Tuesday 8 March: Let’s not fall for Putin’s line that he is entitled to control his neighbours

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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734 thoughts on “Tuesday 8 March: Let’s not fall for Putin’s line that he is entitled to control his neighbours”

  1. Morning everyone and a Happy Birthday to Geoff on his 65 th birthday and who allows us to post on this Blog; one of the few remaining outlets of Free Speech in the UK!

    1. Morning Minty et al.

      Free speech indeed – but it comes with a price. The price to be paid is to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous puns…..

    2. Morning, Araminta and All. Special greeting to GG on your Birthday. Enjoy your day and thanks for all that you do for us.

        1. Happy Birthday, Geoff.

          Thank you for the blog, it is far more reaching than some appear to think;
          Friendships have been made, people have and continue to meet up.

    3. Good morning all and an especially Good Morning to Geoff. Have a splendid day and thank you for keeping this great forum going.

          2. Erm ….If that comment is correct then you are 90,,according to your
            remarks about my age!!

            Good morning Phizzee and Dolly.x

          3. A repeated (I was early and sent greetings a couple of days ago) happy birthday from me, Geoff. Thanks for all the comradeship of your creation, nottl.

      2. And a happy birthday from me if you missed my comment on yesterday’s page1

  4. Vladimir Putin never believed the West would cut off Russian oil: that was a grave mistake. 8 March 2022.

    A Western oil embargo against Russia raises the geostrategic stakes exponentially.

    What was almost unthinkable last week looks almost unstoppable this week. Ukrainian resistance and outraged moral opinion in the democracies has changed the character of this war, and changed what the West is prepared to do.

    The White House is sending emergency missions to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to find extra barrels. The US is pushing for a quick deal with Tehran on nuclear proliferation to bring back Iranian crude. All normal diplomatic reservations are being set aside.

    It is this – as much as comments by top US diplomat Anthony Blinken – that tells us Washington really is going for broke. You can hear the footsteps of the world’s only real superpower bearing down fast.

    The West having provoked this war is now intent on extending it. This article assumes that Russia with its armed forces intact and 6000 nuclear warheads in its arsenal is going to meekly submit to its economic evisceration! Only a fool would believe that!

    No one should think that our leaders are the good guys here. Authoritarian. Corrupt. Decadent. Ironically they hate us even more than they do the Russians!

    We should all be making preparations for what is to come. Shortages and Rationing at best and the Ultimate Sanction at worst!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/07/vladimir-putin-never-believed-west-would-cut-russian-oil-grave/

        1. There was a shortage of baby rattles in WW2 so my dad (working under the Blitz in London) found some nuts and bolts and put them in a tin. I was told later it was a knockout!

    2. Irony isn’t dead.

      The White House is sending emergency missions to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to find extra barrels. The US is pushing for a quick deal with Tehran on nuclear proliferation to bring back Iranian crude. All normal diplomatic reservations are being set aside.

    3. “Ukrainian resistance and outraged moral opinion stirred up on purpose by the media in the former democracies has changed the character of this war, and changed what the West is prepared to do.allowed the West to proceed towards a “climate emergency” requiring energy rationing, which they always intended to do”

      Fixed it.

      1. Yes, bb2, a clever move to blame the imminently rocketing fuel price increase not on our anti-fracking blindness but on the big bad Russian wolf.

        1. Yep – our heating oil is now twice the price it was in November – all Vlad’s fault of course, nothing to do with our moronic politicians and Carrie’s baleful influence.

    4. Biden scrambling to get more oil from Venezuala must have heads in the US spinning. After over a decade of derision about the Venezuelan socialist hell hole and it’s inhumane treatment towards it’s populace, suddenly it’s time to go cap in hand begging for a larger supply because Biden and son stirred the hornet’s nest in Ukraine; following the elections in 2014 caused by meddling from Horse-Face Ashton and her fellow unelected EU gangsters Barossa and Drunken Juncker.

      It is embarrassing that, after just one year of Biden at the helm, the US, having shot themselves in the foot regarding domestic supply, are now reduced to this self-inflicted injury.

  5. This is the sort of madness that Guardianistas thrive on….how these liars can continue to get away with it is a mystery

    Don’t let high energy prices derail UK green agenda, say climate experts

    Analysis: Ukraine war may increase short-term need for North Sea oil and gas, but fossil fuels no solution to Britain’s energy woes

    Fiona Harvey and Helena Horton
    Mon 7 Mar 2022 19.18 GMT

    Ramping up production from the UK’s oil and gas fields in the North Sea could help ease the pain of high fuel prices in the short term but should not be seen as a long-term solution to Britain’s energy woes, experts have warned.

    Lord Adair Turner, former CBI chief and former chair of the Committee on Climate Change, now chair of the Energy Transitions Commission thinktank, said the prime minister’s plan to produce more oil and gas now marked a sensible move, but he cautioned against those who saw a continued future in increased production.

    “You have to distinguish between the short term – more gas from existing fields – and the long term,” said Turner. “You would have to be a very furious climate campaigner to say in the middle of a war you could not take measures like that.

    “So we will probably have to take these short-term measures, like squeezing more from existing fields or importing more LNG [liquefied natural gas, by tanker], but fundamentally we want no new oil and gas [exploration] from the North Sea. The future of the North Sea should be windmills, not oil and gas.”

    The returns from a push to expand production were likely to be limited, and so the focus should also be on renewable energy, added Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics.

    “The UK is already committed to maximum economic recovery of oil and gas from the North Sea, but it is a mature basin with declining production, which is why the UK currently has to import about half of the natural gas that it consumes,” he said.
    *
    *
    *
    Rebecca Newsom, head of politics for Greenpeace UK, also warned against cutting government support for renewable energy in an effort to reduce bills, pointing out that this had backfired in the past because the levies funded insulation and other efficiency and low-carbon measures that were abandoned.

    “We have already seen what happens when, in David Cameron’s infamous words, ministers ‘cut the green crap’ – UK energy bills are now £2.5bn higher thanks to that. Our gas-guzzling homes are funding Putin’s war, hurting our pockets as gas prices soar and wrecking the climate,” she warned.

    “This is the price we pay for decades of government failure to end our dependence on fossil fuels. Our best hope for a safer, healthier, peaceful future is in moving away from oil and gas as quickly as possible and investing in clean energy and warmer homes.”

      1. Nigel is probably going to end up as the Minister for Energy in the forthcoming Coalition Government. If only to shut him up!

          2. 351311+ up ticks,

            Morning JN,
            We have had a gutful of many like him in successive governments, his actions in
            helping to establish this reigning shower of political shite confirms that.

      2. Petrol at £7 a gallon – I remember when I started driving in 1964 petrol cost 4/- a gallon and I could fill the tank of my Morris Minor for less than a £ and drive to London and back from Keyhaven.

    2. “Don’t let high energy prices derail UK green agenda, say climate experts.”

      Morning, C1. We all know that the Graun is besotted by the green agenda, but this bilge really takes the biscuit! Anyway, if fossil fuels are such an abomination then presumably they will be arranging for their homes and businesses to be disconnected from the gas and electricity networks? It is a ‘climate emergency’ after all. Isn’t it?

      Thought not.

      1. What powers the Gruaniad’s computers and printing presses.
        Hampstead hamsters pedalling like fury?

    4. I’m sure that Rebecca Newsom doesn’t use electricity from the National Grid.

  8. All hail the Chief NoTTLer – A very Happy Birthday, Geoff, and then a further 364 happy unbirthdays.

      1. Happy Birthday, Geoff! Singing away lustily in your honour, drowning out the remnants of the dawn chorus as I do so because I’m not sure of which direction to face! Wishing you a wonderful day x

        1. Thank you, Katy. Meeting former neighbours for Thai lunch – he shares the same birthday, give or take five years. Then choir practice this evening – will see if anyone remembered. Life in the fast lane…

  9. For once I am on topic.

    I posted this just now under a question on Quora:

    https://brexitbites.quora.com/Does-Russia-technically-have-carte-blanche-in-Europe-to-move-against-Finland-Sweden-Austria-Georgia-Armenia-Azerbai

    “Brexit Bites, Sun

    Does Russia technically have carte blanche in Europe to move against Finland, Sweden, Austria, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and some Balkan nations, all being non-NATO members? Will NATO only activate Article 5 if a fellow member is threatened?

    =========

    Yes, and the remedy is simple.

    Remove the veto at the UN Security Council from any combatant in the incident under discussion and resolution. Right now, this means Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are excluded from any decisive resolution over Putin’s “special military operation”.

    It should not be NATO coming to the aid of beleagured Ukraine, but the UN. It should apply a no-fly zone immediately, and also tackle that convoy of heavy artillery bearing down on civilian areas in Ukrainian cities, and threatening any nation on Russia’s borders not prudent enough to secure for themselves NATO membership.

    The other campaign is a leaflet drop over Moscow, explaining in graphic detail precisely the nature of Putin’s “special military operation”, the likely effect it will have on their boys at the front, and the likely consequence of anyone living in Moscow if Putin or Lavrov start bringing in nuclear warfare to hold face.

    I understand that Vladivostok is threatened with expansionary opportunism from Beijing if Putin continues to weaken his country’s military in this crass, disproportionate and uncalled for intervention in Ukraine. There are also revenge attacks likely from the Islamic world to the south.

    Russians should be reminded not to be so complacent about their security under their “strong leader”. Their own news networks are hardly likely to tell them.”

    1. Yes, and the remedy is simple.

      Morning Jeremy. Actually it isn’t. Removing the veto at the UN is to all intents and purposes impossible and there is the further drawback that it has no military forces of its own. Any plane attempting to drop leaflets anywhere on Russian, or for that matter, anyone else’s territory, would recieve short shrift.

      1. It is impossible because the UN make it so. Let it be on their conscience.

        As for military forces, it can and should call on those of all member states not directly involved to provide whatever is necessary to restore order.

        If Putin wishes to consider dropping propaganda leaflets an Act of War, then let him. I would remind him that issuing propaganda has long been a legitimate peacetime campaigning tool abroad, and I have myself often turned to Radio Moscow or Russia Today to hear another slant on a story. It is not the first time I have suspected my own national broadcasters being economical with the truth, and of course Russia is quite free to drop their leaflets over London.

    2. Yes, and the remedy is simple.

      Morning Jeremy. Actually it isn’t. Removing the veto at the UN is to all intents and purposes impossible and there is the further drawback that it has no military forces of its own. Any plane attempting to drop leaflets anywhere on Russian, or for that matter, anyone else’s territory, would recieve short shrift.

  10. ‘Morning Peeps – not forgetting Geoff the Birthday Boy.

    Leading letter:

    SIR – Adam Holloway MP refers to Nato’s “possible mistake in moving its border so much closer to Russia’s” (Commentary, March 6). This narrative has to stop, because it implies that the Western allies were somehow to blame for welcoming former Soviet satellites desperately wanting to get out from beneath the oppressive Russian yoke and move into the democratic Western sphere. This was an inalienable right as self-determining sovereign countries.

    To imply otherwise buys into Vladimir Putin’s poisonous line that Russia is somehow “entitled” to control its neighbours.

    Roger White
    Sherborne, Dorset

    1. Gooses and ganders?

      Why shouldn’t the Cubans have had Russian missile bases on their island if they wanted to! Was the president of the United States in 1962 entitled to control what Cuba did?

      1. It was a negotiated settlement.
        Did Turkey wish to lose the jobs and money that followed removing US missiles?

    2. Being a member of the Western sphere does not require NATO membership. Even the densest member of a “satellite” government surely knows that NATO was set up with only one purpose – to smite Russia.

    3. Would Roger White be entirely happy with an independent Scotland playing host to Chinese warships in one of its sea ports and laundering Chinese tycoons’ dirty money, and when the Shetland Isles said they wanted no part of this, and wished to stay with England, attacking them in an eight year conflict costing 14 000 lives?

      Edit, oh I forgot, the Chinese-sphere Scotland would also be home to eleven bio weapon research labs funded by the Chinese ministry of defence. All absolutely fine in Roger White’s book, presumably.

  11. SIR – Fifty years ago, as a young married couple, we often enjoyed the hospitality of Nicky and Grete Winton. Later we were honoured to know Sir Nicholas Winton, as he became. As a nation we are all proud of his role in the Kindertransport – the saving of young children sent to this country to escape Nazi persecution in their own.

    Today, Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, and Priti Patel, the Home Secretary – both from refugee families that benefited from British generosity to distressed immigrants – seem to be more concerned with preventing bureaucratic disruption, such as that which Winton and the Kindertransport caused, than with helping refugees. Somehow we are finding it difficult to be quite as proud of Mr Raab and Ms Patel as we are of Sir Nicholas.

    Philip and Nicky Stevens
    Hartley Wintney, Hampshire

    Quite so, but you are forgetting that drinking sessions in breweries are well beyond their capabilities, even with alcohol and glasses provided. There is one thing they are really good at though – incompetence.

    1. And Blighty wasn’t stuffed to the gunwales with ‘refugees’ whose only interest is taking our money and destroying our culture.

  12. SIR – Russia’s biggest source of income is energy sales. These allow it to continue the war against Ukraine.

    If the energy pipelines were turned off, Russia would get the message that the West was serious.

    We have a choice: we get cold or Ukrainians die.

