I was discussing the possibility of anti-gravity technology with Trev, one of the great commenters to this blog, in the comments below a previous post about space technology. I understand that the vast majority of physicists believe it’s impossible, but that hasn’t prevented rumours circulating that it really exists.
In this video, Professor Simon Holland talks about the possible use of electro-gravitic technology in the B2 Stealth Plane. The aircraft apparently uses the Byfield-Brown effect to give itself lift. The effect was first discovered in the 1920 by Thomas Townsett Byfield, who was experimenting with X-rays. He found that a very high electric charge sent across an object reduced its weight. In the B2 a very high electric charge also runs across the leading edge of its wings, according to material released in 2003. This ionises the air around the plane, which becomes very hot and generates extra lift. Prof Simon shows footage of a Russian experiment which purports to show it working in a test model. But the American Army Research Laboratory tested the effect, and found that it was at least 3 times too weak to work. But other researchers claim that it does, and electricity is somehow related to gravity.
Some of the supposed information about the plane comes from Minutiae, which from the picture in the video appears to be a New Age magazine or blog. It’s claims about the technology may therefore be highly questionable.
However, experiments last year or so with a model plane showed that ionised air can be used to give aircraft extra lift and to fly further. That experiment stated that this was a technology that could be used in the future, indicating that it wasn’t being used on existing craft. This video suggests otherwise, at least in the case of the Stealth plane.
The Americans do have a secret space programme using the X-37B spaceplane. I very much doubt it involves anything as exotic as contact with extraterrestrials or uses back engineered alien technology. However, while the Americans have admitted the existence of the craft, they won’t reveal just what it’s doing up in the Deep Black. Yesterday, 30th October 2019, the I reported that the plane had returned to Earth after a record-breaking mission. The article by Marcia Dunn, ‘Secret space plane finishes 780-day mission’, ran
The US Air Force’s mystery space plane is back on Earth, following a record-breaking two-year mission.
The X-37B landed at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early on Sunday. The craft looks like a space shuttle – but is a quarter of the size, at just 29ft (8.8m) long.
The US Air Force is quiet about what the plane did after launching aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2017. The 780-day mission sets a new record for the reusable test vehicle.
Tight-lipped officials will say only that the mission successfully completed its objectives and that experiments from the Air Force Research Laboratory were aboard. It was the fifth spaceflight by a vehicle of this kind.
Barbara Barrett, the US Air Force Secretary, said: “Each mission advances our nation’s space capabilities.
Although the exact nature of X-37B missions are classified, air force officials have dropped hints about the type of experiments.
One was the launch of an advanced structurally embedded thermal spreader, an experiment designed to “test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies”, according to an air force statement.
The plane flew to a higher orbit than previous X-37B flights, suggesting it had new experiments or technology tests. Air force officials said it carried multiple experiments and smaller satellites into orbit.
My guess is that some of those are almost certainly spy satellites.
A few years ago the X-37B docked at the International Space Station, but the US wouldn’t say what it was doing up there either.
Well, an election has been set for December 12th, and the papers have been full of stories claiming that Labour is 15 points behind the Tories in the polls. This is quite a reversal from last Friday, 25th October 2019, when that day’s I carried an article by Jane Merrick, ‘New opinion poll shows narrow lead for labour’. This ran
A surprise poll put Labour narrowly ahead of the Conservatives last night, suggesting the possible Christmas election could be as close as 2017.
The ComRes survey has Labour on 27 per cent, on epoint ahead of the Tories on 26 per cent. The Brexit party is on 20 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 18 per cent.
Recent polls have given Boris Johnson’s party a comfortable lead of as much as 15 points ahead of Labour.
However, the new ComRes poll was not based on a straight question of voting intention but was dependent on whether “the deadline for the UK to leave the EU has been extended beyond 31 October 2019”.
The survey was taken on 16 and 17 October, just as the Prime Minister had reached his Brexit deal with Brussels but before the publication of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
The poll suggests Mr Johnson’s latest plan, to call an election and extend Brexit beyond 31 October to allow the Bill to pass through Parliament on 6 November could benefit Labour.
