Thursday 24 February: British sanctions need to go much further if they are to hit Putin’s Russia where it hurts

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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814 thoughts on “Thursday 24 February: British sanctions need to go much further if they are to hit Putin’s Russia where it hurts”

  2. British sanctions need to go much further if they are to hit Putin’s Russia where it hurts

    It appears that Western Governments only know how to apply sanctions on their own people these days.
    At least the troubles in the Ukraine might make them all wake up and realise that we the people are not the enemy.

    1. I doubt it, because the truth is we ARE the biggest enemy of politicians who work for the WEF.

  5. Russia launches Ukraine invasion as Putin declares war to ‘demilitarise’ neighbour. 24 February 2022.

    Explosions from artillery rockets lit up the night sky as shelling began near Mariupol, video showed. A senior adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry said that it appeared Russian troops may soon move on Kharkiv, which is about 20 miles from the border, and the Black Sea port of Odesa in an amphibious landing. Locals in Kyiv sought safety in bomb shelters as explosions were heard outside the city.

    “Putin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” said Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. “Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes. This is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend itself and will win. The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”

    The seizure of Odessa would imply that Vlad is going to take the whole country! My own impression; though I don’t know any Ukrainians (Or Russian’s either for that matter) is that this will be pretty brief. As in Afghanistan we will see mass surrenders and a swift legging it for the nearest airport or border as soon as the pressure comes on! The arms we have sent them will; as there, prove to be a futile gesture.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/24/russia-attacks-ukraine-news-vladimir-putin-zelenskiy-russian-invasion

      1. A large number of formerly life long Republican voters voted for him.

        Had they still been alive at the time, they’d have been furious!

        1. Thank you. How wonderful! I must go and see it one day. Bet it’s spectacular when it freezes too!

      1. They won’t be satisfied until there isn’t a single white person left on the planet, and then they would start on anyone with white ancestors.

        1. Not a clue who she is but do grow up Janel, please.
          I wonder if she’s ever heard of the saying regarding ’empty vessels’?

    1. I realise the model is standing on a plinth, but judging by the lass in the picture, it looks larger than I expected.

        1. What is ironic is that much of that is fake. Apparently Nelson was so vain he had bling put on his uniform so he looked impressive. Thus making himself an obvious target.

      2. I never knew that Shirley Williams now works at the National Maritime Museum. (Good morning, Annie, btw.)

        EDIT: My apologies for this post; it is in poor taste. I have just discovered that Shirley Williams passed away in April last year, less than a year ago.

    1. Side note: BKK is a private insurance company that provides social health insurance policies according to the rules laid down by the government, so that they are affordable for ordinary people.
      We don’t have this kind of semi-independent input in the UK.

      1. When in hospital in Thailand (motorbike,yes yes,I was that stupid) I found a gleaming marble palace,so clean you could have eaten off the floors,equipped with all the most modern gizmos (MRI etc) all indivdual rooms in pods of eight lavishly staffed by 1 senior nurse 3 qualified nurse and 3 trainees per shift
        Excellent menu too
        I assumed it was very expensive no problem I was insured I was amazed to discover it was the main hospital for the Garbage Workers insurance health plan.
        NHS?? Envy of the world
        Laff ,I nearly split my stiches

      1. Fun fact: Ciabatta loaves, invented as recently as 1958, are known as “little slippers” due to their shape and size.

  17. Britain’s spies told to check their ‘white privilege’ and stop saying ‘manpower’. 24 February 2022.

    The UK’s spies are being urged to consider their “white privilege” as Europe braces for war.

    The chiefs of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have told staff to avoid using words such as “manpower”, “strong” and “grip” because these can “reinforce dominant cultural patterns”.

    The guidance, from a leaked dossier titled “Mission Critical”, was published internally on Dec 6 amid fears that Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine.

    If one were to look for something to illustrate the utter rottenness and decadence of the British State this would serve admirably!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/24/britains-spies-told-check-white-privilege-stop-saying-manpower/

  18. No way would Putin have tolerated Ukraine joining the EU or Nato. It should have been left as a buffer state and the EU should not have tried to bring it into the EU. I blame the EU.

    1. But that the EU tried, thus provoking Russia is where this all stems from. No mention of that in the press, is there?

    3. The unelected Horse Face Ashton has blood on her fetlocks, along with Miguel Barrosa and Drunken Juncker. As you suggest, their insistence on pushing east to feed the Brussels/Strasbourg gravy train brought the current situation about but from the days of the ECSC in 1951 the French jockey on the German horse have been single-minded in their expansion plans.

  19. No way would Putin have tolerated Ukraine joining the EU or Nato. It should have been left as a buffer state and the EU should not have tried to bring it into the EU. I blame the EU.

    2. According to my external thermometer this evening, the outside temperature was minus 21 degrees! A wire had worked loose; it was actually plus three.

        1. I have one of those, too, but mine is kept in the greenhouse. I have an indoor/outdoor thermometer in the kitchen.

  21. Kremlin mouthpiece faces Ofcom probe: Nadine Dorries orders watchdog to take action against Russia Today over its coverage of Ukraine crisis. 24 February 2022.

    Nadine Dorries yesterday ordered Ofcom to take ‘timely and transparent’ action against Russia Today amid growing concerns it is spreading propaganda during the Ukraine crisis.

    The Culture Secretary wrote to the broadcast regulator to raise concerns that the Kremlin-backed outfit could ‘look to spread harmful disinformation’ in the UK.

    It is Truth that Government fears not “Harmful Disinformation“!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10544997/Nadine-Dorries-orders-watchdog-action-against-Russia-Today-coverage-Ukraine-crisis.html#comments

    1. Seriously, RT is providing an alternative viewpoint. I am not a Russia analyst, but I want to hear both sides of the story, not just the hysteria in the British press, some of which is frankly absurd.

    2. They’ve managed to completely ignore the BBC’s propaganda for decades, now all of a sudden, they want to shut down RT.

      Pathetic cowards.

  24. Not so good a morning…….

    Share

    British sanctions will need to go much further if they are to hit Putin’s Russia where it hurts

    SIR – As someone once involved in countering illicit finance in various forms, I would argue that the “first barrage” of British sanctions against Russia (report, February 23) lack any significant operational bite.

    Sadly, they reaffirm Britain’s recent propensity for light-touch interventions against Russian elites and amount to little more than political window dressing.

    This is a watershed moment. Further measures need to target the oligarch trustees – seemingly known to the British authorities – who manage Vladimir Putin’s wealth.

    Dr Marc Parker

    Bangor, Co Down

    SIR – Vladimir Putin must be trembling. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, is threatening a few sanctions, and something about the Champions League not taking place in St Petersburg. I can just see those Russian tanks turning around.

    Stefan Badham

    Portsmouth, Hampshire

    SIR – Sanctions need to hit Russians where it hurts.

    All yachts should be banned from territorial waters outside Russia, and all private jets should be banned from non-Russian airspace. Any already in port or on the ground should be impounded. The children of Russian parents should be excluded from British schools. These sanctions would be carefully targeted to hurt only the wealthy, as it is they who support Mr Putin (for their own selfish reasons).

    If Emmanuel Macron is serious about stopping Mr Putin, he should also ban all Russians from French ski resorts. Failure to apply such sanctions would send the message that the West intends to let Mr Putin have what he thinks is his part of Ukraine.

    Huw Wynne-Griffith

    London W8

    SIR – Vladimir Putin and his gang are no more interested in diplomacy than were Hitler or Genghis Khan.

    He despises Western politicians as weak, indecisive hand-wringers, and is no doubt counting on a response that is disunited and based on fine words rather than meaningful action.

    British, EU and Nato leaders, steeped in 21st-century sensitivities, must show that they are also willing and able to meet an act reminiscent of 19th-century aggression with suitable fortitude, toughness and courage. That is the only currency Mr Putin respects.

    Mark Mortimer

    Blandford Forum, Dorset

    SIR – Charles Moore (Comment, February 19) is right that the West has for too long pretended that Vladimir Putin is not the enemy.

    With Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, this illusion has now come crashing down. However, to suggest that the West has lost is too defeatist.

    Sanctions are one option, but they will not work as a deterrent and will be seen only as a punishment. The free world must rally round Ukraine and give it all the support it can, both on and off the battlefield, to deter Mr Putin from further aggression. The only way to stop a bully is to give him a bloody nose. The only safe course is to arm Ukraine to the hilt and make sure Mr Putin gets one.

    M J Svoboda

    Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany

    SIR – Margaret Thatcher, anticipating a long and bitter miners’ strike, ensured that enough coal was stockpiled to last the country a year.

    How much fuel has been stockpiled by our Government to ensure continuity in the event that supplies get constricted?

    Gerald Penney

    Teignmouth, Devon

    SIR – Is there no one in Russia’s high command capable of seizing Vladimir Putin’s war machine and putting it to good use by executing a coup and ridding the country of this tyrant?

    It’s hard to believe that ordinary Russians want to inflict such pain on their friendly neighbours.

    Bob Stebbings

    Chorleywood, Hertfordshire

    1. The children of Russian parents should be excluded from British schools. These sanctions would be carefully targeted to hurt only the wealthy, as it is they who support Mr Putin

      Actually Huw these people are opposed to Vladimir Putin. That is why they live in the UK!

    2. Lots of good points here, but no mention of the need for cyber attacks from the west. If we are not doing so now, when will we? Surely more effective than making shopping a bit more difficult for a few oligarchs??

    3. Gerald Penney does not understand that our government has no intention of averting a crisis that they can use as cover to roll out the digital currency.

    4. Stop the EUFA Champions League Final being played in St Petersburg but continue with the FIFA World Cup Finals in Qatar. Joined up thinking was never a strong point of our ‘weak, indecisive hand-wringers’.

  25. Vintage put-down

    SIR – The delightful obituary of Anthony Barton (February 22) reminded me of a visit I once made to Château Léoville Barton, when I experienced first hand his way of putting down the pompous.

    In our group were a number of Russians, clearly intent on seeing if an investment in a vineyard might be a good vehicle for laundering money. One, “a merchant banker in Zurich”, asked: “Your malolactic fermentation, is it done in the barrel or the tank?”

    Barton shook his head sadly and replied: “I make my wine the same way as old grandfather Tom, and he made a decent drop of plonk.”

    Dr Michael Baxendine

    Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire

    2. In our group were a number of Russians, clearly intent on seeing if an investment in a vineyard might be a good vehicle for laundering money.

      And how many picked up on this passage of the letter as indicating a prime reason why relations with Russia soured after the collapse of the USSR? The West’s carpet-baggers facilitating the money laundering activities of the ex-KGB nomenklatura?

  28. Yo All

    Sanctions are already working, due to the shortages of oil and gas their prices will rise alarmingly Here

    1. Morning OLT. All this Ukraine outrage is actually in the cause of disguising the oncoming domestic crisis and blaming Vlad for it!

    2. Which is precisely what Boris wants.

      A screaming Lefty green liberal nutcase I know said that gas getting expensive was good, and that we must all be forced to use less of it.

      I asked when he’d be happy taking a 90% salary cut. He argued he would, for the good of the planet. Righty, get on with it then. When it comes down to it, they’re all hypocrites.

    1. Except the Democrats are not aggressive Rottweilers. They’re pathetic, badly trained, carried in a hand bag Bischon Frise.

  32. It’s a sad, sad day today as Europe is once again plunged into war by a dictator trying to build a new empire.

    On a relatively trivial but connected issue, I see Putin’s propagandists are here spewing more pro-Putin and anti-western propaganda. I joined this site shortly after it started when it was a vibrant and interesting forum for reasoned and balance discussion with large numbers of posters. However, the interesting posts and funny memes that I enjoy are becoming fewer and harder to find as the forum deteriorates into an anti-western and anti-vaccination mouthpiece and echo chamber for fewer and fewer people, already a tiny fraction of people in this country. Finding ignoring the latter themes ever harder, I have from time-to-time responded with facts and a more balanced view. However, I now find myself unable to stomach what I consider to be evil propaganda. There are far better places for me, including the DT. I have therefore decided to stop visiting here.

    I wish the good people here well. As for the others – you know who you are – your propaganda will fall on fewer ears.

    1. We’ve seen off numerous Government Trolls peddling Globalist Propaganda on this site. Your departure will make little difference! It is noticeable that we at least allow others to speak!

    2. We’ve seen off numerous Government Trolls peddling Globalist Propaganda on this site. Your departure will make little difference! It is noticeable that we at least allow others to speak!

    3. Who’re we talking about here?

      We’re got the wretched Carries Johnson, the useless Biden, the embarrassing Camel Harris – who cannot string a sentence together without a speech writer, Arden trying to make New Zealand into a communist empire of her own, Truedat so terrified he’d lose his power that he even revoked the emergency powers act he had applied to keep it, the entire eurorracy, strangely silent all of a sudden as they hide their guilt…

      And then there’s Putin. Who, if he ignored Ukraine and left it alone would be welcomed to the UK by a purple haired, nutcase, Left wing bunch of socialist fascists demanding he obey their pronouns.

  33. The Guardianistas are rallying the troops

    Opinion Climate crisis

    To Tory MPs seeking to derail the green agenda, I say watch out – we’re coming for you

    Gemma Rogers
    In Wycombe, voters have set up Steve Baker Watch to send him a message. His Net Zero Scrutiny Group should heed it too

    ‘If you examine Baker’s record you see that, time and time again, he votes against the interests of poorer people.’ Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
    Wed 23 Feb 2022 15.44 GMT

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/23/tory-mps-derail-green-agenda-steve-baker-net-zero-scrutiny-gr

    1. Politics

      We must wake up to the danger of right wing woke wars
      Ric Carey, Richard Barnes, Prof Andrew Moran and Rosemary Gill respond to attempts by the Tory party to weaponise the term ‘woke’

      Letters
      Mon 21 Feb 2022 18.11 GMT

      Nesrine Malik (Scared to be ‘woke’? It’s time for progressives to take a stand in the culture wars, 21 February) sets out the bemusing battlefield surrounding the concept of being “woke” and how it has been weaponised by the right wing of Conservative repression. Part of the issue is clearly the way different groups and factions define the meaning of woke. She correctly deduces that Labour needs to own it.

