Sunday 13 March: It’s shameful that refugees have had to deal with Britain’s broken bureaucracy

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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646 thoughts on “Sunday 13 March: It’s shameful that refugees have had to deal with Britain’s broken bureaucracy”

  2. SIR – One reason that so many people object to fracking is that they are often ignorant of the science.

    Many of them – whether they admit it or not – are obsessed by the danger of earthquakes. They have seen on their televisions the devastation caused by major earthquakes in Haiti, Indonesia and other far-flung countries, and assume that the same could occur here.

    It is time for independent scientists and bodies such as the British Geological Survey to be more proactive in explaining that it is highly unlikely for there to be earthquakes in, for example, the Preston New Road drilling site of more than 3.1, and to illustrate with clear examples the maximum damage that such a low disturbance could cause.

    The anti-fracking demonstrators remind me of the demonstrators against nuclear energy back in the 1960s. They were often CND activists who believed that, because of the word “nuclear”, the reactors might blow up like bombs. No doubt if nuclear fusion, the holy grail of energy production, ever becomes a real prospect, their successors will be out in force to ban its use.

    Dr Norman Burrow
    Preston, Lancashire

    Since no reprieve for the two gas wells in Lancashire has been announced, it looks as though many tons of concrete will still be poured into them, starting tomorrow. In other words the soap-dodgers have won. Furthermore, it indicated that fracking really is now a dead duck. Shameful.

      1. It does indeed. And you need about a thousand tons of it as the foundations for each and every ‘green’ wind turbine.

    2. Work To Plug The Preston New Road Gas Exploration Wells Begins This Week Lytham St Annes News – March 7

      Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has once again rejected demands for the renewed exploration of onshore fracking for gas as the solution to swollen energy prices. Instead, he has outlined the government’s investment in “cheap, clean power” in order to protect the UK from global gas markets. Extra supply generated from untapped shale reserves in the UK “won’t materially affect the wholesale market price,” MP Kwarteng said. “This includes fracking .

      Truly ignorant.

      1. If we have our own gas the wholesale market is irrelevant unless we have enough gas to sell. There isn’t one competent minister in this government.

  3. 351387= UP TICKS,

    Morning Each,
    Sunday 13 March: It’s shameful that refugees have had to deal with Britain’s broken bureaucracy,

    Will anyone consider the long suffering decent indigenous?

    1. Another whinging downvote from the pointless Stapleford.

      The government doesn’t care about the locals. We pay all the taxes, commit almost none of the crimes, obey the laws.. etc etc. Not much for the state to do there.

      Far easier to shower the nation with people who don’t and create a massive bureaucracy to support those people and give them everything the worker has earned.

      1. You are a pathetic coward, robert. Grow up. You post nothing. If you disagree, say why, otherwise your petulant idiocy is useful only for pointing out how pointless you are.

        1. Strangely, I can’t see the posts to which you are responding. Not ‘This user is blocked’, but just nothing. Anyone else?

          1. He doesn’t post anything, he just downvotes. He has nothing to say, no contribution, no value.

      2. Many, many places can exist for years with no crime and no trouble. These places are the towns and villages of the British people.

        1. The vicar this morning, in the sermon, spoke about attending a Christian conference in a Butlins holiday camp; they could all leave their doors unlocked and bicycles etc. outside, because everybody was a Christian. It reminded me of what life used to be like in the fifties.

  4. What was the point of sanctioning Roman Abramovich?. Spiked. 13 March 2022.

    But it seems that little of this matters to the UK government, or those cheering it on in its pursuit of Bad Russians. What’s important, it seems, is less the strategy than the spectacle. This high-profile punishment of no doubt unsavoury characters is a means to show the public that the government is doing something. That it is fighting the good fight (while desperately avoiding an actual military fight). It has even branded its bizarrely titled ‘Oligarch Taskforce’ as if it’s a True Crime serial, rather than a serious state operation. But then what matters is the optics, not the content.