Well, it’s now the 31st, and the Brexit deadline has definitely been extended.
Polls, of course, are notoriously untrustworthy. The polls for the last few elections all claimed to show that Labour would be wiped out. But as many of the polling companies are run by Tories, it isn’t remotely surprising they show Labour behind them. In reality, the party actually made some gains. Much also depends on the implementation of the laws on media impartiality. These come into force at election time for broadcasters, so that the Beeb is prevented from lying quite so flagrantly about Labour and Corbyn. As a result, Labour actually rises in the polls to the point where it overtakes the Tories. My guess is that the same process will begin to kick in the closer we get to an election.
And as for the standing in the polls of the two party leaders, the last time I looked BoJob had a massive -44, by far the worse polling of any party leader.
Mike covered this story a few days ago, but it’s another one that bears repeating: the Tories want to privatise the NHS and sell it off to American corporations.
This was revealed on Monday night’s Dispatches programme on Channel 4, broadcast at 8 pm. The description of the programme in that day’s I ran
Earlier this year, Donald Trump sparked a row when he said that the NHS would be “on the table” in any future trade talks between the UK and America – swiftly performing a U-turn over his comments. Now Antony Barnett shows that US drug giants are busy lobbying trade negotiators in Washington and London to make the health service pay more for their medicines and to ban cheaper alternatives.
This should come as no surprise. The Tories voted against Labour’s bill setting up the NHS, even after claiming that they welcomed it. A few years later under Harold Macmillan, the Tory Right tried to privatise it on the grounds that we could not afford it. And Thatcher wanted to privatise it, but was prevented by a cabinet revolt. Since then there has been an encroaching privatisation of the NHS by both the Tories and New Labour. It’s described in Ray Tallis’ book, NHS – SOS, and I’ve self-published a book on Lulu and a small desktop pamphlet discussing this. There have also been a series of short videos presented by Stephen Fry on YouTube against the Tory attempts to sell out our NHS to the Americans. In one of them, the former presenter of QI tells you that under the American private healthcare system, simply being taken to hospital in an ambulance can cost you £200. The Tories have been lying for years that the NHS is safe with them, but the truth is that they have consistently run it down, closing hospitals and A&E departments, all while claiming that they are doing no such thing. Or are actually going to reverse this policy. Remember when Dave Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith were running around protesting against Blair’s hospital closures when they were in opposition? Soon as Cameron got his foot in the front door of No. 10, that policy was reversed and they went on closing hospitals and outsourcing services to private healthcare companies.
You cannot trust the Tories with the NHS – not now, not ever. If you want to continue having a National Health Service that provides everyone in Britain with healthcare, free at the point of service, you have to vote for Corbyn and Labour.
If you vote for the Tories, you are voting for a private system, which will profit the big healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, but will be unaffordable to a large part of the British people. Can you afford private health insurance?
The I carried this article by David Connett, ‘Brexit ‘jeopardises workers’ rights’, says leaked paper, in its edition for last Monday, 28th October 2019. The article reads
The Government has denied that it is seeking to throw out existing workers’ rights and abandon environment protection after Brexit.
Kwasi Kwarteng, a business minister, dismissed reports that employees’ rights would be slashed after Brexit as ‘way exaggerated’.
It followed a leak of documents handed to government ministers saying that Boris Johnson was willing to consider diverging from EU standards on the environment and workers’ rights despite statements he has made in Parliament to the contrary. The Prime Minister told MPs last week that the UK was committed to “the highest possible standards” on both issues – a stance which helped to secure votes from 19 Labour MPs to support his Brexit bill.
Mr Kwarteng dismissed the report, saying it was completely inaccurate. “I think this is completely mad, actually,” he told the BBC. “You’ve said how we built a coalition – 19 Labour MPs have come with us and voted for a second reading [of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill]. It wouldn’t make any sense at all to dilute workers’ rights in building that coalition to land the Bill. We have said we will be better than our word. We have said our ambition on securing workers’ rights will be stronger than the provision of the Bill.”
According to the report, the leaked document said the way the political declaration – the agreement setting out the aims of the future trade negotiations between the UK and the EU – had drafted workers’ rights and environmental protection commitments left “room for interpretation”.