      We have already been pointed in the necessary direction by a man speaking in the saddest of situations. Dave Merritt, the father of the young lawyer Jack Merritt, who was killed in the London Bridge terror attack in 2019, gave a moving speech after his son’s inquest. He described how proud his son would have been to be called woke. He defined its meaning very simply as “the opposite of ignorant”.
      Ric Carey
      Southsea, Hampshire

      Nesrine Malik expresses the problem brilliantly. But I’m so angry I couldn’t read her piece all in one go. Angry because it’s impossible to imagine anyone on Labour’s current frontbench saying anything a tenth as powerful, and angry that I, and many thousands of other members, were gulled into believing that Keir Starmer had a fairly radical and progressive agenda. He must have known perfectly well that he would never get elected if we knew then that he would align himself so completely, whether through conviction or tactics, with Labour’s right wing.
      Richard Barnes
      Windermere, Cumbria

      The weaknesses of the west are not the result of a “painful woke psychodrama”, as the Tory party chairman Oliver Dowden claims (Report, 14 February). His slur is simply another distraction for those who are angry that the high-skilled, high-wage jobs promised by the neoliberals never materialised. We are among the largest economies in the world, yet 30% of children live in poverty and we have food banks. Years of austerity are now being followed by a catastrophic cost-of-living crisis. None of that was caused by woke ideas.

      Instead, the west has been divided by politicians playing fast and loose with democracy, undermining the validity of elections, refusing to take responsibility for their actions and widening the divisions between people through racist tropes. Politicians have weakened European institutions, either by undermining Nato (as Donald Trump did) or Europe itself (as the populists have done).

      The woke are not undermining the west. They are seeking to ensure that all are represented and have a place in society.

      Decolonising the curriculum is about telling a more complete picture, ensuring that everyone sees themselves reflected in a classroom and that we do not hide from the past. Spoiler alert: the empire was brutal, cruel and exploitative. It involved slavery, murder and the stealing of land and resources from other people. Perhaps understanding the past and ensuring all are represented will bring greater unity rather than the divisions Dowden claims.
      Prof Andrew Moran
      Saffron Walden, Essex

      Reading Marina Hyde (You can’t erase history. But if you lived on Prince Andrew Way, you might have a go, 18 February), I was reminded to check whether my Tory MP had answered my fourth request to explain what woke means (apart from not being asleep). Again, no explanation. I assume that even Tory central office doesn’t know.
      Rosemary Gill
      Salisbury, Wiltshire

      2. Mr Moran seems to forget that he is there to teach, not preach. Like far too many Lefties, he refuses to see both sides of the coin.

        No, no one needs to see themselves reflected. That’s just egotism. You aspire to ideals of character, you pompous oaf. As for Trump diminised NATO – he walked away from an organisation demanding the US carried the weight of the world. He said no, that’s unfair.

        The woke Left are undermining the world. Their touch is poison. That you refuse to see this is laughable, but expected. You are pandering to your audience and making them weaker. It is a spiral to the bottom.

        Ah, those evil populists wanting democracy and individual liberty. How dare they. How dare they intrude upon your cushy grants. Oh, hang on, sorry. That’s what you meant but cannot say because, well, that would expose your hypocrisy.

    2. Wow. “Coming for” anyone who dares disagree with their lies and frauds. Well, I suppose a lot of money is at stake.

      1. It’s rather satisfying that some of the Lefties seem to be foaming at the mouth! We must be over the target.

        ‘Morning C1.

        2. The disgusting thing is it isn’t actually about the environment at all. They never complain about the 400 tons of concrete poured into the ground, the waste f materials, the energy used to build the wretched things, the unrecyclable blades, the rare earth magnets dug up in Columbia by children. No, it’s always ‘green is good’ regardless of the facts.

      2. It’s rather satisfying that some of the Lefties seem to be foaming at the mouth! We must be over the target.

        ‘Morning C1.

    3. Obviously, it’s in the interests of poorer people that their food and power bills should rocket upwards in the course of a few months.

      1. She’s a daft bint. The whole tone of her article is of dictatorial moral superiority and too many factual errors to list before lunch

        2. It’s that such gets past the press groups who exist to ensure honest reporting. Isn’t there a body that specifically prevents such drivel being posted?

      1. Is it allowed to target a politician personally like that, and to say they are “coming for him?”

      2. Feck me, the article is insane.

        “…Poorer people. So why is he on your screen claiming to care that struggling pensioners can’t afford energy this winter because of the crisis? Why does he say we should continue with expensive fracking, instead of taking up cheap renewable options? It couldn’t be that he is putting the interests of fossil fuels above our futures, could it?…”

        Poor people can’t afford energy taxes that green forces on them. The reason they can’t is because of the green taxes.

        Expensive fracking? It’s cheap as anything – made expensive by heavy Green taxes.

        Cheap renewables? Cheap? Are they flip flopping kidding? https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/feed-tariff-fit-annual-report-2020-21

        The guardian is staffed by liars and thieves, fools and the stupid. Our future won’t exist if energy is unaffordable.

  35. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    This self-effacing hero parachuted at night in a hail of enemy fire…

    (And another military obituary, two in a week. Well done, DT.)

    Harry Read, Salvationist who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and did so again 75 years later – obituary

    Weighed down by a huge battery, he landed in a swamp and took 16 hours to struggle out while many comrades drowned on landing

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    23 February 2022 • 2:15pm

    Harry Read, who has died aged 97, was a Salvation Army commissioner who, as a 20-year-old wireless operator with the Royal Signals, parachuted into Normandy in the early hours of D-Day.

    In 2019, 75 years later, with fellow D-Day veteran John Hutton, 94, he took part in a commemorative tandem jump to honour comrades they had lost when they first made the descent under heavy enemy fire.

    Read volunteered for the Parachute Brigade early in 1943, and when his wireless training was completed in May, he joined the 6th Airborne Division. Its first mission was Operation Tonga on June 6 1944, D-Day, when it was responsible for securing the left flank of the Allied invasion of Normandy.

    Read recalled being told to expect a high casualty rate. As paratroopers jumping into France, they had only a 50 per cent chance of reaching the ground without being killed or wounded. “We young fellows, who thought we were immortal, suddenly had to change our tune,” he recalled.

    “In that first hour of D-Day, as our Dakota aircraft took us towards the French coast, on the word of command we stood in line and prepared to jump. As we did so we flew into the most magnificent fireworks display imaginable, except of course they were not fireworks but shells and tracer bullets.

    “Keeping our feet in a wildly bucking aircraft was no easy exercise but the red warning light was on, then came the green light and we shuffled unsteadily down the plane to the exit where, in turn, and aided by a burly dispatcher, we leapt out into the night air to whatever awaited us.”

    Weighed down by a battery the size of a toolbox strapped to his right leg, at 05.00 hours Read parachuted down amid mortar fire while an aircraft went down in flames ahead of him. To improve chances of survival, the drop took place as close to the ground as possible: “30 seconds later I was on the ground.”

    He landed in an area which had been deliberately flooded. Many of his unit drowned on landing and Read and a comrade spent 16 hours struggling out of the swamp before finding refuge with a French farming family. A priest then helped to reunite them with the rest of their section so they could continue their advance to the River Seine.

    Seventy-five years later Read took off from Duxford, Cambridgeshire, in a Cessna and flew over to France, where he and John Hutton were the first two out of the aircraft, followed by a 5,000 sq ft Union Flag. They landed in fields at Sannerville.

    Their jump had been in danger of being cancelled when a Dakota aircraft originally lined up for the mission proved unavailable. When the Cesna was found it was a race against time to get into French airspace in time in order to get clearance from the authorities to land.

    “I couldn’t believe the drop was going to be postponed because I had this assurance that it was God behind why I was doing it,” Read said. “I would have been examining my theology if it hadn’t happened.”

    “I feel good,” he told reporters after his landing. “This was a very different kind of landing to when I arrived in 1944. The people waiting for me then didn’t really want me to be there. They were going to shoot me. So this was definitely worth the wait.” He did not think he would do another jump.

    Harry Read was born on May 17 1924 and grew up in Grangetown, North Yorkshire. His family were Salvationists, his father serving as a Corps Sergeant Major. As a child Harry joined the Army’s Singing Company and YP (young people’s) Band, but most of his friends were Methodists and in 1940 he joined the Methodist Church.

    When he volunteered for military service aged 18 in 1942, his father, who had been twice wounded in the First World War, refused to sign the necessary documents, reasoning that with one son a commissioned officer in the Royal Artillery, and with a daughter in the WAAF, the family had done its bit. He could not prevent Harry from joining up, but, in deference to his father, instead of joining the infantry he joined the Royal Signals.

    Of the less than a hundred men who made up the group which parachuted with him on D-Day, Read was one of only 25 to come back. A parachuting injury prevented further jumps and he was returned to an ordinary signals unit.

    At the end of the war in Europe, Read applied to train for the Methodist ministry. However the Royal Signals transferred him to Orkney where, in Stromness, there was no Methodist church, so instead he attended a small Salvation Army Mission Church Corps in Kirkwall.

    In 1946 he was posted to Edinburgh, where he attended Salvation Army Saturday evening meetings. Though he had been accepted to train for the Methodist ministry, he realised that God was calling him to service in the Salvation Army and became a soldier in the Army’s Edinburgh Gorgie Corps.

    After demobilisation in June 1947 he entered the Salvation Army’s training college and over the next few decades served as press officer and director of information services at its international headquarters; territorial leader in East Australia; chief secretary at the Salvation Army in Canada and Commissioner and Territorial Commander of the UK.

    In 2018, in preparation for his jump the following year, Read took to the skies at the Old Sarum Airfield in Salisbury and jumped from 10,000 feet, alongside two granddaughters and a great-grandson. He used the event, and the Normandy jump, to raise funds for the Salvation Army’s anti trafficking and modern slavery campaign.

    Read was supported for more than 50 years by his wife Win, née Humphries, whom he had met at the Salvation Army training college and with whom he had a son and a daughter. After her death in 2007 he published a book based on his experiences of bereavement. He continued to publish prayers and poems on Facebook .

    In 2016 he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur for the role he played in France’s liberation from the Nazis.

    Harry Read, born May 17 1924, died December 14 2021

  36. 351102+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Thursday 24 February: British sanctions need to go much further if they are to hit Putin’s Russia where it hurts

    Tbis Putins move is going to cover a multitude of domestic political sins,
    in my view any British indigenous forces out there will eventually return to a vastly different country they left.

    This could certainly open the way to a raft of NEW EMERGENCY LAWS
    being put in place and a new range of suitable clothing for the bulk of the herd, bullet / shell proof burkas etc,etc. as with the mask it will be a “must have ” item.

    Once again I do believe the eyes are off of the domestic balls.

    1. 351102+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Does this pretender leader of the pretender tory (ino) party realise we indigenous of the United Kingdom are suffering a daily invasion via DOVER ?

      1. The Sunday Times claims that the British taxpayers are paying £5million a day to house “asylum seekers” in three and four star hotels.

        2. 351102+ up ticks,

          Morning J H,
          Asylum seekers ? alien
          invasion force more like,
          tory (ino) party instigated.

          if they cannot break us physically they will do it
          via finance

          The continuing support / vote for the lab/lib/con coalition with NO pro United Kingdom opposition.

          The voting pattern has brought us, without doubt to our seriously broken and in dire straights as a nation state.

  37. The apologists for Putin (Farage, Trump, several on ‘ere), the supposed Christian but in reality the Stalin-like monster, should apologise to all of those whom they have misled.

    1. The EU should apologise to the world for its eastward expansionism which has brought us to a very dangerous pass in our history.

    2. No. Ukraine is not the good guys. NATO is not the good guys. The EU is bursting with unelected, big-mouthed bullies and their sycophantic claques, eager to cause hurt. (The EU is doing it to us, haven’t you noticed?). The Ukraine was a source of willing helpers when overrun by the Germans in WW2. (Need camp guards? The Ukraine has lots of volunteers.)

    3. Trump was not an apologist for Putin, he opposed him.

      Farage offered us freedom from the hated EU. It’s funny that you discuss Stalin, as it’s his policies that this useless government is imposing.

      I feel no need to apologise for recognising the problems in our society and being angry at them.

      Also, thank you for posting. It’d be nice if you were a little less adversarial and more ‘what do folk think of this’ but I do disagree with the downvotes on principle, but I can’t ‘upvote’ you for the same reason.

    4. Trump was not an apologist for Putin, he opposed him.

      Farage offered us freedom from the hated EU. It’s funny that you discuss Stalin, as it’s his policies that this useless government is imposing.

      I feel no need to apologise for recognising the problems in our society and being angry at them.

      Also, thank you for posting. It’d be nice if you were a little less adversarial and more ‘what do folk think of this’ but I do disagree with the downvotes on principle, but I can’t ‘upvote’ you for the same reason.

    5. Many people recognise that the Left accuse others of what they are guilty of themselves. That’s you.

    1. Oh come on. The screaming Left wouldn’t go to war. The demand other people do that to keep them safe. The same people they deride, insult and abuse the rest of the time.

      1. People Sleep Peacefully in Their Beds at Night Only Because Rough Men Stand Ready to Do Violence on Their Behalf

  40. It will be the ordinary people on both sides who will bear the brunt of this, never the elites.

  41. SIR – Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been complaining about the funding of free Covid tests, which she wishes to continue to offer (report, February 23).

    If there were ever an admission that an independent Scotland could not stand on its own feet economically, this is it. Health is devolved in Scotland, and the country has higher rates of income tax than the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as receiving billions from Westminster to cope with the pandemic.

    Given that we will have to live with the virus for years to come, Ms Sturgeon must address how Scotland would handle another outbreak after independence.

    Harry L Barker
    North Berwick, East Lothian

    Quite so, Harry Baker. Despite other recent critical examples of how Scotland would sink without English money, she remains wedded to her idea of a socialist paradise. I trust that the day of reckoning is not far off and that the English-hating Scottish Nasty Party will finally hit the buffers in spectacular fashion.

