Saturday 12 February: Disagreeing with the Mayor on the kind of Met Commissioner that London wants

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

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

554 thoughts on “Saturday 12 February: Disagreeing with the Mayor on the kind of Met Commissioner that London wants”

  3. Disagreeing with the Mayor on the kind of Met Commissioner that London wants

    I think we all agree on the kind of Mayor we want and it is not Khan.
    Although no Mayor at all would suit me.

      1. The Lord Mayor has little or no real power – the role is mostly ceremonial. Pity the same couldn’t be said about Khan.

  4. Foreign Office tells Britons in Ukraine to leave country now. 12 February 2022.

    The Foreign Office has issued new guidance advising British citizens in Ukraine to leave now while commercial means are still available, amid increasing concern of an invasion by Russia.

    Are they issuing similar directions to the citizens of Dover? The UK Government is defending the borders and interests of a country with whom we have almost nothing in common while our own are ignored. As Johnson dispatches forces to Central Europe almost a thousand aliens a week cross the Channel and enter the UK!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/11/foreign-office-urges-uk-citizens-ukraine-leave-as-soon-as-possible

      1. Worse than brainless. She thinks she knows something when she does not. The only sensible thing that she might have said to Mr Lavrov is “what should we do?”.

  6. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    The first couple of letters:

    SIR – I didn’t have a lot of time for Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, but I must admit that losing the confidence of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, is about as ringing an endorsement as it is possible to get.

    Nigel Cowan
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    SIR – What is next on Sadiq Khan’s political agenda – to take over the running of the Met himself?

    He has already masterminded the ruin of London Underground services, just as commuters are struggling to get back to work in their offices.

    Charles Kemp
    Chichester, West Sussex

    In my view Kahn is an odious, self-important little runt (sorry about the typo) who, apart from his normal incompetence, greatly embarrassed this country when he opposed the visit to London by POTUS. His conduct then was shameful. It is most unfortunate that our great capital is in his disgusting hands.

  7. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    The first couple of letters:

    SIR – I didn’t have a lot of time for Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, but I must admit that losing the confidence of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, is about as ringing an endorsement as it is possible to get.

    Nigel Cowan
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    SIR – What is next on Sadiq Khan’s political agenda – to take over the running of the Met himself?

    He has already masterminded the ruin of London Underground services, just as commuters are struggling to get back to work in their offices.

    Charles Kemp
    Chichester, West Sussex

    In my view Kahn is an odious, self-important little runt (sorry about the typo) who, apart from his normal incompetence, greatly embarrassed this country when he opposed the visit to London by POTUS. His conduct then was shameful. It is most unfortunate that our great capital is in his disgusting hands.

  11. SIR – The elevation of Dame Cressida Dick to lead the Met police was in no small part due to her being female and LGBT, which satisfied the politically correct lobby.

    London has paid dearly for this obsession with diversity. Yet if there was a time for positive discrimination it is now, and the elevation of a black candidate to Commissioner might be perfect timing to right the problems that the Met and London now face.

    Kelvin Trott
    London SW1

    If I have read this letter correctly Kelvin Trott wants more of the very same ‘diversity’ he criticises in the selection of a replacement Met Commissioner. Is he out if his mind? Surely it must be time to revert to the tried and tested principle of ‘the best person for the job’?

    1. Well Mr Trott Basu will probably get the job and he’s even more of a numpty than Dick!

      1. ‘Morning Minty. Didn’t he try to have a reporter arrested for printing something he didn’t like? Hardly a suitable candidate, but my money is still on him for all the wrong reasons.

  12. SIR – The elevation of Dame Cressida Dick to lead the Met police was in no small part due to her being female and LGBT, which satisfied the politically correct lobby.

    London has paid dearly for this obsession with diversity. Yet if there was a time for positive discrimination it is now, and the elevation of a black candidate to Commissioner might be perfect timing to right the problems that the Met and London now face.

    Kelvin Trott
    London SW1

    If I have read this letter correctly Kelvin Trott wants more of the very same ‘diversity’ he criticises in the selection of a replacement Met Commissioner. Is he out if his mind? Surely it must be time to revert to the tried and tested principle of ‘the best person for the job’?

  13. SIR – Good heavens! What luck for the Prime Minister – to be savaged by Sir John Major. Boris Johnson is much safer now.

    Edmund Mahony
    Brighton, East Sussex

    Bravo, Edmund; hole in one!

    1. Nigel Jones
      Boris vs the Blob: the real reason John Major can’t stand the PM
      10 February 2022, 12:09pm

      The embattled denizens of Downing Street must be quaking in their loafers as another incoming missile streaks in. This one – typically late in the day – is fired by one of our growing squad of embittered ex-prime ministers, Sir John Major. It takes the form of a speech to the Institute for Government titled ‘In democracy we trust?’.

      Sir John’s sense of irony in choosing this subject is clearly not strong considering he spent much of his spectacularly undistinguished premiership struggling to subsume British parliamentary democracy under the dictates of the openly undemocratic European Union. Nonetheless he chips in with the usual tropes of the anti-Boris brigade: the PM is demeaning standards, undermining probity, telling fibs. We all know the familiar words of the song.

      But in belatedly clambering aboard the creaking anti-Boris bandwagon over partygate, Major is at least demonstrating one thing that becomes plainer by the day: the chorus of denunciation of Johnson and his administration appears to have less to do with illicit parties, wine glugging, and cake scoffing, than with the ‘Blob’ exacting revenge for Brexit.

      Give or take a couple of Brexiteer Tory MPs, by spooky coincidence almost the entire choir of Boris loathing backbenchers who have submitted letters of no confidence – or say they intend to – come from the wringing wet Remainer wing of the party. And outside parliament it’s the usual suspects, who cannot forgive or forget that Johnson was the trophy boy figurehead of the Leave campaign, who are now shouting the loudest.

      The ‘Blob’ – made up of the upper reaches of the civil service, those who walk the studios of the BBC and Channel Four and the lecturers and common room leaders of academia – may differ in minor ways and prefer polenta to Prosecco, but when it comes to Johnson, they present a united front.

      Yet in another savage irony, the object of their disdain is one of them. Born in New York, brought up in Brussels, and a long term resident of north London, Johnson as the capital’s Mayor had a track record of liberal values: pro diversity and immigration, relaxed about sexual morals, and a bicycle-riding environmentalist of the deepest Green hue.

      As Prime Minister, the government he leads has been following a non-Conservative agenda that should warm the heart of any left-thinking observer: dedicated to Net Zero, splashing the cash like a Formula One winner on the podium, taxing high earners till their eyes bulge, racking up debt, running down the armed forces, worshipping at the altar of the sacred NHS, throwing open the borders to all comers, from the point of view of a right-on Islingtonian, what’s not to like?

      Brexit, that’s what. Still fighting their neverendum certain Blobbers, so used to having things go their way for the past half century, view the man who brought us Brexit as the one who betrayed the favourite cause of his caste. For that alone he must be punished. They seek not only Johnson’s removal from office but his total humiliation.

      Of course, no-one with even a half-functional cerebellum can plausibly deny that our Prime Minister is a rogue. But behaviour that has been an open secret since Johnson hosted ‘Have I Got News For You’ can hardly have come as a surprise to the pearl clutchers. What really sends them gibbering to their keyboards to spray social media with bile or stand and deliver pious and pompous platitudes about democracy to think tanks, is the fact that he has profited from his roguery politically.

      The Mays and the Majors of this world, uniting with the legions of the left who have always loathed Johnson, cannot bear it that someone who sums up in his rumpled and hitherto popular persona all that they are not, is, after all the ordure that they have poured over him, like Elton John: still standing. After weeks of sustained bombardment with the most vicious projectiles his enemies can muster, the object of their righteous wrath is withstanding the siege from the Downing Street bunker, even belting out ‘I will survive!’

      Boris might be right that we are not witnessing the last days of the Johnson Reich. And those, such as Johnson’s former editor Max Hastings, who has predicted the PM could be gone within weeks, could yet be proven wrong. But if partygate does bring down Boris, his departure will owe less to the flood of booze than the bile of ‘the Blob’ against the black sheep who dared, by accident or design, to stray from the flock.

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

      Tom Armstrong • 2 days ago • edited
      Excellent summary of the real reason the Blob hates Johnson: he’s a heretic Brexiteer and, just as bad, (reluctantly) lifted the totalitarian lockdown and infringements of our freedom so beloved of the Blob.

      Major? “‘In democracy we trust?’” But only when it goes their way. The Maastrricht Treaty, designed to end our national sovereignty, was signed by Major in a major act of treachery and wholly without any democratic legitimacy, 30 years ago this month. Getting lectured on democracy by the mendacious mediocrity that is John Major is as bad as being lectured on patriotism by Jeremy Corbyn and/or Kneel Starmer.

  14. SIR – Diccon Swan’s proposal (Letters, February 11) of ringing church bells for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee from 19.52 to 20.22 one evening is brilliant, and proof that the simplest ideas are so often the best. Let us hope that the Church authorities pick it up in time.

    Tim Hadland
    Duston, Northamptonshire

    Let us hope that Her Maj doesn’t succumb to the ‘small c’ that may have been passed on by her son and heir, of all people!

    1. When I proposed that the bells be rung on All Saints Day a couple of years ago, to remind the UK that we are a Christian country, all of the Church leaders who bothered to reply, dismissed the idea

  15. SIR – Diccon Swan’s proposal (Letters, February 11) of ringing church bells for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee from 19.52 to 20.22 one evening is brilliant, and proof that the simplest ideas are so often the best. Let us hope that the Church authorities pick it up in time.

    Tim Hadland
    Duston, Northamptonshire

    Let us hope that Her Maj doesn’t succumb to the ‘small c’ that may have been passed on by her son and heir, of all people!