    John Wotton
    Shaftesbury, Dorset

    I think it highly unlikely that the swaggering Russian thug will turn off the gas supply to Europe because he has a war to finance and all his thieving chums to keep onside.

    We, on the other hand, need to take immediate steps to secure alternative, long term energy supplies, so that we are then in a position to turn our backs on Russian gas and oil, thus strangling its economy It will take time, thanks to the stupidity of successive governments (but particularly this one) for falling for the green scam.

    This is our ‘energy emergency’, no matter what the eco-brat and her ilk think.

    2. With China, India and Pakistan stepping up to the plate customer-wise, I don’t think freezing Europeans will do anything more than dent the sales sheet.

  13. SIR – In light of the global gas shortage and the war in Ukraine, special interest groups are loudly lobbying for their preferred solution, but many of these will take years of development and are not helpful in the short term.

    Britain’s electricity system is vulnerable to outages now. Winter capacity margins are very narrow and when low winds combine with increasingly common nuclear outages as the fleet ages, we face real threats to security of supply.

    There are steps that can be taken to address this in the short term. We should delay the closure of coal-fired power stations, at least until Hinkley Point C opens. We should also ensure that gas generation resources are optimised, with mothballed plants returned to service.

    We should negotiate firm gas-supply contracts with producing nations, and suspend renewables subsidies in favour of a major retrofit effort to reduce heat losses in homes. (This will require reform of the energy performance certificate to take account of the condition of buildings.)

    Looking to the longer-term future, we should expand domestic gas production and secure new nuclear projects, preferably technologies such as advanced boiling water reactors. These reactors have been built in four years, while EDF’s technology takes at least a decade to build.

    Kathryn Porter
    London E1

    Dream on, Kathryn Porter! This lot will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to take such sensible measures, although a thumping good defeat at the May elections will help.

    1. Ms Porter misunderstands.

      Reducing heat losses in houses benefits the peasants, whilst renewables subsidies benefit major corporations, mainly based abroad.

    2. Yes, yes….. but has Katey talked to Carrie Antoinette and her dear chum Lord Goldsmiff?

  14. And now for a real problem…

    SIR – We have almost given up growing hostas (Leading Article, March 5) because of slugs and snails.

    We tried being ecological about prevention. Someone suggested grit – it didn’t work. Then we added crushed eggshells baked in the Aga but that didn’t work either.

    The next step was to try those sheep’s-wool pellets, which were very expensive and ineffective.

    Finally, as bran was thought to work, we bought a sack from the agricultural merchants. The labrador ate that and blew up like a balloon.

    The pests have won.

    Chris and Bill Neil
    Yockleton, Shropshire

    Not in my garden, because I find sharp grit is pretty effective, provided it is used generously.

    1. I use those blue sprinkly things which kill slugs and snails. (It’s all right, the slugs and snails are not Ukrainian.)

    3. I go on night patrol with salt and zap any slugs I find. My hostas are surviving.

    1. Let’s find a sculptor who knows well the foul working of Shwab’s mind and etches the frown, the wrinkled lip and the sneer on his face on the stone

      Let this sculpture be more thoroughly vandalised than the worst woke attacks on statues depicting our history and be left in the desert to decay, dislimbed and decapitated as a sign for future generations of this monster’s futility.

      Let us look at his works and not despair but ridicule.

  16. Further letters about the BT conversion of analogue telephone lines to digital:

    SIR – I took little comfort from the letter (February 28) from Chris Howe, the Customer Care Change Director at BT. Judging by the volume of letters about the “digital voice system” replacement for landlines, there will be many like me up and down the country.

    My community has no mobile phone signal. I have to travel more than nine miles to secure one. My community is also reliant on overhead power lines that have been susceptible to the recent storms. We have experienced outages of well over an hour, so even if one-hour battery back-up packs were available (and many local people have been told that they are not) they would not be much help.

    It is perfectly likely that during a power cut somebody will experience an accident, a stroke, a heart attack or other medical emergency and, without a landline, will have no way of summoning help. Those dependent upon health alarm systems are particularly worried.

    Mr Howe states that BT will be delaying the “upgrade” for landline-only customers until “late 2023”.

    Does he have inside information that the nation’s mobile black spots will be eliminated by that date?

    How many avoidable deaths is BT prepared to tolerate before it takes the problem seriously?

    Keith Benning
    Tregeiriog, Denbighshire

    SIR – I have some sympathy with BT, even though we will be adversely affected by the move to phone via internet. (My wife relies on a Telecare personal alarm system.)

    The Government has decided that homes need fast broadband. This cannot be delivered over the existing copper wiring, most of which is reaching the end of its life anyway. Installing fibre optic and putting the telephone service over it is the only sensible business option.

    John A Landamore
    Lutterworth, Leicestershire

    SIR – The provision of reliable communication by landline should be made mandatory by law. If home-owners had no running water or electricity there would quite rightly be an outcry. Withdrawing landlines is akin to ripping up railways and then wishing the tracks were still there.

    Robert Taylor
    Ruddington, Nottinghamshire

    1. The reception for our mobile phones here at Le Grand Osier in Brittany is hopeless – we have to go out into the garden to get a proper line.

    2. I wondered why there was a rush to fibre optic. Mr Landamore seems to have found the problem Just another lack of joined up thinking from Westminster in the push for fast broadband.

  17. New Zealand: the wokest country in the world. Spiked. 8 March 2022.

    The state broadcaster, Radio New Zealand (RNZ), devotes a vast amount of attention to what it refers to as the ‘LGBTQI’ community. During the pandemic, RNZ lamented that Covid restrictions were making it difficult to access gender-affirming healthcare. It cited the example of a 13-year-old unable to get ‘binders’ – not ring-binders for school work, but constrictive material that allows young women to bind their breasts. The term ‘healthcare’ similarly disguises the fact that what is really being talked about is puberty-blocking drugs, which can cause irreversible damage to growing bodies. And if you think a publicly funded news provider should question these practices rather than promote them in children – well, welcome to woke New Zealand.

    This is the ideology not just of New Zealand but of the West in general. This is what it seeks to spread. It is the Globalist religion.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/07/new-zealand-the-wokest-country-in-the-world/

    1. Imagine the outcry if foot binding for young girls was reintroduced, or female circumcision/genital mutilation was to be offered to parents of young women who believed in such things for their daughters.

      You would probably hear the howls of outrage from New Zealanders in London, and yet tell me what the difference is?

    2. How on earth did the Kiwis produce such magnificent rugby teams and win the most prestigious sailing trophy : The America’s Cup.

      What turned them woke?

    3. We have relatives in NZ.

      This article is very restrained when compared with what is really happening in NZ.

      One thing that the article missed out was that the PM Jacinda Ardern spent two years being trained by Tony Blair.

      …so if you find her actions really creepy, that’s why.

    4. Surely NZ’s latest bestie – China – can knock up a pallet load of breast binders.

      1. On its current trajectory, the disdain for it held by the likes of Putin and assorted mullahs is understandable.

      2. Morning Bob. Whatever the outcome of the present difficulties it is finished!

        1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/538714d3499c445ca842b5daf43c236a51242009ea018971b755818b2c17b88c.png Good morning, Araminta.

          The writer of this excellent letter shows what the main problem is. In the UK (as well as elsewhere) we are incapable of electing the best people to lead us. Since Mrs Thatcher’s curmudgeonly defenestration in late 1990, we have been ‘led’ by a progressively weaker set of imbeciles. As Mr Taylor clearly illustrates in his missive, we permit (or instruct) clowns to destroy our infrastructure then lament doing do many years later.

          The loss of telephone landlines will be this century’s “Beeching” moment.

          1. Will they or won’t they pour all that concrete into the fracking holes so they can never be used it is scheduled to happen this week?

            We shall see.

          2. They will.
            Basically they have their fingers in their ears and are shouting lalala so they can’t hear the warnings.

      3. Human stupidity commenced its incessant and exponential rise around the start of the 20th century [Man took to the air for the first time in December 1903 and just 12 short years later had commenced using its new flying machines to engage in dogfights!].

        At the current rate of ever-increasing acceleration in human stupidity, I don’t see how any civilisation could possibly last into the 22nd century.

    6. Scotland is a world leader in mistreatment and surgical deformation of children.

  18. Good morning, everyone. And a very Happy Birthday to our Geoff on this lovely sunny morning.

  19. Good morning, all. Bright sun and sharp frost. ON parade early as the phone rang at 6.30. The CH oil man (who was due tomorrow) was on his way and arrived at 7.30. Mustn’t complain, I suppose – at least the tank is full….

    I see that my friend Mr Rashid’s lad’s team was knocked out of Univ Challenge. Pity. Can’t stand the nippy girl on the Emmanuel team…

    1. Morning Bill.
      Frosty here too which caused a bit of excitement earlier!
      See earlier post for details!

        1. I was talking to one of the drivers and trying to slow vehicles down, when we had one tw@ drop down from Bonsall and, ignoring the hand signals to slow down, accelerated hard towards Buxton, loosing his grip in the process and very nearly going broadside on into the blue van.

    1. If that is the St Maximin in Provence – it is a church where one of the many hearts skulls of Ste Marie Madeleine is buried!

      Edit – I was wrong, again!

    2. Very many happy returns, Geoff. And another year’s thanks. Where would we all be without you?

          2. 🙂 I didn’t name them.
            There’s a pink unicorn … um … Elvis down the chip shop … er ….

  21. ‘Morning again.

    Her exploits are nothing short of hair-raising, and my respect for the work of the Resistance is unbounded: A true heroine:

    Henriette ‘Monique’ Hanotte, heroine of the Resistance who helped Allied airmen escape into Spain – obituary

    She helped to run the fabled Comet Line for downed airmen and took more than 100 to safety

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    7 March 2022 • 12:44pm

    Henriette “Monique” Hanotte, who has died aged 101, was one of a number of young Belgian heroines who assisted Allied airmen to evade capture by the Germans and travel along the Comet Escape Line through France to the Pyrenees and into Spain.

    Shortly after the Germans invaded the Low Countries and France on May 10 1940, two British officers, who had been cut off during the retreat from Belgium, called at the family hotel seeking help to evade capture. It was to be the beginning of a remarkable career for the slim 19-year-old, and in the years that followed she would assist more than 100 Allied airmen in their successful bids for freedom.

    She lived in the Belgian village of Rumes, some two kilometres from the French border. She had attended school in the village of Bachy, just inside France, and so had crossed the border every day. She knew all the local paths, ditches and countryside and was familiar with the habits of the neighbourhood.

    Those manning the customs post knew her well as she cycled to school with her violin on her back. She was an ideal courier, able to take evaders across the border and on to Lille, from where they were taken to Paris.

    Within a year, the Comet Line, organised by the Belgian nurse Andrée de Jongh, and supported by MI9, came into existence. More than 800 airmen would travel down the route to Spain. Henriette, first given the code name “Marie”, and then “Monique”, had all the qualities needed to take on the dangerous task of escorting the evaders.

    The nine-room family hotel became a key collecting point for crossing the Franco-Belgian border. Evaders were brought from Brussels, sometimes by Monique, and stayed at the hotel, where her English-speaking mother checked their clothing and possessions for any incriminating evidence.

    When it was the right time to cross the border Monique would take them through the local fields before passing them to the next courier, usually in Bachy. On occasions, using buses and trains, she took them to Lille and on to Paris, the main collecting point for the Comet Line.

    Sometimes the six-mile walk to Bachy was straightforward, but on other occasions, she told The Daily Telegraph in 2020, “You had to think on your feet. There were German soldiers all along the border.”

    On one occasion, she was taking her “package” of two airmen to Paris by train when a German officer asked to borrow the newspaper they were pretending to read. “I quickly gave him mine instead so they wouldn’t have to speak,” she recalled. “It was a very scary moment.”

    It was on one of her visits to Paris that members of the Comet Line were betrayed, placing those who avoided capture at great risk. Monique was spotted in Rumes by the Gestapo, and in January 1944 MI9 decided to extract her. She travelled down the Line to Biarritz, crossed the Pyrenees led by a Basque guide, and went on to Madrid and Gibraltar before being flown to England.

    The daughter of a Belgian First World War veteran and a French mother, Henriette Hanotte was born at Sépeaux in the Yonne region of France on August 10 1920 before her parents returned to their home at Rumes. After leaving school, she helped with the running of the family hotel and their smallholding before becoming involved in the work of MI9.

    After her arrival in England early in 1944, she was recruited as a secret agent. Enlisted into the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a second lieutenant, she trained as a parachutist with the intention of dropping into the Ardennes to assist in establishing a Resistance cell.

    But late in her training she was injured on landing, and, to her eternal regret, she was not fully fit until Belgium was liberated in September 1944. She remained in England for the rest of the war and celebrated VE-Day in London.

    After the war, Monique Hanotte returned to assist in the family hotel before moving to work at the Château de la Rocq near Nivelles, where she remained for 30 years. On retirement she moved into the city of Nivelles, where she was made an honorary citizen on her 100th birthday in recognition of her “exceptional career as a war heroine”.

    Described as “a master of secrecy, [whose] reticence remains drilled into her after all these years,” she told the Telegraph: “I was trying to protect my family and they were trying to protect me.”

    Until very late in life, Monique Hanotte attended many Comet Line reunions in Brussels, as well as meetings of the RAF Escaping Society and its successor the Escape Lines Memorial Society, where she met other helpers and the airmen she had assisted.

