Sunday 30 January: Instead of shaking up the establishment, the Prime Minister has been absorbed by it

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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683 thoughts on “Sunday 30 January: Instead of shaking up the establishment, the Prime Minister has been absorbed by it”

  2. Bonjour les amis,
    I’m not sure about this topic.
    It is was pretty obvious that the estabLishment did not want BJ when Gove stabbed him in the back and we got the woesome May instead. Do they love him any more now?
    Not judging from the drip-feed of photos of his speakeasy parties. I suspect that Cressida has prevailed on Gray to censor information that would harm people besides the PM.
    It also seems that he has realised that they don’t have any more compromised a puppet to replace him – maybe he will at last become a real boy (apologies to Pinocchio).

    So we are one of the only countries in the Western world to have returned to a semblance of normality. These mandates for health staff obviously need to be dropped, but one thing at a time.
    A disaster would be that someone knocks Starmer conscious and that Left that call to unbind the poorer classes and demand the lifting of these absurd and oppressive rules. Fancy that… the Left sticking up for the poor. How 20th Century.
    But Starmer is so comatose this is unlikely.

    I know he is a cynical shit but he is one of the few who is bright enough to understand that his benefit is bound to ours.

    For now, Johnson has my cautious approval.

    1. 334806+ up ticks,

      Morning LIM,

      Treacherous treasa was in place well before the farce was acted out,we are just going through the same old shite since major mounted curry on our way to the deep.

      The WHOLE kit & caboodle are very dangerous self interest peoples in pin strip, the power / money magnet has a very firm grip on the politico fraternity the signs have been there for years.

      The electorate are worse in so far as they have the power to change but choose instead to grip nostrils, vote for the best of the worst, etc,etc.

      Bear in mind ALL the toxic trio ARE paedophile importers, also they have in the past conversed with PIE.

    2. I would like to see some positive action on at least one issue at a time, perhaps on the net zero policy which is putting so many into fuel poverty. Who knows perhaps he might discover what being a Conservative PM means and continues in the right way. Of course it is a pipe dream, I fear he cannot and will not change, to think otherwise is delusional.
      As they say, it’s the economy stupid and fuel bills, increased taxation hitting voters in their wallets and purses will be his downfall, being a cynical liar with poor morals and judgement will be the least of his troubles.

  4. We must face down the clear and present threat posed by Russia. Liz Truss. 30 January 2022.

    The Prime Minister will spearhead diplomatic efforts by talking to President Putin and travelling to the region in the coming days. Tomorrow, the UK will join talks at the UN Security Council to apply pressure on Russia to pursue the path of diplomacy. I will be flying out to Moscow within the next fortnight.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    David Rowsell. 8 HRS AGO.

    I never thought I would find myself defending Putin but I am not entirely happy with our position on this. When Gorbachev withdrew his troops from Eastern Europe there was an implied understanding that they would not be replaced with NATO troops. The Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union not an occupied territory like Poland or the Baltics. The country decided to become an independent state friendly to Russia. The ballistic missile sites were decommissioned but the Crimea, whose population is Russian and contains the Russian Baltic fleet continued to have those Russian troops. There seemed to be general agreement on this. Then the government of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup where the rebels waved EU flags. This at a time when the EU countries had reduced their military forces. I do not think Britain and the US have any obligation to fight the EU’s war in the Ukraine.

    The activities of the UK Government are more concerned with distracting attention from their domestic problems than with any realistic attempt to influence affairs in Ukraine. Mr Rowsell’s comment is the more interesting in that it is not only true but represents an increasingly large measure of support for Russia. Trawl through any comment column and you will find; despite the best efforts of 77 Brigade, the same increase in pro-Russia sentiment. This does not mean that there will be a change in UK Foreign Policy only an increase in hostile UK propaganda. The real cause for this response is largely hidden from public view; Russia, or more accurately Vladimir Putin, represents to the Political Elites of the UK the unacceptable face of Patriotism and National Identity whereas Ms Truss, despite her assertion that, The United Kingdom is proud to be stepping up to take the lead in defence of freedom and democracy through credible deterrence and diplomacy. presides over a Police State in which hatred of the people predominates and Democracy is extinct.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/29/must-face-clear-present-threat-posed-russia/

    1. When Gorbachev withdrew his troops from Eastern Europe there was an implied understanding that they would not be replaced with NATO troops.
      … back when the West was run by people with a sense of responsibility to the people rather than huge corporations.

    2. Russia and the EU should keep out and let the people of the Ukraine get on with their lives. As misguided as the EU has been, at least it’s not a bully-boy threatening to invade.

  5. We must face down the clear and present threat posed by Russia. Liz Truss. 30 January 2022.

    The Prime Minister will spearhead diplomatic efforts by talking to President Putin and travelling to the region in the coming days. Tomorrow, the UK will join talks at the UN Security Council to apply pressure on Russia to pursue the path of diplomacy. I will be flying out to Moscow within the next fortnight.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    David Rowsell. 8 HRS AGO.

    I never thought I would find myself defending Putin but I am not entirely happy with our position on this. When Gorbachev withdrew his troops from Eastern Europe there was an implied understanding that they would not be replaced with NATO troops. The Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union not an occupied territory like Poland or the Baltics. The country decided to become an independent state friendly to Russia. The ballistic missile sites were decommissioned but the Crimea, whose population is Russian and contains the Russian Baltic fleet continued to have those Russian troops. There seemed to be general agreement on this. Then the government of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup where the rebels waved EU flags. This at a time when the EU countries had reduced their military forces. I do not think Britain and the US have any obligation to fight the EU’s war in the Ukraine.

    The activities of the UK Government are more concerned with distracting attention from their domestic problems than with any realistic attempt to influence affairs in Ukraine. Mr Rowsell’s comment is the more interesting in that it is not only true but represents an increasingly large measure of support for Russia. Trawl through any comment column and you will find; despite the best efforts of 77 Brigade, the same increase in pro-Russia sentiment. This does not mean that there will be a change in UK Foreign Policy only an increase in hostile UK propaganda. The real cause for this response is largely hidden from public view; Russia, or more accurately Vladimir Putin, represents to the Political Elites of the UK the unacceptable face of Patriotism and National Identity whereas Ms Truss despite her assertion that, The United Kingdom is proud to be stepping up to take the lead in defence of freedom and democracy through credible deterrence and diplomacy. presides over a Police State in which hatred of the people predominates and Democracy is extinct.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/29/must-face-clear-present-threat-posed-russia/

  6. We must face down the clear and present threat posed by Russia. Liz Truss. 30 January 2022.

    The Prime Minister will spearhead diplomatic efforts by talking to President Putin and travelling to the region in the coming days. Tomorrow, the UK will join talks at the UN Security Council to apply pressure on Russia to pursue the path of diplomacy. I will be flying out to Moscow within the next fortnight.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    David Rowsell. 8 HRS AGO.

    I never thought I would find myself defending Putin but I am not entirely happy with our position on this. When Gorbachev withdrew his troops from Eastern Europe there was an implied understanding that they would not be replaced with NATO troops. The Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union not an occupied territory like Poland or the Baltics. The country decided to become an independent state friendly to Russia. The ballistic missile sites were decommissioned but the Crimea, whose population is Russian and contains the Russian Baltic fleet continued to have those Russian troops. There seemed to be general agreement on this. Then the government of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup where the rebels waved EU flags. This at a time when the EU countries had reduced their military forces. I do not think Britain and the US have any obligation to fight the EU’s war in the Ukraine.

    The activities of the UK Government are more concerned with distracting attention from their domestic problems than with any realistic attempt to influence affairs in Ukraine. Mr Rowsell’s comment is the more interesting in that it is not only true but represents an increasingly large measure of support for Russia. Trawl through any comment column and you will find; despite the best efforts of 77 Brigade, the same increase in pro-Russia sentiment. This does not mean that there will be a change in UK Foreign Policy only an increase in hostile UK propaganda. The real cause for this response is largely hidden from public view; Russia, or more accurately Vladimir Putin, represents to the Political Elites of the UK the unacceptable face of Patriotism and National Identity whereas Ms Truss despite her assertion that, The United Kingdom is proud to be stepping up to take the lead in defence of freedom and democracy through credible deterrence and diplomacy. presides over a Police State in which hatred of the people predominates and Democracy is extinct.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/29/must-face-clear-present-threat-posed-russia/

    1. 334806+ up ticks,

      Morning A,

      The johnson chap is far from gullible and the choices he has been making / makes brussels find very satisfactory
      we edge nearer semi eu re-entry on a daily basis.

    2. ‘Morning Ethel. Good to see that you have taken some time off from sorting out those pesky Vikings.

      You are not alone in your view of our leader; the vitriol pouring forth from many BTLers suggests that many other contributors readily agree. (Incidentally, I thought it was an 80-ish seat majority, not 60, but this is of no consequence because neither is being used):

      Lenny Thelion
      17 HRS AGO
      In 2 years Boris has wasted the advantages of Brexit and a 60 seat majority, bankrupted us with the response to covid and the final nail in the coffin will be worshiping at the altar of the climate change religion . The NHS, police force and major institutions all seem to be working against the people who they should be supporting and who are paying for them. We are aiding and abetting thousands of illegal immigrants to come here and stay in some luxury at our expense and Chester University has reached peak insanity by putting warning stickers on a children’s Harry Potter book. Worse still, The Great British Public are powerless, we have no alternative, and ultimately no hope. I don’t see one single conservative in the cabinet and come May 2nd 2024, we will either re-elect and so embolden the Tories and their eco lunacy or elect Labour with eco madness and wokeness on steroids.
      The future for a great majority of the population, is I fear, very bleak.

      Andrew Hicks
      18 HRS AGO
      Johnson was a likeable buffoon. The public seemed to warm to his clowning around. He has always had appalling judgement of issues and people – just look at the low calibre of those around him. The fatal mistake is that he has allowed his shambolic private life into his political life. His indiscipline has infected others in government. They think that it is acceptable to behave with hubris, hypocrisy and sheer contempt for the public who put them where they are.

      Ian Pyne
      16 HRS AGO
      Let’s cut to the chase. Boris lies as easily as he breathes. So do a lot of people, many serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. If you lie as PM in Parliament – and that lie (or pack of lies) is demonstrably proven (Hansard) then you resign. That is the way things are done in this law-abiding Parliamentary democracy.
      So many people think that it’s just about Johnson and his mates breaking the lockdown rules – that were of course drawn up by Johnson and his team. That is bad and inescapably hypocritical, Far worse is denying that you did precisely that.