          1. Could their actions achieve what the convoy aims for – Paris shutdown. The convoy will then just block the periphique (Paris M25)

      1. Has the left has always been happy to “win” by cheating or is this a relatively new phenomenon?

        1. They’re following Uncle Joe.
          It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.

        2. In pursuit of their goal, anything is legitimate, whether votes or casualties (how many millions murdered did Hobsbawn say would be justified to bring about the triumph of Communism ?). Their opponents’ repeated error is to think that if ”we play fair then they’ll do the same.

  18. And now for today’s hottest topic on the DT Letters page:

    SIR – I have been a flower arranger in our local church for many years, so thank you for saying “church flower arrangers should be valued” (Leading Article, February 10).

    Perhaps the General Synod of the Church of England should value us too and give serious thought to the proposal to ban green flower-arranging foam (such as Oasis).

    I know this is part of making our churches eco-friendly, but without it flower arranging on a large scale is impossible. This means no flower festivals and consequently less income for our parish church.

    Christine Palmer
    Dunwich, Suffolk

    SIR – I do many church flower arrangements and clear up after many more. Disposing of dirty water and rotting masses of green microplastics is a horrible job. It should not be thrown down the sink nor outside, where birds and other wildlife suffer the consequences.

    We stopped using floral foam years ago. Twigs, wire netting, sand, stones and glass holders can all be used to support arrangements. Constance Spry managed the floral displays for the Coronation using just these things.

    Karen Elder
    Idlicote, Warwickshire

    SIR – I wonder if the Church of England’s leaders have any idea about what actually matters in parishes. The parish share continues to rise, with less and less given by dioceses in return, and they decree that volunteers who do the flowers can no longer use green foam.

    They may hope to save the planet, but it’s not the same one that I and many other Christians are living on.

    Julian Snell
    Bishopstrow, Wiltshire

    SIR – Banning floral foam is not as environmentally friendly as is suggested. In my church, we tried a less harmful product, but it did not retain water so well and the flowers did not last as long.

    Churches require large floral arrangements and the mechanics of ensuring their stability must be robust. Yet again, the environmental lobby wants actions that are time consuming, complicated and costly.

    Gill Clark
    Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire

    You would think, wouldn’t you, that the C of E has more important matters to attend to…

    1. Yo HJ

      Welby and Co have absolutely no interest in Parishoners, their needs, fabric of the Church etc… as long, as they get theirt money

      Welby will soon convert to Islam, the rest of the Bishoprick will follow

      1. Yo Tryers.

        Quite so. The C of E is falling to bits. What a pity Selby doesn’t concentrate on the important stuff – falling congregations, churches closing, far too many bishops…

      2. Welby is a committed atheist with the express instruction to destroy the Church of England. Never has an A of C filled me with such total disgust.

  19. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/171fac1c8869ff72e5a3ef0f1031ee35e73371eec4bd840fc501d4104fcead5d.png Nearly right, Kelvin.

    Whilst the two factors you specify played an undoubted rôle in her selection, I do not believe they were the main reason. Dick was selected, primarily, because she is a double graduate of the Common Purpose indoctrination programme; a qualification that seems to be de rigueur for advancement in any sphere of influence in this mad modern world.

    1. Good morning, Grizzly

      Her father, Marcus Dick, was a very popular professor and the Dean of Students at UEA in the late 60s/early70s. Probably before your time in Norwich?

          1. Still @ Home Son had already shifted all of them close to where I wanted them stacked, so all I had to do was stack them and managed it before the rain started.
            Looks like we’ve got rain for a couple of days.

  21. Douglas Murray on fine form in today’s DT:

    Ardern and Trudeau, the woke darlings of the Western world, are finally getting their comeuppance

    Facing protests and falling popularity, they are proof that it is wrong to prize empathy in political leaders above everything else

    DOUGLAS MURRAY
    11 February 2022 • 8:00pm

    Who knew that empathy wasn’t enough? Two leaders who got to their positions by showing how much they can emote, how much they can feel, how much they care, now appear to be in the worst positions of almost any head of government in the democratic world.

    Take Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand. Ardern has always achieved a degree of international fame far beyond that enjoyed by most leaders of her small nation because she is a woman and she appears to really mind. In fact caring is Ardern’s shtick. She is especially good at apologising for things she hasn’t done. Her face crumples, her voice breaks, and the world’s news organisations shout in chorus: “Here is what we need in a leader.”

    Sadly for the people of New Zealand, that isn’t quite true. Most of the world is emerging from the corona era. Britain, thank goodness, seems to be leading the way, and even recalcitrant countries such as the Netherlands are starting to realise that if the UK is back up and running, you can’t lock down your own people forever.

    Jacinda seems not to have got the memo. Last summer she notoriously locked down her country again after one man was found to have Covid in New Zealand. I wouldn’t have wanted to have been him. Now, even Australia, which has been one of the strictest, harshest, countries during Covid, has started to lift regulations. And New Zealand?

    Well, Ardern has announced yet another batch of regulations for her countrymen. New Zealand seems almost hooked on the stuff. The international media once again went doolally for Ardern when she gave a press conference announcing fresh lockdowns and saying that this meant that her own wedding was off. How much she seemed to care! How much her face crumpled as she talked of the plight of her countryfolk! How selfless she was even to cancel her own nuptials!

    What people should have said was that New Zealand’s prime minister had clearly become a mad person. There was no reason to do this performative caring. There was no reason to sacrifice the opportunity to get hitched. The rules were the problem, and getting rid of them should have been the priority.

    Instead, everyone got swept along, yet again, on an ocean of Ardern ardour. And on it seems this will go. What will come of New Zealand? Perhaps it will remain always stuck in the summer of 2020, never allowing anyone in or out. Those of us who once went there will tell of it to our grandchildren who will listen in awe to tales of this remote island people who voluntarily cut themselves off from the rest of the world.

    Or perhaps, if some recent opinion polls are any guide, New Zealand will soon tire of its caring prime minister. Facing a mounting economic crisis, support for Ardern’s party among New Zealanders appears to be collapsing.

    But it isn’t just Ardern who has this emoting, empathetic act. Perhaps the world leader in this shtick is someone with an even softer voice and even nicer hair: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.

    As time goes on it becomes clear that Trudeau really is the worst leader in the democratic world. His principal qualifications for the role were that he had been a primary school teacher and that his father had been prime minister before him.

    Other than that, he simply promised to do things differently, to be more empathetic, to emote more, to be more feminine and more understanding. Before lockdown, this manifested itself in international trips during which Justin did more costume changes than the cast of any West End show. But as the Covid era came, Trudeau, like Ardern, seemed to come into his own. He talked about the importance of caring, looking out for each other and other fundamental Canadian values.

    Unfortunately, if you do not happen to agree with the silken-haired premier, he will have zero time for you. In recent months, as the rest of the world has adapted to Covid, Trudeau seems to have boxed himself into a corner on the matter.

    In an effort to persuade the population to get vaccinated, Trudeau did everything he could to defame those who disagreed with him. This extended to him dismissing anyone hesitant about taking the vaccine as being (guess what?) racist, misogynistic and more. Trudeau had no evidence for any of this, but this is the modern way of excommunicating any person or group of people. Say that they are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobes and you have successfully un-personed such people.

    Unfortunately for Trudeau, many Canadians can see through this playground antic and are not persuaded by it. Specifically, Trudeau found that his vaccine demands had riled Canadian truckers.

    There is no special reason why truck drivers (one of the most isolating professions in the world) should have to display vaccine passports in order to do their work. But Justin decided that they had to, or their livelihoods would come to an end.

    Gloriously, last month, thousands of truckers drove in convoy to Ottawa. As they arrived there for their protest, Justin decided to pretend he had a headache. Or rather he said that he had met someone who knew someone who had once danced with someone who had Covid. And so the prime minister was doing the reasonable thing and self-isolating.

    The truckers stayed. At present they remain in Ottawa. Officials have looked into how to criminalise them. They have even looked into criminalising the thousands of Canadians who gathered at the roadsides to show their support. The Ottawa police are now actually stealing the truckers’ fuel and other necessities in an effort to make the protest go away. But the truckers aren’t budging.

    There is no reason why Trudeau should not make peace with the truckers. Any more than Ardern should not start to walk back from isolating her island nation.

    But the problem is that when you have presented yourself as the most moral person in the land – the most feeling, the most understanding – and portrayed all your critics as Nazis, it is hard to move to ground we might once have called common. So there Justin is, like Ardern, holed up in a problem entirely of his own making.

    Empathy is an overrated trick in political leadership. It only gets you so far. Much more important are grit, capability, adaptability and expertise. Neither Ardern nor Trudeau have demonstrated any of these traits. And it is their populations who are suffering as a result. A leader might like to present themselves as limitlessly compassionate, but if you end up having neither compassion nor even understanding for the citizens of your own country, then “compassion” is the problem.

    * * *
    Some typical BTLs:

    Midget Gem
    11 HRS AGO
    Well said Douglas. Trudeau and Ardern are great examples of liberal wokes, whose wish-washy policies have totally collapsed all because they thought their “superiority” would trump common sense. Their comeuppance is now complete. Not forgetting Woke-in-Chief dangerous fool Biden.
    A lesson to all leftwing wokesters.

    basil valentine
    11 HRS AGO
    Two of the most loathsome Leftie hypocrites ever to inflict themselves on politics. The depressing/frightening thing is, their populations largely seem to back them. And sadly for us in the UK, Johnson isn’t much to the right of them…

    James Fulton
    10 HRS AGO
    I live in New Zealand and Mr Murray’s description of her is completely accurate.
    She is a thoroughly unpleasant individual and narcissistic to a fault.
    She revels in the adoration of the left liberal press and is now becoming even more deluded. For so long here the local press have never questioned here, the best free ride of her life. She used to have free airtime on a national radio show each morning for an age until, horror, the host started asking awkward questions. Again and again. It did not take long at all for her to refuse to appear again.
    Not one government policy has been enacted which has been useful or successful. Dozens of others lie strewn on the cutting room floor.
    Her latest draconian restrictions are now driving the youth of the country to plan ‘covid parties’ to enable them to become infected simultaneously.
    She has nowhere to hide, Mr Murray is correct plus as covid recedes eventually, her cover will evaporate and the country will see her government for what it is. Superficial and incompetent.