    Among her numerous decorations she was appointed MBE and received the US Medal of Freedom.

    Monique Hanotte married Jules Thomé, her pre-war fiancé, and they had two children.

    Henriette “Monique” Hanotte, born August 10 1920, died February 20 2022

    1. Amazingly – and unusually – The Times also published an obituary to this gallant lady.

      1. You are very welcome. I marvel at their astonishing courage, and in this case in the knowledge that, if caught, it was torture and death for them – and often for their families too.

    3. That is real, sustained courage.
      It has to be maintained when the adrenaline is not flowing.

  22. We have a planned power cut from 09:00 to 14:00 so I may go missing and, since I have a late lunch date with an ostrich steak and port-wine sauce, I may be away for some time. Play nicely.

  24. Charles Moore in today’s DT:

    COMMENT
    Why block energy wells just when we need them?

    While Putin’s rape of Ukraine creates energy insecurity, to deny ourselves indigenous production of shale gas is crazy green dogmatism

    Yesterday contractors began to arrive at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site in Lancashire. They are there to clear the place. Next Monday, they will start the process of pouring concrete into the only two horizontal shale gas wells in Britain, and keep on pouring until they will never be usable again. It is an eco-punishment, as vengeful as the Romans sowing the defeated Carthage with salt.

    In the House of Commons, the junior minister answering, Greg Hands, said: “Gas wells need to be safely decommissioned at the end of their useful life. The Oil and Gas Authority is acting within its statutory remit to require the operator of these wells to decommission them.” But these two wells have been allowed no useful life at all. They are the victims of the government moratorium on shale gas extraction announced in 2019.

    At any time, this behaviour would be extremely foolish. The wealth of energy contained in the Lancashire field is huge and the recorded damage of fracking there is tiny. As Lord Lilley eloquently put it: “UK shale gas regulations are up to 180 thousand times more stringent than in the US, requiring tremors equivalent to dropping a bag of shopping on the floor to be recorded as an ‘earthquake’.

    “Cuadrilla’s wells produced – for just two seconds – movement that was half what standard construction sites are allowed to produce every single day.”

    At this time, when Vladimir Putin’s rape of Ukraine is creating profound energy insecurity for Britain and the whole of Europe, to deny ourselves all future indigenous production of shale gas is crazy green dogmatism.

    The BEIS Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is trying to treat this as a technical matter for the Oil and Gas Authority, and says he cannot intervene. It is far more than that – a political and strategic decision about our future energy security. Boris Johnson who, when he decides a U-turn is needed, can execute one with the speed and skill of a London taxi, has just started calling for increased production of natural gas throughout Europe. Mr Kwarteng should be similarly nimble, and stop the concreters before Monday.

    Eastern promises

    On the whole, I don’t think the BBC can be accused, in its reporting of the Ukraine crisis, of the “moral equivalence” between dictatorships and democracies of which it is sometimes guilty. After all, you have to be as extreme as Jeremy Corbyn to see Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as chiefly the fault of Western imperialism. My concern would be more about naivete. It is hard-wired into the BBC (and many other media outlets) to see any offer of “peace talks” or “humanitarian corridors” as “a glimmer of hope”.

    When dealing with someone like Putin, there is no such hope. He cannot be trusted in any agreement he might make, and he has no scruples about killing anyone.

    Take the humanitarian corridors in Mariupol. They require the safe passage of Ukrainians out of the city. You can see why the Ukrainian government asked for them: it naturally wants its fellow Ukrainian women and children not to be killed and wishes to emphasise this before the world. But Russia agreed to the corridors not out of even temporary mercy, but because they make it easier to capture the city, taking the escapees hostage on the way – which is why most of the corridors proposed for various cities lead to Russia not to Ukraine. The Russians, the aggressors, control them, and Putin is perfectly free – and perfectly happy – to break his agreement and bomb, shoot or ensnare those escaping.

    Similarly, President Macron of France gets a certain media kudos (and is seeking electoral prestige at home) by taking direct “initiatives” with Putin. Shortly before the invasion, he visited Putin in Moscow, which helped foster the illusion that Russia might hold back. More recently, he rang Putin to obtain commitments that nuclear plants in Ukraine would not be attacked in the conflict.

    Naturally, it was easy for Putin to agree, saying he stood ready for talks between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ukraine and Russia. This makes him look semi-respectable. He can always make sure the talks fail, if he wishes (blaming the Ukrainians), or make them “succeed”, but fail to implement their decisions. He will not be punished for this.

    The effect on the West of initiatives such as Macron’s is simply to weaken resolve and make allied division likelier. In remarks following the Macron/Putin phone call, a spokesman for the Élysée Palace not only made clear that the IAEA is now in some sense beholden to Putin. He also used the briefing to pour cold water on the US plan to supply fighter jets to Ukraine, urging “some caution on those issues”.

    So, on balance, a win for Putin, not for peace. BBC reporting should show awareness of this.

    ————————————————————-

    In the piteous video of the entire family blown up by Putin’s forces as they fled Irpin, near Kiev, an animal carrier was visible among their baggage. All the family were dead. The dog in the carrier was alive and barking.

    Of course, the fate of an animal in such a situation is morally much less serious than that of human beings, but this detail of the picture nevertheless struck home.

    Was the dog hurt? Will someone look after it? Its survival, all alone, feels somehow more poignant even than its death would have done.

    1. Q. Why block energy wells just when we need them?

      A. All part of the Great Reset and the destruction of Britain’s hope of economic, cultural and social survival.

    2. Charles Moore says, “When dealing with someone like Putin, there is no such hope. He cannot be trusted in any agreement he might make, and he has no scruples about killing anyone.”

      I fear that Moore has gone woke. That sentence shews a complete misunderstanding of the situation. It was EU and NATO who broke the 2014/15 Minsk agreements, not Putin.

    3. But Russia agreed to the corridors not out of even temporary mercy, but because they make it easier to capture the city, taking the escapees hostage on the way – which is why most of the corridors proposed for various cities lead to Russia not to Ukraine. The Russians, the aggressors, control them, and Putin is perfectly free – and perfectly happy – to break his agreement and bomb, shoot or ensnare those escaping.

      This makes no sense! If he wishes to empty the cities to enable their capture why would he then prevent their leaving? Much more likely is that the escapees are being shelled by the Azov Battalions or their ilk to retain a humanshield!

  25. Good morning all from a bright, sunny & frosty Derbyshire with -3°C and, with the gritters not going out last night, the road outside the house like a bloody ice rink!
    As a result, 4WD heading up towards Buxton spun on the corner outside the house, smashing his rear right wheel on the pavement kerb.
    Light blue van following on shortly after comes round corner in same direction, sees stationary 4WD on his side and HGV coming down on other side. Puts brakes on and slides into aforesaid 4WD.
    Nobody hurt, but absolute chaos as it’s one of the peak times for HGV and Going to Work traffic!

    We’re bloody lucky I didn’t have anyone in the front room!

    1. Derbyshire and no gritters? It’s the ‘cutbacks’. Money has to go to incomers instead… Or

      be contributed to the current regime in the Ukraine…

    2. The lack of care for the roads in Britain in winter is one of the most infuriating aspects of the country.

      1. It’s all year round up here BB – it’s ‘dodge the pothole’ up here

        1. oh yeah, we are pretty familiar with those in the South as well. When I was a child, the roads in Bucks were well maintained and the ones in Oxfordshire were full of potholes – now they’re both dire. Third world country standard, off the main roads.

    1. Good morning Maggiebelle

      I believe I posted a picture of this organ for Geoff a year ago. This time I found a recording of a magnificent organ in France playing some appropriate music.

      1. Good morning Richard

        I am amazed , I had quite forgotten about that when I searched through for something different for Geoff.

        Having said that , I had no idea there were so many different sized organs . Researching them has been a real learning curve.

        Your French example is magnificent .

        1. “I had no idea there were so many different sized organs”

          Who are you kidding, Nurse!!!

          1. When I was at UEA in the late 1960s the son of the Labour government’s minister without portfolio was a contemporary of mine. As was the case with the progeny of Labour politicians in those days he went to a public school (Wellington).

            He desperately and very unsuccessfully chased the girls and we nicknamed him The Thieving Organ Hawker – not exactly a spoonerism of his real name.

            Can any Nottler suggest what his real name was?

          3. Actually it was Robin Gordon Walker who was born, as I was, in 1946. I looked for him on the Internet and discovered sadly that he died in 2016.

          5. Actually it was Robin Gordon Walker who was born, as I was, in 1946. I looked for him on the Internet and discovered sadly that he died in 2016.

    2. Good morning Maggiebelle

      I believe I posted a picture of this organ for Geoff a year ago. This time I found a recording of a magnificent organ in France playing some appropriate music.

    4. Pictures of the Four Biggest Male Organs in the World

      https://assets.lbc.co.uk/2016/33/boris-johnson-6-1471423735-view-0.jpg

      https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/justin_trudeau_yearbook_05.jpg?w,800,quality,85

      https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/15/1381855194943/Photo-Op-001.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=575740a841f8552179288a070c7c6bd6

      https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1603394/joe-biden.jpg?w=466&h=311&f=e5a40b9c0e107f02bf72ce7c745a96a6

    7. Whoa! Is that the crystal Cathedral in California or somewhere like that?

  29. Happy birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 Geoff! Thanks for hosting us here!🥂🍷🥰

    1. He is even better dressed than Johnson.
      If the roles were reversed and the UK PM was on Uk(raine) TV, would it be Carrie on PMing or Johnson?

    2. I am certain you are positively drooling over the prospect of a pan-European war, which is what he will be begging for.

    3. Well, his voiceover work seems more than adequate, although I don’t speak Ukrainian. He recorded the voice of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian dubbing of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017).
      That may seem a bit odd, supporting a cartoon show, when the Ukraine has banned Russian artists and other Russian works of culture from entering Ukraine. (Although he was paid for the cartoon show work.)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy

    4. Well, his voiceover work seems more than adequate, although I don’t speak Ukrainian. He recorded the voice of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian dubbing of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017).
      That may seem a bit odd, supporting a cartoon show, when the Ukraine has banned Russian artists and other Russian works of culture from entering Ukraine. (Although he was paid for the cartoon show work.)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy

  33. Happy Birthday, Boss,

    Many Fanx for all the pleasure that your hard work has given to us over the last year (and the previous ones)

    Without the Torygraff knowing, their pettiness in stopping ‘readers comments’ has, because of you, brought a safe ‘chatting’ haven to many
    and introduced a new word, with optional spellings, to Disgust “The Nottler”

    And of course, probably more important, have 364 Happy Unbirthdays, until your next .Carded event

  34. Good morning and many many thanx to Geoff for keeping this forum going. Happy Birthday, Geoff! Have a great day.🎂

  35. “SIR – It is good that Pope Francis has spoken out against the invasion of Ukraine (report, March 7), though this will not even be reported in Russia.

    What if Pope Francis made an immediate visit to Ukraine? As the Vatican’s head of state, he is entitled to visit any country that invites him. It is unlikely that the head of state in Ukraine would not want to invite him.

    Even the Russians might be unwilling to kill a pope. But the visit must be very soon while there are still Ukrainians alive to be visited.

    Eric Hester
    Bolton, Lancashire”

    ““The Pope? How many divisions has he?”” J Stalin (allegedly).

        1. I have just attached the story to my above remarks. And. Good morning Bill, another day of lovely weather.

  36. Geoff – Wishing you a Very Happy Birthday today and the sun in shining! Well done, you obviously have great influence. Have a splendiferous day in every way. From John and Maggie x
    ETA; to make sense

  37. Liz sets up propaganda unit. 7 March 2022

    With her many Instagram snaps, personal videographer and army of special advisers, Liz Truss knows a thing or two about spin. But now it seems the Foreign Secretary has applied her love of brand management to the department she runs too. The invasion of Ukraine last month was preceded and met with a bombardment of pro-Moscow propaganda on traditional and new media from the Kremlin’s useful idiots, excusing and justifying Putin’s actions.

    And now it seems Truss and her department have decided to fight fire with fire, turning back to the Cold War playbook to counter an old enemy in new forms. For the Foreign Office has, in recent weeks, set up a dedicated team to push back against the lies pedalled by the enemies of Britain and its enemies. Heartening stuff.”

    Hmmm. The MSM and 77 Brigade along with sundry quangos are not sufficient that we have to have more? I wish someone would direct me to this pro-Moscow propaganda. I would love to read some of it. In truth Putin’s utterances are more the invention of the MSM than his own words!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/liz-sets-up-propaganda-unit

    4. “… turning back to the Cold War playbook to counter an old enemy…” Exactly what is wrong with these idiots? Fossilized in the past they really can not get it through their heads that Russia is not the Soviet Union and the Putin is not Stalin. Russia, now a days, is more capitalist than the West and more Christian. Under Putin’s auspices 30 thousand new churches and cathedrals have been built and two more are built every week One wonders if it is really, although I don’t believe in such metaphysical flights of fancy, that the West fights Russia because in its collapse into materialism, scientism, and nihilism it hates the idea of a nation guided by Christianity and not the Wests degenerate values. Therefore Russia is an affront to these degenerates.
      A friend of mine, a philosopher, Dr Edward Conze, toward the end of his life said: “I have come to the well neigh incredible conclusion that the forces prevailing in this world are principalities and powers of a demonic nature rather than the work of man and this is merely the stage upon which they play.” He was not a Christian but a logician who had discovered that reason failed man in the end. He came to that conclusion after he realized he was being used as a consultant for the CIA in order to do harm with the information he gave them in his field of study. In the defence of democracy, so called, they perverted good to evil. He was not told he was being employed by the CIA so underhand were they.

