Bruges Group Blog

 It is sad to say that many people, especially the young and gullible, take in and believe all the guff endlessly spewed out about global warming and the impossibility of net zero, especially on the BBC. Sadly, those who get taken in by this nonsense who then think they are doing the right thing by voting for the Green Party, don't seem to rea...

Despite the best efforts of clinicians, the weight of bureaucracy is rendering the NHS unable to function. Doctors are obliged to waste time filling in endless documents, while staff are subjected to constant nonsense from that non profession HR. Apparently endless numbers of so-called managers appoint each other to obscenely well paid posts, while...

For those of us who were born and grew up in days when freedom of speech and debate on topics were considered a fundamental right, and a proud part of British democracy, who are these days are saddened and dismayed as these once inalienable freedoms are being dismantled, one by one. We live in despair and frustration watching the actions of those d...

The truth about ME: it's not rocket science. It's neuroscience, by Catherine Van dome, foreword by stand-up comedian Patrick Monahan, introduction by producer/director Stephen Pettinger, 239 pages, ISBN 978-1-7390920-8-5, Bruges Group, 2024, £12.99.  This is the story of the actress, the osteopath and the Minister of Defence. No, not the 1963 ...

Here in rural England there has traditionally been a feeling that the Labour Party is the voice of a very metropolitan hostility and non-comprehension of the issues associated with 'the Countryside'. In truth possibly many Conservatives are little better informed, albeit their inherent instincts are not hostile to landowners. In the 1990's, BBC rad...

 The World Health Organisation, with the support of governments, public-private agencies, profit-seeking multinational corporations, academic institutions, charities and foundations, has been allowed to become a medium for the international marketisation of medical tech and vaccines, and, if we are not careful, the use of these may become mand...

By  Dr Jonathan S. Swift    ISBN: 9-781739-092009  Published By  The Bruges Group  There cannot be many people who are not aware of the virus classified as Covid-19 by the WHO in March 2020 – indeed some people may have contracted the virus – as did the author of this novel. The pandemic hit the UK in March 2020, and l...

Assume for a moment that the world achieves net zero carbon emissions and that no more fossil fuels are being produced or consumed. How might life change on Earth? Firstly, let us assume that with no fossil fuels being burnt the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere falls to pre industrial levels of around 280 parts per million. CO2 is an essential r...

Straws in the wind   The NHS The NHS is crumbling and cannot continue for much longer in its current form. Free healthcare for all at the point of need was possible in the late 1940s and early 1950s but with ever more costly and complex interventions this is no longer the case. None of the modern imaging equipment had been invented when t...

 For many years I have pondered the cunning, deceitfulness and often seemingly sinister actions of our elected Members of Parliament and Governments, I have tried to understand why they were so happy to surrender our country to rule from the European Union and why they are all so besotted with 'Net Zero' and spout a lot of nonsense about globa...

GET ON YOUR BIKE No matter where we turn, it's the environment. It's the Earth! And like the Earth, my head is spinning from all of the information and the hypocrisy of private jet riding, elitist, globalists Davos attendees. However, I believe the answer is in the spin: spin the pedals. I believe it is time that we got on our bikes - especially th...

Recently, I tweeted as below. It is not exhaustive, this is Twitter after all but it serves as a useful starting point for a piece I did not think needed to be written, such has been my own "compliance" in the con. Canada has full despotism. New Zealand is descending further into tyranny. Germany has been muzzled by Putin’s gas yet suppresses its o...

I recently attended the funeral of one of my old office colleagues who, like me, worked for over forty years in the same organisation. At the wake I reminisced with other long term colleagues about our early days in the workplace, in the 1960s, and 1970s, comparing them with what we came to know towards the ends of our careers, and with what young friends now tell us about their experiences.

At one time health and safety rules and regulations, although obviously necessary in industrial environments, was confined in offices to exercising what was basically common-sense, while we had a personnel department, which dealt with matters of recruitment, and staff welfare. As in any social environment we naturally had our ups and downs with others, although, not being complete sissies, we could argue quite aggressively without it becoming anything requiring interference from anyone in authority, while many of us, myself included, met and married girls from within the office.

What a contrast we see today. Health and Safety has expanded to a ridiculous extent, far more than is justified by the reality, while that accursed non profession HR has spread like the plague throughout organisations, producing absurd policy documents, which only hamper effective working, and which most people ignore whenever they can. HR is responsible for making mountains out of mole hills when it comes to inter personnel relations, setting up inquiries to examine what we would once have regarded as trivial disputes. Far from being a department like Personnel, which tried to help staff, HR is an arm of management, allowing senior officers to keep their distance when implementing policies which treat staff unfairly. As far as romance in the office is concerned it would be a bold young man to make advances to a girl he found attractive, as the sexual Thought Police would be on him like a ton of bricks.

This increasing crushing of normal life is of course now everywhere, as the right of people to exercise free speech is more and more constrained by the metropolitan elite, aided and abetted by the morons of social media, with ‘twitter storms’, and cancel culture treated as valid by a weak, incompetent media, and enforced by politicians frightened to stand up for the values which this country has always represented. The Free Speech Union must now be at risk of overwhelmed by the number of people seeking help in opposing these fascists of the Left. We must not allow the latter to say “you can’t say that” without saying “Oh, yes I can”, and cease to listen to the whining from vanishingly small sexual minorities.