    2. Douglas was late to the party but it’s good to see him speaking out.

      If anyone wants a smile, JP Sears is on fire on the same theme:

    3. James Fulton hasn’t said all.

      We have a relative living in Wellington. She points out that the biggest demonstration ever seen in NZ has been totally ignored by the Press.

      The demonstrators, with their families, pitched tents on the nice Parliament lawns, so the Police turned on the sprinklers.

      When this didn’t work on the peaceful demonstrators, the Police did a baton charge which hospitalised ten people.

      It appears that dear Jacinda is only beloved by the media.

      Even the easygoing Kiwis dislike the idea of the New World Order !

      1. Edit: The BBC now has an article about this on their website.

        Unfortunately they don’t mention the numbers, and they don’t mention the Police baton charge.

        …………after all, we can’t criticise the extreme leftie, can we?

  22. Right I’m off downtown fellow Nottlers. Don’t let Vlad cross the Channel while I am gone!

  24. Mea culpa.

    Yesterday evening I posted a rude comment about a barrister and a dispute regarding his nanny in business class.
    In my defence, I am convinced that at the time when I posted the article there was no mention that the nanny had been downgraded. There is now.
    I remain convinced that the article was changed/edited later. I did check at the time, because I have had experience of similar, both being downgraded and of people getting others upgraded from cheaper seats when spare places were observed

      1. Yesterday you and a few others made a comment re “try reading the article”.

        This morning, I went to look at the comments under the article. It states that comments have been moderated in advance, and when starting at “oldest” it is very clear that many others commented at around the same time I did AND made similar observations to mine.

        A while later rebuttals started to appear regarding “read the article”.

        I am fairly sure that the bits about being downgraded appeared later when the moderators realised that something was missing.

        2. One good thing about The Guardian is that when they edit an article, they put a note to that effect.

          1. The DM changes the dateline time fairly regularly, particularly if it’s a “running” story, but doesn’t appear to point out what was changed nor when.

    3. Sometimes you can get upgraded quite by accident. On one occasion on a holiday to the US when we first checked in at Heathrow I asked the girl at the desk if it was possible to have 2 lots of 2 seats that are side by side. My thought was our 2 girls could sit side by side with Mum & Dad sat behind rather than one of us being sat alone. I did know that there were a few seats with this configuration in economy which is what we paid for. Imagine my surprise when at the departure lounge 4 business seats where offered to me.
      I was quite unused to the first question being asked to me of “Juice or Champagne Sir”

          1. Those were the days when I used to get invited into the cockpit to amuse the pilots. I suspect you may have been the wrong configuration for such invitations 😉

      2. I have never been upgraded although I have been bumped. I’ve lots of instances where people with me have been pushed up a level.

        I was a BA gold carder for years, one year rating the “VIP” nomenclature on my boarding passes and even so when travelling economy was never lucky.

          1. My son is very lucky, he gets upgrades regularly.
            He even got one once when travelling with me and I had paid for his ticket!

    5. There’s something fishy about this. Throwing people off a flight is a PITA for everyone, not least because their baggage has to be found and taken off. If the basic facts are true, then I suspect that he and his wife went about it the wrong way and the crew wouldn’t sort it until they stopped abusing them. They didn’t stop and they got thrown off the flight.

      1. The picture of him did make him appear to be a, “Don’t you know who I am?” kind of bloke.

    6. In your defence, there was something ‘not right’ about the whole story.
      Kaypea could provide some background information, but IMHO any passenger is double daft to argue with the Captain and crew.
      In the situation, the Don’t You Know How Important I Am Because I Employ a Nanny should have quietly requested a seating adjustment well after take off.

      1. Indeed.
        But it turns out I was correct, the DM edited their story.
        I completely agree re requesting the change after take off.
        My guess is that they were arguing the toss while the crew were preparing the aircraft for take-off and interrupting/preventing the safety briefing.

  25. From the Peterborough column in today’s DT:

    We paid for Sopel’s bash
    Speaking of celebrations, it has been revealed that British taxpayers paid £700 for a leaving party last November for the BBC’s departing North America editor Jon Sopel and 86 invited guests at the British Embassy in Washington. Tory MPs are unhappy. Julian Knight, the chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, asks: “Why are the public paying for a knees-up for a BBC journalist who is already paid for by the taxpayer – is it a case of ‘double bubble’?”

    A Foreign Office spokesman says: “Hosting events allows our embassies around the world to pursue the UK’s objectives. This is normal diplomatic practice.” A source adds that “English sparkling wine was served, paid for privately at no expense to the taxpayer”.

    Couldn’t Sopel – who was paid between £235,000 and £239,999 a year by the BBC in 2020 – pay for the whole thing himself?

    * * *

    I really do wonder how a knees-up for Sople, another biased and overpaid Beeboid, allowed our embassy “…to pursue the UK’s objectives.”

    Anyone?

    1. I used to quite enjoy his commentary when Trump was in the WH – you could see he was absolutely seething about anything Trump did. Especially if it was good.

  26. Steerpike
    What Boris learned from John Major
    The truth about Major’s 30-year hatred of Boris
    11 February 2022, 1:08pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt9be37fe0036a2b23/62064e59a642a324dc3c9e07/GettyImages-1236746617.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    As yesterday’s attack showed, there’s no love lost between Boris Johnson and John Major. Mr S has previously chronicled the many times Major has criticised his successor, with whom he so publicly disagreed over Brexit. The enmity between the two men stretches back to the early 1990s when Johnson was the Telegraph’s main man in Brussels and subsequently the paper’s chief political commentator in Westminster.

    The-then journalist had great fun lampooning Europhile excesses at the time of the Maastricht debate, something which naturally didn’t make him popular with the pro-EEC Major as he tried to ram the treaty through Parliament. As Johnson later recalled:

    “
    I was just chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and I’d listen to this amazing crash from the greenhouse, next door, over, over in England, as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory Party, and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of, of power.
    Major subsequently tried to get his revenge by blocking Boris as a Tory candidate when the latter sought to run in the European Parliamentary elections of 1994. Major’s efforts were unsuccessful and Boris was ultimately elected in Henley, the safe seat of Major’s onetime ally Michael Heseltine. The rest, as they say, is history. But now Johnson is in trouble, with his enemies circling in Westminster and a vote of confidence still appearing likely. From where can he draw inspiration as he seeks to prove his media critics wrong?

    Well, Mr S has the answer. Flicking through a 2004 compilation of Johnson’s old Telegraph columns – Lend Me Your Ears – makes for insightful reading, not least for his comments about Cherie Blair, in light of claims made about Carrie Johnson’s own media treatment. How would some in No. 10 react, for instance, if a broadsheet columnist suggested an Eva Perón themed musical number for the PM’s Desert Islands Discs appearance?

    But Steerpike’s eye was drawn to the column Johnson wrote in July 1995 on Major’s triumph in the Tory leadership contest. Under the headline ‘So much for the pen and dagger men’, the Old Etonian confessed he’d called the result wrong, beginning his column by describing the sound in Westminster of:

    “The gentle mastication of humble pie on the part of much of that which used to be called Fleet Street, and – for there is no point in denying it – your reporter had a mouthful himself.

    For Johnson then delivered something of a ‘mea culpa’ on behalf of the press while noting that many of Major’s problems were not the newspapers’ responsibility:

    “One might conceivably follow Douglas Hurd, and blame the Sunday Telegraph for encouraging the Danes to vote no in 1992, and so triggering the Maastricht crisis. But one cannot blame Fleet Street for the decisions of Messers Major and Lamont to stay in the ERM, long after it had ceased to be economically defensible.

    Wise words perhaps for Boris to reflect on when he mulls his current dilemma. Yet it was the conclusion of Johnson’s piece which might give him most succour as he battles to save his premiership. Reflecting on Major’s triumph over John Redwood by 218 votes to 89, despite the criticism of much of the Tory press, Johnson wrote:

    “The press has the power to convey its own public dissatisfaction to the Prime Minister. But it does not have the power to break him. Last night’s results proved that.

    Something to remember perhaps the next Johnson receives another damning editorial.

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

    Katy Hibbert opopanax • 15 hours ago • edited
    He’s the ultimate Cavalier to Starmer’s and Major’s Roundhead. Lefties, Remoaners, self-muzzlers and econutters are all Roundheads. Free-breathing Brexiteers are all Cavaliers. David Starkey said that there is actually a correlation between areas that voted Leave supporting King Charles, and Remoaner areas supporting the ghastly Oliver Cromwell.

    … the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive).

    Charles I was a Cavalier King and therefore had a small pointed beard, long flowing curls, a large, flat, flowing hat, and gay attire. The Roundheads, on the other hand, were clean-shaven and wore tall, conical hats, white ties, and sombre garments. Under these circumstances a Civil War was inevitable.

    1066 And All That

    1. Major’s bright blue socks tell you all that you need to know. (It’s a funeral, not fancy dress!)

        1. Dear Lord. I now have this vision of him hopping around on one leg trying to pull up his Y-fronts.

    2. Good comment and probably still true. I only have to look at my two sons to see that. The caveman is a Cavalier- literally as he’s a musketman in the Sealed Knot; while the clean man is very much a European.

    3. What I noticed in the image was Johnson’s manspreading bouncy persona, even at a funeral/memorial service. At least he’d shown some respect by combing his hair.