      1. The degeneracy is all part of the Great Reset. Especially when they turn children mad by feeding them the lie that they can defy biology and logic and become the opposite sex.

      2. His notion is not far-fetched. Previously there was a balance in favour of Christianity in the West. That has tipped the other way. The Adversary is in the ascendant.

        1. If you want to talk in terms of symbolism, I agree. I just have difficulty thinking in terms of literal demonic powers etc. But it sure looks like decay when you look at Western civilization. Why would a healthy country want to submit to it? It is telling that all the countries, like Poland, that resist are all still religious countries, that is no coincidence.

    5. “… turning back to the Cold War playbook to counter an old enemy…” Exactly what is wrong with these idiots? Fossilized in the past they really can not get it through their heads that Russia is not the Soviet Union and the Putin is not Stalin. Russia, now a days, is more capitalist than the West and more Christian. Under Putin’s auspices 30 thousand new churches and cathedrals have been built and two more are built every week One wonders if it is really, although I don’t believe in such metaphysical flights of fancy, that the West fights Russia because in its collapse into materialism, scientism, and nihilism it hates the idea of a nation guided by Christianity and not the Wests degenerate values. Therefore Russia is an affront to these degenerates.
      A friend of mine, a philosopher, Dr Edward Conze, toward the end of his life said: “I have come to the well neigh incredible conclusion that the forces prevailing in this world are principalities and powers of a demonic nature rather than the work of man and this is merely the stage upon which they play.” He was not a Christian but a logician who had discovered that reason failed man in the end. He came to that conclusion after he realized he was being used as a consultant for the CIA in order to do harm with the information he gave them in his field of study. In the defence of democracy, so called, they perverted good to evil. He was not told he was being employed by the CIA so underhand were they.

    1. Good morning Bill

      You mentioned you had an CH oil delivery the other day .. and shocked us all by revealing the cost .

      Around these parts , people are finding it difficult to get their deliveries , the price is rising DAILY.

      Friends who ordered oil weeks ago are now on zero in their tanks , costs are escalating rapidly , that oil companies are struggling buying oil in.

      1. The chap arrived this morning at 7.30 – a day early. The firm is only dealing with existing customers.

      2. We’re in a group delivery scheme with our neighbours – but fortunately we’d had a full delivery a few weeks ago.

  39. I have said on a number of occasions that Putin’s assassination would be justifiable. Nobody has done the deed – yet – but I’ve thought further on it. I believe that it would be morally justifiable bearing in mind the death and destruction in Ukraine that he personally ordered. I believe that it would be economically justifiable bearing in mind the international havoc that has overtaken the markets of Russia and much of the rest of the world – including us here in the UK. I believe that it would be legally justifiable because, in the twenty-first century, nobody, no matter how mighty, should be permitted to get away with international criminal actions that so adversely affect not only Russia’s neighbours but Russia itself. And to put the argument another way, just think of the wave of relief that would sweep over the world (perhaps excepting China), as well as Ukraine and Russia itself, if it happened. All we all need now is for some individual or some country with the capability to do it to get on with it.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b3d72eb6f5f1b3523031fc14f08b127f47ae32a56c80f749a121af6aa0f66b4.jpg

    1. I suggest your good friend Fonder Lyng. She’d be killed in the process and the world would be marginally safer.

      You continue to ignore – deliberately – the carnage caused by Ukrainians in the east of the country. 14,000 people killed.

      1. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

        Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

        There’s no success like failure and failure’s no success at all.

        (Respectively: Paul Simon, Chris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan)

        You can even find the occasional bit of wisdom in the lyrics of popular songs.

    2. Good morning all.

      You mean, light blue touch paper and stand clear? Or are you volunteering to do the deed yourself? No, thought not.

    3. My word Geoffrey you really have lost the plot, haven’t you.
      If we’re going to start acting like Stalin, Hitler and others of such ilk there are many ahead of him in a very very long list for the devastation caused throughout the world like Fauchi, Whitty, Vallance, van Damm, Johnson, Sunak, 600 odd MPs, the whole of the EU Commission etc ad infinitum for the ruination of the western economies due to the pandemic that never was.
      You really must get your priorities right.

    4. no matter how mighty, should be permitted to get away with international criminal actions

      Worrabout Bliar?

    5. I might add that assassination would be politically justifiable, too, because Russia is now a pariah nation under the control of a pariah leader. Destroy the pariah leader and Russia is no longer a pariah nation. I have no wish for that great nation to have pariah status for ever and a day. It deserves better.

    6. I might add that assassination would be politically justifiable, too, because Russia is now a pariah nation under the control of a pariah leader. Destroy the pariah leader and Russia is no longer a pariah nation. I have no wish for that great nation to have pariah status for ever and a day. It deserves better.

    7. Good morning all.

      Enormous no to Geoffrey, because 2 wrongs do not make a right. As a rule, assassination of heads of state is taboo because then no head of state would ever be safe.

  40. Good morning all and happy birthday Geoff. Your efforts are much appreciated.

  41. I read somewhere that M&S have taken to asking customers at their checkouts whether they’d like to contribute to a fund to ‘support the UKraine’. I’m pleased to report that this did not happen to me this morning. I would have had to strongly state NO. Sadly the moslem beggar has appeared outside the place again. I did not buy her ‘Big ISSOO’.
    I did not wear a mask either…

    1. Well then. It’s a good thing I order on line vie Ocado, because the person asking me to donate to Ukraine would get an unwelcome lecture from me.

    3. She could have been of Romanian traveller origin, wearing a headscarf; afaik it´s not usual for moslem men to send their wives out to work.

  42. “Tuesday 8 March: Let’s not fall for Putin’s line that he is entitled to control his neighbours”

    So says, presumably, Geoff Graham. Well said, Geoff, and thank you.

      1. Nice try but you’re wasting your breath, Wm.

        “And some seed fell on the stony ground”

        1. My grandfather, a Devon GP, had eleven children and ran a large household and employed a tiny woman called Polly Courtier from a village in Dartmoor. She was four foot ten, wiry, dictatorial and a very good cook who was adored by the family even though many of them received a good clip around the ear if they tried to pinch anything from her larder.

          Courty, as she was affectionately called, was not just a cook – she was also a philosopher who did not suffer fools gladly. She said of somebody like our friend Mr Woolard: “He can’t use the brains God didn’t give him!”

  43. Good Morning and Happy Birthday, Geoff! Many thanks for keeping this site going. As a grasshopper, I am in awe of your “stickativity” in keeping the site going, rain, hail, or shine.
    You are really a wonderful person, and I am not one to throw compliments about.

      3. But didn’t a funny thing happen on the way here with Frankie Howerd?

    2. The EU mustn’t be allowed to duck out of their responsibilities for the current situation; Ashton, Barossa and Juncker meddled in Ukraine a decade ago.

    3. Maybe our friend Geoffrey, when he is getting his group of assassins together to kill Vladimir Putin, might pay them a bonus if they can kill Klaus Schwab as well.

  46. Morning all, Happy birthday Geoff have a great day, all the best to you and yours. Thanks for the site. 🤩🥂 Your a star.

      1. On many occasions a black sense of humour is probably a requirement to be able to do the job.

      2. In a school in Bideford in which I once taught many years ago the careers master was a retired army major.

        When the parents of a rather dull boy without any obvious flair, talents or academic qualifications consulted him he could think of nothing to say other than: “Your son has a very lugubrious manner and a very gloomy face. I think he should think about joining a firm of undertakers.”

        The parents who were paying school fees and had other aspirations for their son were not impressed but perhaps they should have been. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” (in this case lugubriousness and gloom) as Zero Mostel claimed in The Producers.

        In the North they say: “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.” I think the career master major should have said: “Where there’s death there’s dosh.”

      3. I would have thought they would have needed a sense of humour to cope with constant death. Black (ooh, they’ll be cancelled!) humour, of course.

    1. Bob was on GB News a coupe of days ago. He came across as a thoroughly decent chap.

    1. It was the final score that amused me:

      At the end of the quarter-finals, King’s College London lost out to Emmanuel College Cambridge.
      The former scored 80 while the latter narrowly defeated them with a score of 85.

      I am assuming the DE hasn’t missed off a number.
      An individual score of 165 would be unlikely to get a team through to the second round as a high scoring first round loser. Truly pathetic.

    3. The government may be in favour of diversity and integration but many of the diverse who arrive in Britain have little desire to integrate.

      However they divide us and multiply like rabbits and subtract happiness and add to the misery of the indigenous. We need to square up to the problem and root it out.

  52. Do i detect movement?…

    2014 following the Maidan coup in Kiev, which witnessed the overthrow of the country’s government and its replacement by ultranationalist and pro-Western forces. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics were established in the spring of 2014, also in response to the coup in Kiev.
    Ukraine is ready to consider “discussing” the status of Crimea and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, President Volodymyr Zelensky has indicated.
    “I’m talking about security guarantees. I think items regarding temporarily occupied territories and unrecognized republics that have not been recognized by anyone but Russia, these pseudo-republics. But we can discuss and find the compromise on how these territories will live on. What is important to me is how the people in those territories are going to live who want to be part of Ukraine,” Zelensky said, speaking to ABC News.
    Zelensky’s comments follow remarks by Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov on Monday calling on Ukraine to demilitarise, guarantee its non-bloc status, and recognise Crimea and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
    Warning that Ukraine is “not prepared for ultimatums,” Zelensky nevertheless expressed willingness for dialogue with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
    “Regarding NATO, I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago, after we understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine. The alliance is afraid of controversial things and confrontation with Russia. We never wanted to be a country that is begging for something on its knees, and we are not going to be that country and I don’t want to be that president,” Zelensky said.

    1. I sincerely hope so!
      Nothing about the Krim, but that is historically Russian anyway.
      I have a horrible feeling that if the conflict looks like ending, the West (read: the globalists) will stoke it up again, so that they can introduce rationing under camouflage of war emergency.

    1. He’s lovely. I used to have a wolfhound cross; he was the brightest dog I’ve ever had.

    1. The film of McCain and Graham is appalling. They are in another country, openly egging it on to war against its neighbour in the name of the US government and making promises that as we have seen, were never going to be honoured. And all so that their puppet government could stay in place, and their money-laundering activities could continue!

  57. British defence minister Ben Wallace said on Tuesday Britain would

    support Poland if it decided to provide Ukraine with fighter jets, but

    warned that doing so might have direct consequences for Poland. “I would

    support the Poles and whatever choice they make,” Wallace said, adding

    that the United Kingdom could not offer aircraft that the Ukrainians

    would be able to use. “We would protect Poland, we’ll help them with anything that they need,” he said. “Poland will understand that the choices they make will not only directly help Ukraine, which is a good thing, but also may bring them into direct line of fire from countries such as Russia or Belarus.” (Reuters)

    Hmm..remind me again what happened the last time we made promises to Poland.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0c95bc1ab9f7774f4b4a50b0905e46e537faddb14b16b88684d1bcaabbc4a88.jpg
    What could possibly go wrong……………

    1. All of this just underlines exactly what it thought of the political classes they are dreadful people scum is a far too nicer a-word for them all.
      They all seem to be on a repetitive fair ground ride, with unsavoury and mind diseased bits flying off the edge from time to time.

    2. Well, any aircraft that the pilots of the Ukraine will be able to fly will be outclassed by the Russian planes, presumably. There is hardly time for a six week familiarisation programme. Any airfield that is used by planes being used against Russia will be destroyed by the Russians. They have made that very clear. Moreover, what is the point, other than to be utterly nasty to Russia, effectively just using the Ukrainians as catspaws?
      “Protection” of Poland would mean the destruction of the UK. Goodbye London, kind of thing. The Russians have made that plain. Though maybe not to Liz Truss who is off somewhere…

  58. ‘Bullying’ John Bercow banned from Parliament for LIFE: Shamed former Speaker barred from Commons over appalling treatment of staff including sexual and racial discrimination – but vows to KEEP turning up
    The former Speaker of the House of Commons might never return to Parliament
    Mr Bercow faces multiple allegations of bullying behavior towards staff
    A report into the claims will be published today and could see him banned
    The former Tory MP has branded the inquiry ‘protracted, amateurish and unjust’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10589483/Bullying-ex-Speaker-John-Bercow-banned-Parliament-LIFE-appalling-treatment-staff.html?ito=push-notification&ci=Gj0b7ql-Ux&cri=s799BLw1uB&si=26738248&ai=10589483

    1. The former Tory MP has branded the inquiry ‘protracted, amateurish and unjust’

      Well that’s today’s MRD award sorted!

        1. The WEF won’t like that, they already have their own plans for cities and they rely on independent, pliable and corruptable mayors, hence the current encumbent.

          www weforum org/projects/accelerating-consumer-health-and-well-being
          (full stops left out)

          1. This creature is only Mayor number 3……We did not need a Mayor the GLC was fine….

  59. Some of the other side of the story

    If Ukraine is a NATO member, then according to the North Atlantic

    Treaty, all other members must support the country in case of a military

    conflict. No one besides us has recognized Crimea as a Russian

    territory. The yare conducting military operations in Donbas but also

    could move onto Crimea, and in such case we would have to fight with the

    whole of NATO. What is that? Do you understand the consequences? I

    think everyone understands.

