The Other Side MIA

The Divine Sarah has just returned from her native Portugal, and reports as follows:

One of the scariest things about the trip to Portugal was talking to people and realizing they’re living in an alternate reality.

You know, all the things that the Junta has tried to sell, and push? From “We’re in a booming economy” to “Biden is a patriot who stepped down to save the nation” to “Trump is a criminal” to “The refugee crisis is the result of global warming” ALL OF IT is being bought wholesale in Europe.

Now as a caveat to this, actually two of them: My family is now very much what would be considered “laptop class”, i.e. they are all credentialed professionals of some description, who therefore pride themselves on being “well informed” a lot of which consists of following our MSM (NYT, CNN, etc) and the Portuguese translations thereof. And I was mostly associating with them, save for listening in when we were in public, as I pretty much do all the time out of habit and because I like to know what people “really” think.

However, as far as I can tell even if not uniform, Portugal — which probably means most of Europe — at least as far as its educated classes go, is taking the pap our MSM spews as the gospel truth. You literally can’t tell them the truth without their thinking you’re a complete lunatic. I.e. the reality on the ground here in the US seems to them like something out of the left field that we’re just saying for shock value.

Keep that in mind when you hear of all the European love for Kamala-rama-lama-ding-dong.

The thing is that Europeans (including Brits) have  been accustomed to people telling them what to do (and to read, and to think, and to say) for so long that now, when it really counts, there is no “counter-culture” such as we have Over Here:  no equivalent of PJMedia, RedState or Breitbart News, no conservative radio (e.g. as practiced by the much-missed Rush Limbaugh or even the still-living Sean Hannity), or fearless “alternative” bloggers with an enormous following such as Instapundit, and precious few independnet small blogs such as this one.

So in the absence of all that, all they have is state-controlled electronic media and leftwing-sponsored newspapers like Le Matin, Der Spiegel and so on.  (I was amazed at how Lefty even Austrian newspapers were, the last time I was there, and Austria is easily one of the more conservative Euro countries.)

Small wonder that they believe the bullshit thrown at them about Glueball Wormening, Ev Inevitability and untrammeled Third World immigration as a benefit.

So of course, when confronted by the New Counter-Culture (as espoused by leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders and Giorgia Meloni), they are utterly bewildered by such strange concepts because they have never been exposed to them before — and strangeness, as we all know, leads to fear, opposition and resistance, if not outright rejection for no other reason other than strangeness.

And as Sarah so correctly points out,the funny thing is that while European society is living in an alternate reality, they are convinced that it is we who are.

The prognosis for Europe is not heartening, just as it will not be happy for us if the upcoming vote is fixed to provide another four years of BidenHarrisObamaClinton policies.

Touring Britishland

I’ve done this a lot (not as much as my several Brit Readers, of course, but certainly as much or more than most Murkin tourists).  So when in response to my post about The George last week, Reader Raven comments:

“We need to know what is the best car to tour rural England [and its pubs – Kim]. And with whom.”

…I need little or no prodding to get this one on paper, so to speak.

Some ground rules first.

There will be no travel on any highway beginning with the letter “M” (M25, M4, M1 etc.) because 1) there are no pubs located on any of them, and 2) if you think road construction in Michigan during the summer is bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ until you hit a 25-mile-long highway construction zone (with only about a half-mile’s worth of actual construction taking place therein) in the British fog and/or rain.

Forget that nonsense:  we’ll be taking (at least) the “A” and “B” roads.  And just in case you don’t know:  the higher the number following the prefix, the smaller/narrower the road.  The A4 (London to Bristol old main road), for example, is mostly a two-lane affair with only occasional widening to accommodate turnoffs or city traffic.

By the time you get to, say, the B237, it’s likely to be a single-lane thing, with a tarred surface being an optional extra.  This is the two-way approach road to The Plough Inn in Cold Aston, Oxfordshire, just off the A436:

So forget anything wide, and a large engine will just gulp petrol (currently at $15/gallon US) without getting you there any faster.  And you won’t be able to park your behemoth in any pub’s parking lot, if indeed it has a parking lot at all.

So you end up parking in the street.

Good luck with that.  Also, unless you do this tour in summer (when the traffic is absolutely terrible, on just about any road in Britain), expect rain — so no soft tops / drop heads, especially on the older types, which leak.

So here we go.  First, the car choices, starting with the Top 5, and in no specific order.

