant owner was not telling the truth to Guido, or Kay has been fibbing…
-
- Her party at the “Covid compliant” club was made up of ten people, split across two tables. Yet the ‘Rule of Six’ apples to social events like birthday parties inside or outside. The only other gatherings such as business meetings can exceed it...
- Kay’s statement presumes she walked all the way to the restaurant Folie to spend her penny. Despite it being not exactly next door to the club she came from.
- Kay does not mention the other people who came with her into the second restaurant. Yet the owner admitted to Guido yesterday that “several people” came in to the restaurant.
- Guido was initially told by the restaurant owner that Kay and her friends had gone in to the second restaurant after curfew “to pay a bill, that was it”. Not to go to the loo…
- When Guido put to restaurant owner Guillaume Depoix that Kay and company had been in the restaurant for quite a while, “a couple of hours”, this was not denied. Guido certainly got the impression the group were there for a considerable amount of time.
- Kay does not mention the other people who came back to her home. Yet she didn’t deny it.
Whilst Kay’s statement tries to take all the blame, Guido has yet to hear what her Sky News colleagues and party guests Beth Rigby, Inzamam Rashid, and Sam Washington have to say …
On Tuesday, December 8, i reported (emphases mine):
Sky News presenter Kay Burley has been taken off air after she admitted to breaching coronavirus restrictions, i understands. She has been replaced on the breakfast show for her remaining shows this week and is already due on annual leave until 4 January …
The TV host is facing an internal inquiry for what she described as “an error of judgment”.
Sources told i the presenter was called into Sky’s headquarters in Osterley, west London, for an urgent meeting with bosses on Tuesday morning. The channel’s most senior staff, John Riley, head of news, and Christina Nicoletti Squires, director of content, were seen entering the newsroom at the time the meeting was due to be held.
Burley will be replaced by early morning presenter Niall Paterson on Wednesday and other presenters will cover her programme for the remainder of the week. Burley was already set to be on annual leave from next Monday until 4 January 2021.
A source close to the presenter said she “doesn’t have a leg to stand on” after breaking the Government’s rules, while being employed to grill politicians over the need to follow guidelines.
It is not clear if she has been removed from air as part of formal disciplinary proceedings.
When the news of the breach broke on Monday night, Burley was in Coventry, where she was due to anchor the news channel as the first Covid vaccines were administered. She was hastily replaced and ordered back to London for Tuesday’s meeting …
Too funny.
Burley, along with colleague and birthday guest Beth Rigby, were among the media stars who endlessly criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advisor Dominic Cummings, who is staying on until the end of the year, for his lockdown breach during the first lockdown during the Spring:
Burley, who presents a daily breakfast show on Sky News, has grilled politicians on lockdown throughout the pandemic.
In May, she questioned cabinet minister Michael Gove on the controversy over Dominic Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle.
A Sky News spokesman said: “We place the highest importance on complying with the Government guidelines on Covid, and we expect all our people to comply.
“We were disappointed to learn that a small number of Sky News staff may have engaged in activity that breached the guidelines.
“Although this took place at a social event in personal time, we expect all our people to follow the rules that are in place for everyone. An internal process is under way to review the conduct of the people involved.”
Sky News declined to comment on Burley being taken off air.
This tweet shows Beth Rigby having a go at Dominic Cummings in May during his press conference:
The Guardian had more on the story:
All of the Sky staff are facing a review of their conduct by their employer, which said it was “disappointed” by the incident.
Burley’s usual 7am breakfast programme was presented from Coventry University hospital on Tuesday by Sarah Hewson. Burley is understood to have already been in the city, where the UK’s first vaccine dose was administered, when the decision was made. There was no mention of the reason for Burley’s absence when the show began …
Burley is understood to have blamed the situation on misunderstandings in planning and organising the event. But she did not address why a group of four people, including Rashid and former Sky News royal correspondent and Huawei PR executive Paul Harrison, returned to her home after the dinner, a claim that is not believed to be in dispute. Other Sky News staff are understood to be irritated by details of the event.
Under the tier 2 restrictions in London, indoor social gatherings of any kind are barred except among those who live together or have formed a support bubble. Groups of up to six can socialise outdoors. Police can impose fines of £200 for a first-time breach.