It reportedly boasts “UK negotiators successfully resisted the inclusion of all UK-wide level playing field rules” in the previous deal agreed by Mrs May’s team, allowing the UK to compete against the EU by possibly watering down rights.
The document, seen by the Financial Times, will fuel Labour’s concerns that workers’ rights and environment rights would be tampered with if the Tories were in power after Brexit.
Jenny Chapman, shadow Brexit minister, said: “These documents confirm our worst fears. Boris Johnson’s Brexit is a blueprint for a deregulated economy, which will see vital rights and protections torn up.
“It is also clear Boris Johnson was misleading Parliament earlier this week. You simply can’t trust a word Boris Johnson says. The Brexit Department initially declined to comment on the leak but later said: “The UK Government has no intention of lowering the standards of workers’ rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU.”
I’m sure that this has already been covered by the many other excellent left-wing blogs, including Mike’s and Another Angry Voice, but this bears repeating. Of course the Tories are going to cut workers’ rights and environmental protection. Their hatred of workers’ rights is one of the fundamental reasons why the Tory right has wanted to leave the EU since the days of Thatcher. I can remember one of them appearing on Wogan back in the 1990s, who explicitly said so. He liked the single market, but hated the Social Charter. That’s the section of EU law providing for workers’ rights and other standards regarding social conditions. They also loathe the green movement with a passion. Remember how Dave Cameron boasted that his would be the Greenest government ever, and put a windmill on the roof of his house to indicate his commitment to it. And then when he won the election, he went back on his word – surprise, surprise! – supported fracking, and that windmill was off his roof. And BoJob is a worse liar than he was.
As for the 19 Labour MPs, who supported him, they were either gullible, as one blog suggested, or active collaborators. The Blairites, it should be remembered, are also fellow worshippers of the cult of Thatcher.
Kwasi Kwarteng and the rest of his revolting party cannot be trusted on this for a minute. It might be Halloween, but to them it’s always April Fools Day, and they see us as the fools. Vote for Corbyn and get them out of office.
It’s October 31st, Halloween, the day when it was traditionally believed that the dead returned to Earth, and people dressed up as witches, wizards, ghosts and ghouls and went to parties. It was believed that the festival was based on the pagan Irish feast of Samhain. Research by folklorists suggest that it did start in Ireland, but the historian Ron Hutton published a piece in the folklore/ Earth Mysteries magazine Third Stone back in the 1990s disputing the idea that it was based on any pagan Celtic festival.
I had a book of ‘spooky verse’ as a child, which contained all manner of poems about ghosts and witches and so on, some funny, some tragic and some genuinely creepy. One of these was
Hey, ho, for Halloween,
And the witches to be seen.
Some black and some green.
Hey ho for Halloween.
Which is great when your a child, but hardly Ted Hughes.
However, I hope whatever you’re doing tonight, you’ll have a great evening, and best wishes to all. And just rejoice – Boris hasn’t got his way, and we haven’t left Europe!
Mike’s also covered this hilarious story over at Vox Political. According to Monday’s I, for 28th October 2019, children are planning to celebrate Halloween by dressing up as our appalling, catastrophic Prime Minister. The article on page 2, ‘PM is ‘ghastliest figure of the 21st century”, ran
Children are planning to dress up as Boris Johnson for Halloween. The Prime Minister is the 10th most topical option on a list topped by Pennywise, the clown form IT Chapter 2. In a poll for the Beano, Mr Johnson was named the ghastliest figure of the 21st century by two-thirds of families.
A photograph on pages 6 and 7 showed a young lad in his costume, with a pumpkin jack o’lantern. Apparently the comic has called the PM ‘Boo-ris Johnson’. Well, he definitely deserves booing.
