Imagine the fear and the adrenaline rush  for those young men in 1944  as the landing craft beached and opened them to German fire for the first time. There  were many who had to brave the privations and dangers of the soldiers life as the largest amphibious landing was underway against Germanyâs brutal fortress Europe. We owe them all so much, that for 79 years now many European peoples have been able to live in democracies freed from Nazi tyranny and mass murder.
The US and U.K. had to bring together a huge army, massive supplies, and a large seaborne force to ferry  them. The airforces had to control the skies, drop troops behind enemy  lines and bomb enemy defences. There were innovations including floating harbours, a pipeline under the ocean, adaptations of fighting vehicles to tackle mine strewn beaches. There  was superior Intelligence and carefully placed disinformation to allow some surprise.
It should serve as a reminder that we need to keep strong defences and use diplomacy backed by lethal force to deter and prevent evil triumphing again in the way it did in 1940 s Europe. It is a worry that war stalks Europe again in Ukraine, with continuing tensions in countries near Russiaâs borders and in the Balkans. The foundations of NATO emerged from the Allied victory in 1945. With the emergence of a modern Italy and Germany pledged to democracy and Western values they too came to join the Alliance.
NATO was tested by the Cold War against the USSR. The Alliance allowed Russia to dominate countries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland that wished to revolt against Soviet rule, whilst preventing and deterring any further expansion of the USSR westwards. The tensions over Russian  missiles going to Cuba with US  missiles inTurkey brought war close, narrowly avoided by diplomatic exchanges.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Gorbachev reforms gave us the opportunity of a new and improved relationship between a Russia shedding reluctant USSR member states and a NATO with no territorial claims of its own. Unfortunately in recent years the opportunity has slipped away, with a mutual suspicion bringing back a new kind of Cold War. Mr Putinâs wish to recreate a wider Russian zone of influence has spread to invasion creating challenges for NATO.
1944 can remind us that the resolve  of the democracies, slow to rouse, can bring victory over tyrannies. It should make both sides to the current tensions and both combatants in the Ukraine war want to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.
June 6, 2024
It is NATO that has dramatically expanded – it has become an attack force. The fact that the French – which did not fight as an allied force, should refuse to invite Russia, which list 27 million people in the Second World War, is a disgrace but then the whole history of France is a disgrace.
Time we held our own commemoration of D-Day at the ports from which The Greatest Generation set out and were shot at and killed in French beaches.
June 6, 2024
Not sure I would go quite that far on French History, but then history is not my strength did not even take it at O level.
David Starkey does like to say: âAll bad ideas are Frenchâ.
I did however enjoy the book:- That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France
Book by Isabelle Tombs and Robert Tombs
June 6, 2024
After the war the French executed La Valle, their wartime PM BECAUSE HE WAS A COLLABORATOR. The whole French State collaborated with Nazi Germany – famously!
Now you will tell me about the underground, well of course I bow the knee to them. But there were MILLIONS of âpartisansâ in Ireland who ignored their Government and made their way to England and signed up to fight the Nazis. Ireland is never thought of as an âAllyâ in spite of that. Why should France be different?
D-Day was a terrible day. A Terrible risk, terrible culmination of so much courage and horror.
Thank God it paid off. Thank God they thought they had won.
A man who was a paratrooper and a valiant fighter for Brexit died recently. I told him that few have fought two great wars for the soul of Britain, and won both.
June 6, 2024
Is it just World War II we should be thinking about? We should remember all wars to prevent future occurrence. We shamefully had Iraq and Libya to stain our nationâs reputation along with Afghanistan. Those brave soldiers were equally scared, injured and died, but for what? Blaire and Cameronâs vanity? UK ran off from Afghanistan after decades of telling us how necessary it was to fight the Taliban. The Taliban were in charge within a month of leaving!!
Why are our troops in Ukraine, why is our taxes being wasted on Ukraine. Regime change of Putin was a bad idea. Stop the war now there has been enough suffering. UK has bigger grievances with China over breaching Hong Kong treaty, Covid, spying, stealing ideas etc. Same for Iran. Somehow this is all overlooked while portraying Russia the baddie. Yet our PMs happy to Russian coal, gas and oil. So the UK taxpayer funds both sides of the war!! Great plan Sunak!
Johnson told us to stop Russia bashing until his position as PM became weak, then overnight he did a 180 degree U-turn! I am not convinced World War II should have happened, to go to war because Poland was invaded to give it away to another dictator at the end of the war together with a large chunk other European countries. The lives, injuries, suffering, finance, devastation was not worth the sorrow, pain and anguish the ordinary people suffered at the hands of rotten politicians.
June 6, 2024
Yes, Russia was our ally and lost tens of millions in the war. But it didn’t participate in D-Day, and that was the point of the Commemoration yesterday.
June 6, 2024
Russia could not attack from the west, it is located in the east, but made the whole idea of D-Day landings possible because of the number of enemy troops it diverted to that front.
Prince William spoke in French of the heroic Canadians – does he not know that Dominion Canadian troops spoke and overwhelmingly were English? Itâs like speaking to the American troops in Cherokee.
June 6, 2024
Yes, there’s a lot of posturing and pandering going on …. but I still think my point is valid. Russia didn’t participate in D-Day. If we were commemorating the end of WW2 (or even Victory in Europe) then absolutely, Russia should be invited.
June 7, 2024
France did not participate in the D-Day Landings!
June 6, 2024
@LA; “Prince William spoke in French”
And to think some think am contrarian!
June 7, 2024
The troops you refer to were 80 years ago.
June 6, 2024
@Donna; “But [the USSR] didnât participate in D-Day”
True, there was no direct involvement in Operation Overlord but surely it depends on how much (neutral [1]) military historians consider the effects of having so much of the Nazi war machine bogged down defending the eastern front played, as a result of the Soviet DnieperâCarpathian offensive, during the first four or five months of 1944, involving the transfer an entire Panzer Corps and other units from France to the eastern front; by the time they, and other Divisions, returned to France, not long before D-day, they were weakened, non operational, and due for repair.
[1] post war both the western allied forces, Germany and Soviet history either ignored or purged mention of DnieperâCarpathian offensive, thus its place in history is often overlooked
June 6, 2024
The French were not present on D-Day.
June 7, 2024
@Lynn Atkinson; Just what is your problem with anything French!