      Peter Findlay
      16 HRS AGO
      Boris can drink prosecco and eat pork pies and cakes to his heart’s content. Most sane people don’t give a toss about what he eats, when, or who he’s sleeping with. What most of us worry about is the endless boatloads of illegals (which is why I resigned my party membership) and the absurd fixation (courtesy Carrie) in zero emissions, while India and China build a new coal-fired power station every two months. Cut tax, stop immigration, cut the public sector and the BBC, make the police catch the occasional criminal and keep our streets safe.

  12. Good morning, all. Clear skies.

    Great day in London. At Kings Lynn virtually no one wore a mask on the train; by Cambridge everyone was! London streets 90% mask free. Courtauld – all bagged up – apart from the Thomas Four.

    And I DID walk from Kings Cross to Somerset House and back. 3½ miles!!!!!

    Johnson gone yet?

    1. Well done you. We also had a great day here but missed you most terribly, terribly, terribly.

      Tom Tugendhat is not to be trusted – from a tribe of europhile fanatics – his v. bright father was at Ampleforth.

  15. Morning all, frosty start but at least the sun is shining. Off to visit a cousin who is 81 today, that warrants a card and some birthday cake. I wonder if Johnson has some left over?

    1. He’s a fat bastard, the answer is obvious so be prepared to be disappointed. 🎂

      Morning, VVOF.

      2. Morning Korky, I expect to be disappointed with all things concerning the buffoon.

  17. SIR – Since becoming Prime Minister Boris Johnson has almost died from Covid, finalised Brexit, overseen the response to the pandemic and now has to deal with Russian aggression.

    I am not a supporter of Mr Johnson, but the “Partygate” accusations should be seen in perspective.

    John Hanson
    Canterbury, Kent

    Err….no, John Hanson. Brexit is far from “finalised” and other important matters are also on the back-burner. Should lying to the House and the country be “seen in perspective” too??

  18. Justin Trudeau and his family flee Canadian capital Ottawa as up to 50,000 ‘Freedom Convoy’ anti-vaccine mandate truckers arrive at his office. 30 January 2022,

    Justin Trudeau and his family have left their Ottawa home amid security concerns as demonstrators marched up and down the streets in front the Prime Minister’s office to rally against the vaccine mandate.

    Louis XVI offered no explanation for his departure from Paris in 1771 to escape his outraged citizens, though they did intercept him and eventually put him on trial and execute him. One hopes that the Canadians can eventually achieve a similar outcome!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10456147/Justin-Trudeau-flees-secret-location-50-000-Freedom-Convoy-truckers-hit-Ottawa.html#comments

    1. I thought Louis XVI left Paris for Versailles because Paris was an open sewer. Much like it is today.

      1. Although, I gather Versailles stank so much that, if the wind was in the ‘right’ direction, it could be smelt in Paris.

    2. I thought he was isolating because of a very convenient Covid encounter???? That does sound better than “fleeing” which in turn is better than “running away”!

      1. Yesterday, I had to mingle with people who still believe that the covid virus knows whether they are sittiing down or standing up during a pub lunch.
        No doubt they would also believe that the bug knows when a ‘important person’ is likely to be asked difficult questions and therefore obligingly infects him.

    4. When will Trudeau (nearly typed the r and the u the wrong way round!) get his Varennes moment?

  19. SIR – Now is precisely the time to end the Prime Minister’s tenure.

    Mr Johnson has presided over a shambolic Government, is known to be at the very least economical with the truth, and constantly seems to have difficulty identifying the difference between right and wrong. I would also suggest that the vaccine programme was Kate Bingham’s triumph, not the Prime Minister’s.

    The world in general and this country in particular are about to enter a dangerous and difficult period. Boris Johnson does not possess the qualities required to lead us through the turbulent waters ahead.

    Peter Little
    Herne Bay, Kent

    Hear, hear Peter Little. The present occupant is a principle-free Bullingdon Boy, and lacks even a most basic level of integrity. No such person should be permitted to go on occupying No10 as it will all end in very expensive and ultimately ruinous tears. I, for one, made the mistake of being a supporter, as did many others, but now that his true colours are on display (and blue isn’t one of them) his removal is a matter of great urgency.

    1. The only reason I support him staying is that we could get someone worse – ie Lockdown fanatic Gove.

  21. The wallpaper, the parties, the animals. They all have one person in common . . .
    Camilla Long
    Sunday January 30 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    The usherette…
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ff4f24770-811e-11ec-b216-7a521e8f125c.jpg?crop=4465%2C2977%2C0%2C0&resize=1010
    The feminist notion that Carrie Johnson is not responsible for her husband’s mistakes no longer washes
    PETER NICHOLLS/GETTY IMAGES

    The accepted narrative on Boris Johnson is that he is a liar. He lies, we are told, almost as easily as he breathes. He does it so fluidly and expertly and naturally that it is easier to assume he is lying than he isn’t. The Downing Street parties, for example — he is clearly lying. Who doesn’t know a party’s happening, even when it is happening and they’re actually there? Also the gold wallpaper — lies at £840 a roll. He was unaware of who was going to pay for it, despite having desperately asked his mates to pay for it, before lying about that as well.

    Then there were the dogs — a despicable story, far more serious than anything else. There are actual messages from Johnson’s own private secretary approving an airlift of Pen Farthing’s dogs out of Kabul. Last week a Foreign Office email showed that an official working for Zac Goldsmith had confirmed that “the PM has authorised” the airlift of animals in favour of people. But the prime minister’s response on Thursday? “Total rhubarb.”

    How can Johnson claim he had nothing to do with it, I wondered, when it says, in black and white, that he did? As I watched the television footage of him saying “rhubarb”, it suddenly occurred to me: maybe Johnson wasn’t lying; never had been. He didn’t look as if he was lying, so perhaps he isn’t lying about any of it.

    Maybe the real reason is that the prime minister is in fact so disorganised and chaotic that many things are happening at Downing Street without his knowledge, things much, much worse than birthday cake. He is just letting anything happen, which he has no idea how to explain, let alone defend.

    To this Johnson, No 10 must seem like some kind of extraordinary Advent calendar — open door after door, and behind each one is a new surprise. In one room he might be stunned to discover the interior decorator Lulu Lytle and the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, singing “Happy birthday” to him with cake.

    In another is a bunch of staffers setting up DJ decks and drinks for a disco gruntfest. In another, there are people writing letters approving things he doesn’t even know about yet, like the airlift of animals for the charity. The question for us now is, if Johnson isn’t behind any of these parties or emails, what mystery person is?

    It can’t be Dominic Cummings, because he wasn’t there when the dog drama happened. It can’t be the useless Dan Rosenfield, Johnson’s chief of staff, because he wasn’t there when the parties happened. It can’t be any of the other second-raters and yes men who crowd his office, because none of them has real rank. It needs to be someone who cares about animals and thinks parties are important and enjoys decorating and has clout to get private secretaries to do anything. Who has form on mad letters and gold wallpaper? Carrie Johnson.

    The big, awful, unspoken reality of the Partygate scandal — and many other recent scandals — is that all roads lead back to her. The decorations, the parties, the stupid animals — you cannot think any of that is down to Boris.

    You cannot for a single second tell me Lulu Lytle came down to the cabinet room during Johnson’s illegal birthday party to ask him a question about curtains. Her office claimed someone “requested” face time, but Johnson is not interested in lamps — whereas Carrie definitely is.

    And don’t tell me, either, that Johnson was remotely behind any of these parties. As an insider put it, he has never said, “I know what — let’s get a suitcase of wine with some Spads.” It’s not that he doesn’t like parties — it’s just that it’s other people’s parties he likes. The ones you throw yourself tend to be expensive. Bored Carrie, by contrast, likes spending money and is, according to observers, “addicted to them”.

    You can try to advance the feminist notion that she is not responsible for her husband’s mistakes, but this no longer washes: there is nothing about Carrie’s terminally basic, avaricious outlook that is feminist. In my view it is anything but feminist to marry a weak man and then hide behind him and live as a kept woman known only for gold wallpaper.

    If she doesn’t want to be blamed for any of this, she shouldn’t be anywhere near it. If she wants to be political, she should have a voice, not lurk manipulatively on the sidelines. It is ignorant to think the wife of any man has no say in his thinking — but the fingerprints on these decisions are entirely hers. She is creating policy rather than advising on his. She is almost the PM herself.

    Why, for example, would she be at a “work event”, if that’s what the party Johnson attended in the Downing Street garden actually was? Why would she book the cabinet room, the most important working room in No 10, for his birthday if she did not think she was essentially doing his job? Why would a staffer say that “the PM has authorised this” in an email if they didn’t think “the PM” was a loose term and it also meant Carrie? Who told Martin Reynolds to write the party email? Why would the PM stammer, “Nobody told me it was a party,” if the party hadn’t been sprung on him by someone like Carrie, who couldn’t be bothered to look out for him?

    This is without going into the hirings and firings she has orchestrated, the offices being cleansed of people she sees as rivals. Or the creepy appropriation of Nimco Ali, who seems to think Johnson is a socialist, and who laughably let us believe she was Wilfred’s nanny to get around the rules, yet again, when it was discovered she’d stayed at Christmas.

    Is this what Johnson really saw for himself when he finally attained power? Having to go out there and grovel and apologise for problems someone else had created, and he’d not been able to stop, through being pathetic and people-pleasy and unable to run his own life? While being pumped for cash he doesn’t have, nearly dying and looking after two tiny children? I doubt it.

    Playboy’s orgy denials leave it looking a little exposed
    We seem to be suffering from a catastrophic bout of wilful stupidity. Does no one use their eyes or brains any more? For example, if I were to invite you to the Playboy mansion, would you expect a friendly tea party or a non-stop, suppurating filth hole filled with sad, abused women with hardly any clothes?

    Playboy has claimed it is stunned to hear about “abhorrent actions” that took place at Hugh Hefner’s legendary parties.

    A new telly programme says that there were constant orgies in which celebrities could do anything they wanted, including “pig nights”, where Hefner invited “ugly” prostitutes to have sex with his friends. Guests took so much cocaine that some Bunnies’ dogs became addicted from licking surfaces in the mansion. Hefner referred to Quaaludes as “leg-spreaders”.

