Sunday 27 February: Putin’s brazen aggression has exposed the West’s complacency

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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801 thoughts on “Sunday 27 February: Putin’s brazen aggression has exposed the West’s complacency”

  2. Putin’s brazen aggression has exposed the West’s complacency

    It has also exposed the West’s slow drift into insanity at every level.

    1. That drift started at the beginning of the 20th century and has now gone into overdrive.

      Mankind is a busted flush.

      1. no, it’s just the inevitable cycle of a too successful civilisation.
        Hard men produce good times, etc.

          2. Good morning, Rastus.

            It were “three minutes to midnight” back in 1962. Bit closer now, I reckon.

      2. It isn’t mankind that is a “busted flush” it is the West that has drifted into decadence.

          1. It certainly isn’t as anywhere as F-up as the West. Traditional values still apply as well as common sense. And I’m not talking about Islamic cultures.

  6. Khan and Patel to clash over campaigns to protect women. 27 February 2022.

    Tensions between the mayor of London and the Home Office are likely to intensify as both unveil what they are claiming as the UK’s first major campaigns to target perpetrators of sexual harassment and violence.

    Football stars, other sports figures, celebrities and influencers have been enrolled by Sadiq Khan to speak to men via billboards and video to address “pervasive misogynistic attitudes”, which experts say if left unchecked can allow harmful behaviours to escalate.

    The next Woke Brainwashing Campaign. This is of course aimed at those who have created the present Feminised society; White Males. There will be no mention here of Muslim or Third World attitudes!

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/26/khan-and-patel-to-clash-over-campaigns-to-protect-women

    1. I write this as a British patriot. How was it in our interests to provoke a war we cannot win, and cannot even fight, against a country which is not, in fact, our enemy?

      How indeed?

      1. The more the EU and NATO provoke Russia, the angrier Putin will become and the more and the harder he will lash out.

        1. That Vlad will sit still for economic ruin seems unlikely. If Russia is to go down then it might as well do so fighting. We are here on the path to escalation and all-out war.

          1. I fear so.
            Watch China, India and Iraq very carefully.
            Taiwan, Kashmir and Iraq/Israel will be in the cross hairs.

        2. I don’t see Putin as a lash-out, more a carefully thought through and planned kind of person.

          1. Normally I would agree, but if he’s painted into the corner he’ll start using the paint-stripper.

          2. Which is why I question his latest decision. It doesn’t tie up with his usual crablike progress.
            Why did he not wait until Germany – and most of the EU – were hooked on Nordstream 2?

  8. Sleep easy in your beds at night?

    British Spy Boss: ‘LGBT+ Rights’ Are What ‘Distinguish Us from Putin’

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2022/02/GettyImages-79155556-640×480.png

    “LGBT+ rights” are the most important “values and hard won freedoms” distinguishing “us” from Russian President Vladimir Putin, Richard Moore, chief of MI6, the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, wrote on Friday.

    Moore did not specify if his use of “us” was a reference to the United Kingdom, the Anglosphere, or the broader West.

    He expressed his sentiments via Twitter, relating his remarks to ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He included an acronym from “LGBT+ History Month,” with “LGBT+” for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans +.”

    He wrote, “With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022.”

    Moore highlighted an “LGBT+ support group” within MI6 to illustrate his emphasis of “LGBT+ rights” as the primary philosophy distinguishing “us from Putin.”

    He added, “Introducing P: ‘I had to move for the job when I joined #MI6, so I was relieved to find out there was an LGBT+ network group. Through the group I’ve made some great friends in the office, and it’s reassuring to know it’s there for support if I need it.’”

    https://twitter.com/ChiefMI6/status/1497287654441984007?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497287656128004111%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Feurope%2F2022%2F02%2F26%2Fbritish-spy-boss-lgbt-rights-are-what-distinguish-us-from-putin%2F

    Moore’s Twitter profile includes “he/him,” a reference to “preferred pronouns” in accordance with transgender ideology’s framing of sex as an arbitrary social construct.

    Under Moore’s directorship, the MI6 recently warned the UK’s intelligence personnel of “white privilege,” “hierarchy,” and “gender biases” as part of an effort to develop a “diverse and inclusive culture” across the spy agency.

    Weeks ago, the Times reported that MI6 recently began hiring foreigners as part of its “diversity” agenda.

    Last year, the intelligence agency chief promised to use the MI6’s resources to spy on other countries to verify their compliance with “climate change” pledges — which he dubbed “green spying” — to address what he labelled a “climate emergency.”

    The “climate emergency,” Moore claimed, is “the foremost international foreign policy agenda item for this country and for the planet.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/02/26/british-spy-boss-lgbt-rights-are-what-distinguish-us-from-puti

    1. Does this idiot realise how many people will read that and think they’d rather be on the side of Putin?
      No of course he doesn’t, because people like him are totally unable to read the world.

    2. Well, it looks as if MI6 gets its intelligence from the MSM and social media. I’d have thought that they would do some incisive research into “global warming”, check the facts, explore the science, check the people making the claims, deriving profit, you know, do some intelligence work?

    7. If things like that are running the show, and even hiring foreigners, then we are finished. How can someone in such a position claim that lgbtqxyz nonsense is anything but irrelevant compared to what is happening in Ukraine? On second thoughts, how did someone so unhinged get the job in the first place. Getting procedures have been abandoned.

    9. I would be so relieved to be blown up by a mincing pink tank rather than a nasty dirty green one, wouldn’t you?

  9. A new Europe is emerging from this crisis. 27 February 2022.

    Europe is waking up to the danger that Putin poses to its fundamental values and is beginning to steel itself against him. It has undoubtedly taken too long, but it is happening now and European geopolitics have been changed for good.

    It is indeed; assuming we do not graduate to a direct Russia/NATO confrontation it’s going to be a Globalist Europe without borders or indigenous peoples ruling themselves. A vast EU Marxist Serfdom without Freedom or Democracy for the masses but boundless riches for the New Nomenklatura. It is paradoxically the end of the West and European Christian civilisation!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-new-europe-is-emerging-from-this-crisis

  10. Morning all.

    Here’s the news about Putin…..

    Share

    Putin’s brazen aggression has exposed the West’s complacency

    Flowers for freedom: daffodils left outside the Ukraine Embassy in Dublin on Thursday

    Flowers for freedom: daffodils left outside the Ukraine Embassy in Dublin on Thursday

    SIR – Russia has built up an army with nearly 13,000 tanks.

    This has given the man in charge of those tanks the freedom to go where he likes. Vladimir Putin knows that Britain, with its 200 tanks (the same number as Germany and France), will do nothing.

    Only America and China have the armies necessary to stop Russia – and, for very different reasons, neither of them will.

    Our politicians have for years been asleep on the job of keeping us – and our democratic way of life – safe.

    Raymond Humphrys

    Cambridge

    SIR – The West, not least the United Kingdom, has squandered the peace dividend from the Soviet Union’s collapse on wokism, identity politics and eco-lunacy.

    So, while Britain’s economy is larger than Russia’s, our military resources are puny in comparison.

    We need to change our priorities and stop spending millions on fashionable fripperies like net zero. European nations need to follow suit.

    Nicholas Dobson

    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

    SIR – Twice the Prime Minister has been asked about the wisdom of continuing to cut 10,000 troops from the current number. Twice he has deflected the question by referring to increased defence spending – but for what scenario?

    The invasion of Ukraine surely reminds us that conventional war is still possible and requires soldiers, tanks, aircraft and a navy capable of leaving port (HMS Diamond being a case in point).

    Again we are reminded of the folly of basing defence on assumptions about the future while neglecting boots on the ground.

    David Lane

    Ludlow, Shropshire

    SIR – The reported remarks (February 25) made by the incoming Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, on the need to rebalance the British Army towards cyber warfare, reminded me of the time when a group of Nato experts first got their hands on one of the Soviet Union’s most advanced fighter bombers and were shocked, then amused, to see that the avionics packs were based on old-fashioned valves or vacuum tubes.

    The tittering stopped, however, when one of them observed that vacuum tubes were immune to the electromagnetic pulse effects of neutron bombs – then much in the thoughts of Nato’s strategic and operational staff members – whereas the solid-state avionics systems of Nato’s combat aircraft were highly vulnerable to them.

    No doubt Sir Patrick will be monitoring the effects of analogue rockets and artillery shells on Ukrainian targets, which have then been attacked by large numbers of analogue tanks, and the objectives been seized and held by armoured and mechanised infantry firing distinctly non-digital bullets.

    He will know better than most that an unsophisticated enemy, not dependent on cyber and advanced electronic systems at the operational and tactical level, will defeat highly sophisticated forces if there are enough of them and they are committed to defending their homeland, as we saw in southern Iraq.

    There has been a potentially tragic misunderstanding in the Ministry of Defence that technology is capable of overcoming mass. The fact is that, in order to insure against the broad spectrum of potential threats, modern armies need both.

    Sadly, by failing to keep up the insurance premiums the British Army has been reduced to a state in which it has neither.

    Lt Col Patrick Chambers (retd)

    Rosedale Abbey, North Yorkshire

    SIR – You would think that Vladimir Putin might have learnt the lesson from the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. This ended 10 years later with the withdrawal of the Red Army, after it failed to defeat the Mujahideen.

    It is one thing to take a country, but quite another to hold it.

    Anthony Haslam

    Farnham, Surrey

    SIR – With protests from ordinary Russian citizens being brutally suppressed through incarceration, we should recall our diplomats from Russia, close our embassy and expel all Russians from the United Kingdom (including those on work permits), freeze all Russian state, business and private assets, and ban entry to all sporting contests both at a national and individual level. Let’s start to show them what being a true pariah really means.

    Britain should also push for the immediate suspension of Russia from the United Nations Security Council, and of all who try to veto any such a move and support Russia’s actions.

    Simon Attwell

    Bury, Lancashire

    SIR – It appears that the EU is only united when it suits each member state.

    With fighting on their very doorstep, certain European countries are putting their own interests first, regardless of the atrocities being carried out. If Mr Putin is successful in Ukraine, will he turn his attention towards Lithuania, Latvia and Poland?

    The EU needs a much tougher sanctions package – one that includes the suspension of all Visa money transfers, the closure of all Russian embassies and consulates, and full sanctions on all oligarchs. All flights to and from Russia should be suspended from the end of the month, and European airspace denied to all flights to either Russia or Belarus.

    Mr Putin is making all the decisions: embassies around the world are redundant. If the wealthy are targeted, however, they will soon understand that their global playground has disappeared. They are the only ones with the means and ability to influence Mr Putin.

    Bruce Murray

    Hayling Island, Hampshire

    SIR – Almost more terrifying than Mr Putin’s veiled threat to use battlefield nuclear weapons if the West attempts to frustrate his conquest of Ukraine is the fact that Joe Biden, the most disastrous president in American history, has become a war leader.

    I’m reminded that, some years ago, Robert Gates, President Obama’s defence secretary, said that Mr Biden had “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”.

    Mr Biden couldn’t possibly mention Afghanistan when he delivers his State of the Union address on March 1. Any reference to it would only remind the world of the shameful cut-and-run from that tragic country, which surely emboldened Mr Putin to make his savage assault on Ukraine.

    Stephen Webbe

    East Molesey, Surrey

    SIR – Once President Biden declared that no US troops would fight in Ukraine the die was cast.

    Mr Putin knew that, without US support, any Nato response would simply take the form of sanctions that he was more than willing to endure. He also knew that tacit support would be provided from China.

    What are the chances of a Chinese move on Taiwan in the near future, using very similar pretexts?

    Tony Fenlon

    Girdle Toll, Ayrshire

    SIR – There is scant evidence that economic sanctions deter aggression, avert military conflict or change the behaviour of rogue states.

    That leaves the West with three viable options to stop a catastrophic war that might rapidly escalate beyond the boundaries of Ukraine: further diplomatic efforts, a full-scale military intervention, or fomenting an internal insurrection in Russia. History shows time and again that all three can succeed.

    The Western alliance must urgently reassess its decision to rule out a conventional military response. Amassing troops and equipment in Nato member states bordering Ukraine must be followed by an unequivocal joint statement from the leaders of America, Britain and France that any first use of nuclear weapons by Russia will be met with immediate retaliation.

    Philip Duly

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – Jeremy Warner’s critique of Western political myopia in the aftermath of the Cold War (Comment, February 23) was long overdue.

    For once, however, the initial culprit was not the EU, but Nato itself – and more specifically President Clinton’s disastrous Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who failed to perceive that, if the Cold War was indeed over, its institutions were now an anachronism and required not eastward extension but total replacement.

    Peter M Oppenheimer

    Oxford

    SIR – More than 150 years ago Lord Palmerston remarked: “The policy and practice of the Russian government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when met with determined resistance… and then wait for another opportunity.”

    It appears that little has changed.

    Peter Rossiter

    Swinford, Co Mayo, Ireland

    SIR – Mr Putin is now 69 and his power over Russia has been absolute for nearly 20 years, but his latest utterances suggest that he is beginning to lose his grip somewhat, and perhaps he is becoming vulnerable.

    It is encouraging that demonstrations have taken place against him in Russia, and these should be encouraged by the West. At the moment the EU can do little other than apply sanctions, but the West could warn Mr Putin that these and other punishments will last at least 10 years from his defenestration, when that comes.

    Over the years he has been suspected of, among other things, ordering the poisoning of several individuals and shooting down an airliner. Now he has invaded a sovereign country. Nato nations could consider moving to indict Mr Putin on crimes against humanity – a list to be added to until he is caught.

    No place in the world should provide a safe haven for him.

    David Belchamber

    Warminster, Wiltshire

    SIR – The situation in Ukraine has laid bare the folly of Britain’s current energy policy.

