Friday 24 December: Whatever time we eat it, we shall be sitting down to Christmas dinner

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here

647 thoughts on “Friday 24 December: Whatever time we eat it, we shall be sitting down to Christmas dinner”

    1. Good morning BoB! Spoke to my dear friend yesterday, and she was at the Christmas Fair at the Mill last weekend!

        1. She was a tourist! From Cheshire! But her daughter and son in law live in Bonsall! One of these days I’ll get there!

          1. She’s probably drove past this place a few times!

            I wonder who they are?
            Mind you, since the brood left Bonsall School, we’ve lost all track of who is in the village!

          3. A time bit. Half the bloody village is listed with most of it being a conservation area!

  3. Many A True Word

    On Christmas morning, a cop on horseback was sitting at a traffic light, and next to him was a kid on his shiny new bike.

    The cop said to the kid, “Nice bike you got there. Did Santa bring that to you?”

    The kid said, “Yeah.”

    The cop said, “Well next year, tell Santa to put a taillight on that bike.”

    The cop then proceeded to issue the kid a $20.00 bicycle safety violation ticket. The kid took the ticket. Before he rode off he said, “By the way, that’s a nice horse you got there. Did Santa bring that to you?”

    Humouring the kid, the cop said, “Yeah, he sure did.”

    The kid said, “Well next year tell Santa to put the dick underneath the horse, instead of on top.”

  4. Boris Johnson says booster jab will be a ‘wonderful gift’ to families. 24 December 2021.

    In his Christmas message released on Friday, Mr Johnson will say: ‘Though the time for buying presents is theoretically running out, there is still a wonderful thing you can give your family and the whole country, and that is to get that jab, whether it is your first or second, or your booster.

    ‘So that next year’s festivities are even better than this year’s.’

    Worthy of Kim Jong-Un at his best!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10341333/Labour-leader-Sir-Keir-Starmer-thanks-key-workers-saving-countless-lives.html

      1. …and that knob’s silly regulations means that his daughter, by his second marriage has lost her waitressing job.

        1. Do you imagine that he cares? The destruction of the economy and family life means little to him. I repeat, what a knob!
          Oops! Manners – Happy Christmas Eve, Tom!

      2. …and that knob’s silly regulations means that his daughter, by his second marriage has lost her waitressing job.

    3. Elsewhere on here it’s reported, thanks, OLT, that the “vaccine” booster wanes after 10 weeks. A jab isn’t just for Christmas, it may last until March.

      1. Morning Korky. The whole thing is a ridiculous scam. I only wonder that everyone else cannot see it!

        1. I am so very disappointed in family and friends regarding this scam. The government’s brainwashing has been accepted and become almost lore, to such an extent that even the people that I care about will not listen to any counter argument. Their anguish when they discover the truth will be incalculable but many will fall into denial.

          1. I received a Christmas card in the post yesterday, the franking on the envelope read, ‘Get Boosted Now’. With the image the other day of all the papers having a wraparound cover pushing the ‘booster’, the multitude of adverts including the deployment of the war criminal Blair I wonder how much taxpayer-funding has gone into this.

        2. If it don’t work and I can’t fix it – scrap it.

          (As my garage man said when I took my car in for a service!)

    1. Comment from GP:-

      Daveylad32 • 30 minutes ago
      One of these trans cunts turns up at Northampton hospital regularly, they all know he’s been convicted for abuse on girls

      Every time it turns up they throw it into a special room and only male staff will go in

      None of it’s official, it’s simple what the staff have had to organise themselves

      It’s disgraceful

      1. On an allied subject. This poor lass died of political correctness. Who the heck thought it was a good idea for women to escort this waste of oxygen?

        “A convicted criminal has admitted killing a prison security officer by kicking her in the head as she was escorting him from his cell following a court appearance.

        Humphrey Burke, 28, who was described as “unpredictable and dangerous”, left Lorraine Barwell, 54, with catastrophic brain injuries when he attacked her at Blackfriars Crown Court in 2015.

        In 2016, he was charged with her murder but was deemed unfit to enter a plea due to mental illness and sent to Broadmoor hospital.

        But during a hearing at the Old Bailey on Thursday, Burke was re-arraigned and admitted manslaughter by grounds of diminished responsibility. He will be sentenced on January 11.

        Ms Barwell, a Serco prison custody officer, had been part of an all-female team transporting Burke from Blackfriars Crown Court following a sentencing hearing on June 29 2015.”

  6. Covid fearmongering has consequences too. 23 December 2021, 8:18pm

    The front pages are starkly different today. ‘Official: Omicron 50% less severe’, says the Mail. ‘Omicron hospital risk is two thirds lower’, says the Telegraph. Even the Guardian’s no doubt distressed headline-writers have had to admit that their earlier vision of another nightmarish wave of disease whacking Brexit Britain might have been a tad overdone. ‘Risk of hospital stay is 40% lower with Omicron variant’, the front page says.

    Actually these figures appear to be rather modest. We have yet to hear of anyone dying from Omicron which bearing in mind the huge numbers who have reputedly contracted it is something remarkable.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-fearmongering-has-consequences-too

  9. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – Has anyone heard whether 100,000 pigs were ever slaughtered, or was this another case of the National Farmers’ Union crying wolf?

    John Sharp
    Great Glen, Leicestershire

    Of the expected slaughter of 100,000 animals it is said that 30,000 have been slaughtered on farms so far. As such they are not permitted to enter the human food chain. Who’d be a pig farmer now?

    1. Of course many will enter the food chain by the back door. Pig workers will have at least a pig each.

      1. Boris Johnson has done nothing to help the pig farmers. They are not to blame, it is the lack of pig slaughterers and meat processors which is to blame. I wonder if our PM’s upbringing is partly to blame for his reluctance to help the pig farmers. BJ commented at the start of the pig problem that “pigs have to die some time”.

        3. Lack of slaughterhouses is a problem forced on us by following EU regulations without any sense. We should have paid for new local slaughterhouses. We still could. But maybe not many Tory chums are in that business?

          1. This was, if I recall, due to the fact that many parts of abattoirs were designed and built on clearances of six feet rather than 2 metres as in the Europe.

            Instead of standing up to the EU regs the British government of the time surrendered to the EU and put a very large number of slaughterhouses in Britain out of business.

            My worry is that the NI Protocol will have the effect of cancelling Brexit and Britain having to go back into the EU with her tail between her legs. Will Liz Truss show that she has the grit to sort this nightmare out?

          2. Hence the widespread F&M outbreak of 2001.
            Infected pigs were driven from Northumberland to Essex to be slaughtered.

    2. This BTL poster has a point:

      Giulia Khawaja
      5 HRS AGO
      Re the letter from John Sharp- I found information on the slaughter of pigs online. One sentence stands out “China no longer accepts pork from the Uk because of Covid”
      Unfortunately the UK and the rest of the world had no choice but to accept Covid from China.

  12. Sky News…..COVID is used “as a weapon” against police officers, as the number of
    assaults against constables is estimated to have reached almost 80 per
    day nationwide.

    They should have remained with the people and not acted like goverment storm troopers.

    2. Don’t spose its anything to do with our natural immune systems being weakened by the shots. Nah, couldn’t be.

      1. I think this is quite deliberate. If our own immunity systems no longer work properly we shall, in effect, all have AIDS and be dependent on the state prescribed injections for ever.

        Who knows? When the sixth or seventh boosters have been injected into 90% of the population the only the unvaccinated will be naturally healthy. As I postulated yesterday, has Bill Gates been repeatedly vaccinated?

  14. SIR – According to the website electricityinfo.org, on December 21 – the shortest day of the year – wind provided just 2.6 per cent of the United Kingdom’s electricity.

    In a sustainable energy future, when we have similar weather with high pressure dominating across Northern Europe, where is the other 97 per cent of our electricity going to come from?

    John Storey
    Edinburgh

    A question we Nottlrs have been asking for some time now…but answers came there none.

    The eye-watering increases in energy prices early next year will cause an explosion of anger when they happen, and yet the government seems content to ignore the problem in the hope that it will go away. They could start by removing VAT, but that’s only 5%. They could also remove all of the cost of so-called green subsidies, but that still won’t do it. Some consumers are going to find the new charges crippling, and many of them will be the elderly, the sick and the frail. And as for industry, those using large quantities of energy are already struggling to compete, and may well go under. Is this government concerned? Apparently not.

    1. First Steel,now Bricks,all imported from China and Pakiland
      The major reason?? Energy costs
      Sheer insanity!!

    3. Covid imported by stealth into care homes only achieved a fraction of the target figures, perhaps the Government is hopeful the cold can boost the figures.
      The great reset must continue, after all our “glorious leaders” has been bought and paid for.

      1. If you buy faulty goods you try to take them back. The bought politicians need to be taken back.

  15. Good Moaning.
    Douglas Murray is a superb writer, but this is one of his best.

    “This narrow obsession with Covid has starved our lives of meaning

    Christmas is a chance to lift our sights beyond entertainment, sport, and the pandemic

    DOUGLAS MURRAY

    23 December 2021 • 9:30pm

    An English vicar went viral this past week. A phrase you don’t have the pleasure of reading every day. The cause was a snippet of a video which went around the internet showing the priest, in church and in front of a Christmas tree, speaking to his congregation “from the heart”.

    He mentioned that he had spent another set of days batting off emails from people about whether or not the church could or should be open over the Christmas period, and he said that he had something to tell people. “We are not a cinema,” he began. “We are not the O2 Arena. We are not a football match. We’re not going to play by those rules. We are a family of brothers and sisters in Christ who come together on a Sunday to worship the living Jesus Christ. Not a football match. Not a film. Nothing like that. I am not going to close our services until I am ordered by law to do so, and even if that happens it will be screaming and kicking.”

    Perhaps one reason why this video took off online was that it was so unusual to hear it in our country from a clergyman of any denomination. From the first lockdowns onwards the leaders of the Church of England and other churches acquiesced to lockdown measures like lambs. And so the churches were shut. During the most isolating and troubling event of many people’s lifetimes, our nation’s churches literally shut their doors. Even private prayer in historic places of worship was forbidden.

    As our country reopened there seemed to be precious little pressure to change that situation. The nation’s garden centres were reopened before the nation’s churches, suggesting an order of priorities that some of us had suspected, but never expected to see so disturbingly proven.

    Some of us expressed our resentment over this state of affairs. But always standing against us were the leadership of the churches, who seemed almost content to be lumped in with various entertainment venues by the Covid-obsessed authorities. This is not to say that many individual clergy and parishes did not do a lot of work during this period, with virtual services and practical volunteering. But in a period in which we were all locked in our houses, many others missed an unparalleled opportunity. An opportunity that may not come along again in this generation: to speak into the silence that exists in our modern culture on issues of meaning.

    For it is the settlement of the modern state that the state does not seek to address such areas. Its role may be to provide the optimal political and societal conditions for meaning to be pursued. But it cannot itself provide such meaning.

    One of the advantages of having an established Church (to slip into government-speak for a moment) is that such a role is effectively outsourced to an accredited provider. And this has always been a disadvantage as well as an advantage for the Church of England. It means that it has a certain head start over some of its rivals but is hampered by an inability to rock the boat. It is one reason why the Church’s leadership today often sounds indistinguishable from any other arm of the state.

    When the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby makes interventions into the life of the nation they are almost always political. His comments during the Cop26 summit were indistinguishable from those of any apparatchik from the Department for the Environment. His recent insistence that people who had not had the Covid vaccine were “immoral” was indistinguishable from the sort of thing that might be said by anyone from the Department of Health.