  42. Putin’s terrifying warning to the West: ‘To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside – if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history’ as he claims he is ‘de-Nazifying’ Ukraine
    Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and gave a chilling warning to its allies in the west in an early Thursday morning address
    Explosions were heard in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, as Putin announcing that Russia was launching a military attack on the Ukraine
    The United Nations Security Council had just convened an emergency meeting Wednesday night

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10545641/Putins-gives-chilling-warning-West-early-morning-TV-broadcast.html?ito=push-notification&ci=kCE8W03MFE&cri=X-683gq99_&si=26738248&ai=10545641

    1. We failed from the outset. A strong man needed to be opposed by other strong men, from a position of strength.

      Instead weak men set about weak sanctions from countries he know have none of the cards, let alone are bluffing. We need Russian gas. We’re stuffed without it because of the idiotic Left wing green agenda.

      2. No, we should be strong, but lack of strength is not why this has come about. We failed because we did the wrong things. We did not coddle the new Russia, we did not invite them to sit at our table. We did not talk. We did not dance with the them. Instead we gave them the cold shoulder. We did not consider their vulnerability, and make allowances. Instead we pushed the US ring of steel, set up in the Cold War, to the borders of Russia. When the school bully draws a line with his toe and urges you to dare to cross it, then draws it again even closer, and does it again even closer… there comes a point where you have to punch his nose.
        We are that school bully.

  43. Delusions never survive reality for long……..

    “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than
    has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at
    its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it
    with their lives and their freedoms”

    ―

    Robert A. Heinlein

    1. Undeniably true, but a dangerous philosophy by which to live. Violence should ideally be tightly controlled and used as a last resort.

      1. It has become perfectly clear that mankind will never and has never learned by its many mistakes.

        1. Can’t argue with that! And there have been many sincere attempts to improve things over the years. We’re a terrible lot!

  44. Morning all, just as we thought that ‘things’ can’t get any worse……
    And foul weather to boot.

  45. Putin’s terrifying warning to the West: ‘To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside – if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history’ as he claims he is ‘de-Nazifying’ Ukraine

    Would Cruel Putin have used Covid as biological warfare, and is he really the perpetrator?

    1. No, and no. Covid is Chinese.. Putin is stating that he will use nuclear weapons. This is a reverse Cuba.

      1. Do you think Putin may be saying that he is prepared to use nuclear weapons to ensure the West doesn’t attempt to use “tactical nukes” which, if we are honest, is the only way Russia can be stopped from taking the whole of Ukraine militarily if they are determined so to do.

        1. We have no need to stop them taking Ukraine. The country is not a member of NATO, and we are not members of the Brussels clique. Mind you, if we can flog some of our old weapons to them at great profit, like we do to other 3rd world countries, then who would complain. We need cash.

          1. The problem we have is that there will be numerous powerful people suggesting that we do get involved.
            They will argue, wrongly in my view, that Ukraine will be the first domino in a chain where Putin retakes the old USSR states.
            We didn’t need to go into Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq etc, but we did.

        2. Good point. Worryingly though, those pulling Biden’s strings and moving his lips for him, might see a limited nuclear war in the Ukraine as a good idea.

          1. China will be looking on with great interest.

            I wonder where the WEF elites will be jetting off to to hide, getting ready for their great reset.

          2. Keep checking flightradar24 for large private spaceships leaving orbit. Jets, much like hollowed out volcanic peaks, are so last century.

        3. Good point. Worryingly though, those pulling Biden’s strings and moving his lips for him, might see a limited nuclear war in the Ukraine as a good idea.
          (I posted this at lunchtime but it seems to have vanished. Or maybe I posted it in the wrong place…)

          1. For what little it’s worth:
            I think that Biden’s string pullers may actually be the most dangerous players in the game.

          2. A “limited war”? Isn’t that what they thought they would do in Vietnam? That turned out well, didn’t it?

      2. American funded Chinese Labs. The Americans have thousands of such Labs. Mostly in Africa. Guess which other nation features highly in Africa…

    2. Morning Belle.
      The Ukrainian Nazi’s are not a fantasy of Putin. Look up Azov Battalion. They are bona fide Nazi’s that wear Nazi insignia. They also have a political party and are represented in the Ukrainian parliament. What do you think that Russians think of this considering that the Nazi’s killed 12,250,0002 Russians and that the Ukrainians sided with Germany during that war.

    1. Couple of interesting clips here too
      https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/bill-gates-says-covid-risks-have-dramatically-reduced-but-another-pandemic-is-coming/ar-AAU2wVm
      The top one is where he holds up Australia as a shining example of how the pandemic should have been managed.
      At 1:36 in the top video of this article, he refers casually to the cost estimate for global surveillance.

      Here’s another short clip – watch it right to the end, where he compares wearing a mask to wearing trousers – Bill Gates doesn’t understand why anyone has anything against wearing a mask.
      https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/bill-gates-there-e2-80-99s-no-doubt-that-misinformation-enhanced-vaccine-hesitancy/vi-AAU2waX
      Almost everything he says is a lie, or a lie by omission.
      Nobody challenges any of it.

  48. “All remaining legal Covid restrictions have been removed in England, nearly two years after the first rules were introduced.”

    This should be a day of mentally relaxing, to stop getting so wound up. Instead, our ludicrous excuse for a government has dug itself (and us) a hole that could possibly end in nuclear conflagration as a worst case scenario.
    It’s quite a nice sunny morning too.

    1. Anything to divert attention from the incoming legal tsunami and financial earthquakes that are about to engulf the island will suffice. The squirrel that dropped from the wheel of misfortune happens to be possible nuclear war in eastern Europe.

      Much easier to scare the populace than allow them time to think about who, having had their lives ruined for the past two years, is responsible.

  49. From today’s DT:

    The real reasons for the BBC’s brain drain

    Deep resentments are fuelling an exodus of big names such as Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel

    By
    Anita Singh,
    ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
    24 February 2022 • 5:00am

    The sweater was a mischievous move. In a publicity shot announcing that she and Jon Sopel were quitting the BBC for Global radio, Emily Maitlis chose a £300 Bella Freud jumper bearing the slogan “Oh!” That was indeed the reaction at New Broadcasting House, where BBC bosses were startled by the news that two of their biggest names were heading for the exit.

    They are the latest presenters to join the exodus: Andrew Marr is another recent signing to Global, Andrew Neil left in 2020. With Huw Edwards dropping heavy hints that he is in the market for a new job, Amol Rajan being courted by ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Emma Barnett leaving Newsnight, and Laura Kuenssberg stepping down from her political editor role (she will remain with the BBC, but who knows for how long), BBC News is facing a brain drain.

    Insiders point to several reasons why top “talent”, as presenters are known in the industry, have had enough of the BBC. Director-general Tim Davie’s strict new rules on impartiality are endlessly frustrating for presenters itching to share their opinions on political issues of the day.

    “I rose in journalism as a reporter and commentator in the fiercely competitive commercial world, where you could say anything you like,” Marr said recently. In his resignation statement, he said pointedly: “I am keen to get my own voice back.”

    In Maitlis’s case, this was even more of a constraint. She was regularly and publicly admonished by BBC management for breaching the rules. Mostly, this was down to her use of social media, but famously spilled on to television when she opened an edition of Newsnight with a scorching monologue about Dominic Cummings. Davie may be quietly relieved to be rid of this particular problem, but as one source put it: “Emily brought in the interview of the decade with her Prince Andrew scoop. It’s a big loss.”

    Mary Greenham, an agent who counts Marr and Sopel among her clients, said: “There are complex reasons for leaving the BBC when you have been there for a long time. It comes down to a combination of ambition, more opportunities and freedom.” Simon McCoy, a newsreader who left the Corporation last year for GB News, reflected on the loss of seasoned talent: “For a long time, there was a sense of ‘we are the best’. As senior people leave to go to other places, that sense of indomitability is damaged amongst younger people who work there. When you have a BBC lifer like Jon Sopel going elsewhere, it’s quite a strong message: this is not necessarily a career-long destination.”

    The director-general’s crackdown on external speaking engagements for presenters and the decision to move journalists to regional “hubs” in an attempt to appear less London-centric, has led to a deeper disquiet among staff. “There is a feeling: does Tim Davie really have our backs?” said one. “He announces all of these things that feel like sops to the Government, whereas staff want to feel that he 100 per cent has our interests at heart. At the moment, it doesn’t feel that way.”

    Meanwhile, the scrapping of more than 500 BBC News jobs, part of an £800  million savings package, has led to understandable anger. “Management asked for people to take voluntary redundancy and they’re not bothered where they come from. They’ve got a few people they care desperately about, and never mind the rest. It’s a strange atmosphere.”

    Another source complained: “The BBC has always valued a handful of presenters above others, although how they’re chosen is a mystery to the rest of us because there are plenty of people who rate well with audiences yet are overlooked. Maitlis was one of the chosen few, even though Newsnight is not the force the BBC seems to think it is.” Asking journalists to up sticks has also led to departures: veteran science editor David Shukman has left, and his colleague Roger Harrabin follows in June, after management decided to transplant the science team to Cardiff as part of its pledge to make the BBC “a genuinely UK-wide organisation”.

    Rory Cellan-Jones, long-serving technology correspondent, made the same decision after being told to move to Glasgow. There is anger too that Fran Unsworth, architect of the reorganisation, is taking retirement. Her replacement, Deborah Turness, is expected to make changes. “It is all very uncertain – the direction of travel is unclear, so no wonder people are thinking now is a good time to leave,” said one source.

    Yesterday, the BBC’s interim news boss, Jonathan Munro, felt the need to reassure anxious Newsnight staff that the programme is safe. Political and financial pressure on the organisation is a constant headache for Davie. But another issue is entirely of the BBC’s making.

    “The BBC has been so inward-looking for so long that it failed to see these competitors coming up on the inside,” said one observer. “It is not just Global – Bloomberg, Amazon, all these companies have changed the landscape significantly.” Until 2014, LBC was a London radio station beloved of cabbies. But in that year it went national, and slowly began poaching established names from the BBC. Shelagh Fogarty, one of the best-known voices on Radio 5 Live, was first to join in 2015.

    She was followed by Radio 4’s Eddie Mair. Yet the BBC was wedded to the old-fashioned belief that its news presenters would only jump ship for a commensurate role on ITN, Channel 4 or Sky News.

    It was also slow to wake up to the popularity of podcasts. Maitlis and Sopel will co-host an LBC show but their excitement is focused on a podcast planned for the Global Player app. Dinos Sofos, who produced their US politics podcast, Americast, for BBC Sounds, will join them. Sofos quit the BBC last year.

    “At the same time that it’s losing top people like Maitlis and Sopel, it’s also losing the next generation of talent like Sofos,” said one former executive. “That’s a real problem for an organisation that is trying to attract young audiences.” Americast was the fifth most listened-to podcast on BBC Sounds last year, behind Fortunately, presented by Fi Glover and Jane Garvey, and You’re Dead To Me, from the historian Greg Jenner. Sue Ayton, agent for Garvey and Jenner, said the BBC “were quite late to acknowledge” the popularity of the medium.

    Ayton also pointed to another reason why presenters are looking beyond the BBC: a re-evaluation of their lives during lockdown, and the realisation that they can have portfolio careers. She pointed to Garvey, who left Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour in 2020 after 13 years and is now involved in projects across different media.

    “It used to be the case that people would only leave for the security of another full-time job. But there are so many opportunities now,” she said.

    A former BBC star agreed, saying: “There is life outside the BBC. Ten years ago, that might not have been true.” And there is, lest we forget, the money. Maitlis and Sopel may have been paid handsomely by the BBC, but their Global deal is worth significantly more. Not that we will ever know: another advantage to life outside the BBC is that wages are a private matter.

    * * *
    I am particularly pleased to read that Harrabin is going. Even better would be the news that the eco-nutjob Packham will also have to make his way in the big bad world beyond the BBC, because I for one resent having to subsidise his ridiculous campaigning. I also resent such hugely overpaid and generally useless people popping up to tell me what to think. The BTLs are having a field-day:

    mark starr
    2 HRS AGO
    If these highly paid BBC employees want to express their irrelevant opinions then they should do as Maitlis and Sopel have done and exit the BBC and trust that their opinions are then appreciated in the world of private broadcasting . The BBC is not there to enable ego maniacs to let their personal opinions rip but to present an impartial view on the news . Hopefully we are seeing a return slowly but surely to a British Broadcasting Corporation and not a left Remainer woke organisation which despises 95% of the population.

    John Nerding
    1 HR AGO
    For example: paying pathetic June Sarpong’s £267,000 p.a. for a 3 days week as Diversity Director to promote ‘woke’ ( which means purging normal heterosexual white Christians thoughts) needs binning.

    BB Ftang Ftang Ole’Biscuit Barrel
    2 HRS AGO
    BBC News is facing a brain drain…… Of the self important, pampered, overpaid, woke, cultural Marxists who believe their opinion should be heard being more important than the truth, balance, and the BBC charter on being non-biased.
    Good riddance.

    Edmund Rigby
    1 HR AGO
    Yes indeed.
    The problem I (and many, many people?) have with the BBC’s news and current affairs output is not so much that presenters give their own opinion but that the ONLY opinion which is ever given/heard is one which is a few pips left of centre, internationalist, pro-EU, pro-Remain; palpably not conservative.
    The BBC is the author of its own misfortune. It is a fine institution and the idea is bold and good but it has become the captive of the left and is institutionally leftish, pinkish, greenish, activistish, feministish.
    The overwhelming BBC view – its working presumption- is so obviously that Left is right and Right is wrong.
    It has become an almost morbidly dull political monoculture where you can hear any opinion you like, so long as it wouldn’t annoy a Liberal Democrat activist.
    Instead of allowing their talent to drain away, why not be bold enough to allow, encourage and promote those who have tradtionalish/rightish/conservativeish views and then there would be much less concern about opinions being given – there being a balancing view available.