Go read what the French resistance did, such as blowing up railway lines, telegraph poles etc, to hinder the moments of German reinforcements, the night before, on the morning and the hours and days after, whilst the ‘Free French’ did land on D-day. Then of course there were the French civilians who tended to the allied wounded and dead.
June 7, 2024
Yes they were – infantry, navy (operation Neptune) Free-French Air Force and SAS units.
June 6, 2024
What a strange attack on France, singled out for narrow, exclusive criticism, but then you do continue with a series of unjustified accusations.
June 6, 2024
The only country that surrendered and DID NOT FIGHT wrongly included in the Allied forces. Thatâs why France is different. I did not single them out.
June 6, 2024
NATO isn’t an attack force, it’s there for defence. It has expanded because of tyrannical developments in Russia and elsewhere. The attraction is that the new members enjoy the umbrella of US weapons and protection. Not that all countries contribute their fair share – even in the UK we much prefer to put our money into debt interest payments.
June 6, 2024
What about all the ânew membersâ who joined before 2014? What were they defending against? What were NATO âdefendingâ in Serbia – oh – stupid of me – they were defending the newly arrived Moslem asylum seekers were they not? In fact the Luftwaffe and the RAF went on a bombing spree WITHOUT AUTHORISATION FROM THE UN.
Merkel said it was âbecause there were deaths in Kosovoâ. Well there have been 14,000 ethnic Russian deaths in Donbas at the hands of Ukrainian troops since 2014. This is uncontested.
NATO is supposed to be a Defence Force for NATO countries – which NATO country has been attacked?
June 6, 2024
NATO is clearly an attack force (Yugoslavia/Libya). It argues, I assume, that attack is the best form of defence. To be clear, NATO was formed on 04/04/1949 and the Warsaw Pact in 1955, although that is often conveniently forgotten. Another little canard is that NATO was formed to combat the Soviet threat. The USSR ceased to exist over 30 years ago, but NATO still trundles on. NATO then continued to expand closer and closer to Russiaâs borders having stated that they would not do so, and when Russia had withdrawn its forces from Eastern Europe. The USA then started pulling out of nuclear treaties (2002), and putting missiles into countries adjacent to Russia with the clear intention of threatening them. Why does NATO exist? The grift, itâs always the griftâŠ.
Zorro
June 6, 2024
There’s no “we” in the Uni Party’s accumulated debt and its interest. Just like mass immigration it was not agreed by the people in any vote. Stop paying welfare in extreme and to foreigners without set time limits. Live within our, the 46%s, means. Simple Reforms!!!
June 7, 2024
‘NATO isnât an attack force’, you say, Dave. How do you think you’d get on, telling that to the Serbs, Libyans, and Afghans whose relatives were killed by NATO bombs?
Granted that NATO was originally founded to stop other European countries going Communist after Czechoslovakia, the world has changed since 1949.
June 6, 2024
@Lynn Akinson; A typically ill-informed rant about French history, and somewhat ignorant view of the whys and wherefores of NATO. As for your second paragraph, you mean like the commemoration held in Portsmouth yesterday (5th June)?…
June 7, 2024
So should we celebrate VE Day in Berlin? Letâs have the Germans organize it and decide whether the British should be invited?
June 6, 2024
Think about it Lynn. Inviting Russia would mean inviting Putin. We are involved in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. I believe Putin has been indighted with war crimes which would make things a bit tricky. I do not detract from the sacrifices of Russians during WW2, we and the americans helped them comprehensibly and logistically at the time. Remember too that it was Russia in cahoots with Germany that attacked Poland, triggering WW2. Finally Russia was not involved in D-Day.
June 6, 2024
I have been watching the proceedings in Portsmouth and France, with sadness, and gratitude for the enormous sacrifice that was paid for our freedom today. The numbers if those who served, is very small now, but their courage is undimmed.
It is very concerning to hear that a minority of children today have not been taught about D Day, snd what it means. It seems that schools no longer teach about our wartime history. When I went to school,many years ago, we were taught about these things, and encouraged to be proud of the valour of our troops, and those from other Countries, who came to assist us. I still feel the same pride today.
June 6, 2024
There’s just not time to teach British history with transgender studies, BLM. Net zero, climate change, Black history, Slavery (which Britain ended) Islamic studies, to indoctrinate into the snowflake generation.
June 6, 2024
Never a true word.
June 6, 2024
Agreed,which is a shame because the present World has been shaped by past history, which may give some who protest about almost everything, a little bit of knowledge about why certain problems still exist.
June 6, 2024
Perhaps an author like JK Rowling, who specialises in stories for children, could write a book about it.
June 6, 2024
Six years and look at all the government managed to do. All the thousands of aircraft, tanks, trucks & weapons they managed to build, the farming and land armies, the people they trained, the battles they fought, the war hospitals they ran, the code breaking, the radarâŠ
Now it takes more than that just to decided where to put a nuclear power station let alone build it, where to build an extra runway, the sick joke of the Covid Inquiry will probably last 2-3 years, the disaster of HS2 – Jan 2009 15 years ago it was first talked about, how long did the half Brexit take. Nowadays if we had a war they would probably spend 5 years arguing over whether the tanks, aircraft and bombs should be battery powered for climate reasons and where the charge stations should be located.
June 6, 2024
Nigel Farage has driven the Tories to a state of near-total psychological collapse.
We could be just days away from a tipping point in the polls when Reform overtakes the Conservatives.
ALLISTER HEATH surely right today in the Telegraph.
We are going to get Starmer anyway it seems. The last thing the country needs is even more open door immigration, even more net zero lunacy and even more taxes, regulation & government waste. So little to lose by voting for Reform.
June 6, 2024
Quite so ll but we need Farage as a disrupter to finally kill off the not conservative party.
Today because of the scandalous state of our armed forces and the de industrialisation carried out by the One Nation gang we could never protect ourselves in a conventional skirmish.
Well done the veterans who shared their stories. I’m afraid we don’t posses that determination these days.
June 6, 2024
LL,
â ALLISTER HEATH surely right today in the Telegraph.â
One of your familiar lines.
We donât yet know what the full impact of Farage will be though.