    In the process, the Church loses sight of the one great advantage it has over almost every other corner of society, which is the ability to speak to the non-political, the non-scientific, the non-rational. What Tom Holland, the historian of Christianity, has praised as the opportunity of the church to talk about “the weird stuff”.

    As the churches keep showing, you certainly can transform the Christian religion into a sort of proto-green movement. An entity which favours environmentalism and various other causes (predominantly Left-wing, it must be said). But the Christian story is not actually about that. It is a strange, bizarre and beautiful story of God coming down to Earth. It is the telling of completely unexpected, almost inexplicable, events. The story of a virgin birth, of a Christ-child, of a single intervention by God into time and, through this intervention, the redemption of mankind.

    What does it mean? Well this has been something that theologians and others will quarrel over forever. And in an age of increasing unbelief, it is inevitable that the literal truth of this story will be doubted and contested by members of the Church as well as those outside it.

    But what it undoubtedly is – and I can say this as a doubter myself – is a doorway through to a completely different realm. To consider the Christian story is to consider the reality of Plato’s cave. The possibility that all we see around us are shadows compared with this blinding, singular light which – if we can only turn around and accept it – has the potential properly to illuminate everything.

    In the past two years our sights as individuals and as a nation have been singularly restricted. Our movements have been restricted. Our priorities have been restricted. And it is perfectly possible that as a result we have become a servile, cringing, limited people: requesting permission to rejoin our loved ones; desiring beyond all things the right to attend a football match or a cinema again one day.

    Yet this cannot be the total of our ambitions or world view. Any more than should be the simple endless search for longevity. After all, what is the value of a life lived long if it is not also lived deep?

    We have an opportunity to consider this question again this Christmas time. Not in an entertainment venue. Not at a football match. But in the places best prepared to answer this call of the heart. In considering once more the story of Christmas. Where something remarkable happened. Something completely unlike everything else.”

    2. What a hero!
      Our village church was also shut and locked for a time. Even when it opened, there was no singing of hymns, surely a vital part of parishioners expressing their faith.
      He mentioned garden centres. I stopped going to our local garden centre because even after ‘freedom day’, they insisted on maintaining their one way route through the place, barriers everywhere to enforce the route, and with many signs warning customers to not turn back.

  16. SIR – I am a great fan of Bendicks Bittermints (as, I believe, is the Queen), but it baffles me why, like many other confectioners, Bendicks sells chocolates by the prime number.

    A box contains 11 chocolates, and so the only way to avoid unfair distribution is to share them among a football team. Twelve is such an easily divisible number, as shown by the standard units of time. Why can’t they just give me one more?

    Tom Ward
    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    Don’t worry, Mr Ward; with inflation now rampant the box will soon contain only ten, and then you will have cause to send more silly letters to the DT…

    1. As Tom Lehrer observed our numeric system would have been far better if we had had six digits on each hand rather than five.

  17. ‘Morning All

    Happy Christmas Eve

    Let’s all kneel to our incredibly benevolent masters who have graciously agreed to take their boot off our necks for at least three or four days…………

    Mystic Rik is not reassured,looking around Europe and especially at Israel the future direction of travel looks ever more sinister 36 million doses for a population of 9 million??

    Can you say quarterly jabs for ever??

    https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1474146159627227141?s=20

    Finland,Austria,France Italy the “othering” of the unvaxxed accelerates remorselessly

    https://twitter.com/ProtecttheFaith/status/1473934661978107911?s=20

    https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1473652484597956610

    https://twitter.com/ClareinItaly/status/1474100469282836487?s=20
    The Fataturk Christmas message “Get a booster to protect your family and the NHS”
    Mystic Rik anticipates next year’s message
    “Get a RFID chip under your skin if you want to shop for food”
    These bastards aren’t giving up yet

    1. If the deployment of RFID chips proves to expensive, perhaps they’ll just resort to a QR code tattooed on the inside of the forearm.

  19. Vaxxing

    Johnson’s words echo those of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said getting vaccinated against coronavirus is a moral issue.
    He said having the jab was an expression of Jesus’s teachings to “love one another” and “love your neighbour”, because of the protection it
    afforded to others.

    Well, that’s all the non-Christians persuaded………………. not to

      1. I cannot understand why any of them loved him back. My wife, a woman of good judgement who knows an attractive man when she sees one, thinks that Boris Johnson is both physically and psychologically repulsive

    2. It doesn’t “afford protection to others”, and since it reduces the symptoms arguably makes it more likely to be passed on.
      Arse.

    3. Did Jesus peddle dodgy potions for profit on a zero liability contact? I seem to’ve missed that part of the Bible.

    4. The “vaccine” and the lockdowns, the seizure of total control of the lives of ordinary people is the work of the Adversary carried out by his minions, likely including Soros and Gates. those who speak up in support of these actions are either dupes, unthinking, or accomplices of Satan. The Christian churches have now been infiltrated. This Archbishop is an example. The Catholic Church seems to be on th verge of schism. It’s not good.

    5. Strange that the injunction to “love one another” in the Bible didn’t appear to include joining in a dodgy experiment.

  20. Morning all, I would just like to wish all fellow Nottlers a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

    I hope Santa brings each and every one of you what you wished for because I’m sure you have all been good boys and girls.

    2. Morning! Nothing seems to’ve been reported about what happened to the poor dog? They tend to be traumatised and have to be put to sleep?

  22. SIR – My favourite school report read: “Brian should pay more attention in lessons.”

    Bruce MacFarlane
    Harrogate, North Yorkshire

    Nul points for the teacher!

  23. #CovidClownWorld

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c3d3e77278978a5ab9724c6e58164fed329cc6842509d3e4316f3df22d413c0a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/49eec6eddc48bf6d3efc2d7a539963260d1fa723372f4e79c10edd4a871fd117.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a6c85d5d115ddf317bd0b000a7b713efd3bc0daa40eeb19524a0c8e0ef61d7c3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/14e643d2f0f6d4e1a3c67e15767c2ecb3e57bfcafa48dfea547ad7ce07da04f1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f39153dc2792fd37ddeba00ca3a2561c756fc2de084a3bedd59856fdf58025ee.jpg

    1. We could do with someone like gangbuster Eliot Ness (played by the marvellous Robert Stack, above) running this country today.

  26. Logical Paradox
    4 MIN AGO
    After all the vitriolic bashing that Boris has received in the last few weeks, he should at least get a modicum of praise for refusing to shut us all down… despite the scare mongering that fills our media.
    If you look at the rest of Britain and most of Europe, Boris is the most liberal leader out there. He is leading the way out of knee jerk lockdowns. We are also the most vaccinated country in the world, having overtaken Israel….
    Yet still, Boris is reviled every single day… To me it’s beginning to sound a bit like ‘Boris derangement syndrome’.

    * * *

    I agree, although this one correct (for once) decision will not in itself atone for all the other insufferable bolleaux that pours out of No10. Still, it does have the distinct advantage of wrong-footing the Fishwife and that strange chap who, allegedly, runs Wales! (or is there an ‘i’ missing from ‘runs??) I suppose that the law of averages would, sooner or later, mean that Johnson’s got something right.

        1. That’s lovely! I wish we had some! Damp, mild and drab here! Love the new avatar, pet!

        4. Forecast from our friends in Perth Oz 32 degs and a beach picnic at Rockhampton in the arvo 🏝🌅🌞⛱
          And a BBQ in Upper Ferntree Gully Vic high 20’s and a few coldies. 🍻🍺
          But believe me it’s not the same, despite the attraction of the beach on Christmas Day.

    3. As BoB remarks, Mr Frampton is a proper New Forest resident. The Forest is suffering terribly from lack of affordable housing for young people, which has an impact on schools and all sorts of local services.
      Greens aren’t interested in the workers, or indeed in anything other than some dreamy form of Maoism.

      1. When I wasn’t at boarding school I was brought up partly in my mother’s family home in St Mawes and partly in a village near Lymington where my parents bought an idyllic thatched cottage when I was 13 years old. So during the years of my adolescence I spent the summer holidays in Cornwall and the winter and Easter holidays on the edge of the New Forest

        Any chance of buying a house in either of these places was scuppered when a survey came out a few years ago showing that the two places in England with the greatest rise in property prices were St Mawes and Lymington!

    4. As BoB remarks, Mr Frampton is a proper New Forest resident. The Forest is suffering terribly from lack of affordable housing for young people, which has an impact on schools and all sorts of local services.
      Greens aren’t interested in the workers, or indeed in anything other than some dreamy form of Maoism.

  31. As I turned off the latest edition of Christmas University Challenge yesterday evening I wondered whether it was just me, or whether other Nottlrs were tired of teams consisting of mostly media luvvies? Where are the scientists and the engineers – or don’t universities produce such people any more? And as for the seemingly interminable introductions of the smug contestants…

    1. Slebs, innit! Scientists and engineers aren’t slebs, unless you’re called Ferguson, or Whitty or whatever!

    2. Contestants for quizzes are probably chosen as carefully as the audience for Question Time. Any deviance on the application form from PC principles will see it binned!

    3. Contestants for quizzes are probably chosen as carefully as the audience for Question Time. Any deviance on the application form will see it binned!

    5. “Where are the scientists and the engineers…”

      There were more in previous years, including some I’d heard of. This year’s contestants are a dreary lot of nonentities. They’re meant to be people who’ve achieved something notable in life. I had never heard of Adeshola Mos-Shogbamimu before last night. I hope I never hear of her again but I expect I will. Here’s what Wiki says about her:

      She is a regular speaker on women’s rights, law, politics, diversity, inequality and exclusion. Her debut book, ‘This is Why I Resist’, was described in The Telegraph as “an unapologetic declaration that black identity will no longer be defined by white supremacy, and an unfettered call to action to revolutionise the narrative around the black experience in our day-to-day lives.”

      Zzzzz….

      1. Wake up, woman, those you espouse appear to be a thick minority who have contributed not one iota to any form of civilisation that is recognisable in the wider world.

    6. Me too, Hugh. I get sick of the BBC’s agenda of force-feeding us an ever-growing number of media luvvies, all of whom are utter nonentities.

      Another thing that annoys the shit out of me about this programme is the fact that it takes over seven minutes at the start of each episode for those nonentities to wax lyrical about themselves. I now simply fast-forward through all that tedious crap.

  32. 343204+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Friday 24 December: Whatever time we eat it, we shall be sitting down to Christmas dinner

    The common sense minority will be sitting down to a Countrywide peoples UNITED Christmas dinner.

    The high on the hog, political hogs and current supporting cast would have the decent peoples on Christmas Day gruel in blacked out lockdown.

    That will be on the political agenda next year for sure if this odiously treacherous overseeing political fraternity is not taken down along with their supporting main stream media.

    Well meant advice,
    Be aware at Christmas not only of the second coming but also the clicking of the overseers ratchet.

    1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/da2ffb6bc2237a909a59861d3cc01d2ff6dc6e2c0d54174350c425fc6140d6d5.png Precisely, Ogga, and Mary from southern Somerset. No one has EVER eaten anything called “Christmas Lunch” until a recent few halfwit journalists, who have no idea of tradition, started calling it by that absurd name.

      Normal people call the midday meal, properly, dinner, and the main meal in the evening, supper. Cockneys and northern folk still abide by tradition and are not governed by modern fads.