    How can Playboy say it had no idea what was happening when everyone knew what went on? It is like Jimmy Savile: turn a blind eye when it’s going on then, after the event, claim to be moral by releasing some disingenuous open letter where you say Hefner has nothing to do with Playboy and tell us how many women you employ.

    It was known for decades how disgusting the mansion was. When I visited Hefner in 2009, I was — full confession — devastated to find zero trace of “abhorrent actions”. Hefner himself was an ancient relic whom the Playmates avoided.

    When I asked one of them if she had ever made out with him, she looked horrified: “Gosh, no.” How is it that a single tits model knows more about Playboy than Playboy itself?

    ****************************************************************

    Roger d’Altry
    7 HOURS AGO

    You are normally way ahead of us but on this you are months behind. Carrie is wallpaper, electric cars, heat pumps, green taxes etc..
    All the things that she will never have to pay for in her life but is quite happy to cripple the population with. If you see another new policy appearing that was not in the manifesto it will be from this young lady. I did not vote for her and I did not vote for her schoolgirl policies.

    TimesReader
    42 MINUTES AGO

    Plus the trans lobby. Don’t forget the policy capture by stonewall at the heart of government. Does anyone think a 57-yo Eton-educated straight bloke has any interest in (or even awareness of) this stuff? But a 33-yo social-media-savvy woman? Well, some of her best friends are stonewall lobbyists.

    2. We have never been told why her job at CCHQ ended.
      The few I bods I have seen from that area were not impressive.

    3. The thesis that it’s all Carrie holds water right up to the last post by TimesReader. Boris has been in Stonewall’s pocket ever since he was Mayor of London.
      He once emailed TfL telling them to pull a legal, true, paid for advertisement off a bus, because Stonewall didn’t like it.

  22. Latest missive to my MP about my dental problems, which is fairly self-explanatory;

    “Dear Harriett Baldwin

    Thank you for your letter of 6th January 2022 with the response from Maria Caulfield, MP.

    It seems that her department is refusing to take responsibilty for decisions made centrally that might affect, instruct or guide decisions made at local level or by individual practitioners.

    A while ago I forwarded to you a communication from the Senior Complaints Officer of NHS England’s West Midlands branch. She refused to extend her remit beyond any consideration of malpractice by the individual practitioner, effectively stating that her office takes no responsibility for decisions imposed or affected by decisions taken centrally by the Department of Health and Social Care. I have challenged this, and the matter is still pending, hence my delay in responding to your letter.

    What exactly are we paying these people for?”

  23. Yo All

    Two statues stand in a park, one of a naked woman and the other of naked man

    Suddenly from out of nowhere, a magical genie arrives and grants the statues each one wish to be fulfilled.

    Both the female and male statuesagree on 15 minutes as a real man and woman in the bushes behind
    them to “get things done.”

    The genie gives a knowing grin and grants the wish.

    The man and woman immediately jump behind the bushes and screaming sounds and laughter can be heard from their activities.

    12 minutes later they return to the front of the bush again claiming they are finished.

    “Well now, that was kinda quick!” the genie says.

    “You can do it asecond time for the remaining 3 minutes if you want,” the genie tells them, winking his eye.

    Both the female and male look at each other and smile.

    The man says to the woman,

    “Okay great, but this time you get to hold the pigeon so I can crap on him!”

  24. SIR – In reply to Margaret Robinson (Letters, January 23), there is so much Britain can do to improve its supply of electricity.

    The Calder Hall nuclear power station started generation in 1956, followed by Dounreay in 1958. These were world firsts for the technology. Sadly we have fallen behind on this front. It is time for a significant increase in nuclear power generation.

    In addition, the Severn Estuary has tides of approximately 10 metres twice a day, offering huge potential. Smaller generators could also be installed in numerous rivers across the country.

    Finally, there is the possibility of hydrogen production using electricity (relatively free) and water (unlimited), creating no pollution – a win-win situation.

    Britain’s first-class engineers are quite capable of designing and building such facilities. All that is required is the political will to proceed.

    Clive F Gardiner
    Minehead, Somerset

    SIR – Wind turbines constitute a danger beyond destroying birds and bats (Letters, January 23).

    Solar radiation apart, there is no such thing as free energy. What the layman perceives as wind is, in fact, the movement of enormous three-dimensional air masses around the globe, the building blocks of climate.

    Every wind turbine extracts a tiny amount of energy from the air mass, insignificant in isolation, but there must come a point when a proliferation of these devices will extract sufficient energy to alter the nature of that air mass, a potential climate-changing event.

    Meteorologists, pilots, seafarers and farmers understand air masses well enough but, in my experience, frighteningly few scientists and engineers do.

    Huw Baumgartner
    Bridell, Pembrokeshire

    1. “Finally, there is the possibility of hydrogen production using electricity (relatively free) and water (unlimited),”
      I must have missed something, what is the source of this ‘relatively free’ electricity?

    2. I will be the first to put my hand up and say i’m thick but wouldn’t taking some energy out of the air mass reduce the strength of storms?

    3. Clive F Gardiner, another half-wit who thinks that tidal rivers can power the country.

    4. Rolls Royce are developing small nuclear generators, I believe. They could be the way forward if we can ever unseat the loons.

  25. Good morning all! Late on parade, but so what?
    -2°C outside on a bright & dry morning with the sun shining up the valley.

    At least the winds have died down. Apparently up the road was blocked for a couple of hours yesterday after a tree came down.
    Not sure where, but a couple of HGVs were noted coming back down after passing up the road a short time before.

    1. Strange how we can send a few troops to stop 100,000 Russian troops invading an adjoining country but we can’t stop a boat load of terrorists from crossing the channel to invade us

  29. The Bloody Sunday cover-up. Spiked. 30 January 2022.

    Fifty years ago today, British troops from the Parachute Regiment were sent to Derry to commit an atrocity. They entered the Bogside, where unarmed civilians had gathered for a civil-rights march. Then they opened fire, killing 13 people. Another person died a few months later from his injuries, taking the death toll to 14.

    There is in this Diatribe of Hate not one word of the innocents killed by the Provisional IRA.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/30/the-bloody-sunday-cover-up/

    2. If they call it Bloody Sunday it should be ‘Bloody Sunday II or even III, as the first bloody Sunday occurred in Dublin 1920.

      1. The best one is Sunday Bloody Sunday, starring Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson. I don’t think any others are worth mentioning. Did you know that one of the children is now the writer of Endeavour?

    4. I read the title then wondered why the hell Spiked would be publishing what was clearly going to be insulting propaganda against Spiked’s readership. I closed the page down in disgust.

      1. I too wondered at Spiked publishing it since it is no way journalism. It is a hate filled polemic against the UK! The “writer” is quite clearly unhinged by his prejudices!

    5. This is Kevin Rooney’s (the writer of the piece) magnum opus
      Blood–Stained Poppy, The – A critique of the politics of commemoration Paperback – Illustrated, 25 Oct. 2019
      by Kevin Rooney (Author), James Heartfield (Author)
      For a century the war dead have been honoured with Red Poppies on Remembrance Day. The Poppy is part of a cult of death that celebrates the slaughter of the ‘Great War’ of 1914-18. The Poppy and the Remembrance Day ceremony turn grief to sanctify war. Here we expose the truth about the First World War, and about the century of militarism that followed. The war was not fought to make the world safe, but out of hatred and imperial greed. In the hundred years since the end of the First World War, Britain’s military ventures have continued to wreak havoc across the world. The Poppy is a symbol of British militarism, not a badge of peace.

      Nuff said

      1. Commemoration? It’s REMEMBRANCE. Those who don’t remember continue to make the same mistakes.

    6. Were they really sent to COMMIT AN ATROCITY or were they sent to sort out a potential threat?

  30. PETER HITCHENS: Have Cressida Dick’s Cake Squad joined the drama because they too hate us being free?
    *
    *
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/01/29/21/53529173-10455359-image-a-35_1643492214040.jpg
    The BBC last week interviewed the Chief Commissar of the Welsh People’s Republic (I think this is his title), Mark Drakeford. They asked him about the sharp difference between Welsh Covid policy and England’s currently more relaxed view under Johnson. He replied: ‘In Wales we still have a greater attachment to collective ways of doing things… We don’t have the same attraction that you see Conservative politicians having for that sense of individual freedom trumping everything else
    *
    *
    And now the police, who as we all know are totally bored by actual crime and disorder, have come tumbling into the drama.

    The Met Police Cake Squad, waving handcuffs and truncheons and donning the baseball caps they now wear for all the biggest inquiries, are hurrying to act.

    Has the Metropolitan Police, whose chief Dame Cressida Dick is as useless as she is radical, joined in this because, like Drakeford, they much prefer ‘collective solidarity’ to human freedom?

    What do you think? I expect they miss the days in 2020 when they could arrest people for sunbathing or walking in the park, and shout at them to go home. Their attitude is shocking. Dame Cressida and Sir Keir Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, must both know that a police inquiry is not a conviction and that everyone is innocent until presumed guilty.
    *
    *
    A cartoon to sum up our times…
    I have always loved this cartoon, drawn 60 years ago by Alex Graham, creator of the Fred Bassett comic strip. Alas, he is no longer with us, but his daughter Arran has kindly given me permission to use it here.

    It is funny in itself, but it has come to be a perfect summary of the West’s mad treatment of Russia.

    We did not in fact defeat Russia in any war in 1990. But we treated them as if we had. We promised them that we would not expand Nato eastwards. Then we did exactly that.

    They growled a bit, but we ignored it. Now they’re really cross and Joe Biden, much like the man in the cartoon, is wondering what he did wrong. He and lots of other Western blowhards should learn some history.
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/01/29/21/53529365-10455359-image-a-37_1643492297308.jpg
    *
    *
    The BBC has now moved on from trying to tell us what to think, to policing those who don’t share its views. Last week I was approached by a Marianna Spring, who proclaims herself the Corporation’s ‘Disinformation Reporter’.

    She wants to question me about my work during the Covid panic. I’ll keep you informed about her enquiries, which are proceeding.

    But my view is that her very title is an expression of prejudice. ‘Disinformation’ is just a long way of saying ‘lying’.

    If she thinks I’m dishonest, then let her say so on the BBC and we’ll see how that goes. But in general, if you want to investigate something, you start with an open mind and see what you find. How can your mind possibly be open, if you glorify yourself as a judge of truth before you even start? And remember, this is being done with licence-payers’ money.