June 6, 2024
LL : âNigel Farage has driven the Tories to a state of near-total psychological collapseâŠ..The last thing the country needs is even more open door immigration, even more net zero lunacy and even more taxes, regulation & government waste.â
You would think this applies just as much to Labour. Whilst the metropolitan elites have at least the benefit of taxpayer subsidised toy cars are the unions, who are supposed to represent âthe workersâ, going to continue to accept mass immigration and net zero de-industrialisation and hence lower wages, overloaded and diversity degraded services, overloaded infrastructure and mass unemployment?
Or are they all either now WEF funded or have joined the Communist go woke to go broke cult? If the unions have not joined this cult will they be able to force the next Labour administration to end this net zero suicide or will they too end up supporting Nigel?
June 6, 2024
If Reform does overtake the Tories will we then get the ludicrous situation where the rump Conservative party has (say) 100 seats in the new Parliament and Reform has one or two or even none? Surely this would make change to the current system inevitable.
And what of the suggestion that Tory ‘wets’ are being selected for the safer seats so we could end up with an even more woke HoC?
June 6, 2024
Those ‘safe’ seats occupied by some ‘useful idiots’ across from the Government benches will get a close look at just what 14+ years of hopeless failures has brought us to! Perhaps the Reform handful will demonstrate what a farce our so-called democracy actually is?
Unless Starmer and backstabbing tear Labour apart you can look forward to at least 2 terms of them.
Perhaps many of us will not get to witness the political meltdown that is in store for us.
To requote on here ‘ nothing will stop what is coming, nothing!’
June 6, 2024
Itâs not a suggestion – the Tory Chairman parachuted himself into a safe seat as the only candidate.
Everyone in the constituency is furious. The Tories may lose it.
June 6, 2024
Their remaining Constituency activists should down tools. Make him campaign on his own.
June 6, 2024
Starmer will most certainly be worse in every respect than the Conservatives on all the criteria you mention, and many others. It therefore makes no sense to vote Reform, which will make his victory even more likely and enable Starmer to claim a âmandateâ for the red-green madness which wil surely follow.
June 6, 2024
They didnât have DEI.
They had the best man for every job.
June 6, 2024
We have recently had to stop having deliveries from a certain grocerâs because of the rudeness of their (young) drivers.
Music played in the van ( for our neighbourâs enjoyment?) at Downing Street speech volume and choice words including âf***ingâ.
I donât think Iâm a prudeâŠbut really I donât enjoy paying for rudeness.
It would take 1930s style discipline to make soldiers out of such boys.
And I donât think that the West is capable of it.
June 6, 2024
Indeed. Or many of the other employment lunacies.
Applicants seeking to join RAF described as ‘useless white male pilots’ in bid to hit ‘impossible’ diversity targets say the emails.
Given that men seem, on average, to be rather better or at and more interested in playing video games, chess, racing cars, darts, engineering⊠might we not expect far more men if recruiting on ability. Flying an RAF jet in battle surely has some similar skills required.
Circa 80% of people graduating in Engineering, Computer Science, Construction, Physics even now are still male it has decreased slightly but not by much.
June 6, 2024
LL : âApplicants seeking to join RAF described as âuseless white male pilotsâ in bid to hit âimpossibleâ diversity targets say the emails.â
The whole purpose of woke is to destroy the Westâs prosperity and cohesion in order to turn it into third world state which Communists can control. So diversity replaces meritocracy to place people in jobs in which they cannot or do not wish to perform well.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, diversity is meritocracy, net zero is prosperity.
June 6, 2024
They did not have computers either, where you must now follow the system at all costs to get to the next stage.
The British Forces were taught to think for themselves and use their initiative if matters were not going to plan, if officers were lost or disabled, or if an unforeseen problem was in front of them, the command system was firm but flexible, and rapid at the same time.
June 6, 2024
Well sort of mechanical computers and enigma machines.
June 7, 2024
among the first code- breaking machines.
June 6, 2024
And women too, including some very remarkable ones in e.g. SOE. We had a country that was more or less united. Other nations who fought alongside us could see we were worth supporting, and made a corresponding effort.
June 6, 2024
DEI now stands for Didn’t Earn It.
June 6, 2024
Nobody can afford Labourâs secret tax bill
Are we going to see rises in a range of taxes on savings, deposit interest, capital gains, pensions and motoring?
We need a tax cutting government that understands lower taxes are essential to ease the cost-of-living squeeze and to promote growth from private sector investment and new businesses.
JOHN REDWOOD in the Telegraph.
Indeed but we have needed this for well over 14 years. The Tories delivered the complete reverse and pissed money down the drain all over the place for all this period with a mad energy policies, vast over regulation and massive open door immigration on top. Hence we will now have to suffer Labour for 5, 10 or 15 years+ and have to afford it.
Not much incentive to invest in the UK with this dire prospect.
June 6, 2024
Lifelogic:
This naĂŻve Government might argue that we need battery-powered weaponry, as without it we wouldnât be ever ready to shoot.
June 6, 2024
Surely Duracell soldiers might be better.
June 6, 2024
Duracell bunnies are better!
June 7, 2024
There were many in the H of C.
June 6, 2024
There was a little prefabricated footbridge at a railway station that took more than 10 years to complete ÂŁ9.5m.
June 6, 2024
So Starmer says he has 100% confidence in the NHS obviously he knows almost nothing about it.
Has he looked at Ambulance response times, A&E delays and the huge delays in cancer tests and treatments. The dire maternity care costing ÂŁbillions in compensation for negligence. Then we had them giving net harm unsafe and ineffective Covid vaccines to million most of whom never needed them even had they been safe and effective. Time for Starmer and âunequivocally safeâ Sunak to get real.
Anyway is it not more moral to go privately and this reduce the waiting lists for others if, like Starmer, you can afford it?
June 6, 2024
His comments re NHS were so offensive.
A man with his sort of wealth shouldnât even dream of using it.
Nor, come to think of it, rejoice as many politicians do, in giving it away.
But then lefties never do get the â6 bananas in a roomâ theory.
They believe more in five loaves and two fishes which was not a theory but a miracle.
Yet they are NOT in any way Godlike!
June 6, 2024
+1. We need more people to pay for their children’s schooling and far more people to use private health. Thus lightening the load on the NHS and state school. The complete reverse of the Starmer lunacy.
June 6, 2024
Exactly!
Oh dear Iâm dreading it.
