Free Citizen

2025-04-29

What do we think of QUANGOs?

No really, what do we think?

Are they an undesirable unaccountable but essentially just a peripheral part of our machinery of government that we don't really understand much about, but we suppose don't do too much damage?

Or are they a terminal cancer on the body politic that is sucking the lifeblood out of our economy?

Given the recent revelations by DOGE from across the pond, should we be worried that the UK has exactly the same problem, a problem that may amount to authorised looting by corporate crime with the tacit or even perhaps open connivance of the government / civil service?

Does the fact that the title of this article seems incongruously inapplicable to the subject in hand  offer us a hint?

"These organisations are designed to operate independently from ministerial control

2025-04-29

Investor's Daily (previously Fortune and Freedom, but now rebranded - no, I don't know either) favours us with another timely review of various aspects of the current economic situation.

As always, the economics pay for the politics, so you can't assess one without the other, or the other without the one.

Whilst not specifically pertinent to today's news, it does review the general balance of economics and where developments may be expected.

As is now usual, we get two articles for the price of one.

Plus I have thrown in another about Europe, for good measure.

Enjoy.

2025-04-28

The "Holy Father" 's funeral arrangements come in for some analysis, as do some of the lack-of-power figures that still inhabit the EU and UK, still seemingly hopeful to recapture "past glories". Would you bet on it?

By coincidence (divine timing?) Fall of the Cabal release their latest video exposing the history of the Roman Catholic Vatican. Is today's Vatican fundamentally different, even if  they have stopped overtly burning heretics to death in the town square (for which we are grateful)?

With a world in flux anything could and may well happen; although the threat of war with Iran seems to be subsiding, the threat of war between India and Pakistan seems to be growing.

So a fast-paced scenario emerges where the absence of Pope Francis creates opportunities, which will no doubt unfurl in due course.

2025-04-27

The Duran treat us to their view of the world situation, and the UK may be leading the way... but we need to be clear whither we are going.

"... the fall of Britain is going to be a very very tumultuous event, not just for Britain..."

"... it's very important to get the UK back into the EU... "  'despite Brexit' (!)

"... I think they are desperate to get into that mess..."

(65 minutes)

Like / Dislike this video here.

2025-04-26

This "unprovoked" conflict should perhaps be seen in a different light if this report of the deliberations of the ECHR are to be believed.

The so-called Maidan Revolution of 2014 was an horrific and bloody affair, with (reportedly) gunmen firing into crowds, and much else as described in the linked article.

After the change of government, internal sporadic conflict took place almost continuously, despite the negotiated Minsk Agreements 1 and 2 which should have ended the fighting.

The Greyzone reports.

2025-04-26

Promethean Action discusses the current state of world negotiations.

They don't field the most engaging of presenters (which is why you won't often find them on my pages), but they do seem to be blessed with sound logic and common sense. 

Make up your own mind...

(14 minutes)

2025-04-25

Martin Geddes isn't happy to solve the immediate problem, he wants to delve deeper to identify and resolve the underlying cause(s) so that the problem or family of problems will not happen again (or if it does it will fail safely - you can tell he cut his teeth in IT!).

That in principle is simple enough in the context of IT, although IT is now infamous for being constructed of many layers of abstraction, with appropriate software to manage the operation of each layer.

When I started in IT it was possible to understand almost every layer and how it worked... but nowadays nobody understands more than a few - those that are of special significance for the individual. The rest can wait until we are forced to grapple with an unfamiliar error message!

Real-world systems are also multi-layered, even a trip to the shops may involve operating the garage, getting the car out, navigating and driving and operating the car's controls (three or more quite distinct

2025-04-25

Mike Robinson and Patrck Henningsen review the influence of Britain on Zelensky's Ukraine, and how Starmer and Von de Leyen may intend to find sufficient troops to match their unclear and probably unachievable military ambitions now that Donald Trump has spiked his NATO guns.

Is there any evidence that they understand how warfare has changed since the Maidan coup that set these ill-fated wheels of war in slow-burn motion? 

Or must we expand Margaret Thatcher's dictum along the lines of "the trouble with socialists is that they only stop fighting when they run out of other people's  troops"?

And is Zelensky really a British agent?

If, as is now becoming

2025-04-25

In what may turn out to be a last hurrah for the deep state, Dr Reiner Fuellmich, of the original Corona Investigative Committee, who did so much to investigate and bring to light the circumstances behind the Coronavirus pandemic, has been convicted following a questionable trial where the rule of law appears to have been contorted beyond reason simply in order to ensure his conviction.

See the Covid Court of Public Opinion:

2025-04-25

Can we believe everything that we read in the media?

Can we believe the stuff that we don't read in the media?

Can we believe what the government tells us? Or is there a reason that politicians (and estate agents) reportedly rank lowest in the public mind for being trustworthy?

Should the media join them?