Under the rules, Burley’s initial gathering would only have been allowed if the two tables remained separate throughout and sat outside. It is not clear how many of the group went to the second venue, but Burley’s tweets suggested that the rules were broken during this part of the evening. A group of four gathering at her home would be against the rules unless they remained outside throughout.
Burley has been a stern interrogator of politicians who have been perceived as making excuses over lockdown breaches this year.
In May, she conducted a widely shared interview with the cabinet minister Michael Gove about the Dominic Cummings affair, repeatedly asking him to clarify what the government advice would be for a member of the public “struggling with Covid-19 and you think you’ve got a problem with your eyesight”, in reference to Cummings’ explanation of his trip to Barnard Castle.
She also interviewed the health secretary, Matt Hancock, after Prof Neil Ferguson was forced to resign as a government adviser and asked: “What did you think when you read it? Did you bang your head on the desk?”
Burley’s colleague Adam Boulton, the other star of Sky News, was deeply unhappy with her. The Guardian told us all about it in ‘Kay Burley row could undermine Sky News, warns Adam Boulton’:
The Sky News presenter Adam Boulton has warned that the row over a breach of coronavirus restrictions by his colleague Kay Burley has raised concerns over “the credibility of our journalism”.
With executives at the broadcaster weighing their decision over what sanctions are merited by the actions of Burley and three colleagues who attended her 60th birthday party last weekend, Boulton retweeted several posts about the story on Wednesday, including one that read: “Look at the state of Sky News. The morons spent all summer preaching to us and now look at them!”
Speaking to the Guardian, Boulton noted that his retweets did not necessarily constitute endorsements. But he went on: “That said, I retweet things because I think they’re of public interest, and certainly my feed has reflected a lot of people who are very concerned about the credibility of Sky News, and that I think is the important issue: the credibility of our journalism.”
The intervention from the station’s editor-at-large and former political editor is the first significant comment on the situation from a senior broadcaster at Sky News, where executives have been considering how to deal with the fallout from Burley’s celebrations since Monday.
Boulton said: “My view is that Sky has worked very hard during the whole Covid crisis and has taken a very clear line about public safety, and obviously something like this perhaps underlines [the importance of] that.” And he noted that he believed the matter to be “of widespread concern” to colleagues at the station.
Since Guido Fawkes broke the story on Monday, December 7, Burley’s fellow colleagues who celebrated her birthday have also been suspended:
Beth Rigby, Inzamam Rashid and Sam Washington have all been taken off air during discussions over what sanctions will be imposed. On Tuesday, Burley was withdrawn from consideration for a prestigious TV award, while two of the group signed non-disclosure agreements as Sky sought to limit damage from the row.
Other staff at Sky share Adam Boulton’s consternation:
“The situation is just excruciating,” one producer said. “The longer it goes on, the worse it gets and the harder it is to see this ending without serious punishment.”
Boulton noted that he viewed Burley as a “remarkable” journalist who deserved her success on the station. And he added: “Whatever happens next is not my decision and obviously it’s not up to me to criticise colleagues.”
Nonetheless, his comments will be viewed with alarm by executives hoping to keep staff concerns under wraps until they reach a decision, which is expected to be this week.
It appears that Burley had a safari holiday booked:
Burley herself deleted a tweet saying she was going on holiday on Friday to go “sit with lions”, adding: “They kill for food, not sport” – a possible reference to the media coverage of the situation.
Well, she can take her time and enjoy an extended safari holiday.
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UPDATE: Early this evening, news emerged that Sky News has suspended Burley for six months! Excellent.
Furthermore, Beth Rigby has been suspended for three months; Sam Washington and Inzamam Rashid have also been suspended pending an internal Sky News enquiry. Result!
How pleased Kay and Beth were with themselves only a few days earlier …
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It is a bit rich to defy coronavirus regulations then pole up to a hospital, especially one giving COVID-19 vaccinations:
I’m really glad this has come to light:
Agree. I don’t understand why people give these hypocrites any credibility.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The results for the 2020 US presidential election have never been so confusing.