June 6, 2024
Some Labour chap on the radio questioning where the private schools closing due to the threat of VAT were already not viable. But why do private schools often struggle? They have totally âfreeâ competition from the state sector and their customers or forced to pay for that where they use it or not. A totally rigged and anti-competitive marked which does vast harm to education and the economy. We have this unfair state competition and market rigging in healthcare, housing, banking, energy, transport⊠it is all hugely damaging. Competition authorities never seem to address at the vast levels of tax payer subsidised unfair competition from the state sector.
June 6, 2024
The really important point about private education is that it provides a benchmark against which the state offering can be assessed. Remove the benchmark, and the politicians are free to trash education still further. A poorly educated population is less likely to resist whatever commands are issued by those in power.
June 6, 2024
‘Going private’ merely takes away consultant, specialist, surgeon time away from the ordinary tax paying citizen.
June 6, 2024
What if those consultants are foreign only ever worked for the private hospital and wouldn’t want to work in the NHS would that be acceptable?
June 6, 2024
đ€Łno it doesnât. It is supposed to jump the queue, thatâs all. The queue remains the same length and many of the people in the queue are not tax paying or citizens.
Of course Johnson trashed even that when he took private hospitals away from those who pay for them during the trash-down of the country.
We now know that paying private insurance as well as NI provides you with NOTHING extra. Better to go abroad and pay privately there when you need medical intervention.
June 7, 2024
Depends what you identify queue as! A friend in hip pain and becoming immobile over a year waited and waited and still did not get any idea of the wait in store….
Spent ÂŁteens going private and done inside a month.
June 6, 2024
MT
Like it or not many Doctors have a private clinic in their own time after completing their required and agreed NHS duties. Taking that away would simply lengthen the NHS waiting lists even more, and no I do not have Private medical insurance, but have no problem with those who do, and just like they do with Private Schools are paying taxes for the NHS and the State Education System which they do not use.
Take private medical away (which the NHS also uses) and the NHS would fail us all completely.
June 6, 2024
Not at all, more money overall goes into healthcare and so you can employ more doctors and healthcare workers and have more scanners, radiotherapy machines, operation rooms etc. Plus you get far more innovation – expensive scanners etc. should be used 24 hours if the demand is there. Perhaps doctors and nurses could be trained more quickly but just to do certain specific types operations Knee, Hip, Cataract, Brain, Heart, Abdominal ⊠No need to be able to fix a jet engine before you can replace an aircraft seat? Nor to rewire the whole aircraft before you change the light bulbs.
June 7, 2024
You are assuming that the extra income attracts no new facilities and people to work in them. It will tend to attract better people with higher skills of course. Top consultants do like challenges of more difficult cases, which is one reason that they also tend to work for the NHS. As with education, private medicine displays standards that benchmark the public offering, preventing standards from falling unnoticed.
June 6, 2024
Starmer can be confident about the service he will get. He will be given special benefits, as will his family. He will get the best people and priority.
June 6, 2024
Consider all that sacrifice of life and the opportunities created. At the time there was no alternative to sacrifice given the genocidal slaughter perpetrated by German national socialism or the rapine expansion of Japan in the Far East.
Europeans have attempted to create a conflict free Europe based on trade. Political ambition has produced an inward looking, protectionist entity on a very questionable democratic base. In my not so humble opinion they should have concentrated longer on trade and the balancing of wealth across Europe, and less on the drive for a United States of Europe.
We the United Kingdom lost our empire, inevitably, and lost our purpose or failed to find a new one in the aftermath. Had our brave military understood the extent of the evil they were fighting, they thought it was for a threatened UK and their brother soldiers, they might have more readily accepted their sacrifice. They gave us freedom from tyrany. Politically we have utterly failed that freedom. Look about you and tell me otherwise. We have nearly all collected the baubles of that freedom as we have chosen to understand it, but in the context of a nation we have slid downhill to the point where nothing works as it should.
Now on the brink of an election, apart from the genetically politically committed, some 40% of the electorate feel either disinterested or disenfranchised. I only blame the paucity of political leadership. Those who sacrificed their lives would not be impressed.
June 6, 2024
We seem to have run out of principled would-be MPs. Does the role, the conviction, seem attractive to career enhancing candidates, and does the Central Committee (sounding more like a communist controlling group) only select nodding donkeys to their bidding unquestioned?
June 6, 2024
Of course! We have discussed this many times. I once wondered, some 25 years ago, whether you had to pay some young man to chase you around Clapham Common in order to get on the Candidates list (if you are a âuseless white maleâ that is).
June 6, 2024
People keep saying that people who pay privately for healthcare or education pay twice. No they often pay four times. Once in tax for the services they do not use, then income tax NI on the extra they need to earn to buy the insurance, then the insurance premium itself and then 12% IPT on top. Under Thatcher there was no IPT and you could get tax and NI relief on the premiums. So loads of companies ran such schemes taking pressure of the NHS. Not that I usually recommend insurance, just save and pay at least then you avoid the IPT and insurance overheads, fraudulent claims and hassles of organising cover and claiming.
With VAT on school fees (an evil, hugely damaging totally unfair, anti-competitive and immoral policy) it will then be four times too. Even worse as 20% rather than 12% for IPT.
June 6, 2024
This blog is not about the only thing you respect – lucre.
Why don’t you give us all a break from your spleen and show some respect for those that bought you the freedom at a price you can never repay.
June 6, 2024
I have every respect for their sacrifice.
But if you want to win wars you have to do thing efficiently and money is vital too for that. The current government has done almost nothing efficiently, has an insane and dangerous energy policy, an insane EDI and employment policy, a mad economic policy, appalling defence procurementâŠwhat have they done well in recent years?
June 6, 2024
You make an argument that ends with the conclusion that there is a choice- go private for EVERYTHING never to use NHS for anything, or create an NHS that does not embrace staff who share their time between NHS and Private income.
June 6, 2024
No you can have some who work exclusively for the NHS, some exclusive private and some who work for both.
June 6, 2024
Have we forgotten D-Day so quickly in a readyness to get into print.
June 6, 2024
Lifelogic:
The government used to recognise that private schools saved the state money. The âAssisted Places Schemeâ helped some after Prep, but Blair stopped even that based on cruel ideology. Private health care also saves the state money, but apparently individuals personally do not qualify for tax relief, only businesses that provide it for employees.