When we dare to oppose the rewriting of history by know nothing activists, or resent attacks on our heroes such as Winston Churchill and Douglas Bader, by those who would be living in a Nazi nightmare but for them, we are accused of being at best reactionary, or even of being Nazis. We now see what have been described as ‘blobs’ undermining our nation, via the education system, the health service and the civil service.

When I think of the brave men and women of previous generations who rallied to the colours, or stoically endured massive privations to save us from foreign tyrannies I have only absolute contempt for the pathetic wimps who now infest our universities, with their demands to ‘feel safe’, as they are too feeble to tolerate the idea that their opinions might not be shared by everyone. Clearly there are limitations on what the government can do to deal with these inadequates, particularly as they are often supported by the useless university authorities but, if I were PM, I would be seeking to cut off all funding to any educational establishment which yielded to their demands, while introducing policies aimed at ridding the country of the hundreds of Mickey Mouse degrees on offer, and forcing jumped up polytechnics to cease to be described as universities. Boris is not alone in the political class in avoiding this subject, but it is a matter which a truly determined Conservative politician should be addressing.

The bureaucrats in the NHS go their merry way, wasting vast sums on administration, while resisting any attempts to reform, while the upper echelons of the civil service continue their campaign to undermine Brexit.

The latest spat between a Left liberal Mayor of London and a ‘right on’ Metropolitan Police Commissioner would be funny, were things not so serious. Cressida Dick should never have been appointed head of the Metropolitan Police after the operation she directed as leader of Gold Command led to the death of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes, an appointment condemned by his family. Nevertheless the desire of our political class to display their politically correct credentials ensured that they preferred to select the first female head, regardless of other issues.

Now that she is retiring there is an opportunity to make fundamental changes to the Met, returning it to its proper function of fighting genuine crime, but the continued dominance of the so called progressives makes such action unlikely. Unfortunately TV’s DCI Hunt is a fictional character, but it is his model of policing which would restore common-sense to the force, although whether any such as he could exist under the modern leadership is doubtful. An end should be put to the growing power of what is an embryonic Thought Police, spending time pursuing innocent citizens for using their right of free speech to oppose the nostrums of the politically correct, while the use of trained constables for monitoring computer crime should be stopped, a separate expert agency, on the lines of GCHQ, being created for such matters, who, once having established the details, could pass the evidence to the police for final action. The public wants the police to be visible on the streets, dealing with both petty and major crime, not sitting in offices looking at computers, or attempting to intimidate law abiding citizens by ‘checking their thinking’, as has happened on more than one occasion. However I do not think anything will change until we have a government that is not in thrall to the vociferous activists of the Left. Whether that will ever be the case is, at best, doubtful.

The government has signed up to the ludicrous Green agenda, which is set fair to totally undermine our economy, forcing people to abandon their cars, and to pay through the nose for energy, all to follow a theory based on the false premise that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere drives climate change, when an impartial examination of the scientific evidence, and the historical record, reveals that this is totally false.

When I was young we had serious politicians like Attlee and Churchill dealing with matters of true importance. Now we have a bunch of lightweights obsessing over rubbish such as ‘cakegate’. If this country is to survive in any recognisable form the ordinary, decent, normal people must fight back against those destroying it, whether they be the liberal left, or the lunatics who subscribe to the so called ‘woke’ agenda. I am sure that I am not alone in being sick of the nagging busybodies who seem to think that they have the right to order decent people about.

We will receive no help from the biased belly speakers of the BBC, or from politicians who know little, and care even less, of what the electorate really wants. We need leadership, not appeasement of the lowest common denominator with the biggest mouths!

Sajid Javid's decision to pull back from forcing frontline NHS staff to be vaccinated or leave their jobs is a victory for the Workers of England Union, NHS100 and belatedly common sense. It is mendacious to claim that the evidence before the Health Secretary on COVID-19 is materially different to what was known in December 2021. Angelique Coetzee,...

 Whilst Plan B restrictions are now lifted in England, the Coronavirus Act, which grants the government sweeping draconian emergency powers, inter alia lockdowns, vaccine passports, work from home orders and mask mandates remains live legislation until 25th March 2022 when it is due to be renewed or it will expire. The government could termina...

Who could have predicted that of all the Downing Street scandals of the last two and a half years, the parliamentary Conservative party would finally divide...over an actual party? In the name of public health, Boris Johnson and his government punitively repealed and restored basic civic autonomies as they pleased. Now it transpires that at a time ...

DFor libertarians, it has been another alarming week as the political class continues to use emergency measures to control their populations and the COVID-19 narrative. In France, (absolutely not because there is a presidential race in April), Emmanuel Macron has admitted he wants to "piss off" his country's 5M unvaccinated, exacerbating the divide...

On 7th January 2022, as the new law requiring NHS staff to be 'fully vaccinated' against covid-19 came into force, Health Secretary Sajid Javid was visiting King's College Hospital in London. Meeting some clinical staff, he was challenged by consultant Steve James, who calmly and rationally explained why the 'no jab no job' policy is nonsensical. D...

This country's change from consuming sugar derived from sugar cane, which Britain historically purchased from its old colonial territories, to consuming sugar extracted from sugar beets from about 1973 onwards has slowly but surely greatly contributed to this country's obesity problem S Davies 2nd September 2017   I pose the question of w...