    I’m obviously not an Oligarch and from what I’ve read of them not a supporter either. This however does not mean that I approve in any way of the present seizure of their assets without judicial sanction if only because at its lowest level experience tells us that it is Them today and Us tomorrow. In many ways this process tells us more about the UK Government than it does these men. That they really care nothing for Justice or any of the other forms of Civil Rule. That this is simply feeding the political blood lust. That their announcements about Russia are the most blatant lies and hypocrisy. That these are the same people who voted for Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. That they have provoked this war and seek to extend it.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/12/what-was-the-point-of-sanctioning-roman-abramovich/

    1. HMRC wrote those powers in to law many years ago under Brown when it decided it wanted more of other people’s money that it ordinarily had no right to. Theft became far easier than the annoyance of investigation, research and effort.

  5. SIR – Is our Prime Minister hoping that the wind will be blowing when Vladimir Putin turns off the gas?

    That we have 50 years of our own gas left but are not using it is lunacy.

    Jonathan Moore
    Wimblington, Cambridgeshire

    Quite right, Jonathan Moore. This government seems to specialise in lunacy, but on this occasion they have excelled themselves. I suggest that ‘Dig for Britain’ should have become ‘Drill for Britain’ now but it seems as though this is not to be.

    1. Pursuing the lie of climate change and the after dinner speaker jobs market is infinitely more important than keeping the lights on.

      Comically I don’t think they realise that we are heading for a 3 day week. Under a Conservative government.

      1. This is what Heath did:

        “To reduce electricity consumption, and thus conserve coal stocks, the Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, announced a number of measures under the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973 on 13 December 1973, including the Three-Day Work Order, which came into force at midnight on 31 December.”

        The difference between Heath and Johnson is that Heath was dishonest about the Common Market but believed fervently in it; Johnson pretended to believe in Brexit to advance his own career but doesn’t give a toss about it. I am beginning to fear that we shall never complete a proper Brexit and am beginning to wonder if the only way we shall avoid re-joining it will be if the EU collapses before we can do so.

        “Liz Truss reveals plan to put Article 16 on hold because of Ukraine war
        Foreign Secretary understood to have written to Boris Johnson with proposal including tax cuts for Northern Ireland businesses        ”
        https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

        1. Morning Rastus. It appears that the entire state machine is devoted to created so much poverty, so much chaos, to bring taxation to such a crushing point, to make us so indebted and impoverished that when they – no doubt by forcing us to go to the IMF who are europhile crooks – present it, the only option will be to rejoin the EU and have this nation obliterated.

    1. One day you’ll post ‘water is wet’ and the oaf Stapleford will downvote it.

      What the last few years have shown us is that a huge majority of people simply don’t want to think. They like being told how to think.

      2. Hmmm.

        disqus_E9pgGp9Oli
        Robert Stapleford
        @disqus_E9pgGp9Oli

        0 Comments 0 Upvotes 1 Follower 0 Following

        This user’s activity is private

        Does he even exist?

      3. Who is Robert Stapleford? Does he post his own points of view or does he just down vote others?

  7. SIR – Neil MacGregor asks why we don’t have a Museum of England.

    I’m proud to say that we do: it’s just not contained within four walls. English Heritage cares for over 400 ancient monuments, historic buildings and their artefacts, which together form a truly national museum for England, telling the story of this country from prehistoric times to the Cold War.

    Created in 1913 and massively expanded since, this unrivalled collection offers the chance to explore the great turning points in English history, including the Battle of Hastings and the writing of On the Origin of Species, as well as the backdrops to past everyday lives – like the deserted medieval village in the Yorkshire Wolds, and the Lakeland factory where the bobbins for the cotton industry were produced.

    English Heritage celebrates history but, like Mr MacGregor, we don’t believe in showing only the “sunny side”. And we offer in abundance “space to think”.

    Kate Mavor
    Chief Executive, English Heritage
    Swindon, Wiltshire

    Do I detect in her final paragraph a subtle dig at the NT?

    1. I tried to visit Wharram Percy en route to York a couple of weeks ago, but the signs led me around in a circle and Google Maps dumped me at a farm gate. Must try again soon.