    If this entirely predictable situation does not force a rethink on fracking then what will?

    That Britain is at the mercy of global energy markets when we have bountiful supplies of our own is a basic dereliction of the Government’s duty to its people. Individuals and businesses are going to be crippled by energy price rises for no reason other than to placate a tiny section of society who are net-zero fanatics. This has to change.

    Steve Plampin

    Coggeshall, Essex

    SIR – Now is the time – if it is not already too late – to plough our fallow fields, extract our enormous gas supplies and mine the high-quality coal available to us under the North Sea, and give ourselves a chance of a slightly more comfortable future with our own home-supplied energy and home-grown food.

    David Statham

    Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

    SIR – On hearing the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I was reminded of the thoughtful and passionate words of Yehudi Menuhin one hot, sticky evening at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968. This was a day or two after August 20, when 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks had invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring.

    Shortly before commencing his performance of Beethoven’s violin concerto, Menuhin turned to the audience and said: “In these days of dark despair, an echo of 30 years ago, I dedicate this performance, as Beethoven did his life, to the indomitable and defiant spirit of mankind.” I hope the spirit and defiance of democratic Ukrainians prove as indomitable in the dark days and weeks ahead.

    David A Lord

    Dunfermline, Fife

    1. The only sensible comments are about our loss of control over our energy and the emasculation of our armed forces. Everything else seems to be a reiteration of the views published by the government and the BBC. Only one reference to the unsuitability of NATO to the post Cold War world.

      1. The idea that Russia, as one of the five Permanent members, could be expelled from the Security Council is farcical. China, another permanent member, would laugh at the idea; the US might quibble but I doubt the UK or France would support a move that might bring about the end of the entire supine UN.

    2. SIR – I must complain about the letters to the editor being little else but mindless propaganda brought on by you and the rest of the MSM

  11. University warns woke students that Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel Old Man and the Sea contains graphic scenes… of FISHING
    History and Literature students at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland have been warned the classic novel contains ‘graphic fishing scenes’
    TV and film adaptions of the 1952 classic have been given U and PG certificates
    The university said content warnings allow students to make informed choices

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10555411/University-warns-students-Ernest-Hemingways-Old-Man-Sea-

    University named after cardinal John Henry Newman slaps a content warning on the BIBLE because of its ‘themes of sexual violence and abuse’
    Newman University in Birmingham tells students studying the Bible the module ‘includes themes of sexual violence and abuse – in images and biblical texts’
    The University has flagged up certain passages as especially problematic
    It includes chapter two of Samuel in Old Testament about David, King of Israel
    A University spokesperson said warning is not a commentary on the holy book

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10555441/University-named-cardinal-John-Henry-Newman-slaps-conten

    1. What next – are universities going to be warning students that they may get paper cuts by turning pages of books?

    4. Some of these links ought to have the warning:
      This article will have you banging your head on the table.

        1. That Bible contains hurty words, too. “The first shall be last”; “..cast into outer darkness”. And as for that snake in the Garden of Eden…

          BURN IT…

    5. It also contains laws about homosexuality.

      Leviticus 18 and 20

      Leviticus means ‘The Law Giving’.

          1. Yes, don’t read it. It is a literary version of the Bubonic plague along with its sister volume the Koran, the literary version of Pneumonic plague. You can burn the former, but, unfortunately, I would say the latter is essential reading in order to understand what it is we are allowing to fester and grow in these here islands.

    7. If only Hemingway had set his graphic scenes in a West Highland fish farm.
      I assume that, so as not to upset any student RoPers, there is no warning about Lot bunking up with his daughters.

    1. Oh aye, he’ll be on the rampage until they’ve cooked up a new piece of cinema for us to gawp at.
      Good morning.

    1. Good morning. Making preparations for roast beef and batter pud. I’m going to risk a tarte tatin too. Pictures to follow. :@)

  14. Good morning from a rather chilly Derbyshire. -3°C outside, but a bright & sunny start with, as far as I can see, an almost totally clear, blue sky.

  15. Taki writing:

    Right now we have a bunch of nobodies canceling people, plays, and books, ruining careers, and we do nothing about it. Publishers are scared to death of these nobodies, and one unproved accusation against a noted historian by a woman has ruined Blake Bailey’s career. Lies and unproven charges have become the norm, and instead of resisting such blatant rubbish, people are giving in by remaining silent. And by their silence they aid and abet the false charges and ghastly lies. It’s time to fight back and fight back with a vengeance.

    Mind you, America has been one big lie for some time now, starting with the informal promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to Russian borders. Yet Putin is now the bogeyman while the clowns of the E.U. and Biden are posing as tough guys à la Mussolini on parade. By the way, did you know that Ukrainian oligarchs are among the most corrupt and make some of their Russian counterparts look almost honest?

    Edit for link:
    https://www.takimag.com/article/one-big-lie/

    1. “America has been one big lie for some time now,…” Actually America has been one big lie since the beginning including the concocted excuse of taxation without representation and the Boston Tea Party. Both were deflections from the real motivations of the Founding Fathers.

      1. They discovered a land of plenty and they wanted it for themselves, but how is that any different from any other group of individuals?

        1. That isn’t what I’m alluding to. What I’m on about is the manufactured reasoning they give for their history. It is practically lies from start to finish. What really miffed them was that the British government forbade them from taking any more Indian land and enslaving them. The Boston Tea Party was merely an excuse to wrap themselves in the mantle of righteousness and aggrievement. No co-incidence that the deceptions of the Woke left emanate from the USA, they have been at it for almost 300 years. I recommend a book that goes into the real history of events in early America and a great read. “Redcoats and Rebels”. by Christopher Hibbert. It is the English side about what happened. Something you almost never hear about because we have so readily accepted the American version of history.

  17. A bright, sunny, Spring morning here in the Borders. Which could be a problem as it is not yet Spring. The rabbit is in the garden chewing grass. Unhappily on its own. We need two rabbits to produce little bunnies for the stoats to eat.

  18. The week that perished can sometimes produce some crackers:

    PUTIN OUT-TRUDEAUS TRUDEAU
    The “Trudeau Doctrine” is very simple: If there’s even one Nazi flag at a peaceful protest, the entire protest is Nazi and must be dismantled by force, its participants imprisoned and impoverished. Never bother to find out who brought the flag or why. One flag = ruthless war of extermination against everyone present.
    The Trudeau Doctrine has been lauded by U.S. leftists, who’ve long said that anything “Nazi” deserves to be punched, no questions asked.
    So it’s rather surprising that Trudeau and the American left are angry at Putin for invading Ukraine. Putin made it quite clear in his Feb. 24 speech that he was only attacking in order to punch Nazis: “We will seek to denazify Ukraine,” to cleanse the nation of “far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis.”
    Putin: the Antifa president!
    This is some grade-A trolling. Putin, for his many faults, reads his enemies well (whereas Biden reads Where’s Waldo? not-so-well: “C’mon, man; where are ya?”). Western leftists have spent years pushing the line that the presence of even one “Nazi” in a thing means that the entire thing must be crushed, and all rights and rules suspended in the course of the task. And Western media has readily admitted the presence of Nazis in Ukraine (until last week, when it became a “manufactured claim”).

    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-week-that-perished-179/

    1. ‘Putin, for his many faults, reads his enemies well’

      Reminds me of the sculptor who made Ozymandias statue and read the ancient despot’s passions well and was able to convey in his stone face the wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.

    2. Some interesting reports there. I noted the part about Californian teachers installing ‘transition closets’ full of bras, dresses and wigs (WTH?), and boys will be ‘INSTRUCTED’ to enter as male and come out as female. Have they taken lessons from the London school I just posted about?

  19. ‘Morning All

    Neil Oliver….

    Here in the West,

    for a few decades so exceptional as to be almost dreamlike, a handful

    of generations have known something else: individual freedom; bodily

    autonomy; equality before the law; the promise of a fair trial so that

    the state may not punish a person without due process; the right to

    vote; tolerance of sexuality and religion. You might say it has not been

    perfect – and you would be right. But it has been immeasurably better,

    and so much more than 99 percent of the species has known anywhere else

    and any when else.

    And yet, having been granted so much by our predecessors, what have we done

    with that treasure beyond price? The most recent of us committed the

    cardinal sin and took it all for granted. We actually had the temerity

    to think what we have had here for a few sweet generations is nothing

    more than the end product of the natural order of things … that

    individual freedom and protection from the excesses of the State, and

    the rest … just happens. Too many of us allowed ourselves to think all

    of this was natural, and that, regardless of our behaviour, it would

    greet us every morning like the rising sun. But I say again, if you want

    to see the natural order of things – look around at the rest of the

    world. To anyone who looks at what we have had here and says it’s not

    good enough, I say, “compared to where … compared to what?”

    https://www.gbnews.uk/gb-views/neil-oliver-we-watch-ukraine-and-russia-but-at-the-same-time-we-should-watch-what-our-leaders-are-up-to-here-in-the-west/235533

    1. Another cracking piece from Neil Oliver. Thank goodness he’s still talking about frozen bank accounts and WEF fascism.

      1. As I have said before, men of Neil Oliver’s character, clarity, integrity and wisdom are desperately needed in the British government at the moment.

        1. The sad thing is Rastus, they would refuse to have anything to do with it. The rational individual does not consort with vipers.

          1. Morning Johnathan. Indeed no decent person would want to serve at Westminster no matter how drawn. You cannot jump into a cess pool and come out smelling of roses!

        2. Interesting that since Neil Oliver has pointed out a few truths, he has been ignored by the BBC.

          We used to enjoy his programmes.

  20. Modern Life…………

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/53e1c972e92ca4d90be9086c039a56e5d8036a8571b74b4c4f47e20bb385005e.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0833e69b5fbd9183f9ee24c1b9dde6552959c3d52187b748a3139a329039403e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc0506cfb34e6542eb819039a7da133085329d60900165fe017f4b9ed2112781.jpg

    CNN to the rescue..

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/100/005/612/small/886db70e11d7568d.jpg
    (Yes,yes we know it’s from the Walking Dead but given CNN’s form in Syria it wouldn’t surprise me)

    1. Succinct summary by Robin Monotti.
      Our government, and the echo chorus of the MSM, take the position that we are the good guys. We are not. The members of our Parliaments are not Christian, moral, or ethical. They have no touchstone of what is right. Nor do they consider the outcomes and ramifications of their actions. This is bad enough when it destroys our society and impoverishes the population of the UK, but they can get away with it.
      Interfering in a Civil War is rank stupidity. Any flight that we send to the Ukraine carrying war materiel may be legally destroyed by the Russians.
      Then what?

    2. If you condemned the bombing of Belgrade, you now condemn the bombing of Kiev, yes? (Takes cover.)

  21. 351129+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    You ask me I believe putin has done us in the United Kingdom one hell of an unintended favour in highlighting the framework supporting British society.

    Currently these actions could very well morph into a major conflict and there will be NO room for powder compacts in the front line.

    We in England must surely enter a serious political arse kicking era
    BATTEN down ALL hatches and repel ALL boarders, treating the DOVER
    invasion as incoming hostiles.

    Sunday 27 February: Putin’s brazen aggression has exposed the West’s complacency

    2. Morning Ogga1. Actually the headline should read: Putin’s defence of Russia has exposed the Wests decadence.”

    1. I’m not usually speechless. But I’ve been sitting for a minute trying to think up a comment and I really can’t.
      WTF are they playing at?

  23. I wonder what the chances are of Gazprom switching their accounts to one of the sanctioned banks.
    That way they would have no option but shut down the gas supply to Europe as they couldn’t receive payment!

  24. My MP has tweeted that the PM has said that we will welcome refugees from the Ukraine. DearHeaven! There are thousands of our own citizens who are homeless.
    Why are there always refugees? Why do we offer to take them?
    When London was bombed in the night, when flying bombs flew in during the day, and ballistic missiles rained down around the clock, the people of London stayed put.

    1. As men of fighting age are now forbidden from leaving Ukraine, I do wonder who the refugees will be. Minority Ukrainian speakers from the Donbass republics? Russian speakers from the Ukraine, but only the women, children and elderly?

    2. Actually, many people (especially in Coventry) went out of the city at night and slept in the fields. They did, however, return (and went to work) during the day.

    1. It’s in the DNA of every living creature. Survival of the fittest.
      Without that drive, an animal, plant or country doesn’t survive. Putin watched the west descend into a slough of self indulgent wokery and self loathing and judged that his time had come.
      Has he judged it right?

    2. Must be living in an alternate universe and her message has bled through into this one!

    1. I used to read the Christian Concern thread on Facebook and a Muslim woman regularly posted there asking them to join forces to rid schools of this dirt. She was mostly ignored.

        1. It’s just the other baggage (creating a caliphate and making us dhimmis) that causes problems.

    2. To quote Antony Beevor from another article

      Putin is not another Stalin, but he has managed through propaganda and the education system to change Russian opinion dramatically over the past five years, doubling the proportion of those who regard Stalin as a great leader to 56 per cent.

      My slight change to that:
      Blair was not another Stalin, but he managed through propaganda and the education system to change British institutions dramatically, culminating over the past five years in the wokery that now dominates British society and which is destroying us from within.

  31. Putin’s fascists aren’t scared of death or privation. We are, so all we do is shriek

    Rod Liddle
    Sunday February 27 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    On the day that the first missiles landed in Ukraine it was reported that Britain’s spies were studying a dossier informing them that they should not use words such as “strong” and “grip” because these could “reinforce dominant cultural patterns”. They should also acknowledge their white privilege, declare their pronouns and shun words such as “manpower”.

