Tuesday 8 February: Britain’s nuclear energy sacrificed to politicians’ electoral ambitions

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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678 thoughts on “Tuesday 8 February: Britain’s nuclear energy sacrificed to politicians’ electoral ambitions”

  1. Good morning from a still dark but dry and, with 6½°C on the yard thermometer, very mild Derbyshire.

  4. Good morrow fellow NoTTLers.

    Had she lived, my Mama would be 119 to day – still missed.

    2. Morning Bob. I’d pay good money to watch a similar performance with a whole raft of present day politicians suffering the same fate!

    3. Morning Bob. I’d pay good money to watch a similar performance with a whole raft of present day politicians suffering the same fate!

  6. Tories join backlash at Boris over hate mob targeting Keir Starmer. 8 February 2022.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b0b312aa93ca63c291cf952577ee2ccf76db5cb85fe405a8b91d0783c0e5dfa2.png

    Keir Starmer was today bundled into a police car after being heckled by ‘Covid Freedom’ protesters as he walked near the Houses of Parliament.

    Dramatic footage showed the Labour leader being shouted at as he walked in Westminster after leaving New Scotland Yard while surrounded by police officers shortly before 5pm.

    There looks to be about five people in this “mob”. Being of a naturally suspicious mind I would point out that the incident plays far more to Labour’s favour than anyone else!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10486189/Keir-Starmer-bundled-car-outside-Parliament.html

    2. Quite so, Minty. What constitutes a “mob” I wonder? Or is this just the usual hype in the fevered minds of the media?

      1. There seem to be about 7 – some of whom I suspect are journos – that’s pathetic, even by false flag standards!

    3. I watched some youtube footage. The only ‘chants’ I could hear from ‘the mob’ related to Labour no longer representing ‘the working man’ and something to do with Julian Assange. Nothing about Jimmy Savile.

      1. I looked at a few. That’s what I heard too.

        The MSM misrepresentation of this is scandalous.

        1. Just like the BBC’s take on Ottawa and the truckers – “racist, homophobic, extreme right wing, urinating on tombs ..” have I missed any?

  8. Arizona Senate Approves Bill to Ban Males From Female School Sports
    By Allan Stein
    Updated: February 6, 2022
    The Republican-sponsored bill prohibiting males from playing on Arizona female school sports teams passed by a majority vote of the state’s Senate on Feb. 2 and now goes to the state House for review and vote.

    The Senate voted 16-13 to pass the bill, with all Democrats voting against it.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/arizona-senate-approves-bill-to-ban-males-from-female-school-sports_4257271.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge

    In another report on the story, one BTL comment suggests those opposing the bill are Wokepanzees

    Morning folks – Have a nice day….

  9. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Here is a welcome article, although I’ll believe it when I see it. Whatever next…fracking? There will be tears at bedtime in No10:

    Six North Sea oil and gas fields to be fired up amid Cabinet row over net zero

    New drilling to be approved as Number 10 faces resistance over green moves and spending

    By
    Tony Diver,
    POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT and
    Ben Riley-Smith,
    POLITICAL EDITOR
    7 February 2022 • 9:45pm

    Six North Sea oil and gas fields are set to be given the green light this year, The Telegraph has learnt, as Cabinet figures push back against “insane” demands to go further on net zero.

    Rishi Sunak has asked Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, to fast-track the licences amid Treasury fears over the economic impact of making the UK a net zero carbon emitter by 2050.

    It is the latest sign of tensions between Number 10 and Number 11 after the Treasury held back plans for bringing down NHS backlogs and demanded better value for money.

    The Telegraph understands that Mr Sunak is also preparing to resist Boris Johnson’s high-spending instincts over public sector pay, measures to limit migrant Channel crossings and the scrapping of free Covid tests.

    On Monday, the Prime Minister moved to play down suggestions of a rift with Mr Sunak – seen as a future Tory leadership contender – by responding “absolutely not” when asked whether he has doubts about the Chancellor’s loyalty.

    He said: “Everybody in Number 10 and the Treasury are working together in harmony to deal with the big problems that the country faces and clearing the Covid backlogs.”

    The six oil and gas areas, which have already been given a preliminary licence by ministers, are expected to be given approval by Britain’s oil and gas regulator to begin construction of rigs in the North Sea.

    Despite calls for all domestic fossil fuel extraction to be halted, ministers have pledged to continue to support oil and gas production while renewable energy sources are developed.

    Drilling of oil and gas could begin in the Rosebank field, to the west of Shetland, and at the Jackdaw, Marigold, Brodick and Catcher sites in the central North Sea. A sixth site, Tolmount East, had been intended to be approved by the Oil and Gas Authority last year but is now expected in 2022.

    The combined reserves of all six sites are thought to be enough to power the whole UK for six months, with 62 million tonnes of oil equivalent fuel in the ground.

    A Whitehall source told The Telegraph: “The Business Secretary is pushing for more investment into the North Sea while we transition – not just for jobs and tax revenue, but for domestic energy security.

    “Kwasi is actively resisting insane calls from Labour and the eco-lobby to turn off UK production. Doing so would trash energy security, kill off 200,000 jobs, and we would only end up importing more from foreign countries with dubious records.

    “Over the long term, we need to generate more secure, affordable, low carbon power in the UK to achieve greater energy independence. The more clean power we generate in the UK, the less exposed consumers will be to gas prices set by international markets.”

    For much of the last year, Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak have privately tussled over the scale of public spending, with the Prime Minister more eager than the Chancellor to approve extra money.

    With Mr Johnson weakened politically by a rebellion by some Tory MPs to oust him as leader, Mr Sunak is expected to be more robust in his opposition to new spending in the coming weeks.

    Senior government sources who have seen the pair interact up close are predicting that Mr Sunak will take a tough line on spending when it comes to public sector pay settlements and policies to tackle the surge of migrant boats crossing the Channel.

    The Chancellor is also expected to push to scrap mass free Covid testing by the end of next month, when the Government is set to publish a “living with Covid” strategy.

    The installation of Steve Barclay, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Mr Sunak, as Mr Johnson’s chief of staff could help the Chancellor in his drive to curb the Prime Minister’s instinct to approve more spending.

    Mr Johnson has pledged that the UK will reach net zero by 2050, meaning that carbon emissions will be reduced to as close to zero as possible and remaining emissions will be absorbed by carbon “sinks” like forests or captured from the air by new technology.

    But renewable energy sources, many of which are reliant on sunny or windy weather, are not yet well developed enough to provide the country’s power alone, while most homes are only equipped with gas-powered heating systems.

    Since 2004, the UK has been a net importer of fuels and buys around half its gas from Norway, or from other countries, in liquid form.

    Several Cabinet ministers believe the pace of net zero is too fast, and that the UK must continue exploring its domestic fossil fuel reserves to prevent it becoming over-reliant on foreign imports. Although Britain imports little of its gas from Russia, the global market price is increasing amid tensions on the border with Ukraine.

    Ministers’ continued belief in the fossil fuel industry will raise eyebrows in some quarters after the UK’s hosting of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow last year.

    Labour has proposed a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas producers to pay for a rebate for consumers amid rising energy bills.

    2. I’m so cynical at this point that it feels like positioning Sunak to appeal to the Conservative voter base to make people happy for him to be Prime Minister. I don’t believe for a second he’d actually go through with such common sense. I hope I’m wrong.

    3. Stop-start all the time, and green uncertainty will make it unattractive to develop new oil/gas fields in UK waters. The investments are huge – typically £1 billion per major installation, but on the other hand, payback is usually about 10 months after production starts… but if that payback can be won elsewhere with less risk, it will be.

    5. This is of limited use if people believe that it’s only being done because we were too weak to implement Net Zero.
      We won’t get anywhere near common sense until it’s widely understood that Net Zero, carbon footprints and the rest of them are just one big fraud, from the fraudsters that brought you the covid response.
      Still, every delay works in our favour, as we get nearer to the Maunder minimum predicted for the 2030s.

    6. “The combined reserves of all six sites are thought to be enough to power the whole UK for six months…”. Six months! We’re saved!

  10. SIR – Nick Timothy is wrong to blame Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for not building nuclear power stations (Comment, February 7).

    When I joined the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1988, we were going to build four: two at Sizewell, one at Wylfa and one at Hinkley Point. As privatisation advanced, this became a twin reactor at Sizewell (cancelled) and a single reactor at Hinkley (cancelled in 1997).

    My MP in those days was John MacGregor, who was also the transport minister. He told me that politicians could only think in electoral cycles, not the timescales of major projects. In addition, there were no votes to be gained for supporting nuclear energy.

    The arguments we used in the 1980s and 1990s to support new nuclear projects were identical to those in use today: Russian gas, carbon dioxide emissions and diversity of supply. We wasted our breath, and nothing has changed.

    Philip Saunders
    Bungay, Suffolk

    Come along now, Mr Saunders; we are talking about short-sighted and mostly ignorant politicians…

    1. I joined CEGB in 1987, and agree 100% with Philip Saunders. In fact, I was part of the safety case development for both Sizewell B and Hinkley C, covering materials testing and defect tolerance of the pressure circuits.
      That’s 35 years ago, and nearly a whole working lifetime.
      The position is now not recoverable by UK-grown expertise, as there isn’t any in the nuclear field outside of a few at Rolls and in the Navy.

      1. I used to visit a number of CEGB stations in the course of my job, and I was always greatly impressed by the engineers I met. Hugely knowledgeable and happy to explain their part in the operation of the plant. Their administration was also detailed and reliable. In those heady days we had a surplus of around 10-12% in generating capacity, too. To our shame much of that expertise has been exported, and it won’t be returning.

    2. Who decided to sell off our power generation to unregulated profit-focussed private businesses?

  11. SIR – If we keep Boris, we keep Carrie; and, if we keep Carrie, we keep greenery; and, if we keep greenery, we not only traduce Brexit but we all freeze to death in 10 years’ time.

    However, to remove Carrie, we must remove Boris, and then we not only get sucked back into Europe, but we are crushed by the iron heel of socialism, and so is the economy; the country goes bankrupt, and we all freeze to death in 10 years’ time.

    Suggestions?

    William Freeman

    I would say that the national debt of £2.2tn means that we are already bankrupt in all but name, and when the day of reckoning finally arrives it will be a proper disaster.

      1. Ideal outcome for the WEF. We will then build back better as there will be no other option. Better for who, I leave that question open..

    2. This morning the Telegraph is pretending Sunak, that Indian fellow, is the saviour because HE is going to reopen Oil and gas… Sorry, still wouldn’t vote for him..

    3. It’s not just the debt, add in the unfunded liabilities such as unfunded state employee pensions and you’re looking at over 3 times that (£250,000+ per taxpayer).

  13. Can we trust our spies’ claims about Russia? 7 February 2022.

    ‘If you doubt the credibility of the US Government, of the British Government, of other governments, and want to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out,’ Price told Lee, ‘then that is a matter for you’. The ramifications are clear: take our word for it, or support the Kremlin in an information war.

    Well there was the Dodgy Dossier of Weapons of Mass Destruction fame. The Chemical Weapons False Flags in Syria. The Skripal Saga. The Afghan Bounties. More recently the Kiev Coups 1 and 2. The threat of Russian Invasion 1. 2. 3. Etc.

    The Kremlin by comparison are remarkably reticent. All their accusations come second hand via the West’s MSM. Even the volume on RT is turned down so that it is barely audible. There is in essence no Russian propaganda!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-we-trust-our-spies-claims-about-russia-

    1. I wouldn’t trust government if they said they were lying.
      Nor their lapdogs, the MSM – who, at least, are more subtle about it, lying by omission not commission (the story & nothing but the story, just not the whole story).