June 6, 2024
You used to get tax relief both businesses and personal. No tax breaks at all now indeed a 12% Insurance Tax surcharge. Best to keep the premiums, save and be able to pay as needed. Cut out the IPT tax and the Insurance Company overhead costs, admin, fraudulent claims, profitsâŠ
June 6, 2024
The tears of brave men are being shed both for friends lost in a battle and a nation lost hollowed out from the inside and outside by those who now govern us.
In time the memories of these brave men will be forgotten and even condemned by the woke scum that will come to control this nation.
June 6, 2024
Iâve often wondered whether war culls the bravest genes.
That could explain why we are now in this dire position.
June 6, 2024
Interesting point Everhopeful.
June 6, 2024
Everhopeful
One of the problems with modern day Wars is that those who start it take no actual part in the fighting, they direct others to do that from a very safe distance.
At least in the old days a couple of centuries ago, the leaders were on the front line, which tends to concentrate the mind on the horrors of such conflicts.
Lessons learn’t, now soon forgotten.
Never again, until the next time, and next disagreement.
June 6, 2024
Agree 100%
June 6, 2024
Churchill led from the front. He led cavalry into battle in Africa, and in November 1899 he went on patrol with the British Army aboard a train in South Africa, and they were ambushed. Churchill was able to help most of the men escape the Boer ambush but he was taken prisoner. He was held in Pretoria at a prison called the State Model Schools and made a plan of escape with two other POWs.
There was a substantial price on his head.
It was a real battle to keep him out of harms way during WWII. But he was irreplaceable. So it was done.
June 7, 2024
Lynn
Rather proves my point, that was 100 years ago and he was not a National leader at the time, but that experience did stand him in good stead for later.
June 6, 2024
@DOM; “a nation lost hollowed out from the inside and outside by those who now govern us”
Indeed, but remember many of those brave men voted for Attlee, the welfare state, supported the Nationalization of health care, centralized planning of post war rebuilding etc. and they carried on voting for such; Churchill only got back at the 1951 election having accepted many Labour policies, the post war consensus was born, and it flourished for close on 30 years, with great gains to the UK economy, great strides in social mobility etc, it was very true, by the late ’50s the UK “had never had it so good”; start-ups and SMEs, even during the Socialist years of Attlee and Wilson/Callaghan, all flourished – so what changed, when?
June 6, 2024
I can imagine the fear.
All the old soldiers who have told me their ( different) war stories have fully conveyed that.
So why were they there? Iâm blessed if I know.
But my Dad never stopped cursing this country for taking 7 years of his life whilst âreserved occupationsâ flourished back home. And he never got over the claustrophobia that being locked in the underbelly of a troop ship at night caused him.
And my maternal grandfather was not best pleased at being called up age 38 to be one of Churchillâs âTigersâ!
And blow me downâŠthose who returned thought they had at least won their âfreedomââŠ.and many believed that a united Europe would stop all future wars!
June 6, 2024
Those who fought and died in WW2 did so to liberate Europe from a tyranny. They have the admiration of those who came after. Contrast that with the British soldiers who have fought in the more recent conflicts – politicians’ vanity wars. But we have to tell them they fought and died for our freedom, even though we really believe they were more like mercenaries recruited because soldiers were needed and the threat those countries presented to the UK were a lie.
June 6, 2024
@Dave Andrews; I’m not sure there is much difference between the European WW2 and more recent conflicts, in all cases the UK has done so to liberate people from a tyranny. Remember, there were many voices back in late 1939 who wanted the UK to walk away (some were interned for their views), just as with more recent conflicts.
June 6, 2024
Yes.
I think that you perfectly describe all wars.
We should go back to traditional battlefields with the instigators of war leading the charge.
That would cure them!
June 6, 2024
I would like to point out that I made the above comment well BEFORE I read Berkshire Alanâs reply to me đł
June 6, 2024
Meanwhile a new wave of de-colonization is sweeping Africa-which Russia is riding.Foreign Minister Lavrov on a four country tour this week(Chad,Guinea,Burkina Faso,Republic of Congo)congratulates the President of Guinea for being “in the vanguard of the decolonization process” and tells the President of Burkina Faso:”For our part,we are ready to provide our support for the just cause of Africans who are trying to free themselves from neo-colonial influences.”
France’s shadow empire in Africa is going up in smoke.
June 6, 2024
Fought (and generally lost) the recent & totally counterproductive Bliar wars.
June 6, 2024
This is a sad and unusual post. Everyone I know who fought the German wars never indicated an ounce of regret. In the colonies they were all volunteers of course, except for Rhodesia where they were conscripted – because the whole male population volunteered, so they had to find a means of retaining some manpower in the country. Enoch Powell rushed home to Britain and volunteered as a Private in the Army. A New Zealander won the VC and Bar; Ian Smith, an RAF pilot, was saved when his plane crashed – he suffered massive burns (one side of his face never wrinkled) – he later declared UDI in Rhodesia the breadbasket of Africa. Airey Neave made the first home run.
These are the people who thought it an honour to serve the British people in their Parliament thereafter. Itâs why they fought. So that Britain would remain British and free.
Iâm sorry that your family regretted defending Britain. They are a tiny, almost vanishingly small minority.
June 6, 2024
War is not a good and noble thing.
June 6, 2024
My father volunteered for the Air Force in the hope of avoiding the trench warfare that his father had told him about. During the First World War that grandfather became a champion boxer. That way he avoided having his head or limbs blown off. He also avoided being gassed like the party of dead German officers he came across when taking an enemy trench. They had been playing cards.
Nothing, nothing is as sad as the waste of life and the unhappiness that war brings. And the appalling clearing up operations afterwards ( I was told by an old soldier about what happened in Germany but I canât mention that!).
And it is only ever to enrich over and over and over the people in charge.
June 7, 2024
My uncle, Laurie Stevens won an Olympic Gold Medal for boxing (in 1932 I believe) but volunteered for the trenches too.
He was known as âthe Gentleman boxerâ in his day, a native of St Ives although he was at the Olympics in the Dominion of South Africa Team. When he told of standing on the podium and âGod Save The Kingâ being played – well, he never got through the telling without crying.
Nothing is worse than being beaten without being able to fight. Fighting is the primary freedom which Britain has lost.