    1. Are we supposed to feel sad that this “talent” is leaving the BBC?
      I do not think anyone in the legacy media truly appreciates the level to which they and the BBC “talent” have antagonised ordinary people.

      1. It is since they introduced ‘personality’ into radio and TV. In the Olden Days, announcers and presenters were usually just actors, and any political opinions were kept to themselves, one thinks of people like Kenneth Kendall, Cliff Michelmore etc. Then the Cult of Personality developed, the salary ratcheting started, and we ended up with the sad state of things now.

    2. If Huw Edwards leavesthe BBC, will the be a paternity court case over ownership of “The Overcoat”

      Anotherway of looking at the Movers moving, is that more some people may actually watch the Biased Broadcasting Company News

      Laura Cursenburger for example

    3. If Huw Edwards leavesthe BBC, will the be a paternity court case over ownership of “The Overcoat”

      Anotherway of looking at the Movers moving, is that more some people may actually watch the Biased Broadcasting Company News

      Laura Cursenburger for example

    4. Oh dear. If the BBC cannot recruit and develop real talent for less than £50k per head then they are incompetent and profligate. If the salary level paid by threBBC was capped at £120,000 for the Director-general and less for everyone else with no exceptions* there would still be queues several miles long to work there.

      *No fiddles such as commissioning outside companies for exotic sums. (See Kirsty Wark for more information.)

    5. “Even better would be the news that the eco-nutjob Packham will also have to make his way in the big bad world beyond the BBC, because I for one resent having to subsidise his ridiculous campaigning” Amen to that, and good riddance to mate-less too

      1. Yes, the BTL comments are excellent!

        Edit: oh, I just realised that one was from our own Hugh – all the comments are spot on!

    6. “Even better would be the news that the eco-nutjob Packham will also have to make his way in the big bad world beyond the BBC, because I for one resent having to subsidise his ridiculous campaigning” Amen to that, and good riddance to mate-less too

    7. At least a couple of agents quoted, no doubt wanting their ‘talent’ to be seen as a valuable commodity, i.e. their cut of the contract keeps them in the style to which they have become accustomed.

      This comment from agent Mary Greenham is illuminating, ‘As senior people leave to go to other places, that sense of indomitability is damaged amongst younger people who work there. When you have a BBC lifer like Jon Sopel going elsewhere, it’s quite a strong message: this is not necessarily a career-long destination.’

      There are no longer ‘jobs for life’ in any other form of employment, it’s high time the autocue-reading bBC churnalists met reality.

    8. “…veteran science editor David Shukman has left, and his colleague Roger Harrabin follows in June…”

      Dare we hope that their successors will present a more balanced view of a certain subject?

      1. Somehow I doubt it, William. Such is the extent of the deeply-ingrained groupthink ‘We are never wrong’ I think they will only recruit similar people, and doubtless
        they will be Grauniad readers too.

  50. Apropos Rick’s comment re German insurance company seeing increased claims. The following link has more analysis, and it’s grim.

    bad cattitude – German Insurance Vaccine Side Effects Data

    and if this is not quite a smoking gun, it certainly does look like an awful lot of smoke in the known vicinity of a firearm to simply ignore.

    if this is anything like what it looks like (and once more, let’s be clear, we need to validate this but we’re seeing an awful lot of consonance from independent data), this is going to be one of the great scandals in human history. it will make thalidomide look like forgetting your house keys.

    1. We’ve only known one person (very elderly) to die of Covid, but we know two people who’ve had strokes after being vaccinated.

      Yes, we realise that’s not a scientific observation, but it does give one food for thought.

    3. Here’s the smoking gun from that article (thank you for the link, Korky!)
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/13c58065d2ebe591136c84f449960a25786c8ed7b7e545333cb1b701b9388b72.jpg
      The population of Germany is roughly 80 million.
      On the left is the Paul Ehrlich Institute’s estimate of the total number of vaccine injuries for the whole population in the part of 2021 that is under discussion.
      On the right is the BKK’s record of doctor’s bills – and remember the BKK insures about 11 million people!
      It gets worse.
      These numbers are only for the first 7 1/2 months of 2021, and most of the vaccinating was done after that.

      I wonder how they will manage to spin, manipulate and twist this data? pressure on doctors not to bill for vaccine side effects?

      1. Statistics can be meddled with or hidden but as several involved people in the USA are saying, “You can’t hide the bodies.” Funeral parlour stocks in the USA are on the rise, sadly.

  51. Ten minutes ago, it was clear outside, but a bit grey. Now there is a blizzard and the ground is covered in real snow for the first time this winter.

    Update (Camp Granada) Noon. Blue sky, sun shining. snow mostly gone…

    1. Quick, get outside and check there are no soldiers with snow on their boots.
      Putin will be manipulating the weather.

  54. Oil prices at new record high. The price is being manipulated upwards yet again. The latest excuse is the crisis in the Ukraine. Nothing to do with lack of oil or logistics. The world is awash with the stuff. It seems to me that the US has been a prime mover in bringing about this crisis as their industries will benefit.

    (The US motorist is paying the equivalent of 65p per litre at the pump. what happened to North Sea Oil benefiting us?)

  56. Orlov is a megalomaniacal Soviet general who believes that the Warsaw Pact has a decisive advantage over NATO in conventional military strength that is being tossed away by its leaders in détente. Rejecting their diplomacy, he advocates a massive military attack in Europe to seize dominance of the continent and call (what he thinks is) NATO’s nuclear bluff. However, his proposal for a full-scale invasion of Europe is flatly rejected, with General Gogol being the loudest voice, in part because NATO would respond with nuclear strikes that would escalate the conflict to a global nuclear war. Gogol also seems to hold Orlov in contempt, feeling that his thirst for power is dangerous. https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/General_Orlov

    (James Bond — Octopussy ) See the connection , Putin lives in a fantasy world .

    2. For me it’s the other way round Belle
      Putin deals in brutal Realpolitik
      Our leaders dribble Green woke fantasy

        1. Or possibly Biden

          It would certainly be interesting to know who makes a lot of money in the derivatives markets out of these events and when they placed their bets.

    2. Sadly he’s absolutely right – I never understood why the USA put up with pretty much everyone else not paying their fair share of NATO costs?

        1. Your Russian chums can do no wrong. I am amazed that you don’t go and live in Russia. Though, I suppose, that when the Russians take over (“send peace-keepers to”) Finland – your dream will have come true.

      2. Actually the Ukrainians are aggressors by allowing the West to go right up to Russia’s borders and thus threaten Russia. It has been a long standing policy of Russia that they would not tolerate hostile forces on their borders, they have been saying that for decades. This is hardly surprising. America would not tolerate it when the USSR put missiles in Cuba. And we would not tolerate it if France was to point its missiles at us and thus threaten us. So what is the difference?
        And, lets not pretend that Ukraine is a “democratic country” its legitimate President, corrupt and obnoxious though he was, ended up being driven out of the country with the convivence of the EU. In power, in Ukraine, we have a poodle of the American/EU faction and it knows very well that its actions were and are a provocation to Russia. Ukraine thought they could get away with it by hiding behind the skirts of the EU and America. They were mistaken and the results are what we see. Russia forcibly putting Ukraine back in its place, as a buffer between Russia and the hostile forces of the EU.
        And, good morning Bill!

        1. Thank you for your courteous comment. Of course, one could argue that by taking over the Ukraine, and establishing its border on the edge of “the West”, Russia is doing the very thing that it dislikes the West doing.

          I fear that it will all end in tears.

          1. Well no. All that Russia wants is neutrality on its borders. That is, “buffer states” It is hardly unreasonable when you look at the history of Russia. It has been a history of almost continuous invasion and violence because they have no natural borders they can defend. To prevent invasion they developed the concept of “near abroad”, these are countries they believed should not join common cause with their enemies but remain neutral. That way it would help Russia be much more secure. It is not an unreasonable doctrine for a country that has seen so many invasions it doesn’t have a word for peace because they have never known it.
            I posted, yesterday, a video of Russian history. Take a look. You will see clearly what I mean. It is a history of constant invasion and non-stop suffering.

          2. Sorry Bill, an addendum. Russia has no intention of occupying Ukraine. Russia intends to neutralize it which is a very different thing entirely. He has even said that if Ukrainian soldiers want to go home, they will not be stopped. That is not the action of an occupier, I think you would agree. Putin has already said he recognizes Ukraine as an independent country. He will do his “policing” to use an American expression, and then withdraw.

  60. Just back from Fakenham market. Very few masks in the street. About half the people in Morrisons were bagged up.

    Pissing with rain. Ugh!

        1. I’ve been chop-sawing some sticks to stack in plastic crates and we’ve had a couple of hailstone flurries.
          Still bloody cold though.

      1. We’ve been through this before Bill. I had my sights on my local pub landlord’s daughter if we got the 4 minute warning on the train into Glasgow.
        Dinna fash yersel.

        2. MB and I met during the Cuban missile crisis. For some reason, we have this feeling of deja vu.

    2. I just wonder what’s up their sleeves for the 3rd horseman. We’ve had Covid Conquest, now War…

  62. Going nuclear anybody?

    Biden taps non-binary drag queen to look after nuclear waste: MIT graduate and ‘kink activist’ says it will be ‘enormous challenge’ to take on top level Department of Energy role

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10520757/Biden-taps-non-binary-drag-queen-look-nuclear-waste.html

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/02/17/12/54287787-10520757-The_Biden_administration_has_hired_the_first_non_binary_person_t-m-4_1645101026699.jpg

      1. Jest ye not, that guy may well have a significant role to play, assuming any of us survive WW3.

    2. It would be an enormous challenge to him to take on any role in the real world, I would imagine.

  63. In an alternative universe Western leaders had decided that in order to find a peaceful, negotiated settlement in Ukraine its accession to NATO or the EU would be parked for ten years to defuse tensions and allow talks to proceed.

    The Russian elite then turned their attentions to building more massive basements under properties in Mayfair and spending a King’s ransom in the shops in Bond Street and on the professional ladies that operate in the up market bars and clubs.

  64. Troubles in the U Crane: the baskets, that is another booked holiday down the pan.

    Not a word of possible trouble had been put out by the MSM, even the Trusted BBC was three busy reporting storm damage

  66. The Liars in the media and the government now expect to wrap themselves in the flag and condemn Russia’s monstrous expansionism as Allister Heath so fatuously labels it. They have their war and now expect us to forget the holocaust at home and fall in with their drum banging.

    I remember getting on a school bus so many years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the real expectation that the world as we knew it might end that day. This is precisely parallel situation in reverse, save that in place of Kruschev we offer “leaders” without integrity or good sense, who are already happlily engaged in evil acts against their own peoples.

    NATO membership for Ukraine, to bring missiles right along the boundary of Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea ,has always been the issue. Russia has never asked for anything else.

    The Liars remain just that.

    1. NATO Article 4 has just been invoked.
      What next ? Article 5? Article 5 is why the UK should leave NATO instantly. The Ukraine is not an “ally” as described by Liz Truss. Hands up all who think that the UK should go to war to defend Latvia, for instance, and thereby risk the total destruction of our country?
      (Reminder: Out of date Treaties brought us into the First World War and a Treaty with Poland brought us into WW2. “Say no to Treaties.”)
      Article 4
      The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.

      Article 5
      The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
      Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security

  68. Another voice raised in concern about the Online Safety Bill, this time from the Campaign for Marriage:

    “Dear marriage supporter,

    Could defending real marriage soon be banned online? That’s the question many are asking as the Government’s Online Safety Bill inches closer to becoming law.

    While there is certainly a need for additional online safeguards, particularly for protecting children, the proposed new law has been widely criticised for banning ‘legal but harmful’ content. It will impose a maximum penalty of a massive 10% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover for failing to remove user-generated content deemed “harmful”. This includes comments, posts or videos that are viewed as risking “a significant adverse physical or psychological impact on an adult of ordinary sensibilities”, even “indirectly”.

    This definition is very vague and left up to companies and ultimately courts to determine. But when bombarded with complaints of ‘harm’ from LGBT activists, it is hard to imagine many companies taking the risk and leaving ‘controversial’ content up.

    To make matters worse, Facebook’s new President of Global Affairs is former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg. The same Nick Clegg who, when UK Deputy Prime Minister in 2012 and 2013, called supporters of real marriage “bigots” and ‘dinosaurs’.

    Conservative MP David Davis asks rhetorically: “Do you want Nick Clegg to be the supreme censor of what you write online?”

    Of course we don’t. But that could be where things are headed, with serious consequences for the freedom of marriage supporters to share their views via the internet. If you think censorship and ‘cancel culture’ are bad now, wait till this law comes in.

    Spectator editor Fraser Nelson notes that already Facebook will “blacklist a publisher who prints what they regard as wrong-think” so that “your content isn’t promoted”. This problem would get many times worse.

    Ministers and MPs need to think again on this legislation before we lose more of our precious freedoms to speak up for marriage.”

      1. I’ve sometimes wondered what Dear Old Old Treasure David Attenborough thinks of the scripts has had to read.

      2. I’ve sometimes wondered what Dear Old Old Treasure David Attenborough thinks of the scripts has had to read.

    4. I did like his earlier railway progs but i don’t think i will bother now he has been turned to the dark side.

  70. I have found (on YouTube) the Ukrainian National Anthem. Playing it took me back to 1956 and to the hapless Hungarian Revolution against the then Stalinist government of Mátyás Rákosi that had been in control of Budapest and the whole country. The then new reformist prime minister, Mr Imre Nagy, made a last broadcast (followed by Budapest Radio playing the Hungarian National Anthem and then going off the air) before Communist Russian forces took over and re-took control. Mr Nagy was arrested, tried and executed (in 1958) for ‘treason’ alongside his closest allies, and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. It took until 1989 for Hungary to become free and democratic. May Ukraine and its elected President, Mr Volodymyr Zelensky, not suffer the same fates but have a free and better future.

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

      1. And here is the proper National Anthem of Russia that at some time in the future, will be restored. Notice, people stand as soon as it starts.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvMDZag8-DE
        Sorry Geoffrey, you are not in sympathetic company with your hyperventilating fantasy about executions and assassinations.