    2. I hope you had a 111/999 free night and slept well.
      Have your birthday celebrations today, if you feel up to it.

      1. There was quite a lot of swelling and some leakage. I can barely walk. Not out of the woods yet. I will see how today progresses. The last thing i want is to go back in no matter how kind they were.

        No celebrating yet.

    3. Good moaning.
      I would sooooooooo like to be surprised. Or even feel a passing flicker of disgust.
      Sadly, it’s no more than I now expect.

  28. Good morning all, with all the worrying worldwide news and the concomitant concerns that should accompany it why was my waking thought this A.M. “When greek transvestites/drag queens hit middle age do they shrink by a foot put on 3st and wear large shapeless black dresses” . When I asked SWMBO she just rolled her eyes and defrosted some more berries for her morning yoghurt.

  29. Morning all.
    Hopefully now Mz Dick has been moved on.
    The next commissioner won’t be so forgiving to that nasty, arogant, unimpressive, rude little git of a mayor.
    And might even find a reason to lock him up.

  30. Good morning all
    Are any of you viewing the Winter Olympics this morning .

    Creeping diversity is very much obvious . BBC presenter woman is black,

    6. Morning TB.
      Obviously because I’ve not seen one black or other member of the diverse team taking part.
      The bbc racism and its efforts to be totally unrealistic are probably driving more more people away. Why don’t they just have a C5 bbc bame channel 🤔
      Surely that’s the answer to all their obvious problems.
      I remember going to a bbc music concert at Broadcasting House in London and we were having a drink upstairs over looking the news area and where all the off screen people work.
      Out of around 60 people there was only one person of colour. Hardly the ratio impression of the ratio they insist in placing in public view.

  31. Thought from the shower. Our government has forced the entire country to rely on electricity, without giving the country electricity it can rely on.

    3. If you could have seen the complete snobbery with which anything to do with science, technology or engineering was regarded in the late 80s at Oxford, you would understand why. They simply assume that some boring little northern chemist who’s paid a tenth of their annual income will do the actual providing. Besides, electricity has always been there, hasn’t it?
      They don’t realise that most of the boring little northern chemists have f’ked off to countries where they can earn more and be respected.

    4. If you could have seen the complete snobbery with which anything to do with science, technology or engineering was regarded in the late 80s at Oxford, you would understand why. They simply assume that some boring little northern chemist who’s paid a tenth of their annual income will do the actual providing. Besides, electricity has always been there, hasn’t it?
      They don’t realise that most of the boring little northern chemists have f’ked off to countries where they can earn more and be respected.

      1. Good morning Maggie

        “The idiots are running the Asylum.”

        They have been since November 1990.

    5. I look forward to addressing the surely greater number of people who state their religion as Jedi. I’ll convert to it as I can then insist on being referred to as Master Dale, something far better than ‘he’ (that said, I tried it with my wife and she clipped me around the ear).

    6. Morning!

      No problem, as long as they don’t mind being spayed/neutered and made to eat cat food and/or uncooked rodents. Not to mention changing their toilet habits.

          1. Sunderland AFC will probably be worried if and when they next play a West Ham side including Kurt Zouma. Sunderland’s nickname is “The Black Cats”.

    9. Every day in C21 Blighty is April 1st.
      All 365 of them – apart from leap years when we are gifted an extra day of woke madness.

    10. Great BTL.

      If I “identified” as a Giraffe, could I insist that all the doorways at Bristol University had 14 foot tall doors so that I could take a degree course there ?

      Of course the Scot’s, being ahead of the game, are already catering for limbodancer gender.

      1. Nasty Nicola has to spend the money on something ‘worthwhile’ dontcha know. Though how all their ‘enrichers’ feel about the nonsense they spit out up there, goodness knows. Though as most of them will never pay a penny of tax, they probably don’t care ….. unless any of the mentally unstable alphabet nutters move into ‘their’ neighbourhoods.

    11. “But Debbie Hayton, a transgender campaigner, told The Telegraph: Hayton, a transgender campaigner, told The Telegraph: “It brings the whole concept of being a transsexual and transitioning in society into disrepute, we didn’t ask for this. Pronouns are there to describe what we see and what we know.”It brings the whole concept of being a transsexual and transitioning in society into disrepute, we didn’t ask for this. Pronouns are there to describe what we see and what we know.”

      Maybe not a bad idea then.

      .

  33. I do not know if this has been posted before, also, I stopped being a fan of Clarkson a few years ago, but I support him in this

    Why Jeremy Clarkson’s council battle is a cautionary country tale
    The TV presenter is revved up about the threat to farmer’s livelihoods from gesture politics – and his derision isn’t an isolated incident

    Food was at the heart of their complaint against a proposed ruling that would result in all the council’s events going entirely vegan. The
    move, suggested by Ian Middleton, a Green councillor for the suburban Kidlington district, has been put in place to “show that the council
    recognises that meat and dairy is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and global deforestation”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/12/jeremy-clarksons-council-battle-cautionary-country-tale/

    1. Idiots! Thank heavens I don’t live in Kidlington. What about the disaster that is avocado farming? The deforestation to make wood pellets?

      1. The desolate acres of chemical-drenched soy, where nothing else grows and no animals, birds or insects live.

    2. If, as is likely, the food is being provided at local taxpayers expense, then that food should not be vegan. I doubt more than a minority of the taxpayers are vegan. The questionable choices of a small, leftie minority should never be forced on everyone else.

    3. Oslo council now only serve vegetarian food.
      If it were curries, I’d not complain, but artificial bacon burgers… really?

      1. Our local footie team – Forest Green Rovers – is entirely vegan – owned of course by vegan millionaire Dale Vince of Ecotrickery.

    4. From a quick, interwebby check.
      “To grow one almond requires 1.1 gallons of water, and to grow a pound takes 1,900 gal/ lb.”

      And almonds will only grow in warm, dryish areas.

      1. We watched the final part of St David Attenborough’s Green Planet last night and part of that focused on an almond plantation in California, without ever mentioning the amount of water needed to make them grow – only the monoculture aspect.

    5. Well, Mr. Middleton, if you are so concerned about CO2 emissions, why don’t you set an example and stop breathing?

      1. They will be odious, woke, vegan hangers-on at various arms of the University – pound shop academics on social issues.

  34. Young people aspiring to be HR managers are a dire sign of a country in trouble

    I have never met anyone in HR who is not a presumptuous dullard. The principal qualifications for this overpaid role are stupidity and odious self-importance

    Douglas Murray.

    A new study suggests that this is the best possible time to be an employee. Apparently, with the pandemic, a small exodus of some EU workers and demands for more flexible working, employees are speaking from a position of strength. So they can pick and choose.

    My eye was caught this week by a list of the most desirable and highest paid professions. One of these is – wait for it – “HR manager”. According to the website Glassdoor, HR managers have a median base salary of nearly £50,000 a year, with a job satisfaction score of 4.4 out of 5. HR managers are credited with being able to hire, interview and “shape the culture” of a company. They are also credited with being able to excel in “conflict resolution”, as though they were overseeing the Ukrainian border, and demonstrating “a high level of emotional intelligence”.

    Personally, I have never met anyone in HR who is not a presumptuous dullard. The principal qualifications for this overpaid role in my experience are stupidity, lack of curiosity, misguided self-worth and odious self-importance. No great company was ever created by HR managers. But many have been held back by them.

    The news that the role is among the best paid in the country is not a surprise. HR chiefs in the NHS can be paid up to a quarter of a million pounds a year. But the news that young people might aspire to become such restricting dullards is bad news indeed.

    A country should encourage people to excel and be great at things that are important. A country whose youth aspire to be bureaucratic middle meddlers is a country in trouble.

    HR stands for ‘Human Resources’, a woke name if ever there were one. I am not a ‘resource’; never have been, never will be. It is time that the idiotic appellation was consigned to the dustbin of woke history and the proper name, PERSONNEL, restored.

        1. That’s a long time ago when it was about people now all employees are a resource. It stops them being thought of as human they’e just a resource to be managed.

    2. When I resigned from a company a few years ago the HR manager said that I had to work for at least another month as that was the law. He seemed somewhat perplexed when I told then showed him that was complete bollox and that, in any case, my contract stated a week’s notice. He then doubled down on his stupidity only to then have to make a grovelling apology.

      I agreed to work on for a month and, their not having found a replacement, he asked me to stay on as a contractor. The standard rate was some 3 times my salary, so I was somewhat taken aback when he offered my salary, without job security, pension and other benefits and refused to negotiate. Needless to say, I left, had a break and found a better paid post elsewhere.

      1. The Personnel Director at one firm I worked at told me I must work an extra week since my contract stipulated a month’s notice (and I was required to start my new job in three weeks’ time). I told him that I would be starting my new job on time and if he wanted me to stay for an extra week he would have to personally drag me back to Nottingham, from Norwich. He didn’t bother.

        1. Technically, the contract works both ways. If the firm want you to leave tomorrow they have to pay you for the notice period. If you leave without giving the contractual notice the firm could legally sue you for any loss or costs it incurs.
          However, there has not been a single such case in the UK.

      2. Over the years, my husband changed jobs on numerous occasions, sometimes before fully securing his next job. As he worked in ‘sensitive’ roles in IT, he was sometimes effectively given a 1-2 month paid ‘holiday’ as they wanted him off site while ‘working’ his notice. Win-win. He knew he could easily pick up a contracting job to fill any gaps. HR are a liability to most companies, employing those who have no real skills on comfortable salaries.

