Wednesday 23 February: The West must robustly reverse its complicity in Putin’s lawless and murderous behaviour

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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651 thoughts on “Wednesday 23 February: The West must robustly reverse its complicity in Putin’s lawless and murderous behaviour”

    1. ‘Morning Minty! And all! A wild night here and howly wind this morning! I’m blaming the amount of caffeine I imbibed yesterday!

    1. It’s pity Vlad couldn’t have waited until the Police have concluded their ‘Partygate investigation’. Seems Vlad has rescued Boris’s skin….

  4. Exclusive — USA ‘People’s Convoy’ Set to Roll Wednesday: Biden ‘Fears the American People’

    “Let Freedom Roll” is the slogan of “The People’s Convoy” set to depart Wednesday morning from Adelanto, California, on its way to Washington, DC, to protest federal coronavirus mandates and call for an end to President Joe Biden’s emergency declaration.

    Convoy organizers Marcus Sommers and Maureen Steele spoke to Breitbart News about their “peaceful” transcontinental movement to “defend our freedom” at a time when “our freedom is on the line and tyranny closing in.”
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/02/22/exclusive-usa-peoples-convoy-set-to-roll-wednesday-biden-fears-the-american-people/

  5. The ‘adults in the room’ have failed again. Spiked 23 February 2022.

    Things feel rather different now. With Vladimir Putin’s decision to roll tanks into Ukraine, we are on the cusp of major destabilisation in world affairs. And while Putin alone is responsible for this unacceptable incursion on Ukrainian sovereignty, the Biden administration – the smart set, the sensibles, the adults, supposedly – has managed to bring about the worst of all possible worlds. It has invited Russian aggression, more or less forcing Putin’s hand, while hindering any prospect of a diplomatic climbdown.

    Yes. Putin has rolled the tanks but the Globalists have provided the fuel. All this could have been resolved by diplomatic means but the West would have none of it. We are now faced with the very real possibility; one might well say probability; of a direct confrontation between nuclear armed powers.

    The “sanctions” touted by the UK will not quell but inflame the situation. As soon as Putin has dealt with Ukraine he will turn his attention to these and other matters. Contrary to the beliefs of our “leaders” sanctions are not a one way street. Russia provides vast amounts of the energy and raw materials (not least food) that power the more “advanced” West. The threat for example from the German Chancellor to close down the NS2 Pipeline is idiocy. One is irresistibly reminded of Bart in Blazing Saddles holding a gun to his own head with the line: Hold it! Next man makes a move, the ni**er gets it! The Russians provide the Gas Supply for Europe. They have only to turn this off to bring German Industry to an absolute stop.

    The UK’s part in this is little better. The Government acts more like an arm of the Globalists (which is what it is) than the democratic agent of a Nation State. Its indifference to Canada and our own borders plus generous offers of free accommodation and benefits for anyone who wants them typical of Socialist thinking.

    For myself I don’t feel myself to be personally involved, I’m not a supporter of Westminster in any sense whatsoever. Just look at them! Liars, Cowards, Traitors, Crooks! The rulers of a Petty Police State. Their leader a Blustering Buffoon! Who would ally themselves with such?

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/22/the-adults-in-the-room-have-failed-again/

    1. If the West had been a bit more accommodating in the first place and not behaved like a teenager on Wotsits, there might have been a sensible debate!

      1. Morning all, it appears to me that by inviting Ukraine to become a member of NATO they as in the West would have been significantly aware it would have been an act of provocation towards Russia.
        Biden and his WH dickheads including the EU mafiosi have been hugely instrumental in this situation, but are now with the assistance of the west’s MSM blaming Putin for all of this unessesary nonsense.

          1. It appears that ‘mankind’ never learns anything from its many stupid political mistakes.
            The same old problems reoccur with monotonous regularity.

      2. I agree. Serious consideration should have been given to ceding the Dombass and Crimea to Russia without any need for Putin to bring in tanks. That would have kept control with the diplomats and crucially sent Putin the message that it is through diplomacy, not war, that sovereign anomalies should be sorted out.

        1. Interesting. I think Putin has been the most diplomatic person out of the lot of them. He doesn’t need to invade to prove anything.

          1. It would come at a price though. Ukrainians living in the Dombass and Crimea would need to be heard and safeguarded. In addition, by removing two predominately Russian-sympathetic provinces from a balanced Ukraine, the residual part of Ukraine may well move westwards, allied with its ancient overlord Lithuania, which is already a full EU member.

            Any military threats by Putin to Ukraine would be met by Maidan applying for NATO membership, whereas the neutrality of Ukraine, as it is in Finland and Austria (also full EU members), is in the interests of everyone.

    2. For a long time now, the WEF shills thought they were oh-so-clever to disenfranchise millions of people who don’t support their values. Now they want to mobilise us against the only Western leader who promotes the values of Christianity, the family and strong nationhood that we believe in.
      Forget it. Go fight Putin with your silly little rainbow flags and your Diversity Officers.

    5. Someone – apologies to the ‘author’ for my lack of memory – put a YouTube video up on here yesterday, ‘Vladimir Pozner; How the United States created Vladimir Putin’.

      His speech, delivered between the 5 min and 40 min mark was spot on, relating how western politicians consistently defaulted on agreements with the Russians instead of working towards a more harmonious political and financial future.

      Towards the end he states that he works in the Russian media and that everyone is aware that it is state controlled but he also points out that the ‘free’ media in the West is equally under government direction. Of course, this comes as absolutely no surprise to Nottlers.

      P.S. Regarding Ukraine, someone on GP suggested having a look at the map of Eastern Europe in 1914, just before the Great War shook the board, to see how some land boundaries have changed since then and that our current travails are just part of an ongoing struggle.

  6. The ‘adults in the room’ have failed again. Spiked 23 February 2022.

    Things feel rather different now. With Vladimir Putin’s decision to roll tanks into Ukraine, we are on the cusp of major destabilisation in world affairs. And while Putin alone is responsible for this unacceptable incursion on Ukrainian sovereignty, the Biden administration – the smart set, the sensibles, the adults, supposedly – has managed to bring about the worst of all possible worlds. It has invited Russian aggression, more or less forcing Putin’s hand, while hindering any prospect of a diplomatic climbdown.

    Yes. Putin has rolled the tanks but the Globalists have provided the fuel. All this could have been resolved by diplomatic means but the West would have none of it. We are now faced with the very real possibility; one might well say probability; of a direct confrontation between nuclear armed powers.

    The “sanctions” touted by the UK will not quell but inflame the situation. As soon as Putin has dealt with Ukraine he will turn his attention to these and other matters. Contrary to the beliefs of our “leaders” sanctions are not a one way street. Russia provides vast amounts of the energy and raw materials (not least food) that power the more “advanced” West. The threat for example from the German Chancellor to close down the NS2 Pipeline is idiocy. One is irresistibly reminded of Bart in Blazing Saddles holding a gun to his own head with the line: Hold it! Next man makes a move, the ni**er gets it! The Russians provide the Gas Supply for Europe. They have only to turn this off to bring German Industry to an absolute stop.

    The UK’s part in this is little better. The Government acts more like an arm of the Globalists (which is what it is) than the democratic agent of a Nation State. Its indifference to Canada and our own borders plus generous offers of free accommodation and benefits for anyone who wants them typical of Socialist thinking.

    For myself I don’t feel myself to be personally involved, I’m not a supporter of Westminster in any sense whatsoever. Just look at them! Liars, Cowards, Traitors, Crooks! The rulers of a Petty Police State. Their leader a Blustering Buffoon! Who would ally themselves with such?

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/22/the-adults-in-the-room-have-failed-again/

  7. Pics: Violent Clashes Erupt as NZ Cops Move on Anti-Mandate Protesters

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2022/02/protests-in-wellington-640×480.jpg

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2022/02/1000-1-2.jpeg

    https://twitter.com/BreitbartNews/status/1452439595916922891?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1452439595916922891%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fasia%2F2022%2F02%2F22%2Fpics-violent-clashes-erupt-as-nz-cops-move-on-anti-mandate-protesters%2F

    2. Another of the current political classes committing treason against their country and its people.

    3. Interesting that they are showing these pictures, but I didn’t see legacy media pictures of the khaki clad troops in Canada?

    1. Considering that the legacy media ignored troops of possibly dubious origin trampling the Canadian flag just this week, the above effort is pretty rank.

    1. Clever stuff eh. The crowds gather outside and shout ‘is tat you’ ?
      I watch draining the oceans last evening and so much of that culture has been rediscovered under water in recent years.

        1. 😎
          Did I mention that is was in the Cairo museum with my wife in the mid 70s and stood in awe looking at the gold sarcophagus of Tut and we were separated from the tour party and were lost. Every one we tried to get to help us to find the exit wanted a bribe.
          It was right there and then I had a reminder of what my father told me after he’d served with the RAF in Egypt and Algeria “never trust and arab son”.

    1. Of course that could have been the wind. But……..
      They are waiting for you to go out and knock through in the loft.

  14. Morning all

    The West must robustly reverse its complicity in Putin’s lawless and murderous behaviour

    SIR – The world, especially the West, stood by while Vladimir Putin rigged elections, imprisoned political opponents, authorised killing on foreign soil and supported international law-breaking by Belarus. So it is little wonder that he feels he can do as he wishes.

    Russia should be completely isolated, politically, financially and physically, even at the expense, for example, of supplies of gas to Europe. Only when such robust action causes considerable daily hurt to those in his country will he be toppled by them.

    Richard Tinn

    Malvern, Worcestershire

    SIR – Sherelle Jacobs (Comment, February 22) is spot on: “The Ukraine situation is so dangerous, because it is about more than the fate of one country. The West’s enemies are watching: indeed, this could be a dry run for an even greater confrontation with China over Taiwan.”

    Britain has been tougher than most, but publicly ruling out the deployment of troops was a huge mistake, serving only to embolden Putin. Forget sanctions and “diplomacy”; he only respects power .

    If he is able, for a third time, to act with impunity, he will not stop at Donetsk and Luhansk. Nato and the free world must draw a line by immediately deploying troops to Ukraine to deter any further advance in pursuit of Putin’s declared mission to reintegrate Ukraine with mother Russia.

    In doing so, we would call his bluff in support of the commitment that Britain, America and indeed Russia, gave in 1994 to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. That would send a clear message that the Baltic States and other former Soviet satellite states will be defended and send a warning shot across the Chinese bows, just as Margaret Thatcher’s resolve to recover the Falkland Islands from foreign aggression 40 years ago made the world a safer place.

    Sir Gerald Howarth

    Chelsworth, Suffolk

    SIR – Although the Corbynites like to express their support for Vladimir Putin, it is the gullible greens and frightened anti-frackers who have handed him the power to control energy requirements throughout Western Europe. He can sit alone at his end of a long table, playing Russian roulette with the EU, Nato and Western Europe’s gas.

    Brian Christley

    Abergele, Conwy

    SIR – Further to Sherelle Jacobs’s article on “shifting tectonic plates”, I suspect that there will only be one real winner from events now playing out on Nato’s eastern flank – China.

    In the grand strategic context, it would be helpful if this could be the wake-up call for the West to cast off its increasingly dull propensity towards self-doubt. While very rightly reasserting the strength of its liberal democratic values and political and military solidarity, the West might now be wise to accept the realpolitik and achieve a more complementary relationship with a resource-rich – albeit economically weak – and militarily powerful Russia.

    This would allow for Russia’s long-held security and self-esteem sensitivities, in order to ensure that we are best positioned for the more challenging, truly global contest in the Far East. That is the long view.

    Colonel Rob Davie (retd)

    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    SIR – For the last few weeks, the British International School in Kyiv, Ukraine, has been advertising on a teachers’ jobs website for a head of school.

    This week, however, a notice was posted alongside the advertisement which read: “Appointment temporarily postponed due to unforeseen circumstances.”

    Bearing in mind the “unforeseen circumstances” have included 130,000 Russian troops plus heavy artillery and tanks, this is a pretty impressive example of understatement.