  9. From today’s DT:

    COMMENT
    On every level, the lie that Nato is to blame for this war is absurd

    Both the Left and the Right have their own versions of this ridiculous idea. Neither has any credence

    JANET DALEY
    12 March 2022 • 1:00pm

    Given the mass neurosis that now passes for Western political conscience I suppose this was inevitable. But it is still shocking to hear apparently rational commentators claim that somehow all of this horror – the bombing of civilian neighbourhoods, the missile attacks on maternity hospitals, the threat to remove a democratic government – is our fault.

    It was not Russia’s maniacal fixation on an ancient mission to unite with its Ukrainian brethren that drove this onslaught. Or even the more cynical fear of its leaders that their nation was being eclipsed in the global game. No, the real cause of this unspeakable mayhem is “Nato expansionism” – which is to say, the desire of Ukraine to seek the protection of the West and the West’s inclination to offer it.

    Absurdly, this desire on the one side and willingness to consider such a request on the other, have been given overwhelming credence by the very Russian assault which was supposedly provoked by the existence of them.

    In other words, Russia is waging an armed attack on the population of a country which had the presumption to claim that it needed protection from a Russian attack. Have I got that right?

    And just to add to the logical nonsense, what would the result be if Putin succeeded in taking Ukraine back into the Russian motherland? (Which is clearly the ultimate aim, contrary to his interim insistence that all he wants are the eastern bits of it, to act as a neutral buffer zone.)

    Then Russia would have states like Poland and Hungary which are full members of Nato on its Western border, would it not? What then? Would they be next in line for assault because their proximity would be seen as an imminent threat? The Kremlin might be able to sell this bizarre account to its captive audience at home but how in the name of God can anyone in the West fail to see that it is laughable?

    Some of this “we are to blame” rhetoric comes from the Left and is clearly part of the orgy of self-loathing and assumed guilt that dominates western consciousness. We must take responsibility for every modern evil – social inequality because we profited from the slave trade, climate change because we created the industrial revolution – and now the homicidal mania of the Kremlin because we had the effrontery to offer protection to former Soviet satellites who pleaded with us to provide it.

    The inevitable conclusion to which this leads is that the West must withdraw from any contest with even the most dangerous or malevolent adversary: a kind of unilateral moral disarmament. Useful idiots have been talking like this for generations but during the Cold War there was a comprehensible objective: they wanted Communism to win and were prepared to overlook Stalin’s genocidal tactics (in Ukraine, most notably) and the suppression of human freedom, in its name.

    What motivates the Russia apologists now that the country is a corrupt kleptocracy with no alternative social ideal to offer? Who knows? None of the exponents have provided anything that would count as an answer.

    But there is another strand to this peculiar position which comes mainly from the Right, most notably in the United States. It is, to an extent, simply the most recent incarnation of American isolationism which had a memorable record in the twentieth century for keeping the country out of both world wars for an unconscionable length of time. So maybe there is nothing very new here.

    The idea that America should steer clear of Europe’s inherited hatreds, and concentrate instead on the safety and prosperity of its own people has been a fairly reliable vote winner in US elections. That sort of dirty vengeance between the old world’s dying imperial powers is, after all, just what most migrants to America had fled.

    Why get mixed up in those endless battles when you could just enjoy the new life and the opportunities it offers? It is worth noting that support for foreign military interventions generally becomes palatable in America only when the country itself comes under direct attack – the invasion of Iraq after 9/11, for example.

    The principle here is that America is seen as a refuge from persecution and poverty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…”) and that promise must entail staying out of the old national hatreds and rivalries which drove so many people to its shores.

    There is however a very strong opposing interpretation of American destiny. Written into the sacred documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, is not just a guarantee of freedom and self-determination for the nation’s own inhabitants. There is a much greater premise that underpins the entire project. Those texts are the most eloquent expressions ever composed of the Enlightenment belief in universal human rights.

    Their commitment to protect “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is made on the understanding that these rights are “unalienable” and are not the sole property of citizens of the United States.

