Wolf

White House race

by
Joe Biden has a big lead in the polls and is 1.5 to be the next president on the Betfair betting exchange. Trump is 2.98.
Biden is generally 4-9 with British bookmakers, Trump is priced at 7-4.
In America, Biden is slightly shorter odds at -227 and Trump a little bigger at +180. *These were the odds and prices as of 24th October and they are subject to market fluctuations.
—-
Here are my personal thoughts and opinions about the state of the 2020 race for the White House with 11 days to go to election day (Nov 3rd).
—-
With the exception of some of the Fox News presenters, the American TV networks are vehemently anti-Trump.
Biden has raised twice as much as his opponent in campaign donations and that money is being spent on flooding the airways with adverts.
The pandemic has hit the US really hard with deaths approaching a quarter of a million and millions of jobs lost.
However, despite all these positives for Biden, I can’t see him winning on Nov 3rd, unless the election is rigged.
The enthusiasm among Trump supporters is off the scale, while Biden struggles to attract more than one man and his dog to his rallies.
Biden’s record in 47 years in politics is horrendous and he and his family are immersed in a huge corruption scandal.
He’s run twice before for president and was forced to drop out both times. The 1st time for plagiarising a Neil Kinnock speech, the 2nd for attracting just 1% of the votes in a primary.
Biden is a proven liar and his lies are huge and easy to demonstrate.
He’s clearly in mental decline and will be celebrating his 78th birthday on November 20th. He would be president in name only and it’s highly likely he would be forced to step down at some point in favour of his VP Kamala Harris.
Harris appeared to be the DNC’s preferred candidate at the start of the primaries, but she had to drop out as there was so little support on the ground for her and she came across as entitled. Harris has also indicated she sees herself as the head of the ticket by saying, “A Harris Biden administration will….” Her husband also describes himself as married to the next president of the US.
—-
Despite his obvious flaws, Trump’s actual record is excellent. The economy was buzzing before Covid. He hasn’t started any new wars while managing to get rid of ISIS.
Trump has already been nominated 3 times for the Nobel Peace Prize and may get another nomination for the Sudan Israel deal.
My gut feeling is that Trump will do at least as well as he did in 2016 and possibly a lot better. His base is solid and there are some very encouraging poll numbers for him among Black people and Hispanics.
But, as I said earlier, the election could be rigged. The arrangements for mail-in voting, which has been huge because of the virus, are open to enormous amounts of fraud, and counting the mail-in ballots will go on for some time after election day.
—-
Unless one candidate gets a truly massive landslide on November 3rd, the winner will not be officially declared for weeks and there are bound to be all sorts of legal challenges.
The stakes couldn’t be higher and anything could happen.
Civil unrest is guaranteed no matter who wins.
—-
There will be plenty ready to cheer if America descends into chaos. But I believe, we should all pray for cool heads to prevail as the whole world will suffer if the US goes down the plughole.

Council Houses

by

The Labour manifesto contains the pledge to build 150,000 new council houses every year for 5 years.

There were good arguments for council houses when slums were being cleared in the 50s, 60s and 70s when the country was recovering from the war, but the UK is a very different place now.

The vast majority of those who have lived on council estates are decent upstanding hard-working citizens. However, public housing schemes can have negative effects. They encourage the belief that it’s the state’s responsibility to provide homes for everyone.
People become lazy when there is no motivation to work to put a roof over their families heads. If they hadn’t been disincentivised, these people may have led happier, more successful and fulfilling lives. If they had had to strive to provide accommodation for themselves and their families, they and society would have been better off.

Allocating council houses is a nightmare.
Who should be offered a council house first, the homeless, the poor, families with children, families with large numbers of children, families with disabled children, families living in overcrowded accommodation, families with long-term unemployed parents, families with low-paid parents, families with only one parent?
A system for assessing those in most need will be devised and there will be a waiting list as there will be a limited number of homes available at any particular time.
People will become aware that to move up the list they will need to increase their amount of need. There will be many who will inevitably try to game the system.

Council housing estates are notoriously expensive to maintain. They are also difficult to manage and susceptible to anti-social problems.
Some tenants will run up arrears in the belief they will not be evicted as the council would still have to provide them with accommodation.
Some tenants will neglect their homes as they have no reason to look after them as they have no stake in the property and only rent them.