    David S Ainsworth

    Manchester

    1. Nato and the free world must draw a line by immediately deploying troops to Ukraine..

      Free World! What a joke!

      1. Not to mention that it is the expansionist plans of the EU and NATO that have stoked the fires of these latest east European troubles. The same NATO that refused Russia membership, which admittedly would have taken flexibility on both sides, but I believe the hardship would have been worthwhile. After all, Russia could hardly complain if Ukraine then also joined.

    2. A fine sample of insane views. We should be mollycoddling Russia. We should quit NATO. Col. Davie’s is the most sensible letter above. What is the desired outcome of our huffing and puffing? The US is intent on poking the bear, as always. No sense there. What about us? Why align ourselves with the EU when that organisation has been Hell-bent on our destruction for the last six years.? Why do we not hold out the hand of friendship to Russia?
      When I was at school the DonBass was Russian.

    3. Richard Tinn seems to be confusing Russia with China and Sir Gerald Howarth must have a secret army in his backyard – i don’t know where else troops are going to appear from.

  15. Why the silence over Biden’s links with Ukraine? 23 February 2022.

    His speech on Tuesday was at least competent, if not entirely coherent. ‘Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called ‘countries’ on territory that belongs to his neighbours?’ asked the President, in one of his now all-too-familiarly infirm attempts to sound firm.

    It’s always worth reflecting when you read stuff like this and about Crimea that the US “annexed” all its southernmost states from Mexico after the war of 1846. Ulysses S. Grant himself remarked:

    The presence of United States troops on the edge of the disputed territory farthest from the Mexican settlements, was not sufficient to provoke hostilities. We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should commence it.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-silence-over-biden-s-links-with-ukraine-

  16. Why the silence over Biden’s links with Ukraine? 23 February 2022.

    His speech on Tuesday was at least competent, if not entirely coherent. ‘Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called ‘countries’ on territory that belongs to his neighbours?’ asked the President, in one of his now all-too-familiarly infirm attempts to sound firm.

    It’s always worth reflecting when you read stuff like this and about Crimea that the US “annexed” all its southernmost states from Mexico after the war of 1846. Ulysses S. Grant himself remarked:

    The presence of United States troops on the edge of the disputed territory farthest from the Mexican settlements, was not sufficient to provoke hostilities. We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should commence it.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-silence-over-biden-s-links-with-ukraine-

  17. Working with Covid

    SIR – The article by Lucy Burton (“Bosses will now have to be the Covid rule-makers”, Business, February 21) rather overstates the problem.

    Using the Office for National Statistics definition of “deaths where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate” – which inflates the true number – in the working-age cohort of 20 to 64, covering the two-year period to the end of 2021, there were 20,096 deaths out of a population of 39 million; an incidence of 0.051 per cent.

    But in the 65-plus cohort, a third the size, there were 139,372 deaths; an incidence of about 1 per cent.

    John Murray

    Guildford, Surrey

    SIR – As people who test positive for Covid will no longer need to self-isolate (report, February 22), why will a triple-jabbed English resident, prior to re-entering the country, still need to complete a locator form?

    Steve Narancic

    East Challow, Oxfordshire

  18. Well now we have it.
    I didn’t think Putin would invade because I thought the West would be sensible and remove their exercising troops and stop arming and training the insurgents.
    What happened was that the West just kept ratcheting up and inflaming the situation. The leaders of the West (so-called) have brought this on themselves,
    Few of these leaders will be in the least affected, it will be the ordinary people who pay for their hubris, as usual.

    1. Reading the list of sanctions, they none of them make sense. They will be irritating, but nothing more. Why do we continue to pour petrol on the fire? Why doesTruss, an embodiment of naive stupidity, make reckless pronouncements? Why is the UK in any way associated with this interference in the internecine affairs of Russia and the Ukraine?
      Why are we now the perpetual lapdog, parroting the wishes of the USA, even when they are the clouded drivel of a senile old man?

  19. Dogs on a short lead

    SIR – Our district council has voted for dog leads used on the public highway to be a maximum of 3ft long.

    It claims that this is cleaner and greener. But lead length has no effect on whether people clean up after their dogs – and how on earth is it greener?

    Surely it would make more sense to focus on catching the non-pickers-up.

    Sandra Hancock

    Starcross, Devon

    2. Sandra, Surely you know that most people who are on local councils are frustrated politicians and like to poke their oar into the calmest of waters.
      Ours removed dozens of local dog poo bins and now it goes in with general waste green bins. Or in hedgerows or left hanging on fencing, in the bags of course.
      Not good thinking.
      Our district council has recenty placed a charge on green bin garden waste. And of course fly tipping has increased.
      Who would have thought that.
      When daft vader Gordon brown was in charge he increased charges for general waste disposal……..another stupid thing to do.
      While I’m on the subject, a local counselor I know has a 20 metre high hedge in the garden, that blocks out the sun from others solar panels. It doesn’t affect me but I think I know how I would deal with it.

        1. It almost worked when I had a problem with Bamboo, but some of the roots were too long (3 mtrs) to be effected by the dosage. And some of them came up through my pond liner.

        1. I’ve heard about old stale urine being collected over a few days and administered to the roots, it’s less detectable and more easily applied.

  20. We always use to call it “Kee-eff”. Recently that changed to “Kee-iff”. Now it’s “Keev”. What’s next?

    1. During the Chechen war I remember R4 announcers pronouncing “Che-chen-yah” with Russian interviewees slurring out “Cheshnya”.

  21. Hitchens on form.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10540829/PETER-HITCHENS-blame-arrogant-foolish-West-Ukraine-crisis.html
    he concludes:

    Having been there when everything was possible, on that Moscow summer’s day in 1991, I cannot forgive or forget this great missed opportunity to bring Russia into the free and lawful world.
    And I think the peoples of the West should think very carefully before they follow the path to a new and bitter division of Europe.
    It is wholly avoidable. It gains us nothing. And it might lose us everything.

    2. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the People had a voice in all of this – even through the elected representatives, who only represent themselves.
      I’m finished with the “democracy” as practiced in the West these days, taking no notice of the voters wishes, and in fact, being fascist in all but name. Not forgetting, Adolf H was democratically elected and passed an “enabling act” before causing untold deaths and misery. Turdeau is on the same path, as seems Adern.

  22. 351075+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wednesday 23 February: The West must robustly reverse its complicity in Putin’s lawless and murderous behaviour

    But sure;y the United Kingdom MUST attend to it’s own home front first & foremost, heavens only knows what the UK political overseers are up to
    behind the deflective Russian front.

    Our own “invasion” is a daily success viewed from parliament.

    1. Yo ogga

      Do not fret

      Carrie on PMMing is on the phone to Greta

      Johnson is down the pub with his mate

    2. Yet that’s the problem. They want the illegal criminal gimmigrants here. I don’t for the life of me know why. The next thing we’ll hear of is murders, rapes – most likely rapes – paedophliia and then domestic terrorism.

      We all know the criminal will be one of the criminal illegals. Just get rid of them.

      1. 351075+ up ticks,
        Morning W,
        I do agree totally “Just get rid of them.”
        first ( the politico’s), then the illegals

  23. Morning all,
    “No student loan for pupils who fail GCSE maths or English”

    Funny, I didn’t think you could matriculate without Maths and English.

    1. Given that I was – am – very poor at maths, scraping through with my pass much comes down to disinterest. A lot of kids simply aren’t taught well, in classes that are too big by tired teachers doing the work of a person and a half.

      2. When you look at the syllabus, one wonders why the pupils need to know much of what they are taught. A select few may go on to work in areas where high levels of maths is involved, but as a professional engineer for the last 35 years, I’m still waiting to use most of what I learned at school A level, let alone in University. In the end, I skipped the 3 semesters of maths (as I didn’t see the point and couldn’t understand a word of it anyway) and focused on useful stuff, such as metallurgy and polymer processing, getting tp grades in these – and in Thermodynamics….

        1. Show off!

          I could never see the point of the questions about stupid people who ran a bath but failed to put the plug in….

        2. My final cut off point was when the maths teacher drew two very different shapes on the blackboard and told us to prove they were the same. (Something to do with dropping perpendiculars? Ooh er, missus.)
          Either answer – yes or no – was a pointless waste of a maths period.

      1. I suppose if they all start learning how to spell we’ll see the end of Herr Kutz and the Scissor Scistors

  24. Good morning all from a bright and, at the moment at least, dry Derbyshire. 1°C in the yard with, foreby a couple of hours of rain this afternoon, a largely dry day forecast.

  25. Why I blame the arrogant, foolish West: 23 February 2022.

    We have been utter fools.

    We have treated Russia with amazing stupidity. Now we pay the price for that. We had the chance to make her an ally, friend and partner.

    Instead we turned her into an enemy by insulting a great and proud country with greed, unearned superiority, cynicism, contempt and mistrust.

    Oooh er! Peter Hitchens has come out of his shell!. Very probably because he can hear the missiles being warmed up! Worth a read because he was in Russia when the old Soviet Union collapsed.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10540829/PETER-HITCHENS-blame-arrogant-foolish-West-Ukraine-crisis.html

    2. Well, he’s not wrong. There is a sneering contempt held for those national leaders who don’t subscribe to the big state, high tax, Left wing fervently green agenda.

    3. The eastward expansion of NATO and the EU were two of the most short sighted, provocative and idiotic moves of recent history.

  26. Good morning, all. Sunny start to the day. Good invasion weather.

    Much happened over night?

  28. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Another fine leader leaves who served this country with distinction:

    Dick Hastilow, commanded Invincible in the Adriatic providing vital air support during the Bosnian War – obituary

    While on fishery protection duties in UK waters Hastilow brought his diplomatic skills to a tense negotiation with a Russian trawler

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    22 February 2022 • 5:08pm

    Captain Dick Hastilow, who has died aged 76, commanded four ships during his long and distinguished career, the last of which was the aircraft carrier Invincible.

    On August 24 1994 she sailed for a tour of duty in the Adriatic as senior British ship in the area tasked with providing support for the British forces serving in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia with the United Nations Protection Force, Unprofor. The ship and its air squadrons had to be ready for action at any time, day or night, and this meant remaining in a limited area with little shore leave or relaxation.

    Hastilow kept his men sharp and motivated during a difficult period, arranging exchange visits with other warships, Army units in Bosnia and US naval units. When short breaks were possible, visits were arranged to places of interest and he sent volunteer sailors ashore to repair a shell-damaged school at Bugojno, near Gornji Vakuf.

    The French and American navies shared replenishment activities with British tankers, but political considerations prevented an exact matching of carrier operations and Hastilow had to use his diplomatic skills to liaise with their commanding officers to produce the best results.

    Air support was an essential element of Allied operations, enforcing a no-fly zone over the former Yugoslavia both to enforce UN sanctions and to cover Unprofor re-supply and medical evacuation missions by helicopter. RN Sea Harriers operated closer to the men on the ground than Nato fighters based in Italy and could offer air interception, close air support and reconnaissance capabilities within a single sortie.

    Soon after Invincible’s arrival, two Sea Harriers came under fire from surface-to-air missiles over the town of Bihac on the border of Bosnia and Croatia. Invincible and her two sister ships took turns to operate in the Adriatic between January 1993 and March 1996 and, although none had more than eight Sea Harriers embarked at any one time, they flew a significant percentage of all the British fast-jet missions over the former Yugoslavia.

    When VIPs visited his ship, Hastilow showed them how well his team performed their difficult task and this left a deep impression on politicians who saw at first hand the important work they did.

    Richard Geoffrey Hastilow was born on May 27 1945 in Liphook, Hampshire, to Geoffrey Hastilow, a civil servant, and Phyllis (née Blower). He was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School before entering the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, as a Murray Scheme Cadet in 1963.

    His early appointments were in ships stationed in various parts of the world, but in 1976 he demonstrated his qualities of diplomacy and the leadership that had created a ship’s company capable of achieving positive results in a difficult situation. Recently promoted to Lieutenant Commander, he was in command of the mine countermeasures vessel Soberton on fishery protection duties in UK territorial waters when a Russian trawler was detected fishing near the Scilly Islands.