  14. SIR – President Emmanuel Macron of France thinks that he can prevent war in Ukraine (report, February 7).

    His predecessor thought the same. In 2015, François Hollande stood beside Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin as they signed the “Minsk II” accord to end the war in the Donbas region after Russia’s invasion the year before. The event was celebrated as “proving” that European diplomacy was superior to Nato militarism.

    Minsk II did not even last one day: Russian-backed rebels immediately resumed their attack on Debaltseve and to this date not a single provision of the treaty has been implemented.

    Robert Frazer
    Salford, Lancashire

    It’s all about grandstanding, Robert Frazer. Something that the French seem particularly good at.

    1. ‘Morning, Hugh, “Something that the French seem particularly good at.”

      Particularly with a white flag in their hand.

  16. Javid the Bald appears relentless in his drive to have all NHS staff jabbed. The current serums are out of date for any disease declared as “covid” (did they ever work as advertised?), so why the pressure? His agenda is of course not the health of the Nation but meeting the jab target set by others. Attempting to pass the responsibility onto other bodies is a sign of desperation and cowardice. He isn’t man enough to try and plough on at the inevitable risk of failing nor does he have ‘the science’ to back up his demand. He cannot have failed to see the disaster that is befalling Israel and therefore clearly isn’t concerned about creating a repeat of that massive failure here.

    https://twitter.com/Togetherdec/status/1490774046858006528

    1. What does this say about the man who put him in post. Our glorious leader in No10 must be in agreement with this policy.

      1. They’re all in it together. They’ve sold their souls to whomever created the agenda. How many ‘they’ are is yet to be discovered.

      1. Morning, Paul.

        I had a small cognac (Hennessy) last Friday evening: my first alcohol since August. It was delicious. I may have a wee Single malt on my birthday in a couple of weeks’ time.

    2. It’s a new endorsement of the irresponsibility of leaders. “Nothing to do with me, I’m the guv.”

  22. 335050+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 8 February: Britain’s nuclear energy sacrificed to politicians’ electoral ambitions,

    Are we on the verge of a political national, politico’s jockeying for position in the ” I never backed any of the party issues” stakes.

    Do not put the house on it but it could be the GREAT AWAKENING has
    been triggered just prior to the ” BEGINNING”.

    Cracks are starting to show in the footings of the reset, replace campaign
    politico’s are looking at their £80,000 sobs plus exes a year basic and thinking, it is only within the political fraternity i’ll get this pay structure.

    This party before country, supporting / voting for an ersatz lab/lib/con party the originals being DEAD these last four decades.

    If we continue supporting / voting in the same vein with NO viable opposition to the three party close shop coalition then I do believe for old BLIGHTY the end is very near, for conformation ask your nearest
    mullah,imam, thanks to the current voting pattern there will be one on hand.

  23. Good Morning all,
    Amongst this mornings letters and BTL comments there runs a theme of uses and storage of bread , heavy stuff indeed , I will add one of Chef’s post Christmas offerings – Bread and Butter Pudding using stale croissants and Advocaat , very much something to be enjoyed, but just the once perhaps.

    1. Doughnuts and condensed milk make a pretty fabulous bread pudding too (Linda Howard’s recipe).

    2. Morning Datz, one of my grandkids is a bit of a cook and recently made a bread and butter pudding. Of course I had to try it and told him it was delicious. Only after eating a fair sized slice of it did he tell me it ought to taste delicious, it contained 2 cartons of cream.
      Delicious in taste but high in calories, I may have to go up a “dress” size!

      1. The only problem with all these luscious recipes is that croissants, doughnuts and hot cross buns never go stale in our house…

  24. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Now one of our leading universities is demanding recognition for people who identify as felines… A college campus where it’s cool for cats

    SHARE SELECTION

    Germaine Greer was only half-joking, I think, when she waded into the incendiary debate about gender reassignment surgery.

    ‘I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a cocker spaniel,’ she said.

    The pioneering feminist was using humour to make a serious point. She doesn’t believe that a man who has the chop and wears a dress is a woman.

    It’s a view shared by the majority of people. But that didn’t stop the more militant members of the trans lobby going ballistic.

    They are not noted for their sense of humour. Greer went straight to the top of their hate list of TERFs (so-called Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists). That’s despite the fact that, like me, she sympathises with those who feel they are trapped in the wrong body.

    If someone wants to undergo surgery and identify as a member of the opposite sex, that’s fine. They are entitled to our understanding. But the ferociously intolerant trans brigade won’t leave it at that.

    Germaine Greer (pictured) was only half-joking, I think, when she waded into the incendiary debate about gender reassignment surgery

    They are determined to push the boundaries beyond reasonable limits and demonise anyone who dares to dissent.

    For the past few years they have been seeking out new frontiers, like the crew of the Starship Enterprise. When Greer joked in 2015 about turning into a cocker spaniel she couldn’t in a million years have anticipated what madness would come next.

    Yet now we learn that one of our leading universities is demanding recognition for people who identify as cats.

    Beam me up, Scotty.

    Bristol University, a member of the prestigious Russell Group, has just issued guidelines to staff on the correct pronouns to use when addressing those who define as ‘catgender’.
    *
    *
    On a mission from Plod…
    *
    *
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/02/07/22/53895011-10486861-image-a-30_1644271534109.jpg
    Now he fancies another crack at law enforcement, alongside one of his former partners in crime Steve Plodhouse, who was in charge of the shameful Operation Midland witch-hunt. Plodhouse is currently Number Two at the NCA, on a salary package nudging a quarter of a mill.

    Incredibly, Hyphen-Howe and Plodhouse think they can put the band back together, like Jake and Elwood. Meet The Boys In Blue Brothers.

    Hit it!
    *
    *
    Now Lord Ashcroft’s new book, serialised in the Mail on Sunday this week, has put some juicy flesh on the bones.

    As always, the really riveting stuff is in the detail.

    One passage I particularly enjoyed was the description of a party in the Downing Street flat in January 2020 to celebrate Britain finally leaving the EU.

    Boris was ‘pretty much ordered to dance’ to the music of Carrie’s favourite Abba. A source is quoted as saying:

    ‘Everyone was whooping and cheering as he did so. For a few seconds it was as though he was one of those dancing Russian bears. There was something rather sad about it.’

    2. Now Bristol university are going down a VERY dangerous path there, and not for the reason you may think either.
      Once you open up the field to people who identify as other species, what’s the difference between identifying as a cat and say, as an attack helicopter?
      https://psichologyanswers.com/library/lecture/read/115720-what-does-it-mean-to-identify-as-an-attack-helicopter
      and
      (triggered people) https://www.pedestrian.tv/online/identify-attack-helicopter-incels-trolls/
      You REALLY don’t want to go there…

    3. The only three ‘pronouns’ anyone ever needs are: HE, SHE, and IT. Those three cover all requirements.

    4. As for Commissioner H-H, I was a fan – one of BJs appointments if I remember correctly – back in the day when he was allowed to hire his own competent staff thereby giving him more time to bonk.
      I also remember H-H not being loved by local SLT who did what they could to apply his directives as inefficiently as they could, and conducted whisper campaigns about his supposed collusion in the Hillsborough cover-up.

      And what a marvel his replacement has turned out to be. The Globalists showing that the adults are back in charge. God help us.

      As for Op Midland – I wonder when that will be properly aired.
      But let’s look at a stat in the meantime: 4% of adult men have paedo tendencies. No more than that among Catholic priests, BTW. And the Church has done a lot to clean up its act.

      Where are the 4% politician nonces? Why is nothing heard about them and everything about the church of Rome?
      As Stalin rightly asked – how many battalians does the Pope have?

      Beech was a mad fabulator and thus the estabLishment media puppets made the whole stinking thing go away – as in Belgium with the Affair Dutrou.

      1. SLT? Shitty Little Twats.

        Please, please, if you must use esoteric abbreviations, elucidate. We’re not all as woke as you.

        1. I assure you there is nothing woke about LIM.

          SLT = Senior Leadership Team – what we used to call the people in charge.

          1. Thank you, Bill.

            I think both Elsie and I hate this use of abbreviations without explanation.

          3. That I do understand – 10 years, RAF (Royal Air Force) and that’s Air Officer Commanding.

          4. I try to give explanations, but it does get tedious typing “Central Bank Digital Currency”
            I like the alternatives that you and Elsie come up with!

          7. Isn’t there a saying that the man who works for himself has a fool for an employee??
            ;-))

        2. Sorry NtN – Senior Leadership Team. Management.
          Congratulations! You are the only person who has EVER described me as woke.

          1. Good morning Les Sis, and all Nottlers. Until you posted a career resumé recently, your pseudonym could be read as something to do with the sisterhood, so potentially a bit feminist (nothing wrong with that). Big Smile emoticon.

          2. Dear Lord! How we can inadvertently misrepresent ourselves!
            Woke and feminist on the same day.
            I’ll never live it down.
            The pseudonym is a rather lame pun on a common mispronunciation my name: Less0re as Lessimore and which I edit so that it isn’t too obvious to the woke who might Google me and hence cause me grief at work.
            I’m not hiding from these people but I don’t want to be on offer either.

      1. Only yesterday I read that due to ‘climate change’ in the future the younger generations will be suffering from more heart problems.
        Re write that as due to unnecessary mass injections.

      2. It’s the “miracle magic solution that requires no effort from me” syndrome.
        One jab and I’m slim again.
        Until it wears off…

    2. I’ve reduced the amount if carbs but not cut them out entirely. I’ve lost weight and feel better for it.

      1. I went carb free for a month. By the third week i was having dreams about mashed potato.

        You do need some carbs. They power the brain.

        Grizz is right about cutting carbs to reduce weight. There is so much money to be made though for the weight loss industry that they downplay this simple fact.

        The first thing i noticed when cutting down was a flat stomach.

        1. “…a flat stomach.”

          That’s what I’m looking for, haven’t seen the old boy for a couple of years now.

          1. Thanks. Just the covid drive through today. Op on Friday.

            I do use a 3/4 sized dinner plate. Not that i need bother. The nausea from my Meds means i only eat once a day anyway.

          3. The meds will remain though i might be able to change them for some without that particular side effect.

          4. Good luck with the false positive negative. If there is any doubt, send for “Professor” Ferguson. He is very SAGE….

          5. All the tests i have had due to hospital visits have been negative. If this one shows a positive the operation will be delayed.

            I wouldn’t trust Ferguson to run a bath. Most people who have led a purely academic life are useless in other areas.

    3. Stitching the mouth up and feeding the patient through a straw would do as well

      Yo Mr Grizzle

    4. …and the food tastes better, too!
      What’s not to like?
      ps: Did you know that the weightwatcher cereal, Special K, has more sugar than cornflakes, which (until you sprinkle sugar on them) are low in sugar?

    1. Quote from the gettr post
      “Former Bank of England & Goldman Sachs Banker Mark Carney is now back in Canada. He’s speaking for the in-hiding Tredeau. He’s calling the truck driver protest ‘sedition’ & saying it should be ‘crushed’.”

      Great, and we’ve had this authoritarian pulling the strings in Britain for the last I don’t know how many years. Batten is spot on.

  28. Morning all.
    And so it goes on and on the headline referes to more massive mistakes by our political classes. And beind the headlines there is another huge mess that’s been going on under successive governments, in that our Royal Naval nuclear ships and subs are costing millions of taxpayers money as decommissioning has been neglected.
    Why are all these people who subject us to so much unessesary expense and so much confounded misery so effing useless ?
    We so desperately need a makeover.
    Vlad what are you doing next week ?

    1. 335050+ up ticks,

      Morning RE,

      They have told us they are working to a reset / replace
      agenda and that agenda to my mind is working out pretty
      successful.

      Looking at by election results the party still have the herds backing.