    This has always been the basis of American exceptionalism: it was to be a beacon to the world, a model and protector of democratic nationhood wherever it was under threat. However imperfectly that role may have been carried out, it must be considered essential to the American idea. If the United States does not stand for this, what is it? A bolthole where the poor people of the world go in the hope of getting rich? Or just an escape from whatever hell prevails in those foreign lands for which it has little concern?

    In recent years it has tried to disengage itself from this responsibility: to renounce its obligations and deny any attempt at a Pax Americana. The end of the Cold War gave a huge impetus to this withdrawal. But that retreat was an ignominious betrayal of what the Founding Fathers – whose authority is endlessly invoked by Americans on the Right – saw as the nation’s identity.

    Nobody who calls himself a patriot should be espousing it.

    1. Ms Daley is taking a bit of a hammering in the BTL posts:

      James Bice
      17 HRS AGO
      This is the most flawed and dangerous argument I’ve read on this matter since the start of the war. Nato and, in particular the US, whilst absolutely not guilty for the atrocities committed by Putin are absolutely largely the cause of why this is happening. Years of brazen talks of expansion, interference in Ukranian politics and dangerous war games. And now we seem to think we can bring Russia to its knees by stopping drinking its vodka! I honestly pray we wake up and realise we are a major part of the cause of this and negotiated settlement is the only sensible way put (let’s not forget, for example, that 80%+ of Crimeans want to be part of Russia). Otherwise, thousands more will die whilst our idiotic, virtue signalling leaders continue to pursue a policy almost as unwinnable as the insane “war on drugs” they’ve been waging for the last however many decades!

      Huw Tippett
      1 HR AGO
      In terms of geopolitical failure by the West this is spot-on James. Big fail in this article not to set everything in context. Russia swallowed two large waves of NATO expansion between 1991 and mid-2000s and then there was the NATO Bucharest Summit of 2008 with the firm declaration that Georgia & Ukraine would become members of NATO. At that point Russia said ‘this is not happening’ and what followed just a few months after the Summit was war in Georgia. Then in 2014 the crisis broke out when a coup in Ukraine deposed the pro-Russian leader and installed a pro-American leader. The Russians went ballistic and walked into Crimea. So todays war had been on the horizon for years. And finally, thanks to all this brilliant meddling by NATO and EU in an area where it should have kept its nose out or at least encouraged Ukraine to stay neutral, we’ve managed to drive Russia into the arms of the Chinese when we should have had them as an ally against them. Honestly, you couldn’t make this mess all up…

      Willie Eckerslike
      18 HRS AGO
      The EU, mainly Germany is front and centre for Putin’s war.
      2014 Russia invaded Crimea and spread unrest in the Dombass and Luhansk regions.
      The EU response – minimal rhetoric; cancel the EU-Russia summit; disinvite Russia from the G7 meeting; not much else. What message would that give to Putin?
      Rather than ostracizing Putin, Merkel gave him the green light by increasing German’s dependency on Putin, paying him increasing €billions, as Germany’s nuclear power closed down.
      The UK saw the signs that Putin was a threat. Operation Orbital was the UK’s response – British troops providing training & capacity building to the Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2015. Over the last 6 years the UK has provided training in a range of key battle basic infantry and medic skills – Medical; Logistics; Counter Improvised Explosive Devices (C-IED); Leadership and infantry skills; Planning; Maritime capacity building: diving, firefighting, damage control and sea surveillance.
      The UK & Ukraine built a strong defence relationship, With British troops having trained more than 20,000 members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the five years since the start of the UK’s training mission.
      When Putin began placed troops on the Ukrainian border the UK upped their support for Ukraine providing state-of-the-art weaponry – NLAW Anti-tank and ManPad surface to air missiles
      EU did nothing. After war started did the EU expect/hope the Russian blitzkrieg to quickly win and business as usual would be resumed?
      The EU underestimated –
      Putin’s desire to make reality his essays;
      Resolve of the Ukrainian people;
      Quality training UK had provided over recent years, the impact of the state-of-the art weaponry.
      UK intelligence
      The EU dragged kicking and screaming into supporting Ukraine, a war they didn’t expect.