    Now they (Ukraine) are talking about acquiring the nuclear status,

    i.e. developing nuclear weapons. We cannot possibly ignore such things,

    particularly considering that we know how the so-called West behaves

    with regard to Russia. First, Ukraine has some nuclear competence left

    from the Soviet time. As far as enrichment and nuclear material are

    concerned, they would be able to organize that work. They have missile

    abilities: suffice is to mention Yuzhmush. This company used to build

    intercontinental ballistic missile equipment for the Soviet Union. They

    could recover that ability and do it. And those from across the ocean

    would even help them do it. And after that would say: “Well, we do not

    recognize the nuclear status; they have done everything themselves”. And

    then they would put these complexes under control, and from that moment

    on, from that very second, the fate of Russia will be completely

    different. Because in that case, our strategic adversaries would not

    even need intercontinental ballistic missiles. They would keep us right

    here at the nuclear gunpoint, that is all. How could we disregard such a

    thing? These are absolutely real threats, not some far-fetched silly

    fantasy.

    Our boys who are now fighting and risking their lives, they are

    fighting and giving their lives for our future, for the future of our

    children. This is something perfectly obvious. And the people who do not

    want to understand that, particularly those among today’s leaders (of

    Ukraine), have to understand that if they keep doing what the have been

    doing – I have spoken about this before – they put at risk the very

    future of the Ukrainian statehood. If this happens, that will be

    entirely their fault.

    Rest here

    https://thesaker.is/extremely-important-statements-by-putin-must-see/

  60. London Metals Exchange suspends nickel trading after unprecedented 250% spike.
    Its not looking good for Western steelmakers.

    1. You seem to derive satisfaction from unpleasant news for ‘the West.’ Why so?

      Oh, I ought to have remembered. You’re Putin’s top agent, aren’t you?

      1. You really don’t get it do you? In todays interconnected world, if you embargo Russia, you automatically make yourself suffer. It is a double edged sword that our politicians, just like you, are to stupid to understand.

          2. We find it the best way. They eventually get bored and go off where people still take notice of them.

            The other thing is…One does oneself no favours by telling them what deluded idiots they are. Though true it can reflect badly on one.

            It’s why i’m so popular on here. Sweetness and light me… :@)

          5. Never any support for his arguments forthcoming. How he ever got elected as a councillor i don’t know. Need to be gentle though. He is in his 80’s.

  61. I know it’s alien to NOTTLers’ characters, but here’s a bit of optimism…

    Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset is doomed to fail. Here’s why

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/klaus-schwabs-great-reset-is-doomed-to-fail-heres-why/

    Half way down this article is a clip of some talk that took place at a WEF event, where a room full of adults sits and listens seriously to some lunatic lost soul jabbering on about humans being the result of intelligent design – he dismisses God with contempt, and goes on to explain that he means the intelligent design of scientists and engineers…he is of course talking about trans humans. He seems pretty certain that humans are up to the job of improving on nature!
    They are deadly serious – the lunatic’s ramblings are introduced by the US editor of the Financial Times.

    We need to take this nonsense as seriously as its perpetrators do, and fight it with all our might – but I think lifesitenews is correct, it will fail in the end, after causing a lot of misery, suffering and death along the way.

    2. Whilst I agree that the Great Reset is an insane idea. Actually I think it is worse than that, it is evil, a proposal to enslave mankind for the elites sake. It is possible to see transhumanism in quite a different way. Not as the deliberate”…design of scientists and engineers…” But as a natural evolution of technology designed to benefit us so that eventually there is an amalgamation of man and inventions designed to help him. I deliberately don’t say “man and machine” because that is not what I mean. If you had cataracts, would you reject lens replacement? If you had COPD and were slowly suffocating but could grow new lungs using your own DNA would you reject it? Would you reject this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3bqt2pSxY
      Innovation is not automatically evil or a bane to be resisted it depends on what it is and what it is for.

      Wikipedia entry on Transhumanism.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

    3. I have to believe Revelations. There is no justice if these people don’t fry in hell.

  62. Jane Stannus
    Where’s the outrage over Trudeau’s trip to Britain?
    8 March 2022, 7:00am

    As Justin Trudeau waltzed through the UK, visiting Boris Johnson and the Queen, did anyone spare a thought for Canadians struggling under Trudeau’s authoritarian Covid power moves?

    In 2016, the British parliament debated whether Donald Trump, then running for the US presidency, ought to be banned from the UK for inflammatory ‘hate speech’. When Trudeau announced his visit to the UK, did the House of Commons ask itself whether he should be made welcome?

    Trudeau is no stranger to inflammatory language – having called the unvaccinated in Canada ‘extremists’, ‘misogynists’ and ‘racists’. But it’s far worse than that. He has undermined the principles on which Canadian democratic government is founded by criminalising peaceful protest. He invoked emergency powers to inflict extreme punishment on those who objected to his Covid policies while denying them proper due process. Does no one in the UK government find that troubling?

    Trudeau used the Emergencies Act to allow banks to unilaterally freeze accounts and assets, not only of participants in the peaceful Ottawa freedom convoy but also of anyone who supported the protest financially – all without a court order and legal immunity. And insurance policies of participants were subject to cancellation. Nothing says ‘free country’ like being able to freeze the assets of your political opponents without notice, judicial oversight, or possibility of legal recourse, on suspicion of having donated $25 to a trucker who parked in front of Canada’s parliament because he didn’t want the government to take away his job.

    Perhaps this seems unfair. Trudeau may have invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act to resolve a parking problem. An error in judgement, but in the end he rescinded it.

    Quite true. But not before he suspended Canadians’ rights to due process and to peaceful assembly. Or delayed the Act’s debate in the Canadian House of Commons until after the protestors were forcibly removed by police. Or cynically strong-armed its approval through the House of Commons via a confidence vote – cleverly changing the subject of the vote to whether or not MPs wanted to call an election. And remember too that he hinted that the Act would be needed for months to come. Can the country ever be considered truly safe when – at any time – a truck driver apparently going about his business might approach the heart of Canada’s capital city and run up the Canadian flag, thereby magically metamorphosising into a terrorist?

    Trudeau lifted the Emergencies Act on 23 February when it became apparent that the Canadian Senate was likely to vote against it. The next day, Russia attacked Ukraine and both national and international attention turned elsewhere – doubtless to the Liberal government’s great relief.

    But anyone who thinks Trudeau has learned his lesson is sadly naïve. In a speech to the Toronto Ukrainian community on 4 March, he had the audacity to deplore the ‘slippage in our democracies’ and express concern about countries around the world ‘turning towards slightly more authoritarian leaders’. Why is this happening? According to Trudeau, it’s because ‘misinformation and disinformation’ are allowed to be shared on social media, thus ‘turning people against the values and the principles of democracies’. Right. To preserve democracy, what we need is censorship?

    For all Trudeau’s talk, the real threat to Canadian democracy is not the truckers’ movement, whose actions revealed that large numbers of Canadians just want a return to normal life. No: the real threat to democracy is Canada’s ideologically driven leadership, seizing more and ever more unchecked power so as to force Canadian society into the mould of a collectivist utopia. It would be nice if the British parliament cared enough to discuss it.

    Jane Stannus is a translator and journalist.

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

    Ricky • 4 hours ago
    Trudeau has shown Woke’s true totalitarian colours. His abusive treatment of the protesters, divisive rhetoric and de haut en bas attitude towards opinions other than his own, make him an anti-democratic and illiberal. It is shameful that the establishment in our country celebrate his arrival and refuse to condemn his actions.

    Ricky • 4 hours ago
    Trudeau has shown Woke’s true totalitarian colours. His abusive treatment of the protesters, divisive rhetoric and de haut en bas attitude towards opinions other than his own, make him an anti-democratic and illiberal. It is shameful that the establishment in our country celebrate his arrival and refuse to condemn his actions.

        1. Thank you! Apparently she writes for both publications so will check out her articles in The Critic too.

  63. We have just received a letter from Scottish Power telling us that our electricity charges will go up next month by 40%. Our fuel oil charges are about 50% up on last year. We can do nothing about this.
    What the government could do is raise the lower limit for paying income tax, so that those on less than £30,000 a year, for example, would pay no tax. At a stroke millions of people would breathe easier and sleep sounder. Fewer would have to choose between heating and eating. Money would also move around the economy, food, clothing, transport.

    1. Wouldn’t help the poor pensioners whose income is so low they don’t pay tax now
      Cutting the Green Levy on our ‘Leccy bills would
      But it won’t happen………

      1. No, an increase in pension would help, maybe £2000 a year? (We pay tax on our income then that taxed income is spent on fuel for car, electricity, heating oil, and coal. Our already taxed expenditure is then taxed again.)

        1. That is the same for anyone who has an income, whether earned or pension (except from something like an ISA).

          1. I know. I am complaining about it. Are the Tories not the party of low tax?

      2. Isn’t the Green Levy a charge on customers to help the energy supply companies remain solvent when they are unable to function due to lack of wind, sun and imported gas?

        1. The GL is to help those that own the “Green” energy supply companies to keep living in the style to which they are now accustomed.

    2. Anyone use Octopus? They are the company I have to deal with but haven’t heard a peep from them about raising charges.

      1. I heard from them last October, when my 2-year fixed price contract came to an end. What contact are you on?

          1. If you only have to renew your contract now, I don’t know what they are offering. I was offered another 2 year fixed, at a price shown to increase my total bill by 50%. The standard variable after that time would have increased my bill by 30% so I thought it probably worth overpaying by 20% for 5 months and then getting 19 months for 50% more.

            They are pretty good if you ring them and ask them to explain the figures of the various options – what you would have paid according to your usage.

  64. This is worth a gold star if only for the “Poor Sally” comment

    Steerpike
    Will Keir Starmer purge John Bercow?
    8 March 2022, 11:01am

    Well that’s that then. This morning’s report by Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, into John Bercow’s behaviour makes for damning reading for the former Commons speaker. Stone found him guilty of bullying House of Commons staff and has banned him for life from holding a parliamentary pass for former members. The move effectively kills his chances of getting a peerage. Poor Sally.

    Bercow for his part is gloriously unrepentant, firing off a pre-emptive press release with more pomp than the state opening of Parliament. Drenched in hubris, fizzing with ego he describes his treatment as a ‘travesty of justice’, blaming it on a ‘reactionary and prejudiced old guard’ and that ‘to describe what I have experienced as a kangaroo court is grossly insulting to kangaroos.’

    The former Speaker claims the report is ‘amateurish,’ ‘based on flimsiest evidence,’ ‘rooted in hearsay and baseless rumour,’ a ‘vengeful vendetta,’ ‘unjust,’ ‘shambolic,’ ‘a disgrace to a democratic Parliament,’ ‘cowardly,’ ‘feeble,’ ‘a blatant stitch up,’ and ‘beneath contempt.’ Gosh. He adds, in a veritably Nixonian phrase: ‘Don’t fall for the Establishment spin that I have been banned for life. I can still attend debates with the help of a friendly passholder or go as a member of the public.’ Very ‘I am not a crook’ indeed.

    All of this leaves Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in a bit of a difficult situation. For Bercow decided last June to flout the convention that ex-Speakers remain politically neutral after leaving office by deciding to sign up as a Labour party member. Since then, Bercow appears to have had a whale of a time: speaking on a party conference panel about small businesses, scheming to purge the Corbynites in Battersea and attacking Boris Johnson at every available opportunity. Truly, a natural Labour comrade.

    But now Bercow has been found guilty, will Starmer and his team choose to bar his onetime Remainer ally from the party? Labour are the self-styled champions of workers’ rights after all, even if some, like Labour grandee Margaret Beckett chose to overlook it during the Brexit years to try to thwart Theresa May. Indeed the powerful GMB union, an early backer of Sir Keir’s leadership bid, has a Members’ Staff branch in parliament which has been active in calling out bad behaviour by MPs.

    Will Bercow be next to join the scores of purged Labour members? Mr S looks forward to finding out…

    WRITTEN BY

    1. With the Peerage kicked into touch, how long before “poor Sally” kicks him out?

    2. ”The row started when Mr Cameron said Health Minister Simon Burns had
      backed his ministerial car into the Speaker’s own official limo.

      Mr Cameron added an irate Mr Bercow told the minister: “I’m not happy!” Mr Burns replied: “Well, which one are you?”

      No he’s not happy. He’s Mr Angry lol.

      1. Don’t know anything about Simon Burns, but if that’s true, he can’t be all bad!

        1. He was MP for Chelmsford.
          I’ve met him in the passing at social events; seemed an amusing chap.

    3. Kathryn Stone is not as objective as she would like to appear.

      Not a patch on my former pal Elizabeth Filkin – who WAS straight and true.

      2. She was sacked for being both competent and honest and for trying to hold MPs to account over the expenses scandal.

    4. If he doesn’t like it, chances are it’s accurate. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

  65. The President of the Ukraine is to address the House of Commons today. In person? To what end?
    Our government is beyond stupid. A new word needs to be coined to combine bombast, braggadocio, ignorance, stupidity, thoughtlessness and insouciance.
    “Liztruss” might be a suggestion?