    2. Yo RE

      To my knowledge, the RN has never had any Nuclear Powered Surface ships

      Many surface ships were capable of carrrying Air Launched Nuclear Weapons, such as WE177, which was withdrawn from in 1992.

      There are submarine reactors to be disposed of, unless we just leave for Ms Krankie to do, when Scotland becomes a Independent Republic.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WE.177

      PS I was joined my ship, by helo, with a *Practice WE177 fitted
      * A yellow band painted on the bomb casing indicated it was a Practice Weapon, used for loading drills

      1. “* A yellow band painted on the bomb casing indicated it was a Practice Weapon, used for loading drills”

        That’s what they TOLD you….!!!

          1. You should have been more specific when you asked for a stripper.
            I worked with a guy in JHB who was one of the radio operators on the Ark Royal. His name was Cliff Stilling, he told me a few funny stories.

      2. Yo 2 U ……I can remember some of the Royal Navy ships not being allowed to dock in certain countries because it was considered they had nuclear weapons on board. Perhaps the journo didn’t do the home work, but it might refer to the decommissioning of the weapons as well.
        I’d say they were a bit out of date by now.

        1. As we went into Swansea, there was a Sign, saying

          This Is A Nuclear Frree Zone
          The Council were informed, that we were Nuclear Capable, but whether we were ‘Armed’ was Top Secret
          They let us in
          PS WE had the Green Monster (with a Yellow Stripe) onboard

          1. One of the stories was about a couple of newish recruits doing national service aboard the AR. There were going ashore in Malta notorious for ‘a promiscuous area’ i think called the Cut. The CPO warned them about catching something from possible visits. They told him they were going a shore to buy magazines and sightsee. About a week later they arrived at what was known on board as ‘Rose cottage’. The VD clinic. The CPO was organising the queue and said to them “Oh i see, you’ve been readin’ those dirty magazines again then”. Better than Port Hole Duff I spose.

          2. The Gut was the naughty bit of Malta

            Across the border, in La Linea, a friendly lady used to ‘amuse a donkey’ in strange ways’

            Probably a relation of ‘Sticky Vicky’ from Benidoom

          3. That’s it, The Gut.
            I remember a mention of a similar area mentioned when I went to Durban. I don’t think I would ever have been that desperate 😇

  30. I was looking at my wife: no teeth in, tits on her belly, hair a mess and smoking a roll up. Then she cocked her leg and let out a massive fart.
    “You are a mess and I’m disgusted with you,” I said.
    “I’m still the woman you love and married,” she said. “Sometimes we all let ourselves go a bit.”
    ”We’re on our fucking honeymoon,” I replied!

    5. Reminds me of a tale about one of my uncles in northern Scotland. He went to lodge with a ‘spinster’ who soon got her claws into this thoroughly decent young man. As soon as they were married, and he had agreed to help bring up her illegitimate child and that of her sister, the battle axe stopped dressing nicely, stopped wearing her false teeth and generally became a proper old harridan.

  31. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/30d3d9c72d5ac5eaeda2f5e7eca34474f132be62dfb84e202f964c10c710b546.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/efb2263c3427177188f6400dc6e623fda35ec728d1226425e5b4ff3d85771b47.png People running amok with guns, firing them willy-nilly. Scumbags invading pitches, attacking sportsmen. And still we do not bring back thrashing and hanging.

    Are politicians scared that if we do, then they might be the ones who test out those time-honoured punishments first?

    1. Sportsmen, George?

      If this was a wendyball player, then he’s part of the current Wendyball business.

      Alas and alack, I fear that Rugby Union has gone that way, ever since turning ‘professional’.

      No longer a sport (play up, play up and play the game) but a lucrative business. I’ll have none of it.

    4. “Officers today have been guarding a cordon opposite, with CSI also at the scene.
      Local business owners told Yorkshire Live that they expect today to be “quieter” than usual, on account of part of the road being closed and
      the pavement being inaccessible.”

      Incident occurred at 0200, so perhaps they were night shift workers on an urgent delivery.

    5. The ownership of handguns is illegal in GB. So, the car cannot have been shot at, it must have been peashooters that were used.

      1. A catapult and a marble would have done the job.
        Mind you Obs there has been a lot small arms smuggling from Eastern Europe happening here.

  32. BP boasts BIGGEST profits in eight years: British oil giant records £9.5BILLION gains while public suffers sky-high fuel bills and cost-of-living crisis – as calls grow for windfall tax on energy firms

    Oil giant BP has revealed it swung to a mammoth £9.5 billion underlying replacement cost profit for 2021
    It notched up £3.01 billion of profits in the final three months alone, up from just £85.1 million a year earlier
    The results will intensify pressure as households and businesses are struggling due to soaring inflation
    Rise in wholesale gas prices led to Ofgem raising the cap on supplier charges by £693 to £1,971 a year
    Britons also face other demands on their income, including rising food, broadband and mobile phone costs.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10488443/BP-swings-highest-annual-profit-eight-years.html

    Shareholders will be happy, not us though!

    I wish.

    2. The market has ups and downs. It wasn’t so long ago that oil companies were paying to have the oil taken off their hands.

      1. The shares are well below what they were before the oil price crashed when covid arrived. BP made a huge loss that year.

      2. BP was also severely punished by the USA for the Gulf accident when a serious oil leak happened caused by an American company assisting BP. The President showed no mercy and BP had to pay massiive compensation to any Gulf claimant. Now UK politicians want to enforce a windfall tax on BP.

        1. I still remember Obama saying British Petroleum rather than BP, gleefully putting stress on British when announcing his actions. Anyone who thinks the US are our friends or who thinks we have a special relationship with them should watch the available clips. With the odd exception such as Trump their politicians hate us, the chips on their shoulder over our past empire still weighing heavily.

    3. Shareholders could well be you, via pensions funds and insurance policies. Private shareholders are relatively few.

    4. At least BP and other oil companies put up their money to explore with no guarantee of success. The price of oil is decided by an international market.
      Tax makes up over 60% of the price of fuel at the pump. The government sits back, steals our money and blames the oil companies.
      Why aren’t people clamouring for the government to reduce tax.
      It’s highly likely the majority of that profit comes from overseas but the tax on the profit is paid in this country.
      Now, a windfall tax on Amazon, Starbucks and others would be a result rather than taxing an already taxed British company.

  35. The Chancellor, who many have tipped to replace Boris Johnson in Number 10, has reportedly called for the licenses to be fast-tracked. Mr Sunak is said to have asked Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to do so as the Prime Minister’s net zero targets sparked fears that the economy will suffer. Mr Johnson had come up with a “10-point plan for a green industrial revolution” to ensure that the country would achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1562541/rishi-sunak-boris-johnson-green-energy-net-zero-oil-gas-north-sea

    A green industrial revolution is just not going to work.
    CJ didn’t where he was today by telling the truth!
    …and certainly not by serving up soggy sponges!

    https://youtu.be/drlPbIWAz-E

    3. Not all bad. If Sunak gets us to join the Indian Empire they will sort out the muslim problem for us.

  36. “Seven men arrested in north London over nullo cult ‘that livestreams illegal castrations’”

    Someone ballsed that up.

    2. Ooh, is the cult of Isis and the Magna Mater still around? Their priests used, apparently, to self-castrate.

    3. Hi Elsie, good afternoon. I have been out visiting elderly relatives doing good deeds.
      I’m back now ready to see if the world has returned to its senses.
      We all know the answer to that.

      2. The mere sight of this repulsively odious Squalid Jawdrip makes me want to vomit.

        Rumour has it that he was an intimately close friend of the PM’s wife which is why, after he had been sacked from government, she insisted that he be brought back into the cabinet.

        I suppose that you could argue (though I wouldn’t do so) that it shows a remarkable generosity of spirit in Boris Johnson that he should promote the interests of his wife’s former paramour.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6e68995dca2e696a8dbca2afb798fcde3dc62cd2b6e6658dd4846ea2aa3bd73d.jpg

    2. It’s always sad when a popular person passes on.
      Shame we can’t choose who goes next.

      1. This is because the queue for the unpopular stretches from here to Alpha Centauri.

        I should know, I’m stood on an asteroid.

    3. RIP. A nice, if eccentric, chap. Used to see him around Richmond and remember him and his lunch guests, some clutching car inner tubes, bobbing around in the Thames moving upstream with the tide and then returning with the tide. He won’t be forgotten by a generation who when watching UC, and hear, “and asking the questions is..” and his name pops into their heads.

        1. I suspect he won’t be next year’s question-master.
          Place your bets on which Bame or Rainbow Qwerter gets the job.

          5. White, hetero with children?
            Although she is a flavour of the month, I think that in the present climate that’s unlikely.
            Unless she can persuade one of her children to transition…

          7. And he only scored as many as he did because of very generous marking that for a genuine contestant would have been marked incorrect.

      2. And when every contestant was READING his subject, never “studying”, “doing” or “just done”.

    2. Funny how burning down property, defacing monuments and looting and rioting is ‘mostly peaceful’ yet a bunch of blokes parking funny is a threat to national security.

    3. Apologies as I’m double posting – the mental health of our children thing: Junior was kept busier than he would be at school. I contacted the teacher and asked for learning objectives and outcomes over the week and what he should know.

      We did all sorts of things. Built trains, dug holes, made models, did experiments, made rockets, read books – 1 hour a day split into 20 minutes unless he wanted to continue.

      We played rounders and made an obstacle course (which flooded, meaning Mongo made more use of it than we did). His day was long and he went to bed tired. I don’t believe I’m exceptional. Maybe I’ve slightly more time and I can take him with me on site to most places (handy for carrying cat5 spools!) but while plumbing in switches we were doing times tables, addition, subtraction and got some algebra in there.

      1. Probably a very different experience for him than the children of a poorly educated single mother living in a high rise block of flats.

  42. Convoy !!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rockBeDNVBk&ab_channel=DennisHendrickson

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d144d2b0a44a8ca615d55dd66c16f9acd9b1915df639bf4c6d56c7cd64bc6e2f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/60dc678422b28b911cf8d636feaedbc1f5c46a42770f60c414c5996f44f8b030.jpg

    https://twitter.com/myrontmoore/status/1490722316887764993

    Bastards……….”Failed to ID”……….Ausweis Bitte

    https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1490819892169383941?s=20&t=ErixNpIgN8PNiKiY6xI02A

    https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1490468295987793920?s=21

    https://twitter.com/ThevoiceAlexa/status/1490750010320994315

    https://twitter.com/candescent_eve/status/1490739193349382148?s=20&t=7QqP0o3XLxWBk84_7quhjA

    2. What on earth were the gestapo arresting that little old man for anyway?
      The actions of the authorities there seems out of control.

    1. Lovely – calm and rational voices. The sort of Canadians I used to know and love. Thanks for posting.

      1. Vicious evil network of mayhem, the lot of them. The state will prevail, the violent antisocial terrorists will be dealt with and this carnage end.

        To translate from statist “we’re pooing our pants at the popular disobedience and don’t know how to listen because we’re a bunch of fascists used to getting our own way so we’ll use force and blame them”

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyVCCD9OrbQ

        The thing all these films forget is it’s never, ever the Conservatives, never the Right minded governments, it’s always the Lefties. Always the fascists who fall back on thuggery and violence.

    1. Next time I have to be hospitalised, (touch wood it’s not too soon), I’ll be taking my own DNR sign to hang above the bed.

  47. Good morning, my friends

    Your large pension could be a tax disaster waiting to happen
    Pensions Doctor: lifetime allowance rules can mean a 55pc tax hit in retirement
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/pensions-retirement/financial-planning/large-pension-could-tax-disaster-waiting-happen/

    We are governed by financially illiterate morons. They seem to have forgotten that many doctors, including the husband of one of my nieces, stopped practising in their 50s when they worked out that if they went on working they would receive a lower pension. There is now a shortage of doctors but they are incapable of seeing the connection.