150,000 new houses will not come cheap. A very conservative figure to build 150,000 new homes over 5 years is £75billion and that’s before the costs of managing the estates are added in.
Rents will be subsidised and many tenants will be receiving housing benefit, so council housing is an ongoing drain on public resources.

Rather than building council houses, it would be better to spend the money on helping people turn their lives around or improve their employment prospects so they can stand on their own feet while contributing to society.
There needs to be a safety net for those who can’t look after themselves such as the mentally ill, but it would be far better to give people the ability to thrive rather than a reason to skive.

Wolfie image

by

Several people have been sued for using images of a frog in social media postings.

So here’s Wolfie – a completely free image. No accreditation required. Just download (left click Woolfie’s image, then right click and save a copy). You are free to resize, alter and use for any purpose you want. In other words, Wolfie’s image is in the Public Domain.

Democratic Playbook

by

One America News Network‘s brilliant political analyst Liz Wheeler lays out the Democratic Party’s playbook for bringing down the Trump administration.

Antifa

by


A = Angry
N = Nihilistic
T = Thuggish
I = Intolerant
F = Fecal
A = Anarchists

Identity Politics

by

Identity politics is designed to strip us of our free will.

It takes away our ability to make choices.

It stops us being individuals and turns us into heard animals..

It makes us see everyone as a member of a particular group.

It then decides which groups are good and which groups are bad.

Labour’s anti-Trump stance is causing massive damage to the UK

by

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan have led the calls for Donald Trump‘s invitation to the UK to be withdrawn.
Theresa May invited the US president to make an official State Visit a week after his inauguration in January.
Corbyn and Khan’s calls have been enthusiastically backed up by many Labour MPs, the hard-left Momentum group and a host of party supporters.
A petition to call off Trump’s visit was signed more than 2 million times and the campaign appears to have born fruit.

Although there has been no official announcement, in early June Mr Corbyn tweeted, “Cancellation of President Trump’s State Visit is welcome, especially after his attack on London’s mayor & withdrawal from #ParisClimateDeal”

Mr Corbyn’s claim the visit had been cancelled was given credence by reports Mr Trump told Theresa May during a telephone call that he didn’t want to come to the UK at present to avoid the possibility of anarchists and left-wing activists using his visit as an excuse to mount violent protests against him.
An unnamed Downing Street adviser, who claimed to have been present when the call was made, told The Guardian newspaper that Mr Trump informed the PM he didn’t want to visit the UK while there was so much hostility in the country towards him.
The official reason why the visit has not taken place is that a date has still to be decided.

In late June, French president Emmanuel Macron took advantage of this hiatus and invited Mr Trump to France for Bastille Day (July 14th).
The visit was quickly arranged and it seems to have been a considerable success.
Macron and Trump were depicted smiling broadly together at a series of functions in Paris and the two men appear to have developed an excellent relationship.

The French have made no secret of their desire to grasp any benefits and business opportunities in the wake of Brexit. Therefore, to see Macron assiduously positioning France at the head of the queue to make trade deals with the World’s biggest economy will have been a very bitter pill to swallow for many at Westminster and in the UK’s boardrooms.

It’s impossible to put a figure on how much potential business may have been lost by Trump’s UK visit being put on hold but it will undoubtedly be a very significant amount.

The Left’s public antipathy towards Trump has already cost the UK dear but it’s only the start and could easily become far more calamitous.
Whether you approve of Trump or not, to deliberately disrespect the office of the President of The United States and to encourage anti-American feelings is stupid. As the old saying goes “it’s biting off your nose to spite your face”.

The hostility of Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan and their left-wing supporters towards a sitting president ensure there will be no “special relationship” if the Labour party form the next government.
With Mr Corbyn ensconced in Number 10 Downing Street, the UK would find itself at the back of the business queue with the US.
However, the most dire consequences of the Left’s fibril antipathy towards Mr Trump is its potential to irrevocably damage the bonds of kinship, respect and shared values that have served the UK and the US so well for so long.

Whose colluding with the Labour Party?

by

Despite wrecking the country’s economy the last time they were in power and their current leaders’ Marxist ideologies and history of sympathizing with terrorists, the Labour party are the bookmakers’ favourites to win the most seats at the next UK general election.

