Chris Whiteside for the North

During the 2024 General election I had a number of emails from electors in Leeds North East, where I was the Conservative candidate, challenging me on the prediction in my election literature that Labour would raise taxes if they were elected. This prediction was based on the work of analysis at Conservative Campaign HQ who were convinced, as were then Conservative minsters from Rishi Sunak down that Labour could only deliver the programme in their manifesto if they raised taxes. I can't take credit for actually drafting that section of my election address but it went out in my name because I agreed with it and was prepared to own it. And the prediction was right. Labour raised National Insurance by £40 billion in their first budget. Last year they said they would not need to raise taxes again. But this week they did raise taxes again - another £26 billion on income tax by extending the freeze on tax threshold. Even Rachel Reeves admits this measure will hit working people. They hi...

 

The Jewish shopkeeper in this picture from Germany in 1933 is called Richard Stern - and he's wearing an Iron Cross awarded for serving in the German Army in World War One as a Nazi thug stands guard outside his shop as part of a boycott of Jewish businesses. . You can see from the wry smile of Richard Stern's face that the man had incredible guts. It's the brown shirt, not the shopkeeper, whose demeanour radiates fear and tension. This post is taken from a tweet by  Archaeo - Histories on X here  which reprinted an article in the Jewish Observer. After being awarded the prestigious Iron Cross for his service in the German army during World War I, Richard Stern was driven out of his home country by the Nazi regime. MyHeritage’s Research team discovered records of him arriving at Ellis Island at the age of 40 in May 1939 — narrowly escaping the beginning of the war.  In 1942, when Stern was 43 and not yet an American citizen, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to join the war ef...

 

  From "For the Fallen" by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21 September 1914. Image posted by the Royal Family in their Remembrance Sunday message.

  "If one is remembered by a Friend, one is never truly gone." (Grand Admiral Thrawn: the passage below from which this quote is taken forms the first words of the  the Epilogue of Timothy Zahn's novel "Thrawn." In context these words are clearly about exile, not death. Thrawn himself had been exiled from the Chiss Ascendancy to the Empire: he had written these words in a journal he gave to his friend Eli Vanto who was going into exile in the opposite direction, from the Empire to the Chiss Ascendancy. However, I find the comment to be equally relevant to All Soul's Day. For what is death if it is not an exile from the world of the living?)