After the Covid exercise where the media slavishly and without any qualms parroted the official lines (lines which completely contradicted all previous official notions of how to deal with a pandemic), many more people are now awake to the fact that something isn't free about our "free press".

Of course many stories are routinely rubbished as being by and for crackpots and "conspiracy theorists" who have an insane paranoia where trust of official

2025-04-23

The many manifestly idiotic delusions associated with the drive to save the world by the elimination of the gas of life might be sufferable were they to be at least sensibly arguable, but as many are beyond the reach of rational thought, there comes a point at which the inner human must for sanity's sake emit a silent thought-scream - "Please just MAKE IT STOP!".

However as I am conscious that 'we all know' that the Green agenda is vital for the extinction of humanity before the world reaches another 1.5^oC (I may not have that exactly right - it may have been changed to 2^oC whilst I had a momentary lapse of attention - but it somehow feels right) I must draw attention to another unforeseen obstaclewhich I'm sure requires urgent research and investigation lest it impede the important onward march toward green technocracy (donations please to the usual address, and don't

2025-04-23

As a committed nationalist brought up in the United Kingdom with a dual Parliament (House of Commons, House of Lords) under the Monarchy, I have deplored the proliferation of devolved parliaments for the other nations that cohabit within the UK. It was always going to divide allegiances as a step towards a "Europe of the regions" for which almost nobody in the country was ever clamouring. There was no popular support, but plenty of politicians wanted it - after all, it was more "jobs for the boys".

So in principle I have never supported the idea that the UK needs yet another talking-shop where politicians can leverage "local grievances" - largely manufactured for the purpose. And if the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly are anything to go by, I'm a long way from being convinced that they work in any way better than the Westminster versions.

But there is one possibility that might under the right circumstances gain my support...

(15

2025-04-23

Yanis Varoufakis and Jeffrey Sachs review the current World for DiEM25.

What will they make of the world at the end of the era?

What do they foresee and what do they think we should be doing in the new era?

Will it be "same as the old era"?!

Pin back your ears and make yourself comfortable for two of the world's leading non-conformists...

"All problems in the world go back to the British"

Ouch!

(1hr 40 mins)

The United States is the Problem, Not the Solution

2025-04-23

Martin Geddes has been waging his one man legal crusade to expose and ultimately invalidate the legal mechanisms that are used to bewilder the unprepared, who are "taken to court" by a due-process-free system (= "taken to the cleaners").

"... no process has authority unless it first proves its standing in truth. This is the difference between tyranny and order..."

"I have asked the AI engine to reverse engineer the implied doctrine I am working with, so that others can see how I am working, and adapt and improve it"

Not to mention using it for themselves.

"This elevates the use of AI above mere productivity... it becomes a high-level thinking partner"

So if you feel like taking on a challenge...

2025-04-23

The last working blast-furnace in the UK is going down.

Can nothing be done to save it?

Short of shipping it to China (where cheap coal is abundant) as a free gift, probably not.

After all, it requires coking coal that it could have had locally from a proposed mine in Whitehaven - but that conflicted with the Government's Net Zero policy so it couldn't.

So instead of giving it a viable source of supply, the government in its infinite wisdom sought to give the Chinese owners a £500m bung (for a totally impracticable "conversion to green energy") if they would only take the problem off its hands, an offer which the Chinese, being sensible businessmen (whether also CCP spies or not), could plainly see wouldn't make the business viable.

2025-04-22

Here Clif High continues on from Emerging Now (in 2025) to look further ahead into the start of the new era, to the next twenty or so years to 2046. Yes, it's not 'business as usual' any time soon, or ever! Will David Milliband have achieved Net Zero by then?

Emerging Now - Part 3; part 1(yet more qualia - grist for our mill)

Read on Substack (16minutes)

Emerging Now: Part 3, part 2 (

Emerging Now - The New Era - The Age of Aquarius

2025-04-22

I've never heard of Perplexity.ai, but it sounds like it might be appropriately named.

Patrick Wood (of Technocracy News) explains what he asked it for and what he got.

" ... they don't want my voice heard anywhere on the internet ... "

Maybe there's something in this AI lark after all...

2025-04-22

As one might expect, it's a little less forceful here than in the US, no doubt because Elon hesitates to involve himself in the internal affairs of another nation, but from small beginnings do large happenings grow.

And who can seriously dispute the need for a UK "War on Waste"?

No doubt Sir Humphrey would be apoplectic at the idea that his fabled Civil Service - the "Rolls Royce" of government support and administration - might benefit from a bit (or a lot) of slash and burn; but maybe, in the words of the song, "the times they are a-changing".

My only fear is that the project may be in danger of overwhelm - the occasional stories of totally profligate, even illegal, waste that sometimes leak out into the open speaks of a hidden mountain range, vast tracts of unnecessary expenditures that probably continue long after the initial needs