          1. Just you working class Northerners. Sensible upper class people (Southerners) have their dinner in the evening.

            In many modern usages, the term dinner refers to the evening
            meal, which is now typically the largest meal of the day in most Western
            cultures. When this meaning is used, the preceding meals are usually
            referred to as breakfast, lunch and perhaps a tea.[2][12] Supper is now often an alternative term for dinner; originally this was always a later secondary evening meal, after an early dinner.
            The divide between different meanings of “dinner” is not
            cut-and-dried based on either geography or socioeconomic class. However,
            the use of the term dinner for the midday meal is strongest among
            working-class people, especially in the English Midlands, North of
            England and the central belt of Scotland.[12

            Wiki

          2. That’s the problem with you southern softies: always willing to follow the latest fashion or fad in case you feel left out.
            It’s the same in Sweden: they changed their main meal time to the evening but still call it “middag” (mid day) even though it is no longer taken in the middle of the day.
            Social mores will always migrate to suit the zeitgeist of the times. However, to call the main supper meal “dinner”, and invent a new name for the midday meal (“lunch”)
            was not needed. Just ask any Cockney (by definition, southerners) or anyone born in the sensible northern heartlands of the country before you elicit the opinion of
            someone born nearer to Britannia’s arse in the south.
            Happy Christmas, Philip, hope you enjoy your Christmas DINNER. 🎄🎅🔔🍷

          3. We all live in the modern era. It is typical of the lower classes not to face reality. :@)

            Hope you enjoy yours too. Whatever time you have it and whatever you want to call it.

          4. Weird thing, Philip, is that Swedes have theirs on Christmas Eve (tonight). The julbord (Christmas table) is a smörgåsbord of two hams (one smoked, one not); various breads and crackers; cheeses; meat balls, small sausages, a huge gravadlax (cured salmon), up to seven different types of sill (pickled herring) in various sauces, brunkål (brown cabbage), pig’s trotter in aspic, cold cut meats (venison, wild boar), hard-boiled eggs, salads and various pickles. Dessert is rice pudding!

            I’ll cook a traditional English Christmas dinner (roast chicken this year) next week, with a two-year old Christmas pudding.

          5. Danish D-in-L is doing her usual Scandi Christmas Eve.
            Nice fish starters – whoopee.
            And the rice pud with the almond in it.

          6. Does she do the rice pudding (actually it is far richer than a rice pud. with all those grated almonds and cream, isn’t it?) with cherry sauce?

            My ex- used to love it. The kids and I didn’t!

      3. Normal people like us have dinner in the evening and lunch at lunchtime. But Christmas Dinner will be eaten when it’s ready at whatever time that is.

        1. For us, about 3pm. Lasting until the last person rises groaning, to lurch to the sofa and digest the huge meal – somewhat like an anaconda digesting an alligator.

    2. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/da2ffb6bc2237a909a59861d3cc01d2ff6dc6e2c0d54174350c425fc6140d6d5.png Precisely, Ogga, and Mary from southern Somerset. No one has EVER eaten anything called “Christmas Lunch” until a recent few halfwit journalists, who have no idea of tradition, started calling it by that absurd name.

      Normal people call the midday meal, properly, dinner, and the main meal in the evening, supper. Cockneys and northern folk still abide by tradition and are not governed by modern fads.

    3. 343204+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Some have been left with serious heart conditions post jab which in the future will lead to very serious heart problems.

      My take,
      Could the jabbers in the pursuit of the unjabbed be thinking “I could have done a wrong un ere” so if i’m going to suffer,everybody suffers.

    1. Morning, Hugh.

      Another wonderful Matt cartoon that shows clearly just how much the brains of humans have deteriorated in the past century. Lions replaced by pansies (and that’s before I start on those ruling over us).

    1. Good morning Mr G,
      We have expressions in english for what happened, such as ‘thin end of the wedge’ , ‘give them an inch and they’ll take a mile’ and ‘tail wagging the dog’. IIRC the Frankfurt School showed that incomers/immigrants/foreigners change laws in 3 stages; firstly asking for permission for their taboo customs, followed by gradual acceptance of said customs etc, followed by legislation to make them legal and even compulsory.

  36. Uff Da

    “Furthermore, we live in a society that daily conducts its own massacres
    of innocents (over 200 thousand abortions a year in a land of freely
    available contraception, such that in some social groups the number of
    babies aborted is greater than those brought to term) and tens of
    thousands more abused, groomed, exploited, raped while the authorities
    turn a blind eye. We make Herod look like a small-town amateur, and we
    call it ‘a right to choose’, an act of female emancipation. Those who
    live in the darkness indeed cannot comprehend the light or the value of
    life.”
    By 1642 who used to post here

    2. 343294+ up ticks,

      Morning Rik,

      ” and tens of
      thousands more abused, groomed, exploited, raped while the authorities
      turn a blind eye” .

      The likes of JAY report rotherham etc,etc, the political overseers are being given the peoples consent via the polling booth.

      The present odious state of these Isles could never,ever have been achieved without continuing lab/lib/con coalition supporter / voter input.

  37. Christmas Eve. Let us play, “Name the next variant” to pass the time as the sprouts boil for tomorrow…

  39. I listened to the latest offering from Alma Deutscher’s fan club – a TV interview along with a new improvisation from the maestra.

    Grumpy Old Sod, thinking humbug the day before Christmas came up with this critique:

    “It seems to me that these days Alma is hiding from the emotional power of beauty in a grand cascade of acceptable nothingness. Little in either this improvisation nor in the adaptation of ‘Siren Sounds’ said anything to me, telling a story or awakening a passion. Alma said herself it was imagining a holiday and her own thoughts of a beach, self-expression and inward-looking. Me too, as an ex-royal might say in California. It was very grand, yes, and perhaps more accomplished than it has ever been, on a prestigious social level, but it seems to shy away from the mysteries of the human condition she so deftly navigated when first creating her interpretation of ‘Cinderella’.

    Maybe it is a part of growing-up? As a child, one encounters the power of emotion and passion of beauty, All her life, Alma has known how beautiful music is, but for the child it was a mystery. Mysteries can be enjoyed freely because they do not impose on the real world, but merely enhance it.

    Like realising the true nature of Father Christmas, one day comes the dawning dread that we must take onto our shoulders the burden of responsibility for this beauty, along with its consequences, and be capable of nurturing the new life it brings. Whilst lightly treated by the innocent child, whose responsibilities are borne by its parents, the teenager suddenly becomes aware of its weight, and it is scary. Better simply to dream of a rich lifestyle on a beach somewhere.

    Until one is strong and resourceful enough to shoulder the world, it is easier to retreat to superficiality, grandiosity and self-indulgence, which is a mere impersonation of carrying this burden.

    Music takes on the cares of the world and transforms them into something wonderful, giving courage and hope and singing our troubles to God. When all is raged against us, and doom seems the only outcome possible, music can bring down the walls of Jericho and make the birds sing.

    I think Alma is only now beginning to realise her destiny and her honour in stewarding music herself into difficult times, and cannot blame her finding it too daunting to repeat what she innocently played with as a child plays with a skipping rope.

    Maybe the best thing for all of us is sometimes to retreat from the world and rediscover the child, since the child is without fear. Let God take on the heavy burden.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfi-Meo0MFE&fbclid=IwAR2Zxg0T1vzkRh3pBfEt8SUA3gUG56zIqOl3p1QEbkTQAQTo67Euw5DgHWM

  40. Free speech triumph as Court of Appeal rules recording of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ is unlawful

    Former police officer Harry Miller has won a landmark legal battle this week against the police recording ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs) against innocent people for things they have said lawfully. Miller was reported to the police for transphobia in 2019 after tweeting a piece of feminist doggerel that sent up trans women. A police officer visited his house, told him to “check his thinking”, and an NCHI was recorded against his name. Harry first challenged this in the High Court, won a partial victory, then challenged an aspect of that verdict – the bit that said there was nothing unlawful about the recording of NCHIs – in the Court of Appeal and won a second victory. The court ruled that the recording of NCHIs is an unlawful interference in freedom of speech and a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

    We are proud to back Harry Miller in this case. Had he lost and had to pay the other side’s costs, we had pledged to help with that bill, but thankfully that won’t be necessary. Our General Secretary Toby Young was quoted in the Daily Mail and by Guido Fawkes:

    The Free Speech Union is proud to have played a part in winning this landmark victory, but the lion’s share of the credit must go to Harry Miller.

    Thanks to his courage and tenacity, we can all rest a little easier in our beds tonight, knowing the police are not about to knock on our doors because we’ve made an inappropriate joke on Twitter.

    The ruling was widely reported by the Times, BBC, Sun, UnHerd and the Guardian, and our support for Harry’s case was noted in ConservativeHome and the Spectator. Toby wrote in Mail+: “When Humberside Police tried to intimidate Harry Miller, they picked on the wrong guy. They should be policing our streets, not our tweets.” Harry spoke to Spiked following his victory.

    The Times welcomed the verdict with an editorial which concluded: “Once society punishes people for having the wrong opinions, there is no limit to the incursions on freedom that this seemingly benign principle will allow. The Court of Appeal has thankfully sounded the alarm.” Sarah Phillimore and Rob Jessel said the case capped off a year that will be remembered for having turned the tide against the official imposition of trans orthodoxy. You can read our full press release here and the judgment itself here. You can also watch our legal officer Karolien Celie explain the importance of the ruling here.

    Professor Andrew Tettenborn of our Legal Advisory Council wrote of the ruling:

    As a by-product, pressure groups and the easily offended will find it more difficult to silence those they do not like by reporting them to the police. Instead of having to show excessive respect to a complainant just because they are a complainant (or in police speak, a ‘victim’), the latter will now have a great deal more reason to do what they should have done all along and tell complainants, tactfully but firmly, that they cannot become embroiled in the policing of political or social argument.

    Back in 2019, Harry told James Kirkup: “Free speech is a hill that we have to fight on. If we can’t express ourselves freely within the law, none of the other rights we have mean anything.” In recognition of his courage in fighting this case all the way to the Court of Appeal and striking such a major blow for free speech, one of our members has nominated Harry for a knighthood. We encourage our members to write to the Cabinet Office (honours@cabinetoffice.gov.uk) in support of this nomination, as we have done.

    Existing “non-crime” records should now be deleted

    The barrister Adam King warned that existing NCHIs aren’t gone yet, and that the “perception-based recording” of hate incidents hasn’t ended. That’s true, but the College of Policing, which came up with the guidance on the recording of NCHIs in 2014, has already changed its advice in light of the Court of Appeal’s judgment. Until now, every time a hate incident was reported to the police and then investigated, it had to be recorded as an NCHI, even if there was no evidence that the incident in question was motivated by hostility towards another person’s protected characteristic. Henceforth, the recording of NCHIs should be at the discretion of police officers, according to the College’s new guidance, who will have to exercise their judgment in deciding whether the recording of the incident as an NCHI is a proportionate response. We think this means there is a strong case for asking all the police forces of England and Wales to review the NCHIs they have placed on record against people’s names – more than 120,000 of them – and delete those that don’t merit being memorialised in this way and we will be writing to the Chief Constables asking them to do that. Our hope is that rather than embark on this colossal labour, they will simply delete all of them.

    Following the ruling, we joined others in calling for NCHIs to be deleted. Our Deputy Research Director Emma Webb said:

    Given this landmark ruling, which confirms ‘non-crime hate incidents’ represent an unlawful interference with freedom of expression and that their recording on a police database is likely to have a ‘chilling effect’ on public debate, it is only right that all ‘non-crime hate incidents’ be scratched from police records.

    Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that the Government will table an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to curtail the police’s power to record NCHIs and strengthen safeguards on freedom of expression. She said: “Some current practices are having a dangerous impact on free speech and potentially stopping people expressing their views. This amendment will ensure every police officer abides by a code of practice, approved by Parliament, when recording such allegations.”