    Hastilow persuaded him to stop and sent an unarmed boarding party of three men on board; 16 hours of tense negotiation followed. While this was progressing, a Russian seaman in another trawler was injured and Hastilow organised a helicopter to pick him up.

    Unfortunately the man died, but this act of goodwill, with firm but professional pressure, led to the Russian captain to agree to his ship being taken into Plymouth, where he was prosecuted. He pleaded guilty and blamed faulty radar equipment for his position error.

    Prior to Soberton, Hastilow qualified on the first Principal Warfare Officers’ course, and after further service at sea he completed the RN Staff Course and trained ships’ warfare teams. After promotion to Commander in 1979 he attended the US Naval War College before joining the Defence Policy Staff in Whitehall in 1982.

    In 1984 he was appointed to his second command, the destroyer Manchester, in which he circumnavigated the world. Promoted to Captain in 1986 he led the Navy’s officer recruiting team for two years and then became Captain of the RN Presentation Team, an appointment that involved speaking to public audiences around the UK on naval matters.

    He was appointed to his third command, the destroyer Bristol, which was training Dartmouth Cadets, in 1990, and was then in command of BRNC, Dartmouth, in 1991. Throughout this period he was strongly in favour of women serving at sea on an equal footing with their male colleagues.

    Invincible was his last appointment; in 1995 he left the Navy and was appointed CBE.

    Hastilow went on to have a successful civilian career, starting in 1996 as the group managing director of the Hampshire Training and Enterprise Council,with a turnover of £35 million and 200 staff. The leadership skills he had demonstrated in the Navy were still much in evidence and the chairman described him as “a rare breed … equally at home chatting with young trainees as he is discussing issues of vision and strategy with government or the TEC’s many partners”.

    In 2000, still only 55, he was appointed chief executive of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Hastilow considered one of the biggest challenges faced by the RIBA was for the profession to “capitalise on the current interest from both the public and government in the opportunities that architecture has to offer”. By the time he retired in 2009 he had made RIBA into a more outward-facing and high-profile organisation.

    His warmth and humanity brought staff and members closer together in an atmosphere that is still spoken of more than a decade later. He introduced a staff social committee and a summer games day in Regent’s Park – the sort of innovations with which the sailors in his various ships would have been familiar. He also took volunteer members of staff sailing.

    He left RIBA in 2009 but spent a further year as an ambassador for the organisation, before retiring for the second time in 2010, aged 65.

    Richard Hastilow married, in 1967, Jill (née Hayes); she survives him with two sons and a daughter.

    Richard Hastilow, born May 27 1945, died February 1 2022

    1. There was no evidence found for this. Note I say evidence – deliberate culpability rather than a mistake.

      Besides, the West hated Trump. He went against their big state, high tax, globalist sod the nation ideals.

      1. Morning wibbers.
        No evidence emerged from the London mayoral election but let’s face it only people who benefit from him voted for him.

          1. Just like where his parents are from the country who blew up a decent female PM . And nobody seems to want to notice the election fraud.

        2. Without question, and there they didn’t want to find any evidence. can you imagine the backlash in pointing out the truth, that Khan only exists because his London is now an open sewer?

          1. He was also said to have been involved in defending the 7/7 London bombers. I have said this many times previously when he first got in most of the north London Jewish population didn’t get their ballot papers on time due to an ‘admin error’. He’s just a lying POS.

  30. Undecided on this, so much on the internet can be fabricated. Was Kenney a member of Schwab’s elite and has he genuinely cut his ties or is the picture a fraud put up to denigrate Kenney? On the other hand is Kenney a slippery politician detecting the wind of change and running for the hills?

    https://twitter.com/thececilcharles/status/1496248464845508609

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/49f4c8d6b661b3fb9562752c379d06ea1690de27a731536d137bdb1cd7640287.png

    1. Korky. You can listen to what Schwab and his cohorts say themselves, there is plenty of it on the internet. You don’t have to wonder if you are being deceived by the internet. They make it perfectly clear that the Great Reset is real and that we have no say in it unless we disrupt them like the Canadian truckers and we win. If not, look forward to a life of servitude to the elite, and look forward to your children and especially your grandchildren living in a society something like Communist China.

        1. Do these people realize what a horror show they are proposing? This is the result of no longer believing in evil or a higher power. We are the gods but we don’t have the vision to understand what the results are of what we are doing. These are deeply sick people and very dangerous to humanity and the planet.

      2. JR, I’m well aware of what the WEF proposes and the fact that Schwab openly brags about what he has in mind for the majority, soon, if he gets his way, a minority, of us. He is absolutely shameless in his bragging.

        I posted this because at first look it appears that Kenney is opposed to the WEF but tweets appeared quickly that linked him to that bunch of desperadoes. I questioned, what is the truth about Kenney?

        Closer to home, how many have strong links to Schwab? In the light of what has been revealed over the last few weeks and the current input from Edward Dowd on the financial and insurance fronts, some of these people may be running scared. Dowd predicts the WEF acolytes tripling down and causing problems for some months as their plot unravels.

        1. Ha! sorry Korky, I obviously misunderstood you. I don’t know enough about Kenny to know what he really thinks.

          1. No problem, JR. The World has gone mad and keeping up is not easy, well, not for me, anyway.

        1. They are mainly younger and frightened to speak out, in case they go against currently inflicted strong trends. Like Kneeling for instance.

  32. No student loan for pupils who fail GCSE maths or English
    Overhaul aims to reduce university numbers and amount of ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees

    Camilla Turner : Pupils who fail their maths and English GCSEs will be banned from taking out student loans under new government plans.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/23/no-student-loan-fail-gcse-maths-english-bid-control-numbers/

    Good news for those who should not be thinking of going to university in the first place as it will save them from a life of misery and indebtedness.

    Most people are happy with the idea of students paying for their own university education; what people object to is that loans are charged at usurious rates of interest – currently over 6% when the BoE base rate is only 0.5%. Zero interest rates on student loans (as is the case in more civilised countries) and tax relief on repayment of loans and tax relief on employers who help their employees get out of debt would be a more equitable system.

    Having young educated people with their lives crippled by debt is surely the policy of a barbarian government?

    1. There are 3 issues here:
      1. University education has been pushed at all school leavers, many of whom would be far better working, either with or without formal work-based education, rather than spending 3 years of the lives that all too often gets wasted. The financial cost is horrendous, with taxpayers expected to pay half the loan amount.
      2. Universities generally charge the maximum allowed regardless of the cost or value of the course, effectively meaning that the idea of bringing the market place to universities’ has failed
      3. Someone has to pay for all of this. Why shouldn’t it be those benefitting? Why should working class kids in low-paid jobs pay taxes to subsidise rich kids to have even more? Crippling the poor with the debt of the rich would surely be the policy of a barbarian government. If you give free university education without strict rationing then there will be even more waste of time, effort and opportunity.

      We need a proper independent review of what this country needs and how to achieve it. Our politicians are incapable of putting the long term interests of this country first, so don’t expect progress.

        1. I attended City of Bath Technical Shool 1963-1970. A Levels in Pure & Applied Maths, Physics and Art plus Usage of English.

          Subsequently, first degree at Sheffield University and post grad Diploma at University College London in Architecture.

          I have practiced for forty five years and two of my modern buildings are listed Grade II and Grade II* respectively.

          My headmaster at the Technical School was F T Naylor, co-founder of the Grammar Schools Association.

          2. I consider myself very fortunate in having attended the last boys technical school to be abandoned the year after I left for university.

            I became an architect, several classmates became GPs and one a dentist. Boys from the second tier often joined the civil service (Navy Department based at Copenacre and other sites at Combe Down and Lansdown). Many worked for Stothert & Pitt cranage and pump
            Engineers or CIC Engineering, other electrical manufacturers and Horstman Gears and even Pitman Press (Pergamon Press).

  33. We poor citizens in the UK, on our way to becoming much poorer as a result of the policies and decisions of our government, can only look on with incredulity and trepidation as UK government ministers issue their bombastic threats to Russia.
    We know, as does the Russian government, that not one of those involved on our side, our government ministers, have been able to control the civill servants in their own departments. For some time now the Civil Service has acted on its own, ignoring the instructions and requirements of the Ministers of State.
    When one was challenged, there was an unholy row. Now the Ministers of State no longer attempt to control the workings of their Ministry.
    How much safer we would all be if our government ministers made no blustering pronouncements to the outside world, but got on with their jobs, riding the resulting storms of internal dissent.
    Illegal immigration halted completely, Customs processes speeded up and delays at borders removed. Energy made cheap and reliable. Our military built up and well equipped. Our industry supported, encouraged and subsidised where appropriate. Our education systems returned to traditions. Our health services rationalised, streamlined with administration expunged.
    You know, the people in the Cabinet doing the job that they are paid for!

    1. The reality is that if they did what they promised the electorate and what the electorate expected over certain issues, energy, immigration etc. we would have some respect for them. But they take us for electoral cannon fodder and fools. So why should we listen to them and why should we support them when it comes to issues such as Russia or China? The internet has provided us with the truth if we seek to find it, and the old fashioned politics that relied on us believing that they were there for us and telling us the truth are long gone., We know that almost anything that comes out of their mouths is little more than lies, deceit and venality.

  34. Good morning, one and all…even the bots. A calm morning, with weather due soon and snow forecast for tonight and tomorrow so I’m guessing golf will be a non-starter tomorrow, as it has been since I last played on the 6th.

    On the bright side, my gas boiler, which has been playing up for the past week, consented to allow me a warm shower this morning. The boiler repair man is due this afternoon. Local boy and a fine chap with competitive rates.

    I’m just about to head off to the North face of Tesco Irvine, where I expect I shall yet again be the only mask-free shopper. My folks wouldn’t starve without my efforts but I’m happy to pick up the heavier items for them…and some decent plonk for my dad.

    I shall peruse the latest from the Eastern Front later, as our brave churnalistic divisions continue their maneuvers.

      1. It’s not the red balls the greenkeepers worry about, it’s the damage from the crampons when ascending the tees on the 2nd and 10th…not to mention any off-fairway excursions.

  35. Scrapping Eton and Harrow matches at Lord’s is not ‘kowtowing to the woke police’, says head of MCC
    Statement issued after club is criticised for cancelling 200-year-old game to ‘broaden the scope’ and provide for a ‘wider range of players’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/22/scrapping-eton-harrow-matches-lords-not-kowtowing-woke-police/

    Peter Benson’s BTL:

    If it looks woke and sounds woke and smells woke then it is surely woke.

    1. Maybe the OB and the OS clubs should campaign to have the Blundell’s vs Sherborne cricket match to be held annually at HM Prison Dartmoor, Princetown, Devon.

    1. Morning Johnathan. What wonderful excoriating account of the “West” and its leaders!

      1. High Araminta! I think the point is that Tucker Carlson has a talent for stripping away cant and presenting the bare facts. It is a pity that there aren’t more like him. But lets face it, the Russia haters are a bunch seized by ideological irrationality who never bother and will not bother to question where exactly their hatred comes from. Because if they actually looked into their minds, they would find no basis for their hatred other than a constant conditioning and propaganda that Russia is, somehow, a continuation of the USSR and therefore the “olds enemy” . A more false belief it would be hard put to find but very useful for the corrupt politicians of the West.

  37. Just reposting part of an article I read last night .

    I have just read this :

    Today’s Cossacks are a far cry from their Czarist-era ancestors, the fierce horsemen with woollen papakha hats, sabres and horsewhips, best known as a buffer force on the borders of the Russian Empire. But revival communities of Russians claiming Cossack heritage are increasingly making their mark as conservative shock troops, fighting alongside separatist forces in southeast Ukraine and embracing, and sometimes policing, a return to conservative values under President Vladimir Putin.
    The Kremlin under Putin has generally promoted conservative values, and Cossacks have emerged as avatars for all that is Russian, and have been described as similar to cowboys for the United States or samurai in Japan. Their legacy, however, is also bound up with vigilante-style violence and their historical role against Muslim invaders and Jews.