        1. HR also move at the speed of a glacier. The problem is, they never feel the consequences of their uselessness – maybe if they lost their jobs because of their messup, ghey got no bonus because they wre too slow in hiring or hired the wrong people, and had to tidy up after themselves instead of leaving it to the operational manager, they might sharpen up a lot.
          SWMBO, as HSE Authority in the raiilway infrastructure company here, regularly has to explain working environment and employment law to HR…

  35. Putin ‘has decided to invade Ukraine on WEDNESDAY’: Joe Biden will call Vladimir today in bid to prevent war. 12 February 2022.

    Russia is planning to invade Ukraine on Wednesday, a credible intelligence report has claimed, as US President Joe Biden urgently arranged a telephone call with Vladimir Putin on Saturday in a bid to prevent war.

    According to German newspaper Der Spiegel, the US Secret Service, CIA and the Pentagon are said to have received intel of an ‘exceptionally detailed’ invasion plan, scheduled for February 16.

    That will be half past two then? Just after closing time?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10503627/Foreign-Office-tells-Britons-Ukraine-commercial-means-available.html

    1. It has to be in time for the afternoon Moscow Central to Ukraine train. If they miss that, it all goes wrong.

    3. We’re now well into the fourth month of predictions of when Russia will attack.
      They started in late October!!

    4. Certainly before tea time. I must knock up a dozen fairy cakes. I wonder if Vlad would prefer them topped with sprinkles or Smarties?

    9. Perhaps President Putin is kidding on? By so doing he is finding out quite a lot about the thinking and reaction West of Russia. Nothing much as changed since the Cold War. The UK still dances to the US tune, but the BAOR has vanished. Consider that logically. We had a powerful military force poised to resist aggression from the East. The we declare the threat to have gone and we remove our military. Now, with no military capability we instigate the aggression. Like a playground bully we’ve drawn an imaginary line with our toe. We forget that sometimes the playground bully gets a black eye.

      1. I agree – the laugh will be on the West when there’s no Russians swarming over the border – all that panicking, Micron and Truss flying to Moskva to grovel at his feet and be humiliated… who’s the Daddy? More BS exposed to the harsh light of reality.

      2. When I served in Germany in the mid to late 60s we understood that the Russians could roll over the East/West German border and be at the channel in 48 hours.

        To that end, I was conscripted to learn to drive one of the Magirus-Deutz trucks, which were part of Germany’s war reparations, in order to be available to drive families to a ferry port for repatriation to the UK. This was Operation Doffer.

    10. What a brilliant plan.
      Predict that Putin will invade on Wednesday.
      Tell everyone you called him and told him not to.
      Gracefully accept plaudits and go down in history as the President who prevented war in Ukraine.

      Biden must think we are as stupid as he is!

    2. Now that Edwina has gone and Norma is no longer interested Major has had to become sexually self-sufficient and he is having to face up to the fact that he is a totally useless w*nker.

    3. My word as he must have been told time and time again that he was absolutely useless at the job his was greased up and slipped into, surely he’s not that stupid he still doesn’t know.

    4. I know that bungalow; it is in a prime location in woodland overlooking the coast. It was shown to me by a Norfolk Police SB man when I worked at Norwich airport.

  37. The nurse has just been to the house and shoved things up our nostrils:

    We both tested negative and are Covid free

    Hooray!

    2. We did our own at home yesterday and both negative despite our tickly coughs and my sore eyes and early this morning I have a text message from the NHS telling me i had been near someone with the Omicron Variant. How would they know that ? Perhaps they were watching me as I sat in the waiting room of the Minor injuries yesterday.

    3. All restrictions in Norway lifted as of 10:00 this morning. Recommend that you test yourself if you have symptoms. Face nappies on planes will not be required after today.

      1. I suppose i could find the situation in Finland but i can’t be bothered.
        I’ve not had any of the “jabs” nor have i worn a facemask though i’m in the supermarket twice weekly.

      2. Well done Norway. Take note Turdeau/Castro. One of the reasons I am reluctant to visit family in Canada this summer is the need to be muzzled up for around 15 hours (journey to Heathrow, airport time at each end, flight time, transit at that end). Random ‘testing’ of arrivals in the airport in spite of having to record a neg ‘test’ before flying, and apparently they are quite aggressive in the process (as told by colleague of son who came back in recently).
        Never mind potential for being incarcerated in the hotel room (family only have small apartment) if another perfectly healthy passenger has tested positive. I can’t see Turdeau fully removing all controls. Another year of not seeing our precious grandkids growing up.
        I am also seriously concerned that all the extra stress and uncertainty that would entail could result in a big flare-up of a life-long medical condition which is, for now, reasonably under control.

        1. I’m not interested in travelling if I have to mask up. Forget it.
          Likewise, going abroad is an issue – who knows what the host government might do whilst you are there taht makes it difficult / impossible to return? Especially for countries that have gone full-on fascist, like Canada, NZ and Oz, let alone Austria…

          1. Quite so. Petulant Turdeau could stamp his putrid feet on a whim.
            The risk of being trapped with our son and family wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to stay in a hotel. Being downtown, it’s expensive enough for 2 weeks (and not even a high end place) so wouldn’t fancy being confined in the room for a further spell if we were allegedly positive at any point.
            We would also have to have their app on our phones – mine is so old (bit like me…), it probably wouldn’t take it anyway 🙂 ! Then there’s the hassle of getting the NHS one for proof of jabs and transferring that to the Canadian app.
            A modern-day version of ‘papers please.’

    4. All restrictions in Norway lifted as of 10:00 this morning. Recommend that you test yourself if you have symptoms. Face nappies on planes will not be required after today.

  38. I am religiously avoiding getting an account on either British Gas or e-on next because when things go tits up on the internet there’s no legal recourse to your exact energy status if there’s no paper trail evidence.

    The only way I’ve found to avoid getting a BG account when sending a meter reading is to send it from my emai address as a third party.

    e-on next have given up trying to get me to have a smart meter but sent me a letter yesterday saying they wanted a least one valid meter reading a year per customer. They wanted me to send a photo of the meter face so they they could do the reading for me (so much for getting a meter reading every 30 minutes!):

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b90ef72c5d4ddf96953edde734a9660b51f2865c306a77c05908ebcbcda1c92c.jpg

    I can see this would work for the old dual display Economy 7 mechanical rotating disc meters but not with the modern dual rate display sequential meters that require more than one image to capture the full display.

    1. Years ago I was told that anyone aged 75 or over and/or ‘vulnerable’ was not obliged to read the meter, and had the right to request a visit from a qualified meter reader.

      1. Nowadays, with the rapid rate of rising complexity of everything I have reservations about the qualifications of anybody to do anything.

        With age comes wisdom which is something you cannot learn in the classroom. You can gather quite a bit on the internet but by and large that teaches you what not to do.

      2. Ha! Chance would be a fine thing. I asked for someone to come and read the meter and got zilch other than texts and emails telling me it was time for ME to send in my readings. I am registered as vulnerable (although not yet over 75).

  39. Adding to recent comments on the costs of accommodation for immigrants, the cost for each put up on hotels is £150 per night. No wonder hotels are cancelling wedding bookings in order to house immigrants.

    From https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10504373/How-youre-paying-family-Britains-toxic-landlord-fortune-house-migrants.html
    “When Mr Kyle, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, raised the matter with the Home Office in a parliamentary question in November 2021, he was informed that ‘accommodation costs are considered commercially confidential’.
    But he told us: ‘The room rate would be £150 per room per night in usual circumstances.”

    1. OK. But after 6 months have elapsed the Information Commissioner considers the information to no longer be “commercially confidential”.

  40. Just had a wee moment of panic. I was listening to Talk Radio and I could have sworn that I heard the newsreader say “The Government has advised all UK citizens to leave the UK immediately” What could this mean, I thought. Was it another harebrained scheme to relieve pressure on our overstretched (but amazing) NHS?

    Panic over! Turned out she said the Ukraine, not the UK. Well, it was an easy mistake to make. I do wish they’d stop employing newsreaders with silly little girl ‘estuary’ accents.

    1. Did the voice inflect up (I think that’s the term) like a question at the end of each sentence?

    2. Good afternoon, O Monarch etc.

      I advise you avoid BBC Radio “Free” as the vacant totties call it.

  42. Liz Truss: an embarrassment to Britain. Spiked. 12 February 2022.

    Alas, I was wrong. They have just taken another dive, thanks largely to the single-handed efforts of the foreign secretary, aka the UK’s ‘chief diplomat’. Dispatched for little more than a day trip to Moscow, Liz Truss managed to confirm all of Russia’s negative preconceptions about British diplomacy – arrogance, coldness and an attachment to hypocritical sermonising about ‘values’ – while adding at least one more: ignorance.

    For a British Foreign Secretary to be unable to distinguish between the Baltic and Black Seas is of course to be an ignoramus of the first water. This isn’t the worst of it. She appears incredibly enough to be unaware of even the absolute fundamentals of geopolitics. From her exchanges one suspects that she simply regards the Russians and Vladimir Putin as naughty boys who just need a good (one is inevitably reminded of Gavin Williamson) telling off. One has to ask, are they all numpties without a clue about what they are doing?

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/12/liz-truss-an-embarrassment-to-britain/

      2. I smoked a Walnut Sliced/Escudo mix.
        I remember Escudo as being mad by Copes of Liverpool.

      4. In my pipe smoking days (40ish years ago) I was a St Bruno man, not long after meeting my future M-i-L she in all innocence said ” ahh the one with the big bald man” (you need to have seen the advert) the following dawning realisation of what she had said and what it had sounded like was a hoot

      5. In my pipe smoking days (40ish years ago) I was a St Bruno man, not long after meeting my future M-i-L she in all innocence said ” ahh the one with the big bald man” (you need to have seen the advert) the following dawning realisation of what she had said and what it had sounded like was a hoot

      1. Afternoon M. In some ways they remind me of children who have somehow made it into the adult world without actually growing up!