        1. No pet! Just checked! The little sh1t is, or has been, here! Brize Norton and beyond! Why are we letting him come and pose as a ‘leader’?
          Oops! Thought it was Trudeau!

          2. Not that little shit ! The other little shit ! Sheesh.

            Bit early to be swigging the sherry from the bottle. :@)

          3. Bit difficult to distinguish between that little shit and all the other little shits he’s come to see.

          4. We do seem to have a right collection in the UK at the moment. We just need Jacinda Ardern to complete the picture!

          6. You will have noted that I acknowledged my blunder! No time or inclination for sherry – chair- bound old man! Running about like a loon!

      3. He is hoping for a better result than the Emperor Haile Selassie achieved at the League of Nations in 1936, I suppose.

      4. I don’t think he is. It’ll be a video session. And the House of Commons should be ashamed of itself.

        1. They will all be prostrating themselves before the altar boy for world war 3.
          Clapping like crazies and howling like loons.

    3. Did “we” invite him to address the idiots? Or was it his suggestion? With the idea of “us” encouraging NATO to get involved? Either way we should be trying to calm things down not pour petrol (extremely expensive!) on the fire.

      1. From what I understand, it’s the mere suggestion of Ukraine joining NATO that started this whole sh**show off in the first place.
        While I have sympathy for the innocent civilians caught up in the mayhem, it seems totally inappropriate for the Ukrainian President to address the UK parliament. Ukraine is not part of NATO, and, from what I have read here and elsewhere, is hardly blameless.

        1. The west seems to be “egging” the Ukrainians on. Like a playground fight with the onlookers. We should be keeping out of it but MPs, HMG and the MSM are all urging “fight, fight, fight”.

          1. The mood seems to be that Ukraine is totally blameless with no provocation given to Putin.

          3. The two-bit Ukraine president trying to emulate a real hero: ‘We will fight them in the sea, air, forests, fields and streets… we will not surrender’: President Zelensky echoes Churchill’s famous WWII speech in moving address to the Commons as he describes Ukraine’s resolve to defeat Putin’s troops”
            And here they all are, clapping for the Ukraine president.
            https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/preview/mol/2022/03/08/5211324374597680150/636x382_MP4_5211324374597680150.mp4
            MPs seem to think we should be taking in untold numbers of Ukrainians. Where are they all to go? (mind you, I’d prefer 100 of them to a single Channel illegal fake asylum seeking rapeugee). Apparently, Ukraine has an extremely high incidence of TB – will those admitted be screened and, if needed, be treated to prevent an outbreak here?

          4. We may already have an outbreak here – my neighbour (who is English) went to hospital for tests today to try to clear up a persistent chest problem. The consultant thought it might be TB (or pseudoneumonia)!

          5. And so it begins.
            The freeloading illegals who arrive via the Channel are also likely to be carrying easily transmissible diseases of serious concern, and I doubt they are detained, screened & treated before being let loose on unsuspecting decent people.

  66. Instead of teaching children racial and emotional literacy, how about we teach them to be literate?

    Primary school children are being told they aren’t racially innocent but shouldn’t they be taught how to read and write instead?

    CELIA WALDEN

    Whenever you read about a particularly cretinous new strategy, policy or initiative, there’s a strong chance it’ll have something to do with Brighton and Hove City Council. Whether it’s schoolgirls being banned from wearing skirts or schoolboys being taught that “boys can have periods, too”, I now scroll patiently down the article in question until I find the words… ‘Brighton and Hove’.

    Sure enough, there they were again in this paper on Sunday: “Parents’ anger over ‘racially innocent’ label for children prompts council to reconsider.” A rare public climbdown for the woke warriors at Brighton and Hove, and a rarer still triumph for reason – on the surface, at least.

    Because you may remember that, back in January, the council had triggered an outcry after the Sunday Telegraph reported that local schools would be laying on “racial literacy” sessions for school staff, which would result in seven-year-olds being told they view the world with “white at the top of the hierarchy”, and that “the widespread view” that toddlers were “racially innocent” was wrong.

    Curiously, parents weren’t all that keen on their kids being divided up and pitted against one another as either “racists” or “victims of their classmates”, and the inference that three-year-olds could be “racially guilty” also proved ‘problematic’, to throw one of their own wokeisms back at them.

    Some 4,700 people signed a petition criticising the council’s “new anti-racist education strategy”, and after teacher training slides used to illustrate “covert” and “overt white supremacy” in local schools were leaked, Nadhim Zahawi sent in officials to investigate whether it was indeed pushing the radical and highly controversial ideology centred around the concept of “white privilege”: critical race theory.

    The education secretary was “concerned” enough with his findings to issue a strongly worded statement last month. “These issues can be divisive if covered the wrong way,” he said, “and I am clear, as is the law in the country, that any contested theories and opinions must not be presented to young people as facts.” Hence the climbdown. Although look a little closer at the newly published version of the council’s five-year, £500,000 “anti-racism” plan, and you’ll find that this is far from the victory it seemed.

    Yes, some of the wording has been tweaked, with toddlers now described as “racially unaware” rather than “innocent” – break out the bunting! – and the entire section specifically endorsing critical race theory has been taken out. But the strategy remains a manifesto in all but name. It’s also packed full of racially divisive ideas and beliefs, all presented as fact. So according to the campaigner Adrian Hart from Don’t Divide Us: “This is merely a case of scrubbing the label off the tin.”

    The plan includes quotes such as “All of us have work to do to ‘unlearn’ the racism we have absorbed from society”, from Ibram X Kendi, seen as a “prophet” of critical race theory; and, in relation to “decolonising” the curriculum, cites the late sociologist Stuart Hall: “The very notion of Great Britain’s ‘greatness’ is bound up with empire. Euro-scepticism and Little Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood and rotted English teeth.”

    I hope toddlers are able to enjoy those lurid visuals, because here’s the best part of the council’s sensible new and improved “racial literacy curriculum framework”: whereas the original strategy only applied to age seven and above, this one will extend to nurseries, so that four-year-olds can now be taught that being white automatically makes you privileged, and being black automatically makes you a victim.

    Setting aside every other concern surrounding the teaching of critical race theory – particularly at this early age – there is one essential question: does it work? Will it “dismantle” the “internal racist structures” in all those innately bigoted kids?

    In his New York Times bestseller, Woke Racism, the acclaimed American linguist John McWhorter explains why the answer is ‘no’, and how what he calls a “religion” is actually making matters worse: infantilising black people, setting black students up for failure, and ensuring the passing of policies that damage black communities.

    As the council’s new strategy awaits approval (a meeting was held at the weekend), a generation of children’s perception of themselves hangs in the balance. If only schools could shelve the “emotional literacy” classes and the “racial literacy” sessions and maybe focus on teaching kids how to read and write. That way, when they’re old enough, they can formulate their own arguments and defences, and not be at the mercy of agenda-ridden adults caught in a torturous tangle.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/03/07/instead-teaching-children-racial-emotional-literacy-teach-literate/

    1. I watched an online teaching session for work about new coding we have to use for testing/ treating HPV. I was stumped when they kept referring to PIV sex. Thinking it was some new fangled thing I would have to incorporate into my thinking, I had to look, it up – it is penis in vagina sex.

      1. ‘Afternoon, Stormy, I long practiced PIV sex and found it beautiful and satisfying for all parties invoved.

        It also produced two lovely daughters over time.

        What’s not to like – unless you’re a Brighton and Hove nastiness.

    2. It sounds as though toddlers being “racially unaware” is a problem.
      To me, ” racially unaware” suggests the children don’t give two hoots about skin colour. Young children simply play with any other child who ‘plays nicely.’ From the names of our young grandchildren’s classmates, very few are likely to be white Canadians. The only negative comments are along the lines of ‘I don’t like playing with X because he/she is rough and pushes people over.’ Not once have they mentioned, or even alluded to, the skin colours.
      Children have more important concerns, such as ‘Will convid get me or kill my family members?’, or ‘Will Russia attack us?’

      1. A very young white child might ask a very young black child why they look like that. The response of ‘i don’t know’. will get a response from the white child as. ‘Oh…okay. would you like to build sandcastles or go on the swings?

        1. Absolutely so. At a nearby primary school, there were a couple of black or Asian children from time to time but after the initial curiosity, these children just became part of the furniture. No big deal was made of them being different. The only one ever singled out was only singled out because of his bad behaviour.

  67. 351311+ up ticks,

    With all this good will around regarding war refugees I can take it that our own veterans no longer have pavement mattress, and the housing waiting lists for indigenous has finally been mastered.

    1. A .ot of coverage of Ukes not having food, clean water etc. I bet the Ethiopians etc are looking and thinking ‘starving, schmarving’.

      Not that I’m unsympathetic, I felt guilty last night for being annoyed on finding I had run out of jam when I fancied having some toast.

    2. I understood that the Ukrainians being led by Zelensky were keen on joining the EU. Quite why they would prefer to come to the UK when we have left the EU is open to serious question.

      The oppressed Russian speaking ‘Ukrainians’ and those occupying Crimea sensibly ally with Russia.

      Needless to say Pixie Balls nee Cooper is demanding free passage and accommodation and doubtless Lineker will be throwing his hat into the ring imminently.

      Edit: Spice Boy Beckham has beaten Lineker to it.

  69. Happy Birthday Geoff.
    I echo the thanks below for your continuing to provide us Nottlers with the wherewithal to nottle.

    1. Much as I dislike Bercow one must give him credit for his work teaching school children about how parliament functions.
      He probably did more such work than any other Speaker.

      3. Oh blimey, sos! There is absolutely nothing in the nasty little creep which could be described as creditable. A truly revolting, self-serving ar*e.

          1. Nah! You’re not trying to tell us that he’s a good person? Betty Boothroyd wasn’t a thinker and doer!?

          2. Boothroyd was an excellent Speaker. In the House.

            I think people confuse what Bercow did as an individual to tell the youngsters about Parliament and what he did as the Speaker in the House.

            He was a dreadful Speaker in the day job but a superb ambassador for explaining how Parliament works to the next generation of voters.

          3. Sorry pet! I remain unconvinced that the twisted little git, who couldn’t even work out which party would be the best for his unreconstructed beliefs, is anything other than revolting.

        1. That and the Express make you feel you have dropped into a lunatic asylum.

          1. At least with the DM, WW3 has already broken out so thee is no need to wait in suspense for the big boom.

    4. Liked the bit that read:

      ‘In the Commons today, Tory MP Dr Caroline Johnson suggests plaques
      should be put next to portraits of Mr Bercow on the parliamentary estate
      stating he was a bully.’

      Wonder if any of those affected are considering legal action?

          1. Bercow is such a stuck up snob he thought he was a member of the Tory party. I wonder how many people he has to choose from to go out to dinner with.

          3. Given how hungry they seem for power and prestige he would have forgiven her having sex with …well…anyone.

    5. He will probably fashion himself as the Speaker that told the truth and profit from the ban by increasing his speaker fee.

  72. Hello again, Good people, the PTB have deigned to restore power to us, so I shall attempt to resume my humour and baddinage for your delectation.

      1. Planned by Electricity wonks – we had much notice of it but no real reasons other than “work to be done”.

        1. You would think for the interruption of service they would have at least offered LV’s.

          2. Found your way back to the house then? From your vast estate. Did you leave a trail of breadcrumbs as i suggested?

          4. I wait until the wood pigeons have eaten all my the fruit from my cherry tree and then go out and bash them with a cricket bat. Because the fat bastards can’t take off. Pigeon pie flavoured with Kirsch. :@)

          1. 90point,not 90 degree.
            To turn to face the other way you nèd to do an odd number of manoeuvres, a la three point turn but extended.

            OK, so you may not end up going back the way you came, but whichever direction you ended up going in, you’d be driving backwards.

    3. We have a minibus and a Fiat Panda. I have to confess that Caroline parks better than I do.

    1. 4, but I didn’t know you could have 2 letters the same. Got it more by elimination than anything.

          1. If you pull the grid up you enter a 5letter word, any word, and work from there.
            https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

            There are other wordle games and some you can choose the number of letters. You need to enter a proper word on each line, not just any old letters, and you cannot place letters in a random manner. It’s good fun

      2. That always catches me out

        It would help if the colour showed both green for goes here and yellow for and somewhere else.

  76. Just to let any foodies know….Stanley Tucci’s searching for Italy is on iplayer.

      1. Hi Belle, I’m mostly into French Cuisine and thought Italy was all about pasta and pizza but…..living in poverty drives creation. Stanley now has several books to his name which are easy to read and in the case of Italian food…inspiring.

        He was also in ‘The Devil wears Prada’ and ‘Julie and Julia’ among many other things.

        From his writings i felt a resonance. Simplicity is king.

        2. Cooking offal , and I mean every bit of offal was fascinating .. especially the offal (was it an offal omlette) I shall have another look on Iplayer .

          1. Can’t be anywhere near as bad as the French Andouilette sausage. (sticks fingers down throat).

          2. Revolting! I still shudder and it’s 53 years since I encountered the maggotty, tapewormy stuff! And the smell…! Just disgusting!

      2. Heard one of my Army friends saying that when the Septics heard the Rooskies didn’t have GPS wondered how they would navigate.
        In unison the Toms answered ‘Maps!’
        Mind you, the Ruperts might have scratched their heads too.