    4. But their role has been far more pronounced as paramilitary troops during the Ukrainian crisis. When unmarked Russian troops began appearing in Crimea, seizing government buildings ahead of a hastily executed referendum to join Russia, Cossacks in traditional hats began manning checkpoints and providing crowd control. When war broke out in east Ukraine, Cossacks from Russia fought as individual units and even took control of whole cities, until later facing reprisals from competing separatist fighters.

    In an interview, one of the Cossacks who fought in east Ukraine told an interviewer that if he met Putin, he would ask for “weapons.”

    “To create a Cossack army and declare a day of peace on earth, for everyone to leave peacefully, and to those who want war, for Cossacks to come and say: Okay, let’s fight,” Alexander Mozhayev, who was better known by the nom de guerre Babay, said in the interview last week. “First of all I would ask him to help the Cossack people, so that we could live how we want to. The Cossacks will be united by either Putin or war. The government should be thankful to us, but we haven’t seen thankfulness for either Crimea or Donbas. Although Crimea and Donbas showed that the Cossacks are a real force.”

    1. According to the last census held by Ukraine in 2001, more than 58 percent of Crimea self-identified as ethnically Russian, and 77 percent of Crimeans said their native language was Russian. There is a huge gap in usage between Russian and the official state language of Ukrainian — which only 10 percent of Crimeans speak as a native language. The second most common language is Tatar, spoken by better than 11 percent of the population. Tatars, who were previously forced from Crimea after the Soviet Union routed occupying German forces during WWII, worry that a return to Russian rule,…
      Source
      http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2014/3/map-russian-the-dominantlanguageincrimea.html

      So the idea that there was a need for: ” a hastily executed referendum to join Russia,…” is simply Western propaganda. The referendum was completely free, it didn’t need to be rigged because the result was a forgone conclusion. And pretty much of the rest of this article is nonsense. The Cossacks are a diverse people and to pretend that they are “shock troops” for Putin, is a rather crude stereotype taken from history.

        1. Belle. Please read the post I just put up by Peter Hitchins because historically speaking the events he described in regard to the behaviour of the West is 100% true. As all of us who have had occasion to deal with Russians know, as a result, we are not deceived by propaganda.

        2. Also Belle, why you should take what the Washington Post says with a grain of salt.

          We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination [democracy] practiced in past centuries.”

          —David Rockefeller in June 5, 1991 at the Bilderberger meeting in Baden Baden, Germany (a meeting also attended by then-Governor Bill Clinton.

  38. The hero DJ, Jamal Edwards died of a heart attack after performing a set. I wonder what substances in the blood might have contributed…

        1. Part of a tennis match. First to win six games (or, after that, by two clear games).

          Simple really…. The balls must be quite a nuisance when playing gramophone records…

        1. The gene therapy is slowly but surely doing the job the PTB and the globalists want it to do. That process will doubtless gather more momentum with the passage of time.

          What was the percentage reduction in the human population that Bill Gates has constantly told us we need?

  39. 351075+ up ticks,

    The war of oppression will hit United Kingdom neighborhoods shortly via the tory (ino) group.

    Your voting input is still needed to give these actions credibilty

    Bernie’s Tweets on Twitter: “CANADA – Police tell citizens to report ppl who expresses anti government or problematic opinions online, with $70,000 fines or house arrest for those suspected of making legal but offensive posts Total citizen control. #Canada #FreedomConvoy https://t.co/07c6o6UJQi” / Twitter

      1. 351075 up ticks,
        Morning Rik,
        Then all I can say is the majority of the electorate
        are awash with goodies at the expense of their children/ children’s children.

    1. My mother had me when she was 24. She lived to 91 and was still mentally 100% when her body let her down. The 2 besties she had known since schooldays both outlived her, into their mid 90s, and also still pretty lively. None went into care homes.

      1. That’s good to see.
        Grandfather went doolally in later years, and Mother has followed him, although now she’s getting properly fed and conversation & other stimuli in her care home, she’s improving. Father died of cancer when he was 72, so no idea what his mental state would have been aged 96.

        1. My mother died aged 90. She still had her faculties, but it was breast cancer which did for her. She was 36 when she had me. Father died (of cancer) at age 68, still fully compos mentis.

  41. Araminta posted this as a link a little while ago. But the article is so correct, in fact if there was such a thing as more than 100% correct, I would give it that. So I’m taking the liberty of pasting it here for all to read. I am mightily tempted to post it periodically throughout the day for the benefit of those who hate Putin and Russia simply because they will believe any old propaganda that is fed to them by the Western politicians they think are the “good guys” and not the villains that they really are.

    Why I blame the arrogant, foolish West: Our response to this crisis in Ukraine has been to react with mistrust and abuse, and with blatant attempts to worsen the situation, writes PETER HITCHENS
    We have been utter fools.

    We have treated Russia with amazing stupidity. Now we pay the price for that. We had the chance to make her an ally, friend and partner.

    Instead we turned her into an enemy by insulting a great and proud country with greed, unearned superiority, cynicism, contempt and mistrust.

    I have to endure, often several times a day, listening to people who are normally perfectly sensible and reasonable, raging wildly against Russia and Russians.

    Once, I was just like them. I had the normal anti-Russian prejudice of so many Western people.

    But, by great fortune, I am not like them now. I lived in Russia, I knew Russians as friends. I learned to distinguish between what was Russian and what was Communist.

    And I saw something most people will never see – a pivotal event in history, when we could have changed the world for the better.
    One of the most joyful moments of my life was the day Communism died in Moscow.

    I could have sworn the sky was actually clearer and brighter, the people looked happy instead of downtrodden – even the revolting, corrupt traffic police, for once, went into hiding.

    The litter bins were full of red-and-gold Communist Party membership cards, burning merrily in the late summer sunshine as they dissolved into grey ash.

    So I drove my red Volvo through the liberated city, a lot faster than usual, proudly displaying the special yellow number plate (with its ‘K’ for ‘Korrespondent’ and its ‘001’ for Britain, top nation) which had up until then simply made me a target for bribe-hunters and officious cops who prevented me from going on picnics in the missile-crammed woods outside the city.

    I even found myself singing the hymns of my childhood.

    Just a few days earlier I had been sunk in the most abject gloom. Communism, after a long retreat, had struck back.

    The reforming Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been kidnapped in his Crimean holiday home.

    Tanks, barrels aslant and tracks grinding the surface into dust, came growling down my majestic Moscow street in the early morning light.

    This was not some ancient newsreel. I was there, and it was unfolding before me in full colour.

    My elite block of flats, which I shared illegally with dozens of hoary old Stalinists, KGB men and Kremlin loyalists, exploded into exultation as this nasty putsch unfolded.

    Neighbours who I’d previously thought of as sweet old pensioners stiffened their spines, grew several inches taller, donned crimson armbands, and set up a propaganda stall in the lobby.

    The horrible thing, which I had thought was dying, was coming back to life.

    These were the people I hated and had seen defeated in Prague, Bucharest, Budapest and Berlin.
    I had thought they were done for. Was it possible they were on their way back, as their fellow Communists were in China?

    Would they, like their Chinese comrades, use their tanks to massacre the people in Red Square and re-establish the iron rule of the Party? That day it all seemed terribly possible.

    Then, equally swiftly, the tanks turned round and vanished, the putschists lost their nerve and scattered in a haze of vodka and panic, and it was all over.

    It was bliss to be alive in that dawn, as someone once wrongly said of another momentous event. I have never got over it.
    The black beating heart of an evil empire had stopped. A black sun had been removed from the sky.

    All the filthy lies and repressions which I had witnessed in the vast zone of tyranny that stretched from the heart of Germany to the heart of Korea had lost their life force.

    I do not think the world has had such an opportunity since 1945. In fact, it was better, for in 1991 there was no Stalin, no Soviet Communist Party.

    Like a knight dead inside its armour, the once-mighty Soviet armed forces might look from a distance like a menace, but they were rotten and done for, and in a matter of months would keel over and fall to the ground.
    In fact the problem quickly be-came trying to find any way to govern that vast country at all, as the spells and incantations which had kept it together no longer worked.

    What an opportunity this was for the rich, stable, well-governed West to come to the rescue.

    Had not Marshall Plan aid revived and rebuilt a ruined Western Europe after World War Two?

    Had Britain and the other occupying powers not vowed to bring democracy, freedom and the rule of law to a prostrate Germany?

    Was this not a moment for an equally unique act of generosity and far sight?

    No it wasn’t. What was unleashed instead was an army of carpetbaggers from the West, shouting about the free market, who quickly found their match in the crooks and corruption experts, many of them high Communist officials, who rushed to exploit and fool them.

    At the same time formal ‘democracy’ was introduced – that is to say, there were some elections, which were of course rigged by big money.

    And in the minds of Russians whose savings were vaporised, who were turned out of their homes by thugs, who lost their jobs and pensions, democracy became a swear word.

    People and governments who now claim to despise Vladimir Putin for his aggression, for his suppression of freedom and for his corruption did not seem to be bothered by these things when his forerunner, Boris Yeltsin, did them.

    It is a fascinating contrast.

    Yeltsin, a former Communist machine politician with a far from perfect past, ordered tanks to shell his own parliament, while his police shot down demonstrators.

    He savaged Chechnya. His own re-election to the presidency stank of money.

    Corruption under his rule was so flagrant and grotesque that, when he quit, many Russians welcomed with relief the return of what the film-maker Stanislav Govoryukin called ‘normal corruption’.

    Yeltsin, often paralysed with drink, was a welcome guest in the West, even the White House, despite his embarrassing and crude behaviour.

    But Yeltsin, unlike Putin, did nothing to control the oligarchs, allowed the West to continue its rape of Russia’s economy, and – above all – made no protest against the humiliation of his country by the continued expansion of Nato eastwards across Europe.

    This was by then a more or less openly anti-Russian alliance (who else is it directed against?).

    It wasn’t just that the West had promised not to do this, as numerous documents now show beyond doubt.

    It was that it was stupid, and created the very crisis it claimed to be protecting us against.

    Interestingly the leading protesters against this Nato expansion were not Russian nationalists but highly intelligent and experienced independent figures.

    One was the Russian liberal politician Yegor Gaidar, a man Western leaders claim to have admired.

    He prophesied with total accuracy that the policy would strengthen hardliners and nationalists in the Kremlin.

    Then came the brilliant American diplomat George F. Kennan, a man nobody could accuse of being soft on Communism.

    But, unlike so many others, he could tell the new transformed Russia apart from the old USSR.

    Kennan had been architect of the USA’s policy of containment of the USSR. He came out of retirement to deplore Bill Clinton’s support for pushing Nato east. I quote his prediction at length because he was so right.

    ‘I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War,’ said Mr Kennan. ‘I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies.

    ‘I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.

    ‘This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

    ‘We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.

    ‘[Nato expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.

    ‘What bothers me is how superficial and ill-informed the whole Senate debate was.’

    He added: ‘I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.

    ‘Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime.’ Exactly.

    After 1991 Russia had, for the first time since the Bolshevik putsch of 1917, got the chance to build a new and free society.

    As Mr Kennan put it, Nato expansion was an insult to Russian democrats.

    ‘We are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.’

    He asked why East-West relations should ‘become centred on the question of who would be allied with whom – and by implication against whom – in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict’.

    These questions demanded an answer, and never got one.

    It is my unflinching view, amid all the current anti-Putin hysteria, that the leaders of the West have made the crisis we now face today out of thin air.

    I also happen to think that many of them, for varying reasons, are such lightweights that they enjoy the chance to posture and threaten – and do not realise this is deadly serious.

    In hints, in pleas, in public speeches and private approaches, Russia has begged us for years to show it the most basic respect.

    Our response has been to react with mistrust and abuse, and with blatant attempts to worsen the situation in Ukraine and Georgia, two incredibly dangerous flashpoints where real war might all too easily begin.

    Having been there when everything was possible, on that Moscow summer’s day in 1991, I cannot forgive or forget this great missed opportunity to bring Russia into the free and lawful world.

    And I think the peoples of the West should think very carefully before they follow the path to a new and bitter division of Europe.