    Meanwhile, the head of the German army — having just taken part in a “day of values” discussion — reported that his men were not remotely equipped, mentally or physically, to fight a war. If only Wilhelm Keitel, the Wehrmacht chief, had felt similarly in 1939, all that previous nastiness might never have taken place.

    The paradox, then. All the appurtenances of liberal western democracy, the stuff that we rightly consider valuable, render us wholly unable to fight a war and thus protect those values and lifestyles. Sure, we might be able to bully some impecunious desert satrapy entirely devoid of weapons of mass destruction, but faced with threats which are serious and actually directed towards us — threats from Russia and China — we shriek a lot but remain effectively impotent.

    We are too comfortable, even the poorest of us, with too many consumer durables and holidays abroad, mortgages, 80,000 choices of coffee (I refer you to my column last week), second homes (for some) and food fads and allergies and mental health issues to occupy us. The Russian people, by and large, don’t have any of that stuff.

    Then, as referenced above, there are our facile obsessions — the only things we get worked up about these days, on the left or the right. They are staggeringly trivial and meaningless, but the culture war is an agreeable war because nobody gets killed.

    And above all, there is representative democracy. We cannot fight a war because too many people would object to it and would soon be screeching “not in my name!” They — we — object because we are comfortable and cossetted by a fairly benign welfare capitalism.

    Peer into that moronic inferno, the internet, for a moment and check out the reactions to Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state only a thousand or so miles away. There are those who blame Nato and the US, because this is a democracy and every view must be heard, even those of imbeciles. And there are those who pledge to “stand by” Ukraine and do so by affixing the country’s flag to their user profile and maybe putting out a couple of tea lights. Je Suis Zelensky, and so on: an expression of individualism and virtue-signalling of absolutely no use whatsoever, except to the poster’s sense of self-worth.

    In 1936 thousands went to fight in Spain, on either side of the country’s civil war. We have become too lulled and softened to do that now — and of course this is, most of the time, a good thing. I am not decrying western democracy at all, not even the woke stuff, merely pointing out that it ineluctably leads us to where we are now: watching in horror, particularly at the rise in gas prices, and unable to act.

    The fact that Ukraine isn’t in Nato is a merciful excuse for our politicians, but it is a moral evasion. When Putin steps in to “protect” the Russian majority in the Latvian city of Daugavpils, do you really think we will move then?

    We respond by financially penalising the Russians, but money is not remotely the point. Fascists — whether it be the clerical fascists of Islamic extremism or Putin’s more traditional fascism, based upon a confected, deliberately erroneous reading of his country’s history — are implacable and brook no opposition because the wars they are fighting are rooted in blind, unassailable faith. They do not worry about privation and they do not fear death. We, over here, are scared shitless of both, possibly with very good reason, given that we have enjoyed privileged, comfortable lives. So we cannot win.

    If there is any hope it lies with the young in Russia, those less beholden to the notion of a recreated, very right-wing version of the USSR. The vast majority of those who have bravely protested against Putin’s savagery, in 40 towns and cities across Russia, have been overwhelmingly youngish. People who have begun to enjoy the internationalist pull of social media and do not want these freedoms curtailed and their country to retreat — as it has done countless times since its origins in Kyiv a thousand years ago — to an autocratic, backward, Asian redoubt.

    They may in the end be more potent opponents of their leader than even the courageous Ukrainians who are soon to be sniping at tanks from the smashed apartment windows of their shattered capital city.

    Elephant forgets . . .

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F4fa98b8a-9725-11ec-addf-533e9597e348.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1010

    Nationalise the oligarchs
    I don’t really understand what freezing a bank account means. Unless it’s just like my old account at the Co-op, where I can’t get at it because I’ve long since forgotten who my memorable name was.

    Instead of freezing the accounts, why don’t we just nationalise them? Or, as it is sometimes put, steal them? We could give half the money to the Ukrainians for stuff that shoots down Russian planes and the rest could go as a subsidy to everyone in this country for our forthcoming energy bills.

    Yes, the plan is technically illegal. But then, we’re not really dealing with those sort of niceties any more, are we? And at least my idea would cheer everyone up for a bit.

    A gallery of fuel fools
    I notice that the National Portrait Gallery has decided to end its sponsorship deal with BP, on the grounds that the company has an, uh, association with oil.

    I assume that given their disdain for fossil fuels, henceforth the gallery will be heated by a modern, green energy form, such as distilled unicorn tears, or something. Or maybe they will keep the visitors warm by burning the many regrettable portraits of dead heterosexual white men.

  32. Morning all Sunny but cold here in West Sussex. Onward and upward. I thought I would post Peter Hutchins column in todays Daily Mail. He is about the only reason I go over to that paper now a days. I actually remember when this was a proper Conservative paper and perfectly respectable. Now look at it. It has all the reputation of a Lady of the Night hanging out under a spluttering light in a seedy part of town.
    Anyway here is Peter Hitchins. And I have to be honest about it. I like him because he says more or less the same things as I do. Which does rather bolster one’s ego, ahem! I only wish he was not such a pessimist.

    PETER HITCHENS: The West acts tough with Russia because we’re just too feeble to stand up to our real enemy… China

    So they finally got their war. But what are they going to do now? This is the most avoidable, needless conflict in modern history.

    It was nurtured and hatched in the small minds of foolish men. There was a compromise available, but because they were too proud to consider it, terrified civilians now weep outside the ruins of what were once their homes.

    At this point, these noisy boasters turn out, as usual, to have big mouths and tiny fists. The Kremlin, responding to years of deliberate humiliation, taunting and provocation, finally goes mad and invades a sovereign country. The mighty West hits back by… chucking Moscow out of the Eurovision Song Contest.

    You might have thought that, after 30 years of tough talk, they could have come up with something a bit better than that. But if you had observed, as I have, the steady, shameful shrivelling of Britain’s diplomatic soft power and hard armed forces over the past three decades, you would not have been surprised.
    When I say ‘they’, I mean the army of Washington power-worshippers, think-tankers, politicians and swaggering musclemen journalists – most of whom have never heard a bullet fly or seen a corpse.

    Since 1992, they have thought it wise to treat Russia like a beaten dog. The inventor of that policy is the American neo-conservative politician Paul Wolfowitz. He just happens to be the architect of that other great disaster, the Iraq War.

    The New York Times in March 1992 reported the existence of a Pentagon document, believed to be the work of Mr Wolfowitz. It said that from now on there should only be one superpower. It stated ‘Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.’

    The suggestion was ridiculous. The former Soviet Union was at that time a bankrupt mass of scrap metal, rust and corruption. I was there, I know. Once the dust settled, it would find itself with an economy the size of Italy’s, and an ageing, ill, diminishing population. The Communist ideology which had driven its expansion and aggression was dead.
    Yet here were senior American political figures, planning further humiliation. The outcry over this dangerous language caused a hasty rewrite, and when the document was published it had been greatly toned down.

    Yet within a few years, under Bill Clinton, and supported by expensive lobbying by US arms manufacturers, the USA began the eastward expansion of Nato.

    Since then Nato has never said who it is defending its members against – because such an admission would be an act of aggression in itself. But it can only really be explained by a desire to keep Russia down. For what purpose?

    I have never seen any attempt by anyone to reply to the urgent condemnation of this decision, made in 1998 by one of the greatest diplomats who ever lived, George Kennan. Mr Kennan, inventor of the successful strategy of ‘containment’ of the Soviet Union, came out of retirement to protest.

    He said Nato expansion was folly, and correctly predicted it would create nationalist backlash in Moscow. Did the neo-conservatives who created this policy really think Russia, with its huge intelligence services and vast, sophisticated foreign policy establishment, would not notice that it was being targeted?

    Russia guards its interests, as do all nations, just as rain falls downwards and water is wet. Out of this realisation came Vladimir Putin, the direct consequence of the Wolfowitz doctrine. We created him.

    In fact, Wolfowitz and Clinton were simply wrong. China was the real danger. Think about this. In 1989, the Soviet Empire gave way to mass demonstrations in Prague and East Germany. It could have massacred protesters in Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, but it did not. After a few nasty but feeble attempts to fight demands for independence in the Baltic states and Georgia, Russia gave up its enormous empire in Europe and Asia. In return, Russia was treated like a pariah by the EU and Nato when it sought a civilised relationship with them.

    That same year, China’s Communists answered their people’s demands for freedom by murdering them on the streets of Peking.
    In the years since, they have created an ever-fiercer police state regime, tightened their dictatorial grip on Tibet, and menaced Taiwan by hugely increasing their military and naval power. They have also blatantly broken their promises to maintain freedom in Hong Kong, and engaged in a shameful and racialist repression of the Uighurs.

    This is a real threat, and a regime which makes Putin look relaxed. Yet we stay on friendly terms with them. When their despots come to London, and dine at Buckingham Palace, British police cravenly crush peaceful demonstrations of protest lest our tyrannical guests are offended.

    We continue to pretend Taiwan is not independent. We cravenly shun the Dalai Lama for the sake of trade. Is it precisely because we are so feeble in this real struggle that we pretend to toughness in the supposed New Cold War with Russia? I often think so.

    And now here we are again, in a moralising frenzy. The BBC, which insisted on strict neutrality between Britain and Argentina in its coverage of the Falklands War, flings itself into an ignorant and one-sided coverage of the Ukraine crisis.

    A leading presenter proclaims, from a city he weirdly calls ‘Kyeeeev’, that Ukraine is a ‘European democracy’, in which case he is very easily satisfied.

    As my old friend Edward Lucas, no friend of Russia, put it in the Daily Mail yesterday, Ukraine is a country where ‘oligarchs run media empires, with politicians and officials on the payroll.
    The judicial system is a festering mess where arrests, prosecutions and verdicts are used as score-settlers between political and commercial rivals.

    Senior positions are bought and sold. Healthcare and education are plagued by kickbacks. The security service, the SBU, is infested with intrigue and sleaze – and penetrated by Russian agents of influence’.

    Justified outrage over the terrible harvest of war would be more convincing if we had paid more attention to the hundreds of civilian casualties, many of them inflicted by Ukrainian armed forces, in and near the breakaway regions in the country’s East.

    A 2020 report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said that between January 2017 and September 2020, there were 946 civilian casualties, of which 161 were fatalities. Among the casualties were 100 children (73 boys and 27 girls).

    It would also be more convincing if our political and media establishment had not supported the Nato bombing of Belgrade in 1999 (with major civilian casualties); the crazy invasion of Iraq in 2003; and the forgotten Nato bombing of Libya, also with its toll of dismembered children killed in supposed ‘surgical strikes’.

    That intervention destroyed Libya. Mr Putin, and the Chinese police state, know that we did these things, and see them as precedents for any crimes of the same kind they may commit later.

    I’m told I am supporting the invasion by saying we provoked it. But if I warn a child that, if he annoys a wasp, it will sting him, am I supporting the wasp?

    I am accused of treachery, or of being an apologist for Russia, for urging a different view on this crisis. Surely this is how dissent is treated in dictatorships.

    I write this as a British patriot. How was it in our interests to provoke a war we cannot win, and cannot even fight, against a country which is not, in fact, our enemy?

  35. Golly gosh and crikey Moses ..
    Where have the conversations about Covid gone ..

    Putin has got his army of over 150,000 in war mode ..

    I guess Eastern Europe must be totally clear of Covid .. were they all jabbed .. or was it just us here under who seemed to be martial law?

    1. I guess the German health insurance results have something to do with it, plus the paper that came out this week that shows that the mRNA can get written into your DNA, as was said to be possible from the start of this ghastly experiment.
      Oh look, a squirrel!

    3. Covid is now irrelevant. We have something far more unpleasant to frighten the populace into compliance with. Nothing like a lovely war to get the sheep into a tight and disciplined herd to baa in unison. You can find an example above in the unfortunate form of Geoffrey Woolard. Sheep by nature and, apparently, judging by his surname, sheep by name. Here he is weighed down with his propaganda baggage

      https://i.insider.com/51f03b5becad046b5b000000?width=805

          2. Thank you Eddy, for the explanation. I don’t follow Wendyball – I suspect I’ve heard his name in that connection.

      2. I noted an observation on one of the articles this morning that Putin was so terrified by Covid that he restricted who he came into contact with and that that has driven him mad, because he only saw his yes-men, or words to that effect.
        Strange how when Putin does it he’s a mad coward and yet the real fascists on the block, Trudeau and Ardhern did exactly the same in the face of protests yet they are lauded by the left and the Covidians.

        1. Good point. Thanks for that. I will put it in my inventory of rejoinders to those on the left that criticise Putin.

  36. I find it almost unbelievable – nay, frightening – coming on here and seeing a number of contributors continuing to tend toward support for the insane and dangerous Russian dictator. I reckon that Putin is closely akin to a rabid dog. If anyone sensible sees a rabid dog he/she should shoot said rabid dog.

    2. You find it frightening because you are a complacent dimwit afraid of the facts and wish to hold on to your narrow world view of ignorance and bigotry that now, is being threatened by events.

    4. “I find it almost unbelievable – nay, frightening – coming on here”

      The solution is staring you in the face Geoffrey.

          1. Geoffrey’s record of being right is the same as Great Britain’s in the Eurovision Song Contest up til now!
            I am not going to gratify him by suggesting that he departs either!

        3. You would if you knew me, assume I was so far right of Genghis Khan that you would need binoculars to find me.
          But I find your view of the world interesting and makes me at least question my own opinions.
          So for good or bad keep posting, but try answering some of the questions put forward.

    6. I can only guess, Geoffrey, that you have never served in times of war or near-nuclear confrontation. That is why we fear the weakness of the West, it’s unwillingness and/or inability to shew any strength.