    That, too, is excellent news. It means the College of Policing’s revised guidance on the recording of NCHIs will have to be approved by Parliament and we will be lobbying Parliamentarians to ensure that NCHIs can only be recorded in truly exceptional circumstances and never in a way that interferes with people’s freedom of expression.

    Anti-lockdown activist Debbie Hicks cleared

    Anti-lockdown activist and FSU member Debbie Hicks was found not guilty of breaching Covid regulations for organising a protest march during lockdown, the BBC reported. Many thanks to all those who donated to her crowdfunder. But the fight isn’t over for Debbie. She has at least three more cases pending.

    Ex-Corbyn aide fined £10,000 in defamation case, while Piers Corbyn arrested for “burn them down” comment

    Countdown star Rachel Riley has been awarded £10,000 in damages for a tweet posted by former Jeremy Corbyn aide Laura Murray.

    Meanwhile, Corbyn’s brother Piers has been arrested for a comment he made about MPs who voted for lockdown measures. He told his supporters: “You’ve got to get a list of them… and if your MP is one of them, go to their offices and, well, I would recommend burning them down, okay? But I can’t say that on air. I hope we’re not on air.” Sam Leith asked if Piers Corbyn really is dangerous and whether this comment really did constitute an incitement to violence.

    Cut “dead white men” from courses or we won’t promote you, UCL academics told

    Academics in grade 8 jobs at University College London have been told to limit the number of “dead white men” included in course material, and “engage” with the university’s ‘Liberating the Curriculum’ initiative if they want to be promoted. We wrote to the Vice-Chancellor, pointing out that this was a breach of academics’ right to free speech and therefore probably unlawful, which prompted the Telegraph to write a story about the dogmatic requirement.

    One academic, who remained anonymous, said staff and students were being hit by a “woke avalanche”. Our founder Toby Young was quoted in the story:

    Insisting that anyone in a grade 8 job at UCL, or applying for one, has to remove ‘dead white able-bodied European men’ from reading lists, ‘check their privilege’ and ‘acknowledge the prejudice baked into their field’ is an infringement of their right to free speech and almost certainly unlawful.

    We were also quoted in the Times and by GB News.

    Meanwhile at Oxford, a commitment to equality may become an “essential criteria” for job applicants, according to a new report prepared by the university’s Race Equality Task Force, which is also planning yet another campaign to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum. The document also recommended that students and staff should “continuously learn” about so-called “microaggressions”.

    Senior Conservatives have recommended Kathleen Stock for a peerage after she was forced out of her job at Sussex by militant trans activists.

    Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman wrote for Quillette about the ideological capture of science, technology, engineering and maths. Anna compared the situation to her life in the USSR.

    A German academic has been suspended by Sciences Po Grenoble for “Islamophobia” after a student campaign against him. President Macron’s government condemned the decision as “Islamo-gauchisme”.

    Trans

    The Scout Association has apologised to Maya Forstater after a two-year investigation for “misgendering”. Forstater had previously raised safeguarding concerns about the Scouts’ transgender policy, which she warned could mark the end of separate sleeping facilities for girls, and referred to a man called Gregor Murray as “he” instead of “they”, his “preferred pronoun”. Sarah Phillimore wrote for the Critic about the safeguarding risk posed by teacher activists “affirming” very young children who self-identify as a member of the opposite sex and want to embark on a course of life-changing medical treatment but lack the maturity or legal competency to make such far-reaching decisions.

    Choreographer Rosie Kay, forced out of her own company for expressing her views on trans issues, has written about her ordeal for UnHerd.

    In the US, two leagues for the broomstick-based Harry Potter sport Quidditch have dropped the name out of embarrassment. The issue? It was created by JK Rowling, who they say is “anti-trans”. Graham Linehan told the Mail on Sunday that a musical version of Father Ted may not be staged unless his name is removed from the credits, even though he created the TV series.

    Comedian, GB News presenter and FSU Advisory Council member Andrew Doyle said that asking somebody for their pronouns was effectively compelling them to pledge allegiance to the trans worldview.

    UCL has severed ties with Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme, and Stonewall founder Simon Fanshawe said the campaign group was pulling people apart, with businesses “panic-buying” diversity training to avoid bad PR.

    Oldham fans banned for “promoting dislike”

    Three football fans have been banned after expressing “negative opinions” about Oldham Athletic AFC’s management, the Mail Online reported.

    Self-censorship in the UK is widespread, poll finds

    A YouGov poll from November, reported by the BBC, found that while just over a third of Brits recognised the term “cancel culture”, 57% nevertheless censor themselves on issues such as trans rights and immigration. Dame Maureen Lipman warned in the same BBC report that cancel culture could spell the end of comedy. She said a “revolution” was taking place and that cancel culture is endemic. That being said, the BBC is actually piloting an “anti-woke” comedy show, featuring many of the comedians who entertained FSU members at our two recent comedy nights. Robin Aitken welcomed the success of GB News in offering an alternative outlet to existing broadcasters.

    The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci has said: “What’s wrong with being offended? It’s good to be offended, because it tests your own beliefs. If you’ve got a certain set of beliefs and you can’t take a joke, those beliefs aren’t as strongly held as you might think.”

    Philip Hensher asked what books we have been denied by a woke publishing industry afraid to publish anything heretical.

    Ella Whelan and Alex Diggins wrote in the Telegraph that cancel culture has come to define 2021. You can watch our Battle of Ideas panel discussion on how to beat cancel culture on our YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe!

    Culture wars

    Telegraph art critic Alastair Sooke spoke to museum directors about weathering the culture war and modern progressive sensibilities.

    Another raft of classic films are having their classifications tightened to “reflect modern sensitivity”, the Times reported.

    An advert by fashion chain Jigsaw has been banned on the grounds that it “objectified women”. It showed a woman wearing boots and underwear climbing over a fence. Former Vogue editor Alexander Shulman ridiculed this decision in the Daily Mail.

    Crackdown on “racist” mountains

    American mountains with “racist” names are to be rebranded. Squaw Mountain in Colorado is to be renamed “Mestaa’ehehe Mountain”, and both Redskin Mountain and Negro Mesa are to be renamed, the Times reported.

    Protecting Freedom of Speech: is it time to revisit the Equality Act?

    We begin 2022 with another Online In-Depth on Tuesday 11 January, when Toby will be joined by an impressive panel of legal academics and practicing lawyers to explore the various ways in which equality law is undermining freedom of expression. If you would like to join us on the night for Protecting Freedom of Speech: is it time to revisit the Equality Act?, register here.

    Sharing the newsletter

    As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today, or encourage a friend to join and help us turn the tide against cancel culture.

    You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below to help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all our members. We’ve published this special video thanking you for your support over the last year.

    Best wishes,

    1. GB News with Mark Steyn had Harry Miller on in the Nigel Farage programme at 7 pm last night. He intends to pursue the attack on the police hierarchy who encourage their officers to pursue these non-crime hate incidents.
      Edwina Currie was also on the programme and she slightly changed my opinion of her. She was very amusing and got on well with Mark Steyn.

    2. Existing “non-crime” records should now be deleted
      They just can’t. The systems won’t allow it.
      But the result can be marked as malicious, for example.
      Besides these do provide a record of vexatious reports and who makes them. There are people listening all day to religious radio channels and looking for Christian run venues to see if they can be offended by service refusal.
      There needs to be some tracking of their activities.

  41. When are more people going to realise they’re being played? I went to a mince pie and mulled wine charity event last evening and a few people didn’t turn up and some who did turn up mentioned that family and friends are having doubts about other events, including Christmas Day because of you know what. Johnson and the members of his cabal can never atone for what they have done to the people of this Country.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5e9aeada17f609d57b49a3f18abe0ead555cb598ace6576399e6bd6ce97a28cc.png

  44. Rachel Riley deserves every bit of compensation for the hard-Left abuse she’s endured
    Ms Riley could have lived comfortably without taking on the vile anti-Semitism of Corbyn’s Labour. She instead made tremendous sacrifices
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/23/rachel-riley-deserves-every-bit-compensation-hard-left-abuse/

    This article shows how the anti-Semitism of the Labour Party must be exposed and extinguished and discusses the fact that the greatest perpetrators of genocide in history – Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot – were all extreme Left Wing socialists or communists.

    BTL Comment

    Some might argue that Bill Gates is promoting a lethal vaccine which will fulfil his aim of reducing the human population to a ‘sustainable level’!

    The scope of this would make Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and other historical figures of the Left seem like amateurs!

    1. I posted this last night. It was the background of the Murrays that caught my eye.
      ________________________________________________________________

      Most of you will have read of the libel case involving Rachel Riley of ‘Countdown’. The defendant was Laura Murray, an activist in Corbyn’s rotten anti-semitic Labour Party. You may not have known of Murray’s background. I didn’t until I read this:

      Rachel Riley deserves every bit of compensation for the hard-Left abuse she’s endured

      Ms Riley could have lived comfortably without taking on the vile anti-Semitism of Corbyn’s Labour. She instead made tremendous sacrifices

      IAN AUSTIN • 23 December 2021 • 12:36pm

      The court case between Countdown presenter Rachel Riley and Labour’s Laura Murray told us so much about the crisis of antisemitism that poisoned the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

      Congratulations and thanks are due to Ms Riley and her lawyer Mark Lewis. The TV presenter and Strictly celebrity could have had a much easier life if she had concentrated on her show business career instead of standing up for herself and the Jewish community so strongly over the last few years.

      She bravely took on the anti-Jewish racists and refused to back down despite the abuse and threats she faced. She demonstrated much more bravery and principle in tackling racism in the Labour Party than many of the party’s most senior members, many of whom now in positions of leadership. Perhaps if they had fought more strongly, she and others would not have needed to. Frankly, they should be ashamed that a TV celebrity showed more political courage in tackling a problem in their party than they did.

      It is extraordinary how Jewish women like Ms Riley, the actress Tracey-Ann Oberman or Members of Parliament like Luciana Berger, Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth or Louise Ellman bore the brunt of the harassment and abuse meted out by the hard left during this terrible period. And let’s not forget how the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg needed a bodyguard just for doing her job at the Labour conference, protection not required by any of her male colleagues.

      Second, Ms Murray was not some insignificant Labour member with an over-active Twitter habit, but part of the hard left leadership, working in Corbyn’s office and as a senior official at the party’s head office.

      Her family connections can’t have harmed her meteoric rise to these positions. Her father Andrew Murray is one of the most senior figures on the far left of British politics, chairing the so-called Stop the War Campaign which argues against Western governments, acting as Chief of Staff to Len McCluskey at Unite which bankrolled the party under Corbyn and even working as one of his closest aides as well. Her mother, Professor Susan Michie, famously sold a Picasso worth £50 million she and her siblings had inherited.

      Ms Murray and her family are not just Labour aristocracy but come from the actual aristocracy too. Despite being a lifelong communist, her father is the son of stockbroker Peter Drummond-Murray, a descendant of the Earl of Perth who held the title Slains Pursuivant of Arms. His grandfather on his mother’s side was Baron Rankeillour, the Governor of Madras and a Tory MP. Professor Michie’s family are just as grand. Her grandfather was the Eton-educated Baron Aberconway.

      None of that prevented the hard-left Corbyn-supporting campaign Momentum from greeting the court’s verdict with the words: “The establishment always closes ranks. Solidarity with Laura Murray, a kind & principled socialist.” According to Momentum’s class-warriors, the establishment figure is not Ms Murray but the self-made Ms Riley whose talents and hard work have taken her from an ordinary background in Southend.