    It is wholly avoidable. It gains us nothing. And it might lose us everything.

    1. Hitchens. Excellent as always. One point though. Is this sentence correct?

      ‘But, unlike so many others, he could tell the new transformed Russia apart from the old USSR.’

      1. Kennan? Yes, he knew the difference as do we all that have had dealings with Russians.

    1. Love Avi Yamini, he really doesn’t pull any punches. Been arrested so many times by the police he aptly calls the “Gestapo” that I have forgotten how many it has been.
      Rebel media, the people he works for can be found online. I would urge people to watch it for the truth both from Australia and Canada.

    2. The awful thing is, this was predicted. It was predicted last year that there would be unrest against the regulations, and that the western governments would be ready to stamp it out.
      The “UN” troops in Canada are very disturbing. Some of the footage from Canada doesn’t look like any other demonstration footage I’ve ever seen. That row of silent, anonymous figures, whose body language doesn’t look as though they belong there.

  45. You have to give your licence plate number to go to a tip now. I think I know why.: it’s to prevent you going to a ‘tip out of town’ and disposing of bulky waste there.

    After all,, the tip exists to stop you throwing things away. The absurdities, the petty regulations, the sheer idiocy of this country are an abomination.

    1. I presume it’s to identify frequent visitors in order to limit the ability of traders and businesses to pass themselves off as individuals, thus avoiding fees.

      1. So don’t blasted well charge them. Heck, they pay business rates, they pay corporation tax. If they don’t, oh well, perhaps the tax is too high. Is this yet another thing to tax just to tax it?

        1. Yes, but gotta pretend the state bureaucracy cares about Green issues regardless of how counter-productive their actions are.

          As an aside, fly tipping near me increased dramatically when our local tip brought in charges. There was a long argument between the county council that controlled the tips and the borough council who picked up the cost and work of sorting fly tipped waste.

    2. ANPR cameras have been at rubbish dumps for a while. Many places now insist on booking an appointment (aka ‘slot’) a day or more in advance. The idea is to ensure that people who make regular trips can be spotted, eg houseclearers and builders and assorted pykies.

      Thanks to Brussels, recycling is an expensive process, and we are not allowed to even sacrifice asian tat into the sea in case it snags French trawler nets, or burn it in case it upsets the doomgoblins.

      1. Yet a lot of our waste does get shipped straight to Africa or India where they dump it into the sea.

    3. We had that issue when getting rid of some of MILs unwanted stuff. I was driving a hire car and that was a no no to the tip police. To prove that the recycling was local, we basically had to take the dragon with us on those tip runs.

      1. Either that, or there is a mole in A Current Affair who isn’t singing from the same songsheet as the rest of them…

  47. Gary Brooker RIP

    Thanks for all the good times.
    hthttps://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/procol-harum-frontman-gary-brooker-dead-obituary-1310688/tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA

    2. The influence of Bach’s Air, from his Orchestral Suite No 3 (“Air on a ‘G’ String”), can’t be understated on this original hit.

      RIP, Mr Brooker.

      1. Your trouser cuffs are dirty,
        And your shoes are laced up wrong!
        You’d better take off your Homburg,
        ‘Cause your overcoat is too long.

        1. Good afternoon Grizzly,

          Procol Harum – Homburg was on the flipside of A Whiter Shade of Pale

          A year and a day ago I seem to remember posting a lyric from Paul Simon’s Old Friends – How terribly strange to be 70. Is it stranger to be 71?

          1. Good afternoon, Rastus,

            Not really. I’m a bit of a fatalist and I consider each day (and each year) to be nothing more than a numerical progression. When I sit and think about being 71, it feels a little surreal, but I don’t feel any different in my mind from what I did when I was 41.

            By the way, did you see my response, yesterday, to your birthday greeting, in particular my reply to the ditty about the burgling copper?

            And, loathe that I normally am to disagree with you, Rastus; the ‘B’ side to A Whiter Shade of Pale was Lime Street Blues. Homburg was a stand-alone ‘A’ side, backed by Good Captain Clack.

    1. Are they really ‘working’ or just being paid? Here, we’re talking about the elite’s circle, very different world.

      1. Paid for access. How else does a senator manage to acquire many millions of pounds in property.

    1. Ahem 3

      “Right now, it’s important to remember that nothing has changed on the
      ground. Even in Donetsk, the centre of global attention, the influx of
      more soldiers does not actually alter the status quo”
      Not exactly a “Dresden” moment then…………

      1. Oh, the irony that “Dresden”, universally used to refer to the bombing of Dresden in WW2, was instigated at the behest of Stalin as leader of the USSR, synonymous with Russia, with Dresden then being invaded and becoming a puppet of the USSR/Russia for decades.

        1. The real irony is the even the hysterical polemic you link to acknowleges as I quoted

          “the influx of
          more soldiers does not actually alter the status quo”
          All “If’s” “Could” and “Maybe”

          1. Oh, cherry-picking out of context. You forgot to post the words around it. You know, such as “it looks like that’s going to change”

          4. Hardly because I do not work with people who, in ignorance, or deliberately, misrepresent the facts. Did you bother to read the unpalatable facts, at least for you, by Peter Hitchins. Odd isn’t it that those of us who have actually had dealings with Russians don’t fall for any of the propaganda that people spew in the West.

          5. The status quo should be adherence to the Minsk ceasfire agreement in the disputed Donetsk and Luhansk zones of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. The Minsk agreement, overseen by France and Germany didn’t work and had to be updated to Minsk II a year later. The occupation of the Donbas region as it became known always existed as a de facto arrangement and even Putin has recently been recorded as saying that Minsk II is dead.

            Things haven’t really changed then even if any military vehicles in Donbas happen to pop off a few rounds because of France and Germany’s oversight!

    2. What Putin said was the truth whether you like it or not. I don’t blame him at all for being angry. Since the fall of the USSR he has put up with incredibly dishonest machinations by the West. Please see the Peter Hitchens article I posted earlier on. Putin is neither mad or a “high functioning psychopath.” The anti-Putin anti Russian propaganda is really getting to be pathetic now. No pretence at objectivity at all, just relentless demonization. It is crude and it is evil. Worthy of the propaganda of a third world dictator.

    3. “Last week, I wrote that the idea of an all-out invasion of Ukraine and a march on Kyiv, touted so often by Joe Biden, made no sense. As it stood, the world hung on Putin’s every move: Russia had cemented its superpower status — and all this was achieved without the need to fire a single shot. Putin had won gold; he had leverage without cost. That would change with a full invasion — and what would be the point of that?”
      But I did caveat all this: “It may well be that after 20 years of acting like a Tsar, he has gone mad, like so many before him, and something crazy is coming.”

      You should read the comments below the article. Not all of them agree with it.

    4. Pick any multi-millionaire or billionaire and you could say the same about them. It is why they are so successful. In a word…ruthless.

    5. It ignores that we started it, by ostracising the Russia reborn from the Soviet Union.

        2. In that (in)famous CBS 60 Minutes interview, Soros stated that there is no morality. He says that whatever makes money for him is justified. The interviewer asks Soros if he has a God complex and the answer is a simple yes. No rights or wrongs, no lies and truth, merely whatever serves the agenda.

    3. “The people of Ukraine must be able to determine their own future.”

      They did. They installed their own dictator.

          1. Indeed. The Byzantine Empire, the Khazars, the Vikings, the Ottoman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Union, the list goes on. All at some time held part of what is now called Ukraine.

        2. Oooh, actually Ukraine in its current form was created post-WWII as an administrative district of the USSR.

    2. Warning: This may stretch your belief in the way of the world:

      The Canadian Federal Court have just announced that a Chinese organization working with Chinese immigrants in Canada is actually involved in espionage. In a further attack on credibility, they claim that politicians were aware of these actions but downplayed the seriousness of the spying.

      I am not sure who was tit and who was tat.

        1. I have no secrets worth spying for (a pity, because some of these Chinese spies are quite lovely)

  54. Lifted from a book review of the nineties. I rather liked the cancellation comment:

    On the other hand, in 2022, Zima is one of the few things you can make fun of with no fear of getting your career canceled. Much of The Nineties appears pitched at such a high intellectual level that it’s likely to slip past members of the volunteer auxiliary thought police looking for crimethinkers.

    1. Remember those stocks of smallpox virus? Are we absolutely sure that only Britain and the US has the remaining phials?

      1. Here you go anneallan. From Wikepedia:

        “The last cases of smallpox occurred in an outbreak of two cases, one of which was fatal, in Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1978. A medical photographer, Janet Parker, contracted the disease at the University of Birmingham Medical School and died on September 11, 1978.[1] In light of this incident, all known stocks of the smallpox virus were destroyed or transferred to one of two World Health Organization reference laboratories which had BSL-4 facilities—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia.[2] Since 1984, these two labs have been the only ones authorized by the WHO to hold stocks of live smallpox virus.”

        Although, I would strongly suspect the Chinese would have it on the quite.

        1. I remember the Brum death.
          Yes, I feel pretty sure that China has some smallpox in stock. The acronym WHO is no comfort whatsoever.

    2. Who wouldn’t welcome false positive syphillis and HIV test results in return for getting protection against the common cold, whoops, I mean the deadliest! plague! evah!

  56. There may be a glimmer of a glitch in Trudeaus plan.
    The senate need to pass the emergency act for it to be law but they have been digging their heels in over the lack of evidence behind claims of foreign involvement. “We have proof but it is secret” is not going down too well.
    Dearest leader declared that the Senate should not work on party lines so about six years ago, he removed the liberal party whip from senators, they now sit as independents.

    Meanwhile oppression continues, cases are being uncovered where bank accounts are being frozen of people who donated a small amount back in the early days of a perfectly legal convoy to Ottawa. Not our problem said the government, talk to your bank.
    Needless to say, opposition is treading very softly nowadays.

    1. How independent are the provinces? Do they have their own legal system like US states?
      How is the Canadian Senate chosen and what is its position vis a vis the ‘Commons’?

      1. Senators are elected by the prime Minister, supposedly on the advice of a committee and supposedly providing a balance of appointees from all provinces.

        Provinces have no official say, Alberta tried proposing a slate of senate candidates but Trudeau wasn’t having it.

        The senate functions much like the lords, they can normally just refer legislation back to the commons. However, the Emergencies Act specifically requires senate approval.

        2. Seriously? And people here complained about the original House of Lords; the hereditaries were nobody’s pet as they had a vested interest in and a deep understanding of Great Britain.

    2. Probably it is secret because it is people donating to the truckers from democracies like the UK and other oppressive regimes. Relative to Trudeaus Canada they are free democracies, that is!

  58. 351075+ up ticks,

    Thousands of Britons Face Lockdown Violations Appearing on Criminal Background Checks for Next Decade,

    May one suggest that if “they” the politico’s are hell bent on reset then we must oblige them surely, starting with resetting 650 political positions with common sense radical change at every voting opportunity.

    You DO NOT support & vote for bigger whips and shinier manacles unless you are a Madam Sin client.

      2. Quite common here, too.
        Ond doesn’t share a cubicle or a stall, nd each have their own sink & paper towels.
        Guys leave the seat up, glas leave it down. So??

        1. That’s the arrangement in most BBC buildings now. It works OK and the self-contained cubicles have been known to double as dressing rooms on filming days in TV Centre.

    1. Hey! Castro was a good guy by comparison. Deposed a vicious dictator and threw American gangsters out of the country. (The USA hated him because the Kennedy family were at home with gangsters. Well, maybe.)

          1. JFK’s father made a fortune as a bootlegger during prohibition and bought his son the Whitehouse.

            The were all notorious adulterers.

  62. The massed chorus of hyenas are baying for the closure of RT broadcasting in the UK. They are also demanding the defenestration of Alec Salmond.
    Free speech? Not on your Nellie duff.

  64. 351075+ up ticks,

    The political fat turkish chap is sending the guardians of the United Kingdom tooled up & abroad seemingly.

    If the shite does, heavens forbid, hit the fan and conscription is brought into play that will sort out the genders in no uncertain manner.