      When you have a sensible solution, I’ll listen, otherwise…

    7. Good morning Geoffrey

      I have put several questions to you since you have returned to posting here but I have had no response.

      1. Do you think that Putin would have invaded the Ukraine if Trump were still president?
      2.Do you think that the EU is largely responsible for antagonising Russia by going back on it commitment not to encroach its territorial ambitions Eastwards?
      3. Do you understand why Kennedy did not want USSR missile sites in Cuba? Can you not see the parallel with NATO potentially in the Ukraine?
      4. Do you not understand that Hunter Biden was heavily involved with corruption in the Ukraine (in which his father was complicit) – the news of which was suppressed by the MSM?

      I certainly think that Putin should not have invaded the Ukraine – but do you not have a more sensible thing to say about him other than that you think he is a rabid dog?

      1. “I certainly think that Putin should not have invaded the Ukraine …”

        Well said, Rastus: that’s something.

        Your other questions are based on hindsight and are impossible to answer.

        2. I don’t think anyone on here actually thinks that Putin should have invaded the Ukraine, but what they are saying is that NATO and the EU are largely responsible for creating the problems we are facing.

          2. Without being able to hide behind the skirts of NATO and particularly the Americans the EU would be a lot smaller.

        3. Bullshite! The first two are perfectly answerable.
          1: Very probable.
          2; Definitely Yes.

          As for 3 & 4, they are asking your opinion on matters of fact. That you are unable/unwilling to respond speaks volumes on how uncertain you are of you ground.

      2. I know i keep on about this but also supressed by the MSM in this case BBC news, interview two weeks ago next Wednesday, where Lord Dannatt stated quite openly that any country with a border dispute would never be allowed to join Nato, And I agree Vlad over stepped the line, but it’s possible to understand his frustration with the Brussels mafia. And the openly blatant corruption happening in Ukraine.

    8. I find it almost unbelievable – Well in that case there is some hope out there eh Geoffrey.

      1. A response from GW to one of my posts yesterday. The quote he gives, which I place in italics, is part of my post.

        “I look at both sides of the argument.”

        Can’t see ’em: sorry.

          1. I’ve posted just that, and links to both sides, which you totally ignore.
            All you ever do is bleat EU propaganda.

            I wasn’t twisting your words, just quoting you verbatim.

    11. Or is it because we are all (hee-hee) bonkers? Nope. We are the rabid dogs. The US, UK, EU,NATO combination acting under orders of the NWO have decided to sacrifice the entirety of Europe in a war that will destroy the West.

    14. I suppose Biden is in Johnson’s words “a breath of fresh air”.

      Ukraine is run by a mix of political mobsters gaming massive corporations run by oligarchs for kickbacks. Obama, Clinton and Biden have all taken massive bribes from Ukrainian politicos and industrialists.

      Ukraine is the seat of much of the cyber crime we experience in the West. It is a corrupt country in need of reform on a large scale.

        1. Well they way i see things is Plum, this was mainly originally stirred up by the EU mafia and let them sort it out. They have already spent the last 5 years supplying rubber boats and dumping all the other ‘refugees’ ( who should have been made welcome due to schengen) on our beaches that we once swore to fight them on. It’s not our problem. https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/greece-visa/
          26 countries to choose from and they all turn up here. And we are not even part of the agreement.

          1. We are under the illusion we still have a British Empire….FFS we don’t even have a country anymore!
            Thankyou Ted Heath….

    3. The government is already taxing us until it hurts. There’s nothing left and certainly no room for any more incomers.

  38. Yo all

    When the world turns even more 5H1Tier and Conscription & National Service are reintroduced, new regiments will have to be formed’
    or old ones resurrected

    The Gay Hussars:
    The Rotherham Paedophiles
    The Coatbridge Turncoats
    Many Regiments of ” Nomenery” (will march, with right hand on right hip)

    Many Regiments of “Jihadists” (will support the enemy)
    The Pathfinders (Ramblers Association)
    The Amblers Rambling Groups dis-organised by Mr Grizzle
    SDK Escapers Londoners escaping the Clutches of Sad Dick Kant)
    Boston Red Sox (cabbage picking Eastern Europeans
    PC49ers (Policpeople who will drive the Multicoloured Transport Tanks etc)

    1. Oi think that all fences, racing, garden or otherwise should be painted white to deflect the heat and save us from global warming and roasting to death in 20 years time. That, or we will all drown as the icecaps melt.

      1. Tut tut – they should all be fitted with solar panels – and little windmills. Think laterally…{:¬))

    3. Yes, I know, They did a study on how horses see and apparently the traditional orange rails look green (and thus blend in with the turf) to horses. I don’t think it’s the birch on the fence (and certainly not boundary fences!), just the guard rails and take off rails.

  41. Phew!
    Another barrowload of wood chopped, dragged & tipped by the pantry firewood stack and stacked.

        2. Please pay attention! They have already been sent to the Ukraine. Please see photo below.

      2. Sounds like a day’s supply! We got more wood on Saturday, but the farmer from whom we buy it chops and splits it. We only have to unload and stack it. Hopefully enough to last until the first week in April.

  44. The Law of the Sod strikes again. Tomorrow, I am taking the MR to Cambridge, as she is on the interview panel for a new priest.

    Great, I thought. I can go to the Fitzwilliam, Kettles Yard, and David’s bookshop.

    ALL CLOSED ON MONDAYS……..

    1. As the old boy on The Fast Show would have a said “Oh Booger”,……… you can always go to John Lewis.

    3. Afternoon Bill.

      A new priest , where?

      A new priest who wants a change of scenery, or a woke priest on a diversity mission in a nice part of the country .. and what and how does one interview a priest .. ?

      2. First and foremost, you avoid all reference to God.

        You ask for their views on diversity, alphabet people, trans-children, safeguarding, outreach, Brexit, “refugees”.

        You tell them how you relish the Janet and John Bible and the new fatuous versions of the liturgy.

        Then, having heard all their predictable answers, you gently say, “I don’t think our church is for you.”

        1. You have nailed it.

          At the funeral i went to last week the Vicar performed a great service and we all Amened everything until he asked for us to pray for Ukraine. Some did. Most didn’t see the relevance.

    4. There’s a splendid new building near Mill Road which won architectural acclaim.
      They will doubtless welcome you, even on a Monday.
      Don’t forget to remove your shoes at the door.

      1. There are several places in Mill Road that attract me – BUT it is too far for my ancient legs to walk. The car will be parked at Trinity.

        2. Make sure you keep looking down at the pavement, lest your gaze should fall upon one of those terribly dangerous statues that are terrifying our future leaders.

    5. Mondays traditionally have low footfall. Any independent will want to be closed and have a two day break after being open on the Saturday. Don’t be so selfish. Find something else to do. :@)

      If you see Geoffrey, stick him with two fingers for me.

    6. Dashed insensitive opting for Monday interviews – perhaps you could suggest the panel moves to Tuesday??

  45. It’s February. It’s winter. And I’m suffering from hayfever!

    Apparently its from the pollen — coming off the umpteen thousands of catkins — on my hazel tree!

    1. Same here.

      To add insult to injury, ours look very similar to processionary caterpillars, which will soon be marching.

        1. As another hay fever (mis-named) sufferer there are many types of allergens that set it off. The only time i seem to be okay is when it is raining.

          I found the best way of dealing with it is to shove a load of vaseline up each nostril. Then blow my nose.

          Good afternoon, Grizz. I will be posting pics of my yet to be baked Tarte Tatin later today. :@)

          1. Thanks and good afternoon, Philip.

            I forgot to photograph my just-polished-off delicious spotted dick. First one I’ve made in decades!

            I’ll try the vaseline trick and report back anon.

          5. I never dreamt that mentioning a traditional steamed pudding and some patented petroleum jelly in successive sentences would bring about such general swooning. 😲

      1. My catkins (as buds) appear on my large hazel in late October, Paul. It is not until now, however, that they are in their full mature glory.

        [Since catkins are male I call them ‘little dicks’; and their pollen: desiccated semen! 🙄]

    5. Tree pollen is a shocker; many don’t realise it because it occurs … round about now, not in the summer.

    1. Talking of which – the main carpark in Fakenham on Saturday was closed off – to provide a Covid drop in TESTING CENTRE….Now – after it is all over etc etc/

      3. It isn’t over – it is going full speed ahead, but not in the media, now that there is too much truth coming out.
        Digital passports next – Boris will probably be able to get away with blaming those on the evil EU, who are rolling them out in the autumn.
        Then, following swiftly on, some “crisis” that will necessitate the introduction of the digital currency.
        Game over, they won.

  47. I see that Brash and Trash offer their “support” to the people of Ukraine.

    I don’t imagine either has the faintest notion where the Ukraine is located.

    4. Why doesn’t Migraine’s husband use the military training he received at Sandhurst and do something useful and join the Ukrainian army?

  48. “I certainly think that Putin should not have invaded the Ukraine – …”

    So said one contributor on ‘ere, qualifying it by saying other things that might be described as hindsight.

    So, despite the things that might be described as hindsight not having been done differently in the past, surely we ought all to be able to agree that Putin’s present invasion of Ukraine ought to be stopped right now? And, if not, why not?

      1. You’re a funny old boy, Bill: you seem to be quite nice sometimes – supporting your church, etc. – and yet at other times being sarky and curmudgeonly just for its own sake.

        1. I find people like you, Geoffrey, who refuse to see anything wrong with the EU, and who believe (quite falsely) that it has “kept the peace” since it was created – curmudgeonly

          You, like all Remainiacs, believe (rightly) that you are entitled to promote your views but you deny that Leavers have any merit to their argument.

          The nightmare in The Ukraine was created – almost single handed – by your beloved EU – and its continued provocation of Russia.

          1. Does the MR think you curmudgeonly, too, Bill? It’s not my business, of course, but I’ve often wondered what she thinks of some of the
            curmudgeonly stuff that you post. Or do you keep it from her?

          2. Casting aspersions on someone else’s relationship, Geoffrey?

            A usual tactic for a Leftie to use when they have lost the argument. You should be ashamed of yourself.

          7. The EU is a socialist construct.
            Typical left wing. Want to control everyone except for Germany and France who flout the rules and laws at will. Everyone else must comply.

          9. Congratulations you have been given the first and only down vote I have ever given.

            Although are extremely muddle-headed I thought you did not comment on fellow posters’ relationships with their spouses.

            You are clearly not a gentleman.

        2. Interesting that you should mention “my church”. I am not a believer. However, unlike Remainiacs, I am prepared to be tolerant and give the other side a hearing – and I “support” the church in the village because I think it is my civic duty to do so.

    2. Why should he stop? See the two videos I have just posted above. He lays out clearly the grievances of Russia and how this happened. It has not suddenly happened and, as you will note, he puts the blame firmly on the West and explains why.

      He should not stop until he has accomplished his aim. At that point the West will have got the message that Putin is serious and will not be crossed. If he stops now, the West will pretend it is because he is weak and cannot accomplish his purpose. In other words they will resort to more propaganda and not have to face reality. Just as you are attempting to do.

        1. Not in the sense of the suffering is will cause. But yes in the sense that the West needs to get the message loud and clear that he will not have his country threatened by dishonest brokers who pretend peace but do the opposite to diminish it. If he does not do that, I fear the consequences will be far worse. How about a nuclear weapon or two lobbed our way. Because he will do that if he sees Russia being brought down. You underestimate him if you think he will just play games and this present exercise is. I hope, making that clear. He has had enough and quite rightly.

          If you look at the history. The West has been completely insincere in its dealings with Russia since the fall of the USSR. If we had done what Russia asked for then, we would all be living in a very peaceful Europe indeed and we would have common cause against the real enemy, China and be able to contain it. Our behaviour has done the very opposite. Emboldened China and weakened the West. Perhaps fatally. Our behaviour has been the very embodiment of stupidity and poor thinking.

          4. You still will never see another point of view will you. Look at the facts. Did you complain about NATO moving further east. I knew then Russia would do something about it. If Nato had not expanded do you think this would have happened.???

          5. I am not an apologist. I simply know something about Russia and therefore not fooled by Western propaganda.

    3. And tell us Geoffrey, just how do you propose “we” stop it?

      I doubt that the whole of your beloved EU could raise enough troops, let alone muster the will to send their young people to die.
      Perhaps you are proposing that “we” should target Putin himself and bomb Moscow.

  49. I think it is well worth people listening to these so I’m posting them. Putin replies in Russian so you will have to click on the translator. For those who don’t know where or what that is on You Tube, you will see it directly below the video on the right, next to the cog symbol and to the left of it. Looks like a symbol for a credit card. Click on it and a red line will appear underneath and when Putin speaks text of what he is saying will appear.

    The first video is an English reporter.
    The second is an American reporter.
    You will note that these two videos are from last year and the year before. In other words Putin has not suddenly lost it. He has been warning the West for a long time.
    Putin: How Would America React If Russian Missiles Were Placed At The Border With Canada & Mexico!?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Cugn8JZfk&list=TLPQMjcwMjIwMjLoqbLtgBBJXA&index=2

    Putin Replies To American Journalist Who Criticized Him For “Promoting Stereotypes About America”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPR3iJhpleY&list=TLPQMjcwMjIwMjLoqbLtgBBJXA&index=1

        1. I did. He asks “what if we put missiles on the Mexican or Canadian border?”

          Again. NATO has no missiles on the soil of any country bordering Russia and all nuclear missiles are still in Western Europe.

          This is a war about water supplies & the inevitable decline of a corrupt kleptocratic petro-state unable/unwilling to plan for its own future.

          1. Why do the ex Soviet satellite countries need to be in NATO?

            Unless they are prepared to be launch locations for missiles or troops or aircraft there is no real rationale and until they joined the EU and NATO Russia had shown no belligerence towards them.