    If the BBC wants to hunt down ‘disinformation’ about the Covid crisis, it is my view that it should clean its own house first.

    1. How did they manage to get my mother’s furniture in that cartoon? Most of it is here, too. Her piano, bureau, and the little wine table.

  35. Always try to choose the best person for the job of being impartial and judging the case on its merits vs the law and the Constitution you say?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10455771/Bidens-list-potential-SCOTUS-picks-expands-12-candidates.html

    Biden’s list of potential SCOTUS picks ‘expands to at least 12 candidates’: Civil rights attorney who compares ban on felons voting to slavery, a judge Ted Cruz called an ‘activist advocate’ and an NYU professor who said Giuliani’s defense of Trump during impeachment trial was ‘death spiral of stupid’

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/01/30/03/53535945-0-image-a-6_1643511972162.jpg

      1. True, but I don’t think they wore their bias on their sleeves to quite the same extent as this crop appear to.
        They must have hid it better.

    3. Golly Gosh. There seems to be a theme running through this list.
      Can anyone point me to it?

      1. 334806+ up ticks,

        Afternoon P,

        No wonder I could run fast our old dad used machine drive belting for shoe
        repairs,

    1. Talk to them about Word Processing Programs that are NOT What You See Is What You Get WYSIWYG

      The first one I came across was one for Atari, back in the 1980/1990

    3. My son came across of list of 50 common sayings that are about to become extinct in spoken English – I haven’t seen it but he told me it included things like ‘ nail your colours to the mast’.

      2. A Barry Cryer…

        By mistake a man swallowed a lot of tippex instead of viagra a got a massive correction

    9. ♪♫I’ve got sixpence, jolly, jolly sixpence, I’ve got tuppence to spend, tuppence to lend and tuppence to save for a rainy day.♪♫

  39. This BTL is for Rik in particular. I can’t see it staying up for very long!

    Giles Weston
    2 HRS AGO
    The DT seems to be unaware of THE biggest story around. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau flees Ottawa in the face of the Trucker Covid Counter-Revolution.
    To ignore this is a mark of a newspaper that is no longer a newspaper at all. Time for the editor to resign, methinks. This is more than shameful, it is a dereliction of journalistic duty, which suggests the DT owes its survival not to paying subscribers but to a group of very sinister people with a genunine totalitarian impulse.
    Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany owned their newspapers, but who owns the Sturmer/Pravda Telegraph today in order for it it to behave as it so inexplicably does? What else is the DT not telling us about? Why do we have to look elsewhere to find genuine HUGE news? How much longer can the DT survive if it is now just a mouthpiece for Davos, Gates and Big Pharma?
    Shame on you DT. Shame on you. #Nuremberg 2-0.

    * * *

    Even the World Service devoted a sentence or two in its hourly news last night…

  40. Why are we pretending to be a lion by commiting troops to the Ukraine..

    Why are we over there .. I thought we were meant to be sorting outselves out re Brexit .

    We cannot warmonger anymore .. can we?

    2. Grandstanding, whilst the Europeans take the back seat. If Boris really believes that another 900 troops put far away from Ukraine is going to stop Vlad doing what he wishes, he is bonking mad.

  42. A name to take you back….(esp for PT). The S Grimes cryptic today:

    “1980s singer refusing to change” 7 letters.

    It made the MR larf out loud!!

        1. He was involved in a row in a London pub. He went home and got a gun. Went back to the pub and waved it around. I think someone had said his music was crap.

          2. I must have missed that one.
            He got off lightly after pleading mental illness. The web remembers the details, back in 2002.
            He was sentenced to a 12-month community rehabilitation order and
            ordered to pay £500 compensation to Plato Contostavlos. Mr
            Contostavlos was hit by the alternator and needed three stitches.

          3. I must have missed that one.
            He got off lightly after pleading mental illness. The web remembers the details, back in 2002.
            He was sentenced to a 12-month community rehabilitation order and
            ordered to pay £500 compensation to Plato Contostavlos. Mr
            Contostavlos was hit by the alternator and needed three stitches.

  44. This afternoon, in our little church, we have a concert given by https://jackgonzalez-harding.com/ and his chums.

    Though he looks about 40 – Jack is 18. He has already been appointed an assistant conductor at Covent Garden. Those who know about these things say that he is already on the way to a glittering career.

    He also plays like a dream. 3pm. Free. Come early. Church likely to be full to bursting.

          4. Gazpacho is not that far away from being a Bloody Mary. It’s why i like a shot of Vodka in it.

      1. More likely a churchgoer.
        Jesting aside, the occasional thunderflash in Sweden is nothing but lighthearted rivalry between teams of herbalists and pharmacists, rather like boisterous apprentices boxing each other’s ears back in the Middle Ages.

    2. Last year, it was reported that Sweden saw over 80 explosions and while the number was a decrease from the previous year, it was still far higher than any of the country’s neighbours.

      Cultural enrichment for all to see.

      I do hope he is in a lot of pain.

  46. After the ‘Partygate’ investigation cock-up, the latest in a long history of blunders on the part of Dick, Head of the Yard, it’s becoming clear that she will have to go. Problem is, she knows where too many bodies are buried and Boris won’t want to upset her. Here’s my prediction for how he will wriggle out of it.

    Cressida Dick will be elevated to the peerage and she will take her seat on the cross-benches in the House of Lords as “Lady Dick”, the first transgender peer in British history.

    You read it here first.
    :¬)

      1. It will be there for the next few weeks……. he’s making four more holes to go through to boxes in the loft space.

    3. I caught another rat last Friday after an extended bathing session it then it took its place on the shed roof, but the usual on the ball Red kites missed out this time, the crows and Magpies got in on the act first. All Gone.

        1. A good soaking.
          I love to recycle.
          On closer inspection I found a round hole had been gnawed through the the side in one of my kitchen waste compost recycling bins. There quite strongly made from plastic.
          Now blocked. But the entire content had been turned over.

    1. I hope, for Nadal’s own sake, that Medvedev wins. To get to the top of the Grand Slam winners’ list without the best player being there would cast a permanent shadow over the achievement.

    2. One might say the same things about all the illegal gimmegrants and their dreams and desires.

      1. You could, but the Canadian truckers are trying to change their country because they are not happy with the direction it’s going in.

        The gimmigrants have run away to continue their way of life somewhere else as freeloaders. They haven’t the stomach to change their own country and just want the money another one provides without changing anything about their own lives.

        1. That doesn’t change the fact that they are moving to get away.
          We’re the stupid ones for accepting them.

          1. True, and we should refuse them. In fact, the first country they get to should have refused them.

  51. I’ve just been chatting to my mate Brucie in Victoria again. 37c over there today very high humidity, 27c in the house with the Air con on full blast. The poor sods eh !
    After 10 days of having the luxury of Nottlers on my mobile phone, I tried to log in today and it’s back to where it’s been for many months previously, as in, it doesn’t recognise my email address, my new and current pass word or my user name ???
    Slayders.

    1. My phone uses my other Nottl account but I only have to click on the D for disqus each time to log in.

      1. I’ve managed it Ellie I used my email address this time, it’s the first time that’s worked.
        If I’d changed my password again, I then wouldnt be able to access nttl on my pc. It’s all beyond my compression.
        But I could build you a staircase fit a kitchen or pitch you a roof. 🤗😉

        1. I set up the second account a couple of years ago when when all the upvotes were disapearing and there was a worry that we might be thrown out altogether- quite a few of us made new accounts then.

  52. Belated ‘Morning All

    Convoy Time !!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d53a66f98089f402c322821c2e92f956fdd2786c47e8e49c79650e5390a53a39.jpg

    https://twitter.com/canadiangirls99/status/1487501073120067587?s=21

    https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/875642290297769984/937070601254891540/d4d4af53936ed2d1.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59959b8a17337d1806448bb156522fe7d19a1eb5e82155211a3c7e359055cee3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bf6b83904ce6aa986084d922e1b08c3153b600170a28c185e901705575708c44.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a7c140cab42e7472bafed2ac153da80609002360a66b76737e954fa9948afb9f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3cb6003977b98325715ad7ce47feffa210d073f2213f84a603c2516ebeb9f1c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1edb7419722bd214c480cdc99e7c8de3b0c388412a0305908a65a67d2e2d751b.jpg

  56. We must face down the clear and present threat posed by Russia
    The UK is joining forces with our allies to show that there can never be rewards for aggression
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/29/must-face-clear-present-threat-posed-russia/

    BTL Comment under Liz Truss Article

    Ms Truss. Why should we think you can have any influence over Putin when you have yet to prove that you can stand up to the EU and the dementedly determined remainers in your party? If you fail to get rid of the N Ireland Protocol you should resign from politics along with most of your cabinet colleagues.

    1. And just in case you aren’t worried enough about us getting entangled in some lunacy in Ukraine, the Telegaffe front page reminds us that the idiot Radakin is advising Boris.

  57. Nicked fron a different Rick

    Apparently
    Johnson and Sunak have said that they cannot cancel the National
    Insurance hike because “there’s no magic money tree”.

    Why is that never a reason to prevent third world animals from being imported to overinbreed on benefits?

    Why isn’t it a reason to cancel HS2?

    Why isn’t it a reason to abolish foreign aid to countries that hate us?

    Why isn’t it a reason to scrap QUANGOs, charities, departments, policies,
    projects and schemes that the British taxpayer neither needs nor wants?

    We all know the answers. The British Government Of Globalist Occupation
    And Moslem Appeasement is a corrupt and criminal gang of dirty
    sociopathic parasites.

    2. Millions every day of the week spent of housing and feeding illegal migrants get a grip Boreus. You and you government are a useless and very expensive waste of space.

        1. Since the modern ‘Conservative’ Party are better described as Continuity New Labour, that’s no defence whatsoever.

          1. I was chatting to my old mate Bruce from Victoria Oz on the phone this morning, putting the world to rights. We both absolutely hate politicians. They have a double dose with state and federal.
            We couldn’t think of anything good they actually do.

        3. That’s no reason for them to carry on with it. As Conservatives, they are supposed to be different.

    1. Dear fricken’ life. These people are terrified. What they don’t understand is it won’t stop people. Only through referism, recall and direct democracy will this nonsense end.