      And isn’t it ironic that left-wing activists called on Ms Riley to donate her damages to a soup kitchen but don’t demand their comrades to donate the proceeds from the sale of the Picasso as well? The whole sorry story shows us so much of what happened to the Labour Party under the hard left: nepotism, entitlement, anti-Jewish racism and hypocrisy.

      Well done to Ms Riley for having the courage to shine a spotlight on it all and exposing the toxic, morally vacuous far-left for exactly what they are.

      Lord Austin of Dudley was the Labour MP for Dudley North between 2005 and 2019

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/23/rachel-riley-deserves-every-bit-compensation-hard-left-abuse

      1. “The lovely Rachel has now been replaced…”

        But only because she’s about to pop one.

        1. Well, she already has popped one, but it will be interesting to see if she every returns there has been a lot of nasty talk from plastic Anne since she took over the chair.

          1. No Amount of plastic surgery would ever make Ms Robinson as spectacularly pretty as Rachel Riley is. It is Rachel’s good looks that fills Anne will jealousy, hatred and spite.

          2. You might have thought the people who run the show might have had a better candidate than her, she is absolutely horrible.

          4. IMO Anne already had hatred and spite naturally before the Countdown change. She genuinely seemed to revel in the ability to be nasty on The Weakest Link – her wink at the end did nothing to disabuse me of that thought.

      3. I only ever watch 8 out of 10 Cats version of Countdown and the lovely Rachel still presides over the letters and numbers.

    3. Not only good looking but highly intelligent, Ms Riley.
      You have to remember that Stalin himself was very bright, but generally communism and fascism are anti-intellectual.

      1. The only ‘-ism’ that both Stalin and Hitler were interested in was DESPOTISM. Everything else was a ruse to keep the plebs in order and following the leader.

      1. You’re as bad as Uncle Bill, Phizzee. How many times do I have to tell you that my name is neither Harry, nor Eve, but Elsie?!?!? Lol.

        But seriously, thanks for your good wishes, Phizzee.

      1. Wonderful, Grizzly. I shall pop on the bathroom scales tomorrow morning and briefly email you the results.

  46. A BTL comment from someone I know well:

    J G Gibson

    As far as I am concerned, Azeem Rafiq bowled out English cricket this summer with some very average off-breaks. Its readiness to prostrate itself in guilt and self-loathing before the tides of Wokeness and Political Correctness (for example, the idiotic suspension of Ollie Robinson for tweets he made as a 14-yr old) is extremely annoying and debilitating to behold. No guts, no self-confidence, no pride, no defiance. Would that we had Boycott, Barrington, Thorpe, Botham, and Trueman out there, in their prime.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

    1. Mine started last evening when i saw the line up for University challenge and from the previous progs I think Paxman needs to packs it in. He must bored out of his skull. Well that’s how it come a cross.

      1. Sadly, J Paxman has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease; I expect he wants to increase his savings while he can still work.

      1. There was a young man who said “God
        Must find it exceedingly odd
        To think that the tree
        Should continue to be
        When there’s no one about in the quad.”

        Reply:

        “Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
        I am always about in the quad.
        And that’s why the tree
        Will continue to be
        Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.’

        Since God is also watching telly, I hope Crapita have the Almighty’s address so they can rock up on his doorstep and put the frighteners on him.

    3. I started my, continuing, ‘boycott’ of the bBC and all livestream channels just over four years ago. I watch some programmes through on-demand services and/or YouTube.

      Sadly, this has meant I’ve ‘missed out’ on all the Kung Flu adverts and the ‘Nicola Sturgeon Show’, yet my life goes on.

      It also means I get a monthly letter from the bBC TV Tax folks, who live under the misconception that their sales database is on a par with the Census. It isn’t.

    4. The figures for falling licence fees aren’t cumulative. Each year, about 800,000 people don’t renew their licence. I’m assuming it’s the same 800,000.

      What we need is an end ot the charter, an end to the licence fee and an end to the hubris and spite of the Left. We will only get that when government acts and it has no interest in doing that whatsoever.

  50. 🎶
    “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam…”

    ‘The PM hailed the way that people have been flocking to get boosters, suggesting they are honouring Jesus by getting jabbed ‘not just for themselves… but for friends and family and everyone we meet’.

    1. Welby has encouraged that. And the Pope, to my dismay.
      This madness has to play out.
      Let’s hope we haven’t crashed back into the 30s by then.

      1. Welby is of course a member of the WEF.

        The Bible, I recall, is not complimentary on the subject of alchemists and their claims of potions to heal the sick.

  51. Morning all and a very Happy Christmas to all.
    And Ho Ho Ho ……..Due to covid our plans have been altered in the fact we will be spending Christmas day without our eldest and his wife and two lovely children.
    Boxing day will be a little more sociable, number two and three with partners and wives, one grand child will be spending the day with us.

  55. A pickup from Going Postal:-
    When people talk about Black History, why don’t they make more of men like this US Army officer?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8d092e3ac05d5987eead5bfdaf8f55f4ab3cafb0482f5d45eb421e8b115ddcb1.jpg

    Colonel Charles Young in 1917!

    He graduated from West Point in 1889 and would become a Buffalo Soldier and the first black American to achieve the rank of colonel! He was fluent in Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and German and I can barely speak English! Why is this man not promoted as a role model for our young?

    𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗚 (1864-1922)

    Colonel Charles Young enjoyed a decorated military career after his graduation from West Point Military Academy in 1889. A Buffalo Soldier serving with the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry, Young eventually became the first African American to achieve the rank of colonel in the United States Army.

    Charles Young was born to ex-slaves in Mays Lick, Kentucky in 1864. His father, Gabriel, served in the Union Army during the Civil War. At the age of twenty, Charles Young was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 1889 he became the third African American to graduate from the Academy.

    As a second lieutenant, Young’s assignment options were limited to the four Buffalo Soldier regiments then stationed in Nebraska, Utah, and Montana. After serving five years on the “Western Front” with the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, Young left to become a professor of Military Science and Tactics for four years, between 1894 and 1898, at all-black Wilberforce University in Ohio, where he became close, lifetime friends with fellow faculty member W.E.B. DuBois. Young, an accomplished linguist, taught Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and German as well as military science.

    At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Young returned to active military service as a major in the 10th Cavalry of Buffalo Soldiers during U.S. operations in Cuba and the Philippines. He was in command of the cavalry as they participated in the celebrated charge up San Juan Hill. In 1903, Young was appointed superintendent of the Sequoia and General Grant National Parks in California. He was the first African American to hold the post of National Park Superintendent.

    In 1916, Young led the 10th Cavalry again when his regiment was assigned to General George Pershing’s “punitive expedition,” which attempted to capture Mexican rebel leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa. After the campaign, Young was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
    When the United States entered World War I in 1917, many assumed Young, the highest ranking African American in the Army, would be given a prominent command. Instead, he was declared physically unfit for duty due to high blood pressure. After a 500-mile horse ride from Ohio to Washington, D.C. to prove his fitness, Young was returned to active duty in 1918 and promoted to colonel. He was later appointed United States military attaché to Liberia. Colonel Charles Young died in 1922 while visiting Lagos, the capital of British Nigeria. He was interred in Lagos with full honors by British troops. However his body was returned to the United States in 1923 and interred at Arlington National Cemetery. The eulogy was delivered by his friend W.E.B. DuBois.

    1. Over 100 years ago! Well done to that soldier, he had determination and ambition.
      The whinging bames need to get rid of the chips on their shoulders and make the most of their opportunities instead of expecting preferential treatment. They have the same access to education as everyone else. There are plenty of solid role models of whichever ‘race’ they belong to. There is no need to resort to gangs, drugs, crime. Parents and the teenagers have poverty of aspiration.
      Think of all the Asians Idi Amin kicked out of Uganda – did they come here and scrounge on benefits? No, even though most arrived having been forced to leave most of their possessions and money behind, they made the effort to rebuild their lives and contribute to society.

        1. I didn’t know that.
          Parents of a girl in one son’s class at primary came from Uganda with nothing. They bought a small shop, worked all hours and made a success of their lives. The parents’ siblings also came over. Each household supported others when needed.
          I remember seeing the girl’s mother at the meeting the term before the children started school, when the children were spending time with their teacher. The mother was in a sari (back then, still quite a rarity in our area) and several parents wondered if the child would even speak English (whole family fluent). Lovely family, all decent British people now.

    4. Mays Lick, Kentucky in 1864.
      Still looks like a One Horse Town. he was only around 25 years old when heft left Westpoint. I wonder how and where he managed to get started on such a varied and worldly education fluent in 5 languages and no English in such a short space of time, also in such a small town in the middle of nowhere.

        1. A remarkable person with out doubt but there is something not quite right about his ability and such rapid learning.
          For instance if he attended an all white high school and seemingly could barely speak English, how did he manage
          to learn anything ?

        2. A remarkable person with out doubt but there is something not quite right about his ability and such rapid learning.
          For instance if he attended an all white high school and seemingly could barely speak English, how did he manage
          to learn anything ?

        1. It’s just that it’s such a sparsely populated area even now Bob, but back in the late 1800s it probably would have been very difficult to find such academic availabilities in such advanced subjects.
          He probably lived about 40 miles from the school which is on the other side of the wide Ohio River, there is now only one modern bridge ???
          But just sayin’ ………

      3. I think it is the author joking about himself, not Charles Young, when it said “I can barely speak English”

      1. But note how his initial interment was by our forces and, deservedly so, with full military honours.

          1. Shame he wasn’t treated and recovered, he was quite a remarkable person by al accounts.
            Something that has always puzzled me about the Caribbean is, who were the early indigenous people before the slave traders stared to arrive,………. anyone Know ? 🤔

    1. What’s the point of yet another. Fading after just ten weeks? That could mean at least five jabs a year! Time to buy shares in pharmaceutical companies.
      This latest scariant is known to be far milder with only the very frail or otherwise very unhealthy at any risk. Nope, unless we can fly to Canada to see son and grandchildren in a reasonably uncomplicated fashion, I’m not having another, especially so soon.

    2. Oh, vaccines not working,….. again ???
      They must have another variant lined up and ready to go all ready.

      1. RE, further variants will diverge from the ‘wild’ and Alpha strains and the “vaccine” will become ever more useless. I cannot comprehend why so many people turn up for the same jab time after time to offset the symptoms of something quite different. Before long it will be as if people will accept the measles jab because mumps is on the rampage. What has happened to people’s ability to actually think?

        2. The AZ which many people in the UK had for two jabs, is no longer available, only Pfizer and Moderna some times apparently you cant choose. I have heard of people only being told they can only have the moderna walking out, as others have had very uncomfortable side effects. As has one of our sons.

          1. The AZ vaccine, unlike the others, was offered to health services at cost, the other companies are making a killing both in reality and metaphorically.

        3. For many years since childhood we have all been offered various types of vaccines. And I personally have never been so incapacitated by a vaccine as I have this one. And nobody is taking any responsibility for all these adverse effects or even offering any advice.
          Even my GP and the cardiologist are sitting on the fence. Deep down something is not right, it’s all been a complete cockup.
          No wonder Handcock up managed to escape with his camera view snog pose. Witty however has a problem i’d say ……….

          1. All the previous vaccines were against specific and mostly dangerous diseases. You didn’t have to have so many jabs either, as most were for life or 10 years. Or you got lifelong immunity from catching the childhood diseases – chicken pox, measles etc.

            These jabs that are ineffective after a few weeks are pointless.