          2. Their still is one Bill. Although to be accurate she is a Tsarina. Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia. A rather plump woman, somehow lacking in grandeur. Here she is with her pet penguin.
            But being first and foremost an English Imperialist, I nominate Prince Michael of Kent. He speak Russian and is idolized in Russia.

    2. You still haven’t seen last Wednesday mornings BBC news Interview with Victoria Derbyshire and Lord Richard Donnatt have you ?
      I think he lives near you as well.

    1. I’m listening to RT, the NATO people declaring their intentions. In short, it is nothing more than bombastic rhetoric. They know very well they can’t do much. And I think they know that the West created this mess. If you want to pop over to RT on You Tube. The spokesman is still rattling on and its obvious that the bottom line is “we intend to do absolutely nothing”.

      1. Morning Johnathan. I cannot abide that Stoltenberg. He would tell you that Black was White if it suited him!

        1. He’s cast-off failed Labour leader from Norway. Speaks almost no English (unusually), and is known here as Beaker, after the muppet.

  72. I wonder how Vonder Liar and her mafia friends will cope with all the Ukrainian refugees. Rubber boat and a cheap hotel any one ?

  73. Moh and I live on the edge of the tank ranges .

    The rumble of tank exercises this morning are loud and clear .

    Army families live in our village and in the 2 garrisons , Bovington and Lulworth.

    Putins invasion has chilled everyone to the bone ..

    Hells teeth , Europe isn’t like an African rat hole , is it ?…

    We have a shared culture with Europe . Whites are meant to be setting an example to the world .

    1. Take a walk around the Parisien suburbs if you wish to see third world rat holes. They are spreading.

  75. Watching the Telegraph and all the other media – the greatet liars of the modern age – inveighing against Russian misinformation is precisely what one would have expected. Emetic, and a betrayal of those over whom this stuff is spewed.

  76. Government climate advisers say cut fossil fuels to lower energy bills

    The best way to ease consumers’ pain from high energy prices is to stop using fossil fuels rather than drill for more of them, the government’s climate advisers say…

    The Climate Change Committee warned that new fossil fuel projects in the North Sea would, in some cases, not deliver gas until 2050.

    Lord Deben, the committee’s chairman, said average home bills would have been £40 lower now if the former PM David Cameron hadn’t scrapped schemes to insulate the UK

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60497058

    Once you’ve read this nonsense, go and stick your head under a cold shower…

    1. “Lord” Deben aka as John Gumboil is a repulsive little man.

      He came to give away the prizes at Gresham’s in Christo’s last year there and he lectured the boys on climate change and the importance of staying in the EU. I was delighted that Christo sought him out and told him he was a disgrace and it was completely inappropriate to use such an occasion to try and indoctrinate young people. Gumboil had no answer and actually ran away from my son who, at 6’3″ towered over the little squirt.

    3. Ah, Deben. The bloke heavily invested in windfarms. Who’s company provides them to sell to the government. Who’s got rich from the scam of climate change… and chairs the climate change committee. Conflicted? Oh yes.

      1. 351102 + up ticks,

        Afternoon Anne,

        Soon the indigenous soldier will be hot bedding on account of the DOVER daily morally wrong, politically organised intake.
        There are only so many hotel beds.

    2. Ukraine is not in NATO we should leave it alone.
      We have an Army that would fit into Wembley Stadium with spaces to spare.
      Keep our noses out.

      1. Without a doubt, Alf.

        Decades of destroying our once-formidable armed forces has brought about a farcical situation that is now coming home to roost.

      2. 351102+ up ticks

        Afternoon Atg,
        Perfect deflector material though, the turkish chap will have ALL eyes on the Ukrainian border in neglection of DOVER of course.

    3. We could leave NATO this afternoon. We should do so.
      We joined the First World War because we had signed the Treaty of London 1839. Some people might say that the world had changed somewhat in the intervening 75 years.
      The world has changed a great deal in the 73 years since NATO came into being. It now includes a number of countries that we should not care about. They would certainly renege on their commitment if it came to fighting and dying for theUK.

    1. Droll. However not so funny is that, if I heard it correctly, we will be receiving millions of Ukrainian refugees in the near future. (fyi Edinburgh is twinned with Kiev.)

  79. Ottawa city council held a council meeting last night and one of the motions passed was to move Valentines day to March 14th this year. Apparently too much hooting and tooting by the truckers spoilt the romance of the evening.

    No seriously!

    1. “Bu88er” say all the Canadian birds, “we’ll have postpone our wedding. How embarrassing; who wants to be like Jacinda Aherne?”

    2. As your country falls to fascism, you complain about the noise made by the resistance. Those clowns will be cited in history textbooks as an example of the mindset that allowed the fascists to take over.

    3. Grattis på födelsedagen, Sguest. Hope you’re still around, fighting fit, and able to enjoy your day.

  81. There’s much comment along the lines of “be thankful that we no longer have an unstable crackpot in power in the USA”. Really? What would Trump have done? He claimed to wish to avoid foreign conflict and kept his word. The idea that the senile old fool in the White House might be a greater guarantor of peace is risible.

    And it’s noticeable how so many write about Western provocation in general terms but omit to mention the EU’s courting of Ukraine and interference in its constitutional affairs.

    1. They clearly didn’t notice that Trump managed to avoid the US getting sucked into wars when he was in the White House.

    2. Last thing at night, I look at Fox News to see what is going on. This was the headline: “Ukraine should be prepared for the hammer and sickle to fall on its head.” We have a senile crackpot and fantasist in the White House that still thinks the cold war is being played out. How much more dangerous than that can you get?

    3. Last thing at night, I look at Fox News to see what is going on. This was the headline: “Ukraine should be prepared for the hammer and sickle to fall on its head.” We have a senile crackpot and fantasist in the White House that still thinks the cold war is being played out. How much more dangerous than that can you get?

    4. I have mentioned the EU interference in Ukraine many times. And I am not unique in that, Araminta has too.

      1. Our son is pursuing that matter. At the moment, he’s gathering information; it always helps to know what you are talking about.

      2. It’s interesting, the warqueen began some advanced tax exam thing a year before lockdown and it’s a 2 year lark and hasn’t had any problems with teaching and access to resources. I appreciate the circs are different for ‘da yoof’ though.

      1. Excellent speech. No looking back to the past when the British stopped their savage forebears from massacring each other in tribal warfare.

        1. My late brother in law was a white Kenyan, a police commissioner who had to deal with those thugs and cannibals, the Mau Mau, yes, they really practiced cannibalism. He left when the country achieved independence. Going back there for a visit he was greeted with little more than complaints about how corrupt the police were now the British had gone. Returned to England thoroughly depressed and never went back again. Default to corruption seems to be a regular theme with black countries. They have no legs to stand on when lecturing us.

  84. I’m getting very confused; according to Clive Myrie, one of the Rolling Stones is occupying U Crane.

    1. Fank heavens! I fort it woz just me! So that it the much vaunted Myrie? I’m deeply unimpressed!

    4. Myrie pronounced Kiev as ‘Keev’, whereas Lyse Doucet (why do they have two BBC people interviewing each other?) pronounced it as ‘Kee-ev’.

  85. The Prime Minister’s address to the nation as Russia invades Ukraine. 25 24 February 2022.

    Shortly after 4 o’clock this morning I spoke to President Zelensky of Ukraine to offer the continued support of the UK, because our worst fears have now come true and all our warnings have proved tragically accurate

    President Putin of Russia has unleashed war in our European continent. He has attacked a friendly country without any provocation and without any credible excuse. Innumerable missiles and bombs have been raining down on an entirely innocent population. A vast invasion is underway — by land, by sea, and by air.

    And this is not, in the infamous phrase, some faraway country of which we know little. We have Ukrainian friends in this country; neighbours, co-workers. Ukraine is a country that for decades has enjoyed freedom and democracy and the right to choose its own destiny. We — and the world — cannot allow that freedom just to be snuffed out. We cannot and will not just look away.

    It is because we have been so alarmed in recent months at the Russian intimidation that the UK became one of the first countries in Europe to send defensive weaponry to help the Ukrainians. Other allies have now done the same and we will do what more we can in the days ahead

    Today, in concert with our allies, we will agree a massive package of economic sanctions designed in time to hobble the Russian economy. And to that end we must also collectively cease the dependence on Russian oil and gas that for too long has given Putin his grip on western politics

    Our mission is clear: diplomatically, politically, economically — and eventually, militarily — this hideous and barbaric venture of Vladimir Putin must end in failure.
    And so I say to the people of Russia, whose president has just authorised a tidal wave of violence against a fellow Slavic people. The parents of Russian soldiers who will lose their lives. I cannot believe this is being done in your name or that you really want the pariah status it will bring to the Putin regime
    And I say to the Ukrainians in this moment of agony: we are with you we are praying for you and your families and we are on your side.

    And if the months ahead are grim, and the flame of freedom burns low I know that it will blaze bright again in Ukraine, because for all his bombs and tanks and missiles, I don’t believe that the Russian dictator will ever subdue the national feeling of the Ukrainians and their passionate belief that their country should be free.

    And I say to the British people and all who have heard the threats from Putin against those who stand with Ukraine, we will of course do everything to keep our country safe. We are joined in our outrage by friends and allies around the world

    We will work with them — for however long it takes — to ensure that the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine is restored, because this act of wanton and reckless aggression is an attack not just on Ukraine. It is an attack on democracy and freedom in eastern Europe and around the world.

    This crisis is about the right of a free, sovereign independent European people to choose their own future, and that is a right that the UK will always defend.

    Watch out you Whiteys! Your government needs you!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/read-the-prime-minister-s-address-to-the-nation-as-russia-invades-ukraine

    1. “This crisis is about the right of a free, sovereign independent European people to choose their own future, and that is a right that the UK will always defend.”
      Wait, WHAT???
      How about letting the free, sovereign people of the United Kingdom choose their own future not to be invaded via dinghies at Dover, you unspeakable hypocrite?

      2. And finally implementing the democratic decision the British people made in 2016 to actually LEAVE the EU.

      1. Prosecutions for anyone using the term “manpower” or “man up” will follow later this year.

        1. I had one of those. It was slightly disappointing, the buzzer just buzzed and didn’t melt people.

    3. Pretty impressive dose of bombastic sanctimonious meaningless drivel, if ever there was. Well done Boris. You get a gold star.

      1. To get a really toe-curling and virtue-signalling response to Putin you should check out Nikeliar and the wee pretendy parliament at Holyrood condemning the action! It’s execrable, and the ‘leaders’ of the 5 parties are unanimous! It’s a right giggle!

        1. Thanks Sue, I will. But what has that provincial leader have to do with international affairs?

          2. Absolutely zip, but that doesn’t stop her! Has opinions on lots of things but is incapable of any action!

    4. Why did President Putin wait until now to mount his invasion into Ukraine? He must have evaluated the threat from the free world and considered that the combined forces (and intellect) of: Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau, Scott Morrison, Jacinda Ardern and a few other cretins; doesn’t really amount to much.

      Putin, alone, discards more thinking power whenever he cuts his toenails than the rest of them (collectively) have ever possessed in their entire lives. When you elect and entrust — or otherwise assign — such feeble, moronic, dullard nincompoops to lead your nations, then you invariably get what you deserve.

    5. It must be me. Was it not us, or our friends in the CIA, who ousted the Russian friendly government of the Ukraine a few years ago?
      Have we not pushed NATO so far East that tactical nuclear weapons can be delivered to Russia by donkey cart? Since when were we friends with the Ukrainians, a people on the same level as gypsies? Since when was the Ukraine our “ally” – a question for you Liz Truss?
      Oh and a question for Ms Patel, how did Ukrainians get visas to work and live in the UK?

      1. I have come across quite a few Ukrainians in my time, and liked them very much. I agree with the rest of your post.

        1. My first year teaching in Manchester, I had a Ukrainian girl in my home room. Sandra. She came in on my first day and dropped a large worm onto the open register. I asked why and she said it was lost. Ah, said I, then take it to the office and give it to Mrs. Hannible and ask her to put it in lost and found. I knew that she wouldn’t dare as Mrs. Hannible, although young, was formidable. My guess is that the worm found its way back outside.
          Sandra turned out to be a nice girl and was no further trouble.

          2. One of my colleagues is Ukrainian. We are all working at home, so he is a bit isolated. I’d like to reach out to him, but don’t want to be misunderstood.
            Another colleague is married to a woman from Belorus, and they can’t move money out of her country, also she has had a bit of anti-Russian anger directed at her.

          4. It is crazy, I agree – but looking at some of the hysteria in the popular press, I suppose it’s inevitable.

  86. We were worried… now we’re glad we got a boost: Meet the people who didn’t want the Covid vaccine but are pleased they changed their minds
    Sponsored by The UK Government
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10476499/We-worried-glad-people-didnt-want-Covid-vaccine-changed-minds.html

    I wonder what the people who have suffered gravely from having had multiple jabs would say if the UK Government sponsored them to say it!

    I tried to post a comment BUT:

    ■ This article is part of a paid-for partnership with the UK Government

    Share or comment on this article: We were worried…now we’re glad: The people who didn’t want the Covid vaccine but changed their minds

    THEN

    Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.

    But clearly those who did comment did not make the sort of comments they wanted so the comments were all taken down!

    1. Someone I know is quarantining with omicron at the moment. It would have been far, far worse if he hadn’t had 3 jabs! He just KNOWs that!
      (he is not a high risk group)

        1. The vaccine has been a total failure it does not work. People are not as bad because the mutation is not as bad , but of course they dont want to see that.

    2. Someone I know is quarantining with omicron at the moment. It would have been far, far worse if he hadn’t had 3 jabs! He just KNOWs that!
      (he is not a high risk group)

      1. They started by offering people the chance to post their comments but when these comments were not what they wanted to see or hear they took them down.

    1. Sigh. I notice that the white family was pictured as tearing at each other’s throats, everyone black was a high acheiver or admirable, and the white woman was a victim. Oh, and they had a swipe at Brexit too. Another reason to avoid HSBC.