      In a democracy this law would have been stopped, those pushing it through sacked.

      1. I am worried about what has happened to the Mounties.

        Why are they not out their attacking the trucks?

      2. I am worried about what has happened to the Mounties.

        Why are they not out their attacking the trucks?

    1. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-ehrc-is-right-about-the-trans-conversion-therapy-ban

      As a white male intolerant bigot, I see this in a simple light:

      Do what the hell you want. Believe you’re a sheep for all I care. As long as only consenting adults are involved, that is your (and their) right and choice.

      However, your rights stop where mine begin. You have no right whatsoever to tell me what I should call you, nor are you deserving of my respect because of your life choices. You may think you are a goat. I will refer to you as I choose. I may be polite and indulge you but it is my choice. Not yours.

      1. Their riights also stop with children. In the US, they are giving covid jabs to babies and young children. Madness.

    2. The picture of the dead bird encapsulates a phrase my father used about progressive thinkers fifty years ago:

      SELECTIVE INDIGNATION.

      1. That reminds me of another old phrase, originally referring to people who worked in summer but who spent the winters on benefits: ‘self-unemployed’.

          2. They normally do need more people to sort the mail at that time. But the seasonal work is short.

  61. Children aged seven to be taught that they are not ‘racially innocent’
    Brighton and Hove City Council accused of ‘indoctrinating’ children through five-year plan for anti-racist education system
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/29/children-aged-seven-taught-not-racially-innocent/

    Children as young as seven are to be told they are not “racially innocent” because they view “white at the top of the hierarchy” as part of diversity training for teachers.

    Brighton and Hove City Council has been accused of “indoctrinating” children through its five-year plan for an anti-racist education system, which endorses critical race theory and white privilege – contentious ideologies that have sparked protests.

    The council states that all teachers require the training, which will inform “specific racial literacy-focused lessons” for pupils. The Green-controlled authority is in a row with parents opposed to the classes and one has launched a petition to have the training scrapped, which has attracted 4,000 signatures.

    Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, has previously told the Commons that schools teaching white privilege as an uncontested fact are breaking the law.

    The Telegraph has obtained recordings, PowerPoint slides and reading lists that form the “Racial Literacy 101” sessions. Teachers began the training in the autumn term, and 300 have undertaken it so far.

    Brighton is the first British authority to roll out such training, and the hour-long session covers the history of the slave trade and racism in contemporary society.

    One slide tells teachers: “Between the ages of three and five, children learn to attach value to skin colour; white at the top of the hierarchy and black at the bottom.” Another document condemns “the widespread view” that young children are “racially innocent”, concluding that there is “ample evidence” to the contrary.

    Another slide displays a pyramid diagram containing acts that constitute “covert white supremacy”, including denying the existence of white privilege, eurocentric curriculums and saying “it is just a joke” when a person of colour becomes offended.

    On Saturday night Sir John Hayes, a former education minister, said he would call on Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, to introduce statutory guidance against ideological race materials in the Commons on Monday……

    And people call Religious Instruction in Christian schools ‘child abuse’.

    2. I don’t think I even saw a non-white person until I was 10 and in hospital, where some of the nurses were Caribbean.

      1. I know it was long before your time, but in 1950 there were 40,000 non white people in the UK.

      2. There was a quite large Jamaican community where I grew up in south London. They were friendly and always seemed to be smiling.

    3. These people are so full of contradictions. They don’t accept evolutionary biology, they don’t accept the Christian concept of original sin, they don’t accept that sexual preference can be formed by early childhood experience – yet they turn all of that on its head to suit their own pet theories.

        1. Pity the kids, fancy being raised by such woke bar stewards! They don’t stand a chance.

    2. Borrowed for the Canadian newsgroup.

      The media over here are really closing down coverage of the protest and the coward in chief.

      Parliament is supposed to reopen on Monday, any odds on him showing his face?

      1. Wasn’t there some suggestion recently that Turdeau had “done an Andrew” [allegedly] and had some under-age nookie? That all seems to have gone quiet.

  66. Bhutan prime minister mourns rare Covid death. 30 january 2022.

    Bhutan’s success in avoiding coronavirus is almost unrivalled but a rare patient death – just the kingdom’s fourth – shows more work was needed to fight the pandemic there, its leader says.

    The remote Himalayan nation of around 800,000 people, sandwiched between China and India, has recorded fewer Covid fatalities than almost anywhere else in the world.

    That’s because three quarters of them are Yeti’s!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/30/felt-like-a-bullet-bhutan-prime-minister-mourns-rare-covid-death

    2. I wonder if the altitude of Bhutan has made a difference? Bhutanese people may have developed more efficient lungs and have lower blood pressure than us swamp dwellers who abide at or near sea level.

      1. That is an interesting idea…Bhutan is fairly far south so they probably have good vit D levels too. I wonder if flu has returned to their country yet.

  67. Hello all!

    Chatting with a friend yesterday and the Neil Young song “Southern Man” came up. I have always preferred the version made by the Dave Clark Five (link below). Jog any memories? My buddy was of the opinion that “original is best “- well, I’m not sure. IMO a lot of songs have benefitted from re-interpretation (e.g. Joe Cocker with Help Fom My Friends and She Came in Through the Bathroom Window and loads of other which I can’t immediately recall).
    What’s your favourite remake?

    Anyway, although I quite liked Young when he was with CSN and Crazy Horse, his voice was always a bit to whiney for me….

    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=dave+clark+five+southern+man&ru=%2fvideos%2fsearch%3fq%3ddave%2bclark%2bfive%2bsouthern%2bman%26qpvt%3ddave%2bclark%2bfive%2bsouthern%2bman%26FORM%3dVDRE&qpvt=dave+clark+five+southern+man&view=detail&mid=39EAC195E8F8ED3E110139EAC195E8F8ED3E1101&&FORM=VDRVSR

      1. Davi Gray’s cover of Soft Cell’s “Say hello and wave goodbye” is a much better version, despite a dear friend of mine describing him as ‘musically suicidal’?

    2. Hi Lass, I have the original CD After The Goldrush with Southern Man on it, after listening to the DC5 I will choose the Neil Young version, but as they say, each to their own.

    3. I very much like the music of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell but sometimes one has to separate the art from the artists and, well, they’re both idiots.

      A few years back Joni Mitchell claimed to have Morgellons Disease and I always thought that getting over that meant coming to understand that the illusion of being infested was just that, an illusion – but no, she actually believes that there were multi coloured thread like insects coming out of her skin and eating her alive. She’s mad.

      1. It’s the long term drug use. What she is describing is like a bad acid trip.

        Along with a turbulent love life, success exposed Joni Mitchell to other excesses. In 1975, while
        touring with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, Mitchell became addicted to cocaine.
        “I realized you couldn’t stay on that thing straight — you’d be the
        only one,” she explained in a 2006 interview with The Ottawa Citizen.

        Yep. Mad as a box of frogs.

    4. ‘Hurt’, originally by Trent Reznor, sung by Johnny Cash.
      Catch the video on YouTube.

      You’re welcome.

      1. I love Mr Cohen’s stuff and that’s a nice take on it. There’s a guy at open mics who does a lot of his stuff and it’s very good when there are some good musicians backing him. He sings it a la Leonard though.

          2. I am afraid that the late Mr Cohen was wasted on me. I thought his songs and music frightful – and the dreary noise he made when “singing” even worse.

      4. No, it isn’t. It’s the first track on “I’m Your Man”. FBR was not an album, just a song.

        1. Perhaps you should read my post again, more carefully! I was actually referring to the Jennifer Warnes album – which is indeed called FBR and contains a number of Cohen tracks!

  68. I see that yet another white woman who lives with a wendyball player has alleged he beat her up.

    Guess his hue…. Come on, guess.

  71. Justin Trudeau and family flee home as thousands march against Covid mandates in Ottawa
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/justin-trudeau-family-flee-home-thousands-march-against-covid-mandates-ottawa-b979562.html
    Just in case you thought there was some reasonably truthful reporting…
    Some parked on the grounds of the National War Memorial and danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, others carried signs and flags with swastikas and some used the statue of Canadian hero Terry Fox to display an anti-vaccine statement.

        1. The establishment is getting hysterical about a statue of someone they seem to think they own. The hypocrisy is sickening.

        2. The opposition should growl “Brrrrm Brrrm, Brrrmm Brrrmm” every time Trudeau tries to speak in public.

      2. …and seem to be twisting it into a Nazi rally. I guess that’s all they could do after failing to pretend it didn’t exist, make it out to be a Nazi orgy. Classy.

        1. Especially after Trudeau has stirred up hatred against a sector of the population and been hand in glove with big pharma to force the population to have a treatment they neither want nor need. Behave like a Nazi, call anyone who opposes you a Nazi.

    1. Much as I admire her music, she clearly didn’t take on board health warnings concerning smoking as she was (still is?) an enthusiastic ‘puffer’. She suffered a brain-aneurysm in 2015, which could have been smoking related.

    2. Much as I admire her music, she clearly didn’t take on board health warnings concerning smoking as she was (still is?) an enthusiastic ‘puffer’. She suffered a brain-aneurysm in 2015, which could have been smoking related.

    3. Very depressing and too early for wine o’clock. Never heard her do that before and she sounded right down in the dumps. What about Big Yellow Taxi, still about miserable stuff, but at least more upbeat.

    4. Joni Mitchell is mentally ill. ‘And Young’ likewise.

      To these two we can add Harry and Meghan. They too are taking the Spotify millions and wish to see Joe Rogan’s podcast removed.

  73. Nadal wins Australian Open

    Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
    And put a barren sceptre in my grip.

    [Macbeth]

      1. Not to teach ad hominem the difference between homonyms, homophones, homophobes and homologues.

    2. It was Friedrich Engels, who was Karl Marx’s collaborator, who stated that ‘The family is the enemy of the state’ and the state cannot achieve its full potential until the family is destroyed completely.

  75. Just back from the concert by the young quartet “L’Eveil”. It is the first such event in the church for 2½ years.

    They were stunning. 70 people came – about half bagged up on entering the church….. Wazzocks.

    1. Only four of the choir (all men, as it happens) were wearing masks for the celebration of Candlemas (yes, I know it’s early) in church this morning. Choir is about twenty-two strong.