    Any chance of any hard core supporter / voters asking him or his squeeze
    their intentions regarding the DOVER daily invasion that is a continuing
    REA:L threat to life & limb of the indigenous peoples as has been proved.

    1. No it won’t, they’ll all claim to be women.

      So we send the female prison population out. The wokers, the greens, the Lefties, have them led by Shami Chrakrabalti and Jolyon Moronion.

      March them into Russia without equipment, same as they would the real military. They’re all nutcase communists, let them enjoy it.

    1. Clowns to the left of me!
      Jokers to the right!

      Yes, I know that’s Stealers Wheel not Tennyson but it seemed the more appropriate version!

    2. Another embarrassment like Truss. Is Boris keeping silent, or have I missed something? I thought he would be unable to restrain his flights of oratory, and would be talking about the Cossacks thundering over the horizon by now.
      Perhaps they didn’t cover the history of that part of the world in his Classics degree.

      1. Truss will have advised Johnson and the Depost (we ain’t got any Defence) Minister to mass our forces down the Western coasr of UK,
        to repulse any damned Russkie Invaders

    4. I suspect that if Putin was so minded the Russians could be at the channel ports before the likes of Wallace and co had changed their underwear.

      1. Then we will have the RIBs inflated ready to bring them across the Channel and then guide them to their new Barracks

      2. When I was stationed in Germany in the 60s we knew that, despite our strength then, the Russian could have been at Calais in 48 hours.

    5. Not very well up on history is he? The Crimean War was an outstanding example of incompetence on the part of both the British military and government.

    6. The Royal Hospital Chelsea has gone into Lockdown, to prevent the residents (Pensioners) re-enlisting

      1. FFS Ukraine is one of the richest countries in the world! How much of this money will find its way to the Clinton or Obama foundations?

    8. Ben Wallace, nicely turned out. He should be. Do these mentally-challenged people not understand that the Russians will know what he has said before he stops speaking?

      1. Vlad hates Xi. So it is an alliance of convenience. A symptom of the foolishness of the West that he is forced to make common cause with a man he regards as his enemy.

    10. At least the Daily Mail has the decency to admit that these areas are pro Russian. Only one more step and they will admit that the people there are Russians and have every right to be part of Russia.

    12. Has Wallace read any history? Has he any grasp of what military actions entail? Putin is playing at home with a huge army at his disposal and short supply lines. Likewise his air force. We have… ? This statement of Wallace’s is the stuff of the school playground. What an utterly embarrassing thing to say to troops he could commit to complete annihilation. The rank amateurs have the reins of power.

  70. And it seems that once again the lump underneath western MSM’s carpet won’t be mentioned, as in, too many ‘top people’ have become reliant on income from their Ukrainian interests. What an absolutely disgusting scenario.

    1. They say it is about the people and sovereignty.

      They don’t seem to give a flying fuck about ours.

  72. Where are SAGE and pantsdown when we really need their estimates?
    They could put Boris off getting the UK involved in Ukraine.

    Although on second thoughts they would probably say it would be all over by Christmas with zero casualties.

  73. My You Tube feed is suddenly full of Ukrainian/Russian videos. Big brother is evidently watching. But I did watch this one: History of Russia (PARTS 1-5) – Rurik to Revolution. You will note that the “ancient country” of Ukraine doesn’t get a mention, not one. Kiev is there and so is the territory but inexplicably it is either Russia or part of Polish territory, isn’t that strange? So I present the documentary for those who would like a brief history of Russia,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0Wmc8C0Eq0&t=4s

    This second one was also in my feed. Haven’t watched it so I can’t be accused of being selective by the anti-Russian contingent on here. But for everyone who wants more insight:
    I will watch the second one this evening for a thrill a minute.

    The Breakup of the Soviet Union Explained:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2GmtBCVHzY&t=53s

      1. Where did you post that Araminta? Very good 😊
        Perhaps that is why the West hates Russia. It is the last bastion of the Enlightenment and Christianity whilst the rest of the continent falls into decadence.

        1. Spectator ; How the Ukraine Crisis Ends. It was top of the Best Column and then Dales Pals appeared and voted it down!

          1. Is the Spectator worth it, should I give it another chance? Used to be there but gave up because of the socialists that were always writing articles on there.

  78. Afternoon (just about), all. I would say you could substitute Canada’s or even Boris’ for Putin’s in the headline statement.

  80. How Ukraine invasion could send cost of petrol to 170p a litre, push up energy bills by ANOTHER £700 and raise price of weekly shop. 23 February 2022

    Britons have been told to prepare for soaring fuel prices and rising food bills amid the crisis in eastern Europe.

    Following Vladimir Putin’s decision to order Russian forces into eastern Ukraine, European gas prices jumped by 13 per cent and Brent crude oil closed at almost $100 a barrel which was a seven-year high.

    While the UK is not as dependent as other European countries on Russian gas, Britain will still feel the effect of a rise in global prices, which could lead to a further £700 hike in the price cap this October.

    By the end of this year (assuming that we have not been vapourised) A very large percentage of the White Working Class will have been reduced to chronic serfdom!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10542533/Life-home-Ukraine-invasion-affect-Britain.html

    1. Ah but.

      If the EU needs all the power it can generate you can bet your bottom dollar than none will be crossing the channel to the UK

      1. Gosh! Are you saying that EDF will favour French customers? No one in our government in the last 20 years ever imagined that.

        1. That’s because no one in our government in the last 20 years ever even imagined favouring the UK for anything.

      1. I suspect that this is why the crisis has been whipped up. Friends of Biden, Johnson, et al will be coining it in. The magic Covid porridge pot has run out, and been replaced by the Ukraine “crisis”.
        If that quietens down we may look forward to a Taiwan emergency and if that does not materialise, there is the ever reliable Iran to fall back on.
        I don’t think we are going see a UK government looking out for the ordinary folk any time soon.

  82. I am signing off early. Lecture from Rome at 5 pm – then, at 6-ish a girl whom the MR taught 32+ years ago is coming to supper with her 15 year old daughter.

    Rain tomorrow – then five fine days promised. We’ll see.

    Have a jolly evening knitting red socks for brave Russian soldiers with snow on their boots.

    A demain.

  83. Nigel Farage’s record over many years has shown him to have been – and still to be – bad for Britain’s best interests. I would tag him treacherous but he still has a following of sorts. At a time when – as appeared again at today’s PMQs – the major politicial parties are united against Putin’s aggressíon and threats of more aggression, Farage is supporting Putin. By doing so, he has put himself beyond the pale. Our friends in occupied Norway had their pro-Nazi Vidkun Quisling during the second world war. Farage is our Quisling now. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/03d165bb50a65ea763e3f3e504aec05e358e88755ebc324ffb0efdcb4f14941a.png

    1. He got us a referendum.

      And even a blind person such as you should be able to see that Vlad has no choice after we dishonoured the treaties we signed allowing NATO to creep further East.

      1. Spot on – it’s always difficult when the real truth is never told because it is unpalatable to admit that we failed.

      2. Farage the Fraud, gave Doris an eighty seat majority at the last election by withdrawing his candidates.Be wary of him.

        1. Farage is a quitter. He should have allied his party to Boris, and been the kingmaker – the one who could topple the government when they give up on their Brexit promises. But no, away he went.

          3. I believe it was NATO aircraft that bombed the water pipe lines in Libya 2011. Thus cutting off peoples water supplies.

          4. Folk have always been critical of NATO. it has made a lot of mistakes.

            Yet the EU has actively caused conflict through it’s arrogance. NATO hasn’t done enough. The EU doesn’t care who suffers as long as the eurocracy gets bigger.

          5. You don’t keep something that has outlived its usefulness. You trade it in for something more capable of dealing with contemporary problems. And the contemporary problem is China, not the USSR. And those directly effected by Chinese expansionism, those with more concern than us about the CCP, are not members of NATO, are they? What would be the point?

        2. NATO was because of the threat of the USSR. It has gone, haven’t you noticed? But it is true it kept the peace until then. The EU and its inept meddling in foreign affairs has been a cause of conflict not the opposite.

        3. NATO has maintained the Peace

          The EU were the just recruiting ‘infant countries’ with promises of unheard of wealth, as long as the gave up their freedom to Brussels

        4. Well Geoffrey, if it comes to a Gawd almighty shooting match and the civilised world has to rely on one and only one alliance, which one will you choose; NATO or the EU?

          Now tell us which one really kept the peace.

          2. Anyone who suggests that ‘Biden is a great improvement in that respect’ – or any respect – should be sectioned under the Mental Health Act …

          7. You haven’t answered my question have you?

            You know damned well that the EU is a useless talking shop and nowhere has it actually kept the peace.

            Nice try with Trump, but Biden will get a lot of people killed.

            Now answer my question, if it comes to war who would you want fighting for you, NATO or the EU?
            And if it’s the EU, good luck with that.

            Don’t forget that the only really worthwhile armed forces within the EU have now left.

          9. Nope, the EU hides under the skirts of NATO.

            And you still haven’t answered my earlier enquiry as to what the petit Napoleon as “head of the EU” achieved.

            So, to save you the time:
            NOTHING, nothing whatsoever.

            Wow, what a powerful peacekeeping force the EU is.

          10. The EU wasn’t that much of a NATO supporter either. They want their own forces. They certainly never paid their due which is what pissed Trump off.

        5. Sorry, Geoffrey, but I must respond to that lie that the EU kept the peace. It didn’t.
          It was Germany’s act of prematurely recognising the independence of the break away state of Croatia, with the full agreement of the EU, that triggered the Yugoslav Civil Wars.

    2. Absolute silliness. Many of us are pro-Russian, it doesn’t make us Quislings. This hysterical reaction is bloody pathetic and infantile. And, many of us are pro Russian because we know our history and thus not subject to the crude propaganda of the government and their lackeys in the toothless press.

    3. The EU is responsible for the Russian response to Ukraine. Either you don’t know, or you ignore it’s guilt. The EU has caused more conflict than can be imagined.

      Farage also got us out of the hated EU. You must accept that that is a positive thing. It is the continuation of EU policy, the spite and malice of remoaners in the establishment who have forced illegal immigration, high taxes, the idiotic green agenda on us.

      Frankly, considering the betrayal, treachery and immature posturing of our government Putin seems a calm and rational figure.

    4. I do wish you would come on here more often, and give your opinion about all kinds of things.
      The reason is that sometimes I don’t have time to research stuff myself. But if I read your opinion, then I will know that mine should be the exact opposite.
      You’re welcome.

      1. I agreed entirely up to the last sentence – we should disagree, but be challenged to ask why we do.

        1. Sometimes I don’t have time, so I just need a general pointer in the right direction, which Geoffrey never fails to give!

        2. Geoffrey Woolenhead is a paid lackey of the EU.

          How many thousands a month were they paying you Geoffrey?

          2. I’d like to know why you support the EU, Mr Woollard. Is it a belief that it is good for economics? For security? For the vaunted ideals?

            As whatever it is, I can easily shatter your delusions until you’re left with the truth that it is a toxic midden for failed, corrupt communists desperate for power over others.

          3. Mainly because the EU has “kept the peace” in Eurp since 1945. He really DOES believe that.

          6. Good afternoon, Geoffrey

            I must say you are very evasive and never actually seem to respond to the points that are put to you.

            You were here a couple of days ago and I asked what your reaction is to the tyrannical behaviour of Justin Trudeau.

    5. Qvisling was a bit different, Geoffrey.
      After the Narsties invaded, he tried to take over the government, and the Narsties let him, as the useful idiot. That doesn’t translate to the UK, as nobody has invaded (yet). Qvisling was shot at the end of the war.
      I don’t condone invasion, but I think the case is rather more nuanced than presented in the press – Russia bad, West good. Whether it’s like Hitler invading the Sudetenland, then things going further, I don’t know, but Putin has got pretty much all he wants as far as I can tell, being the territories bordering Russia, with absolutely minimal outlay of resources. Why would he go further? In any case, the “please don’t be beastly” response of the West is pathetic. If the US wants to fight Russia, I’d prefer that they didn’t. The buildup necessary to do that would take forever – just look at how long it took to prepare to invade Iraq, and Russia is not a nation of towelheads.
      Personally, and I believe Farage to be a quitter and not worthy of listening to, he’s basically right. The West had an opportunity to be friendly to Russia, instead spitting on their shoe, and are now reaping the reward.