    I suspect that this is very sinister and is part of the New World Order where the private sector is punished by the current obscene pension apartheid.

  48. The BBC has posted a “fact check” on the BBC website. Apparently a nameless, now forgotten, Crown Prosecutor in Surrey in 2007-08 decided that there was not enough evidence to prosecute Jimmy Savile, apparently a friend of Mrs Thatcher, and of the Heir to the Throne.
    As a story it stands up for about 3 seconds.
    This is not how organisations work, nor is it how they handle “hot potatoes”. The mere suggestion of a possible prosecution of such a person, a Knight of the Realm and an OBE, a prominent personality, a TV star, being involved in serious crime, would not be within the bailiwick of a local jobsworth. Said jobsworth would push it upstairs within minutes of it reaching his (or her) desk. That is how things work. Almost certainly the word then came down from above to “drop it”. Otherwise, one would have ask why was there no investigation involving police outside Surrey, in London, Salford, Ilford, Manchester. No extensive interviews with those he encountered at hospitals and the BBC. In the BBC alone the number of people who would be aware of his proclivities and offences would run into four figures. Two versions of “This is Your Life”, a horrifying revelatory documentary by Louis Feroux, and an incisive analysis by Anthony Clare failed to flag up how dangerous this man had always been. One might be inclined to think that the BBC are reluctant to explain their relationship with Sir Jimmy Savile.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60213975
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile#Honours_and_awards
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-jimmy-savile-s-close-friendship-with-margaret-thatcher-8432351.html
    https://www.tomminogue.com/tom/?page_id=633
    https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0geKeYjUgJiaZIAvZVXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZANQSFhMTjI1XzEEc2VjA3Nj?p=jimmy+savile+and+prince+charles+photos&fr=aaplw

    2. I keep hearing that Starmer, “was not personally responsible” but Greg Dyke when director general of the BBC was not personally responsible for Andrew Gilligan reporting that the Iraq dossier was false, yet Blair and Campbell forced him out within 24 hours. I’m not a great fan of Dyke and of course Gilligan was telling the truth but the principal is that the head of the organisation takes responsibility.

      1. Bernard Manning shut her up on ‘Parkinson’ one evening by saying. “No, no…I do like some Jews.”

      1. The village idiot surfaced last night to hurl insults during a debate in parliament. “This is not the Canadian way, we do not talk to protesters waving the confederate flag”.

        After those nice words of compromise, he scuttled back into his hole. His calendar apparently showed no meetings on Monday, just a personal day.

        1. Any more news of the underage girl with whom he is alleged to have had a sexual liaison and to whose bank account several millions of dollars of hush money has been paid?

          1. the media received $600 million from he government / liberals, do you think that it is receiving any coverage?

            Affairs, groping reporters, blackface fancy dress, many examples of corrupt behaviour all conveniently forgotten by the media and many who worship him.
            Some even believe that he has had covid and that is why he is hiding / isolating.

  53. Starmer Savile, Starmer Savile, Starmer Savile, Starmer Savile, Starmer Savile,

    All this distraction.
    What is really going on that they want us to ignore?

  54. I seem to recall a few months ago that we were told that there were 10,000,000* too few HGV drivers and that there would be no food in any supermarket within a week.

    What happened about that?

    * © “Professor” Ferguson

    1. If the gummint had control of the supermarket supply chain there wouldn’t be anything on the shelves.

  55. ‘NEW’ STAMPS

    Each Christmas I send around 100 Christmas cards by post, Internationally as well as to UK. In early December 2021 I had my cards all written, enveloped and ready to go.

    But since my OH is bed bound, I cannot easily get out to the nearest Post Office (which anyway had long queues, made worse by Covid spacing) so I ordered 75 second class stamps from Royal Mail on line. That’ll be quick, I thought – they’ll look after their own mail.

    Days and then weeks passed and I panicked, went to the Post Office and spent £50 on stamps. You’ve guessed: next day the on-line stamps arrived, so I have £50 worth of extra ones. BUT: the on-line ones are the ‘new’ ones with codes next to the image, so I’m one of the lucky folk who don’t have to trade them in. Yippee!

    I won’t be surprised, though, if the price of Second-Class mail goes up anyway, so I hope I may be ahead of the game.

    2. After paying a bill for my mother she proceeds to send us a cheque, in the post, with a second class stamp and a whingy note saying she had to walk to the letter box to send it.

      We suggested a bank transfer and she didn’t want to do that. You see, we asked for a transfer, so the cheque was to spite us.

  56. From Tony Diver’s article in last night’s DT:

    “Mr Johnson has pledged that the UK will reach net zero by 2050, meaning that carbon emissions will be reduced to as close to zero as possible and remaining emissions will be absorbed by carbon “sinks” like forests or captured from the air by new technology.”

    But Mr Johnson’s pledges are meaningless:

    He pledged that there would be no border in the Irish Sea;
    He pledged that Britain would regain control of her borders;
    He pledged that N Ireland veterans would no longer be persecuted or prosecuted;
    He pledged that British fisherfolk would not be betrayed;
    He pledged that the problem of illegal immigration would be addressed;
    He pledged that he would not raise taxes;
    He pledged to get Brexit done – not half-done etc. etc.

    I am sure that there are more broken pledges that you can think of?

    3. In law a pledge is defined as “a thing that is given as security for the fulfilment of a contract or the payment of a debt and is liable to forfeiture in the event of failure.”
      Just trying to imagine the enormity of the debt his pledges will have burdened us and our kids with is beyond belief. The man (being kind there) should be hung, drawn and quartered, ‘the gruesome punishment reserved for those seen to have committed the worst crimes such as treason.‘

      1. Gordon Brown went to court to confirm that his manifesto wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

        These people are liars and thieves.

  57. Back from my covid test. They said they don’t give out results unless positive. Fingers crossed.

          2. Friday: “Sorry, Phil, I am afraid there is no trace of your test. You’ll have to start the process again…”

  58. Daily Groaners

    1. A new patient was quite upset when the doctor’s nurse led him to a small, curtained cubicle and told him to undress.
    “But I only want the doctor to look at an ingrown toenail!” he protested.
    “Our rule is that everyone must undress,” replied the blonde nurse.
    “That’s a stupid rule,” grumbled the patient, “making me undress just to look at my toe.”
    “That’s nothing,” growled a voice from the next cubicle. “I just came to fix the phones!”

    2. A drunk appears in front of a judge. The judge says, “You’ve been brought here for drinking.”
    The drunk says, “Okay, let’s get started!”

    3. A woman answered the doorbell with a man standing on her porch.
    The man said, “I’m terribly sorry. I just ran over your cat and I would like to replace it for you.”
    The woman replied, “Well that’s alright with me, but how are you at catching mice?”

    4. Two women friends had gone out for a girls night out, and had been overenthusiastic on the cocktails.
    Incredibly drunk and walking home, they suddenly realized they both needed to pee.
    They were very close to a graveyard, and one of them suggested they do their business behind a headstone or something.
    The first woman had nothing to wipe with, so she took off her panties, used them, and threw them away.
    Her friend however, was wearing an expensive underwear set and didn’t want to ruin hers,
    but was lucky enough to salvage a large ribbon from a wreath thatwas on a grave and proceeded to wipe herself with it.
    After finishing, they made their way home.
    The next day, the first woman’s husband phones the other husband and says,
    “These girls’ nights out have got to stop. My wife came home last night without her panties.”
    “That’s nothing,” said the other. “Mine came back with a sympathy card stuck between the cheeks of her butt that
    said, “From all of us at the fire station, we’ll never forget you!”

  61. From the Spectator lunchtime email……..

    The Captain Tom Foundation spent
    more on costs and consultants in its first year than it gave away to
    charitable causes. The foundation spent around £240,000 and donated
    £160,000.

    Is that what the old man would have wanted?

    https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search?p_p_id=uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet&p_p_lifecycle=2&p_p_state=maximized&p_p_mode=view&p_p_resource_id=%2Faccounts-resource&p_p_cacheability=cacheLevelPage&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_objectiveId=A11561845&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_mvcRenderCommandName=%2Faccounts-and-annual-returns&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_organisationNumber=5161126&utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=LNCH%20%2020220208%20%20House%20Ads%20%20SM+CID_355c397cd3c9c6d936b83f7eb7559b4bI

    1. If we start down that route we start to look at the endless stream of corruption, fraud and theft of public funds.

      The rage and fury that would excite could move planets.

      1. Sadly none of us is surprised that public funds go to the psychophants and hangers on of the politicians. How much of public funds has drained away in the last two years to Pharma companies, China and providers of services we didn’t know we needed is staggering.

    2. I never understood what the money was supposed to be for. NHS is funded through taxes.
      Saint NHS needs to get its spending priorities sorted, completely cutting all the non-jobs and vast sums spent on pointless ‘awareness’ , ‘diversity’ and similar ‘training.

      1. “NHS charities”…….rather than the NHS itself, was his aim, I think. Not sure what they comprise – the charity made some donations to bodies I’d never heard of but I didn’t read the whole report.

      3. Something like Russian Olympic Committee, or it was when they competed in the Summer Olympics. I believe there has been a scandal and that’s how they get around a ban.

  64. I’m glad to see that Mason Greenwood has been dropped by Nike. I bet
    their marketing team were terrified that being associated with a
    potential rapist would overshadow their reputation as one of the world’s
    leading exploiters of poverty stricken child labour.

    1. ‘Alleged’ sounds better than potential. Let’s hope the Wagette was at least 18 when they started dating.

    2. ‘Alleged’ sounds better than potential. Let’s hope the Wagette was at least 18 when they started dating.

  65. University student, 19, who had Nazi memorabilia and a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ in his room is jailed for 42 months. 8 February 2022.

    A teenager from South East London has been jailed for sharing a bomb-making manual online which he disguised as a guide for the popular video game Minecraft.

    A search of his room also discovered a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The Anarchist Cookbook, which gave advice for building explosives, the court was told.

    He pleaded guilty to disseminating a terrorist publication and to four counts of possession of a document likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, in a hearing in July 2021.

    Another day another teenager being prosecuted for reading the Anarchists Cookbook that well known 50 year old guide available to anyone from their friendly Amazon Bookstore for the princely sum (there’s a Kindle version for you cheapskates) of £13:37. If the Security Services are reduced to prosecuting teenagers for being far-right terrorists they are even scarcer than I imagined!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10484745/Student-jailed-disguising-bomb-making-manual-Minecraft-guide-sharing-online.html

    1. Better lock me up then. I’ve Mein Kampf on the shelves, along with the communist manifesto. As for building explosives – unstable ones are basic chemistry. It’s just an exothermic reaction.

        1. Somehow I’m pretty sure that AH’s prose will be dry as dust. Can’t bring myself to wade through it.
          I have read the communist manifesto, as it was part of my politics syllabus at university, and inspired me with nothing more than a desire to kick its author.

        2. I’ve got a copy of Das Kapital somewhere, maybe*. I used to make explosive devices when I was in primary school. I bought the chemicals at a laboratory supplies shop, A H Bairds, next to Edinburgh University. I barely came up to the counter top but they sold me the ingredients for gunpowder in the correct proportions, without turning a hair.
          *I have had quick look but cannot find it. I seem to remember it was published by Penguin Books. I suppose that a raid by black-armoured storm troopers of our security service on the depository of Penguin Books might enable the authorities to secure a few copies?

          1. As previously stated, a friend and I caused an explosion in the chem lab at school- not planned just two twits who thought they were being clever.