      1. Richard Ayoade is married to Laurence Fox’s sister, Lydia. Apparently he does not share his brother-in-law’s political views.

  89. Putin cuts off vital shipping route to Ukraine while his forces move on Kiev: Russian vessels blockade the Azov Sea while navy conducts ‘special military operation’ in the area
    Russian tankers appear to be blockading the Kerch Strait, which connects the Azov Sea with the Black Sea
    Ukraine has suspended operations at its ports; followed Russia’s decision to close Azov until further notice
    Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of wheat and grain, and experts say war will cause food prices to rise

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10546931/Putin-cuts-vital-shipping-route-Ukraine-forces-Kiev.html?ito=push-notification&ci=cC7e479kbY&cri=fxxv5Jq0a6&si=26738248&ai=10546931

    3. This is going to end horribly – a Chechnya horrible.

      The EU needs to admit it’s fault and apologise.

      NATO forces need a general to step forward and say ‘back off’, with a commitment to military intervention.

      Other nations need to accept they will not use Russian gas, bin the green nonsense and get fracking to tell Putin he has lost that lever – it’s by no means his only one, but it’s a big one power wise.

      Will this happen? Of course not. Too much stupidity, too much ego, too much pride – and all the fault of Western politicians.

    2. This is very interesting – I’ve never heard anyone advocating this point of view before. In effect, that Gates’ and Charles’ malthusian ideas are just vanities, because population reduction will happen anyway.
      He doesn’t tackle the elephant in the room which is the army of imams urging muslim women to have at least five children in order to take over the world.

      1. Blackbox2. It is actually a frequently expressed view amongst those who study demographics. It is a bit like climate change, however. It isn’t a view that is popular with the establishment who support XR, the Greens and all the rest of the doomsayers. So it rarely gets aired. If you google it you will find there is actually plenty about it. And, Peterson has addressed the problem of “…army of imams urging muslim women to have at least five children in order to take over the world.” Within the context of population collapse they will not succeed.

        1. At the moment, they are succeeding though, as the population of muslim countries is exploding, isn’t it?

          1. Yes, but that will change. Note in the advanced Islamic countries that their population are falling too.

          3. It is to do with poverty, that’s the point. You will find that in this country, middle class Muslims have families about the same size as the rest of us. There is an intimate connection between poverty or being poor and the size of families. Most of the Islamic population is not due, in the UK, from children of established Muslims but from illegal immigration which perpetuates the problem of poor families = large, they go on to marry and perpetuate the cycle. That is why the government is derelict in not getting a grip of immigration. The average family size in Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation but one that is increasing in wealth, is 3.5 people. Not much more than us in the last century. It is now 2.3 for the UK. As time goes on family size is falling in Indonesia as wealth increases. So the important thing is to help these countries get richer via capitalism. Socialism only makes the problem worse and families increase in size when run by that system.

        1. Because he subscribes to the warped view that 8 billion people on a small planet is an acceptable number. He doesn’t take into account the unassailable fact that such an obscene number of just one species has destroyed the vital biodiversity of the planet. The human population of earth is still rising, exponentially, and consequentially upsetting the balance of nature and destroying many other organisms that are vital for the life of all species.

          Peterson is one of those who believes that humans are “more important” than any other life form, and from that base viewpoint stems all the ills of the world.

          1. I suggest you look at studies allied to Petersons way of thinking. i.e. that the population will crash. Because you are quite wrong and he is right. It is a process already happening but, apparently, you are unaware of it.

            https://ourworldindata.org/…
            https://www.pewresearch.org…
            https://www.mirror.co.uk/ne…
            https://www.acsh.org/news/2…
            https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1040621
            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781829/
            .
            There are hundreds of articles on this subject. The above links took me a minute to find.

          2. I suggest you look at studies allied to Petersons way of thinking. i.e. that the population will crash. Because you are quite wrong and he is right. It is a process already happening but, apparently, you are unaware of it.

            https://ourworldindata.org/…
            https://www.pewresearch.org…
            https://www.mirror.co.uk/ne…
            https://www.acsh.org/news/2…
            https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1040621
            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781829/
            .
            There are hundreds of articles on this subject. The above links took me a minute to find.

          3. I suggest you look at studies allied to Petersons way of thinking. i.e. that the population will crash. Because you are quite wrong and he is right. It is a process already happening but, apparently, you are unaware of it.

            https://ourworldindata.org/…
            https://www.pewresearch.org…
            https://www.mirror.co.uk/ne…
            https://www.acsh.org/news/2…
            https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1040621
            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781829/
            .
            There are hundreds of articles on this subject. The above links took me a minute to find.

          5. How about actuyally reading about the process involved. No one is arguing about the population presently increasing. But the process of population collapse has already started. I would suggest that you look at the issue in depth because a superficial reading will indeed indicate that things are getting worse. But actually, the contrary is happening.

          6. I suggest you look at studies allied to Petersons way of thinking. i.e. that the population will crash. Because you are quite wrong and he is right. It is a process already happening but, apparently, you are unaware of it.

            https://ourworldindata.org/…
            https://www.pewresearch.org…
            https://www.mirror.co.uk/ne…
            https://www.acsh.org/news/2…
            https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1040621
            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781829/
            .
            There are hundreds of articles on this subject. The above links took me a minute to find.

          7. I suggest you look at studies allied to Petersons way of thinking. i.e. that the population will crash. Because you are quite wrong and he is right. It is a process already happening but, apparently, you are unaware of it.

            https://ourworldindata.org/…
            https://www.pewresearch.org…
            https://www.mirror.co.uk/ne…
            https://www.acsh.org/news/2…
            https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1040621
            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781829/
            .
            There are hundreds of articles on this subject. The above links took me a minute to find.

    1. I can hear Nikeliar rushing for her pen…! As long as she’ll be able to blame someone else!

    2. They can go and feck themselves – I can vote [although it seems to do no good] for my country’s constitution but I have no input to the globalist criminals running the WHO.

    3. Next time we can all be like Australia, which Bill Gates thinks is a shining example that every country should have followed.

    4. This is really alarming. I do not want the WHO in charge of what happens in this country in any way, shape or form. Bet your life the U.K. will sign up to it.

    5. Oh my skies, how awful!

      Of course, the WHO already *has* this power. It can shut down all egress and ingress into a country. It has those legal powers. In the Coronavirus incident, China said ‘up yours’ and completely ignored the instruction.

      1. You say “of course the WHO already has this power”. Is this really so? Do you have a link please? Otherwise I will look it up myself.

    3. Fortunately, after this morning’s rain I decided to risk mowing the lawns (from and back) since tomorrow is the fortnightly gardening refuse collection. Just as i was putting the lawnmower away the heavens opened and hailstones fell. Result!!!

  94. Interesting DT article; well, interesting to me.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/24/could-beginning-end-vladimir-putin/

    “Could this be the beginning of the end of Vladimir Putin?

    Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet past may resonate with older people, but younger Russians may see it as an old man’s fantasy

    Mark Almond24 February 2022 • 12:22pm

    The scenes of panicked motorists pouring westwards from Kiev and the videos of Russian troops raising their flag deep inside Ukrainian territory only a few hours into their invasion suggests Vladimir Putin is triumphant. Maybe his Blitzkrieg will succeed like Hitler’s invasion of France in 1940. But however disastrously this war has begun for Ukraine and its timid Western friends, a long economic cold war is in prospect.

    Given Vladimir Putin’s penchant for citing the “lessons of history”, it is odd that he has chosen to ignore how previous Russian regimes embarked on war confident of victory only to find their foundations at home shattered by the costs of conflict. In 1904, Nicholas II’s minister of the interior prophesied that conflict with Japan would be a “jolly, little victorious war” which would stabilise Russia at home.

    Instead, humiliation brought people onto the streets. The Tsar had the power and loyal forces to crush protests then. But twelve years later, as the human and economic costs of the First World War bit deeply into living standards, the Tsar’s soldiers mutinied rather than shot at protestors. Lenin had urged Russians to turn “imperialist war” into a “civil war” against the regime.

    An armed uprising against Putin’s regime is unlikely. A palace coup won’t take place unless things go wrong on the battlefield. But the evident lack of enthusiasm among younger Russians for this war could turn into Putin’s Achilles Heel. In the past, it was older generations, who had experienced war themselves and had children to lose, who were often cautious about conflict. Young men used to be excited by the prospect of glory. Even though some young Russians will no doubt swallow the Kremlin’s propaganda about restoring historic Russia’s greatness, for many generations this will seem as quaintly unappealing as if our twenty-somethings were urged to sign up to rebuild the British Empire.

    Younger Russians, anyone under forty, have lived in a post-Soviet space. Like their contemporary Ukrainians, the new states have been their everyday normality. Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet past may mean a lot to older people who lived through the traumatic collapse of the economy thirty years ago, but the generation which Putin is asking to risk their lives may see it as an old man’s fantasy.

    Will young Russians swallow Western sanctions on their way of life? Russia’s ruler is completely out of touch with the Smartphone generation. Putin doesn’t use a mobile phone or the internet. His obsession with secrecy means he even limits his use of paper and often gives orders verbally in person.

    What if iPhones and Spotify are cut off? Young Russians have got used to being part of a global entertainment and sports culture. Their everyday economic activities involve using their phones to pay for things. Maybe if Russia was attacked, millions would rally to defend their country. But the generation of young men growing up in one child families with consumerist aspirations are much less likely to want to risk their skins. After all, our own army has difficulty recruiting enough of our smartphone-obsessed young people to fill its modest ranks. There is no sign of a rush of patriotic Russian young men to sign up even for a victorious war. Cultural change has been one of Putin’s concerns. Like China’s Xi, he regards modern pop culture as inherently degenerate and unpatriotic. But it is a reality.

    Goethe defined genius as “knowing when to stop”. Putin clearly sees himself as the reincarnation of Russia’s great state-builders of the past. Putin’s regime could die of indigestion if it tries swallow Ukraine whole. The costs will hit Russia’s coming generation. From defeat in the Crimean War in 1856 to the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan in 1989, Russian regimes have often seen the keystone of their stability slip out of place after defeat. Maybe now, the West’s economic and media warfare will erode Putin’s hold on Russia’s next generation.”

      1. Very much wishful thinking blackbox2. What Putin is doing is neutralizing Ukraine. He has no intention of starting a war and he has no intention of invading to do a full scale occupation of the country. And anyone who knows anything about Putin knows very well he does not hanker after the USSR. If anything he hankers after Imperial Russia. So at the very outset of this article with the sentence: “Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet past may resonate with older people, but younger Russians may see it as an old man’s fantasy…” Is wrong and thus obviously written by someone projecting their propagandist fantasies on Putin. A somewhat common behaviour in the West of late. It really is appalling that people who comment and are even supposed to be experts on Russia haven’t the first clue about Putin, how he operates. And don’t even have a clue about Russia or how that operates. It is an utter disgrace to say the least.

        1. The double eagle standard was visible behind the podium, on his left, when he was speaking.

          1. What! Not the hammer and sickle? But seriously, Putin reintroduced the double eagle flag of Tsarist Russia. Hardly something a Russian communist would be enamoured by. Don’t you think?

  95. 351102+ up ticks,

    Could this be the way to go for the decent indigenous of the United Kingdom.

    A Well-Regulated Militia… Ukraine Gives Guns to Citizens ‘To Defend Our Country

    1. Ignoring Stapleford’s pointless and irrelevant down vote, the reality is that guns do nothing. When the military have missiles guh huh guhnz are pointless.

    2. English Bill of Rights. The precursor to the American thing, they always copy other peoples ides, not an original thought between them!

      Subjects’ Arms.

      That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.

      Sorry, add on. Here is the link to the English Bill of Rights. It should be compulsory reading for all English men and women. We should stand taller than the Americans because we expressed these ideals first. But somehow we are supposed to denigrate and nullify our achievements in deference to others.

      https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2/introduction

  96. OT – cockle warming time.

    In 1992, the MR took me to meet a family in Hemel Hempstead whose daughters she had taught while she worked at the British School in the Netherlands. It was a Thursday – I was to go to the JY. Prog the next day. For a pudding, one of the girls made a surprise Pavlova. It was delicious – and the first I had ever had. I gave it a mench on the Prog.

    Last evening, said girl – now in her 50s ,- came to supper with her youngest daughter (aged 16).

    She brought with her – a mouth-watering Pavlova – as a surprise!! I risked two helpings.

    Aren’t the young wonderful?…… (sometimes…!)

    1. Far more good young children than bad. Our grandchildren are terrific age 17, 18 and 20.

      Edit are not and

    2. Far more good young children than bad. Our grandchildren are terrific age 17, 18 and 20.

      Edit are not and

    3. How lovely. Very pro=Russian. Pavlova named after the Russian ballerina.

      Suet puddings for you from now on !

          1. I made a batch of marmalade t’other day. It was generally to Elsie’s recipe, but I added 3 limes to the 1kg of Seville oranges.

            It’s the tastiest I’ve yet made. I don’t usually like mixed citrus fruits but this works as each retains its own character. Wilkins of Tiptree do a similar one called “Double Two”.

          6. Mr Phizzee, Sir, are you suggesting that I am a tart?!?!? You, Sir, are a very Silly Sausage. (Harrumph!)

  98. Whoopie…it’s FREEDOM DAY. :@)

    Scrub that. It’s WAR DAY. :@(

    That didn’t last long did it…

  99. Spekkie article on the current farrago.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-putin-lost-the-plot

    “Has Putin lost the plot?

    Sitting alone at the end of an absurdly long table or marooned behind a vast desk in a palatial hall, Vladimir Putin’s idea of social distancing has gone beyond the paranoid and into the realm of the deranged. His distance from reason and reality seems to have gone the same way. In little more than 48 hours, Putin’s sensible, peace-talking statesman act flipped into something dark and irrational that has worried even his supporters.

    As Putin’s hour-long address announcing official recognition of the breakaway republics of Donbas went out on Monday, a producer on Kremlin-controlled TV texted me: ‘Boss okhuyel [the boss has wigged out].’