  76. 334806+ up ticks,

    Seeing as though many issues are @rse about face, the odious reverse
    to what they should be, cover ups to protect the guilty etc,etc, then many must acknowledge that this being so, and it is provable fact. that could leave Tommy Robinson with a good chance of becoming a prison governor.

    https://gettr.com/post/prferj79c3

    1. Like most reports, redacted or not, it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know 🙂

    4. Blimey, all I can say is that even the little ones have sharp beaks and merciless talons, so if you ever have to rescue one, wear a thick anorak and sensible gloves.

  81. A lovely sunset building up

    May I make a plea to NoTTLers – on behalf of sports fans hereabouts.

    PLEASE DO NOT POST MATCH RESULTS

        1. There’ll be another.
          Have a gin & tonic. And another. Make it like Second Son: Half a bottle of gin and a splash of tonic. Very quickly, one doesn’t care about sunsets.

          1. Indeed.
            I think they did their best, but were really there for the bar and craic afterwards.

          2. When virtually all rugby moved into the league structures, I think that at the lower levels much of that was lost.
            A great pity, I still keep in touch with friends developed through rugby from 50+ years ago.

          3. It’s the main reason I went scuba diving and caving. The pub & craic after. Haven’t done a lot of that for a while… I’ll not count the years, but there’s a lot of them.
            🙁

  83. ‘Boris and Carrie are f***ing everything up’: Dominic Cummings says ousting the PM is ‘an unpleasant but necessary job’ like ‘fixing the drains’ as he compares Johnson to a ‘Roman emperor’ obsessed with building monuments to himself
    Ex-No10 chief aide Dominic Cummings has renewed his attack on Boris Johnson
    Mr Cummings compared his campaign to oust Mr Johnson to ‘fixing the drains’
    He said PM saw himself as ‘Roman emperor’ and only cared about monuments

    But he swiped that in reality the Tory leader was a ‘f***wit’ obsessed with ‘babbling’ to the media rather than ‘important’ policy problems.

    The intervention came as Mr Johnson awaits the verdict of top civil servant Sue Gray and the police on Partygate allegations.

    Mr Cummings has been instrumental in stoking the crisis for the PM, having highlighted a series of potential lockdown breaches at No10.

    He told the magazine that he viewed getting rid of Mr Johnson as ‘an unpleasant but necessary job’. ‘It’s like sort of fixing the drains,’ he said.

    The maverick ex-adviser said Mr Johnson had been useful for delivering Brexit and defeating Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.

    ‘But after that what’s the point of him and Carrie just rattling around in there and f***ing everything up for everyone and not doing the job properly?’ he added.

    Downing Street declined to comment on the latest attack from Mr Johnson’s former ally.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10457129/Dominic-Cummings-says-ousting-PM-like-fixing-drains.html

    I am beginning to see the light , and by God, Cummings is right .

    1. My great worry is that he will do something completely and utterly stupid over the Ukraine, and turn a drama into a bloody great crisis for Biden to make even worse.

        1. If he should fulfil my concern, that will be the least of our worries.
          Looking on the few positives, at least the EU will have ceased to exist.

          1. Boris is not as stupid as Cameron. Both are equally untrustworthy in my opinion, but Cameron was too lazy to serve an apprenticeship as a politician when he was a student. Boris did, so I don’t think he will blunder into a Libya type error. For all his well documented faults, I don’t think he is the kind of fool who sees himself in the history books as a bold military commander. He doesn’t have that to prove.

          2. I hope you’re correct, but his form to date, climate change/covid/greenery etc. suggests otherwise.

          3. I think they are separate issues. Can he be bullied/bribed/whatever into following the WEF agenda? Demonstrably yes.
            Will he blunder into a needless military situation through a desire to show himself to be a tough leader? My gut feeling is no. Might he follow everyone else? Probably.

      2. ‘Frat house culture’ at Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat ‘led to aides banning him from taking top-secret documents home after he left them lying around in view of visitors’
        Boris Johnson was told to review confidential documents away from No 11 flat
        Decision came after ‘frat house’ atmosphere created national security risks
        PM allegedly left top secret documents in view of wife Carrie and her friends
        Material was instead shown to PM and ‘immediately returned to safekeeping’

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10456823/Frat-house-culture-Boris-Johnsons-flat-led-aides-banning-taking-documents-home.html

        3. Hmm, like Edward VIII. The government restricted his access to documents after they were frequently returned to No. 10 with rings from drink glasses on them and cigarette ash marks. He too left secret papers around when he and Wallis were partying.

    2. Cummings has no moral high ground, and there is still nobody who would challenge the pillars of the climate scam, the covid scam, the mass migration, the blob and the digital currency.

        1. I had to search all over for that. Even his heads too big for a ‘swirly’. It’s got to be an open main sewer for him, perhaps after being defenestrated.

          1. I’m not even sure I got the right word, it’s all I could think of. And it wasn’t just boys who did it:-(

    4. Carrie rattling around in there and effing everything up and not doing the job properly…..She is not supposed to be doing the job, she’s his wife- nothing more.

      2. I know that , you know that , we all know that , but one thing for sure is she is a bloody nuisance .

        She has taken advantage of him for her own purposes .

          1. That’s for sure, Ann, but I don’t think he’s making anything up though. He’ll have all the evidence tucked away on some disc or hard drive.
            Edit; With many copies left in the hands of lawyers, stating “In the event of my …”.

      3. I think that it was because of effing that Boris Johnson ditched his previous wife for Carrie!

    5. A confused badger wearing a raincoat could have defeated Corbyn if they had promised to deliver Brexit. The country was sick of the desperate infighting, the bitter anger from the Left, the remoaners trying to overturn a democratic vote.

      The majority wanted Brexit and an end to the argument.

      Boris got in with a thumping majority. A libertarian by his articles, a common sense politician who offered the greatest act of democracy we’d ever had.

      Then he gets in and – putting aside covid as an anomaly, his entire government has been unmitigated crap. Crap that’s the exact opposite of the character we thought we were hiring. He turns into a big state, big spend, high tax green fanatic.

      The exact opposite of what the country needed. He continues to make the government the absolute centre of the economy, he continues to waste money hand over fist. He has no grip whatsoever on the state machine and the departments continue to ruin this country for their own pathetic, egotistical arrogance.

      He’s Nero, fiddling as Rome burns. He should have said, from the outset ‘we had a small gathering as we always do on ‘day’. I am sorry. We simply didn’t think. I apologise to all those people I have let down.’ Where to go from there I don’t know, as he’s already been shown to be utterly rudderless and changeable as a weathervane.

      His policies are damaging the country. His behaviour is evasive when it isn’t dismissive.

      I’m tired of these people. Tired of all of them. All 650 Commoners and the legions of unnecessary Lords and their endless corruption, fraud and undeserved egotistical posturing. I’m sick of Whitehall and it’s hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats doing so little at such great cost. I’m tired of the country being over-run with foreigners gabbling away, treating this, the greatest nation on bloody earth as a doss house. I’m tired of the taxes, not because of the amount but because the value returned is miniscule. For what we pay the meanest pavement should be mirror smooth and so clean you could lick it. I’m tired of the traffic, the rude people made so because they’ve sat in a jam for 2 blasted hours because Soton CC have slapped up traffic lights every 20 feet. I’m sick of useless counsellors, or lazy, fat, overpaid council management. I’m fed up with inflation caused solely by taxation blamed on companies by thick people who can’t put 2 and 2 together. I’m tired of schools teaching to get funding by the state rather than for pupils. I’m tired of paying and paying for these clowns, liars and thieves – at all levels. I’m tired of the effort I have to go through to not feel as if the state is ramming a traffic cone up my backside. I’m sick of the cost of fuel – because it’s intended to raise tax – it’s bugger all to do with the environment, same for energy. As for energy – pah! An artificial situation created by the state for tax. They’ve no interest in ‘green’. These fools just want to take more and more for their own profit. More, I’m tired of their weaponising of inflation and suppression of interest rates, which have hurt the lowest earners the most, all for their greed and spite.

      I hate them. I dislike many things, I find myself unreasonably angry at most everything, but I actively, seethingly hate this entire useless, state edifice.

  84. Lovely concert this afternoon – a young classical guitarist, James Girling – looks like a schoolboy but must be in his mid-twenties – and very talented. He played a variety of music from Dowland to modern South American.

    OH is catching up on the tennis highlights now while dinner’s cooking.

  85. That’s me for this splendid weekend.

    Good to trip to London; brilliant time with fave grand-daughter.
    Excellent curry lunch (The India Club, Strand – hasn’t changed since the 1950s). Lunch for four = £40.
    Very good show at the Courtauld (where I explained to GD and family that I first entered Somerset House 62 years ago!!)

    Then today, fantastic concert by keen and talented young musicians.

    It was particularly rewarding to see the four musos – very serious; highly trained – applying themselves in an old-fashioned way.

    On top – fave GD (15 going on 25) explained what she wants to do A level (at a different 6th form place “which will stretch me more”) – and then as a career.
    And the MR had an e-mail from another very bright young woman ( aged 16, whose mother the MR taught 30 years ago) with her plans for her future education.

    In this day and age, when there is SOOOOOO much about ditsy, frit, woke youngsters – deeply into PCness and cancel culture – it is refreshing and encouraging to come across six youngsters who are determined to advance themselves for the betterment of society.
    It almost brought a tear to either eye….

    So – on that positive note, I’ll leave you to have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    2. As I point out to my teenage step daughter, Many of her contemporaries are unable to present as smart, well spoken intelligent individuals. So it doesn’t take too much effort to climb into the first division of life.

  86. The BBC must confront its long-held prejudices towards Jews

    It is unimaginable that it would take the corporation so long to apologise for grievous victim-blaming on any other beleaguered minority

    ZOE STRIMPEL • 30 January 2022 • 10:00am

    When Corbyn’s Labour kept having trouble with anti-Semitism, the Left seemed incapable of grasping why. The party stood for anti-racism, after all! What they couldn’t see, of course, was that anti-Semitic behaviour occurred because of a pervasive, deep-seated loathing of Israel – and the two are often linked. The anti-Israel stance itself stemmed from the political convictions of the 1970s far-Left, the circles from which Corbyn emerged.

    A similar problem underpins the BBC’s inability to amend its behaviour towards Jews. It just doesn’t get it. The community was deeply wounded by its reporting of the attack by a group of Muslim men on a Hannukah bus carrying Jews in November.