          2. I blew up a test tube in a biology class. Something to with testing a biscuit (?) for fat content.
            I still have no idea how I managed it.

          3. Given what we got up to at primary school, never mind secondary, I am amazed that any of us survived at all.
            We used to play up the bomb site and there were several gaping shafts- probably led to cellars before the bombing. We used to line up and leap across these shafts many times. Ye gods, if one of us had fallen down…..the mind boggles.
            No wonder we never told our parents.

          4. Back in the 50’s bomb sites were our playgrounds for all neighbourhood kids! I suspect our parents knew and kept fingers crossed that nothing too much beyond skinned knees happened! Did you ever see the film “Hope and Glory”?

          5. Liverpools bomb sites in the 50’s were full of escape artists getting chained into sacks and to the amazement of us kids getting out of them – all free entertainment although they did a collection afterwards but got zilch from us kids

    2. Oh for heavens’ sake, this is ridiculous. Many teenage boys are interested in such things, it doesn’t mean that they are nazis or terrorists. At one point when both my sons were teenagers, one was a second world war history buff who was always searching information about the nazis, and the other one was searching how to make bombs and how to go on the dark web, from the same IP address! Son nr 1 once bored the pants off us on a drive from southern Germany to Dunkirk by reciting facts about Hitler the whole way!! By the time we entered France, we were begging him not to give us any more ruddy Hitler facts!
      Besides, I lived in terror of the authorities putting two and two together and making five, and knocking on our door.
      Both are perfectly law-abiding citizens and neither has committed any terrorist acts or is a nazi!
      And I know they weren’t the only ones with nerdish interests in weird stuff. A boy in their class was fascinated by the IRA.
      Can’t anyone see the irony of being jailed for owning Mein Kampf? And 42 months is a ridiculous sentence. If he wasn’t a criminal when he went in, he probably will be when he comes out.

      2. Afternoon BB2. These kids are being prosecuted for thought crimes. They have committed no actual offences!

        1. They shudda blacked up – then they would have been left to their own devices (“devices” – geddit?)

      3. One of the memorable embarrassing episodes on our lives was after collecting a German au pair from Parkeston.
        Elder son, who was very into WWII at the time mentioned that “The Heroes of Telemark’ was on telly that evening.
        “Oh” said Elke “what is that?”
        We delicately explained – it’s about the Norwegian resistance – while trying simultaneously to cope with the A133 and clumping Sonny Boy around the ear.

    3. Mein Kampf (unreadable) is available from Amazon Kindle, free. I have a copy. It’s terrible drivel.

  66. Blimey; haven’t Mini Coopers become bloated!
    I was behind one at the traffic lights. The hatchback door was about the width of a Mini in my youth.

  67. China is messing about on thé border with Nepal, apparently. This comes shortly after a meeting between President Putin and President Xi Jinping of China. Coincidence? India may feel the need to assist Nepal. If we had any grace and decency, we would offer assistance to Nepal. The Ukraine is foreign to us as Mars and certainly not a friend. However, the people of Nepal are bound to us, and we to them, by blood.

    1. Afternoon Horace. The Nepalese are not all Gurkhas. There’s a powerful Maoist constituency.

    2. I read an article the other day that said that China is moving into Pakistan in a big way, which gives it access to the Indian ocean, and also surrounds India. Worrying.

  68. Live Politics latest news: Jacob Rees-Mogg secures new Brexit role as Boris Johnson reshuffles Cabinet

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/08/boris-johnson-keir-starmer-savile-sunak-net-zero/

    After siring 7 children it remains to be seen if JRM has any testicular strength left to attend to Brexit – siring so many children seems to have made Johnson impotent to do anything else.

    And who is going to be responsible for getting rid of the N Ireland Protocol – Adultera Truss or Jacob Grease Smogg? Unless and until this has been done Brexit has not been completed.

    1. Many have noted Mr Andrew is the eleventh housing minister since 2010.

      His predecessors include current Cabinet ministers Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps, and Brandon Lewis.

      This position is now a sinecure: he will be working closeley with

      Andrews will be the main liaison with Priti Pastel and

      Booking.com
      Airbnb
      Premier Inn
      Holiday Inn
      Hilton
      Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
      Travelodge
      Marriott
      Ritz
      Savoy Hotel

      Homeless Veterans will be directed to Go Outdoors

    2. I don’t believe Brexit will ever happen not as I would want anyway. We should have gone for WTO but once that opportunity was passed up it was obvious that BRINO would be the outcome. The vast majority of the House of Commons wanted us to vote remain. There has been a much less than half hearted attempt at Brexit.

      1. I started banging on about Nigel Farage’s totally wimpish surrender to Johnson before the general election election and I shall doubtless go on banging on unless or until Farage admits his failing on this issue.

        The Conservative Party is stuffed with remainers.

        Farage stood down Brexit Party candidates in seats held by Tory remainers so the Tory Party is still stuffed with remainers.

        Johnson just laughed in Farage’s face and gave him absolutely no quid pro quo – not even a ha’penny, not even a farthing, not even a groat.

        1. It occurs to me that if Farage had not withdrawn from the Election and split the right leaning vote in all probability we would have ended up with Labour in Government. :-((

          1. If that had happened it would have destroyed Labour, rather than what did happen, which has destroyed the Conservatives.

  69. 335050+ up ticks,

    It is very strange to me that starmer is being castigated on account of
    jimmy sa vile when the party ( a third segment of the coalition) was deeply involved via their input in regards to rotherham and the 16 plus years cover up of mass uncontrolled paedophilia.

    They unleashed the foreign paedophilia ingredients on this land and in turn we had tory (ino) / lib /dems take up where lab left off,DOVER ongoing unrestricted / unregulated potential paedophiles, troops, house owners, desk takers, cell inmates, bed occupiers.

    If a General Election was called tomorrow the herd majority would give their consent for more of the same.

    Lets face it the lab/lib/con coalition has proved to be, and still is umbrella holders for mass foreign paedophilia.

    2. Well I’m on my way to Walmart

      We shall not be moved
      On my way to Walmart

      We shall not be moved
      Just like an Jumbo that’s standing by the water side
      We shall not be moved

      We shall not we shall not be moved
      We shall not we shall not be moved
      Just like a Jumbo that’s standing by the water side
      We shall not be moved

    1. They’ve taken to mixing the stuff up with the meat in our supermarket. If you’re not careful, you might get a pack of over-processed soy muck instead of minced beef.
      It still ends up in the reduced section, and we saw some abandoned unopened on the pavement recently. Judging by the bag it was in, it had been given away by one of the soup kitchens, probably to a starving refugee family…

      1. I must admit i quite enjoy it when someone puts pork sausages and bacon in the halal section. They have to clear the entire chiller and throw it away.

        1. No, that would be M&S in Golders Green.
          I have never seen an halal section in an English supermarket.

          2. Lidls in Dingwall and Inverness have great meat – so do Aldi actually, it’s Scottish meat too. The only time I go to a butchers is if I need something different like neck of lamb for soup and even then I’d use one in Dingwall not local .

        2. Almost impossible to find a real butcher in Norway, Grizz, so Firstborn & SWMBO have started doing it themselves – from piglet to bacon sarnie, all home-reared and home-made.

        5. In France many supermarkets have their meat butchered on the premises and they provide very good quality meat which you can order in advance and have butchered to your own requirements. Our local Super-U butcher and the fishmonger in the same store are both excellent.

          1. We found Super U was a very good supermarket and sold ostrich, kangaroo and horse meat – all very good.

    4. Have you seen the lists of additives? Ugh.
      If you want veggie food, eat Indian. Made to be tasty and good.

  72. Is this a National Grid’s sweetener for those with smart meters to convince users that the sporadic nature of net zero electricity comes at a cost:

    Households will be told about each two-hour trial window by 4pm the day before it is scheduled, so they can choose in advance whether to opt-in or not. Octopus Energy is poised to invite 1.4m of its customers with an installed smart meter to take part from Friday this week, and expects about 100,000 homes to sign up for the trial which runs until the end of March.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/trial-scheme-will-pay-householders-to-delay-electricity-use

    2. We could have a standard and an off peak rate, surprised no one thought of that before. Doh…

      2. People with smart meters are being invited to join a trial of compensatory payments when they decide not to use power at peak times.
        A blackout bung?

        1. They’ll regret it when the lights go out at a crucual moment on a cold night.
          Buy a generator.

    1. Yo Fizz

      A totally ‘doctored’ picture

      Micron’s White Flag would be Four times the size of the one that he is waving

      2. Macron would have been invited, if he he had he’d have been ‘taken ill’ so he could wriggle out of it.

  77. Just in from a couple of hours in the garden. It was 18ºC in the greenhouse – where I sowed the first seeds of the year.

    First day without the stove for months. The only curious feature of the weather since September is that we have not really had any north winds (required for bonfires). Usually one can guarantee such wind for several days each month. Must be because of the Tonga earthquake….

  78. I see that BPAPM has rearranged the chairs on the deck of SS Downing Street.

    I thought all the baddies were going to be sacked….

    (Scratches head – ponders…)

    2. I think Boris should keep it up. It’s fun watching Starmer when it looks like his head is about to explode.

    3. Will Starmer apologise for his slur against Boris?
      The Labour leader’s remark against the PM was unforgivable
      Patrick O’Flynn
      8 February 2022, 4:18pm

      Well I don’t know about you, but I definitely heard a nasty slur flung from one leader to another during the parliamentary debate on the Sue Gray report. Not Boris Johnson’s claim that Keir Starmer had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile while he was Director of Public Prosecutions. That was merely a pathetic, unbecoming, unwise and unfair insult thrown from a position of weakness and unattractive impetuosity. No, the insult that had me taking a sharp intake of breath was one made moments earlier by Starmer towards Johnson. It ran as follows:

      ‘Just as he has done throughout his life, he has damaged everyone and everything around him along the way.’

      This was Starmer seeking to eviscerate the Prime Minister’s character by bringing his famously complicated private life and his conduct in general before politics into the fray. The implication was that Johnson had damaged his own previous wives and grown-up children by his grotesquely selfish behaviour; that the man was what used to be described in polite company as an ‘S H, one T’.

      There was no calibration in Starmer’s remarks either. He didn’t say the PM had damaged ‘many people and many things around him’ over the years, but everyone and everything throughout his life. And that simply isn’t true.

      There is no denying Johnson’s conduct has damaged some people. Indeed, Westminster is often awash with gossip about how certain Johnson family members feel about him having left his former wife Marina for the then Carrie Symonds.

      But he has hardly damaged his new wife, with whom he has two children. Or the many Daily Telegraph readers who have richly enjoyed his columns down the years. Or the readers of this magazine during his successful editorship of it. Or the millions of Brexiteers who saw him thwart an establishment that was half-way to blocking the referendum result from being implemented when he moved into Downing Street.

      I can’t have been the only one to notice the highly personal nature of Starmer’s attack. Indeed other commentators also mentioned it in their articles about the debate in the ensuing hours and days.

      But the oddest thing is that a growing number of Tory MPs can be counted in the category of those who have condemned Johnson’s attack on Starmer without having bothered to condemn Starmer’s much more vicious and unqualified attack on their own party leader just beforehand.

      There is certainly an argument that high-minded Conservative MPs should honourably express their disdain for Johnson’s original implication that the failure to prosecute Savile was Starmer’s direct fault. Which it wasn’t. But for them to focus their criticism entirely on the Prime Minister, while not even bothering to take issue with Starmer’s provocative abuse of him a few seconds earlier is very telling. It would save time were they simply to admit that they hold Johnson in contempt and are trying their damnedest to get rid of him via any possible means.