            If they are in NATO they will participate in exercises and those exercises could well include missile launchers and be conducted on Russia’s borders.

          2. I think events presently playing out in Ukraine answer your question.

            Perhaps the ex-Soviet states have unpleasant memories of life under Russian stewardship.

          3. The reason the events are playing out as they are is because the EU and NATO advanced further and further east.

            Russia has been complaining/warning for years. Now they have drawn their line in the sand.

            Look at the map of Europe and EU/NATO membership in 1989 and compare that with now.
            If Sweden, Finland, and other countries bordering Russia didn’t feel the need why should the others?

            Russia has been on the receiving end of invasions throughout history, small wonder they are wary still.

          4. Sweden and Finland do now feel the need.

            Again, because of events playing out in Ukraine.

            If Putin really wants to halt NATO he is doing a very poor job.

          5. Why does NATO feel it necessary to accept new members at all?
            If the West had treated Russia as a potential friend rather than a conquered enemy the West might have a very welcome ally now in the face of the much greater threat that is China.

          7. Why should countries that wish to join the NATO military alliance be turned away?

            Especially now in the context of events in Ukraine.

          8. Perhaps because it is escalating the problem.
            NATO had an enemy, the Warsaw pact and the USSR. Once that broke up in the late 80’s early 90’s NATO no longer had an enemy.
            The industrial complex behind NATO, essentially the USA, needed a good reason to carry on; Russia was a suitable bogeyman.

          9. Again, I would ask you to reflect on the experience of ex-Soviet vassal states and how they may have perceived the threat from Russia.

          11. They did not perceive it as a threat from Russia. You are putting a Western gloss over it the obsession of confusing Russia with the USSR. The countries understood clearly that it was the Communists, not Russia that was the problem. I suggest you get to know some of these people as I have. You will find your perspective switching quire radically.

          13. Well for the rather obvious reason that you get an idea of their mentality and point of view. Something, you very obviously, don’t understand.

          14. And yet, knowing quite a few Russians (as well as Ukrainians, Turks, Kurds and Georgians and so on) as I do, my perspective appears to be very different to yours.

            Hence, this is a pointless cul-de-sac.

          15. Actually, I have many Russian relatives and am Orthodox to boot. So I think I have a rather better idea of things Russian than you do, I grew up with them. You clearly have no comprehension of the Russian mentality at all. But think your knowledge, based on a Western perspective, somehow reflects what the Russians believe while you attribute entirely wrong motivations to them.

          16. You don’t seem to understand that the events in Ukraine are caused by NATO expansion. You have things about face. You are confusing effect with cause.

          17. No. What has happened shows his intention not to create the USSR as you like to pretend. The places you mention are independent countries and he has never shown any intention of invading them because he isn’t in the slightest bit interested in re-creating the USSR, still less be aggressive to other countries. The difference is with Ukraine he does not consider it a separate country from Russia. But a creation of Stalin and thus unfinished business. As I have said it is as if Yorkshire was to break off from England and pretend it was a separate country. You would regard that as an outrage and likewise, looking at history, Russia regards Ukraine as an outrage in the same way. But Putin has said he is willing to recognize, in fact he already has, that it is a separate country. What he can’t tolerate is Ukraine being a part of NATO and threatening him. In the same way as we would not accept a Yorkshire that was, lets say, a member of a hostile EU that proposed to put its missiles there, facing the rest of England. Granted this is an analogy but I think it explains well enough.

          20. Would I be correct in saying that you would object to attempts by the government of the Republic of Ireland to invade and conquer Northern Ireland and demand to control the province’ future?

          21. Yes. But if you are trying to pretend the situations are analogous, think again. Ukraine is not a “real” country. It was set up by Stalin. It is a pure invention. A few days ago I posted on here a video, a history of Russia from its very beginnings up to the Soviet Era. It was a about an hour long. Not once is Ukraine mentioned because it did not exist. Kiev and all the cities of what is now Ukraine existed but no Ukraine at all. I suggest you go and watch. Here it is.

            History of Russia (PARTS 1-5) – Rurik to Revolution

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0Wmc8C0Eq0&t=4s

          22. Similarly, Northern Ireland is not a “real” country. Nor is Israel if we are applying your values.

            Would you say that denying the right of Northern Ireland and Israel to exist because they are not “real” (and I’m using your definition here I think) is a reasonable position to take?

          23. On the country they are real countries. Israel is thousands of years old and the Palestinians have no claim to it. The people of Northern Ireland are not Irish as you would know if you looked at the history. For the most part they are Scots. The Ukrainians, on the other hand are Russ, just the same as their counterparts in Russia.

          25. No more than you. I simply recognize that Israel is a nation thousands of years old and I recognize that Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Are you going to quibble about that? And I have also said that Putin recognizes that Ukraine is now an independent country but as I have said, using the analogy of Yorkshire, he will not tolerate it becoming a member of NATO which he conceives as a hostile entity to Russia. And he is quite right on that score. NATO was conceived to combat the Warsaw pact countries. when that pact dissolved NATO had no reason to continue. But, since then it has continued and its behaviour has clearly been one of hostility to Russia. I believe for the dishonest motivations of the USA.

          26. I think he needs to go back as far as the 9th century and the Kievan Rus, then work forward.
            Unfortunately history is one of the first casualties of a propaganda war.
            Russian attitude after WWII was and is ‘never again’
            World War II losses in the Soviet Union from all related causes were about 27,000,000 both civilian and military.

          27. As I have pointed out many times. They were not under Russian stewardship, they were under a Communist Regime under which the Russians suffered just as much as anyone else. You are confusing a country with a repressive regime that seized control without consent and then imposed its rule by terror. The modern Russian have absolutely no intention of going back there, they do not want it for a second and neither does Putin. This is a fantasy of the West. Putin has no ambitions in that sense at all. As I have pointed out many times, he is, if anything, a Tsarist who wished, initially to have his country return to the European fold. It was the West, that rejected those overtures and created the mess that we are in now by alienating and insulting Russia with hostile moves.

          28. Curious then that Vladimir Putin described the end of the Soviet Union as a “genuine tragedy”.

          29. As per usual, a remark taken out of context. He was referring to the violence that was created as a result. It is always easy to take something out of context and pretend that, in isolation, it is the truth when, in fact, it is a lie by omission.

          30. “As per usual”?

            “First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory”

            An odd thing to say about the demise of a monstrous, undemocratic entity that enslaved the populating and (in your words) “seized control without consent and then imposed its rule by terror”.

          31. Still out of context. He was referring to the fact that it upset the balance of power because we now live in a world controlled by a single superpower that can meddle wherever it will without restraint. It meddled in Chechnya, it meddled in Serbia it meddled in Iraq and in Syria, Libya. It has meddled in Europe and south America. In fact it meddles everywhere it pleases and, as a result hundreds of thousands have died. This is the context of his remark

          32. You are repeating American propaganda. Do your research and find out the facts. Youprobaly believe that masks prevent you getting the flu.

          33. I’m uninterested in discussing your opinions on the COVID issue.

            If I am wrong and NATO countries bordering Russia contain any kinds of missiles, this is your opportunity to put me right.

          34. You do not understand the basics of being in Nato do you.You do not understand Russian history.

          35. Am I to gather that that you now concur that no NATO states bordering Russia contain missile?

          36. If any of them have US or other NATO planes you can pretty much guarantee that those planes carry missiles AND that if it came to it they could readily carry nuclear warheads.

          38. As per the OP – Putin: “How Would America React If Russian Missiles Were Placed At The Border With Canada & Mexico!?”

            Why have you posted a map of Russia?

          40. That’s a different map!

            Your argument has moved from NATO countries containing missiles “on Russia’s border” to circling.

          41. Nope. I provided you with two articles. One article concerns the installation of missiles in Slovakia. The other concerns installation in Poland. And again. look at the map. You have a poor knowledge of geography. Poland shares a border with Russia.

          42. The siting of missile bases and air bases is to some extent a latent threat. The power is real, however, the flaunting is not necessary.
            The UK Astute class submarines are capable of carrying cruise missiles that could reach St Petersburg. The Trident submarines are in a different class, of course. Maybe the Russians do not like to be threatened? Some people react badly to threats and deal with them promptly.

          45. After being part of the USSR wouldn’t those satellite countries want to be part of a mutual defense group and have some reassurances that they will not be dragged back into Russia 2?

            Maybe the EU is not a safe haven from central bureaucracy!

          46. Why should they not then form their own “EU and EETO”?
            No, they want someone else to pay in treasure and blood.

            If they are stupid enough to join the EU that’s trade, or it should be. Joining NATO is force projection.

          47. They are already setting up systems in Slovakia
            https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-02-26/New-NATO-multinational-battlegroup-in-Slovakia-will-include-Patriot-missile-air-defense-system-5153983.html
            And in Poland
            https://www.dw.com/en/us-and-poland-strike-105-billion-missile-defense-deal/a-41433719

            If Ukraine joins NATO and and missiles are deployed there it means that Russia, in the West is entirely encircled by NATO countries it regards as hostile.
            And it has every reason to think they are hostile. I will repost this talk by Vladimir Posner which, if you listen to it, will give you the reasons why the Russians fear NATO’s intentions. It is almost two hours but well worth listening to if you want to understand.

            Vladimir Pozner: How the United States Created Vladimir Putin
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ&t=1112s

            Frankly, your last paragraph is nonsense and tells me that you know very little about Russia.

          48. Please try to remain respectful in your comments.

            Neither Poland nor Slovakia border Russia.

            What part of “This is a war about water supplies & the inevitable decline of a corrupt kleptocratic petro-state unable/unwilling to plan for its own future” do you believe to be “nonsense” and again, I ask you to remain civil.

          49. I am being civil. You are not by making false allegations. Since Russia could bring the West to its knees by turning off the gas and the petrol your statement is clearly false. As for water. Russia has already made plans to create more water resources and clear up the mess left by the USSR. I would suggest you go and read.

          50. I referred quite clearly to Russia’s future as a petro-state.

            I would invite you to research the role of the North Crimean Canal in the destabilisation of the part of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014.

          51. Russia annexed nothing in 2014. Again this is the Western version expounded for its own dishonest motives and it is a falsification of history.

          52. How would you contextualise (to use a word that you seem to favour) events in Ukraine in 2014?

          53. Simple. Russia reclaimed the Crime which it had possessed since Catherine the Great conquered it from the Crimean Taters (Turks). It has always been Russian. Then Nikita Khrushchev came along, a Ukrainian, and in an empty soviet gesture of eternal friendship and to please his mother, gave Crimea to Ukraine. It was illegal under Soviet Law but he was the boss and, of course it was doubly empty because he never believed that the USSR would fall so it was “carry on as normal” grand empty gesture accomplished and lets all hug in fraternal friendship. . When the USSR fell the Russians agreed to leave things the way they were because they did not perceive the Ukrainians as enemies. Then things turned sour and the Russians were not about to allow their only warm water port to be in the hands of hostiles. A referendum was held and the people of Crimea voted to go with Russia. It was not rigged there was no need to do that. Because this is the demographics of Crimea: Russians:1.45 million (60.4%), Ukrainians: 577,000 (24.0%), Crimean Tatars: 245,000 (10.2%), Belarusians: 35,000 (1.4%), other Tatars: 13,500 (0.5%), Armenians: 10,000 (0.4%), and Jews: 5,500 (0.2%).[6] In terms of language Ukrainian hardly gets a look in. The majority, even the Ukrainians that live there speak Russian as their first language. The second language is that of the Taters. Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 so it’s transfer within the context of history is a mere blip

            And I do favour contextualization because otherwise you can make dishonest claims as you have attempted to do by taking quotes out of context.

        1. I’m open to being proved wrong.

          Which NATO countries bordering Russia contain missiles?

      3. That would be like counties in UK during the 70’s declaring themselves nuclear free zones.
        Ignoring the fact that a lot had military bases with big noisy aircraft.

      4. How close do they need be? The US has air bases in the UK Germany, Italy, Croatia, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Diego Garcia, Japan. A ring of steel.
        This excludes the so-called Ballistic Missile Defense sites in places like Poland and Kuwait. a little research will help, but it is by no means clearly defined or recorded, as the US probably wants to play it down.

  50. Good afternoon all. Late on parade but was up early this morning for 2 MRI scans, 1 on my lumbar spine and the other on right knee.
    Now for a look at how our money is wasted as exposed by the Tax Payers Alliance.

    TPA calls out £452,000 “Havering handout” for councillors
    The TaxPayers’ Alliance headed back to Havering this week to continue our campaign against a planned rise in council tax. Further research has revealed that councillors of the borough are set to receive over £452,000 this year in special responsibility allowances (SRAs) funded by local residents.
    Dubbed by us as the “Havering handout” we’re calling on councillors to reject the allowances and vote against the proposed council tax rise this Wednesday.
    Our team assembled outside Havering Town Hall holding up novelty cheques to highlight just how much these SRAs are costing taxpayers. Covered for the second week in a row in the local press, we revealed that every single one of the 25 Conservative council members receives a special responsibility allowance (SRA).
    We pounded the pavements in Havering and delivered thousands of leaflets urging residents to contact their councillors and call on them to oppose the tax rise.
    With no party in overall control of the council, we’ll keep campaigning ahead of next week’s vote to push home our advantage and defeat the rise.
    We’re not resting on our laurels – we’re building momentum! Our message is cutting through. Councillors need to do what is right for their residents. It isn’t fair that local taxpayers will see their council tax increase during a cost of living crisis.
    The council should lead by example. Cutting allowances is a simple way to save and reduce the burden on residents.
    If you live in or near Havering and you’d like to help our campaign, please get in touch!