    Indeed. Putin’s rambling and uncharacteristically emotional address to the nation and the bizarrely staged Security Council meeting that preceded it carried the distinct whiff of the dying days of the USSR. The ministers standing by to publicly agree (some more convincingly than others) with the boss; the formulaic tropes about protecting Russian-speaking people from ‘genocide’; the clichés about the ‘illegitimate’ government in Kiev. The spectacle resembled nothing so much as Leonid Brezhnev’s slurred 1979 announcement that the Soviet Union had to fulfil its ‘internationalist duty’ to protect the people of Afghanistan.

    How did Putin, the three-dimensional chess player whose cynical but often brilliant opportunism leveraged Russia from a middling regional power to world player, come to this? Covid distancing could have something to do with it. According to members of the Kremlin press pool, Putin’s paranoia over the virus has been extreme. He has forced everyone in his entourage to do frequent tests and pass through a disinfection tunnel at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow. The information bubble in which Putin — who famously doesn’t use a computer or the internet, which he considers a CIA creation — has lived for two decades has, over the past two years, become an echo chamber. His access to anything resembling a dissenting opinion has been more restricted than ever.

    He has jeopardised Russia’s main strategic hold over Europe and blown up the Minsk accords he helped write

    Just as significantly, Putin appears to believe his own propaganda. ‘He orders it up, then sees it come true on the screen,’ says one Kremlin pool reporter who sees Putin on a weekly basis and confirms that the boss watches official TV news obsessively. ‘He’s his own director.’

    The irony of Putin’s snap decision to recognise the breakaway republics is that up until that moment he had been doing so very well with diplomacy. Massive troop build-ups around Kiev scared the world into finally taking his long-standing complaints over Nato enlargement seriously. On the eve of Putin’s recognition announcement, France’s Emmanuel Macron had proposed a summit with Germany’s Olaf Scholz and US President Joe Biden that would ‘define a new order of peace and security in Europe’. That’s exactly what Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have been pushing for for months. The Kremlin’s official line, as recently as Sunday night, was that the Minsk peace accords should be implemented, leaving the Donbas republics’ voters inside Ukraine and its parliamentarians in Kiev all pushing back against the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s pro-Nato line.

    So what changed so suddenly? As always, the Kremlin-controlled media is the bellwether of coming policy. Over the weekend, very amateurish fake footage of a series of supposed attacks by Ukraine on the Donbas republics was broadcast. Local leaders tweeted news of terror strikes that had not yet happened. Fake news has been a Russian speciality for years, of course. But ‘what’s surprising is they haven’t got any better at doing it’, Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative site Bellingcat, told the Guardian. ‘In some ways they have got worse.’

    That raises a question: who was the real target audience for this series of obviously staged charades? Credulous, older Russian TV viewers — or Russian TV’s most devoted viewer of all, Vladimir Putin? Putin is usually portrayed as an omnipotent master manipulator. But it’s also entirely possible that he is being manipulated by the many hawks in his entourage — notably defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Federation Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev. The Kremlin, as the Russians say, has many towers.

    Ultimately we will never know exactly what prompted Putin to make his impetuous decision to recognise the Donbas republics. And then, two days later, to send in the tanks and bombers. There was a brief interlude that Putin, teetering on the very brink, still appeared to preserve the strategic ambiguity that has been the hallmark of this career. Was formalising the presence of Russian troops in areas that had been de facto independent of Kiev’s control since 2014 an actual invasion or not? The US said it was. The EU wasn’t so sure. The usual suspects — notably Hungary’s president and long-standing Putin ally Viktor Orbán resisted EU moves to impose sanctions. It was the last moment when the old, Machiavellian Putin, past master of divide and rule, was visible. Then he plunged on in a rain of fire and steel.

    Putin evidently believes that his latest moves will pummel Ukraine into giving up its Nato dreams. From the outside, it would appear that he’s achieved precisely the opposite, pulling the plug on constructive dialogue and boosting support among ordinary Ukrainians for Nato and EU membership. Putin has jeopardised Russia’s main strategic hold over Europe — its dependence on Russian gas — as well as blown up the Minsk accords that he helped to author. Most worryingly of all, Putin’s invasion took even the members of his media and diplomatic apparatus completely by surprise. Russian TV propagandists were left scrambling to catch up with the new messaging that invasion was not western hysteria but policy. One senior Russian ambassador messaged me on the morning of the invasion to say ‘old strategy abandoned. No new strategy yet.’

    Yet deep in his Covid-insulated echo chamber, this all apparently makes sense to Putin — and to the ultra-hawks who seem to have captured his ear. But his once razor-sharp sense of realpolitik has vanished down a rabbit hole of self-made delusion.”

    1. It isn’t worth picking apart this nonsense. Do these people really think the public are susceptible to this sort of WWI crude propaganda. You really need to be more sophisticated than this.

    2. “He has jeopardised Russia’s main strategic hold over Europe and blown up the Minsk accords he helped write”

      After watching civilians in Donbass take a pounding for 7 years and Minsk saying several weeks ago they would never implement the Kiev protocols he was left with little choice.

  100. Russia invasion of Ukraine may have to be stopped ‘militarily’, suggests Boris Johnson. 24 February 2022.

    The Russian invasion of Ukraine may have to be stopped “militarily”, Boris Johnson has suggested.

    In an address to the nation after Vladimir Putin’s declaration of war overnight, the Prime Minister accused the Russian president – who he labelled a “dictator” – of authorising a “tidal wave of violence”.

    “Our mission is clear,” Mr Johnson said. “Diplomatically, politically, economically and eventually militarily, this hideous and barbaric venture of Vladimir Putin must end in failure.”

    Well there it is plain as can be! The aim is war!

    If the UK were actually to become involved in an exchange of fire with Russia I of course would be as much in the line of fire as anyone else. Nuclear Fire is if nothing Egalitarian and Democratic! There will be nothing personal in it. Vladimir Putin has no Political Doctrine that I can discern and almost certainly bears me no personal ill will; there are no Russian Warheads with Death to Mintski written on them. How different with the Government of the UK! There is not one comment I put up on this Blog that I do not wonder if it will bring the Secret Police to my door one early morning! For this reason among many others I shall not be supporting Johnson’s War Aims!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/24/boris-johnson-russia-ukraine-joe-biden-liz-truss-cobra/

  101. Bracing article in the DT about the effects Ukrainian problems will have on the “Home Front”.
    It’s a long article, so I will only post the link

    This paragraph caught my eye:

    “Anybody who was alive between the Sixties and Eighties will remember the first age of nuclear anxiety. Threat of atomic annihilation loomed large in the minds of ordinary people. Schoolchildren rehearsed “duck and cover” drills; householders built nuclear fallout shelters in their garden.”

    Immodestly, I will post my comment:

    “Really? I was young in the 1950s and 1960s. I knew no-one with a nuclear bunker in their garden; several still had WWII dugouts filled with rusting garden tools and mould.

    We vaguely knew about strontium 90 and amongst our chums would be those going on the Aldermaston jolly. The only drills we ever practiced were for crossing the road: “look right, look left, look right again ….”

    Even the Cuban missile crisis failed to stop the Saturday night dances in the local hotel.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/23/ukraine-war-russia-sanctions-could-mean-uk-energy-investments/

    1. For me it was a bit different. My father was in the Royal Air Force and from 1954 to 1958 lived on an active RAF station with three squadrons of fighter aircraft – which were sometimes at instant readiness.

      We all knew why. While we went about life as normal (in the way you describe) there was a feeling of dread hanging over many of us.

    2. The Cuban missile crisis stopped everything where I was in Germany. We slept under the bombed up aircraft on the end of the runway knowing that if the aircraft took off Armageddon was a few minutes away.

      1. Similarly in North Norfolk, Spikey.

        17 Javelin FAW8 each armed with 4 live firestreak missiles and the 30mm Aden cannon fully armed. 17 aircraft because that also included the T3 Trainer.

        Confined to Squadron for 72hours.

        1. By the way, the Thor missiles at North Pickering where down to 2 minutes to lift-off, aimed at Russian Targets and had NO recall system. If we couldn’t stop them, neither could the other side.

    3. Being in the RAF based in Germany on the tail end of the cold war, we were used to exercises ending up with nuclear conflagration thus heralding a beer call in the mess. In the run up, pilots were issued with a go-pack which contained authentication codes, a silk handkerchief and an eye patch. The hanky was a printed map should you get shot down and wish to walk home. The eye covering was for use when yer big bombs were going off. If worn, you were only blinded by the flash in one eye you and could swap over to the other eye and get home. Glad nothing ever happened cos my map was not of an area where we operated.

  102. Governments around the world are going to become more vicious with anyone who disagrees with their master plan (The Great Reset) Glenn says. Here in America, our federal government is using the Federal Reserve — and OUR finances — to take full control and transform our nation away from capitalism. In fact, Glenn explains how recent nominees to the Fed will likely bypass Congress to enact that whatever policies they wish…

    ► Click HERE to subscribe to Glenn Beck https://bit.ly/2UVLqhL
    ►Click HERE to subscribe to BlazeTV: https://www.blazetv.com/glenn

    Connect with Glenn on Social Media:
    http://twitter.com/glennbeck
    http://instagram.com/glennbeck
    http://facebook.com/glennbeck

    2,042 Co

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIhc-QXCC0g

  103. Will China bail out Putin?
    Fears Beijing could take on the West by stepping in to buy Russian gas and oil and limit impact of financial sanctions.
    Experts believe China could help Russia weather the storm of financial sanctions
    Could mean Beijing buying more Russian oil and gas and lending Moscow money
    Experts also say China will have to ‘walk a fine line’ to avoid hurting its interests

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10546499/Experts-say-China-help-Russia-weather-storm-Ukraine-sanctions.html

  104. David Aaronovich (writing in today’s Times) has an excellent article – headed ‘Putin apologists are in a tricky bind now’ – and he names his mixed bag of apologists. I will also name them (in order of appearance in the article): Nigel Farage (pictured as in the paper); Jeremy Corbyn ; Miriam Margolyes; Alex Salmond; Mike Pompeo; Marine Le Pen; Eric Zemmour; Jean-Luc Mélenchon; and Donald Trump. What a shower.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a6469e7c7df7eb8381a9146a988c43ef7c81c565cfd4ae2817117c11a42a6ba8.jpg

    1. Tell me, Geoffrey old chap, how is your wonderful and much lauded EU getting on with keeping the peace in the Ukraine?

      1. Not well, Bill, old boy (I’m older than you), neither Russia nor Ukraine being members of the EU. (Though a reformed and democratic Russia, particularly its Western and more civilised parts, would be welcome by this Europhile in due course).

    2. I cannot understand why a EUrophile is gloating here when if the EU had not expanded eastwards so enthusiastically, none of this would have happened.
      This is 90% down to EU expansionism and their aim to form a pan-European empire controlled by Brussels where all nation states were consumed by its ravenous maw.
      The EU now has even more blood on its hands.
      You should be ashamed, rather than proud.

      1. EU expansion plans also include the whole of North Africa. I wonder how Geoffrey will feel about his new neighbours.

        1. Indeed.
          And of course they will REQUIRE freedom of movement within the whole EU.
          Dinghies supplied at all channel ports.

          3. Look on the website, there is plenty in there.
            I merely gave you a lead.
            I’m not doing the research work you should have done years ago.

            If you actually bothered to look into the long term aims of the EU you would have known all about this.

          4. I am surprised Geoffrey is unaware…

            Fifteen years after most of Africa received its independence, Europe is still present and influential in the continent.
            … While military occupation and sovereign control over African
            territories have all but been eliminated, political influence, economic
            preponderance, and cultural conditioning remain.

            Europe and Africa: Decolonization or Dependency? | Foreign Affairs

          5. Oswald Mosley was enthusiastic about what he called ‘Europe a Nation’ and envisaged Africa as being retained by a united Europe as a giant colony. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since he died.

          7. Not in terms of the character of the people. Fascists wanting control over others. Pretty much sums up the EU, doesn’t it?

          8. Oswald Mosley was enthusiastic about what he called ‘Europe a Nation’ and envisaged Africa as being retained by a united Europe as a giant colony. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since he died.

          9. I’m not remotely surprised.
            His ignorance over what the EU’s long term aims are was very, very apparent during the Brexit debates here, so many years ago.

          13. I learn something new every day, here on the Notl site!! And I thought I kept up with UK and EU stuff but this Barcelonia Declaration was news to me, must have been asleep at the time…..;-)

          14. Like Maastricht and Lisbon, the EUrophiles kept very quiet about what the real meaning and effects were to be.

            I very much doubt that Mr Woollard had a clue about it either, and he’s a huge fan of the EU.

          15. There have been quite a few treaties signed by PM’s who were supposed to be representing the interests of the United Kingdom which were not reported in the media until after the fact. May, Brown and Major being the most recent examples.

          16. We were told we were joining a Common Market. What do you think the North African countries have been told with closer integration (interfering) at all levels?

            This partnership became a reality with the adoption of the Barcelona

            Declaration by the EU Member States and the following 12 Mediterranean

            non-member countries (MNCs): Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan,

            Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and

            Turkey. The League of Arab States and the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) (FR) were invited, as was Mauritania as a member of the UMA.

            https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM%3Ar15001

            In all but name members of the EU. I’m surprised you didn’t know anything about it.

          18. The only things i make up are for Nottlers to have a laugh. Geoffrey never says anything that supports his position.

          19. The only such controversy that I heard of at the time of the referendum (during which I was more active) was about Turkey joining the EU. No to that, thank you. No talk of African countries. That’s why I suspected that Phizzee had made it up.

          20. Yes, but they have kept it pretty quiet. On the other hand Algeria has applied to join the Commonwealth.

          21. Regarding the future ambitions of the EU i have made nothing up. You are the one that chooses to blind yourself.

            The next time you post my name in a post by you i will quote from the Guardian. “We are coming for you” end quote.