      1. It’s quite interesting when you read what is says on the Flowflex test kits it says,…. SARS-Cov-2 Antigen Rapid test. (Self-Testing) That doesn’t seem to fit in with the current situation at all.

  57. Highly Recommended Today 12:05-01:55pm

    Talking Pictures (Ch81) The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) performed by members of the Royal Ballet Company, and choreographed by Frederick Ashton

    1. Well, good luck with that. He is going be talking to private businesses and at least one owned by a foreign government, all concerned with extracting the maximum profit from the UK market.
      There are just some industries and enterprises that need to be nationalised businesses, or at the very least completely UK-owned

      1. No, no and no again. You do not nationalise what the government has intentionally ruined.

        Why is energy expensive? Because there’s a limited supply. Why is that? Because Boris won’t frack and dig up coal. Because he – and previous governments – wed us to the farcical green agenda.

        When the state restricts supply the inevitable result is higher prices.

    2. For goodness sake. No emergency meetings are necessary. The government is deliberately withholding supply. It *knows* this. It’s deliberate! Why bother wittering on about the cost of energy when it is government itself intentionally making it expensive for it’s own agenda?

      The lies and deceit, the hypocrisy, the doublethink is astounding. Ah, but of course. It’s deflection, to allow the state to say ‘not me guv, look at all these evil companies! We should nationalise energy, shouldn’t we… he hee he!’

      Damn them all! Nuke the sodding city of London and double nuke Westminster and Whitehall, then set off a plague of trouser presses just so they know what a real illness is like rather than the fictional terrorism. Solve all our blasted problems.

  60. A Happy Christmas to all, and a Guid New Year*.

    I may be on here intermittently as the “office” is the dining room and the “desk” is the dining room table. I have to clear everything away for the plates etc.
    *I am maybe going to try to gatecrash the big party at Oor Nic’s hoose.

  61. You’ve either got it or you haven’t – but what is it?

    That that shall not be named because it’s Christmas means that we can put things into perspective by thinking of something different and believing that it will all be over by the New Year.

    Well thanks to a spreadsheet calculation I have developed with Nottler contributions I been able to predict that what ever it is will be over by only a few days later – 3rd January 2022:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/deb2fea51a80da7972facb9359e643c5683a28e9414efc85a012da64c27f5f19.jpg

    That just leaves me to hope that Santa doesn’t bring you what you didn’t ask for, that if you really wanted it then he’ll get it for you and then by the time he’s gone in the New Year you will able to look forward to thinking what it was you really needed.

    Have a good one! – whatever it is! 🙂

    1. There will be something else in the new year. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

      Boris is stuck between the desperate colla[se in tax revenue and the public health issue.

      No one’s talking about the ‘it’s covid’ cover people are using to get treatment as GPs are closed.

  62. Black tie nonsense yesterday. Withhin 5 minutes of putting the wretched thing on I looked as I’d slept in it.

    In my defence, I had dozed in the chair. Suffocating.

    War queen looked magnificent though. Home around 2am. Junior still up and watching TV. MiL said something waspish. Shouting match ensued.

    I put Junior to bed and changed and they were still shouting at one another so I pushed MiL into the car and drove her to her flat and came home and pinned the now also changed but now weeping wife on the bed until she got to the bottom of where all this anger came from.

    Christmas. Joy and goodwill to all men my backside.

    1. That sounds like a real downer ending to what should have been a nice day.
      Sorry about that. Sometimes that kind of thing is needed to clear the air. Hope WQ isn’t too upset.
      In my case, MiL barely talks to me after I told her to stop organising our 25th wedding anniversary, in her local village tin shack, about as far from Norway as you can get without falling off the edge of the world. It was well meant, I guess, but looked awfully like a “Look at me, with my daughter married to this bloke for 25 years” event. In the end, I had to send her an email about it, since she wasn’t listening.
      Oh, well, it’ll blow over.

    2. People always were amazed at how the Germans allowed Hitler to take over their country.

      Are we now any better than they were?

      1. No. Hence the demonisation of those who are hesitant about being vaccinated.
        Dictatorships always need an internal enemy to unite the people behind the government in the face of a fictional threat.

        1. Hatred must be nurtured, harvested and then loosed upon one clear target – Hitler chose the Jews, the Liberal Left and the BBC chose Brexiters, and now the state and the media are choosing the unvaccinated.

  64. Christmas eve… The fridge packed up this morning, and the Horsepickle came through with a request for toiletries and extra clothing for Mother – at lunchtime on Christmas Eve, no details as to what’s needed in either category, but enough information to make me REALLY IRRITATED! especially as either problem cannot be solved with ease until Christmas is over (and you guys have 2 days of bank holiday, too, that we don’t).
    If they’d said something even yesterday, I could have sorted it – the cleaning company I use ( also house-sit, and collected Christmas cards from Mother’s house and took them to the hospital for her – they could have collected clothing and toiletries as well! Now all I can do is be cross, can’t solve anything for days and days!
    AAAAHH! :-(((((((((((

    1. Bad luck, Paul. Shops ARE open in England today – could not your cleaners help out? Worth a call??

      1. Called hospital for more details. Finally got through to the ward. Seems that it is clothing the biggest issue, toiletries are no problem. Contacted the cleaning company, who also house-sit, on the off-chance, and the manager said he’d go round immediately and sort it.
        How fantastic is that?
        Hat-tip to Vale Cleaning Services Ltd,
        Elm House
        Merthyr Dyfan Road
        Barry
        CF62 9TL

        Quaffing a gin & tonic now to calm down. Mixed by Second Son (with my gin…) it’s like rocket fuel! :-))

        3. That’s great. Sometimes we forget that most people are kind and willing to help. Hopefully it will reduce your worry over Xmas and being so far away.
          A very merry Christmas to you and yours! We are sipping a glass of medium sherry which is 100% better than the embalming fluid that last year’s sherry turned out to be.

          1. With this level of gin in the G&T, it will be very merry! Hic!
            And a very happy Christmas to you and yours in return, Lottie!
            ;-D)

      2. Called hospital for more details. Finally got through to the ward. Seems that it is clothing the biggest issue, toiletries are no problem. Contacted the cleaning company, who also house-sit, on the off-chance, and the manager said he’d go round immediately and sort it.
        How fantastic is that?
        Hat-tip to Vale Cleaning Services Ltd,
        Elm House
        Merthyr Dyfan Road
        Barry
        CF62 9TL

        Quaffing a gin & tonic now to calm down. Mixed by Second Son (with my gin…) it’s like rocket fuel! :-))

      3. Oh Booger………..
        Argos ??
        Still it’s less of a problem where you are matey, imaging that happening in Oodnawoopwoop northern NSW.

    2. My radiator fell off the wall earlier…..it’s too heavy for me to lift.
      Need a man to fix it!……

      PS I’m no feminist!

    1. He’ll be out of the country by next Tuesday

      When they arrest Tony Blair for his hanging, they should hang the deplorable Dyke-Dick along with him.
      Don’t forget that Blair and his old Flat Mate altered the UK treason laws. And the UK tax payers still pay for his 24/7/365 armed security.

      1. Altering the treason law is, in itself, an act of High Treason, and Blair should be hanged for that.

        1. I was told he used more ‘D’ notices than another MP in history. Other occurrences at Number Ten that were covered up.
          Apparently he also suffered from Afib and I might have had my catheter ablation in the same hospital and on the same operating table as he did.
          Another story was my wife and I had recently arrived at HPB Stigliano in Tuscany and the word went around the Blairs had been staying with ‘Burlesque Tony’ ex Italian PM also in Tuscany and possibly had, had a reason to leave earlier than planned. And arrived at Stigliano almost demanding to be accommodated. But as it’s a private members only organisation they were turned away. We might have found them in our apartment. 😲😖 We had a lovely but distant view of Siena.

        2. I believe it was trying to revoke the treason law completely, that the Law Lords considered to be treasonable in itself. What Blair did was to make it a non-death penalty offence.

      2. Oh yes there will,….. I suspect being trained at the hotels they are staying in right now.

    3. P.C. Smiff seems to be noticeably absent from these cases.
      Maybe the victim forgot the bribe.

      1. True story. I once arrested a young toe-rag called Smith.
        Grizz: “What’s your name?”
        Smith: “Smiff.”
        Grizz: “Is that with two Fs or free?”
        Smith: “Free, I fink.”

    4. From the name, it doesn’t look like he celebrates Christmas.
      Will all others on a rape charge be released for Christmas, I wonder?
      I’m sorry this stuff keeps coming up, Grizz. Having your previous profession rubbed in the dirt by these scumbags must hurt.

  67. If you go to:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/23/fourth-covid-vaccinations-likely-warnings-waning-immunity/

    and look at the graph below the Paragraph header

    There are fewer admissions per confirmed case Number of Covid hospital admissions for every 100 confirmed cases

    You will find that Sad Dick Cant has succeded where Jimmy Krankie and Drakeford have failed and gained Independence from England

    The Graph shows Covid cases in London and England

    I must have missed the vote

    1. “Fourth Covid vaccinations likely after warnings of waning immunity
      New analysis shows that immunity provided by boosters against the omicron variant starts to fall after 10 weeks”

      So we are in the EU approach once more. When the EU isn’t working we need more EU rather than less and when the shots of vaccine are not working we need more injections rather than fewer.

      Will the politicians ever admit that they have been completely wrong? The vaccination programme has been a total and dangerous failure . Early treatment of those with the malady is what is needed – but what do know?.

      1. Natural immunity for me.
        Seems to work!
        In any case, why vaccinate against a cold – an irritant only – not a problem for almost everybody, since we’ve all had several a year since we were born!

  68. 343204+ up ticks,

    You are one multi faced treacherous TWAT, outright winner of 2021 @rsehole of the universe awards.

    Boris Says Getting Jabbed for Others ‘Is the Teaching of Jesus Christ’ in Christmas Message

      1. I do mind the cost and the fact that the experimental injection producers are the only ones in the whole world who have immunity.

    1. Feck off Boris. What does the new year bring?

      Your tax hikes
      Your energy tax price hikes
      More waste in the public sector
      More debt
      Rocketing inflation
      Another likely lock up
      Social control system oh, I’m sorry, Vaccine passports – to restrict what we can do, including the jobs we can have
      The highest taxes in 70 years
      High corporation taxes
      Hordes of invading criminals pouring into the UK illegally and you’re inviting them in.

      You have an 80 seat majority – that you’ll lose and have wasted. You were gifted a democratic vote to unchain us from the hated EU. You’ve signed up to every Left wing moron course going and intentionally adopted EU policy out of spite.

      All you had to do was cut taxes and shred the state. It could have been as simple as changing how one hospital is funded. What a complete waste of time and effort.

      1. Boris Johnson was never in favour of Brexit so he was more than happy to betray the fishermen and create Pandemonium in Northern Ireland. His father his brothers and his sister are all committed remainers and they have definitely got some good blackmail material on him which they are threatening to use if refuses to bugger up Britain and return to the EU.

    3. When did Prime Monsters start making “Christmas Messages”??

      They are not effing heads of state…..

      Grrrr

  71. Nicked Risky Laff

    My wife pointed at me and said, “Well you’re definitely on the naughty list this year.”

    “In my defence,” I replied, holding my hands up, “I was drunk and it was
    your sister who came on to me, not the other way round.”

    She stared at me for a few moments, “… I was going to say you forgot to get the sprouts.”

  73. Anyone seen or heard from Peddy? He didn’t post yesterday or today so far. I don’t think he mentioned he was going away…
    Hope he’s OK.