    TaxPayers’ Alliance in the news

    £2.9 billion surplus in public sector borrowing

    Figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday surprised many as public sector borrowing showed a surplus of £2.9 billion in January. Speaking to listeners on talkRADIO, our research director Duncan Simpson said the country still had a long way to go on the journey to economic recovery.

    In conversation with presenter Nick de Bois, he explained that the government shouldn’t use these figures as an excuse to spend even more money. In reality, the chancellor should use this extra fiscal headroom to offset his planned tax hikes and prevent them from stifling economic growth.

    Duncan urged the chancellor to cut taxes for both consumers and businesses at the upcoming Spring Statement. This is a message we’ll be repeating loud and clear in the coming days, weeks and months. Click here to listen to a clip from the interview.

    NHS rainbow crossings

    Freedom of information requests made by the TPA has shone yet more light on unnecessary spending by the NHS. Our investigations revealed that more than 20 NHS trusts have spent £46,000 on rainbow crossings since 2019.

    Released exclusively with The Mail we found that trusts such as Wiltshire and South West Yorkshire spent £11,000 and £5,000 respectively “pandering to woke nonsense” as Sir John Hayes MP put it.

    Comments Duncan Simpson very much echoed, “NHS managers should not be splashing out on pointless paint jobs. With working households facing the looming health and social care levy, patients expect to see hospital bosses focus their funds on the frontline.”

    We are sending a clear signal to NHS trusts that not one more penny of taxpayers’ cash should be wasted on rainbow crossings.

    Billions lost to covid fraud

    The latest report by the public accounts committee has laid bare the staggering sums of taxpayers’ cash lost to covid fraud and error. It is estimated that just the losses from support schemes for businesses will be at least £15 billion. Concerns were also raised that HM Treasury isn’t doing enough to identify and clawback much-need public money.

    Speaking to viewers on GBNews, our media campaign manager Danielle Boxall urged “the government to do everything in its power to recoup as much money as possible.” As things stand, only £6 million is expected to be recouped from the £4.9 billion Bounce Back Loan Scheme – or 0.1 per cent to put it another way!

    We’re telling the government it must do more. Britain can’t afford to pour money down the drain. Click here to watch a clip from the interview.

    Scottish government splashes the cash on lavish events

    The Daily Express has revealed that the Scottish government spent £7,000 of taxpayers’ cash on “lavish overseas events” during the lockdown in 2021. According to the paper, public money was forked out on “salmon, whiskey and luxury chocolates” for events in Paris and Dublin.

    Defending the spend, a Scottish government spokesperson said, “Such events are an essential part of official government business as they promote Scottish business and the economy.”

    But I disagreed as I made clear in my comments to readers, “Scots will be outraged at this more than questionable use of their cash. While people were following the rules politicians gorged themselves at taxpayer expense. Public money should be spent on essential services rather than lavish banquets.”

    Net Zero: the latest wave of public sector non-jobs

    We saw from the news last weekend that there are hundreds of NHS bosses being paid more than the PM. As our operations director Sara Rainwater writes this week, whether it’s highly paid middle managers or controversial diversity tsars, politicians have done a poor job of keeping an eye on the public sector workforce.

    The problem is getting worse. The NHS recently advertised for a “Head of Sustainability and Net Zero”. A grand title and a grand salary at £93,735 to £108,075 per year! This isn’t a one-off, a quick search revealed another five such jobs.

    The prime minister insists that “every penny” raised from the upcoming national insurance (NI) hike will be spent on improving social care and cutting NHS waiting lists. How can the NHS justify such salaries for jobs that aren’t going to help cut waiting times, or improve social care?

    April is going to be a painful month for a lot of people as the cost of living crisis ramps up another notch and, as we all prepare to pay 1.25 per cent more in NI contributions, seeing this kind of wasteful spending will feel like a kick in the teeth for many. Click here to read more.

    War on Waste
    The cost of “pricey promotions”

    An investigation of Scottish local authorities has revealed the tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ cash spent on social media influencers. Six out of 32 councils spent a total of around £62,000 since 2016.

    According to the Scottish Mail on Sunday, “Fife Council recorded the highest total spend since 2016 of £21,514 – more than £3,500 a year. The other local authorities with influencers on their payroll were Edinburgh City, East Lothian, Angus, North Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire.”

    It’s astonishing that taxpayers’ hard-earned money was squandered on expensive influencers. It’s also outrageous that some local authorities thought paying for these pricey promotions was a priority during the pandemic. We are urging councils to cut back on wasteful spending like this and focus on providing essential services./i>

    1. Of course this doesn’t include how much HMG has squandered on their psychological warfa4e campaign over the last 2 years. TV, radio, streets, hoardings, bus stops, etc. etc. everywhere you went and even now they are still “advertising”. Billions.

    2. £46,000 on rainbow crossings, you are lucky. Our council have committed to spending $125,000 for one crossing in a local village. What is more it is not even a coloured crossing.

          1. “I trust those animals have been reported for what is clearly a hate crime. I expect to see them at the next horse trials in the next meat pie”
            Isn’t that what you meant, Geoff?

    3. Good luck with Havering council. As we discovered when trying to arrange my mother’s death certificate, they are there for their own convenience.

      1. One at 8.15 the other at 8.45.
        Eyes open most of the time but it was quite a squeeze in the tunnel.

          2. I would have thought they all could.
            Perhaps they do, but I doubt it, emergencies only I expect.

          3. Well this goes back to to my point about why we need weekends at all.
            So many people do work on Saturdays and Sundays, why shouldn’t everyone. It would make services cheaper as enhanced rates of pay could be done away with. Everyone would still get their two days off, but could chose which two to take.
            And bank Holidays- why not just give everyone eight extra days leave each year to take when they want to?

          4. I totally agree.
            As one who has worked all sorts of strange hours I actually preferred those days off.
            It’s an anachronism as far as I’m concerned and I suspect everyone would be better off.
            The problem is that nowadays there seems to be an expectation that everyone is “on call” 24/7.

          5. I remember several years ago, it was a Friday and I had been trekking in the mountains all day.
            Got back to my Landrover and picked up my phone, lots of messages about why had I not answered a call from UK.
            I called and said it was my day off but would call back Sunday with required info – silence, then “I’m not in the office on Sundays” I closed my phone and ignored them Tuesday.

          6. I once worked for a Japanese company in London.
            I was expected to be available to respond to queries during Tokyo office hours as well as working the UK 9-5. The really annoying aspect was there weren’t really any issues that could not wait.
            Similar when working for Americans, fortunately the time difference wasn’t as bad.
            My son worked for a German company in Australia, that really was a nightmare for him, calls in the middle of the night.

          7. The one biggest advantage of retirement: never answer the phone unless i feel like doing so.

          10. We used to do 35 consecutive 12 hour shifts come hell or Christmas. Everyday was a work day. No idle machinery or loss of production, the same as most big companies that produce stuff.

          12. I believe Finland moved all bank holidays not bound to a apecific date (Christmas & Easter) to the weekend. Less disruption that way.

          13. Hi Stormy, long time no see. All good?

            Alf was saying exactly the same thing this morning. There’s all this amazing expensive equipment and machinery in our hospitals and most of it sitting idle all weekend, over a quarter of the week. “Cancelling” the weekend would be excellent so that, within reason/negotiation, people could set their two days off whenever it suited them. But that’s a. It too radical. Especially for GPs. They only work 4 days a week anyway and CBA to work evenings/weekends.

          15. But I don’t mean just the ennaitchess. I mean teachers, lawyers, architects, bankers etc etc

          16. Wot? Teachers working weekends? You’re‘avin a larf! Actually I’m quite surprised teachers aren’t on strike like the lecturers although what for I haven’t a clue. Our public services seem to do as little as they can get away with.

          19. I hope so Phiz. I have the day booked off but it will depend how things are at work. We are so short staffed, I may have to cancel it if anyone calls in sick. Fingers crossed.

          20. I remember remarking to a consultant years ago that I couldn’t understand the economics of having million of pounds worth of equipment lying idle for over 25% of the week. That was met with a shrug of the shoulders.

          21. They now work throughout the weekend; at last someone has realised that it is not a good idea to have £millions of equipment sitting idle.

          22. Allied Medical paid for by NHS. They have 2 scanners at Ashford Hospital and the receptionist said she was working until 6 pm today. Both scanners in use.
            The rest of the hospital was like a morgue. Private enterprise has to pay its own way.

          23. I had a similar thing a few years ago at Spire Clare Park – at 7 am – on a Remembrance Sunday, and still had time for breakfast, followed by two services…

      2. I never felt remotely claustrophobic until I had an MRI scan – very unpleasant, but useful! Eyes firmly closed!!

        1. MRI was truly awful – I used to pothole, so can cope with being shut in, but that was something else. In the end, I just shut my eyes and went to sleep.
          CT scan was much easier.

          1. “CT scan was much easier”.

            Except for the moment when it feels like they are deep frying your anus. :@(

          2. Yes, Nurse said there may be a little discomfort – it was like someone holding a candle flame to my hole. Not pleasant, and very weird! {:-((

          3. I didn’t get that with my CT scan though i did feel hot all over for a bit.

            When i had my Angio they injected the dye three times while live scanning.

            Now that was BBQ bottom time !

          4. I never took to potholing – I much preferred rock climbing – but even when I did try I never had a feeling of being too enclosed – the MRI by contrast was unpleasant, especially with my head firmly fixed to the sliding bit!

        2. I don’t know if they all do it but when i had mine they gave me headphones and asked me which radio station i wanted to listen to. Every so often the nurse cut in and asked if i were okay and wanted to continue.

          It was still damned noisy though but with eyes closed it was okay.

          1. My boss had headphones for his MRI – after chatting with him I expected the same but because they were scanning my head and neck it wasn’t possible – VERY noisy!

      3. I never felt remotely claustrophobic until I had an MRI scan – very unpleasant, but useful! Eyes firmly closed!!

      4. The newer MRI scanners are better designed. They are painted/enamelled white, so you don’t feel so claustrophobic; the impression is the at the ‘roof’ is a good two or three feet above you.
        The first scan I had some years ago felt as if I was being entombed; I concentrated on the buzzes, clicks, sighs etc….. and tried to work out what they meant.

        1. The top of the cylinder was four inches from my nose. I would have preferred a starry sky ! The noises were much more than buzzes and clicks.

          10. Lazy as hell these days, thanks. Stopped doing stuff during lockdowns, now finding it hard to remotivate myself into getting on with it again. Stroke effects minimal, except for getting tired easily.

          11. Lazy as hell these days, thanks. Stopped doing stuff during lockdowns, now finding it hard to remotivate myself into getting on with it again. Stroke effects minimal, except for getting tired easily.

          13. There are the hammering noises as well. I don’t know if they signify bone, but, as those noises are spasmodic, does it mean a certain type of bone?

  51. OT – organists’ interlude (an André Preview musical break)

    I’m not a fan of discordant music but what amazes me is the way that this young organist exercises the full range of keys, stops and pedals on this organ whilst still keeping her seat at the instrument. Amazing fingering, use of stops and pedals without a score. I can only assume that whilst she may have played all the right notes on David Conte’s score, she has played them in the order in which he intended!

    https://youtu.be/diQh2CYW7DQ

    1. As the Muslim population of the UK grows, they will gradually start demanding more and more concessions to their religion and way of life.

  53. Ukraine’s tangled political history with Russia has its counterpart in the religious landscape, with Ukraine’s majority Orthodox Christian population divided between an independent-minded group based in Kyiv and another loyal to its patriarch in Moscow.

    But while there have been appeals to religious nationalism in both Russia and Ukraine, religious loyalty doesn’t mirror political fealty amid Ukraine’s fight for survival.

    Even though Russian President Vladimir Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine in part as a defense of the Moscow-oriented Orthodox church, leaders of both Ukrainian Orthodox factions are fiercely denouncing the Russian invasion, as is Ukraine’s significant Catholic minority.

    “With prayer on our lips, with love for God, for Ukraine, for our neighbors, we fight against evil – and we will see victory,” vowed Metropolitan Epifany, head of the Kyiv-based Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

    “Forget mutual quarrels and misunderstandings and … unite with love for God and our Motherland,” said Metropolitan Onufry, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is under the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow but has broad autonomy.

    Even that seemingly united front is complicated. A day after posting Onufry’s message on Thursday, his church’s website began publishing reports claiming its churches and people are being attacked, blaming one attack on the representatives of the rival church. https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/EXPLAINER-How-is-Russia-Ukraine-war-linked-to-16950867.php

    The division between Ukraine’s Orthodox bodies has reverberated worldwide in recent years as Orthodox churches have struggled with how and whether to take sides. Some U.S. Orthodox hope they can put such conflicts aside and unite to try to end the war, while also fearing the war could exacerbate the split.

    1. It was a bit much. In order to assert themselves they went to the Ecumenical Patriarch and demanded that he recognize the Ukrainian Church as separate from Moscow, so it was entirely motivated by politics. The Ecumenical Patriarch having granted them the right to their own church and Patriarch, pissed off the Russian Church and Patriarch right royally. The Russians promptly accused the Ecumenical Patriarch of heresy. So the Russians regard the Ukrainian Church as schismatic and the poor Ecumenical Patriarch is stuck in the middle. I genuinely feel sorry for him because he lives in Istanbul and his Church has dwindled to almost nothing due to Erdogan actively persecuting the Church in Turkey. It is another example of how the West is silent as ancient Eastern Churches are being silenced and destroyed by Islam. His priests and parishioners are frequently murdered.