June 6, 2024
A global survey by Internewsâ Earth Journalism Network involving more than 740 reporters and editors from 102 countries found that 39% of those threatened âsometimesâ or âfrequentlyâ were targeted by people engaged in illegal activities such as logging and mining. Some 30%, meanwhile, were threatened with legal action â reflecting a growing trend towards corporations and governments deploying the judicial system to muzzle free speech.
The global survey is a first-of-its-kind study of the challenges faced by journalists covering arguably the most pressing â if not existential â issues of our time.
The “Covering the Planet Report” includes in-depth interviews with 74 journalists from 31 countries about what help they need, to do a better job reporting extreme weather, plastics pollution, water scarcity, gas flaring, oil spills, wildfires and mining as unprecedented global heating and unchecked corporate greed pushes our lovely planet to its limits.
Itâs not just environmental journalists who are under threat. At least 1,910 land and environmental defenders around the world have been killed since 2012, many of them indigenous native people trying to defend their forests and protect them for their children’s future
June 6, 2024
@SG; “39% of those threatened âsometimesâ or âfrequentlyâ were targeted by people engaged in illegal activities”
Those who live in glass houses should not try throwing stones!
How many people who have questioned Climate change, or just simply want to go about their *lawful* lives, have been actively prevented from doing so, or just “threatened” for wishing to do so, by the Global AGW/Net Zero cartel, protected as they are by the all powerful but biased UN AGW lobby.
June 6, 2024
I think youâll find that corporate greed and environmentalism are somewhat intertwined.
Iâll report some extreme weather if you likeâŠ
Just need to nip under the engine of the nearest Jumbo Jet with my thermometer.
June 6, 2024
Today’s subject is the 80th anniversary of D Day. I had a father there that day, and he did not come back.
That you have chosen instead to post about ‘green issues’ again has somewhat sickened me!
June 6, 2024
I watched some of the Commemoration yesterday and my over-riding emotion was sadness ….. that the sacrifice of these brave young men who gave up their lives to free Europe from tyranny and to preserve our democracy and way of life had been so comprehensively destroyed by successive generations of treacherous politicians, particularly in the last 28 years (Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak).
If they could see what has been done to the country they fought and died for I expect most would ask themselves why they bothered.
I listened to our WEF-supporting King, a man who supports the impoverishment of “his” subjects via the Net Zero Tyranny, tell the younger generation they should “live up to the freedom they died for, by balancing rights with civic responsibilities” and I thought of Sunak’s plan for National Service ….. leading no doubt to Conscription for some future war our political class wants to sacrifice them in.
Why would they?
June 6, 2024
@Donna; “If they could see what has been done to the country they fought and died for I expect most would ask themselves why they bothered. “
You mean like the way some of those who survived would tell the youth of the 1960s and ’70s “how they ask themselves why they had bothered to fight for freedom – if that was how the you are going to behave” or say things like “I didn’t fight for this country so you lot could do/vote [whetever]” etc.
Just what dictionary definition were they then, and you now, using for the word “Freedom”?! đĄ
June 6, 2024
Could you perhaps trying re-writing that in English?
June 7, 2024
@Donna; Perhaps you would like it written in a Shakespearean style?…
June 6, 2024
One observes that the cabal of climate crisis denying, anti-net zero losers at CCHQ are getting more and more exercised over Labour’s alleged plans for increasing taxes. This is a bit much when you consider that the Conservatives have taxed, borrowed and spent roughly ÂŁ1.2 TRILLION since 2010, resulting in the highest levels of taxation since D-Day
Apparently with very little to show for it either.
June 6, 2024
So you think that Starmer could have managed Covid any better SG? đ
Many mistakes were made but Labour had exactly the same (expensive) lock-down policies as the Government. In fact I’m pretty that sure Starmer argued for an even longer lockdown period didn’t he? How much extra would that have cost?
June 6, 2024
There is no evidence far any climate crisis. Just people on the make and another mad new religion.
June 6, 2024
Three points to always remember about D-day, and one moire general observation;
1. It wasn’t all about the beach-heads, as vital as they were, many brave men (and indeed some women) gave their all away from the beaches, my father lost many of his regimental mates that and the following days well inland from the sea (he was by then out of active service due to almost fatal wounds received in a previous battle).
2. D-day indeed could not have happened without the USA, our own Commonwealth or those in exile, but nor could it have happened without the brave French, Dutch and other European underground resistance organizations.
3. The road to D-day could not have occurred had it not been for British (heavy) industry, many of the D-day landing craft for example were built in the large railway workshops of the Southern Railway; furniture factories turned out parts for gliders, even aircraft such as the de Havilland Mosquito; The Austin Motor company built complete aircraft at Longbridge. Last but not least, the will of the British people, who put aside their political and social differences for the good of all.
4. Post war; there seems to a lot of miss conceptions about why the USSR occupied eastern European countries, it wasn’t expansion per se but to create a buffer zone, having already suffered an invasion from Nazi Germany. Not that it excuses how they treated those countries and their people by any means, nor more recent Russian military actions. My point, we need to learn from history, not ignore it whenever it gets in the way of possible political gain.
June 6, 2024
Re #4,correct-and not just Hitler in the 20th century,but Napoleon in the 19th and Karl XII of Sweden in the 18th.All of them destroyed;who will be destroyed in this century?
June 6, 2024
I spent some time in Hotton, Henri-Chapelle and Recogne which put many young names to the cost of battles in the 1940s. The museums and sites in Belgium capture the destruction and human cost wrought on the services and civilian populations which were beyond imagination. We should forget none of this, ever.
Yet it has not been taught in schools, as if the Tudors where ever more important than the lessons from such nearer times.
June 6, 2024
It’s not been taught in schools for a long time. I wasn’t taught any world war history at all. My son did The American West and Medicine through the Ages for GCSE.
June 6, 2024
I think that indigenous European suffering and heroism can not be celebrated.
We can not be victims or conquerorsâŠit does not suit the narrative.
With Tudor history they can, as they have done often, make up scenarios and alter facts.
In historic dramas they can make the players whatever they will.
I would imagine that as time passes and memories die the reported ethnicity of the D Day landings will alter considerably.
June 6, 2024
Perhaps some more enlightened schools will encourage short trips to the battlefields of WW1 and even WW2 to put much more recent history that directly affected their great (and) grandparents.