    1. Geoff said he is 26 today. I am sure all Nottlers will join me in saying………..yeah…right. :@)

  79. Ladyofthelake asked about Poppiesmum. A bit better now but has had the lurgy. Feeling tired but getting better. Also said sorry to concern people. Will be posting soon.

  81. Enjoyed a couple of hours in the garden . Moh weilded the sexxyturs like an expert.

    Pruned the roses and cut back cotoneaster and dead fuschia as well as an out of control honesuckle .

    He really loves cutting trimming and some times being brutal with overgrown shrubs and climbers.

    Earlier on in the morning , rang up a tyre fitters to see whether they had the one I needed in stock . One of my rear tyres was badly worn , so we wandered off a couple of hours ago to replace it .. Old car, tyre prices have increased .

    Then shopping ..

    After such a lovely sunny morning , the hat dropped down over the hills , and the rain closed in , now dark and drizzly and cold.

    1. I have spent the afternoon mowing the lawn and so the job is done for another week when I shall have to do it again. Time consuming as the lawn is 2 acres in area.

      This is one of my favourite Instant Sunshine songs which used to be in my repertoire. It was something I performed for my Sixth Formers when we were studying Paradise Lost Book IX – the one which features Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

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

        1. I’d love to have a ride-on lawn mower. I think I’ll wait tho’ until I have a lawn that is bigger than a ride-on mower.

      2. Consider doing what we do.
        I cut meandering paths around the lawn and let the rest grow wild, getting a farmer in once a year to cut it with one of those mulching gadgets which allow the grass to rot down over the winter. I get wild flowers and am rewarded with lots of butterflies and hares.

        1. I like the idea! I’ve already suggested “wilding” a part of the garden – and I’d love to put a bee hive amongst that little lot.

          Just as a matter of interest, are there any beekeepers amongst the Nottlers?

          1. As one who has a dreadful allergic reaction to bee stings, NO, not I!

            As to the wilding.
            I believe yours is open to boar and deer, mine is completely fenced so you might be at a disadvantage.
            I was amused to see a google air-shot of mine and the paths really are clear from above.

      3. All you people getting out in your gardens have put me to shame. I spent the morning taking phone calls and receiving a delivery of furniture (which when put in place was just a bit too big for the spot it was intended for – Plan B was executed and it’s now on the other wall). By the time it was finished, it had clouded over so I went into town to go to the bank, have a coffee and arrange a drink with my neighbour. It was too chilly to do anything in the garden apart from put the furniture back (it had to be moved to make room for the delivery).

    2. Have you checked the stuff he might have removed? Now that Alan is chair-bound with his broken ankle, I intend to prune and clear in peace! Yo!

      1. Oh dear , broken ankle , that is bad luck .
        How did that happen Sue?

        We have hedges here that need to be kept in order , that is a job and a half for Moh , thankfully not to be cut for a few months untill the birds have finished nesting .

        1. He went to clear the trailer out to go to the dump, stood awkwardly on a stray log then heard a crack! Then he fell over! We spent quite a long time at the ‘minor’ injuries unit in Stirling! He has a ‘boot’ the size of a planet and hurts a lot!

    1. He’s probably up in the belfry drunk as a skunk ringing the bells by now.

      I’ll just text Esmeralda.

          2. ‘Sad Face’. I should have said the Phantom of the Opera!

            My excuse was he had to go up to wind the clock. I suggested after hi Bi-Lateral that he descended on his bottom. Would have done better in the cellars. He could have used the swan pedalo then.

          4. Me too! We actually had a girl at school called Henrietta! You can imagine…

  83. A terrorist has crashed a vehicle into the gates of the Russian Embassy in Dublin. Red paint also involved. Russia has summoned the Irish Ambassador to Russia to complain and demand payment for repairs. It was noted that the Gardai stood and watched while it happened. Has this become standard practice for police now? Pick a side and let them get on with it?

  84. I do love the article in yesterdays Telegraph about my despised leaders visit to London, asking if Mr dress-up would wear a beefeater uniform to the press conference was a wonderful display of contempt (we only wondered if he would be wearing Ukraine coloured socks).

    Doesn’t like protesters does he? Fancy having to go into Downing street by the back door. Snigger, snigger!!

  86. In a world of chaos, confusion and bewildering change, it’s reassuring to know that there are some people determined to uphold the old ways. England are 57-4 at lunch on the first day of the 1st Test against the Windies in Antigua.

    Some other cricketing news…

    Azeem Rafiq fears he is ‘unemployable’ after speaking out about racism
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/60662932

    1. Gosh! I am heartbroken….but I’m sure the ‘compensation’ he got will ease his pain, and unemployability! 🥺

    2. NO SCORES PLEASE – many of us watch highlights later.

      Just saying. Or, at least, put them under a spoiler.

          1. I am unable to find any terrestrial channel that is broadcasting the highlights so I thought you had some hot information. 😩

          2. Me? Hot information?? Never…{:¬)) About anything…

            I just assumed that as Stig spends 24 hours a day watching creekit – there must be highlights somewhere..!!

    3. I trust that ghastly little man is never given a role in English cricket. He should apply to Pakistan where his lies and dissembling would fit in well.

      He was only average as a player and both evil and destructive as a commentator on the operations at Yorkshire County Cricket Club. His lies should have been refuted and not rewarded whilst good men saw their reputations dragged though the dust.

      1. A player can get away with being a disruptive presence in the changing room if he’s as good as, say, Kevin Pietersen. I’m sure we can think of a few others if we put our minds to it.

    4. Well………….no white bloke is ever going to trust him again. His racist fantasy made real. That particular bandwagon lost its wheels in his case.

  87. THE AGONY OF AGING
    ON THE MORNING THAT DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME ENDED I STOPPED IN TO VISIT MY AGING FRIEND. HE WAS BUSY COVERING HIS PENIS WITH BLACK SHOE POLISH.
    I SAID TO HIM, “YOU DEMENTED OLD FART! – YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO TURN YOUR CLOCK BACK”.

    3. Sorry. What? I can’t hear you. Nice shine on it though Wing Commander. ***Personal Services film…

      1. Deaf as a post, me.
        🙂
        That’s how I received it, and being lazy, couldn’t be arsed to retype it in quiet.

  88. HAPPY HOUR – over to you NoTTlers.

    John Betjeman, poet laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972 until his death in 1984, was known by many as a poet whose writing evoked a sense of nostalgia.. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, helping to save St Pancras railway station from demolition.

    One of my favourite poets, I spent a nostalgic couple of hours reading his poetry…….

    2. How To Get On In Society by John Betjeman

      Phone for the fish knives, Norman
      As cook is a little unnerved;
      You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
      And I must have things daintily served.

      Are the requisites all in the toilet?
      The frills round the cutlets can wait
      Till the girl has replenished the cruets
      And switched on the logs in the grate.

      It’s ever so close in the lounge dear,
      But the vestibule’s comfy for tea
      And Howard is riding on horseback
      So do come and take some with me

      Now here is a fork for your pastries
      And do use the couch for your feet;
      I know that I wanted to ask you-
      Is trifle sufficient for sweet?

      Milk and then just as it comes dear?
      I’m afraid the preserve’s full of stones;
      Beg pardon, I’m soiling the doileys
      With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

  89. The Ukrainian President has addressed the Commons on zoom. The MPs have behaved like performing seals.

  90. Prevening, all. Let’s not fall for Putin’s line about controlling his neighbours, let’s rather take note of his concerns to control and protect his borders. Something our government should be doing, but is failing dismally to achieve.

  91. Isle of Wight NHS staff leaving over lack of halal meat

    NHS bosses are appealing to Isle of Wight businesses to stock halal meat in a bid to help retain health staff.

    Muslims make up less than 0.4% of the island’s population and no butcher sells halal meat, a cornerstone of the Islamic faith, to the public.

    Dr Syed Asim Ali Mukhtar said the NHS was “struggling” to keep staff who felt cultural needs were not catered for.

    He said Muslim staff members were having to travel to the mainland for food shopping.

    While halal meat is readily available on the mainland, there is only one wholesale stockist on the Isle of Wight, which does not sell to the general public.

    Doesn’t make sense’
    The Isle of Wight NHS Trust, which carries out overseas recruitment, took on 35 international doctors in 2021, mainly from the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa.

    The trust has its own race equality network and since last August the hospital canteen labels halal food for staff.

    Halal is Arabic for permissible. Halal food is that which adheres to Islamic law, as defined in the Koran.

    Dr Mukhtar, acute medical lead at St Mary’s Hospital in Newport, said three Muslim doctors have already decided to leave the island and a further three, who are reaching the end of their fixed-term contracts, are unlikely to stay.

    St Mary’s Hospital, Isle of Wight
    IMAGE SOURCE,MARK PILBEAM
    Image caption,
    The NHS Trust has carried out overseas recruitment – mainly from the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa
    “Can you imagine planning your weekend just so you can go and buy meat in Southampton or Portsmouth? It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

    “We end up losing a lot of people because we are not able to cater to their simple needs – halal food is something that should be available.

    “We need to step up and integrate these people into society and at the end of the day, understand their cultural needs.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-60655008

    2. These people will NOT be integrated. They won’t understand or even contemplate our cultural needs. Tell them to eff off and recruit non-muslims in their stead.

    3. Use initiative. Freezers in the mortuary and buy wholesale from the mainland. 😊

    4. It’s obviously time we outlawed Halal meat and then watch the slammers queing for ferries outa here. Result.

  92. I’m cooking something for dinner this evening that I have eaten many times all over the world but have never cooked for myself, not even during the potato years in college.
    Chips.
    Fire Brigade is on full alert. Wish me luck.

  93. That’s me done for the day. Have a jolly evening writing the speech which you will make to the House of Common Purpose.

    A demain.

    1. To many Chinese to much weight. “The research has been spurred on by the country’s coastal waters rising faster than the global average over the last 40 years.” But, seriously, due to their one child policy in the past there population is going to take a nose dive. They will have plenty of room to grow food.

        1. They have but the consequences are only just starting to come to fruition.

      2. I’m sure there may be an explanation, but how can coastal waters rise more in one part of the world than another?
        Unless it is referring to relatively more land being lost because the coastal areas are very low lying so more territory is lost for every inch of sea level rise.

        1. I don’t think it is to do with water levels rising but what the Chinese have done to their environment, destroying water catchments by deforestation so that there is not sufficient water reaching the coast to push back against the salinization of the coast. The same phenomenon has taken place in Burma and Thailand due to logging on a vast scale in the mountains so that fresh water can’t be retained. There are now, in Thailand and Burma, huge areas where the water has become so brackish that it is now impossible to grow in areas that were major agricultural places for the production of rice. Traditionally these area had the salt flushed out from the rains and water going to the ocean.

          1. Perhaps they will be able to grow this rice variety too. More food produced in the world is a good thing!

  95. Just read a snippet in yesterday’s DT (neighbour’s paper) about Sajid Javid. Apparently he is announcing that “the NHS will pay for patients’ taxis and hotels if they opt for treatment away from their home”. The public is to be able to “shop around” between trusts to avoid long waiting times”

    Does it not occur to him that people who live at the ‘far away’ hospital trust may be in the same boat as those in the ‘nearby’ hospital trust?

        1. Hope! According to the lies our massive 20 GP health centre pumps out on farcebook, around half the appointments are allegedly now ‘face-to-face’. What they don’t say is that virtually all of those are with nurses, health care assistants (pleasant enough but not the most knowledgeable or sharpest tools in the box) or other ‘clinicians’. Even so, the evidence shows that to be a massive lie as that the original 100 or so seats in the previously crowded waiting area have been reduced to about 15 …. and most of those are empty.

          1. We need to reform GPs’ salary arrangements. They should be paid according to the number of patients they see, not the number on their lists. See, I told you, hope’s the killer!

          2. I did some sums. Total time with GP in 10 years, 1hr 35 minutes (95 minutes). Total time with nurse practitioner, 30 minutes. Total time face to face in clinic, 125 minutes. Per capita payments to clinic in 10 years, total £920. An hourly rate of £441.
            With 4000 patients the actual payment to the practice will be around £400,000 per year, from which they pay for premises, staff and themselves.

          3. With a much reduced bung for each patient seen by any member of staff other than the GP.
            Each appointment conducted by phone should get a fee ONLY if the patient was 100% happy to consult that way, and ONLY if with the GP or a proper nurse.
            I recently had my 6-monthly meds review conducted over the phone by a pharmacist – apart from being extremely difficult to understand, he had NO idea why I was on certain meds.

          4. Not very reassuring. However pharmacists are far better qualified and knowledgeable about drugs.

          5. it also concerns me that a pharmacist, ie not a clinician, would have access to my medical records. I would have thought at least some familiarity with a patient’s medical record would be necessary in order to make informed decisions on what is appropriate for the patient. Yet the medical record is supposed to be solely between the doctor and patient.

          6. This is why I laugh when they talk about GDPR. So many people have access to our medical records, including the receptionist if you’re lucky enough to speak to her, she sees your reasons for wishing to see a doctor. I suppose the pharmacist has your records because of when you order your prescriptions. And don’t forget that, if you had loaded the NHS app, and went into a pub/restaurant/wherever, you had to l prove” that you’d been jabbed.