      One might expect this of dispossessed former ministers on the backbenches: the Julian Smiths and Tobias Ellwoods putting out lofty statements underlining their own virtue at Johnson’s expense while neglecting to offer any criticism of Starmer’s approach.

      But when serving Cabinet ministers fall into a similar pattern of behaviour things have come to a pretty pass. Was the bloodless ‘I wouldn’t have said it’ formula that Rishi Sunak came out with a balanced or sufficient response? Did he really not hear what Starmer had just said about his own boss? Or perhaps he agreed with it, in which case how can he honourably continue to sit in Johnson’s Cabinet?

      The Chancellor, along with others in senior Cabinet posts, should be careful. If Sunak does not remember whose side he is supposed to be on in the unceasing battle against a ruthless Labour machine then the Tory grassroots members he is so keen to woo will hold it against him. And pop will go his own hopes of inspiring durable loyalty in the ranks if he is ever called upon to lead.

      https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-starmer-apologise-for-his-slur-against-boris-

  80. Just watched Nigella make banana skin curry. She said she cooked it for friends and they thought it was an aubergine curry. A good use of something that would normally be discarded.

        1. For such a beautiful vegetable in it’s uncooked form, it turns into khaki sludge as soon as warmed. Yukk! Hot snot… :-((

    3. Thiabendazole is an anti-fungal agent.
      Great for keeping bananas fresh.
      Let’s hope that Nigella specified organic.

          4. Nah, stick a ripe banana in the oven – sweetness and mushy with a dribble of cointreau or Irish cream on top. It’s the only way I can eat bananas, which I don’t like otherwise…

  81. Report in Russia Today
    “Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public broadcaster, announced this week that five staff members had been let go after a probe which looked into antisemitic comments made on and off the job, and also examined its recruiting processes, as well as the diversity of guest speakers.
    Besides the five staffers, four of whom worked at the Arabic desk ..”

  83. Here’s a little poser for those NoTTLers who like a puzzle. What job do I necessarily perform on the following five dates but not on any other occasion?
    1st March.
    1st May.
    1st July.
    1st October.
    1st December.

  84. Thought I would share this… had an email today from my dear friend in GA. About the Queen, she says, “In a world full of nonsense she is a bright spot.” She and her daughter in law are planting trees in their yards to honour HM.

  85. OT – I know you have all been worried sick about the leaking washing machine…

    The domestic staff have conceded that it was caused by operator error. The person concerned no longer works in the laundry…just the kitchen!

  86. It was lonely opposing the first lockdown, but the day will come when no one remembers backing it

    Admitting that the cancelled weddings and ruined businesses were for nothing, is not easy. Still, the evidence keeps piling up.

    DANIEL HANNAN • 5 February 2022 • 5:00pm

    Did you oppose the Iraq war? Good for you. It seems bizarre, 19 years on, that anyone ever thought it a good idea to spend a trillion pounds, kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and turn millions more into refugees, only to end up destroying Western prestige and creating more extremists in the region than before.

    I have to ask though – forgive my being so blunt – whether you are quite sure that you were against it at the time. You see, according to YouGov, 66 per cent of us backed the invasion when it was launched. Then the disasters began – the civilian casualties, the Abu Ghraib abuses, the rise of Islamic State – and people started to edit their memories. Asked the same question by the same pollster in 2015, only 37 per cent admitted to having backed military action in 2003.

    Something similar, I have no doubt, will happen over the lockdowns. As the dreadful health and economic costs bite, few will recall having supported the closures. Just as most Frenchmen over a certain age remember backing the Resistance, so most Brits will remember being lockdown sceptics. Psychologists call it “hindsight bias”.

    We are not there yet. Many cling, with a tinge of desperation, to the notion that their sacrifices were worthwhile. Admitting that the cancelled weddings, the ruined businesses, the lost education, the NHS waiting lists and the national debt were incurred in error, that we narrowed our children’s lives for nothing, is not easy.

    Still, the evidence keeps piling up. A meta-study of 24 surveys, reported in Wednesday’s Telegraph, found that imposing a compulsory lockdown, as opposed to trusting people to use their common sense, reduced the mortality rate by just 0.2 per cent. Think about that. Around 52,000 lives were lost in Britain in the first wave. If these figures are correct – and the researchers from Johns Hopkins and Lund universities have done a thorough job with a huge dataset – then the most extreme curtailment of freedom in modern times saved perhaps 100 lives.

    Those people were just as much the centre of their universes as you are of yours. But more lives will be lost through undetected tumours and other undiagnosed conditions. Indeed, as the researchers note, the lockdown killed people, not just through secondary causes, but with Covid, because it pushed them indoors where transmission was more likely.

    Judged even by the metric of mortality, the lockdowns failed. But how to measure the other privations and penalties – the taped-off playgrounds, the bad haircuts, the dye poured into lakes to keep people away, the insolent tone which the police took with honest citizens, the loneliness of the elderly, the bankruptcies, the ruined university experiences, the money-printing, the mental health problems hatching in silence?

    The thought that these things were needless is too painful to contemplate. The more we suffered, the more we tell ourselves that it must have been worthwhile. Think, for example, of how quickly the cost-benefit analysis turned negative for the combatant nations in the First World War. Most belligerents hoped for swift and relatively painless victories. They instead found themselves paying a price that, had they been able to foresee it, would have made their participation unthinkable.

    Yet, precisely for that reason, they felt they had to keep going. Settling for anything less than victory would mean betraying the sacrifice of the fallen. It would mean that their sons had died for nothing. And so, in history’s grisliest example of the sunk costs fallacy, they carried on hurling their young men against the machine guns.

    It was hard to reappraise the First World War while survivors wanted to find meaning in their loss. Only in the 1960s did the view that the conflict was futile become dominant. How long until the lockdowns are similarly reappraised?

    No fewer than 93 per cent of Britons backed the first lockdown, and 85 per cent the second. 71 per cent opposed the lifting of restrictions last summer. Only in December 2021 did the mood start to turn, with majorities against the closure of shops, schools and pubs.

    Those earlier figures already feel incredible, don’t they? Broadcasters and Labour MPs who spent two years screaming for tighter restrictions are now, without a blush, talking about the misery they caused. But, trust me, opposing the first lockdown was a bloody lonely business. Few commentators came out against the restrictions in March 2020, among them: Toby Young, Fraser Nelson, Jonathan Sumption, Matthew Parris, Freddie Sayers, Janet Daley, Julia Hartley-Brewer, James Delingpole, Peter Hitchens, Ross Clark and, soon afterwards, Allison Pearson.

    Back in that sun-drenched, terrified, illiberal spring, no dissent was permitted. Even to point out that an alternative approach was possible – and visible in Sweden – was to court vilification. When Toby Young wrote that we habitually did put a value on human life via the recognised formula for calculating quality-adjusted life-years, that we used it whenever medical interventions were proposed, and that we should apply the same test to lockdowns, he became a national hate figure, howled down as some sort of eugenicist. [Or neo-fascists, according to Paul Mason.]

    The odium was overwhelmingly one-way. Lockdown sceptics did not respond by accusing their opponents of aiming to destroy children’s education, or of being indifferent to mental illness, or of wanting others to die of cancer. Nor did they accuse them of being “anti-science”.

    Yet it soon became clear that the science on which the lockdowns were predicated was incorrect. Supporters of the closures had predicted a catastrophe in Sweden. By imposing only mild restrictions, the authorities had, according to most international observers, condemned their people to mass fatalities.

    In fact, cases peaked and declined in Sweden more or less in line with everywhere else. In other words, the original justification for the lockdowns had been falsified as early as April 2020. But by then people were invested in their sense of sacrifice. The closures were maintained, but the justification kept having to be amended. “Flatten the curve” became “wait for a vaccine”. When the vaccine arrived, it became “keep the pressure off the NHS”, then “stop new variants”.

    As more real-world data came in, it became clear that the length and severity of a lockdown made remarkably little difference to infection, hospitalisation or death rates. Other factors mattered more: latitude, population density, obesity, vaccination rates and, most of all, average age. But this did not stop the modellers from churning out their incorrect predictions – always incorrect in the same direction.

    “Were we fools then,” asked William Hazlitt in his essay on William Godwin, “or are we dishonest now?” Have we forgotten the fervour with which we demanded that hairdressers be closed and kids kept off school? I think we are starting to.

    It was perhaps natural, faced with what we were told was a deadly plague, to err on the side of caution. It was to be expected that, having normalised our new, hunkered-down lives, we would need to be coaxed back to normality. It was inevitable, if inexcusable, that dissenters were pilloried. And it was only human, as people began to feel the first promptings of doubt, that they would look for someone to blame. Which is enormously unlucky for Boris Johnson, on whose watch it happened.

    The reason Tony Blair became a hate figure was not just that the Iraq war was mistaken. It was that people who had backed it felt guilty. They wanted a sin-eater, a scapegoat. Johnson, despite his dislike of lockdowns, has been marked for the same office.

    Perhaps, on some level, he foresaw it. In 2008, he mused, after the fashion of CS Lewis, on the archetype of the sacrificial king, the leader whose ritual slaughter allows his people to achieve redemption: “Some of the kings are innocent; some of them are less innocent. It doesn’t really matter. They must die.”

    To put the horrors of 2020 behind us, we want to take out our sickles and soak the soil of the barley fields with kingly gore. Did Boris resist the lockdown fanatics more than other politicians? Did he defy the modellers to reopen in July? Did he disregard them again when they demanded a December lockdown? Was he vindicated? It doesn’t really matter.

    In the scheme of things, few people are interested in his election-winning record, his lonely battle to control immigration or his determination to restore British sovereignty in Northern Ireland [come again?] – let alone in who would do a better job. We are in the grip of deep, tribal impulses.

    Blood calls to blood.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/05/lonely-opposing-first-lockdown-day-will-come-no-one-remembers/

    1. The crime of lockdowns is water unto wine compared to the crime of mass injection with an experimental gene therapy jab.

    2. ‘No fewer than 93 per cent of Britons backed the first lockdown,’
      Are we, that inhabit this forum, only representative of 7% of Britons?

      1. Depends when they were asked, and what does “back” mean.
        I did believe that the virus was very dangerous until about April/May of 2020 when it went through the convalescent hospital where my daughter was working and nobody died, including the 94 year old who had recently had an operation. So I didn’t oppose lockdowns in February 2020, and I was surprised when right from the start, some commenters started asking how we would come out of lockdown.
        Naively, I thought it was simple, just lift the restrictions.
        I signed the Great Barrington Declaration when it came out in the summer.
        2020 was a steep learning curve!

        1. Crazed teacher friend was wetting herself with fear over it.
          I was surprised – since she used to be an Army orficer, and trekked alone in the Himalayas, I thought she was made of sterner stuff than that gibbering wreck.

          2. Her brave outlook on life made her enormously attractive – she could have been the second SWMBO, had things gone wrong. The latest incarnation – whew! Mistake avoided. But it’s saddening…
            The current SWMBO has that “Will say Boo! to a goose” and afraid of nothing – that is so attractive in a woman.

      2. Bollox – it was a YouGov “poll” commissioned by HMG.

        “YouGov – the pollster than gets the answer YOU want.”

        1. Maybe, but look at those numbers still wearing masks when it’s not even a mandate any more.

          1. Asda today- 50-50. I also saw a school girl walking home, alone and wearing a mask. The children have been indoctrinated.

          5. They’ve been brainwashed for two years to regard it as normal behaviour and a ‘courtesy’ to others.

      3. I don’t believe that! We are few here but there must be many more of us. I remember being incredulous on arriving back from Kenya on 6th March 2020 to find a stock-market crash and lockdowns talked about. Our final evening out on 16th March was a table tennis tournament and that was the last evening out for more than a year.