      1. I think all too often we (the politcal classes, obsessed with their own egostistical imperialism) in the West think ourselves superior and above. That arrogance causes a lot of problems.

    2. Nobody who calls himself a patriot should be espousing it.

      The last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism.

      2. This quotation is often taken out of context.

        It does not mean that all patriots are scoundrels even though some people think it implies that. A scoundrel who has been rumbled and has exhausted all other justifications for his scoundrelry resorts to patriotosm when he has nothing else!

    3. I’ve seldom read such drivel. Dangerous drivel. The extension of NATO to the border of Russia was a meaningless provocation on a par with the Soviet attempt to install missiles in Cuba. NATO itself is an anachronistic US catspaw. But the extension of NATO is not the proximate cause of the war. The attacks on ordinary ethnic Russians in the Donbas, the thousands of deaths brought about by armed thugs, in or out of uniform, sponsored by the US appointed government of the Ukraine became too much for the Russians to stomach.
      As for missile attacks on maternity hospitals and other overblown horrors, is there any proof of any of them? With an MSM that publishes any and all unconfirmed stories from huge bombs hitting blocks of flats, to cute stories of how refugees had to leave behind the cat’s favourite bowl, how much is true?
      We do know that a lot of it isn’t, from resurrected stories of small dead Syrian children who were not actually dead, to photos of towns bombed in WW2, there is an enormous amount of fakery. Rather than acting as a sieve to retrieve the truth, the BBC, our national broadcaster, “Nation shall Speak Truth Unto Nation” – remember that?) is a conduit for all sorts of misleading and dangerous nonsense.
      Oh, and I do not imagine for one millisecond the Founding Fathers of the United States intended that their far-sighted, clear and robust Constitution should become a basis for involving the US in each and every foreign dispute, rebellion, revolution and war anywhere on Earth. They were concerned only with the present and future safety and integrity of their newly formed country.

    4. As soon as commentators cite the debunked attack on the maternity hospital, there is no point reading further.

    5. Very disappointing – Janet Daley produces some good stuff at times but this is absolute lunacy – and a lot of speculation based on western propoganda!

    6. Janet Daley is wrong in claiming that being a patriot and seeing NATO’s provocation of Putin as incompatible. Putin certainly lost the sympathy of most of us when he started the invasion but until that happened most intelligent people wanted to try and understand both sides’ points of view.

      “… any killing that is necessary on the premises will be done with cold steel. The Bishop does not see why a man should not be a gentleman as well as a Christian.”

      I am a great fan of Saki’s short stories which have a sharp incisive quality which would be considered completely unacceptable today. The Unrest Cure is one of his most disgraceful and I thoroughly recommend it as I am sure it would appeal to the taste of many Nottlers here.

      http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/UnrCur.shtml

  10. Tucker Carlson suggests US government officials WANTED Russia to invade Ukraine because emergency Covid powers had expired and the war would distract from domestic issues. 13 March 2022.

    Tucker Carlson on Friday night made the suggestion that U.S. government officials wanted a war to occur between Russia and Ukraine after emergency powers enacted during Covid had come to an end.

    Speaking during his monologue on Fox News, Carlson claimed the war allowed the U.S. government to shift focus and further ‘grab more power.’

    Carlson suggested Americans following the war in Ukraine were actually being manipulated by power-hungry bureaucrats.

    Ditto UK! Witness Nottlers announcements of services price increases. Just the start of what is to come!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10606727/Tucker-Carlson-suggests-officials-wanted-Russia-invade-Ukraine-Covid-powers-run-out.html#comments

    1. Such has always been the way – busy troubled minds with foreign quarrels. That people don’t realise the state lurches from one crisis to the next, without a rational, calm, adult response (or resolution) is comical. By keeping people in a constant state of fear – and inventing a new crisis when that fear subsides – ensures people keep demanding the state ‘does something’, a constant reminder how how important and necessary something neither important nor necessary is.