        1. I was just thinking along those lines, as if they were still students thinking it’s just a prank and can’t see beyond their own tiny worlds.

  43. “Prince Charles ‘tells brother Andrew to “stay out of the line of sight” and BANISHES him from Windsor Castle’ as the Duke of York faces Virginia Giuffre sex trial in US”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10504989/Prince-Charles-BANISHES-Andrew-Windsor-Castle-faces-Virginia-Giuffre-sex-trial-US.html

    I have no idea whether Prince Andrew is innocent or guilty.

    But I do know that his brother, Charles, and his nephew, William, have both behaved like disloyal and despicable rats and I am beginning not to want either of them to be king.

  45. Ousting ‘hugely respected’ Cressida Dick a ‘blow’ for ambitious female officers, says ex-police chief

    Ousting the “hugely respected” Cressida Dick is a “blow” for ambitious female officers, an ex-police chief has said.

    Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said the treatment of Dame Cressida after she lost the
    confidence of Sadiq Khan “will be a shock to policing”.

    See, no good ever came from closing Lunatic Asylums

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/11/cressida-dick-resign-boris-johnson-partygate-met-police-commissioner/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

    1. HA! HA! HA!
      Hugely respected!
      In any case, real women are in the process of being cancelled by Trans types with willies, so they have more to worry about than a career position. Also, real women don’t tick enough diversity boxes, they only have 1 more point than real white men in the stakes of life – so, they have 1 point.

      1. Yo Ol

        I understand, that Cressida does lick (at least one) ‘Diversity Box’ ……………

    1. MH has often said why do people go to the pub if they’re going to be looking at or on their phones all the time. Going to the pub used to be a social occasion.
      Edit for typo.

  48. Convoy!!

    The Turd isn’t giving an inch,must have got his orders on his Covid “retreat”

    https://twitter.com/Orwells_Ghost_/status/1492223813437820930?s=20&t=zdL6-ih4ysNd83hcb9uZuw

    Not a threat,no siree

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bef5a730e02b55b022b4b479a97d3d5bee6e2c425ca72bc6b380d4de6f2d414d.png

    https://www.rebelnews.com/truckers_in_southern_alberta_hold_the_line_despite_rcmp_enforcement?utm_campaign=as_milkriver_2_11_22&utm_medium=email&utm_source=therebel

    The Rebel Alliance stands strong….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d7b7eb1c955bc91ac394702167ed8c8c544705d6cea690777735d4ed4388b45.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e1319efe620e4f72e8bf1a066c91df01bf8f31339fc25c71017a103a233a8607.jpg

    The Media covering themselves in glory…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f312559eaf409b3da1db950061953e3db808873451ae02d1a35ff8319c4c4263.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9f66e30ad85f2836a03cb6b8559ada384ff993006ba698a1e62860292f8bc64.png

    1. Yo Rik

      doxxing:

      search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.

      “hackers and online vigilantes routinely dox both public and private figures”

      1. My arsebook got hacked to the point where I was not able to gain access so I just cancelled the account after the helpdesk got me back in, good riddance.

    2. Turdeau is an absolute disgrace – what did poor Canada ever do to deserve him? Similarly what did NZ, Aus, Austria and us ever do to deserve ….

  49. Saturday Laffs

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8aea6eb3dd68f4dce7666ba5774bf589f323f91ffd71cb03116be32a576044a1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b3bd95ed6cb1f20362b9debcc04f6e47cc18ece4b7f743e274f1ca1c2482acd.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8dc41a77372d69ac3c66083e05abf2d2c8aa619bafe7489b6350e9d00a8e1cf3.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/98b1cc7dc6fb3b52c237b00717dcedd63c447f32e92c93bf0898971761af6e64.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e801eca7c1e7e9324c902fdb479a6879eda55095075cecf946504d04242fbf89.png

  51. WHO admits that whilst member countries must be resigned to the fact the Omicron variant transmissibility is no longer controllable by vaccination alone, all other tools at our disposal should be used to mitigate the potential harmful effects of the evolving COVID mutations.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1559529/who-horror-covid-update-stealth-omicron-57-countries-ba2-subvariant

    “So what do we do now?”

    This was the question put recently by our mobile haidresser to her GP who happened to be one of her clients.
    Our hairdesser has being cutting our family’s hair regularly during two years of the Delta virus prevalence with strict adherence to the legal precautions using visor, masks and opening windows.

    However with the onset of the Omicron variants two of our children’s families tested positive and so did our haidresser.
    Her business had to be suspended for a week until she tested negative.

    Her GP however conceded that we had already reached a turning point in using testing as a precautionary measure to limit the effects of viral harm and our hairdresser was advised to carefully continue her business as normally as possible. We’ve concluded from anecdotal evidence that the Omicron variant may well manifest itself with symptoms before an LFT test even shows positive.

    Today she visited the family home for multiple haircuts (no masks but open windows) but son’s family who have members testing positive for longer than a week elected not to come.

  52. It’s madness to ignore the answer to the energy crisis that’s lying under our feet. Andrew Neil. 12 February 2022.

    Households across the country are gripped in a cost-of-living vice, with the price of essentials, from food to travel, soaring. But none more so than energy costs, with the average family fuel bill rising by an incredible 54 per cent to just shy of £2,000 a year. For folks on modest and low incomes, there will be real financial hardship
    .
    ‘It’s a global energy crunch,’ say our politicians. ‘There’s not much we can do about it.’

    In fact, we are reaping the bitter consequences of 25 years of increasingly costly, stupid and self-defeating energy policies promoted in unison by these very same politicians — Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat alike — who now bleat there’s nothing they can do about it.

    It’s not just energy prices though is it? The last thirty years have been a calamity to the UK and one suspects that the next five will bring it and its people to their end! That this is the work of the Political Elites seems irrefutable. The adoption of Socialism as the Doctrine of Choice by all parties has destroyed self-reliance and innovation. It has created a population without hope of something better!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10503839/ANDREW-NEIL-madness-ignore-answer-energy-crisis-thats-lying-feet.html

    3. It’s a global energy crunch, say the politicians.

      In that case, why prevent the exploitation of the Cambo gas & oil field?

    2. Just heard from son in Toronto – police began shutting streets again late Weds/early Thursday & now they have helicopters circling close by over Queens Park area. Their own little side street is already shut. Should be fun trying to get the car out for a couple of essential appointments tomorrow. Last Saturday, it took them hours to get back to their apartment. Police were allowing locals through but the problem was the whole swathe of closed off routes back home with standstill jams.

  56. https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1492522767723511813?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1492522767723511813%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dnottlt_i%3D212120https3A2F2Fnttl.blog2F3Fp3D2121t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fnttl.blog2Fsaturday-12-february-disagreeing-with-the-mayor-on-the-kind-of-met-commissioner-that-london-wants2Ft_e%3DSaturday201220February3A20Disagreeing20with20the20Mayor20on20the20kind20of20Met20Commissioner20that20London20wantst_d%3DSaturday201220February3A20Disagreeing20with20the20Mayor20on20the20kind20of20Met20Commissioner20that20London20wantst_t%3DSaturday201220February3A20Disagreeing20with20the20Mayor20on20the20kind20of20Met20Commissioner20that20London20wantss_o%3Ddefaultversion%3D36d86d847b1173b5b939b94bc7be6e80

    1. Plus ça change.

      The PTB had given enough notice that the manifesteurs would NOT be allowed into Paris.

    1. Nice BTL in the Wail:

      “similar thing happened to me, I was so excited about having fish and chips for dinner that i stopped on the way home and had it tattooed on the back of my hand. Imagine my disappointment when I arrived home to find that my wife had changed her mind and made a beef stew.”

      PS I expect he was one before….!

  59. HAPPY HOUR – Plum Impressed…….that’s a first NoTTlers…..!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/37512fa7694fbf62a96285bcf01fb8032bca1f2e4818fb7ed3a563a62e42f7e0.jpg

    A quick jaunt into town this morning before the expected downpour I stopped at my nearest
    supermarket, the Co-op. Not a fan since my mum told me they mixed water with milk during the war and Co-oppers were beneath her!
    I purchased a few comestibles, milk, butter, toilet rolls etc and spotted a strawberry cheesecake lurking in the freezer. OOER… that looks scrummy I thought and puchased two! One for pudding after my meagre lunch of cheese on toast and one for the freezer.
    Not a strawberry fan I was expecting disappointment with my purchase… but no….I detected a distinct strawberry experience and enjoyed a large helping ….or was it two?
    Delicious…

      2. My dad grew Royal Sovereign strawberries, the taste was superb…
        I remember helping him cover the fruit with netting to prevent the birds
        from eating them. It didn’t always work the blackbirds were first to arrive and
        enjoy a free lunch.

        1. My dad grew tomatoes in his greenhouse….I have never tasted anything like the flavour of those ever again. They tasted like tomatoes.

          1. Even more important was the smell as one removed them from the plant. Sheer nicotine bliss which would dissipate before one got them to the kitchen chopping board to make sandwiches, so very superior to much vaunted cucumber sandwiches which became wet before anyone got a high.

          2. We grew tomatoes out of gro-bags against the kitchen wall at our first house – a small yard that caught the sun. On occasion, the whole yard smelled of tomato, and the fruit were fabulous – a strong waft of tomato when you tweaked a fruit off to eat. Very few made the table…

          3. I love a tomato sandwich.
            My dad also grew geraniums of all sorts and he grew them from seed and cuttings. Once he hit his head on something so I stuck a sign on their bedroom door….”If you’ve got a sore cranium, have a geranium.”
            My mother laughed… not sure about dad.

          5. I feel sad every year when the last of my home grown tomatoes is picked. It is back to bland tasting tomatoes until the following year.