          23. No, Phizzee didn’t make it up. They have expressed the desire in the past to expand into North Africa.

          24. The only such controversy that I heard of at the time of the referendum (during which I was more active) was about Turkey joining the EU. No to that, thank you. No talk of African countries. That’s why I suspected that Phizzee had made it up.

      2. David Cameron said he wanted to see an EU that “stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals”. Assuming he wasn’t just asleep during geography lessons, he saw the EU stretching into Russia.

    3. You really are an example of “ignorance is bliss”. But also “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
      ― Martin Luther King Jr.

    4. I’m sure pretence gives you a lot of room to hide, but are you able to accept that the EU caused this mess? As an adult, the basic truth of who is to blame is evident. Will you acknowledge it?

    5. Farage on Putin: “The good thing about him is that he stands up for Russia. The bad thing is the way he does it.”

  105. David Aaronovich (writing in today’s Times) has an excellent article – headed ‘Putin apologists are in a tricky bind now’ – and he names his mixed bag of apologists. I will also name them (in order of appearance in the article): Nigel Farage (pictured as in the paper); Jeremy Corbyn ; Miriam Margolyes; Alex Salmond; Mike Pompeo; Marine Le Pen; Eric Zemmour; Jean-Luc Mélenchon; and Donald Trump. What a shower.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a6469e7c7df7eb8381a9146a988c43ef7c81c565cfd4ae2817117c11a42a6ba8.jpg

  107. Chernobyl nuclear waste facility destroyed during the war [DT and Independent]. A danger to Europe as well as Ukraine and Russia.

  109. MH has the Chase on and one contestant was visually impaired and had his guide dog with him- Harvey. They were knocked out but what a lovely doggie. So well behaved. I love dogs.

    3. Saw very few cod last year, on the south coast at least. Pollack and bass were abundant though.

    1. Ooh… George wore that skin tight suit. Sure that helped !

      He is absolutely correct though. The same as he was about all our other recent incursions.

      Probably why he is regarded as a Starflyer Agent.

        1. Paula can’t help herself.

          Good isn’t it. Having principles. And then deciding for the greater good.

          Thank you Raeil-Rik.

  112. I am off- chums coming for supper quite soon.

    A cold afternoon – plus the hail – that must be how the Russians are getting snow on their boots.

    I assume that the attack on the Ukraine ill be over in a day or so, once the Red Army has obliterated the Ukraine airbases, military installations and hardware. I am not quite sure why the Ukes are defending themselves against overwhelming force. I hope that the trolls will tell us.

    Chilly start, sunny day in view tomorrow. They say…

    Have a smashing evening in your bomb shelters.

    A demain.

    3. There was an article in my local rag asking why the Severn floods regularly. Well, it always did, but now they don’t dredge, they’ve cut down trees at the headwaters and built on floodplains.

  115. DAN WOOTTON: God help us that senile old men Putin and Biden hold world peace in their hands. Boris should step up like his hero Churchill, ignore the modern-day Chamberlain Macron – and the West must finally stop being distracted by woke sideshows

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10543121/DAN-WOOTTON-God-help-senile-old-men-Putin-Biden-hold-world-peace-hands.html

    Whilst there are some parts I agree with in the article, this is a curate’s egg of a piece.
    Godwin takes Wootton en passant. Pathetic.
    Macron is a strutting buffoon but, much as I dislike him, the small man insult is pathetic too. He is taller than Churchill was, as was Godwin’s friend.

    If everyone else, NATO, EU, UN etc. keep the Hell out of Ukraine, unlikely I know, it will probably be over in very short order.

    Why do I think we should let Ukraine fall?
    If for no other reason than keeping powder dry for when China goes for Taiwan.

    1. “Boris should step up” – please God, no, it’s a bad enough mess already! If Boris want’s to use “military means” then he can go, personally!

      1. Even though our armed forces have been badly hurt on the altar of the “peace dividend”, we are probably the only European nation that could still give Putin a black eye.
        That gives us a little clout when facing up to him.
        Unfortunately we would be given a broken nose and worse in any sub-nuclear exchange.

          1. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
            Perhaps some of our services Nottlers can provide the true picture.

            I know a submariner who served on the big boats and he never, ever hinted that that might be the case. On the occasions he ever spoke on the subject it was described as our independent nuclear deterrent.
            However, that said, I am sure he would have towed the official line.

          2. Now you are making sensible posts.

            Why would he?
            All under sea cable cable connecting us to the outside world have been split straight to the US.
            Your chap would not have known this.
            Call me a liar as deaf old Geoffrey if you like.

          3. If what he said was true, once they left Faslane that was it. They were at sea for weeks at a time.
            The commands came from London. How they got to the sub was presumably by radio.
            The cables wouldn’t have come into the equation.

          4. The cables are the beginning and the end.

            Glad you have shown your ignorance to me.

            Do i qualify for a discount in your gite?

          7. All the undersea cables that connect everyone to everything have been having their own cold war.

        1. Just look for the Daily Mail, todays edition..look for columnist,scroll down and you’ll find him.

          1. I did exactly that, and what I found was what I linked to.

            Any chance you can be a little more helpful as clearly you know where it is?

  116. Question for Conway.
    Are the media accurately translating what the Russians – from Putin to the ordinary interviewees – are saying? How similar is Ukrainian to Russian?

          1. Yes. Finally the USA decided after Pearl Harbour that it wasn’t in their interests to keep supplying the Germans with fuel.

            Some thing sounds familiar here.

    2. Very similar given that most speak Russian. Eat more greens means kill all cows… apparently. Sorry.

    3. I have a Ukrainian neighbour (she’s very gobby and screeches away in Ukrainian, Russian, pidgin English and piss-poor Swedish).

      She tells me that Ukrainian and Russian are very similar but distinct (I’ll take her word for it). She is also very pro-Russian and believes that Ukraine was better off when part of the USSR.

      She is also a fervent supporter of the EU and thinks Brexit was a mistake. That tells you all you need to know about her.

    4. I haven’t listened to any TV and that includes reporting on the situation in Ukraine. I believe they are related, but I don’t know how closely.

        1. I wonder if he’s done anything “insane” before? Or has he suddenly become insane? His lawyer must be able to point out previous “episodes” or explain he’s taken drugs. IMO drug taking and alcohol are not mitigating circumstances they are aggravating circs. Self inflicted.

  118. I suppose the West now feels like how the Dodo must have felt after they gave up their wings because they thought they were no longer required.

    3. The bloke on the front row, furthest left. Dear life. That’s our military? Nick Nack? Is he a tank driver or someone who benefits from being short?

      With the greatest of respect to Hervé Villechaize, who suffered horribly in his life.

    4. Homosexuality in the armed forces, in my day, was punishable be detention followed by a dishonourable discharge.

          1. I might be interested. What baccy are you offering?

            And special clothing is extra.

            *As if i need to tell you….

            Speaking of which….. I’m going to watch ‘Personal Services’ again.

  120. As a matter of idle curiosity, how are all these news reporters able to report from the warzone when Russia is pulverising Ukraine?
    No sign of shelling in their vicinity, how did they get there with camera crews etc?
    If we’re (our leaders) are not careful this is the way the world ends, not with a whimper, but a bloody big bang.

    1. I would guess it was the same in the Gulf wars…they got their crews there to report as it was on-going.

      1. In the Gulf “we” were winning and controlled all the airspace.

        The BBC etc treat Russia as the enemy (understandably here) but they seem to be reporting from very quiet areas.
        Kate Adey it ain’t.

        I hope it stays that way.

    3. Orla Whatsit was poncing around in full protective fig while glooming and dooming.
      Clive Myrie just seemed to be wearing normal gear while posing in the middle of a main road.

  121. A Russian president who’s lost his touch with reality and a POTUS who has symptoms of early onset dementia?

    Thank goodness everythiing we buy is made in China! 🤔

    On Putin: he’s gone “full tonto” (Ben Wallace):

    Lies and propaganda are his key weapons. Some observers think, however, the scale of his dishonesty is entering the realms of fantasy; he might be losing touch with reality.

    https://inews.co.uk/news/world/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-attack-psychological-picture-what-make-tick-1424732

    On Biden: “I think we’re all concerned for President Biden’s mental health.” (Roger Marshall)

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-biden-mental-health-roger-marshall-1299500/

  123. “Our Sue”
    Do you ever see any inside “gen” on how the reporting teams are working from the front line that you are able to pass on?

    1. Honestly, no. In the old days of the News tea bar in Television Centre, I once heard a reporter complaining that he’d been sent to a war zone and hadn’t been shot at – but those people don’t come anywhere near where I work now, in BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide).

      News contact me if they need contracts for external photo and footage suppliers but that’s all.

      Years ago, decades now, switchboard put a call through to me from IRIB in Tehran. A guy demanding I pay for services provided by them to Lyse Doucet. He went on about how wonderful she is and didn’t want to hear that her expenses are not my responsibility.

          1. Err, chink? Chinese spy.
            Do sharpen up at the back, even BT would have been ahead of you there.

          2. Do please try to keep up with current events. While all our institutions have been polluted with this PC common purpose shit the Chinese have infiltrated at every level. We are being told it is the Russian emigrees that are the problem with money laundering.

          3. Err irriot.
            “chink” is slang for a Chinaman.
            I am very aware that the chinks have infiltrated all levels of our industry, (what little is left), our universities, our medical establishments our infrastructure.

  124. Trudeau has put on his serious face and threatened severe consequences for Russia.

    Does he really think that anyone is listening to him? Really?

    2. The man is an arse as are all the western leaders. I am sick of all of them. Don’t talk to me about any of these so-called “leaders”. If I had a gun….

        1. The manager at the jewellery store I worked in on Saturdays and college vacations always called me Miss Oakley- as my surname began with O.
          Last night MH and I were having a music contest…he put on a Chicago song and I replied with I Just Blew in from the Windy City. And I sang it- thank gawd the neighbours are partially deaf;-) I can really blast it out when I want to!!

          4. I wish- growing up in sarf London I always wanted a cowboy outfit. Closest I got was a bloody nurse outfit. Grrr.

          8. Have you not heard that you can go in to any shop and walk out with whatever you want under $1000 and security will just watch you do it? Can you refute this?

          10. It is relevant to the people that try to run the shop. Have you not seen the attempts of shops to protect what they are selling? Even simple things as Aspirin being ripped off their shelves? As soon as they they try to protect their stock they are accused of denying the people of the drugs they need.

            These local shops are closing. Not just them. Brands are pulling out also. That doesn’t affect local people so much but having chainstore drug shops closing does.

          12. Just following the thread. Sorry.

            you do know that these policies are no crime is committed under $1000 and also no one is committing a crime by setting up a tent camp in a park in San Fran or Miami Beach?

            Take a look. You wouldn’t want to go there.

      2. This is precisely over a period of 40 years, ownership of fire arms in western societies have been banned.
        Long term planning.

      1. Do you remember the episode where he let his dog greet Angela Merkel, knowing very well that she doesn’t like dogs. I think the pooch was a black lab bitch. It was definitely a friendly creature and trotted up with tail wagging to say hello to the nice lady. Merkel’s sour expression was priceless.

    1. Superb! Our grandson loves the old T & J cartoons on YouTube, but for goodness sake don’t tell his teacher, who will probably regard this as ‘abuse’!

  126. Enough, enough, already. I’m off for the night. Goodnight and God bless all Nottlers until the morning’s light

          1. Just like ogga we got bored with the repeated warnings.. doesn’t make their post less boring thought. We know.

          2. I fight everyone, everyone fights me.

            I would even welcome you, if you reappeared after an absence!

  129. Ukraine strikes back: Kiev’s troops have already shot down five Russian helicopters, destroyed dozens of tanks and captured dozens of troops as Putin’s forces take heavy losses

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10547573/Ukraine-strikes-Kievs-troops-shoot-five-helicopters-Putins-forces-losses.html

    As usual, please forgive my cynicism, but if the Russians really are going in, in force, are they really suggesting that the Ukraine forces would not be crushed?
    My guess is that Russia would overwhelm Ukraine rapidly, the real end-game is whether Ukraine becomes Afghanistan mark two after that initial conquest.
    Constant bombings, IEDs, shootings etc.

      1. Indeed, but IEDs work well almost anywhere, and if the Russians take over they will install a puppet government and leave that government to sort out the mess.
        I suspect.

    1. Don’t involved the sane in society. Self inflict you plonkers. There’s enough of you out there.

  131. Shell Energy, who we were put on after Pure Planet collapsed, gas prices up 100%, electricity prices up 50% from 1 April. Welcome to levelling UP.

  136. Evening, all. Was saying to a friend who dropped in for a cuppa this afternoon that if Putin cuts off the gas it would serve the greeniacs right for banning fracking.

    1. Good evening Conway. You got a bonfire we can warm ourselves with? There might be quite a stampede.

      1. Not at the moment. I put all the prunings from my vines in the green bin. I was late getting up this morning and the Rayburn decided to go out after I’d stoked it. I debated whether to just go over to oil early or to relight it. In the end, I thought it would be cheaper (no electricity needed to cook or boil a kettle or heat the water) to relight it.

      3. After last weekend, with no power for 12 hours, and a fridge full of food – all of which needed cooking – I’ve retrieved my portable gas stove from the churchyard shed at the old place. Along with several tools.

    2. Wee Krankie doesn’t like Scottish gas, Scottish oil, Scottish fracking or Scottish nuclear energy.

      She deserves an early cryoscopic departure …

  137. Just watched ‘A Final Countdown’ from 1980. Surprised I hadn’t seen it before, must have been one of Kirk Douglas’s last films. Predictable but not bad.

    1. I’m just back from a screening of Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt at Guildford Odeon. Not a play to lift the spirits. Quite uncomfortable, given current events.

  138. Boris is sending 4 more of our fighters into air patrols. It will be interesting if one gets shot down. Vlad has little to lose but it will send a big message. Hope the pilots have hankies with the correct maps printed (unlike mine).

        1. The Lanc, the Dakota, several Spitfires and the Hurricane – Vlad will be quaking in his (snow-covered) boots!

    1. That’s the letters page, Geoff. For a brief moment, I could actually read some letters and then the (iron) curtain came down.

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