Lotus Elan +2 (1971)

MGB GT (1968)

Triumph GT6+ (1971)

Jaguar E-type 42 (1970)

(I know I said no soft tops;  but to drive an E-type around Britain?  I’d take my chances.  My game, my rules).  And finally:

Jaguar XK120 (1952)

All the usual caveats about , leakages and reliability apply.

Let’s look at the Top 5 Traveling Companions, who would have been in their prime during the vintage of most of the above cars:

Shirley Ann Field

Susan Hampshire

Belinda Lee

(By the way, Belinda Lee died tragically in a car crash, aged 25)

And two Brit models of more recent vintage, for those who can’t imagine the Oldies in their prime:

Amy Beth Hayes

Ashley James

And one car of more recent vintage with which to drive either of the above two youngins around in:

Morgan Plus 4

Yeah, I faked you out;  but it is a 2021 model, after all.

I know Britain’s a small country, but equipped with any combination of the above cars and womenfolk, I suspect it would take one absolute ages to compete the tour.  And then there are the pubs…

Speed Bump

I saw an article about how expensive car rental has become in Yurp, but in fact it seems to have become more expensive in Britishland.

A cursory look showed me that a 7-day rental in Vienna would run about $450 (base cost before add-ons), whereas at Heathrow the same car would cost $800.  Seriously?

Unlike a lot of people, I have no problem with driving in Europe or the U.K., so a rental car is always preferable to waiting for trains or buses.  (Not in the cities, of course, but around the country to small towns and villages.)  Even Britain’s perennial parking problems don’t really worry me, and I really prefer the freedom of the open road.

When I stayed at Free Market Towers back in 2017, I rented a car which, if memory serves, cost me about $320 per week, fully loaded (insurance etc.) and I fondly imagined that the next time I get Over There, I’d be able to afford the same.

Fat chance, at those prices.

And train travel has become prohibitive too, not just in Britishland but also in Yurp;  but I’m not interested in just staying in cities (ironically, other than maybe Vienna).

So here I sit:  proper fucked, as the Brits say.

Stop It, You’re Killing Me

…and if you live in upscale areas in Los Angeles, that might be “literally“:

Crime has risen dramatically in Los Angeles, as well as in many other major cities, since the start of the pandemic and last summer’s protests against police violence resulted in the slashing of many law enforcement budgets. News stories document rising fear across LA and crime has become the major issue in both the upcoming mayor’s election and a possible recall of the district attorney. It may not be surprising that issues of race and class are driving this concern, though they have a new twist.

Wealthy and predominantly white neighborhoods have experienced the sharpest upticks in a wide array of crimes.

It shows that the richer and whiter the area, the greater the increase in both raw crime totals and percentages of total city crime. This includes a wide range of felonies, from robbery, burglary, shoplifting and car theft to aggravated assault and rape.

California voters have moved the needle on crime in recent years. Proposition 47 decriminalized a number of theft and drug charges, making them misdemeanors, as it did several “non-violent” felonies. Voters also approved Proposition 57, which allows for early release of non-violent offenders.

Imagine that:  you vote to decriminalize all sorts of crime, and those types of crime increase and the goblins goes to where da money izz (/Willie Sutton).  Read the article for the breakdowns.

Who could have seen that coming?

Well, nobody except the 70-odd million people who voted for Trump last time around.

And stop giggling like little girls, you lot;  it’s unbecoming.

Turning Brownouts Into Blackouts

In the latest insanity emanating from California, we see this:

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed a regulation aimed at “Small Off-Road Engines” on Thursday that will ban the sale of portable generators in the state — which includes generators mounted in recreational vehicles.
The ruling bans the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers in the state beginning in 2024. Portable generators will be required to meet more stringent standards in 2024 and meet zero-emission standards starting in 2028.
In the 2024 model year, portable generators will have to improve their efficiency by somewhere between 40% and 90%, which seems unrealistic in such a short period of time, so the reality is, it will be very hard to find a generator in Cailfornia in two years.

The song will be rewritten to show that the lights all went out not in Massachusetts, but California.

Morons, fools, imbeciles.


N.B.:  Insty wants to open up a portable jennie store in Nevada, just over the CA border.  Won’t work:  California will be stationing some Stasi state agents in the parking lot to report the car numbers back to the Fuehrer HQ , and woe betide the CA plates caught “smuggling” generators back into the Dark State.)