    2. Last line of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:- “You’ll go down in History”
      Edit – I see Geoff beat me to it.

  75. Well I’ve just watched my recording from last night of The Big Freeze. 1963. Cliff Michelmore et. al. No Bames. I must say it seemed to drop the temperature here in my living room twenty degrees. I’d forgotten how bad it was!

  77. Russian teenager is jailed for FOUR YEARS for urinating on memorial to World War Two hero. 24 December 2021.

    A teenager has today been sentenced to four years in prison by a Moscow court after urinating on the portrait of a World War II veteran.

    Prosecutors said 19-year-old Matvey Yuferov had on November 25 ‘desecrated’ a display at a memorial to World War II veterans, filmed his ‘criminal actions’ and posted them online.

    Seems reasonable!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10342621/Russian-teenager-jailed-FOUR-YEARS-urinating-memorial-World-War-Two-hero.html

    4. I think that four years is a very harsh sentence. I’d be much more lenient, especially at this time of year.

      I would flog the bastard with a cat-o’-nine-tails, two hundred lashes a day for a month!

  79. I once remember being in a restaurant asking for some oysters, but they didn’t have any. So the waiter asked me if I would like to try the fogs legs. I told him that I just couldn’t really Kermit my self. 🐸

  80. Laura Kuenssberg was no saint – but the Left turned her into a pantomime devil

    The outgoing BBC political editor had her detractors on both sides – but Jeremy Corbyn’s flock showed a truly vicious streak

    ROBIN AITKEN • 21 December 2021 • 10:21am

    There are few roles in British journalism more exposed than the political editor’s chair at the BBC, so it is no surprise that Laura Kuenssberg, who will leave the role in 2022 after seven years, has attracted her fair share of controversy.

    Or perhaps that should read an “unfair” share. Because it is certainly true that her incumbency has been unusually controversial, and that she has suffered an unprecedented amount of personal abuse during it.

    There are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, her stint has coincided with a uniquely divisive period in British politics, dominated by the prolonged and bitter Brexit debate. From 2015, when she began, until the 2019 general election (which lanced the boil, to some extent), the country was divided into two irreconcilable tribes.

    For a political journalist such as Kuenssberg, that must have been intensely exciting – she had the best seat in the house – but it also put her reports under minute scrutiny. She strove to be impartial, but in the event she was a highly visible element of the BBC’s coverage, which itself appeared heavily skewed towards the Remainers. As a result, Kuenssberg attracted the ire of the Brexiteers.

    A second reason is the influence of social media. Anyone doing a high-profile journalistic job these days, particularly if female, is going to be a target online. A previous generation of political editors at the BBC never had to contend with the constant hard rain of abuse from vicious trolls. Kuenssberg says she doesn’t read the abuse that comes her way; we can all sympathise.

    The third reason, however, was the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, also in 2015. His fanatical supporters showed the lack of restraint typical of Left-wing radicals. As anyone who has attended the main party conferences can attest, it is always at the Tory gathering that one witnesses the worst behaviour from the protesters who gather outside the conference venue. Screaming vile abuse, working themselves up into a lather of indignation, the enraged far-Left are an annual fixture – and with Corbyn in charge, they felt their moment had arrived.

    These ultras fastened on Kuenssberg as a hate figure simply because, in doing her job properly, she had to point out that Corbyn had serious flaws. For the man’s hardcore supporters, it was intolerable that anyone should question his virtues; as it was, Kuenssberg was duty-bound to report on all those things which made him unsuitable, indeed unthinkable, as a Prime Minister: the anti-Semitism among his supporters, his sympathy for terrorists, his overall anti-Western mindset.

    Her reporting of Corbyn’s defects drove them mad, and culminated, in 2017, in death threats and fears for her safety. It was in that year that the BBC arranged security for her at the Labour Party Conference – an unheard-of measure for a journalist going about her job, and a marker of the depths to which Labour had sunk .

    In Kuenssberg’s role, it is a truism that you’re never going to please everyone. But she was well-liked and respected by many politicians, and was the journalist-of-choice for Dominic Cummings when he wanted to communicate something of importance.

    This also, unfortunately, meant that, like the rest of the Westminster journalistic tribe, she was obsessive about “process” stories: stories about minute transgressions of procedure, often trivial, which are seen as embarrassing to a government. The journalists love them – they provoke endless speculation – but they rarely matter much to the wider public and soak up far too much airtime and effort.

    The race will now be on to find Kuenssberg’s successor. Vicki Young, her deputy, is seen by some as the favourite; she would be a safe, if dull, choice. Others thought to be in the running are Jon Sopel, fresh from a stint as the BBC’s North America editor; Amol Rajan, the BBC’s media editor; and Chris Mason, another BBC political correspondent.

    The BBC will tread carefully here. The Corporation’s relationship with the government is fragile and it will want to avoid being provocative. The last thing it currently needs is more controversy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/laura-kuenssberg-no-saint-left-turned-pantomime-devil

    To appoint Sopel or Rajan will prove that the BBC is utterly beyond reform.

    1. Sopel it is then.

      When the crazed Lefties whinge and squeal outside tory conference, do the police arrest them?

  81. Oh b*****(other expletives are available upon request) our Christmas has been cancelled so I am having to cook Christmas dinner for the two of us. Just heard from daughter that 2nd grandson has tested positive for you know what!! and the family are now in isolation. Bah humbug, sausage roll anyone??

    1. Bad luck.

      It is my firm belief that these “tests” are simply a money-making scam – and that the “results” are questionable (to put it very mildly).

      1. Have raided the freezer, food not a problem, (but only have frozen sprouts, tough) we were supplying vino, already purchased, so we are good for a happy time!! Cheers!!

      1. Rather more than a sneeze from what I gather. Daughter is a mother of 3 and when they were little, was worrier in chief, now that they are older, not so much. But mothers never really stop worrying!!

    7. Oh dear! Rotten luck. On a positive note, a friend’s daughter has just passed her driving test at the first time of asking.

    9. Oh yes please.

      About a week ago number one and only son decided not to travel down to stay with us, he is scared of giving us that which cannot be mentioned. He is in for a pretty bleak Christmas, sharing a house with she who no longer wants to be married.

      1. Oh dear. One of my friends has his son staying with him for Christmas (in the first instance) because his wife (the son’s, that is) has decided she no longer wants to be married.

        1. I would think that it will be tears all round for everyone.
          Our son has reluctantly accepted the split and has a nice apartment to move to in February but that leaves him a month to share the house before moving our.

          How are you doing?

          1. Me? I’m fine, thank you. Going to have coffee with friends at Oscar’s favourite watering hole (he was a bit miffed yesterday because they’d run out of flapjack and he had to make do with dog biscuits!), going to church, making the most of being Christmassy, going to the meet if local, riding regularly, doing the odd (and sometimes they turn out to be VERY odd!) dressage test …

    10. Sorry to hear that. Hopefully they be no more than mildly affected and recover quickly.
      One of our sons and his partner just tested positive too. Makes one wonder if the tests sent out in recent days have been ‘manipulated’ to force people to not mix over Christmas… ……
      Having said that, they are both feeling pretty rough. Of course, they could just have heavy colds or good old-fashioned flu.

  82. I shall bid you all a peaceful Christmas Eve. For those who believe, I hope your church will be doing Midnight Mass. I missed the first half of King’s Carol Service because I thought it was on Radio 3… I’ll listen again. How niceto find that there is still one place where the “proper” Bible is used.

    I will join you on the morrow, wrapped in swadling clothes.

    A demain.

  84. Afternoon, all. I have laid the fire in the sitting room ready to light tomorrow morning and already laid the table for my midday meal (whatever it’s called) on Christmas Day. I’ll be off to Midnight Mass later. It’s been quite cold, damp and misty here (but it cleared up a bit for the Christmas Eve meet), so I expect I’ll need to wrap up warm tonight.

          8. Thanks Conway! It is now my new motto! Hope you and Oscar have a wonderful peaceful time together and that your toes stay safe! Merry Christmas to you, and many blessings.

          10. Thanks Herr Oberst! Hope the fridge stays cold! It seemingly wouldn’t dare do otherwise!

    2. Sent this to a guy that maintains these things he replied:
      “I hope I don’t get called out to assess whether the blades on that turbine are still fit to run. Santa & Rudolf certainly aren’t!”

        1. No… SWMBO turned on mega-freeze, and the fridge got cold again. Nothing dare defy SWMBO…

          1. Does she make house calls? I think our elderly fridge is on the fritz. Maybe some of her voodoo is required;-)

          1. Which is why I never refer to the American ‘beer’ as Budweiser, as they stole the name from the original.

          2. I’ve raised a brute. Mongo drinks Stella. Junior had half a small glass of Old Rosie.

            Both are now fast asleep.

          3. Old Rosie is good. Stella is OK, drink it now and again.
            Polish Fox is excellent for canned ale – and 7%, so not really lunchtime drinking…

          1. I’m still several weeks before I can take up painting after Christmas. However, all the Kitchen Cabinets are now firmly fixed to the walls – so some progress

          3. No they aren’t – neither are they Smallbone. However, the carpenter employed by the Builders spent 4 years working with Smallbone and he is very good as are the tilers (who use 360 degree laser lighting to get each tile run perfectly level). The plumbers are also millimetre perfect. I just wish they would get the works completed so we can move in. Oh and the electrician is bloody good too!

    2. Tony Satan-Blair says getting jabbed helps Bill “hurry them up to the pearly” Gates reset the planet in his own image.

    3. Did he actually mention Christ and Christianity? Seeing as the largest group of unvaxxed are Muslims i wonder if he would have had the balls to use Allah’s name in vain.

      No obviously.

    4. I hadn’t realised that Jesus was a snake oil salesman. Boris should keep his mouth and his trousers zipped!

  93. A year after the Brexit trade deal was agreed, relations with the EU have rarely been so poor
    The deal could have ‘reset’ relations. Instead, it was the high water mark in a year of rows over fishing, Northern Ireland and vaccines

    James Crisp : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/12/24/year-brexit-trade-deal-agreed-relations-eu-have-rarely-poor/

    BTL

    To quote Satan in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ : “To be weak is miserable …”

    And of course if you are weak you will not be respected – you will be held in contempt and quite rightly so. If Britain had shown any firmness or resolve in its negotiations we would now be calling the shots and not be being humiliated in our fishing grounds or in Northern Ireland. It is absurd to praise Boris Johnson for “Getting Brexit Done. He has effectively allowed the EU to vomit and defecate all over us.

    1. Indeed.
      Weak as pi$$, the UK negotiation. Amateurs. Even the Kiwis offered to send someone who could to help, but no, Amateur night reckoned they could do it themselves. Then MP’s blundering in pretending to know something… when you go up against the EU, they know what they want, and prepare properly for it. And they got it.

    2. It’s almost as if there was a plan to make Brexit so unpleasant that people would want to rejoin. But that’s a conspiracy theory, so put it out of your minds.

      1. But it has only succeeded in exposing the EU as nasty totalitarian protectionist bullies that nobody in the right minds would want to be associated with.

        1. Even my Labour supporting fellow dog walker said there would be no point in trying to rejoin because we wouldn’t get a good deal now. I did point out that we didn’t have a good deal before, which is why we voted to leave 🙂

    3. 343204+ up ticks,

      Evening R,
      He is part & parcel has been for decades, pro eu / an eu asset through & through major, the wretch cameron , treacherous treasa, the fat turk ALL
      very satisfied brussels rubber stampers,
      We in the real UKIP hurt them badly the
      lab/lib/con coalition supporter / voters have tried to hold them together.