I found this Quaker declaration of the freedom of religion in Documents of the Christian Church, selected and edited by Henry Bettenson, 2nd edition (Oxford: OUP 1963). It’s taken from The Chief Principles of the Christian Religion, as professed by the people called the Quakers, drawn up by Robert Barclay in 1678, and published in his Apology for the Quakers. Proposition XIV, Concerning the Power of the Civil Magistrate in Matters purely Religious and Pertaining to Conscience, runs
‘Since God hath assumed to himself the power and dominion of the conscience, who alone can rightly instruct and govern it, therefore it is not lawful for any whatsoever, by virtue of any authority or principality they bear in the government of this world, to force the conscience of others;… provided always, that no man, under the pretence of conscience, prejudice his neighbour in his life or estate; or do anything destructive to, or inconsistent with, human society; in which case the law is for the transgressor, and justice to be administered upon all, without respect of persons.’
(p. 256).
It’s almost incredible to think that this was written in the 17th century, and that nearly 3 1/2 centuries later there are still countries in this world that don’t recognise it. Countries like Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China and Russia. In Saudi Arabia only Wahhabi Islam is permitted, and Shi’a Muslims viciously persecuted. A few years ago they also passed a law declaring that atheism was terrorism even without any violence or threats of violence being made. Russia is far more tolerant of religion than it was under Communism, when it was a persecuting atheist state. But even now, some religions are declared to be illegal. This includes not only extremist sects and beliefs, like Islamism, but also the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I admit they can be a pain when they come knocking on your door sometimes in their zeal to spread their version of Christianity, but a dangerous, radical extremist group? When, and to whom? The Nazis also persecuted them, because they wouldn’t accept Hitler as a secular Messiah.
It’s a disgrace that in the 21st century, freedom of religion and conscience still needs defending from persecutors across the world.
The I newspaper last week also carried a report by Will Hazell, ‘Free schools ‘are failing to reach white working-class communities’ in their edition for 17th October 2019, stating that few free schools were being built to serve white working class children according to a report by the Education Policy Institute. The article ran
The Government’s free schools programme has failed to help white working-class communities where education outcomes are the lowest, according to research.
The analysis by the Education Policy Institute found that the performance of free schools was “mixed”, with the strong results of some schools partly driven by the fact they take pupils from neighbourhoods which generally achieve good results anyway.
Free schools are directly funded by central government and operate outside local authority control. Michael Gove introduced them in 2010. However, the EPI’s report says free schools have failed to reach the worst-performing parts of the country.
The EPI found that secondary free schools have created just five new school places per 1,000 in the lowest-performing parts of England, compared with 18 places per 1,000 in the highest-performing areas.
When free schools are serving economically disadvantaged pupils, the EPI said these tend to be students in urban areas and from ethnic minority backgrounds who typically perform highly anyway.
David Laws, executive chairman of the EPI, said: “If additional money is to be allocated to this programme, it needs to have more impact on the truly left behind educational areas.”
The schools minister, Lord Agnew, said, “We opened applications for more new free schools earlier this year targeting areas with low educational standards.”
There was also a brief snippet at the end of this article reporting that the Queen’s Speech confirmed that 220 new free schools are to be opened over the coming years.
I am not surprised that the free schools aren’t serving white working class children. They were never meant to. Like the academies, they were set up as a part-way house to privatisation. They are meant to take schools out of the hands of the Local Education Authorities, who are left serving the less able and more disruptive pupils that these schools don’t want to take. The academies have been shown discriminating against and disproportionately excluding such pupils because they bring down their results in the league tables. It’s also been shown that the results from academies are no better than those of state schools, if they had the same amount spent on them. There have been instances where they government has poured tens of millions into the budgets of academies many times more than that allocated to the LEA.
From the way the article is phrased, it’s assumed that if free schools were expanded into white working class areas, the educational performance of those areas children would improve. But what is needed isn’t the extension of free schools, more academies or a return of the grammar schools. It is the proper funding LEA-run state schools.
Anything else is contributing to the further privatisation of British schools and the creation of a two-tier educational system.
Well, Halloween is upon us. This is the time of year, according to folklore, when the dead once again return to Earth, and witches and wizards pore over their cauldrons and spell books casting their magic. For most people, it’s simply an opportunity for a party, where people go dressed as witches, ghouls, demons, vampires and so on. Or else they watch a horror film at the flicks or on DVD. Or go and catch The Rocky Horror Show at the theatre, if it’s playing. Many Christians dislike it, as they are afraid it encourages a real interest in the occult with all its dangers. Some churches put on Light Parties instead. I remember as a child going to Halloween parties, where the only magicians were definitely of the stage variety, and everything was at the suitable level of the traditional folktale and children’s fantasy book. This was long before the occult scares and witch panics of the 1980s and ’90s, and the hysteria over ‘Harry Potter’.
