In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Another area of the UK's decline that I've begun to look at is immigration. This so-called "bitesize" piece from the BBC probably puts the best possible take on it: After World War Two, a mass immigration of people coming to work in Britain began. Many of the early arrivals were from the West Indies, South Asia and Cyprus. The most famous arrival was of people from the Caribbean, mainly Jamaica and Trinidad, on the ship Empire Windrush in 1948. This is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the first arrival of black people in Britain. - UK had a severe labour shortage after World War Two, especially in the transport network and the newly created National Health Service - large areas of the main cities had been destroyed by aerial bombing and a programme of rebuilding began, needing workers - for the above reasons, British governments actively invited people from the Commonwealth to come and work - the economy of the Caribbean islands,...

Yesterday I resumed my occasional ruminations on bad ideas that originated in the UK, in this case, Fabian socialism. This morning I ran into a piece on another bad idea from the UK that's had far less traction, the Archbishop of Canterbury: The posh plot to stick Mullally in Canterbury . As best I can tell, it breaks down the controversy in class terms, which is an almost exclusively intra-UK issue, when the occupant of the Canterbury see is at least politely said still to be the leader of world Anglicanism. But here's the issue as outlined in the piece: The BBC presented Sarah Mullally as a ground-breaker in its coverage of her installation as Archbishop of Canterbury. But the real ground-breaker in the Church of England was George Carey, the archbishop that Margaret Thatcher chose in 1990. This is because Carey was non-U. Carey was the first Archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation not to have been educated at Oxbridge. Born as the son of ...

I remember a discussion question from somewhere at least 50 years ago that went something like this: "Which of the two British dystopian novels, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, seems most prescient of current conditions to you? Explain." I thought this was a good question at the time, but I never could come up with a definite answer, and as I revisit the question today, I'm actually more convinced that the answer is "neither". Let's look at Brave New World. According to Wikipedia , Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Nineteen Eighty-Four , on the other han...

Via the UK Guardian : Donald Trump has dismissed British warships as “toys” in his latest jibe at Nato countries for their lack of involvement in the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Speaking at the White House on Thursday, he claimed he had told the UK: “Don’t bother, we don’t need it.” Trump has previously alleged that he requested two aircraft carriers from the UK that Keir Starmer had initially rejected and then offered to send. No 10 has denied that a request was made or denied. However, The United Kingdom will lead a multinational coalition to re-open and then maintain the Strait of Hormuz “as soon as the conditions are right” — likely meaning not while a war is still going on — it is claimed. The Times cites unnamed British defence officials who say meetings between partner nations have already taken place, and more are planned. . . Why is it that responses to Trump's criticisms from both the UK and NATO always involve meetings? This discussion needs ...

The reason he's working is because he has a lot of incentive. He crashed and burned his career in 2017, when multiple women filed sexual harassmnet and misconduct complaints against him from his time as political director of ABC News, at which point his then-employers NBC News ahd Showtime fired him. He began a serious attempt at rehabilitation in 2019 but faced major headwinds, and he made little progress until last year, when he began work for Megyn Kelly and MK Media, hosting the 2WAY news platform. I've followed him on 2WAY, and I get the impression that what he's trying to offer is someone who has good inside sources, who asks those sources good questons, and does good analysis of what he learns. What he's betting is that since this is something nobody else is providing, he can rebuild his career with it. Lately, he's been unique in covering the putative upcoming "negotiations" over the Iran war. One question that's come up for me over the p...

BREAKING: Immunity for two key figures in the Iranian leadership: Iran regime's FM and Parliament Speaker get temporary immunity from the US and Israel, Channel 14's @bardugojacob reports. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf received… pic.twitter.com/EHLIlEfrxY — C14 News Israel | EN (@c14israel) March 24, 2026 As I noted yesterday, it's a near-impossible task to try to put together even the vaguest and most superficial account of what's happening in the Iran negotiations, I think in large part because legacy media is leveraging the laziness and complacency of its staff to work in its favor. The best information I've found over the past day simply hasn't been from US sources, for instance, the X post above from an Israeli TV station. I take "temporary immunity from Israel and the United States" to mean a promise not to blow them up with missiles for the duration. This Fox News story does provide some ...

I've developed a theory that from the first of the year to Presidents' Day, the media, legacy and alt, simply continues the break it's been on since maybe Columbus Day. Then it's several weeks of desultory effort until a break for Mardis Gras, followed by more desultory effort until a few weeks before Easter and spring break, then desultory effort until Memorial Day, at which time everything more or less shuts down for summer, after which there's desultory effort between Labor Day and Columbus Day, when the goof-off cycle restarts. Let's look at the current news of the Iran war. Trump says he's having productive negotiations with Iran , right? President Donald Trump announced Monday he is postponing planned U.S. military strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days after what he described as "very good and productive" talks with Tehran. But what, exactly, is going on? President Trump said Monday he has not been in con...