    6. You haven’t seen or heard the interview with BBCs Victoria Derbyshire and Lord Richard (retired General) Donnatt a week ago. It seems Nigel may well have seen it.
      And the news that there are a few top people in or attached to the white house who have a vested financial interest in Ukraine oil and gas.

    7. Dear Geoffrey, you still are a Woollard mind in a woollard hat if you really believe that and that Russia is bad. We’ve moved on from the USSR and the Cold War and it’s the UK, US and EU who are war-mongering, to divert attention from their problems at home. Ukraine has been just the diversion they seek.

    8. Putin is only reacting in the same way that the USA reacted to the Cuban missile crises.
      In any case the world has moved on, there are no good guys any more, just the WEF controlled West, Putin’s Russia and communist China

    9. And Macron, the vaunted revolving President of the mighty EU achieved what precisely?

      SFA to a jam tart.

    1. It won’t last long. The pharma part of the scam is close to collapsing already.
      Unfortunately, that won’t stop the day of reckoning for the dollar, and the elite’s attempt to turn our homes into digital concentration camps via the digital currency.

  87. I am puzzled …

    Russians invading Russian speaking areas of border of Ukraine

    Ethnics/ non English speaking non Christian Halal chomping hordes invading south coast of Britain, no figures are being released into the Public Domain since 28,000 invaded last year. Wh the secrecy

    Can’t we protect out borders like Ukraine , who are now recieving help from Nato … and Boris providing arms .

    Don’t we matter, , why is our culture being trashed , and who cares about us ?????????

    The Kremlin under Putin has generally promoted conservative values, and Cossacks have emerged as avatars for all that is Russian, and have been described as similar to cowboys for the United States or samurai in Japan. Their legacy, however, is also bound up with vigilante-style violence and their historical role against Muslim invaders and Jews.

    3. Increasingly, they have taken on the role of culture warriors. During the Sochi Olympics in 2014, Cossacks attacked members of the Punk protest group Pussy Riot as they filmed a scene for a music video in downtown Sochi. They protested a Ukrainian dance boy band called Kazaky (which means Cossacks) for their high-heeled routines, which the Cossacks equated to “gay propaganda.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/18/4-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-cossacks-fighting-russias-opposition-groups/

    1. Logic and justice are nowhere in the question unfortunately. Only preparation for the great reset.

  88. Seems as if the sanctions are working…………………in Russia’s favour.

    European prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exceeded $1,000 per 1,000 cubic meters on Wednesday, marking a daily growth of more than 7%, according to Intercontinental Exchange’s London clearing house.

    The March futures on the title transfer facility hub in the Netherlands traded at $1,004.7 per 1,000 cubic meters, marking a 7.8% increase from Tuesday, when the gas was trading at $932.3.

      1. Germany threatens to stop receiving gas from Russia – and that will teach who?
        Nose, face, cut.
        Idiots, they are. And the price of fuel goes up when there’s some disturbance to the regular peaceful rhythms of life.

  89. The US administration has been assessing it’s diplomatic response to
    Russia’s imminent invasion, on a scale of economic sanctions to outright
    war.

    Biden: “Any oil in the Ukraine worth having?”

    “No, Mr President.”

    Biden: “Any Jews there?”

    “Hardly any.”

    Biden: “OK. Tell Putin he owes us twenty bucks for those overdue library
    books.”

    1. I think the conversation went
      Biden: Will we still be able to use Ukraine for money-laundering?
      “Yes, Mr President”

    2. Biden: “How are my approval ratings?”
      “Not good”
      Biden: “Many BLM supporters in Ukraine?”
      “No Mr President”
      Biden: “OK, bomb Ukraine”
      “But Mr President, we are pretending Ukraine is on our side”
      Biden: “Oh”

  90. Celebrated 31 year-old black rights promoter, DJ and producer Jamal
    Edwards died this week of completely natural causes, following a late
    night DJing gig at a North London club.

    In completely unrelated news, excess cocaine use can cause a sudden
    heart attack.

  92. The Cold War went on for many decades. during that time I seem to remrmber that the terms “Soviet Union” and “Russia” were used interchangeably and without distinction.
    We did not like the Soviet Union. We were prepared to drop nuclear bombs all over the place, that’s how much we disliked the Soviet Union.
    Although Russia is not the Soviet Union it seems that the USA and the MSM, our government and others are very much of the mindset that sees them being identical. Calling Russia the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union, Russia, was careless talk.
    We can remember from WW2 that “careless talk costs lives”.

    4. A word to the wise, don’t use that gasmask, chances are it’s full of asbestos.

      BUT given our ages,chances are we’ll die of Putin or old age before that!

    6. We had a gas mask like that at home (it was kept in the bottom of the wardrobe, for some reason). Our tin hat didn’t have a material cover, though.

          7. I thought you two had a hate love hate relationship, I had put it down to your normal perversity.

            I apologise.

      1. But, but, but … we were told to hide under a table or against a wall beneath a window, not just stand there.

        1. I thought the idea was to put your head between your legs so that you could kiss your arse goodbye when the bomb went off.

          1. That was for the military (it was written on the wall of the Elsan compartment in our ROC bunker). Civilians had to be encouraged to think they would come through.

    9. OMG! Is there another Covid variant more deadly than… er, all the others put together on the way?

  95. Goodnight (in the sense of going home from the hunting field), everyone. I’m off to have a soak in a hot Radox bath after my dressage test this afternoon (and having walked two miles a day on Monday and Tuesday getting my camper sorted).

      2. We completed all the movements in the right order and didn’t miss anything out 🙂 We were late making the transition on some markers and the figure of 8 (15m circle left at X then 15m circle right at X proceed to B) was decidedly unround (and I overshot X on the second one). Apart from that, it was fine. Coolio is no Valegro and I’m definitely no Charlotte Dujardin!

    1. It was said that his security council had voted unanimously to recognise the Donbass republics, so I guess he had no choice.

        1. Whoring with prostitutes. Taking drugs and taking millions from a corrupt regime. Allegedly.

          Actually he was on a sight seeing tour of Cathedrals and donated to children’s charities.

          1. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was an Epsteinian sperm donor to any children involved.

          3. Very true and very sad.
            What concerns me is that so few of the great, and the good, and the elite, and the wealthy, have no moral compass whatsoever.

            Bring on the piano wire.

            On 99 things out of 100 I disagree with BLM but when they talk about comeuppance I’m with them all the way.
            And I do appreciate I will be one of their victims.

    2. I think he has pulled a blinder. He has all the globalist stooges in a panic. Making threats they cannot follow through on.

    5. Maybe he is, let’s face it, most of the world is ‘fubar’ at the moment.
      He probably looks at the possibility of China dominance, America has really lost the plot with a weak (corrupt?) leadership. The EU can’t be taken seriously when it comes to international diplomacy and UK are more interested in investigating parties or prosecuting people for ‘wrong think’.
      He probably thinks there was never a good time, but now is the best opportunity Russia will ever get: jump before China makes it impossible.

  98. Has anybody news of Peddy? Has he quit Nottl? It can’t take this long to fix a broken internet connection, even in the Peoples Republic of Englandland.

    1. He has not replied to emails but I do know that a friend of his was going through some difficult times. My guess is that Peddy is being a care giver to his friend.
      I really do hope he’s OK but- look- it’s up to him whether he returns or not. I was absent 10 months last year for various reasons….nobody missed me- sob…;-)

      2. Peddy comforting a friend in need may well need support himself. That can be hard work and very stressful!
        Hope he’s OK.

        2. That is only a guess- I don’t know for sure. Have sent another mail tonight but, as stated, it is up to Peddy if he responds or not.

    1. They’ll be happier after they’ve had a swift swallow, Martin.

      (Sorry, Phizz, addressed to the wrong person.)

  105. Things could be worse.
    “This day in 1836, during the Texas war for independence, Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna began a siege of the Alamo, which was captured after 13 days and which became for Texans a symbol of heroic resistance.”

      3. ‘The.Alamo’ is the best password to use for computers ‘n’ stuff.
        That, or ‘5thNovember’

  106. Don’t forget tomorrow

    Thursday 24th February 12.01 am – Freedom Day

    Thursday 24th February 12.02 am – War with Russia, emergency measures reimposed.

    1. It’s a day i won’t forget.

      I have a funeral to go to.

      Elderly neighbour. Her two sons aren’t going. The whole street is turning out to give her a good send off.

      The service is in the church she was married in last year. The reason for her sons not being there for her. They could only think about their inheritance. The little sods.

      I will not be wearing a mask. Ever again.

      1. Funerals are the worst. That really, final, farewell. Can’t abide them.
        So how does inheritance stop you saying farewell to your Mum? Or did she disinherit them?

          1. My husband’s eldest son was/is delighted that we married. My son, however, took a long time to come round. Even though he told me he knew what a pain in the arse his father was. My son is now very OK with everything.

          3. It’s good to know that everything is turning out well for you and that you are happy with your new man ;-))

          4. My mother never remarried. She had the opportunity but just wouldn’t commit because she was worried about what the boys (that’s her sons) would think. Even though we all said go ahead and get married, she just wouldn’t say yes.

            He had a massive heart attack and died.

        2. Quite often you catch up with people you haven’t seen for a few years and because of the now missing friend, with possible loss of contact with mutual acquaintances, you will probably never see those people again.
          I lost three life long friends last year.

    3. Hundreds, maybe a thousand protesters wil, really scare Putin – especially when they are in London.

      Shall we send in some truckers to help?

  108. It’s a time for celebration but the hardest thing of all will be to remember who we were before

    By following ‘the science’, some of the population were given the feeling of being morally superior. Who knew virtue could be addictive?

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Please don’t let us underestimate what a remarkable moment it was on Monday when the Prime Minister announced his “living with Covid plan” to MPs. It was exactly 700 days – a hundred emotional and exhausting weeks – since he first pressed pause on our national life. While France still requires vaccine certification to enter a café or faire pipi, and cute, caring, herbivorous Canada has accessed its inner Adolf, declaring a state of emergency and freezing the bank accounts of truck drivers who dare to oppose mandatory jabs, our country has been able to restore people’s freedom faster than any almost anywhere else.

    Yes, of course, there have been errors, some of them bloody awful. But Boris is right. The fact we are among the very first to accept Covid is no longer an unique threat, that it will now have to take its place among the other respiratory viruses which return every winter, should be a source of national pride. “Rejoice!” as another PM once put it. Whatever the precautionary-principle pessimists may say, and we will be hearing their long roar of defeat in the coming days, we must absolutely come together and celebrate the extraordinary preciousness of things once again being ordinary.

    If it had been up to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Brothers Grim (Whitty and Vallance), the Welsh Warlock of Woe Mark Drakeford, Nicola Sturgeon shamelessly leveraging the pandemic for nationalist advantage, the entire broadcast media (forever demanding more restrictions), Professor Neil Pantsdown or any of the other expert hysterics on SAGE, we’d be in our fourth lockdown now and preparing a Covid vaccine rollout to domestic pets. To “stay safe”!

    Admittedly, it’s taken a while for people to start to understand that locking up the nation to be “safe” is not only risky, it doesn’t work. Or not for long. Any benefits are soon outweighed by the calamitous consequences – an epidemic of mental illness, toddler speech delay, soaring domestic abuse, the huge numbers of excess deaths in the home, lost education, the missing urgent cancer referrals, an NHS waiting list set to nudge 10 million by 2024… Oh, and a couple of trillion quid down the plughole.

    In addition to a first-rate vaccination programme, which reduced the threat of serious illness for the older and more vulnerable, the reason we are able to lift all remaining Covid restrictions tomorrow is because the Cabinet, under pressure from some sterling Tory freedom fighters, finally pinned fast its courage to the sticking post, ignored “the science” (which was nothing of the sort) and opened up the country last July. Never forget the way the Labour leader laid into the PM for that “reckless” decision. “The Johnson variant is out of control and risks a summer of chaos,” said the sneer that is Keir.