An example: The Last Post, the traditional final salute to the fallen, is played by the buglers of the Last Post Association in honour of the memory of the soldiers of the former British Empire and its allies, who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War (1914-1918). Following the Menin Gate Memorial opening in 1927, the citizens of Ypres wanted to express their gratitude towards those who had given their lives for Belgium’s freedom. Hence every evening at 20:00, buglers from the Last Post Association have the road closed which passes under the memorial and sound the “Last Post”.
Difficult to attend without finding eyes wet with tears, and memories of those affected.
June 6, 2024
Sir John
A day to reflect and remember
June 6, 2024
And after that massive sacrifice by millions to ensure our freedom, we then joined the EU! Which is trying to create a United states of Europe, as was Hitler. Except the EU is doing it by stealth not war.
Luckily the British public saw through it in time and we left.
June 6, 2024
Plenty still do not see where it is intended to culminate.
June 6, 2024
The Third German war of the 20th century. Covert. Nevertheless it has brought Europe to its knees for a third time in just over a Century.
June 6, 2024
We need to increase our preparedness for war in the hope, if not the expectation, that increased preparedness will deter an aggressor. Where are our missile shields? How will our Infrastructure cope? What will be the National Service calls on British Citizens? Sadly this issue is now of even greater concern than the state of the National Health service.
June 6, 2024
We went to the D Day beaches last September and while we were there, the weather was much like it must have been exactly 80 years ago today. It was a raw and inhospitable place, and we were not being shot at ! We stood in silence contemplating the event and have nothing but admiration for all those involved. I doubt whether the Fritzes defending the beaches wanted to be there, but they had little choice, and many died. Our troops at least understood their cause and were not yet aware of the horrific crimes being committed by the Third Reich.
35 years later, at the height of the cold war, my wife and I lived in Northern Germany for five years in what was the zone defended by British Forces in Nord Rhein Westfalen. We were civilians and I worked for a British company but we made many friends, both German and in the British military, and will be visiting some of them later this month.
I am horrified at the way the British military has been hollowed out in the last 14 years. Poland is showing us a lead, having increased spending to 4% of GDP already. The Bundeswehr was not very effective in the 1980s and is even worse now, but to see how all three branches of our military have been weakened by successive Conservative governments is shameful. To see off the threat from Putin, I am told that we need to be at at least 4% of GDP now and if we delay, it will need to be at 5% for an extended period. This also applies to Germany as well as others.
I am concerned that Putin is already probing allied countries in the Baltic, to see what he can get away with. He is also sniffing around infrastructure off Norway and the coast of Ireland. A miscalculation on his part is a serious risk, even today.
June 6, 2024
Spurred on by Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher, President Mikhail Gorbachev did much to improve Russia. His policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) enabled Russians to pursue purposes of good in happiness, fostering peace in so much of the world.
Citizens of all countries are better using their immense capabilities to harness scientific possibilities and productive power toward health and constructive outcomes for the good of all, instead of devising ways and manufacturing products to destroy each other. Russia and other belligerent nations now require renewed leadership to restore world peace and happiness. What our valiant forces fought for in WWII now needs a refresher of similar force, both of defence in preparation for what might happen and stronger diplomacy to prevent what could.
June 6, 2024
What rubbish you have written.The Gorbachev reforms were a disaster-look what happened to Russia in the 1990s before Mr Putin reversed the slide.
June 6, 2024
Gorbachev was conned by the Corporatists pretending to be Capitalists. Putin, a qualified Economist and a monetarist, saw the calamity. He has spent his life reversing that and building the Russian Federation into the industrial and moral giant that it is today. He has been able to beat the one-world Globalists who have hijacked the west.
Man of the century.
Not the Russian view Sir John. My objective view.
June 7, 2024
an interesting take on the probably unhinged ex-KGB murderer who made alliancies with the Russian mob. End result his mates taking over all key State businesses for a song – now fall-in-line Oligarchs – or die even in foreign lands.
June 6, 2024
Mitchel:
Reagan and Gorbachev signed the largest arms control treaty in history, reducing nuclear weaponry.
Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Putin appears to have slid into aggression since.
Opinions vary, but I thank you for yours.
June 7, 2024
The USA has slid into aggression – financial aggression being the go to. They are too Frit to ask their own forces to fight in case they refuse to do so! High probability.
June 6, 2024
On this day, D-Day, a solemn day we hear reports by the BBC that 80+ illegals are in difficulty in the channel …on this day we can’t even protect the coast of France/UK nor the channel
June 6, 2024
BBC ”It is thought the boat reached UK waters after being shadowed by a French warship, then got into difficulty.”
June 6, 2024
back then we could call on a navy!
June 6, 2024
Back then we had a Leader who was determined to protect the nation from invasion.
June 6, 2024
As usual we get politicians talking about total sums to be spent, 2.5% of GDP or more, or can’t be sure.
All this is typical of their detachment from reality and it sounds big and good. Talk should be on what equipment is needed or what ammunition is needed and then get the money spent there, and show it. And don’t tell us only a percentage there has gone up, tell us and show us what it has been spent on.
And vital is that everything is made here. Open up new production here where needed, spend money on that too. Our stupid, dangerous minded leaders thing as it’s easy to buy from overseas that’s best. That’s weakening us more. Those don’t deserve to lead us.
June 6, 2024
And such a shame that as those veterans crossed the Channel they would have passed the invasion dinghies coming the other way and realised that the sacrifice of their comrades was in vain, as in fifty years or so D-Day will be irrelevant to the new demographic.
June 6, 2024
Good morning Sir John and all .
I feel politics and debate should for today be set aside , and we take a moment to remember what happened eighty years ago, and for all those that gave everything so we could have today .
June 6, 2024
I wonder what the world would be like if Germany had won WW2.
Would there have been more wars raging?
Would most of Europe speak German as the predominant language?
Would they have agreed to leave America alone to end the conflict? Would Britain be the 51st State or aligned with Germany? Wasn’t it Harold Wilson who discussed this with America?
June 6, 2024
Let us not overlook that D-Day whilst a major operation that might be considered the beginning of the end was but one amongst very many and contemporaneously there were other theatres of war that saw like bravery and sacrifice.
We might do well also to take note that D-Day was achieved by a country now much changed and likely incapable of replicating such a feat.