How has this happened? The answer, at least in part, is that Labour has hitched its wagon to the phenomena of “populism”.
Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, the UK’s referendum in favour of Brexit and Marine Le Pen making it through to the final round of the French presidential election have all been credited to “populism”.
While Labour have embraced social media, the Tories have been slow to recognise the importance of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and how information is shared in the age of smart phones and high-speed broadband.
The left has developed a clear and coordinated Social Media strategy. This allowed them to dominated the medium and engage with younger voters in particular.
The Tories mainly stuck to their old media habits in June’s general election and paid a hefty price.

Labour has been very effective in stimulating class envy and a readiness to blame the rich for not paying enough taxes. Class and money have always been Labour rallying cries but the party’s lurch to the Left in the  last couple of years have seen these old staples dusted off, polished and pushed with extra vigour.
Former leader Ed Millibands’ decision to allow people to join the Labour Party for just £3 and have a vote in who becomes leader resulted in a huge increase in membership. Many of the new members were in the important 18 to 24-year-old category.

Labour have become adept at taking advantage of current events. Major party figures including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have been turning up for photo and virtue signaling opportunities after tragedies such as the Grenfell Tower fire.
Corbyn and McDonnell made speeches at the Glastonbury Festival. Politicians hijacking pop concerts is a fairly new phenomena in the UK.
Labour party activists and supporters have been leading chants of “Jeremy “Corbyn”  and “F*** the Tories” at other public events, including the Wimbledon Tennis Championships.
If Labour regain power they have promised to end austerity and introduce a tax and spend programme. This will include writing off student loans. A move which, understandably, is very popular with the 40% of young people who go on to higher education these days, never mind those who have been through the system and are paying off old loans.

There has been plenty of turmoil among Labour MPs and many of them were convinced Jeremy Corbyn was the wrong guy to lead the party and he would not survive. However, following a surprisingly strong Labour performance in the general election in June and the rapid rise of his approval ratings in contrast to Conservative prime minister Theresa May’s plummeting figures , Corbyn is more secure in his position now than at any time since he became Labour’s leader.

So now we have come up with arguments which may help explain Labour’s surge in popularity, the next question to ask is why this sudden change for the better in the party’s fortunes has happened in a relatively short space of time?

The Momentum group is Corbyn’s power base and it has sustained him when his leadership has been questioned.
Their old-fashion socialist politics may not be palatable to many in the party but Momentum members appear to be focused, fully committed and, rather unusually for a political group on the left, well organised.

Just having a loyal grass-roots backing group and going down the “populism” route are not enough to have brought about Labour’s metamorphosis from a chaotic party in steep decline into a vibrant, confident and powerful movement with a realistic chance of forming the next government.
What else could be behind Labour’s resurgence?
Is someone or some entity guiding Labour’s hand?
Whose behind the transformation from political outsiders to bookies’ favourites.
For the answers to these questions it’s worth looking across the Atlantic at Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the American presidential election last November for a clue.

Despite no demonstrable evidence, the Democrats and their friends in the main-stream media in the US have insisted Trump’s victory was down to the Republican candidate’s campaign team colluding with Russia and that the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin’s direction “hacked” the US election to prevent Hillary Clinton becoming president.
These claims simply aren’t creditable. If the Russians were going to back anyone it would have been Clinton as they have far more in common with the Democrats than the Republicans and, given her and her husband Bill’s many scandals, Putin is likely to have far more “leverage” over Hillary Clinton than he has over Donald Trump.

Could Russia be colluding with the Labour Party?
The Russians have close historical ties to Labour.
Jeremy Corbyn has frequently attacked Donald Trump and there will be no special relationship with America if he becomes prime minister.
Jeremy Corbyn has stated he would never launch a Polaris missile if he had his finger on the nuclear trigger.
Both Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s number 2, John McDonnell, are strong socialists and fans of Karl Marx’s writings.
It’s not difficult to believe Vladimir Putin would be quite happy to see Labour form the next UK government.
In those circumstances it’s not difficult either to believe the Russians may be supporting the Labour Party with resources and strategic advice to help propel Jeremy Corbyn to Number 10 Downing Street.