      60 Minutes Interview with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qKJTdTW5A

  54. 351129+ up ticks,

    In all honesty and in my opinion we, the innocent of the United Kingdom
    have been fighting a domestic war these past near four decades against
    the ruling lab/lib/con mass party controlled illegal immigration, ongoing /
    mass foreign paedophile 16 plus tears cover up ( for the good of the )(party) coalitiol, supporters / voters.

    https://twitter.com/AgainBraine/status/1497931519381360640

  55. Oh woe, woe and thrice woe.
    I have just watched yesterday’s rugby matches.
    I shall cry quietly in a corner.

    2. My neighbour gave his tickets for the Pompey match to friends because he wanted to watch the rugby on screen in the pub. I bet he regrets it now.

    3. I haven’t watched it, have no intention of watching it and was incensed when the idiots presenting the RACING programme kept wittering on about it (and wasted ages on an interview with some Welsh rugby player). Thank goodness for Christian Williams who pointed out that the racing was what was important when they tried to pump him about the Rugby (he’s a successful, Welsh, trainer).

  56. Isle of Wight council leader, 58, is facing calls to resign amid furious racism row as she denies owning ‘golliwog dolls’ that were spotted in background of picture at her home
    Isle of Wight Councillor Lora Peacey-Willcox shared Facebook post in November
    Post showed a collection of golliwog dolls in the background in a display case
    Has failed to explain the collection and row erupted over post on Wednesday
    Councillors are calling on her to apologise or resign after the post
    But in latest twist to saga, she has gone to police and claimed to be victim of hate crime

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10556795/Isle-Wight-council-leader-58-facing-calls-resign-amid-furious-racism-row.html

    5. There will be all hell to pay when someone is discovered to have a Penny Black in their stamp collection…

    7. Why should she either apologize or resign. People really should, in those sort of circumstances, tell the self righteous to get stuffed.

    8. I posted this yesterday. Prescient.

      Right now we have a bunch of nobodies canceling people, plays, and books, ruining careers, and we do nothing about it. Publishers are scared to death of these nobodies, and one unproved accusation against a noted historian by a woman has ruined Blake Bailey’s career. Lies and unproven charges have become the norm, and instead of resisting such blatant rubbish, people are giving in by remaining silent. And by their silence they aid and abet the false charges and ghastly lies. It’s time to fight back and fight back with a vengeance.


      https://www.takimag.com/article/one-big-lie/

      1. Dark caramel. Not burnt.

        Thanks. For lunch i don’t use the good linen. That one is from the Hathaway collection. Wipe clean. You can also buy curtains to match but i wouldn’t recommend it… :@)

        1. Yes. Making puff pastry is rather an arduous, industrial process.
          And as for filo … fergettit.

          1. There are vids of old ladies making it. I’m just surprised they don’t have a Meghan and Harry ‘go fund me’…to support them. Do they wonder where the sweat comes from?

  59. Fence being reinstalled around US Capitol for Biden’s State of the Union speech. 27 February 2022.

    Fencing installed around the US Capitol for months after the January 2021 insurrection will be put back up before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as concern grows about potential demonstrations or truck convoys snarling traffic in the US capital.

    Capitol Police chief Tom Manger said in a statement that the fence will be erected around the Capitol building for the speech on Tuesday and is being put up “out of an abundance of caution”, in consultation with the Secret Service.

    It’s odd how all these democratic leaders need increasing security! When Washington moved into the White House as its first incumbent, it was possible to stroll in off the streets and address the President directly with your concerns. This in an age when all males carried weapons and knew how to use them. Westminster and Downing Street are similarly fortresses; not least against those people the Elites have imported so as to confer the benefits of Freedom and Democracy on them. The people are of course expected to bear these same risks with equanimity.

    Fence being reinstalled around US Capitol for Biden’s State of the Union speech (msn.com)

    1. I call to mind a newsreel film of a PM (MacDonald/Chamberlain/Baldwin?) arriving by taxi in Downing Street. He put his hand in his pocket to get out money to pay the cabbie.

      1. Churchill used to walk to the House though he was once attacked by an Irish Republican with whom he traded shots! Lol! Such men no longer exist in the UK!

      2. Must have been a good while ago – I can’t recall any modern politician putting his/her hand into their own pocket!

        2. They are all experts at putting their hands in ours though. Time for a Dr Zhivago style revolution.

        1. There is a story about one of George V’s relatives…can’t recall who, but she confessed that she often travelled by bus when in London.
          Good heavens, exclaimed the King, and do you strap hang?

    2. When I was a child you could stroll up Downing Street and pose in front of No. 10 so your doting parents could take a photo.
      Nowadays, you’d need Bolshevik determination to storm the gates.

      2. I certainly remember walking through their anneallan. It is a pity that our politics are not open enough now for the road to be clear.

      3. Somewhere there is a photo of me standing on the steps of No. 10. No barriers, just a policeman (in a proper uniform and helmet).

    3. Funny isn’t it that the very people who say they are for the people need so much protection from the people.

  60. NATO allies Latvia, Estonia and Norway have a land border with Russia. Turkey and the US have a sea border. The US- Russia separation is only 50 miles or so. One assumes all will have missiles of some sort on hand.

    1. Norway is a member of NATO (cuddling up to the US), although not having own nuclear weapons, there’s nothing stopping NATO bringing them in, either overtly or covertly.

  61. The laws of the game and the particular circumstances have reduced the Ireland Italy game to a farce.

    1. Stupidity really is at pandemic proportions.
      Surely this can’t be right. It may be the law but this really proves the law is a ass.
      If I was an Italian I’d feel like walking off.

      1. I thought they were about to.

        I can’t see why they can’t have uncontested scrums.
        It would be slightly to Italian advantage but they are still down one man, making them down two for the scrum and then the immediate passage of play is ridiculous.

      1. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if 14 stayed on all the time, it’s the reduction of a man for scrums, on top of the red card, that makes it such a nonsense.

        1. Yes but if I’d paid to see a rugby match and this had taken place I would have been mightily p1ssed off.

          1. Agreed.
            I can live with yellow and red cards, but that was a travesty.

            I think that the Italians came out of it with heads held high, the score line should have been much much worse.

    4. I watched the game up until that point. Complete baloney. I understand that you need a solid individual in the front row, but a prop is no more use at hooker than a chunky wing forward. Uncontested scrums should be OK, as you say below. Last time I looked at the Laws, the minimum number for a scrum was three, not eight. Having a three man scrum would have solved the problem without any bias. It might have been fun…

  62. Interesting. I’ve just been watching ‘Meet The Press’ from the US. US Senator Rob. Portman (Rep. Ohio) supports Ukraine (and other Eastern European countries) becomimg members of NATO. US Senator Mark Warner (Dem. Virginia) doesn’t.

    1. A bit like our Commons. Often there are people on both sides of the House that do not support their own Party.

      We, like America, have so many bought and paid for by either Russian/Ukraine or Chinese money i wouldn’t read too much into it. After all…the Biden’s are up to their necks in bribes from Ukraine gas companies.

      This should all be familiar territory for you Geoffrey, being a beneficiary of E.U money.

        1. I normally have a large sweet sherry as an aperitif at my local restaurant. This last week i went and Carol said they had run out and as it was raining she didn’t pop out to get any more that day.

          I told her to scour the kitchen…I finished off half a bottle of Chef’s Manzanilla. That’ll teach ’em.

    2. Eat lunch or whatever under the kitchen table, after first whitewashing all your windows. Then have another sherry. In fact, drink the whole bottle – it’s going nuclear.

      2. I finished homework and pressed my school uniform ready for Monday morning inspection by the Head. Extra house points were awarded if met with perfection and shoes had to be squeaky clean….

          3. I liked having the choice of a white or blue blouse …it gave you a sense of freedom to choose without being too authoritarian.
            Smart move…

          5. Navy gymslip, maroon striped blouses, maroon ties. In third year we wore skirts. still navy. Lower and upper sixth we wore our own clothes except on special occasions like speech day.

          6. Careful BT will be having heart palpitations at the thought of navy gymslips.

            Not that I am immune from a slight flutter myself.

          8. The school started with gymslips and then changed to grey skirts and white Aertex blouses – and lumpy grey cardies and a webbing belt that turned into coloured string after about the first week. Since this was the Neanderthal 1950s, the boys wore grey trousers and white shirts.
            Our ties were slightly different in that the house colour would predominate in the stripes.
            We also went from navy blue felt hats and blazers (panamas in the summer) to black berets and blazers.
            I dread to think what the uniform change over must have cost parents.

        2. Goodness me! Were you a boarder? Bog standard comp for me. Can’t ever remember doing any pressing or ironing. Mind you I remember wanting to clean the windows in my bedroom (once!) but not being allowed to because I was born with a hole in the heart. Although I was never told that, just that my heart had a murmur. My parents were quite Victorian, especially my Dad. I was 17 before I ever went in a pub!

          1. Not a boarder but a jolly good school. Excellent teachers and Head.

            My brother was born with a hole in his heart. However he took part in school sports rugby, footie etc. and passed to enrol in the airforce when he was 18. Alas I lost him far too soon. He was a lovely brother….a terrible tease but good fun.

          2. My brother was 4 years younger than me- he died in 2015 aged 56. Far too young. He drove me crackers when were still living at home.
            Anytime a boyfriend phoned he would stand by the phone and play Hearts and Flowers on his violin. Grrr.

    2. If the weather was fine , my sister and I had fun searching for treats in the garden .. ..We often wondered how and when our twin brother and sister were magically created !

      Sometimes the treats were quiz books or Lexicon or books to read .. 11 years age gap.. younger sister 7 year age gap (between us and the twins ) and a four year age gap between her and I. Mallory Towers series and Swiss Family Robinson etc, and sister loved Famous Five or Secret Seven .

      1. Mallory Towers!! I read all of those and also The Naughtiest Girl in the School who became my role model ;-))

        1. I thought that school (Naughtiest Girl in the School) was a bit creepy though – they were all such do-gooders! Not sure I would have got on particularly well there either.
          I always sympathised with the rich girl who didn’t want to give up all her pocket money!

      2. A rather lonely school friend (her parents were aged when she was born and she had odd tics) used to have a birthday party every year.
        The prizes for the party games were her copies of Malory Towers etc…. that she had read once … very carefully.

  69. Going now. I don’t think there are enough defribulators given what the gymslip lasses are talking about.

  70. 351129+ up ticks,

    May one ask,
    Surely the odious monster that has been in the constructive state for near four decades ie the lab/lib/con anti United Kingdom coalition has been completed, is it to their, the members, liking.

    I mean is it to the nasal grippers / best of the worst, party first brigades satisfaction ?

    Do they agree with the latest coalition idea that , Ukrainian refugees
    being taken in to help with harvesting via the vegetable season.

          4. The only thing I’ve got against Boxers (well apart from that) is that you have to fight one’s way into the bloody things!

          6. Sue, HertsLass, the keeper of the NOTTL List of member, apparently has a message for you.
            Are you in contact with anyone who has her e-mail?

          7. Hi BoB! How intriguing! No! I’m afraid I’m not in contact with anyone apart from on this site! I don’t know how to!

          8. HertsLass has a list of a number of NOTTLers.
            If you have the e-mail of anyone on the site who is on her member list, ask them to pass your email on to her.

          9. Sue, our list is simply there so that people if they wish can request exchange of contact emails with another NoTTLer (with that person’s agreement) so that things like the sending of seeds, magazines etc. or arranging other things, can be done privately without any information being made generally available by posting on here.

            If BoB has already deleted his post (below) by the time you read this, do let me know on here, and I will sort something out. What I normally do is what BoB has done – i.e. let my email for these purposes be shown for a limited time and then delete it.

          10. Thank you Hertslass!
            I’ve just emailed BoB! As I said to him, I have the twins today, so I’ve not exactly been quick off the mark!
            Thank you for all your help! 💕

          11. Thanks Sue, he contacted me. Please I suggest that you delete yours above a.s.a.p. for security.

        1. Looked like the breakfast cereal Shreddies’?
          https://www.google.com/search?q=shreddies+cereal&rlz=1C1CHBF_enNO983NO983&sxsrf=APq-WBu15pFBlI1kd2W3WGIZ6jIi5cCu6g:1645991082910&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&vet=1&fir=G8w-V89cZxqM3M%252CgVt_5qeVbAY0LM%252C%252Fm%252F05w_s8%253B1S3aRZ3pzZleGM%252CU_3bUzbxofgepM%252C_%253BXW5SR_oikvxm9M%252Cy5fP-QBWFScQHM%252C_%253BTpUTFwRnRE8cqM%252CcakscCXmgCL5HM%252C_%253BBJpNNcbGOhq0cM%252CwcpGVBDOlO8CvM%252C_%253BV6kHiJSVwtIHZM%252CrRsyQYsFerhv5M%252C_&usg=AI4_-kTd1y0nFM2fo8vSHD3yyU7De3YSDA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBk7PO0qD2AhVpxIsKHXtYAkgQ_B16BAgqEAE#imgrc=G8w-V89cZxqM3M

  72. With so much noise and clamour rending the air, this seems almost quaint.

    We must amend the law to restore our basic rights

    The Public Health Act was used to put the whole population under house arrest – it must not be allowed to do so again

    JONATHAN SUMPTION • 26 February 2022 • 6:10pm

    Lockdown was an extreme, crude, and untested experiment embarked upon with the minimum of thought, no advance planning and no exit route. The original decision was taken in a moment of panic with no consideration of more sensible alternatives, and no thought for the appalling collateral consequences.

    It failed to stop the virus, which is still with us. It inflicted untold misery and economic pain. Its main victims were the young, who were at negligible risk of death, and the poor, for whom confinement was a harsher fate. There is now mounting international evidence that it achieved nothing that could not have been achieved just as well by timely and moderate measures of social distancing and by trusting people to take common-sense steps to protect themselves. We did not need to turn ourselves into a police state.