    Instead of calling it what it was – an anti-Semitic attack, replete with what appeared to be a Hitler salute, the BBC accused those in the bus of provoking the attack with an anti-Muslim slur. Yet when analysed externally, no such slur was found.

    As Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies observed: “The supposed slur, which the BBC insists is there, is nothing but fiction. This raises serious questions about deep-seated biases within the BBC towards Israelis, and towards Jews in general.”

    It is unimaginable, given all this, that it would take the BBC as long to apologise as it has for such grievous victim-blaming on any other beleaguered minority. And then, to add insult to injury, to issue a non-apology, as it did last week. Only after their Executive Complaints Unit partially upheld complaints did it apologise, though the BBC rejected the characterisation of victim blaming, and upheld the use of ‘alleged’ in describing the abuse.

    There’s nothing new here. In October, Dreyfus was briefly described as ‘the notorious Jewish spy’ in a blurb for the BBC’s Paris Police 1900. The recent synagogue hostage-taking in Texas was disappointingly reported with barely a mention of anti-Semitism.

    The BBC’s problem with Jews goes back several generations, and, as with Corbyn’s Labour, the reason lies in the slow but sure percolation of the most toxic parts of left-wing culture of the 1970s. Only when the BBC confronts its anti-Israel bias will it find that it makes fewer slips in its handling of Jews.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/30/bbc-must-confront-long-held-prejudices-towards-jews/

    1. Don’t confuse Israel with Jews.
      One can critcise the state of Israel, without being antisemitic.

  87. I’m enjoying the African Cup of Nations football.
    Interesting that they don’t do any of the knee bending nonsense.
    White commentators, not many. White players, not many. A few white managers and coaching staff.
    Have I heard any complaints about under-representation of whites and Asians? What do you think?

    1. Very apt quotation posted after that article…

      John Henry Holliday, DDS4 hr ago
      “The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”–Proverbs 28:1

    2. As the article says, he has many followers, they still believe. They were silent yesterday but they are back trolling the comments in media that is covering the convoy.

      Groundhog day in a few days, we expect him to pop out from his cottage to insult the vile unCanadian racists that are making a mockery on our country before he crawls back into his bolt hole. He has no shame, nor do his liberal MPs

        1. Oh your mind. . .

          Our glorious leader does not believe that the official PM residence is good enough for him so he lives in teh small 22 room “cottage” in the grounds of the Rideau Hall. .

          2. I see. So his cottage is actually a Palace. Plenty of up and downstairs to keep him occupied. Have you watched Versailles?

  89. Our problems stem from a useless civil service, but we prefer to blame ministers

    Though the administrative state is plainly failing in its duties, nobody is being held to account, except our beleaguered politicians

    DANIEL HANNAN • 29 January 2022 • 5:00pm

    This week, the normally staid House of Lords witnessed a rare moment of drama. Lord Agnew, an entrepreneur serving as an unpaid minister at the Cabinet Office and the Treasury, made a statement about fraudulent claims for Covid grants. Having torn into the uselessness of the officials involved, he announced that he was quitting the government, thrust his resignation letter at the Tory whip who happened to be sitting next to him and stomped out of the chamber to scattered applause.

    It was the liveliest thing to have happened in decades, but it received surprisingly scant coverage. Journalists initially tried to make it a story about the collapse of Boris Johnson’s authority, but Agnew – an enormously able and respected minister – made clear that he had no quarrel with the PM. Indeed, he apologised for the coincidence of timing. No, his problem was with what he called the “arrogance, ignorance and indolence” of the government machine. And that, for most pundits, was simply not news.

    This lack of interest partly explains the problem that Agnew was complaining about. No one pays attention to the failings of officials – except insofar as they can somehow be pinned on politicians. The current rows over lockdown violations, for example, largely involve civil servants. Yet from the headlines you might think that the Prime Minister’s was the only name in the frame. The same is true of the kerfuffle about evacuating animals from Kabul. Something similar could be said of the fact that Lex Greensill was brought into government, rewarded and decorated at the initiative of a senior civil servant but it all ended up being blamed on David Cameron.

    In an inversion of Stanley Baldwin’s complaint about press barons, ministers have “responsibility without power”, carrying the can for things that are outside their control. These days, a politician’s place is in the wrong.

    Keeping politicians in the wrong can require mental contortions. During the first lockdown, commentators raged about our inability to get enough protective equipment, ventilators or tests. These failures were largely the responsibility of Public Health England and the NHS.

    But the same commentators were reluctant to admit as much while the country was applauding the NHS, figuratively and literally. So whenever they wrote about procurement disasters, they performed a neat semantic sidestep and referred to the NHS as “the government”.

    The electorate as a whole engages in the same doublethink. We demand that public bodies be “free from political interference”. Yet, when these agencies fail, we excoriate the very ministers whom we had insisted on keeping away from them.

    This asymmetry in scrutiny has a great deal to answer for. Many civil servants are models of disinterested diligence. Certainly they are every bit as competent and virtuous as politicians. The difference is that the politicians are more likely to be held to account– which tends, other things being equal, to raise their game.

    Nothing new, you might say. The tension between publicity-hungry ministers and wily officials was the basis of the ingenious BBC drama ‘Yes, Minister’. But a number of things have changed since the elegant jostling between Sir Humphrey Appleby and Jim Hacker was first broadcast in 1980.

    For one thing, as a haggard minister put it to me, “at least Sir Humphrey was good at his job”. We cling to the image of a Rolls-Royce civil service but, in truth, its best days are behind it.

    Contrast, to pluck a recent example, our failure on PPE and testing with our success on vaccine purchases. The difference was that, while the former was left to our lumbering official agencies, the latter was deliberately taken out of their hands and given to Kate Bingham from the private sector – who, let’s remember, was roundly excoriated for her pains.

    Another difference is that the civil service now has a collegiate outlook, a set of shared beliefs.

    Sir Humphrey had no agenda beyond ensuring that civil servants were numerous, influential, well-remunerated and, where possible, knighted. His successors, by contrast, have an ideology.

    They may not be partisan, but they are prejudiced. They tend, for example, to believe in the benevolence of government intervention and the efficacy of public spending. They are keen on supranationalism, and regret Brexit. Above all, they have elevated identity politics almost to the point where it has become their chief concern, displacing the notional functions of their departments.

    We see this in small ways. For example, at some point over the past two years, most civil servants started appending their preferred pronouns to their email signatures. These pronouns are never, in my experience, unexpected; but their purpose is not to inform, so much as to serve as a tribal signifier, a badge of belonging.

    A trivial thing, you might say, but a telling one nonetheless, in that it sets our officials apart from the general population. As permanent secretaries fret more about how they are ranked on “inclusion”, they necessarily have less time for what ought to be their main jobs.

    Considerations such as merit, efficiency and value for money are downgraded as initiatives are instead measured by the gauge of what is called diversity – which, in Whitehall, means “people who look different but think the same”.

    What is the basis of this obsession? Is the civil service seeking to correct an ingrained bias against minorities in its recruitment? For an answer, we need only look at the latest figures. Last year, 23.3 per cent of civil service fast stream recruits were from ethnic minorities, as against 14 per cent in the population as a whole.

    In the same intake, 58.6 per cent were female, as against 50.6 per cent of the country; and 19.6 per cent were LGBT, as against (depending on what measure you use) between three and seven per cent.

    What proportion would our mandarins consider sufficient? Do they aim to get to 100 per cent in all these categories? If not, what figure do they have in mind? And, more to the point, on whose authority have they chosen it?

    It was revealed last week, for example, that the Foreign Office remains one of the largest sponsors of Stonewall – despite the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, having made clear that she considered such links to be a distraction from the chief function of government departments. Truly the Blob is an awesome thing. Squash one part of it and it bulges up in ten other places.

    Which brings us to the biggest difference between ‘Yes Minister’ and today. The balance of power has shifted decisively. No longer is it a duel between more or less evenly matched parties.

    As Sir Humphrey has become better resourced and more ideological, Jim Hacker has become more cowed, constrained and distracted. Each Greensill-type affair makes MPs more nervous. Some cabinet ministers now refuse to hold meetings without a civil servant present. They know that they enjoy the automatic disbenefit of the doubt. Simply to tell their officials what to do is to risk accusations of undue interference or of bullying.

    Not every politician is a yes-man, of course. Michael Gove is the outstanding example of a minister who, instead of becoming the champion for his officials, sees it as his role to make them work for the rest of us. Lord Agnew was another such. So, to a degree, is Steve Barclay who, as Minister for the Cabinet Office, occupies the closest thing to Hacker’s imaginary job of Minister for Administrative Affairs.

    Occasionally, these ministers have forced through reforms that the administrative state detests – for example, moving some civil servants out of London to places where they might run into an occasional Leave voter, or insisting on more objective aptitude tests. But, in most cases, Sir Humphrey need only wait until the minister is reshuffled, sacked or (like Agnew) worn down.

    What, then, can be done? Some sensible ideas were set out by the Commission for Smart Government, chaired by the former MP Lord Herbert: bringing in more outsiders, using performance measures and the like.

    We could, as Australia does, allow ministers to bring in hundreds of advisers in, so evening the balance. Or we could go the other way and scrap a great many government agencies.

    Such things, though, ought to be initiated at the start of a ministry, and pursued relentlessly and single-mindedly. The arrival of the coronavirus barely two months after the 2019 election postponed the reckoning.

    Going into battle in mid-term will be far more gruelling. But not doing so could be fatal.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/29/problems-stem-useless-civil-service-prefer-blame-ministers/

  90. Best dinner ever made by Second Son. Peppersteak with broccoli & mash. Fabulous! The lad has talent!

  92. All this talk about Jesus College reminded me of an anecdote I read somewhere- don’t ask where.
    Many years ago the phone rang in the Porter’s Lodge at Jesus College, Cambridge on Christmas Day. A rather don like voice said, “Hello, is that Jesus?”
    “Yes,” said the Porter….the voice then sang “Happy birthday to you…”

  93. All this talk about Jesus College reminded me of an anecdote I read somewhere- don’t ask where.
    Many years ago the phone rang in the Porter’s Lodge at Jesus College, Cambridge on Christmas Day. A rather don like voice said, “Hello, is that Jesus?”
    “Yes,” said the Porter….the voice then sang “Happy birthday to you…”

  94. Re Ruth Rosie….I imagine she is very glad of all our support but I do think the house links should be left out. She knows what she wants and can afford and if she looks at too many things posted here, it will take time up from her search for a new home. Support and encouragement, yes, but leave the rest to her. She’s a canny lass and will know how to proceed.