      3. No, boil them. Giant vat of sprouts, bit of bacon and walnuts.

        Only for a few minutes mind. After about 4 or five, tip the water to re-use, put the sprouts in a bin bag and throw them away.

        Prepare a new bin bag for the next bundle. Keep binning them until the revolting vegetable is history.

          2. Ove ’em. Especially the tinned version by Bonduelle. That pungent aroma on opening the tin….

  96. We’re watching the carols from Westminster Abbey and Prince William has just done a reading, the next carol up was my favourite, the Sussex carol.

    I wonder if that was serendipity or someone at ITV being very naughty!

  97. Slightly off topic.
    I received a general Christmas greeting message and replied to one of the team who I know and who will have prepared it.
    I got an immediate response!
    Working at 8pm on Christmas Eve takes dedication to the cause.

  98. Evening, Nottlers one and all! Just popped in to wish you all a very merry Christmas!

    My family gathering seems to have transmogrified (gender-binary cat, anyone?) into being alone on a deserted campsite. Ha! Rachmaninov, Ardbeg, and a blank canvas it is then. Take that, Life!

    I attach once again the alternative Nativity I directed last year. What with it being Christmas and all. 20 minutes away from the insanity, I hope, if you haven’t seen it.

    Now to try and remember not to stick my paintbrush in the wrong glass . . .

    Cheers!

    https://youtu.be/BT8H339yEZ8

      1. I’m so glad; thank *you*. I tried to balance the humour with shock and awe, to tell a real story. Luckily the vicar didn’t realise what I was up to 😉

        1. Just finished Bunnahabhain a few days ago, opened The Glenlivet for a Christmas quality check with my lads. They approve! 😁😁😁

    4. Merry Christmas!

      An old art school pal, doing her homework late one night, dipped her cigarette in the paint water and set fire to her brush.

    6. You are never alone with a Nottler!

      (Perhaps that should be you should never be alone with a Nottler!!!)

      Merry Christmas Ashes – I’m sure one of us will be logged on during tomorrow to share a virtual glass of best medicine. Merry Christmas!

    7. You are never alone with a Nottler!

      (Perhaps that should be you should never be alone with a Nottler!!!)

      Merry Christmas Ashes – I’m sure one of us will be logged on during tomorrow to share a virtual glass of best medicine. Merry Christmas!

  100. I may well be back later but for now, and for those of you who go to sleep earlier, may I wish you all a very happy Christmas. Enjoy your celebrations, your food and your libations- as shall we.
    It has not been a good year for us, besides all the covid BS and we are really hoping next year is better. Let us hope this Christmas is a pleasant one for us all and that 2022 is better for everyone!
    Merry Christmas!!

    2. Thank you very much LotL! All my best wishes to you both for a very happy day! Merry Christmas to you!

    3. Yes, best wishes and what not. I don’t expect 2022 to improve dramatically, in fact I tihnk it’ll get worse before it gets better but hey ho.

        1. We’re heading for an early night I think – We ‘ve had fish pie for dinner – I did too much potato for the toppping so it could have been done a bit more……. hey ho!
          Shoulder of lamb for tomorrow is marinading in the garlic & paprika dressing. Will probably sit down for it mid- afternoon to give us all time to digest it.

          1. Don’t think we’ll be too late. Dragged “Fang” round today…our industrial strength vacuum. It does a good job but it’s hard work…think my arms are twice their usual length;-)

          2. We bought a Vax blade3 earlier this year – I’m still getting to grips with it but not very impressed with the performance – and the battery goes very quiickly. I think it’s more use if you do a quick whizz every day rather than leave it to build up and then blitz.

    5. Merry Christmas and best wishes for a better year for all in 2022.

      We all need something positive in our lives after the government inflicted misery of the past two years.

      1. Thanks Corim. I cross my fingers that things will be better but…well, we shall see, won’t we?
        I feel at times like Mr. Micawber just hoping that something will turn up, for us and for everyone in the UK and world who has unnecessarily suffered through all this nonsense.

        1. Me too. I pray that the bastards inflicting the hurt and harm on our lives will eventually be brought to Justice.

          Politicos and Pharma shills such as Farrar, Whitty, Vallance and Van Tam will shortly have a rude awakening.

          Twenty five years ago I designed an Immunology and Signalling Laboratory at The Babraham Institute, a BBSRC run complex near Cambridge based around animal testing.

          I was very concerned about animal testing until the Director of the Institute taught me a few lessons. The principal lesson was that without animal testing new drugs could not be released for humans.

          None of the current ‘vaccines’ and the coming ‘pills’ have been tested on animals be they transgenic mice, rats or ferrets.

    1. I’v never read 1984, but I’ve seen so many references to the plot in the last few years, I almost feel as though |I have.

      Merry Christmas everyone!

  103. Hello Nottlers

    Moh , son and I are still feeling not quite on top of things , no temp, but shivering / feeling warm / and a real congested cough. Moh and I were quite bad last night , almost gasping for air . Our eyes have been sore and we have gone through a couple of boxes of giant size paper tissues as well as paracetamol and Covonia .

    I do hope and pray that none of you have been feeling like us , it isn’t pleasant .
    Steam from the kettle or dishwasher helps abit , I am just hoping we are over the worst and can enjoy our meal tomorrow .

    We tested negative re the lateral flow tests , but I think we have had more than a cold , it feels as if our immune system has been given a real battering .

    2. It often happens at Christmas time here too. I’m hoping we’ve had our lurgy for this winter. Hopefully you lot just have a nasty cold. Keep an eye on your taste/smell/appetites etc. Happy Christmas to you and the family.

    6. All the very best, Maggie, hope you will be better soon and ready to celebrate the New Year with the family in style! Take care

    7. Hope you feel better really soon. You can have Christmas dinner any time- the main thing is to feel well and eat when you have appetite.

    9. If colds and flu are making a comeback, maybe there is hope yet.

      Our health experts are telling us that negative lateral flow tests are useless but I am sure that they have an interest in keeping people in a state of fear and uncertainty.

    10. Merry Christmas and hoping you feel better soon.

      I have chronic sinus disease and am finding it very difficult to get rid of a wheezy cough and sticky mucus. Am using Flixonase nasal spray and Carbocisteine tablets on prescription.

      I often feel low with some cold or other at Christmas. These maladies are sent to try us.

      1. I have sinus problems too. Oddly enough while I had Covid, my back of the throat phlegmy cough disappeared. Now I’m Covid free that cough has returned.

    11. Wish you and yours well, Belle.
      Sorry you’re all feeling so poorly.
      We had good news today our son will be going home on Tuesday.

    14. We hope you have recovered in order to have a splendid Christmas day

      Remember that Fawtly Towers episode when Basil’s’ wife was not on top form while the waiter from Barcelona was full of beans. As the waiter declared: “Syb ill but Man Well”.

      We hope to see a Well Belle tomorrow!

      1. J,
        This January 2021 , an elderly was returned to the Care home from hospital .

        She had Covid 19, it spread like wildfire through out the home , and 16 elderlies died in the first 3 weeks of January.. The staff were in shock , and the wonderful home closed and is now on the market .. and will probably be demolished.

  105. I’m a bit worried, I never win anything when it comes to raffles etc.
    Went to the pub for 5 o’clock club but none of my close friends were able to go. Landlord said 15 minutes to the raffle draw. I’ve no idea if I had some in a wallet or somewhere before, but I coughed up a fiver for 5 tickets to be sociable.
    I won 4 prizes. A bottle of Jack Daniels (I don’t drink it but know it’s popular). Then a bottle of Piper Heidsieck Cuvèe Brut. Then, the prizes were getting bigger as it went along, an envelope with £41, and finally, another with £60.
    I knew just about everyone in the pub. I came home with just the 2 bottles of booze.

          1. We definitely would need an East Coast Route – starting in N Norfolk, through Mid Suffolk, Essex, Herts then through to a favoured route to West Dorset and any further points West.

        2. That is a fantastic gesture , and well done , that is what friends are for .

          The thing is if you hadn’t have won it , you wouldn’t have missed it anyway , daft logic , but yes , so what .

        3. I remember winning the pot for guessing the length of the speech at a Granite Guild Dinner at the RAC Club in the eighties. I felt so guilty I asked the chair to donate it to their welfare fund.

  107. Here’s a handy tip: How to get intimate with 10 screws without getting a repetitive strain injury. First take a container of just under 1000 screws in 10 different compartments according to size weighing about 3lbs. Pick it up making sure the lid isn’t closed and tip all the screws onto the floor. Express an expletive or three. Gather screws up into a lager plastic bag. Place the content onto a tea tray. pour a large glass of medicine and sort each screw into its respective compartment after a while change hands to avoid RSI and swear never to be so stupid again!.

    3. What was that story about the escaped lunatic that sexually assaulted 3 ladies in the laundrette and then ran past the police car?
      Nut screws washers and bolts?

    4. I once dropped a bottle of Viagra tablets just after taking one. I was down on all fives for a good ten minutes trying to scoop them up.

  110. Merry Christmas to Nottlers All

    I have left a note for Santa,telling him my bestererester prezzie would be for us to have a Johnson Free 2022

  111. Hi all you lovely Nottlers, just popped in to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas tomorrow, I hope you have a wonderful day. We have been very blessed with our son’s recovery, slow but steady, and will speak to him tomorrow, for which I thank God and the staff at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford.

    Have a peaceful and joyful day wherever you are and whoever you are with, hopefully with family. Alf and I will be raising a glass or two, or three or more, and will be slobbing out, I mean, relaxing. Enjoy the day all. And thank you all for your great humour, good wishes and prayers during what has felt like really dark times. Goodnight and God bless.

      1. Tiny Tim says that he is very, very happy to read that Little Alf is on the mend, and in case he is busy entertaining Mr Scrooge tomorrow, may all Nottlers and their families enjoy a wonderful Christmas.

        1. Good, and well said, but I was thinking of his, “God bless us, every one.”
          And I’m practically an atheist.

          1. Look, by no means am I as grumpy as young Richard Wilson but after 178 years I might be forgiven for wanting to choose my own words, and not those of some bearded hack from Pompey.

    3. Drink until you can’t see and you forget you’re not wearing trousers. That’s fantastic news.

  112. A rotten tomato moment for Monday 27th.

    Christmas University Challenge includes as captain (natch) of the Birkbeck team the fox-battering, cross-dressing europhile QC Jolyon Maugham. He is sporting a pale pink jacket as a poseur would.

    The programme blurb makes no reference to his level of sobriety.

  113. A rotten tomato moment for Monday 27th.

    Christmas University Challenge includes as captain (natch) of the Birkbeck team the fox-battering, cross-dressing, europhile QC Jolyon Maugham. He is sporting a pale pink jacket as a poseur would. The programme blurb makes no reference to his level of sobriety.

  114. Good night, Merry NoTTLers and the seasons best blessings upon you.

    Enjoy tomorrow, I’m not sure if I’ll be present but will do my best, on and off.

  119. I’m off now…yes, I know, many of you would say I’ve been off for years. Anyway, it is now Christmas Day! A very happy one to you all. Goodnight.

  121. Merry Christmas to all Nottlers! Many thanks to the boss, Geoff, and moderators for keeping us all going!!

  122. My very best wishes to everyone on here for a wonderful Christmas Day. I am now off to bed. It’s already almost 1 a.m. and if I don’t get to bed and sleep soon then Santa may not pay me a call. Night night!

    1. Good morning. Merry Christmas and thanks for the blog. Because of your efforts i have made some wonderful new friends.

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