In 2000, when Al Gore ran against George W Bush, life was so much simpler: Florida was the only state where the results were in dispute. Those were the days of the hanging chads.
On Tuesday evening (US time), November 10, I checked election maps in the Telegraph and at Real Clear Politics. The Telegraph had Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes, going to Biden. Real Clear Politics, based in the US, had the state undeclared.
At the time I checked both maps, People’s Pundit Daily tweeted:
Neither map had this result posted.
Additionally, I could not find where North Carolina’s State Board of Elections called the result.
Even so, Thom Tillis’s opponent conceded that day:
There are two more maps I looked at that night (as it was in my time zone) — People’s Pundit Daily‘s and the one at Power Elections:
Note that, on the night of November 10, the Power Elections map was showing Wisconsin and Minnesota still undecided — along with Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, People’s Pundit Daily showed only Arizona and Georgia still in play.
As far as electoral votes go, Power Elections had Biden up by one. People’s Pundit Daily had Biden up by 50 (279-229).
I’m not blaming any of these outlets for confusing the issue, but, until this year, maps were pretty well unified after the election.
Rudy Giuliani, incidentally, seemed satisfied that Real Clear Politics changed their result for Pennsylvania (note Twitter’s response):
Just as bad is this — the coronavirus crisis:
So, what happens when an election result is in dispute across the nation?
A. S. Haley, better known online as Anglican Curmudgeon, explained what the constitutional course of action is in his November 8 post, ‘Down to the Brass Tacks’.
My fellow churchman wrote an excellent article. A big tip of the hat goes to another fellow churchman, Underground Pewster, for the link.
Excerpts follow. Emphases mine, except where noted otherwise.
First of all, for my readers who are not American, please note (emphases in purple mine):
… the rush to “call” a winner of the 2020 election has been driven by the major news networks, who are unanimously biased against President Trump. But the media have no power under the Constitution to declare anyone as “President-Elect”. That title may be bestowed only upon the winner in the Electoral College vote of December 18, or if not there, then upon the candidate selected by the new House of Representatives that convenes on January 3, 2021.
The Electoral College will meet on December 14 and the results will be available on December 18.
The US Constitution and pursuant Congressional statutes make the following provisions:
By Congressional statute (3 U.S.C. § 7), enacted pursuant to Article II, Sec. 1, cl. 5 of the Constitution, the Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a given Presidential election year has been specified as the date on which all State electors are to meet in their respective State capitals and cast their ballots for both President and Vice President. In 2020, that date falls on December 14.
Normally, the electors for any given State are those persons who (first) have been nominated beforehand by a registered political party or independent candidate within that State (or Congressional district), and then (second) who have the fortune to have their Presidential candidate receive the highest number of votes cast in that State (or district) in the November election. But when is it determined that a given Presidential candidate has received the requisite highest number of votes?
Ay, there’s the rub. Again normally, the vote tallies in the various counties and districts of the State are completed within a day or two of Election Day, and are clear enough so that there can be no dispute about which candidate got the most votes. But occasionally, as happened in the Presidential election of 1876, and as almost happened in the Presidential election of 2000, there were disputes about which candidate prevailed in various States, so that the slate of electors entitled to cast votes for their respective candidate was rendered uncertain. The Constitution specifies that in such cases, as well as in any case where no candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College votes, the final selection of the President goes to the newly elected US House of Representatives, and the selection of the Vice President goes to the newly elected Senate.
That last sentence is very interesting. If Nancy Pelosi remains Speaker of the House presiding over a Democrat majority, Biden would be president. Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, and the Republican majority could select a Republican VP. Talk about fireworks.
A S Haley compares and contrasts 2020 with 2000:
As regards the election results in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, we are witnessing a repeat of what happened in Florida in 2000. You may recall that the then Democratic Party candidate Al Gore contested the official count in certain counties of that State in favor of the Republican Party’s George W. Bush. Gore, however, was under a deadline to have the recounts he requested resolved in his favor before the Florida Secretary of State certified the official count to the Governor, who would then sign the certificates attesting selection of the Republican slate of electors to the Electoral College.