Nevertheless some people do try dabbling with the supernatural. Some of it’s just kids legend tripping. This is the term folklorists use to describe teenagers and young people going to reputedly weird or haunted sites hoping to see something paranormal. Or just wanting to take it as an occasion to have an evening out with booze and their girlfriends. This can have unintended sinister consequences, when the wider community takes the evidence of what they’ve been doing too seriously, and concludes that real, Satanic witchcraft has been going on. This can generate rumours and accusations of child abuse and the torture and sacrifice of animals. When this happens, a full-scale witch hunt erupts with the fear and hatred of its medieval and 17th century predecessors. People can be falsely accused and children separated from their parents and taken into care based on nothing but highly dubious testimony and the righteous beliefs of the witch hunters. The witch panic effectively ended over here with the Fontaine Report in the 1990s that concluded that the multi-generational Satanic groups abusing children haunting the lurid imaginations of the witch hunters didn’t exist. But the people, who pushed the Satanism scare are still about, trying to peddle their views to anyone who will listen, and there’s a real threat it could return.
It’s with this in mind that I came across a video on his channel on YouTube by Mark Meechan, the notorious Count Dankula. He’s the bozo, you remember, who thought it would be jolly japes to train his girlfriend’s pug to make the Nazi salute when he shouted ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘Gas the Jews’. He was therefore prosecuted and convicted of spreading anti-Semitic hate speech. Dankula’s posted a number of videos of himself trying to defend it as a stupid joke, which should have been allowed under freedom of speech. He was also one of the crew of extreme right-wing internet personalities, including Paul Joseph Watson and Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, who joined UKIP. This resulted in some of the more liberal members leaving it and the party achieving a mighty 3.3% of the vote at the council elections.
The video I found dated from three years ago, 2016. It was of Dankula’s mates in a forest with a pentagram they had made on the ground out of tree branches. They’d also had some kind of fire, and were scattering the ashes around in order to make their pentagram look even more impressive. One of them also put a candle at one of the figure’s corners. They then phoned up a Black British pastor on a mobile and started swearing at him and trying to trick him with a bogus story about Satanists and human sacrifice.
The pastor was live streaming a Bible study of the Book of Jonah. Dankula’s mates first shouted ‘F**k!’ at him. One of them then put on a fake African accent and pretended to be a man waiting in the forest for Satanists to sacrifice him. The friend then said that there were no Satanists there, and he didn’t think they were going to turn up. But he personally had fought Satan last year on holiday in Spain, when the Devil had taken the form of a lizard. He’d killed the lizard, and roasted it in the ocean. This was accompanied by more swearing and puerile sniggering.
I’m not showing the video here or giving its address because I don’t want to give Dankula the publicity and the views. But it is out there. If you want to see, all you have to do use the search bar on YouTube.
Now Dankula claims not to be racist, and has said that he has Black friends. He may well be right. I also believe that there has been problems with some of the Pentecostal churches, which do promote the belief that witches and a Satanic conspiracy to undermine Christianity and decent society are all too real. It’s perfectly reasonable to criticise the preachers, White or Black, and secular individuals that promote this dangerous nonsense. But there was absolutely none of this here. The video gives no explanation for what they’re doing. It just shows a group of White yobs make a nuisance internet call to a Black pastor and telling a stupid, bogus story about Satanic sacrifice. It just seems to be a case of secular White kids sneering and mocking religious Blacks for their perceived credulity.
This undermines somewhat Dankula’s claim not to be racist. But it’s also an example of some of the pranks others might be making at this time of year. They also might be hoaxing evidence of occult rituals and Satanic practices, simply as a way of winding people up. Be warned, and don’t be taken in.
But whatever your beliefs or lack of them, I hope you have a great time this week. The most horrific thing I can think of is Boris Johnson and Brexit. Don’t have nightmares!
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 