    3. Nice find! Actually, I am not surprised – I have had several similar experiences from the Co-op over the years.

      1. I tend to go into one of several local co-ops and forage round for the cut price offers.

  60. This is unspeakably disgusting for any ignorant American to assert. Nuke them! Never forget the role that the disgusting Mark Thompson played after leaving thje BBC for the NYT. He admitted corrupting news and news sources. https://pressgazette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/RTX15UFZ-scaled-e1618422054626-800×600.jpg

    Steerpike
    New Yorker: Cressida Dick handled de Menezes killing with ‘dignity and grace’
    12 February 2022, 3:13pm

    For some time now the New York Times has been a pioneer in the field of dodgy reporting on Britain. From declaring that Brits live on porridge and boiled mutton to suggesting that we love to cavort in swamps, the US paper of record has managed to paint an increasingly strange picture of life in this country. But could the NYT now be facing stiff completion from the New Yorker in the British fantasy genre?

    This weekend, the magazine published a strange defence of Cressida Dick, after she was forced to resign as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police by Sadiq Khan.

    The New Yorker piece, headlined ‘The Misogyny That Led to the Fall of London’s Police Commissioner’ argues that the police chief’s downfall came after she was ‘overwhelmed’ by the misogyny of the men she led – as opposed to the catalogue of errors that defined her career. This line of argument is rather undermined by Cressida Dick’s own tone-deaf and embarrassing responses to recent police scandals which saw the Met, for example, advise women to flag down a bus if they were approached by a lone male police officer following the arrest of Wayne Couzens.

    But Steerpike was more concerned about the US magazine’s characterisation of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead by Metropolitan police officers on the tube in 2005, after they mistook him for a suicide bomber.

    The New Yorker writes:

    “‘In 2005, Dick was in charge of the counterterrorism team that killed Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian man, on the Tube, after mistaking him for a suicide bomber. Dick always handled that momentous error with dignity and grace.’
    To describe de Menezes’s killing – which saw an innocent man shot seven times in the head by police officers – as being handled with ‘dignity and grace’ is stretching the truth to say the least. Cressida Dick was Gold Commander in charge of the bungled operation, which was later found to have committed catastrophic errors, although Dick was cleared of personal responsibility. Still, Dick didn’t quite seem to grasp the gravity of the Met’s errors when she told an inquiry in 2008 that ‘If you ask me whether I think anybody did anything wrong or unreasonable on the operation, I don’t think they did.’

    In the aftermath of the killing a series of briefings from the Met suggested that de Menezes had somehow caused his own death. The Met suggested that de Menezes was dressed suspiciously and had failed to listen to officers at Stockwell station, claims that were later found to be false. The police force also attempted to block the police complaints commission from investigating the case.

    In fact, the incident was handled with such ‘dignity and grace’ by the Met that de Menezes’s family this week said that Cressida Dick should have been fired 16 years ago for the fiasco.

    Still, what do facts matter when Dick’s resignation can be seen through the prism of American identity politics?

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

    Guiscardus • an hour ago
    A man fails it’s because he’s incompetent and misogynistic, and a man.

    A women fails because she’s heroic and exhausted fighting the misery of men.

    How utterly patronising.

    Sossidge • an hour ago
    The Met also reported that De Menezes had vaulted the barriers at the tube station. That was a lie as well. It was also curious how many cctv cameras were found to be defective or inoperable – one with it’s cable cut – after the event.

    Murti Bing • an hour ago
    The New York Times recently purchased Wordle. Now, in honour of their robust reportage, I start every day’s game with the same word: LIARS.

      1. You’re being uncharacteristically mild and Christian in your assessment. Are you aging or is it because Mark Thompson has some dirt on you? Pray tell – we promise not to tell fibs about you.

        1. It is quite simple. I cannot stand people – especially in very senior jobs – who cannot be bothered to present themselves in a decent, appropriate manner.

          Fortunately, our paths never crossed in my time at the BBC – I started broadcasting 6 years before he joined as a trainee.

          1. I’ve survived 9 BBC DGs. They all do their share of wanton damage, just to make their mark. The wheel gets reinvented a fair few time too.

          2. I get the drift of what you’re asserting, Sue. They each want to make their make their mark by being more trendy….in the belief that lefty Islingtonians represent the oncoming trend. I can’t count more than two chums who worked for the BBC. My view is that the M25 crowd are on the back foot but don’t realise it yet.

            I have been called to the kitchen and must shurrup for the time being.

      2. I have never understood why men wear “beards” like that. Just scruffy.
        The worst boss I ever had had one just like it. He was malodourous too, I often wondered how frequently he washed.

    2. “From declaring that Brits live on porridge and boiled mutton ….. “

      What’s wrong with porridge and boiled mutton?

      … just asking for a friend.

          1. Old Chinese proverb. Man who eats meat and pe(a)s in the same pot. Unhygienic.
            (Well, it was funny when told in the playground at school.)

    3. The killing of de Menezes was plain murder, in my opinion. There was no intention of arresting him. It was immediately clear that those involved then lied and covered up, and colluded on stories. None of the evidence can be relied on as true. As for the whitewash of subsequent hearings…

      1. He was scapegoated. Pick a man, put the sins of others onto him and pretend you’ve responded to a terror attack, without actually upsetting any Islamist terrorists.

      2. At the inquest she failed to tell the whole truth etc. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot after he had been arrested.

  61. Follow-up news about the barrister & nanny:
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/british-airways-flight-row-taken-off-plane-b982216.html
    Top barrister and his family escorted off British Airways flight by police after row over nanny’s seat
    Police escorted a top barrister and his family off a British Airways flight after a row erupted when cabin crew refused to let the children’s nanny sit with them in business class.

    Charles Banner QC, 41, had paid out for business class seats but the nanny’s seat had been downgraded because BA had oversold the seats on the flight sparking the argument onboard with cabin crew.

    The legal brain had plans to go on a week-long skiing holiday in Turin with his wife, who is not being named, their young children, aged one and four, and their nanny after booking last Thursday’s BA flight 2578 from Heathrow Airport for £1,250.

    But Mr Banner said he was “upset” when the row broke out on the plane which eventually led to the pilot turning around the plane and refusing to fly unless the family were removed.

    He told MailOnline: “If BA had told me that the nanny could not sit with us in business then we would not have travelled and could have got a later flight. But they only told us that when we got to the boarding gate.
    “I behaved perfectly but I was challenging the cabin crew because it was the right thing to do. The pettiness and vindictiveness of the staff caused this. I was being very polite about the whole thing.”

    Mr Banner estimated the whole incident cost him £4,000 as he said after the row he booked a hotel close to Heathrow and then the family took a taxi to Gatwick Airport the next day where they flew with EasyJet to Turin.

    He added: “In accordance with standard protocol in a situation where passengers leave a plane and return landside, the police escorted our family back through immigration. They made clear that this was just standard protocol and that no offence had been alleged or committed.”

    A spokesman for BA said: “We do not tolerate disruptive behaviour and the safety of our customers and crew is our top priority.”

    The Standard has approached British Airways for further comment on the story.

    1. All meek and mild now.
      My betting remains that he was still creating Hell as the cabin crew were preparing for take-off.
      Because of the criticism of my comment last night I’ve been following the time line and the various reports, and it becomes stranger and stranger.
      Stuff keeps dribbling out as to what actually happened and posts in the news are altered to reflect them.
      I stand by my opinion of the bloke.

      1. Mr Shouty – I imagine. “Do you know who I am?” sort of chap. Anyway, £4,000 is about an hour’s work for him….

        1. How about BA not selling the same seat twice, and instead delivering what they promised – and took paid for handsomely?

          3. Charles Banner QC, 41, had paid out for business class seats but the nanny’s seat had been downgraded because BA had oversold the seats on the flight sparking the argument onboard with cabin crew.

          4. They did similar to my sister once when she visited us in Europe. At the last moment, her flight was re-scheduled to go via another airport, which cut a day off our holiday, as her journey was then so long. Also would have been a nightmare had she been a nervous flyer, as the number of take-offs and landings was doubled. Why can’t they just deliver what people pay for? It wasn’t even a cut price seat!

      2. I’ve had similar bad experience with BA. They were happy to scatter my family randomly around the cabin, separating us from Firstborn who was then three years old. This despite assurances of putting us together when I booked, we were first at check-in, yet they were entirely indifferent. Complaint to the check in clerk was useless, as was complaint to the supervisor – the cabin crew sorted it, but why should they be left to deal with the cock-up?

        1. I’ve flown with BA a lot over the years.
          They went down hill badly when budget airlines started to appear, not sure why.
          I’m not convinced “one world alliance” was a good idea but I think it was a matter of survival.

          1. They used to be very good and I was impressed back then with the courtesy of the cabin crew. I recall one flight where a man was still standing up when the plane was in line for take off. The flight attendant kept saying on the microphone, “Will all passengers please be seated.”
            I flew on a US plane over once and similar situation; the flight attendant got the microphone and bellowed at the man,” I told you to sit down.”
            BA also used to give you a menu so you knew what the food was supposed to be ;-))

          2. Bring back ‘British Caledonian’ just a shame they used Gatwick, although 100% better than Heathrow – dreadful Airport.

          4. Emirates business class is excellent, although KLM day flights were good, their ‘red eye flights’ not so. Then again they are all better than a Charlie 130 🙄

          5. I’m not sure of the ancestry but my first flight was in a Lockheed Super-Constellation, probably BOAC in 1956, returning from Canada to the UK.

          6. I liked BCal. Flew their last 1-11 flight south from Aberdeen.
            Used to fly their VC10 to Nigeria, but then they bent it at Gatwick and we had to slum it in a 707.
            Poor old plane. IIRC, it was the prototype.

        2. Flew in from Miami Beach, BOAC. Didn’t get to bed last night.
          On the way the paper bag was on my knee. Man, I had a dreadful flight.