Again, Congress has legislated what happens when there is a dispute in any given State over its proper slate of electors. Section 5 of Title 3, U. S. Code, provides that if election results are contested in any state, and if the state, prior to election day, has enacted “procedures to settle controversies or contests over electors and electoral votes”, and if these procedures have been applied, and the results have been determined six days before the electors’ meetings, then these results are considered to be conclusive. Six days before the prescribed meeting of the Electoral College on December 14 of this year falls on December 8. (The date is referred to as “Safe Harbor Day”, because the statute makes any resolution of election disputes reached by that date presumptively conclusive, i.e., not subject to further contest.)
Therefore, the contested results need to be ‘resolved’ by December 8. However, even then, there is a provision when they are not:
Here again, however, the federal nature of our Union kicks in. For while it probably will not be practical to have all contests in all disputed States determined in the courts by December 8, it may suffice for one such dispute to have been finally determined at the highest possible level by that date, if that determination is definitively made by the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS), and if it fairly applies in the other cases, as well. That is because, under our federal system, the rulings of SCOTUS on federal law are automatically binding on all lower courts, both federal and State.
I learned this years ago in US History class, at least twice, but never imagined that this fateful day might come to pass in my lifetime. It seemed so hypothetical decades ago. Today, in November 2020, we could be at that point.
The biggest issue revolves around Pennsylvania (20 Electoral College votes) during a year of coronavirus. Pennsylvania encouraged voters to use postal votes instead of appearing in person to vote this year. The Republican Party of Pennsylvania has brought a case against the secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar:
… which challenges the decision by a unanimous Pennsylvania Supreme Court to (1) extend the statutory deadline for receipt of all mail-in and personal ballots by three days after the legislated deadline of 8 p.m. on November 3; and (2) require the various election boards to include in their counts any ballots received by the extended deadline which could not definitively be shown to have been mailed after November 3 (i.e., ballots in envelopes bearing blurred postmarks, or even no postmarks at all). This ruling, be it noted, shifted the burden of proof from the individual voter to the given elections board to establish that a ballot was not sent in by the statutory deadline — and why would a Democratic-majority elections board try to prove that a ballot for their candidate had not been sent in on time?
Supreme Court Justice Alito issued an order requiring that the Pennsylvania ballots arriving after Election Day be segregated apart from those that arrived on time:
pending action on the petition for review by the full court.
Haley says that the Supreme Court could issue further orders in the days to come.
Can the Supreme Court help Trump? Haley says that things could become quite technical legally. The result could go either way:
Here is one very strong summary of the issues for the Republican petitioners, and here is another informed view that calls into question whether SCOTUS will grant any definitive relief. In the words of my previous post, “you pays your money and you takes your choice.”
As for the Electoral College, this is how electors are chosen:
Here is the language of Article II, Section 1, clause 2, which has been with us since the original document was ratified in 1789 (with my bold emphasis added):
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Thus if the various State and federal courts prove inadequate to the task of resolving the election disputes in each contested State before the Safe Harbor day of December 8, the Legislatures of those States are empowered to step in and resolve the disputes by designating their own slates of electors. And it has not gone unnoticed that of the disputed States (Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada), all but Georgia have Democratic governors, as well as Democratic Secretaries of State, and Democratic election officials, while they each (except for Nevada) have legislatures in which both houses have Republican majorities.
However, will the states have the nerve to:
exercise their Constitutional power to resolve those disputes definitively, in time for the final vote of electors by December 14? On the answer to that question depends who will be President on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.
Haley rightly blames this year’s election chaos on the Democrats for their notional coronavirus concern with mail-in ballots.
If the lawsuits against individual states and the Supreme Court come to nothing in resolving the election result, then Americans have only the House of Representatives — congressmen and women — left.
There is a chance that Republicans could still control the House of Representatives:
If the vote does go to the new House of Representatives:
the vote for President will not be by a majority of its individual members, but (again as specified in the Twelfth Amendment) by the collective delegations for each State in the House, with each delegation having a single vote. As of the latest results for the 435 House elections, Republicans on January 3 will control 26 of the State delegations, and will thus have a majority of the 50 delegations so voting.
In conclusion:
what happens between now and January 20, 2021 is pretty much up to the Republican legislators elected to Congress and to their various State legislatures.
Let us hope for the best.