        I had a conversation with my elder son at that time and we agreed that it was all a huge over-reaction. He’s not had any of the vaxxes.

        We’ve lost two years out of our lives and at our time of life it’s a big chunk of what we might have left.

      4. I don’t believe that! We are few here but there must be many more of us. I remember being incredulous on arriving back from Kenya on 6th March 2020 to find a stock-market crash and lockdowns talked about. Our final evening out on 16th March was a table tennis tournament and that was the last evening out for more than a year.

        I had a conversation with my elder son at that time and we agreed that it was all a huge over-reaction. He’s not had any of the vaxxes.

        We’ve lost two years out of our lives and at our time of life it’s a big chunk of what we might have left.

    3. Lord Hannan makes the mistake of believing the results of opinion polls.
      Some of us rightists have unclean thoughts that could get us into trouble, so there is a tendency to talk sweetly but think bitterly.
      Only today I was asked (rhetorically) why there are so few dark skinned teachers in rural CofE primary schools in the UK, and whether that could be due to racism in the selection process.

        1. ‘Cos de black guys just don’t like the pitchy black. Not a one in our hamlet of about 140 souls.

      2. There are few dark-skinned children in our rural CofE primary schools. We have visited many local schools to do talks about hedgehogs (few in the last two years) and the dark-skinned children are mainly in the city schools.

    4. Hannan’s request for us to remember how our attitudes changed over the Iraq war, are similar to how our attitudes toward the EU changed.

      The change was brought about, in both instances, by the realisation that our Prime Minister(s) had LIED to us.

      It is happening again – polices sustained by lies, damned lies and (so-called) statistics.

  87. Someone asked me what sport i would do at the Olympics. I said Curling but i just can’t.

    Why they asked.

    I said because the fuse has gone in the plug.

        2. Yes. That’s why the people need to be armed, to keep it in check.
          We had the aristocracy acting as a largely benevolent dictatorship – Blair got rid of that, and we lost our guns years ago. We’re in the worst state since before the glorious revolution.
          Even King John wasn’t allowed to renege on the Magna Carta as the government have betrayed us on Brexit.

          1. Canadian truckers are showing the way…
            2A: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
            My bold.

          2. … and Firstborn has a tee-shirt I bought him: “I support the right to bare arms”
            :-D)

          3. …and precisely the reason Obama wanted to curb the armament of the NRA – he was frightened shitless that an armed population would turn on him.

          4. Yes, it’s sinister to see the absolute lust from the Democrats to disarm the population. Guns blamed for everything, even when the perpetrators are as high as a kite on drugs to which the politicians turn a blind eye.

  90. I haven’t watched the video, but just wondering if that Kurt footballer owns a cat in order to protect him from deportation?
    (he is a Muslim, and French, so his life started badly)

    2. He is just a sick, appalling person. His “apology” is only because the video escaped into the public domain.

      1. Which only goes to show how utterly depraved he and his pals are – that they thought the world would like to see this cruelty.

  91. I haven’t watched the video, but just wondering if that Kurt footballer owns a cat in order to protect him from deportation?
    (he is a Muslim, and French, so his life started badly)

  92. That’s me gone for the day. A much nicer one for weather than predicted by the Wet Office. Supposed to be nice tomorrow, too.

    Have a jolly evening being nice to one another.

    A demain.

  96. Isn’t someone going to post the story about the animal rescue in Indonesia? On The Guardian.

    Tili said “I was already exhausted so I let them finish the rescue. The crocodile was unbelievably heavy, everybody was sweating and getting very tired.” But not as tyred as the croc.

    2. https://twitter.com/True_Belle/status/1491117509793452032

      Crocodile story
      A wild crocodile in Indonesia that was trapped in a tyre for more than five years has been rescued, freed from its rubber ring and released back into the wild.

      Conservation workers have been trying to lure the stricken saltwater crocodile from a river since 2016, after residents of Palu city on Sulawesi island spotted the animal with a motorbike tyre wrapped around its neck.
      But it was a local resident who eventually snared the 5.2-metre (17ft) long reptile – regularly seen sunbathing in the Palu River in central Sulawesi – late on Monday.

      Tili, a 34-year-old bird-seller, used chicken as bait and ropes to catch the animal at the end of what he said was a three-week rescue effort, before dozens of locals helped to drag the crocodile to shore and cut the tyre around its neck.

      “I just wanted to help, I hate seeing animals trapped and suffering,” said Tili, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. https://media2.giphy.com/media/26hitHUvISgO2ddT2/giphy.gif

    3. When interviewed, the crocodile cursed the rescuers.
      “Those interfering busybodies have destroyed my food source. I’ve eaten 27 natives who tried to get that bait from my neck…”

          1. Why the downer Phizzee.
            It was a Good Year for that type of joke, or is your sense of humour Michelin this evening?

          7. Only because you blocked him. But I remember you rubbed each other up the wrong way years ago. He’s a kind soul really.

  97. Isn’t someone going to post the story about the animal rescue in Indonesia? On The Guardian.

    Tili said “I was already exhausted so I let them finish the rescue. The crocodile was unbelievably heavy, everybody was sweating and getting very tired.” But not as tyred as the croc.

  98. You couldn’t make it up.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10489865/The-anti-vax-aggressors-Keir-Starmer-stunt.html

    Revealed: The hard-Left anti-vax aggressors who hurled abuse at Keir Starmer for ‘forgetting the working man’ were whipped into a frenzy by Jeremy Corbyn’s conspiracy theorist brother Piers – amid fury at the BBC for blaming it all on Boris

    What a sick joke politics has become.
    Forget killing all the lawyers, time for politicians’ heads on spikes.

  99. Bamber Gascoigne obituary
    Writer, documentary-maker and broadcaster who was the popular quizmaster of TV’s University Challenge for 25 years

    If the polymathic Bamber Gascoigne was ever irked by the fact that he was best known to the British public for the phrase: “Fingers on buzzers … your starter for 10,” he never showed it. More than 30 years after his retirement as the quizmaster on University Challenge – a post he had held for a quarter of a century between 1962 and 1987 – the phrase still dogged his footsteps, despite everything else he did.

    Gascoigne, who has died aged 87, with his easy patrician manner, born of a family steeped in centuries of aristocratic connections, proved an inspired if incongruous choice to chair a television quiz show on a commercial channel, even in the early 1960s. He looked and spoke like a junior don, gradually evolving into an uncensorious professor. He did not mind being parodied by Griff Rhys Jones in the anarchic 80s Young Ones comedy series, or by Mark Gatiss in the film Starter for Ten in 2006 – about a student desperate to appear on the show – and he even played himself in an episode of the Jonathan Creek mystery series.

    His genial presence – fair, curly hair and tolerant smile – hovered over University Challenge long after it was revived in 1994 under his more acerbic successor, Jeremy Paxman, with his displays of incredulity at the ignorance of contestants. Gascoigne never showed such impatience.

    Gascoigne, who was not much older than the contestants when the quiz started (and did not look much older than them when Granada first ended it in 1987), had much to do with the show’s enduring success. Despite being pitched at a level of knowledge above the heads of many viewers, it did not patronise or condescend either to those taking part or those watching.

    Bamber Gascoigne at West Horsley Place in Surrey, which he unexpectedly inherited from a great-aunt. The house, with its 50 rooms and 380 acres of grounds, was in a dilapidated condition, but rather that selling it he turned it into a community arts centre.
    Bamber Gascoigne at West Horsley Place in Surrey, which he unexpectedly inherited from a great-aunt. The house, with its 50 rooms and 380 acres of grounds, was in a dilapidated condition, but rather that selling it he turned it into a community arts centre. Photograph: David Crump/Daily Mail/Rex/Shutterstock
    The show, originally based on an American television quiz called College Bowl, required only 40 days a year of Gascoigne’s time, for which he was initially paid £40 a week. That meant he could indulge his wide-ranging other interests, including opera, theatre and the arts along with a number of serious historical studies, some linked to television documentary series.

    “University Challenge gave me economic freedom, although not much,” he told the Daily Telegraph in 2012. “I love playing games, the students were incredibly nice and it was great fun. I have only watched it two or three times since – but then I never watched myself either. We don’t watch television as early as 8.30 in the evening so I have only seen it very few times.”

    Gascoigne was the son of Lt Col Derick Gascoigne and his wife, Midi O’Neill. He was descended from a long line of military men and the Gascoignes traced their roots back through Yorkshire landowners to the 14th century. Bamber was a family name too – an 18th-century predecessor of the same name had been an MP. His uncle Terence O’Neill was the Ulster Unionist prime minister of Northern Ireland in the 60s. There were family connections also with the Cecils, Tudor and Victorian power-brokers and prime ministers.

    He was educated at Sunningdale prep school, Berkshire, and was a scholar at Eton. He claimed that the scholarship boys were looked on as impoverished scum and although he said he enjoyed his time at the college, he would not have sent a son there because he did not believe in the separation of social groups. National service in the Grenadier Guards was followed by an English literature degree at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a year in the US at Yale. At Cambridge he reviewed plays for Granta and then became theatre critic of the Spectator and the Observer, from which he was plucked to chair the new university quiz show.

    At Cambridge he had written a revue, Share My Lettuce, which was produced in the West End, starring Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams. Over the years it was followed by other plays: Leda Had a Little Swan made it to New York in 1968 (it had been refused a licence by the lord chamberlain, whose responsibilities then included censoring plays, in London the previous year); The Feydeau Farce Festival of 1909 was put on at Greenwich in 1972 and Big in Brazil was produced at the Old Vic in 1984.

    For television Gascoigne wrote and presented a major documentary series for Granada called The Christians in 1977, co-funded by Dutch and German channels. The series took three years to research and present and Gascoigne insisted – in the face of criticism from the church – that his lay status was precisely what was required: he said he wanted Christians to assume he was a believer and non-Christians to assume he was not.

    Further documentaries included Victorian Values in 1987, Man and Music in 1987 and The Great Moghuls in 1990. Usually these were accompanied by books. There were also novels, potboilers and short histories as well as Quest for the Golden Hare (1983), documenting the treasure hunt that followed the publication of the bestselling book Masquerade (1979) by Kit Williams, which set readers clues to finding a precious object hidden somewhere in Britain. From 2000 he became editor-in-chief of historyworld.net and he also accumulated trusteeships in the arts, at the National and Tate galleries, at the Royal Opera House and the National Trust. He was appointed CBE in 2018.

    Gascoigne was unexpectedly left a 16th-century stately home, West Horsley Place – once owned by Henry VIII – near Guildford, Surrey, by his great-aunt Mary Innes-Ker, the Duchess of Roxburgh, who died aged 99 in 2014. The house, with its 50 rooms and 380 acres of grounds, was in a dilapidated condition, as she had lived alone for many years and had not been able to maintain the building. “Every time there was a new drip, she thought: get a new bucket,” he said in 2018.

    Instead of selling the property, as the duchess had imagined he would, Gascoigne and his wife, Christina, decided it should be renovated and turned into a community arts centre. The £10m cost of repairs was largely met by selling much of the contents, including paintings by Edward Burne-Jones and Lord Leighton’s famous Flaming June, at Sotheby’s. A 700-seat opera house was built by Grange Park Opera in the grounds and the house itself is intended to be used for conferences, classes and for filming.

    “We both felt it was a bit feeble not to give it a shot,” he explained. “A place that for several centuries has been entirely private, somewhere people did not even really know was there, can look forward to many centuries of people enjoying it. I think that’s a wonderful thing.” The duchess’s ashes are buried under the orchestra pit.

    Gascoigne had met Christina (nee Ditchburn), a photographer and ceramicist, at Cambridge, and they married in 1965. She survives him.