    2. I wonder if the ‘nanny’ was BAME or scruffy with piercings, and they just didn’t want her up front.

  62. That’s me for the day. Colin the tree man has completed the hedge height reduction – and felled three trees; despite a howling gale. I was anxious when he was 70 ft up – but he assured me that it was all quite safe!

    Rain tomorrow. Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  64. Thai health chief doesn’t actually suggest using the soixant neuf instead of the missionary position to avoid COVID transmission but as I was not going to employ either whilst collecting my fish and chips tonight I decided not to wear my mask.

    Thai Bureau of Reproductive Health director Bunyarit Sukrat on avoiding close contact COVID tranmission:

    Lovers are urged to ‘avoid face-to-face sex positions and deep kissing’ and use contraceptives if they wish to avert unwanted pregnancies, he said.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10505715/Couples-told-wear-Covid-masks-having-SEX-avoid-face-face-positions-Thailand.html

        2. Looking at the self-harm scars, you can see why the parents went along with it. The kid will have to live with the long term consequences though.

    2. Totally sick. This woman, as well as her victims, needs sectioning for heavy duty psychiatric help in a secure facility.

    3. Just read the article. It looks very predatory.
      Fact is, we’re hard-wired to try and protect ourselves and our children from some very basic threats like hunger, cold, rapists and murderers, but there are a whole other bunch of dangers out there, and by doing nothing, parents leave their children exposed to them. It’s just as much of a jungle out there as it was when our ancestors were fighting off wild animals, and those who can’t evolve to protect themselves won’t survive.

    1. As has Damask Rose- she had a bang on the head yesterday; suspect it might have brought on a migraine. Hope she’s OK too.

          5. Has your log-jogging got you over-excited?
            };-))

            I’ve been a good boy today, I stripped (quiet at the back) 40+ feet of ivy off a 50 foot felled oak.
            Nearly did a B-o-B, when I fell whilst levering a trunk into position for stripping when Ivy got a grip on me, (quiet at the back) but fortunately the trunk (for goodness sake, quiet at the back, Gawd, anyone would think Phizzee was conducting the tittering) it fell away from, rather than onto, my leg.

            That’s a relatively small tree, only two foot diameter, but should provide a couple of month’s worth for the stove.

            The real challenge comes soon, there’s an 80 foot + oak with a four foot diameter next to the garage than needs to come down. It’s only a couple of feet clear and the roots are cracking the walls. The current tree was in the way, but on the plus side it’s cleared a great path for its big brother.
            There will be enough wood from the “big ‘un” to see me into 2024.
            There might even be enough for my coffin!

          9. After my hobbit failure, I never felt the urge to t read the others.
            Youngest granddaughter enjoys them.

          10. Irrelevant crashingly boring name-dropping factoid. The South African J R Tolkein’s son was Senior English Teacher at Ampleforth and to be avoided at all costs.for all manner of reasons.

          12. Oh thank goodness, I don’t have to read it then. Have you also reviewed War and Peace, by any chance?

          14. I enjoyed War and Peace. Read it during a long stay in hospital when I was 24. The nurses used to jokingly check my progress. Anna Karenina is the better novel though, if I were making a recommendation, having read both.

          18. That’s wery good for a gurl wot doesn’t come from our parts of the wurld. You get 7/10 an a silver star

      2. And Bob of Bonsall thumped is head against something formidable other than the Dearly Trusted. It looked nasty but my betting is that he’s on the mend, although he will have ignored the collective NoTTlers’ advice to take it easy for a day or two.

          1. Too bloody dark, Madam!
            Anyway, got nowhere to stack the logs at the moment so will need to get the Pantry Wood-stack refilled first.

        2. Of course!
          Still @ Home Son had already shifted the logs to when I wanted to stack them, so I just had to stack them and then get the electric chain saw out and cut a 10″ lump of elm into two bits.

          Got a fire started in the old oil drum and got rid of some brambles I’d pulled, then the rain started so I went indoors and chucked some beef trimmings, stir fry veg and a korma sauce together with onion and a red pepper to serve up with nan bread & baked potato.

          As the DT says, I’m a much better cook than she is!

    2. Fine thanks except for an enormous haematoma. Had a day on my back. Gotta pay the rent somehow…

      1. Were you not advised to call 111 or even 999 if you thought the wound had opened or the plug might have shifted?
        I would err on the side of caution if I were you.

  67. Another really exciting match.
    If you don’t want to know the score:
    don’t consult the results.

  68. ‘Night All

    Milice at work

    https://twitter.com/catturd2/status/1492562294647185408?s=20&t=xUbczRubGtx0306elK61-A

    On a more cheerful note,cats and dogs

    https://twitter.com/cageyeff1/status/1491886900554174468?s=20&t=X6evbxLwHAX0iLqmyYJtuA

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f549d3c70efeabb088fb4f28858cfd6b0dbe53704ae3a7f97a9687527052090.jpg

    https://twitter.com/parkinsbrea/status/1492096633689026562

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/648b8ecb1d282bda0c9150e5dca10a8b99d4009ecfc29d39921600d61f9114be.gif

  69. “Toronto police chief James Ramer says the city’s police department will has “scaled up” its operational response to deal with the truck convoy protests expected in the city this weekend.
    Speaking at a news conference Friday, Raymer says the city will facilitate “peaceful protests,” but adds that does not include “vehicles jamming up the roadways.”.”
    https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/toronto-police-brace-for-weekend-convoy-protests-articleshow.html
    But it’s ok for them to ‘jam up’ the streets by completely shutting many roads around Queens Park, some from as early as two days ago.

      1. I am at a loss as to what to say, Sos. Occasions such as this leave one gasping for the appropriate phrase….”Yo, ho , ho and a bottle of rum with a little bit of lash.”

        1. You and your SWMBO her inside really shouldn’t’ want to know. They are all what you or I would call mentally deviants and we would be cast into Hell for floating such a proposition.

        2. The one on the left; whoever would have guessed on the left, is a very senior American rear/vice Admiral, as to the other two? Phizzee and Lotl?

          11. I thought I recognised the admiral.
            That’ll keep Putin from launching military adventures!

          14. Although the rank exists in theory, there are no Fleet Admirals.

            She’s a relatively new Biden appointment more senior than I though but not a five star.

    1. What a nasty suspicious mind you have, Bob!
      Several people have predicted the crash this spring, so you could be right.

    1. In any court case/compensation claim etc, it will ‘come out’ how many Business Tickets he bought.

      Until then it is speculation

      The incident is not closed

      1. Probably wise counsel.

        However, do you really think a pilot would lose a take-off slot lightly? I’ve lost count of the number of flights I’ve taken and I’ve never been on one where the plane has returned to the gate in those circumstances.

    1. Beloved leader is trying to say that all of the foreign funding shows that the donations do not reflect the fact that all Canadians are opposed to the protests (sorry, insurrection). It is a plot by right wing extremists to influence Canadian government.

      This from someone who has been quite happy to accept endorsements from Obama and Clinton during the last few elections.

      What a hypocritical lying barsteward.

  76. Evening, all. Been cold, wet and sleety here. Not conducive to doing anything outdoors – and, frankly, not conducive to doing anything much!

      1. Glad it wasn’t sour FA 🙂 I have moved furniture, rearranged some books and watched the racing.

    2. I was extremely grateful to have had visitors yesterday; great excuse to sit inside over a nice pot of tea. Today’s weather is similar; I opened a blind earlier, looked out, and pxromptly shut it again.

  77. Am I the only one wondering, what the hell is going on in the world

    UK and a lot of NATOish countries, appear to have been Covidised, whilst WWIII seems to be looming

    We cannot even believe the written or spoken words, coming from the MSM

    1. Triers, we cannot believe a single word spoken by any government or politician in this world. And as for the media- ye gods.

    2. You are not alone, I’m guessing that most sentient beings are bewildered and those who have a nodding acquaintance with recent history may draw uncomfortable parallels with the very late 1930’s and the antics of another megalomaniac.

      1. Just think back, to the Cuban Crisis, when Kennedy told the Russians to F..Off with their missiles

        It was a Thursday and I was at a dance in the NAAFI

        The kids (and adults) of today will only understand the word Fursday out of the above

    3. I think we are living through the death throes of American Hegemony and the rising of the Middle Kingdom. Russia as the big bad wolf is because those now in Washington, think they are still fighting the ‘cold war’ of the 50’s & 60’s. Russia is doing what it has always done, look after its self.

      1. I think you are right about that.
        Bugger, hit post before ending comment.
        Have you begun any of the Sharon Kay Penman books? I will be interested in your opinions.

        1. Lionheart, and she certainly did her research.
          Started with this one because it fits in with my Magna Carta book.
          Henry II will be next and then the Welsh Prince series.
          Again, many thanks for the recommendation.

          1. I emailed her when the stories about Richard III’s remains were going on media. Had a wonderful response from her. She knows her stuff.
            Talk to me when you have read The Sunne in Splendour- Wars of the Roses.
            And, of course, talk to me anytime.

          2. As I have been very interested in the Battle of Towton and have a couple of books on that battle, will come to Richard when I can avoid distractions from other books. I have a habit of reading one, then get distracted by a comment or reference that needs clarification and before long I’ve 3 or 4 books on the go.

          5. I read The Sunne in Splendour per your recommendation a while ago. Did you know she died last year, aged 75 years after a short illness?

    4. Yes, the mainstream media is nothing more than a puppet show. GB News is slightly better, but still marches to the permitted agenda. I only go there to see what the government wants me to believe today.

  80. Good night, everyone. Today has been one of those days which I wish I had never endured. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better one.

    1. No it’s not. My repeated attempts at clicking on the red ‘here’ sends me back whence I originated. Grant thyself another cup of coffee and go back to bed, Geoff. Gawd Bless and I will connect with you later.

Comments are closed.