By any means necessary

by

On the 9th November 2016 the Democratic Party of America received a massive blow when Donald J Trump beat Hillary R Clinton to become the 45th President of the USA.
The Democrats were confident Clinton would not just see off the challenge of Trump but were looking forward to their candidate winning by a landslide.
When Clinton lost the shock was so severe the Democrats and many of their supporters refused to accept Trump was a legitimate victor and convinced themselves they would be justified in doing whatever it took, including assassination, to stop Trump being President.
Senior Democrats Maxine Waters and Al Green have led campaigns to have Trump impeached.
Left-wing politicians, commentators and academics have likened Trump to Hitler and have encouraged violent street protests and called for his assassination.
The vast majority of the main-stream media have been fiercely critical of Trump.
For instance 93% of CNN’s coverage of Trump has been unfavourable and The New York Times 87% unfavourable.
Story after story about the President has been spun to paint him in a negative light. Many of these stories have proven to be fabricated or totally false. But even when they have been shown to be untrue they are often repeated.
There have been a series of stunts depicting the death of the President. Comedienne Kathy Griffin held up a severed bloody Trump head in an ISIS style video photo shoot. A Trump look alike was violently knifed to death on stage in a play in New York’s Central Park.

Now, over 6 months after the election, the Democrats and their hysterical supporters are still suffering from PTSS and are continuing their relentless campaigns to have Trump removed from office by any means necessary.

If the Democrats succeed in removing Trump from the White House, the fallout has the potential to destabilize the US and to undermine democracy worldwide.
If Trump goes the Democrats lust for blood will be even stronger and they will turn their attention to his successor, Vice President Mike Pence.
The hard left in America would feel emboldened by Trump’s removal and would increase their efforts to ferment a violent revolution.
American conservatives, many of whom are heavily armed, would be ready to defend the constitution.

A second American Civil War is a genuine possibility if Trump is toppled.
Democracy itself would be under threat. If America descends into civil war what price democracy in the rest of the world?
When the mob believes it can grab power by staging violent protests when it doesn’t agree with the result of an election, it will unleash hell on earth.

These truly are dangerous times.

News

by

WOLF HOWL 

wolf_17_big2017 began with the ugly roar of diesel-powered chainsaws shattering the normal peace and tranquility where I live on the outskirts of north London.
The local council have been busy cutting down hundreds of trees in the park and along the few country paths that survived after the area was developed for housing 20 years ago.
The official reason given for this destruction of perfectly-healthy mature trees is to “improve the woodland habitat“.

Improve the woodland habitat for whom?

Cutting down trees will do nothing to improve things for the vast majority of the local wildlife.
Countless nests, roosts, burrows, sources of food, breeding areas and natural defenses and habitat are being lost.
The only wildlife to benefit will be predators. The owls, the hawks and the foxes which will find it easier to catch disturbed and confused prey that have lost their usual cover and hiding places.
However, even the initial benefit to the predators will quickly reverse as, once the easy pickings have gone, the result will be fewer prey overall and, with habitat destroyed, breeding populations will not recover.
Cutting down trees in the depths of winter, when wild birds and small mammals are particularly vulnerable, is guaranteed to maximize the numbers that will die.

Will cutting down trees improve anything for the local residents? The answer is a resounding no.
Fewer trees means more noise. Trees muffle traffic noise and act as sound buffers. Fewer mature trees will result in poorer air quality because trees synthesize carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
Other benefits of trees include acting as wind breaks which helps reduce damage to fences and property from all but the most severe of gales and storms. Tree root systems also decrease the likelihood of flooding and limit the impact of heavy rainfall.
Impossible to quantify, but massively important, is the beauty of trees and their unique ability to improve the visual appearance, character and ambiance of residential districts.

Simply put, leafy suburbs are far better places to live than concrete jungles.

So who is better off then?

If there’s no improvement for wildlife or local residents from this tree felling, why is it being done?
Well there are some people who will benefit.
Just follow the money.
The contractors carrying out the work will improve their bottom-line and the council officials who commissioned it will claim they have justified their jobs.
The latter may also enjoy exercising the power their positions afford them.
Having the authority to order hundred of trees to be felled, to change the appearance of an area and being able to significantly impact the environment would be heady mix for many public employees.
It’s the old story of give someone power and they will be guaranteed to abuse it.
The council website dedicated to the venture describes it as “exciting” and a “scene change”.

A close friend with a more cynical outlook than myself suggests the chopping down of these trees will “improve” the chances of the land they occupied being reassigned as suitable for building houses on.

UPDATE Monday January 9th

The destruction continues.
The second week of 2017 has begun with more healthy trees alongside the local roads being felled for no good reason.
It takes decades for trees to grow and mature but only minutes to cut them down.