    Arthur Bamber Gascoigne, writer and broadcaster, born 24 January 1935; died 8 February 2022

    3. RIP. Even after he no longer chaired University Challenge, I still expected to hear his name announced at the beginning! Ave atque vale, amici. I am very late on parade and will be off to bed shortly.

  100. Proof that heat pumps are uneconomic:

    Suppose you were heating your home using a 7.5 kW boiler (on electricity the boiler could run off a 32 amp circuit)

    At a standard electricity rate of 20 p/kWh this would cost (7.5 x 20) = 150 p per hour in electricity.
    At a typical gas rate of 5 p/kWh the boiler would cost (7.5 x 5) = 37.5 p per hour in gas.
    For a heat pump with Coefficient of Performance of 3 it would cost ((7.5÷3) x 20) = 50p per hour in running compressor.

    This comparison is independent of any level of installed insulation.

    It is theredfore concluded that at the present inequality between gas and electricity prices there is no way in which a heat pump installation will ever pay for itself when replacing a gas boiler even if the whole capital cost is written off.

    1. Climate change denier, off to the gulag with you.

      That’s a darn expensive fridge people are installing.

  101. End mass testing now and let us return to normality

    We transferring societal responsibilities to the individual and sentencing many to loss of livelihood, education and hope

    SUNETRA GUPTA

    Britain has got itself into a terrible mess on mass testing. A recent study led by Oxford academics, which found that up to a third of people found positive on a PCR test were not contagious, should give the Government cause to reconsider the wisdom of this approach.

    At an individual level, knowing your own infection status can be extremely helpful, for example if you are planning to visit a vulnerable relative or friend. However, as we all know, a positive test result can have significant negative impacts, particularly if it entails loss of income and opportunity. If the tests are too sensitive, the problem is even worse.

    Furthermore, the truth is that we are permanently crawling with germs. Expecting the individual to bear responsibility for any infection that he or she might pass on risks leaving us all living in a state of permanent guilt. Normally, this guilt is dispersed within the community.

    This is not to say that, during a pandemic, we should not exercise care to protect the vulnerable by limiting contact with them while we are infectious (in fact, I would highly recommend this) but it is also important to remember that once a disease has become endemic, there is little else we can do other than not visit granny when we have a fulminant cold.

    But to what extent should we self-isolate upon testing positive or being told that we may have been in contact with someone who tested positive? As we have witnessed over the past few months, these actions do little to stop the spread of infection and create enormous problems for the delivery of healthcare and education. Sanctioning the use of tests that suggest people are contagious even when they are not magnifies the problem.

    It is, however, important to recognise that things would not have been much different if we had a perfect test, as in some sense we now have with the new generation of LFDs. We would still have vast numbers of key workers unable to function and children being deprived of the safety and intellectual and emotional stimulation that our educational system seeks to provide. We would still have to endure life being endlessly disrupted – all having scant impact on the prevalence of an infection in its endemic state.

    Testing could have been profitably used at the population scale. Even imperfect measurements of the incidence of infection done randomly could have allowed us to make intelligent assessments regarding the progression of the pandemic and the effects of the restrictions, allowing greater flexibility and better tailoring advice to the vulnerable and the NHS.

    Some deficiencies in the rigour of testing early in the pandemic, given that we were dealing with an emergency, could be tolerated on the basis that it was important to garner information on the development of the situation. What cannot be forgiven is that, instead, we used a faulty testing scheme to transfer societal responsibilities to the individual, sentencing many to loss of livelihood, education, social contact and hope – and we still are.

    Continuing with a mass testing, mass isolation strategy in response to a disease that has become endemic is merely piling up the misery. The Government must change course.

    Sunetra Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/07/end-mass-testing-now-let-us-return-normality/

    1. Full marks to Sunetra Gupta for sticking to her guns in the face of a barrage of lefty hate in 2020-21.
      But I notice that the mainstream media is now allowing criticism of lockdown and testing, but covid passports to enter and leave the country are off limits, which makes me think that establishing them is part of the long term goal. They will, of course, soon be implemented via the handy-dandy digital passport that the government just happens to have in its back pocket.

  102. Good evening, lovely Nottlers!

    A few days ago we were reminiscing aout old songs, and someone mentioned Cat Stevens. He was never really one of my favourites at the time, but I’ve grown more to appreciate him as I’ve got older. This particular song has been haunting me for some days – it’s even more true now than when he wrote it – horrifyingly and sadly so.

    Especially the last verse…:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUVvyTqncNM

    1. In my view, Stevens released three top-notch albums: ‘Mona Bone Jakon’, ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ (from which this is taken and my favourite of the three) and ‘Teaser and the Firecat’. Think it went downhill a little after that, but reckon it a remarkable achievement for him to have produced the three mentioned.

    3. The problem isn’t green. The problem is a population of over 80 million. There should be about 45 million and falling, but Labour imported the third world and encouraged them to breed with their cousins.

  105. After Canada, New Zealand Truckers Block Streets To Protest Covid Curbs
    Plastered with messages such as “give us back our freedom” and “coercion is not consent”, hundreds of vehicles parked in streets surrounding the parliament building known as The Beehive.

    WorldAgence France-PresseUpdated: February 08, 2022 8:29 am IST

          1. I sometimes wonder who among the 250,000 foetuses aborted every year in the UK might have been an absolute genius. (and conversely who may have turned out to become a mass murderer)…

          2. A genius these days is vilified for being more capable than others. The terror people have of discussion and debate, especially when they’re dramatically outclassed is almost comical.

            When I see the wife talking to someone and bung in dementedly complicated maths problems and she will not only answer me within seconds, but not miss a beat talking to the other – heck, exchange maths for classics, points of law…she’s a genuine polymath. Best one was having her talk to 2 different people in Japanese and French in completely different topics without realising just how amazing it was.

            Heck, folks might think this is obvious and easy and I am biased, but I was jolly impressed.

    1. False News! That first video is perfectly OK. There is a building next to the White House, the one shown, which is the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. This is clearly seen on Google Earth.

        1. Indeed it does, and this is adjacent to the grey Eisenhower Building (which is shown clearly in the video).

      2. The first tweet came attached to the second, Grizzly, I did not realise that – it was late, I was tired and it was unintended; I wanted to show how easy it is to fake a video (the child walking down the railings) – yes, we know videos can be faked, but to see it happening brings realisation.

        1. Hi. Mum. I wasn’t having a pop. I was just highlighting that whoever made that first video was after sensationalism rather than checking the facts.

          1. Yes, he did get taken to task for that on Twitter in some of the comments. It was the second clip I was interested in, for instance how easy it would be to film anyone in authority and insert a different background for authenticity to suit a purpose.

    2. False News! That first video is perfectly OK. There is a building next to the White House, the one shown, which is the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. This is clearly seen on Google Earth.

  108. Why we must keep the Vagrancy Act

    You need only look to the West Coast of America to see how well-intentioned but wrong-headed policies can swiftly undermine public safety

    FRANK YOUNG

    A flailing Government looking to re-boot should be wary of strangers peddling virtue and short sighted gestures which seemingly solve long standing problems. Most issues are hard to solve and simple solutions that offer a pleasing headline in tomorrow’s papers are the sort of political Valium best avoided.

    One coming example of this trend is a burgeoning campaign to repeal the Vagrancy Act of 1824. Government ministers in 2022 tend not to use phrases like “vagrancy”, even ageing Tory MPs are unlikely to use it much. It is unsurprising then that the campaign to scrap an archaic piece of legislation bearing the unspeakable name is gathering momentum. The latest skirmish in this battle is an amendment to the Government’s flagship Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill championed by Lord Best.

    Vagrancy isn’t a word in common parlance in the 2020s, but there’s a reason why this Act has remained on the statute books. It speaks to a fundamental belief that the Government should send a clear message about what is and is not desirable behaviour within a civilised society, and ensure that the police have the powers and tools necessary to prevent crime and to maintain order. This is a classic of the “people’s priorities” genre beloved by the Prime Minister. What seems like a consensus view in Westminster is often anything but in the “real world”.

    A shopkeeper should not have to step over people sleeping in his doorway, nor should a café owner have to watch his customers be accosted as they sit out in the street. Allowing these relatively minor transgressions against social order to go unchallenged will only see the problems grow.

    More recently, one need only look to the West Coast of the United States to see how well-intentioned but wrong-headed policies can swiftly and fundamentally undermine the very public safety, public health, order and civility in society that we should be fostering.

    At a time when high streets and shopping parades – often the heart of communities – are struggling to compete against online giants and recover from Covid restrictions, repeal without replacement of the Vagrancy Act would only tilt the tables against retailers, restaurants, cafes and their patrons.

    It’s also a reality that the Vagrancy Act touches on a number of other behaviours that the public would rightly want the police to have powers to tackle and challenge. Warwickshire and Greater Manchester are two police forces successfully using the Vagrancy Act as part of a wider approach to tackle rough sleeping and help get people to sort their lives out. According to frontline officers, the most recalcitrant and harmful only engage with help when the alternative is to face enforcement.

    The campaign to repeal the Vagrancy Act, however well-intentioned, is little more than short-sighted gesture politics. The only winners are the campaigners. Anyone who cares about civilised society, the quality of life in their town or city, and turning around the lives of the homeless, should instead prefer well-considered action.

    Frank Young is editorial director of Civitas: the Institute for the Study of Civil Society

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/07/must-keep-vagrancy-act/

    BTL:
    James Carter
    Brought in after the Napoleonic Wars when a trimmed down army led to masses of soldiers swelling the ranks of the unemployed, the act still does have its place.

    And still serving its original purpose two centuries on…

    1. On first conviction under that Act, the offender is branded as an “Idle and Disorderly Person”.
      On second conviction, he/she becomes a “Rogue and Vagabond”.
      On third conviction (and subsequent gaol sentence) they become an “Incorrigible Rogue”.

      Good old George IV standards.

    2. On first conviction under that Act, the offender is branded as an “Idle and Disorderly Person”.
      On second conviction, he/she becomes a “Rogue and Vagabond”.
      On third conviction (and subsequent gaol sentence) they become an “Incorrigible Rogue”.

      Good old George IV standards.

    3. “Well-intentioned”? Removing fines for vagrancy in the US achieved exactly what it was designed to do, which was to increase homelessness and drug abuse, and break down society.

  110. Tonight I watched for the first time LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997) from my DVD collection of foreign films. A most wonderful film, in my opinion, some people considered that it was in poor taste to “joke” about Jewish Concentration camps. But I simply saw it as heroic efforts made by a father to protect his son from the massive tragedy of those camps. 10 out of 10 was my verdict. Anyhow, Good Night everyone.

    1. Saw that on a bust heading for Auschwitz. I agree with your assessment, Elsie. Especially the scene where the German soldier is taking the father away round the corner to be shot, and the father is clowning (in a “Ministry of Silly Walks” way) past the door his little boy is watching through.

  111. Tonight I watched for the first time LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997) from my DVD collection of foreign films. A most wonderful film, in my opinion, some people considered that it was in poor taste to “joke” about Jewish Concentration camps. But I simply saw it as heroic efforts made by a father to protect his son from the massive tragedy of those camps. 10 out of 10 was my verdict. Anyhow, Good Night everyone.

    2. Me too**, Tom. (Good morning, btw.)

      ** As a poor Widder Woman, I am not seeking financial compensation for sexual abuse which I allege to have occurred 50 years ago. I just want to be first with Wednesday’s posts. Lol.

    3. Gah, don’t. I woke up about the same time, did some ipadding and started sorting the bins out.

      2. ‘Morning, Wibbles, I’m going to empty and recharge the wish-dosher and get Best Beloved a cup of tea.

        2. Good morning.
          I’ve just done tea for the DT & Self and taken her cereal & tea up for her to eat in bed.

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