    If you doubt me, look at Sweden, which rejected lockdown and suffered fewer deaths than us. Or read Mark Woolhouse’s The Year the World Went Mad, out this week from a Professor of Epidemiology and member of SAGE’S modelling committee.

    How can we stop this kind of thing happening again? For it will happen again if we do nothing. There will be more variants and fresh epidemics, some of them worse than this one. Governments now know that they can get away with anything if they frighten people enough. They will not forget.

    One of the main culprits is the Public Health Act – the legal basis of the lockdown. This statute was designed to authorise bans on mass gatherings, the isolation of infectious people and the closure of infected premises. There is nothing in it about putting the whole population, sick or not, under house arrest. The Government used it in preference to emergency legislation designed for just such crises, because they wanted to avoid the intensive Parliamentary scrutiny emergency regulations would have required.

    When the relevant provisions were enacted in 2008, the government of the day said that there was no need for serious Parliamentary scrutiny, because the new powers were no big deal. They only authorised measures which were “minor in scope and effect.” Yet in 2020, even the courts bent before the gale and dismissed challenges to the lockdown, disregarding the long-standing constitutional principle that only the most specific language will authorise governments to deprive citizens of their basic rights.

    The first thing that we have to do is put the Public Health Act back in its box. It should be amended so that people can only be deprived of their liberty and other basic rights under emergency legislation, with proper debate in Parliament beforehand or within seven days, followed by monthly Parliamentary reviews.

    Parliamentary scrutiny, however, will not be enough. We also have to tackle knee-jerk government. The scientists who advised the government always made it clear that it was no part of their job to think about the disastrous societal implications of their advice. As a result, “following the science” meant disregarding all the relevant social, educational, psychological and economic considerations. Yet it has to be someone’s job to think about those.

    It should be a statutory condition for brutal regulations like these that ministers do their homework. They must present to Parliament an evidence-based cost-benefit analysis to justify what they are doing, together with a proper assessment of the alternatives. Advance contingency planning would make it possible to produce these quite quickly.

    Governments need to have powers to take decisive action in an emergency. But that should not mean inefficient, destructive and blinkered policy-making.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/26/must-amend-law-restore-basic-rights/

    1. Tony Blair/Gordon Brown, yet again.
      The lied and lied and lied throughout the wrecking crew years.
      Passed under Brown but almost certainly a Blair brainchild.

      1. Curiously, inthis matter Sumption has previously criticised the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 rather then the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

        1. Sumption is an interesting character.
          I wonder whether he’s reflecting on the way one piece of legislation that seemed innocuous can actually be used in different ways than those intended/discussed.
          The Canadians, for example, are suddenly discovering how Trudeau is using all sorts of powers in ways that were probably not intended when the legislation was debated/passed.

    2. I would imagine that in 2008, the public thought the diseases would be biggies like smallpox, bubonic plague and possibly ebola; not a flu variant that carried off the already diseased and extremely aged. As flu has done for centuries.

      1. Yet they’re also viruses, just of a different virulence. Same as SARS is at the very top end of the coronaviruses.

    3. I find Sumption a bit of an enigma. He constantly writes articles most of which, I agree with.
      However, as someone who understood what was going on and had contacts with the highest judges in the land why did he not organise a challenge, to what seems to me, an abuse of power.

  73. Bright, clear blue sky with the sun blazing. A lovely afternoon. We went out in the car for a run. We could see for miles.
    Last Friday we drove up to Dundee. the price of diesel at the service station in Freuchie was 157.9 ltr. or, £7.17 per gallon.
    I can remember adverts for petrol 3/6 per gallon. That is 17.5p. So it now costs 41 times what it cost in the 60s?

    1. A gallon of petrol at 5/3 in 1966 would be £5 today by RPI (not perhaps the most useful measure for petrol but it’ll do).

      1. Interesting. A big chunk of the price is Duty and VAT. The world is a wash with oil. It should be cheap as it is an essential component of the economy, like electricity.

  74. I am off. A lovely day – 18ºC in the greenhouse as I spent an hour sowing seeds variés. Wonderful to be able to forget what is happening everywhere and simply enjoy oneself.

    I shall be away tomorrow, chauffering the MR to her important duties in Cambridge and seeking to find a way of passing 5 hours when all the things I was hoping to visit are shut!! So have a lovely day playing nicely.

    A mardi.

    2. Given Fondoflyin’s performance as German Defence Minister it might be good to just let her get on with it – she screwed it up big time last time she tried!

      1. Broom handles and planes that won’t fly? Not much use for subs that aren’t seaworthy, unless she’s going to sink them in the Black Sea?

  77. Well that’s 3 barrow loads of wood chopped up the garden and then carted, dragged, dumped by the woodstack I’m filling and then stacked, probably for the winter after next.
    Included were logs from the but end of a couple of elms that hadn’t quite been killed off by the dutch elm, though they failed to come into leaf last year.
    Talk about hard wood! Even with a full overarm swing, the axe was just bouncing off! Ended up having to use a sledge & wedge and a couple of the larger logs were sawn even smaller before i even attempted to chop them.

  79. Evening all – chilling out now in the airport Hotel in Nairobi – flying home tomorrow. It’s been a great trip. Struggled with the wretched Passenger locator form – I thought all restrictions had been ditched? All this intrusive surveillance is complete overkill. Bloody masks seem to be obligatory on planes, airports and shops here.

    1. Good luck on the journey home. Looking forward to your snaps.

      Hope your PLF is accepted….. It is one of the MANY restrictions that remain. BPAPM was – of course – LYING when he said all laws had been lifted.

      The PLF – in every sodding country – will remain permanently

  80. On SKY News in the last hour, Mark Austen has been airing a ‘Laundry List’ of tactical nuclear weapons available to Putin’s forces. He made the point that if Vlad becomes frustrated with lack of progress in occupying/ overthrowing Kiev and other cities, he may well be tempted to ‘up the ante’ …

    The fact that this is being discussed is alarming.

    Consider: if Putin opts to use tactical nuclear weapons; how should the West respond?

      1. I have discovered (thanks to the TPA) that our “cash strapped” NHS has spent over £43k on “rainbow crossings”. How is that going to get the waiting lists down?

        1. Next time “our” NHS whinges on about needing more resources (aka Taxpayers’ Money) it should not get a penny until it has shewn how it is going to save money in other areas and provided a full and detailed spending plan which includes lines of responsibility.

          1. I was told by a chap who was a big wig in the Shrewsbury CQC that it made him mad to hear politicians claiming the NHS needed more money. He said it had plenty of money, it just needed to be more efficient.

        2. Every person killed on a rainbow crossing on the way to an operation reduces the waiting lists by one?

          1. Ah, but if they are only injured, that adds to the waiting list. Judging by the way the police horses reacted, you could well have lots of injured riders to deal with!

        3. Colchester General Hospital has one.
          And bloody great concrete Lego blocks at the entrance – presumably to stop crazed RoPers smashing into A&E.

    2. With absolute silence unless it wants mass extinction and the end to achieving our own Soviet goals of net zero, windfarms and the New World Order. If it really happens an early warning sign will be the likes of the heads of silicone valley taking off to New Zealand where they have their bunkers, or so it is rumoured. But it will ruin summer, wont it?

    6. I might get in touch with the QM at my old battalion and see if I can sign out a noddy suit and ressie.

    7. Surender immediately. Clearly the best option. We do not have any quarrel with Putin or Russia. Our politicians are egging it on. But why?

        1. The alternative is an exchange of nuclear weapons. I don’t see us surviving. Russia has no use for us. There would be no army of occupation. If we surrender it will be a case of “shut up and keep quiet”.

        1. And what replaces him might well be even worse for Russia, but good for the Technocrat globalists

      2. Probably not. If it’s anything like the anti-Putin protest In London, it really is just a few hundred people, not the many thousands who marched against vaxx mandates.

  82. Evening, all. I had an early night last night, intending to be up to attend the 08.00 service this morning. Unfortunately, while the spirit might have been willing, the flesh was decidedly weak and I failed to make it 🙁

    2. I worked two nightshirts Fri and Sat so was looking forward to a lo g sleep when I went to bet at 6 o’clock this morning. Darling sister ‘phoned at 8.30am. Grrr

      Edit: night shifts 🙂

          1. You’d have still missed it.
            One tends to read what one thinks one has written rather than what one has actually written.

      1. I had nothing to do with it but I’m genuinely a crowned king:

        Stephen is derived from Greek Στέφανος (Stéphanos), a first name from the Greek word στέφανος (stéphanos), meaning ‘wreath, crown’
        Roy is a masculine given name. In Anglo-Norman England, the name derived from the Norman roy, meaning “king”, while its Old French cognate, rey or roy (modern roi), likewise gave rise to Roy as a variant in the Francophone world.

      1. Lock name Canal Rise (change in level)
        Tuel Lane Lock Rochdale 19′ 8½” 6.00m
        Bath Deep Lock Kennet and Avon 19′ 5″ 5.92m

        1. Thanks. There are plenty of locks both here (N Shrops) and where I was growing up (Worcs, now West Midlands). They were, I suspect, tiddlers in comparison.

        2. The longest.

          Tardebigge Flight

          The longest lock flight in the UK is the Tardebigge Flight on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. The flight boasts 30 locks and raises the canal 220 feet.

  84. Goodbye Marcelo Bielsa … (I wonder what Don Revie would have made of you):

    Fiona Walker
    3 HRS AGO
    I live near him and what strikes me is his normality, he lives in a small terrace house and pushes his own trolley round Morrisons. Until the Covid restrictions he walked the three miles to the training ground and back every day, was a regular in Costa coffee with his notes and always had time for fans wanting a selfie. Just recently he funded a gym for the Elland Road staff, designed by his architect wife. He is pretty much worshipped in Leeds, not just for the football but the quality of his character.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/02/27/thriving-barely-surviving-leeds-shelf-life-expired-went-wrong/#comment

    1. I dunno, I think he’s a bit unrealistic about the current state of 3D printing. It’s far more expensive, slower, clunkier and worse quality than he makes out.

    1. I have absolutely no muscial ability whatsoever; in fact, I’m practically tone deaf and even I can appreciate this.

      Much obliged!

      1. You are not alone…it is said that George V was so tone deaf that he only recognised the National Anthem because everyone stood up.

  87. Liz Truss is suggesting an atomic war in Ukraine/Western Europe. Well, at least it will cover up her inability to get her civil servants to do their work properly.

    “UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has warned that the crisis in Ukraine could spill over into a direct conflict between Russia and NATO nations if Western powers “don’t stand up to Putin now.”
    “If we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine we are going to see others under threat – the Baltics, Poland, Moldova, and it could end up in a conflict with NATO,” Truss told Sky News on Sunday.”

    1. From the Beeb….
      “Turkey has said it will apply the terms of an international agreement that could see it block access to the Black Sea for the Russian Navy.

      Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, Turkey has control over the two straits that connect the Black Sea, which sits on Ukraine’s southern coast, to the Mediterranean.

      The convention guarantees the free passage of vessels belonging to Black Sea countries – like Russia – in peacetime, but allows Turkey to close the straits to all foreign warships in a time of war or if Turkey itself is threatened.

      Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said earlier: “We have decided that the situation in Ukraine has turned into a war. We will be transparently applying the provisions of Montreaux.”

      3. A few years ago several mysteriously rich Russians arrived with their brand new boats in the marina in Marmaris where we keep our boat, Mianda. They were very rude to all the Turkish people who worked in the restaurant and shops and never said please, thank you or even hello.

    1. A lot of footage and images from 2014 and the past 8 years of civil war being recycled and misrepresented.

  89. I’m watching a prog on Beeb2 with Chris Packham walking through somewhere in Hampshire.
    I can’t stand the man himself but the programme is refreshing. Not a note of background music heard yet, just CP talking with the sounds of nature and his footsteps on gravel.

    Brian Cox take note.

    No ‘funky’ photography either, except for the occasional drone shot.

  90. We’ve just watched The Constant Gardener (2005) on Netflix.

    The greed and lies of Big Pharma in Africa and the hushed up deaths. Now being played in real life across the world.

    1. We listened to a Clue today and you were mentioned as possibly needing a Delia Smith cook book 😉

      1. Good morning Ann
        I’m afraid you’ve lost me there. Could you explain.
        Hope you and your husband are looking after each other, I know that will be the case.

    3. Have you heard Geert van den Bossche talking about when he was in charge of rolling out the ebola vaccine? Bad effects, all hushed up as well. When he tried to get the truth out…crickets.

    1. I am fond of the girls called Ann who are my friends but my favourite names for girls are Caroline (what else can I say?) and Belinda, my elder sister.

      1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman), Richard, that I come a poor fourth after Caroline, Belinda and an abundance of Ann(e)s! (Harumph!!! Storms off in a strop.)

  93. “‘We have been brought together for a reason’, says Prince Harry of wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex”

    Yes, nature has a way of corralling those best kept away from the sane and stable majority.

      1. I’m well, thank you Lottie. I took a break unintentionally – I realised one day I hadn’t visited the site for a few days and then felt I had run out of puff and didn’t have anything to say and the days turned into weeks.
        I had an email from a fellow Nottler asking how I was and saying some of the regulars were concerned I hadn’t been heard from in a while. It was the push I needed to get back into it.
        I’m very grateful – I realised straight away I’d missed it.

  95. Poppiesmum has been upvoting today- I hope that means she is better. Was thinking about her earlier.

    2. Have a very Happy Birthday, Jeremy. “If I knew you were birthdaying, I would’ve baked a cake”.

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