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Many A True Word

Taxes and Theft

Last week I created this snarky meme after the Labour Party won the general election in Britishland:

And it was meant to be a bitter joke.  (The tarty redhead is Labour’s Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner).  So imagine my interest when this little snippet appeared in the news a few days later:

How to protect your money if Labour mounts an inheritance tax raid on pensions

Pensions, for example, have been a safe haven for those who want to pass on their wealth without the taxman taking a cut. And millions of people have ploughed money into their retirement savings with this in mind. But even this last bastion could now fall into the clutches of inheritance tax.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been urged by policy wonks to consider an inheritance tax raid on pension pots, amid rising pressure to meet public spending targets. Leading think tanks have told her the move could raise up to £2 billion a year in takings from grieving families.

So, as the title of this post suggests, sometimes the jest turns into reality.

Basically, the takeaway is this:  any chance the Communists can get to steal your money and / or property, they’ll grab it in their greedy little claws.

The Sweetness Of Doing Nothing

Fine Art

…or Il Dolce Far Niente, as the Italians would have it — and why not? it’s about as Italian an attitude as one can get, where there’s an alternative to being busy.

I consider myself something of an expert on the activity, because for example nothing spells “vacation” better than lying on one’s back, emptying the mind of, well, everything and just looking at the sky.  I can and have done that many times in my life, and only some vestigial Protestant work-ethic guilt keeps me at all busy.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

Instead, I want to point you to English artist John William Godward, who exemplifies to me the late-Victorian art movement that bypassed the strict Puritanism of the era, simply by virtue of the fact that one could show the naked or semi-naked female form without censure, provided that it was couched, so to speak, in some kind of Classical allegory.  (“Venus In The Mirror”, for example, has been used as an artistic fig leaf for centuries.)

Well, Godward’s family didn’t much care for this attitude, and when he went to live in Italy with one of his models, they pretty much erased all memory of him out of their lives (literally;  they cut him out of all family photographs;  and as such, there are apparently no photos of him in existence).  Anyway, they wanted him gone out of their lives, and he granted their wish by committing suicide at age 61.

Godward is famous for his painting entitled Il Dolce Far Niente, and in fact used it as a theme for a great many of his later works.  Here’s the first:

And a few other examples in the same vein:

I love that he captures the feeling of dreamy indolence of a summer’s day in Italy — note the classical clothing and setting of each — along with a subtle underplay of eroticism.  (In turn-of-the-century Britain, by the way, there would have been nothing at all “subtle” about it, hence the scandal.)

Of course, he didn’t stop there.  Still in that disguise of Classicism, here are a couple more daring visions:

And of course, there were those works which threw away all pretense at Classicism (and clothing too):

To modern eyes, Godward’s style might seem stilted and unrealistic, perhaps.  But at the time he painted them, that’s about as “modern” as they got.

I like just about every work he ever created.

Millions And Millions

Elections

There’s been a lot of harrumphing about Elon Musk setting up a “Super PAC” (political action committee) to channel tons of moolah into the Trump reelection campaign (here’s one take).

Of course, the Communists aren’t going to take this lying down, oh no.  Expect to see a lot of “Musk is evil” opinions emanating from the Left, and “a few people influencing and endangering our democraceh” wailing.  (Standard Left procedure:  if you can’t overcome the ideas, demonize the characters.)

Of course, when the Left does the PAC thing, it’s all well and good.  Zuckerberg spending millions to enable (possible fraudulent) voting drives?  No biggie.  Soros funding campaigns of other Commies in key state positions?  Why not?

But let a few conservative rich guys do the same for their candidate?  Oh no, that has to be stopped.

Fuck ’em, and the hypocritical horse they rode in on.

Yeah, Whatever

Business, Marxists

It appears that the brand-new Brit Foreign Secretary doesn’t have too high an opinion of our next President:

Britain’s newly installed top diplomat [David Lammy] has refused to back down from his past comments branding Donald Trump as a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”.

Considering that he’s part of the Labour (a.k.a. Socialist) Party, that’s unsurprising.

What will be surprising (to him) is how Trump responds to this kind of non-diplomatic speech.

Because Trump is an Anglophile, he’s unlikely to expel the Brit Ambassador and freeze out the Labour Government — which is what I would do in similar circumstances — and to be frank, he’s heard worse from our own local Socialists.

Anyway, the real power in Britishland is not in the Labour government, but amongst the financiers in the City.

Kinda like the bond traders in Manhattan, really.

But understanding reality has never been a strong suit on the Left.  Just wait and see, for example, what happens when they re-nationalize Britain’s railways.
(Can you spell “C-A-T-A-S-T-R-O-P-H-I-C  F-A-I-L-U-R-E”, children?)

And the Izzies, of course, know exactly what side their bread is buttered on:

“Israelis and the prime minister remember very, very well the incredible support which President Trump, while he was in office, gave to this country,” said Israeli government spokesman David Mencer.

After the foreign policy failures of FJBiden’s administration, I suspect that more than a few countries feel the same way as Israel, and not like Britain.