    How wrong he was. Allowing the virus to do its thing in the milder weather, infecting much of the younger, healthy population, built the mighty wall of immunity that protects us all today.

    With impeccable timing, the Queen got omicron and is continuing with “light duties”. In the nicest possible way, Her Majesty is telling her subjects: “Look, I’m 95 years old. Half my family are carrying on like ‘trailer trash'” – perhaps that should be horse-box trash? – “If I can work through this damn thing, then you lot should just get on with it!”

    Of course it’s time to declare an end to the pandemic and discontinue the free tests which have become a placebo for the worried well. Healthy children should never have been tested so remorselessly and forced to stay home, losing vital days of schooling. Besides, the tests are hardly “free”. The same people who want to keep the tests will be squealing about the Chancellor’s forthcoming tax rises to claw back their cost.

    What people need to get into their heads is that it simply doesn’t matter how much omicron spreads now because everyone is going to get it. Think of the protective bubble they threw around the Queen. It didn’t prevent her eventually catching the virus. According to some studies, Covid-19 is believed to have similar infection fatality rate to seasonal flu for the under-75s (actually, some studies suggest Covid is less lethal than flu for children). Take heart, dear reader, this is no longer that “lethal virus” of two years ago. We must exercise our muscle memory and recover the use of “personal responsibility”.

    Naturally, millions still feel anxious because they were never allowed to acquire a sense of proportion. Many tactical fibs were told to get us to comply with measures which made little or no sense. “Some people will keep wearing masks,” said Sir John Bell, Oxford professor of medicine and vaccine eminence grise, speaking earlier this week on Radio 4, “but wearing masks didn’t help us with omicron. Wear masks all you like, it doesn’t make any difference.”

    Asked by presenter Sarah Montague how he viewed the lifting of Covid measures, Sir John laughed: “You shouldn’t have to talk to me much longer – which should be a relief.”

    If only other scientists would emulate Sir John’s graceful, modest exit from the national stage. But they won’t. Backroom lab boys and mathematical modelling nerds have got a taste for the limelight. Predictably, it was just minutes before an open letter, signed by 1000 individuals including members of Independent SAGE, criticised the plan to “end testing, surveillance surveys and legal isolation” arguing it had “no solid scientific basis”.

    Many of those same scientists, plenty of them politically motivated, have opposed every previous attempt to lift restrictions, issuing bloodcurdling predictions of thousands of dead if their warnings were ignored. Then had the nerve to insist they were merely “scenarios” when they proved to be out by a mile.

    It’s not only the boffins who will need to be weaned off their addiction. John Keats wrote that he had been “half in love with easeful Death”. I’m afraid that Covid has cast that kind of hypnotic spell over the population. It changed all of us.

    Previously, in wars, governments used propaganda to unite the British people against a common enemy. In this pandemic, propaganda was used to create a wedge between those who complied with the rules and those who broke them. Even when human frailty, or desperate need, compelled them to. Giving some of the population the feeling of being morally superior to others was a roaring success. Who knew virtue could be addictive?

    On Thursday, all remaining Covid restrictions will be lifted. This strange and terrible and exciting time draws to a close. It’s a time for celebration, but there will be withdrawal symptoms. We must set aside our differences and help one another. Perhaps the hardest thing of all will be to remember who we were before. And then try and get them back. Your country needs them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/02/22/time-celebration-hardest-thing-will-remember/

    2. Really, so does that mean there will be no extra forms or proofs required when crossing the border at Dover?

  109. Tin pot dictator has just canceled the Emergency Act, claiming that it has been used successfully but the emergency is now over.

    Closer to the truth perhaps is the rough time that the Senate has been giving the government over passage of the act. A lot of unhappy bunnies were driving trucks through holes in the arguments for having the Act invoked.

    Today I was called a peddler of fake news. I commented on a YouTube posting of a conservative senator ripping into the Liberal spokesman for the Act. Apparently anything on social media that doesn’t agree with the woke way is fake – even if it is an excerpt from the official government broadcast.

    Must verify that my bank account still exists.

  110. Exit left, Emily Maitlis – all that was wrong with BBC current affairs

    The rule-breaking presenter has given the BBC’s enemies plenty of ammunition. But her departure gives Tim Davie a golden opportunity

    ROBIN AITKEN

    The departure of Emily Maitlis from the BBC to join LBC will be greeted with jubilation by her many critics who came to see her as one of the worst serial offenders in the ongoing controversy about BBC impartiality.

    Maitlis, along with Jon Sopel, the BBC’s outgoing North America Editor, are off to host a new podcast for Global – the parent company of LBC. And, perhaps contrary to expectations, there will be some sighs of relief within the Corporation’s own ranks. For the truth is that many BBC journalists have tired of her political antics. Every time she broke the rules – whether on air or by her voluminous tweeting – she gave more ammunition to the BBC’s enemies at a time when its future is under existential threat.

    Her most blatant breach of the rules came during the Dominic Cummings trip-to-Barnard-Castle controversy during the first lockdown in 2020. Mr Cummings was discovered to have travelled north from London apparently contravening the rules on travel (though subsequently the police found no law was broken). Maitlis took the opportunity to begin an edition of Newsnight with what was, in effect, a long opinion piece which began “Dominic Cummings broke the rules…The country can see that and it is shocked the government cannot.”

    Number Ten complained about her editorialising and the BBC rapidly issued an apology. But Maitlis herself was unrepentant, defiantly telling an interviewer who asked her if she regretted her outburst: “No I don’t. It hasn’t ever been explained to me what was journalistically inaccurate about that,” she said.

    Her response inadvertently illustrated exactly what the problem was. Maitlis apparently didn’t understand the difference between reporting what had happened – which is the proper job of the BBC – and giving us her opinion about it. The problem wasn’t, as she seemed to imagine, about factual accuracy but about drawing the proper line between news and commentary.

    The Newsnight incident focused public attention on Maitlis’s political stance. She became something of a lightning rod for all those who have lost patience with the BBC’s ingrained political biases. Her tweets were combed through and there was plenty of evidence that her political sympathies were firmly on the left. In advance of the 2019 general Election, for instance, she tweeted: “Don’t underestimate the similarities between Get Brexit Done and Make America Great Again – they each work if they are consistently repeated and chanted – and never explained.” That kind of unflattering comparison made it crystal clear where Maitlis was coming from.

    With her departure the question immediately arises, did she jump or was she pushed? There is no evidence that her decision to leave the Corporation was not entirely her own – doubtless Global will have offered generous terms – but nevertheless her exit will come as a relief to the Corporation’s high command.

    Ever since the Director General Tim Davie announced that his first priority was to restore the BBC’s reputation for impartiality, BBC-watchers like myself, have been looking out for signs that things are changing – so far without sighting any. But with Maitlis gone – even if by her own volition – an obstacle to Davies’ reform plans is removed.

    The case of Jon Sopel is slightly different. He never attracted the same amount of criticism as Maitlis but many observers, this one included, reckoned that his coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency showed clear anti-Trump bias. That’s certainly what the man himself thought, as witnessed in a White House press conference in 2017. Sopel asked a question about the so-called ‘Muslim travel ban’. Which prompted the following exchange:

    Trump : “Where are you from?”
    Sopel: “The BBC.”
    Trump: “Good, here’s another beauty.”
    Sopel: “It’s a good line. (Laughter) Impartial, free and fair.”
    Trump: “Yeah, sure…just like CNN right?”

    With good reason CNN was Trump’s least-favourite network; it promoted an obsessively anti-Trump, slavishly pro-Democrat editorial line. In Trump’s mind the BBC was much the same and, from my own observation, I’d say he had a point. The BBC was opposed to Trump from the outset of his presidency; its coverage was relentlessly negative and it gave headline billing to every story which showed him in a bad light. The tone of its coverage changed markedly when Biden was elected: the BBC’s biases are nothing if not consistent.

    The question is what happens now. Maitlis and Sopel are not the only high-profile journalists who have left the Corporation recently; there has been quite an outflow in recent months prompting headlines about a “BBC brain-drain”, leading to worries about the loss of experience and authority. But, while experience matters, it is also true that the removal of some famous faces from BBC output makes for room at the top – and with it a precious opportunity for the BBC to show that its “reform” agenda is not just empty words.

    There are some crucial roles that need to be filled; the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, will soon leave her post and her replacement will be under minute scrutiny for balance and impartiality. Jon Sopel was one of the names often mentioned as a possible successor but with him, and other prospective candidates, now out of the running the field looks very open. Meanwhile the editor’s job at Newsnight is also up for grabs after the current editor, Esme Wren, announced her move to Channel 4 News. These are important roles, and who gets the jobs will be a useful indicator of whether real change is underway at the BBC.

    To propitiate a government convinced that the BBC is biased against it, it was always going to be necessary for there to be visible change. Fine words are one thing, but they butter no parsnips. For as long as Emily Maitlis graced the Newsnight studio there was always going to be a question mark about the sincerity of the BBC’s intentions; if a notorious anti-Tory, the very embodiment of a liberal-left media-type, could stay in her prominent post what, exactly, did “reform” mean?

    Some time this year it is expected that the BBC will initiate a series of promised impartiality reviews of its output. This could involve close analysis of Newsnight, and that programme will stand a better chance of achieving a clean bill of health if it can demonstrate a semblance of political balance among its presenters.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2022/02/22/goodbye-emily-maitlis-wrong-bbc-current-affairs/

    1. I saw a video of the planned digital ID in Canada just now, can’t find it. Looked pretty fascist to me, a blending of government and big corporations. All for your convenience of course.

    2. I wish that you would post warnings before showing the village idiot.
      Obviously polls of the senate showed him losing the vote and that would have bruised his ego.

      I don’t believe it is over, they wanted to make the financial penalties permanent, he doesn’t give up that easily.

    3. These are the people that successive political leaders in Britain have wanted to come to Britain

  113. I AM ENJOYING THIS:

    Sometimes it doesn’t pay to invest with the Davos/WEF/Globalist crowd.

    Moderna. Pushed a lot by (shareholders) Fauci and Gates**. Peaked at $497 early September 2021 … closed tonight at $135 … I make that a loss of over 70% in less than 6 months …

    https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/MRNA

    See also:

    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4489413-can-moderna-bulls-stomach-shrinking-covid-19-vaccine-sales

    ** Dr John Campbell coulldn’t understand why Bill Gates said recently that “SADLY, the Omicron variant is mild and spreading immunity … ” I might write to Campbell and explain ..

    1. Insurance Man is riding to our rescue!
      I don’t think it will stop the digital ids and currencies though.

    2. I am shocked Lotl

      When and how did this occur , and what a terrible worry .

      Who have you offended .. please don’t be upset if you have .

      A melanoma .. how long has that been going on for .. Insist on help ASAP. xx Either that or walk into A+E .

  119. Hooda Gestit?

    French tennis player, Gael Montfils, has been advised to withdraw from his current tennis competition because of the adverse effects that his third dose of Covid gene therapy has had on his heart.

    I wonder if the unvaccinated Novax Djokovic will be the only international tennis player still standing?

  122. Good night and God bless my fellow NoTTLers, it seems the tide may be turning and we’ll see the overcome of the woke twats ASAP.

  123. BBC World Service

    The Russo-Ukrainian war that started in 2014 has reached a new intensity in the last 24 hours as Putin authorises a ‘peace enforcement process’ in the disputed ‘independent ceasefire zone’ of Donbass. Explosions in Ukrainian cities have been reported and are believed to have been drone attacks on military targets in the country.

    The Ukrainian parliament is assembling at this moment to enact Martial Law – something that one Ukrainian MP said should have been done in 2014.

      1. Seems like as we suspected, the EU is the cause of war in Europe rather than keeping the peace as it likes to proclaim.

      2. Morning Minty
        Ukranians are being treated like Klingons – We come in peace, shoot to kill!,

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