          4. I must say i feel that people that have got to the age of at least 50 years old haven’t been trying hard enough. Admittedly everyone’s circumstances are different. My view is that people hide behind Unions and expect the leadership to provide. What actually happens is the leadership get the nice paid for houses. The Unions are supposed to represent the workers. In reality they use them to further their own goals.

            I am surprised that supposedly intelligent people that teach children do not understand this.

  95. Oh dear, here we go again.
    Forgive my evil mind, but does anyone else start to think that the Prince Andrew money grab is getting copycat crimes reported?

    Manchester United and England ace Mason Greenwood, 20, is ARRESTED on suspicion of rape and assault: Police pictured outside player’s home after disturbing allegations are made on social media and club announces he is suspended

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10457499/Manchester-United-England-ace-Mason-Greenwood-20-ARRESTED-suspicion-rape-assault.html

    This man would appear to be a vicious bastard, but there seem to be an awful lot surfacing where a rich man is chased by a “quickie”

    1. Crikey. Those poor people are being hit twice. Hoping their power is restored soon.

      Our infrastructure is frail and neglected. Billions now squandered on fraudulent PPE start-ups, furlough for charlatans and on lazy council bureaucrats while roads, rivers and the grid are left to the mercy of weather events.

    1. Very good, Belle, he reminds me of how pathetic I was when making excuses for not having done my homework.

      1. I’ve lost count of the number of times I heard that- usually from kids who didn’t have dogs;-))

  98. Evening, all. I can assure BT there is no way I’ll post match results; I didn’t even know there was a match on!

    2. I’m watching the cricket. It’s a white ball game on an ex-slave plantation island, how disgusting eh? Will we be black-balled if we whip them?

      1. MH’s pirate source has gone orf- he’s spitting feathers and following the score card.

  99. Why is Boris set on a path to secure his departure from No. 10 as the most humiliating career -ending disaster in British history?

    Who are his friends and advisors?
    [The latter two are rhetorical questions]

    1. His most recent wife has ruined everything .. and the country .

      She is a liability , she has established ownership of him .. she is the same as the Markle woman that Harry lusted after.

      1. The great thing about Churchill is that he was “happy in his pants” and spent an absolute mountain of time on feeding his brain with book learning and this was added to a formidable amount of on-the-ground, front-line, action.

          1. I recall taking a short motoring holiday about 10 years ago (before my eyes deteriorated big-time) in the south-east in an effort to show my wife that part of the country (for the first time). In the 3 days allotted, we managed to visit Cliveden, Chartwell, and Bateman’s (Kipling’s house – which East Sussex County Council were, deliberately I presumed, not publicising ).

          2. I’ve just been watching a repeat of an edition of the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year competition from a couple of years ago that was held at Chartwell. They gave a good potted history of Churchill’s life there from him buying the place, developing it to suit his needs, and his paintings.

          3. My friend Richard Rees won that a few years ago. I think Joan Bakewell was at the awards.

            Richard was a friend from Sheffield University where we studied in Architecture 1970-1973.

            We meet up every ten years or so, as a group, most recently in Buckingham last year to celebrate our ‘measured drawings’ expedition to Stowe where we were tasked with measuring the various pavilions and temples.

            I measured the Boycott pavilions at the main entrance, designed by James Gibbs and adapted by Giambattista Borra who replaced the stone pyramidal roofs with the lead covered domes and cupolas in place today.

            My drawings contributed to my portfolio and I won the Stephen Welsh Draughtsmanship Prize.

      2. “The same as the Markle woman”, Maggie? But, but, but… I thought that Carrie was hideously white. Lol.

          1. You did, Maggie. And I replied that your post had given me an idea: I could bake a rhubarb crumble and sell 10 portions for £50! Lol.

      1. It is not health status but more likely ‘unhealth status’. The ‘vaccinations’ are now proven to be positively dangerous.

        Nobody knows how many will die prematurely from the jabs on offer.

        Some die immediately, some die within a few days, some die after a week or so and God only knows how many will die in the months and years to come. Others suffer dreadful harm and injury to their health.

        The entire ‘vaccination’ programme should have been halted months ago.

        1. The plan is for people not to die until four or five years after having had the vaccine gene therapy as they hope that in this way people will not associate the death with the gene therapy.

          Every now and then there is a cock up and it works more quickly and people die from heart attacks/myocarditis only a few days after the jab but they make sure the MSM don’t report it and there is no post mortem.

          1. I know. I truly believe that we are witnessing pure evil.

            I have in the past experienced deep vein thrombosis and much later bilateral pulmonary embolism. The very last thing I need or want is a blood clotting serum.

          2. The most significant problem now is getting a GP appointment and getting them to recognise the need for further investigation. I have had a dreadful experience for almost 12 months and all I get is phone appointments. With another booked for April. I write letters send emails and these are ignored.
            I need to see a cardiologist but it’s impossible. As I have mentioned before it seems if you are past 70 now the NHS under instructions from the recently installed and new region management board, are using FOAD as the new policy.
            Eff Off And Die.

          4. What’s worse is the possbility that the fertillity of young women who have been jabbed might be affected. Neither of my daughters has had it, I’m happy to say.

        2. Brother-in Law died shortly after vaccination – but apparently the events are unrelated

    6. That is easily sorted. You walk around the store and fill a large trolley to overloaded, mainly with frozen and fresh goods.. You then place one small bottle of beer on the top. When you are the challenged to show your vaccine ‘status’, you simply tell them that you don’t have one and walk out of the shop leaving your trolley in situ.

      If everyone adopted that procedure the shop’s management would quickly have a rethink.

      1. Yo, Grizz. I like Aldi. Here in Blighty they tend not to be mask Nazis. I suppose they’re just following the ridiculous Oz government orders.

        Incidentally, in church this morning, I was the only person not wearing a face nappy. After the service, I even observed folk trying to drink coffee without removing their mask. There’s no hope.

        1. Even here in Commie Central Scotland, Aldi and Home Bargains are a beacon of hope amongst the convid lunacy!

        2. My experience at church was the complete opposite. Most people were unmasked. Perhaps they make them tougher in Cheshire? Even the visiting bishop (who popped in to have a look around after the service) wasn’t wearing a mask.

          1. I even observed a choir member trying to drink her post-service coffee through her mask. I was in Devon last week, and the mask observance was truly scary. I’ve never succumbed to the mask mandate, but last week, I threw away my lanyard as well.

          2. Good for you, Geoff. Keep up the good example and people will start to realise that taking your mask off doesn’t result in instant death.

        3. You have got to be kidding. Those poor coffee addicts ! and they aren’t even allowed plastic straws !!!

        5. We use Aldi for certain items but we choose ‘click and collect’ which probably costs a fiver. Well worth it to avoid the masked imbeciles inside the store.

      3. I did that at the WGC Tesco HQ store.
        I wanted to buy some lunch and only had cash. The check out wouldn’t accept cash.
        I left the sandwiches and drink on the counter.
        Went back Half filled a trolley went to another check out and when they told me no cash I just walked out.

  103. Bill Thomas is asking us all not to post match results “on behalf of sports fans hereabouts”. Well, Bill, I am not a sports fan, so I am happy to post the match results for non-fans like me: Swan Vesta 75, England’s Glory 76 (after extra time). :-))

      2. England’s Glory was the regular matchbox in Derby when I was but a nipper, Grizzly. And they usually had a wise saying or a funny joke printed on the back. Two I vividly remember were:
        (1) Be wiser than other people if you can – but never tell them so.
        (2) Doctor: Mr Jones, I’m sorry to tell you that you’re wife is losing her mind. Mr. Jones: I’m not surprised, Doctor, she’s been giving me a piece of it every day for the past 25 years.

      1. I used to collect matchboxes when I was a child (I am a hopeless case!) and I had one of those.

      2. “Oh where, oh where does your Highland laddie dwell?
        Oh where, oh where does your Highland laddie dwell?
        He dwells in merry Scotland where the bluebells sweetly smell,
        And all in my heart, I love my laddie well….”

        The Bluebells of Scotland.

    5. Too right Elsie ! Bill blithely posts pictures of jigsaws completed we haven’t even had the chance to pinch from charity shops!

    6. It would be rather difficult for anyone following news channels to have not registered that the Nadal creature had won in Australia.

      He might be a great tennis player but I judge him by the way he effectively dismissed his principal adversary with references to vaccine mandates. Pure evil in my view. His victory counts for nothing simply because he supported the exclusion of the best player from the tournament.

      Australia, a great country and with a distinguished record of supporting Great Britain during the Wars, has regrettably been hijacked by fascist morons in their government. I hope the people rebel and hang the sodding politicos.

      1. I posted a quotation from Shakespeare which I thought summed up a tennis match a couple of hours after the match had finished and after another Nottler had already posted it.

        Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
        And put a barren sceptre in my grip.

        Perhaps, in future, we should post news of sporting events behind the concealing spoiler? And how long after the match need we wait?

        Incidentally, I know the result of the final 20/20 cricket match in the series between England and the Windies.

        But I’m not going to post it until tomorrow!

        1. I find the whole debate somewhat irritating. It is probably best to make no reference whatever to sports results. It seems to upset folk who wish to view a contest at leisure well after the actual event has concluded.

          This is regrettably the modern world in which we live. We are constantly accused of being dissenters to some whacky narrative. I am with you!

  107. Anger, scorn and support as Andrew Neil returned to TV to take on Boris Johnson
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2022/01/30/anger-scorn-support-andrew-neil-returned-tv-take-boris-johnson/

    BTL

    I shall never forgive Boris Johnson for dodging an interview with Andrew Neil before the general election.

    He had talked about a ‘fantastic’ oven-ready Withdrawal Agreement and the truth was that it was a disaster and just a rehash of May’s surrender WA – as the Northern Ireland Protocol and the loss of fisherfolk’s fishing waters has exposed.

    I had hoped that Andrew Neil Neil would have interviewed Johnson live; Johnson said he would be interviewed and then chickened out. I for one have not forgiven or forgotten Johnson for this and now we see that Andrew Neil himself has also got feet of clay.

    1. Morning, Geoff.
      Thanks again. Perfect timing for me to be first on the last day of January! Gotta be some shiny things in that!

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