          7. The pharmacist only needs to know your medications not the reasons the item is prescribed or your medical history. The one I got certainly had no information beyond the names/doses of my prescribed items.
            Similarly, I’m not sure the receptionist can see your full record when you book …. Or, realistically, attempt to book 🙂 – an appointment.
            We never had the NHS app. Not sure yet but we may need to install it just to prove we are jabbed if we go to Canada to visit our son & family. If we do, it will be removed as soon as we get home!

          8. They don’t get a salary, they are self-employed. Pay by numbers seen and you end up with 30-60 sec appointments and no one gets proper medical advice. That’s a total incentive to literally not do the job properly.

          10. They have all the advantages of being “self employed” when, if it were you or I, we would be on the PAYEnsystem as their employment is with the NHS.

          11. It seems that GP practices have been turned into call centres, without the customer service.

          12. Brilliant! I’ve been trying all day to get a bit of advice for my lovely husband and his broken ankle! It’s like bashing your head against a brick wall! I despair.

          14. Ah yes, call centres. I knew there had to be a more appropriate name for them.
            Mind you, catch them out on a serious data protection breach and they are very prompt in making contact and inviting you in to ‘discuss’ the incident. I may now have a good reason to try getting into a better practice in another town.

    2. This sounds like another racket that will be exploited by fraudsters. Why go to your local hospital if you can get more money out of the system by staying at your aunty’s AirBnB?

    3. I read about that. I cannot imagine a stupider, more idiotic concept.

      Here;s an idea Javid. Pay the NHS when it does the work. Stop giving it money to spend as it wants and pay it when it does the blasted work.

  97. An amazing event, the like of which I have never witnessed before. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the House of Commons by video-link and, relatively young and inexperienced though he is, the address was very impressive and extremely moving. The whole House rose and cheered at the beginning and even more loudly and enthusiastically at the conclusion. I am more convinced than ever that the invasion of Ukraine by ‘President’ Vladmir Putin was a wicked act that will do neither Putin nor anybody else any good. It and Putin must be stopped and we must stand by and support Mr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to our utmost. It is our bounden duty.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1e38d0e493c6f9d1f37dd56bb9f2d4c42deb75a421b879e278ea037f10eeadfc.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/77ce9bfe0f7cc311f54c4b44523217658e566ce1aa896f0146d15e339c7dc78e.png

    1. He’s an actor, playing to an audience who are willing him to succeed.

      I think Putin was wrong to invade but completely sympathise with his reason.

    3. Support him how? Militarily? Against the Russian warmachine? Or financially, by not buying their gas which, because of EU policy we are reliant on?

      I’m sorry Mr Woollard but the reality is thanks to the Left wing encroachment our military are emasculated and financially we’re reliant on nations that have fuel to pretend we don’t use it.

      As an ardent EU supporter, you’re responsible for this mess – the pretence, the deceit, the expansionism.

    4. I’m sure all those who applauded the visitor feel really delighted with themselves.

      1. This reinforces the fact that we need a total clear out of the Commons and Lords. These fuckers stopped representing us decades ago and merely serve themselves.

      2. Remember how few of them bothered to turn up to a debate about vaccine damage the other week?

    5. You seem to wish to emulate the mad, dishonest, cretinous and ignorant fools in the House of Cards.

      Zelensky is a WEF stooge, corrupt and dishonest in common with the other Schwab trainees viz. Johnson, Macron, Morrison, Ardern, Trudeau, Merkel, Rutte and the rest of the dishonourable and motley globalist crew.

      1. I don’t think the globalist fanatics really understand … well… anything.

    7. It’s our ‘bounden duty’ to get you sectioned, Geoffrey.

      “An amazing event, the like of which I have never witnessed before. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the House of Commons by video-link and, relatively young and inexperienced though he is, the address was very impressive and extremely moving.”

      Obviously, you have not witnessed a like event, before.

      This was a pathetic – and inappropriate address to the House of Commons by a ‘President’ of doubtful democratic legitimacy – and murky associations – Clintons,
      Obama &etc.

      He appeared scruffily-bearded and inappropriately dressed.
      He should have spoken in English.
      His short speech was boring and filled with clichés.

      He is calling for measures – eg a no fly-zone – that would initiate WW3 …

      1. I don’t think Mr Woollard understands the reality of the situation in Ukraine.

        2. He is perhaps on a wavelength with Dopy Joe’s
          confusion:

          Remain – Ukraine – Iran – Brain?…

      2. Well said. GW is either ignorant or else certifiable and as with all provocateurs extremely annoying.

        When GW was a regular on here I recall he was an EU freak but I never thought for a moment that his return would be as a drooling idiot.

      3. Where did c650 headphones come from?

        President Vloodymary Zelenskyy’s PR staff, perhaps?

      4. Where did c650 headphones come from?

        President Vloodymary Zelenskyy’s PR staff, perhaps?

    8. You silly old fool, easily impressed by a bit of virtue-signalling from a bunch of ne’er-do-wells posing as our government.

    9. Geoffrey, words come very easy to this bunch of shysters. We’re not taken in. These same people have trampled over our rights and democracy for the past 2+ years. Please excuse me when I do not applaud the ghastly hypocrites.

    10. I do not suppose that president Putin will be given the same opportunity. Well, it’s not the Oxford Union, is it?

    11. I bet you’ve already bought your Air ticket to Ukraine GW. As you are so keen I’m sure you feel duty bound to lead the way to the front line. Don’t worry we will be thinking of you – In ‘some corner of a foreign field that is forever EU…..

  98. Oooohh look a squirrel??

    Biden FINALLY sees an increase in approval thanks to Russia threat – but less than half think he is mentally fit to hold office: 45% of Americans now approve of his job – but majority still think don’t he’s sharp enough

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10590197/Biden-FINALLY-sees-increase-approval-ticks-45.html

    Now, just for a moment, might it be possible that Ukraine is a distraction stirred up by people who are coming up for elections that might affect their powerbase?
    Biden, Macron etc?

      1. It’s bigger than that. If NATO can be dragged in it seems probable that the UK – why are we so eager?- the EU, and Russia will all be destroyed.
        Turkey, a member of NATO will not be involved, as far as they re concerned we can shove NATO Article 5 where the sun don’t shine.

    1. I wish our politicians would not be so keen to make themselves important….
      Where are the cool heads? Where are the adults?

      1. Not one MP died of covid while it has impoverished the country, the same thing will happen with this phoney war .

        1. Unless we, ourselves organise another ‘gunpowder’ type plot to blow the lot to smithereens.

      2. Oh blackbox. Blackbox, blackbox, blackbox. The adults. There are none. These are spoiled, immature brats.

    2. It is a very dangerous and stupid decision. It would be a hostile act by a NATO country. Then what are we going to do if the Russians retaliate? An attack on one is an attack on all. The consequences would be obvious and we will not be tending our gardens this summer. I hope and I don’t think though, that the Poles are that stupid although, it seems, Western Europe is.

      1. The Poles were very frosty about the idea.
        Poking the Bear is one thing, kicking his bollocks something else again.
        And what will the Poles do to replace their Russian-made fighter aircraft? Get F-16s, that they have no experience with, spares for, or have any training in how to fight with? Mad idea, and Poland isn’t stupid.

        1. And, for rather obvious historical reasons. They understand Russians far better than the buffoons in Western capitals, puffing themselves up like cockerels and leading us to doom.

      1. I thought I was the only one who thinks he’s a pathetic twit! Thanks NtN

  101. Well,its been a gas today.Oil settle down now to watch the boys see off Milan.

  102. Crap.
    Poland’s Foreign Office reports that they have put their MiG-29s at the service of the USA. Transferred to USAF Rammstein.
    I take it all back. They are idiots of the first water.

  103. War shows the folly of ignoring farmers’ role as food producers

    Our ability to produce food has been hampered by government policy that might have been designed by Vladimir Putin himself

    JAMIE BLACKETT

    Britain has been blindsided by the threat to our food security as a result of the war.

    For years, Defra has been incapacitated by food and environmental wokeism. When it has not been obsessing over exaggerated fears about methane, it has been placating environmentalists by setting politically correct targets for “rewilding”. These days, food production is no longer even identified in the department’s strategic utterances as a “public good” to be delivered by British farmers.

    In short, our ability to produce food, and thus keep prices down, has been hampered by government policy that could not be more helpful to Putin if he had written it himself. We are only around 55 per cent self-sufficient in food, and that number is falling. This means that – unlike France or the US – we are at the mercy of world markets. And they are in turmoil.

    The UK, for example, is a big net importer of fertiliser, while Russia is one of the biggest exporters of nitrogen and potash, two of the three critical nutrients. Now, surprise, surprise, fertiliser prices are at an all-time high, and it is British farmers who are feeling the pinch. But the problem runs deeper. Even before the current crisis, our farmers were facing extortionately high nitrogen prices as a result of British plants ceasing production in response to higher gas prices. And who, at least in part, was responsible for that rise in gas prices? You guessed it, Putin.

    At the time, the Government was fixated on headlines predicting a lack of fizzy drinks caused by the knock-on effect of carbon dioxide shortages. But the main impact has been on farm budgets. It has caused a number of British farmers to change to less intensive business models, or even to plant trees and cease farming altogether.

    To compound the problem, Russia and Ukraine together also account for 29 per cent of world wheat exports. Until recently, the UK was self-sufficient in wheat in good years, but no longer: now the price of wheat in the UK is dictated by world markets. Ukraine is sometimes called the “bread basket” of Europe, but wheat price doesn’t just affect the cost of bread, it is also the main cost in pork and poultry production.

    Environment Secretary George Eustice had the opportunity to address these problems at the NFU conference last month. He chose instead to make enigmatic predictions that climate change would be good for British farming.

    In response, the union’s exasperated president, Minette Batters, accused the Government of a “total lack of understanding of how food production works” and pointed out that, despite living in an increasingly unstable world, ministers’ “ambition for our countryside seems to be almost entirely focused on anything other than domestic food production.”

    Many of us felt that the recent Cabinet reshuffle was a missed opportunity. Down-to-earth Notts farmer and ex-chief whip Mark Spencer could have been moved to Defra and George Eustice’s talents deployed elsewhere.

    Maybe the Ukraine crisis will act as a wake-up call and the Government will now get a grip of Defra, purge Putin’s useful idiots in the “Green Blob” and ensure that one of Brexit’s stated objectives – increased food security – is met. In the meantime, prepare for higher food prices.

    Jamie Blackett farms in Dumfriesshire

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/07/war-shows-folly-ignoring-farmers-role-food-producers/

    1. “…and George Eustice’s talents deployed elsewhere.”
      Six words that convey everything!

      Putin is doing us a favour all round! Mind you, he probably created some of the green idiocy in the first place.
      Most people will never learn.

        1. Yes, as far as I recall his cartoon adventures appeared in the Daily Mirror. (I stand to be corrected.)

    3. BBC Look East – farmer says he’s never seen such big increases in fertilizer prices which will impinge on next year’s harvest. Russia is a major exporter and produces the important component urea using nitogen from the air, hydrogen from gas deposits and CO2 (all things we are supposed to be able to do without to save the planet). Unfortunately fertilizer is the key to supporting production of energy for sustaining life forms on earth and ironically the net-zero target to save the planet will only accelerate the demise of people living on it..

      Farmer says we have to rethink the net-zero targets. Perhaps Big Pharma can come up with a solution.🤔

      1. I think that I may be able to provide a solution. Plenty of manure in my garden, courtesy of the local cats!

          1. I’m certainly catatonic with range at their unwanted “gifts”. (Or, as the Germans might say “Gift und Dolch” [© Wolfgang Amadeus].)

      2. Possibly a good thing that prices are rising – farmers use way too much fertiliser – might force them to cut down. The quantities that just wash into the ground water are huge and all has to be extracted by the water companies.

  104. I only have four words right now…..White chocolate fudge cake.
    Will maybe return when all the bitching and moaning has come to an end.

    1. I prefer dark chocolate cake but never mind.

      It reminds me of a bunch of immature schoolboys ganging up on someone that is not in their gang.

      1. After my doc appointment we went for a meal at our fave bistro. Lovely main courses but I had dessert and that’s a rarity. Thick choc fudge cake with white choc filling and studded with white choc chips. And warm chocky sauce. Oh yum. I only ate half but the rest is home and I shall try and save it for tomorrow….we shall see;-)

          1. Oh, it was…. we brought all the leftovers home and I just went and opened the tub it’s in and said, Be Strong Ann!! Small voice….help.

        4. It’s our wedding anniversary tomorrow, 54 years, and we’re taking a trip to a pub in Fernhurst. Been once before and had the most gorgeous dessert there. It was honeycomb chocolate nugget cheesecake with honeycomb ice cream. Guess what’s for dessert tomorrow!

          1. Oh heck- restrains self from galloping into kitchen to get remains of cake…
            Have a wonderful anniversary and pig out like wot I did tonight;-)

          3. I shall expect a full report tomorrow once you and Grumps have sobered up ;-)))

        5. I just saw your comment and read it as your choc appointment…..I think I need new specs!!

        1. Oh this was but it was the combination. I am trying to be strong but all this talking and thinking about it….hmmm.

      1. Geek nothing. I had a face like a pizza, so many spots… so attractive…
        :-((

    2. What’s her secret? She’s a lefty like them, so she can’t do wrong in their eyes.

Comments are closed.