And when we “learn the lessons of history” so many are so fond of, let us not overlook how those nations fared that kept aloof from the fray.
June 6, 2024
O/T â Today brings a reply from H.M. Treasury to your letter as reissued by me further to https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2024/04/21/the-case-for-change-at-the-bank-of-england/.
Two sides of A4 I read whilst repeatedly exclaiming âwell tell me something I donât knowâ.
It states âdecisions on QT, including the pace of sales and unwiind of the APF, are for the independent MPCâ. What a pity the MPC has no candidates standing in the general election.
It further states âwhile a faster pace of sales will realise losses sooner, all else equal, holding gilts for longer is unlikely to avoid these losses. Instead, a higher net interest cost is expected to be incurred from holding the portfolio for longerâ. Yet two paragraphs later it then asserts â…where national governments are the beneficial owners of central banks, asset purchases that were undertaken on central bank balance sheets will ultimately flow through to government financesâ – so is the net interest cost not then nil however long the portfolio is held?
There may be some insufficient grasp of economics but there is none at all of accounting, which latter of course sees certain crystallization of avoidable losses to the ruination of the government’s finances.
I can forward the whole letter to you should you wish but you may well not be advantaged.
June 6, 2024
D Day anniversary should serve as a reminder that fighting for a country controlled by politicians and bureaucrats subservient to globalist interests is a stupid idea and your legacy will always be betrayed. Nearly a decade and a half of rule by Tory stooges has left Britain staggering along like a zombie with bits of it’s leg missing. A Labour government will serve to remove the rest of the leg and the rotting carcass will drag itself to further misery. Well done political class.
June 6, 2024
Never forget John,
Hope you are well.
Without Keynes we would have lost.
He destroyed the tax payer money myth and in his fantastic book – How to pay for the War – ” Everything is affordable if it is a priority, Anything we need we can afford. ” It has the kings head in it that’s who’s money it is.
Now we are back to the tax payer money myth fairy tale and the election debates have got off to a terrible start. We would never have won the war if we actually believed our taxes fund the monopoly issuer of the ÂŁ. Now politicians lie to the public how they will pay for things. Wonder why the political class is in crises.
We invest 18% of GDP in this country on the back of the tax payer money myth. We can’t afford it myth. Meanwhile China invests 43% of GDP in China as they know taxes fund nothing. Then we scratch our heads wondering why they are so good at moving skills and real resources around were they need them. We drown under austerity. Prefer to load households and businesses with bank loans and bury them under private sector debt.
June 6, 2024
China is a TOTALITARIAN STATE.
Jeez, what a clown
June 6, 2024
âMr Putinâs wish to recreate a wider Russian zone of influence has spread to invasion creating challenges for NATO.â
Most people in the West have no idea of the war that Russia (and China) is fighting in the West. Mass immigration, particularly illegal immigration, cyber attacks and mis-, dis- and mal-information, the UN Agendas, the BBC driven climate doom propaganda to make our children believe they have no future, Net Zero to destroy prosperity, woke, DEI, ESG, Queer and Critical Race Theory are all weapons being used to destroy us.
Why bother to invade when you can insert a cancer into a country which can destroy anything which is normal and wealth creating from within.
June 6, 2024
Oh all of this comes from Mr Putin – and how does this help him sell his commodities?
June 6, 2024
Today we remember the huge ultimate sacrifices many ordinary people gave for precious freedom when called upon by their countries to do so (and so soon after the previous WW1) to end all wars – at least in Europe.
Let us hope lessons have been learned….
At the going down of the Sun
We will remember them.
Very Gratefully.
June 7, 2024
…and in the morning! even 80 years later.
June 6, 2024
Did you know that the Kaiser the King and the Czar were cousins to one another and millions died. Then at the end of WW1 a day before Armistice the Kaiser stepped over the border into the Netherlands and claimed asylum – the Czar and his family left in a different way.
The treaty of Versailles was negotiated in 1919 under PM Lloyd George’s watch which in turn laid the ground for WW2.. Lloyd George also backed the Balfour Declaration 1917 which sowed the seeds for the present Middle East disaster and then in 1922 he drew the border across Ireland – our Kings and politicians have let us down and millions died
June 6, 2024
D-Day.You cannot but admire the bravery.
Accept you have been lied and fooled many times .
The people need to realise what happens when we allow the totalitarians control.
So in the US there seems to be lots of highly suspect lawfare against political opponents. Seemingly all happening in the run up to the election.
Luckily it seems the UNIPARTY contenders are free from this , because we are proper democracy where the interest of the citizens are served. /s.
Who was nearly cancelled from a certain bank.
Which channel has been pursued by regulators perhaps unfairly.
Which people, party have been called names & etc
Your vote might not make a difference but giving it to the uniparty , please , look at the record.
Vote for the uni-party and you will get a change in speed not direction.
June 6, 2024
I attended a service of commemoration in our town square this evening. The Last Post was played followed by a two minute silence. Well, I say âsilenceâ – disturbed by the constant stream of traffic and a loose manhole cover banging as they drive over it. Then we could prosecute a war. Take part in a massive military operation and liberate Europe from tyranny. Now? Canât make our own steel and couldnât organise a drinks party in a brewery. What have you done to our country?
June 6, 2024
And couldnât get the road closed for half an hour. Costs too much, apparently. There is money to piss away on diversity but not to honour our fallen.
June 7, 2024
Many were sacrificed during both the first and second world wars and the people really need to research/investigate the circumstances which led to the commencement both of these conflicts and ask WHY????
June 7, 2024
The other concerns my mother, who worked in Berkeley Street (a Bletchley Park outstation) translating ENIGMA decodes of diplomatic traffic. In the weeks before D-Day she translated an intercept from the German embassy in Dublin (bizarrely relayed via the UK as privileged diplomatic traffic) which gave very considerable detail of the D-Day plans that had been leaked by persons then unidentified. The unit commander (probably after consultation at the highest levels) decided that the original code should be relayed – but not until after the invasion had commenced, in order not to compromise the ENIGMA intercepts and decodes. Aware of the plans, she and her fellow translators had a great sense of concern and foreboding on June 5th -“collywobbles” she said – unaware of the weather postponement.
Had the intercept not been made the outcome might have been rather different. In the family, bad weather in early June is always called D-Day weather.