          1. He makes the point that perhaps people have evacuated, but it certainly doesn’t look like a battlefield.
            A picture that struck me as strange was all the soldiers posing with weapons, very close together on what appeared to be a bridge. I have no military experience; would soldiers really deploy like that? I would have thought it would make them very vulnerable to attack and losing lots of casualties in a single strike.

        1. All i know is someone who travelled to the Ukraine to see what was really happening.

  11. Tucker Carlson suggests US government officials WANTED Russia to invade Ukraine because emergency Covid powers had expired and the war would distract from domestic issues. 13 March 2022.

    Tucker Carlson on Friday night made the suggestion that U.S. government officials wanted a war to occur between Russia and Ukraine after emergency powers enacted during Covid had come to an end.

    Speaking during his monologue on Fox News, Carlson claimed the war allowed the U.S. government to shift focus and further ‘grab more power.’

    Carlson suggested Americans following the war in Ukraine were actually being manipulated by power-hungry bureaucrats.

    Ditto UK! Witness Nottlers announcements of services price increases. Just the start of what is to come!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10606727/Tucker-Carlson-suggests-officials-wanted-Russia-invade-Ukraine-Covid-powers-run-out.html#comments

  13. Good morning all.

    I see that British families are to be offered £350 per month to take in Ukrainian refugees. It will be very interesting to see if the ‘something must be done’ crowd who always tell us that we should take in the world’s poor now decide to put their money where their mouth is and actually take refugee families into their own homes.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/12/households-offered-350-month-host-ukrainian-refugees-britain/

    I have every sympathy for Ukrainians, who are a genuine example of people fleeing naked aggression and deserve our help. It is just a shame that we have spent so many years taking in young men on the make, who are fleeing places no more dangerous than France. Perhaps some of the four-star hotels could be emptied and prioritised for those who actually deserve our help?

    1. Morning Kuffar. One suspects this offer is simply because there is no room anywhere else!

    2. A big hotel locally has been pulled out of post-covid hibernation and readied to house Ukrainians.

    3. Morning, Kuffar.

      If the 4* hotels, or any of the ‘occupied’ hotels for that matter, are emptied, where do you propose the detritus thus removed be deposited? In addition, where would the unending supply from France be deposited if the hotels are given over to others currently more deserving of our help? The ‘French’ problem, a problem engineered by our government, is insoluble literally because it is the unwritten/unspoken policy of the government to flood this Country with undesirables.

    4. Buck House has plenty of empty bedrooms, with a full compliment of household staff to cater.

        1. That’s cruel.
          Imagine fleeing Putin’s thugs, only to find yourself sharing Bute House with the Wee Krankie.

    5. National Trust has thousands of unoccupied rooms, and plenty of land for mobile homes.

  14. Good morning all from a cool Derbyshire with a tad under 4°C on the thermometer in the yard. Not raining at the moment, but has been earlier.

  15. And now for something completely different – watch out, London, our very own Fifth Columnists are on the march again!

    COMMENT
    Extinction Rebellion’s eco-fanatics are the very definition of dangerous extremism

    With Putin rampant and energy prices soaring, there is no excuse for their selfish posturing

    DOUGLAS MURRAY
    12 March 2022 • 6:00pm

    As the writer Dennis Potter was dying of cancer he memorably mentioned that he felt unjustifiably surprised that his psoriasis hadn’t now had the decency to leave him alone. Surely to God, now the cancer was here, this wretched skin condition would give him a break?

    I hope it is no insult to the late, great screenwriter if I mention that I had a similar thought this week when I read that the fanatics of Extinction Rebellion were planning a fresh set of protests in our country from the beginning of April. According to the eco-extremists, from April 9 they plan to “flood” London with activists and “create the most roadblocks we ever have”. They have also promised, with their usual grace and charm, to be “disruptive and impossible to ignore.” They also plan to blockade oil refineries.

    With all the things going on the world right now, it is the mark of a true extremist – as members of Extinction Rebellion are – that even now they will not alter their demands. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has precipitated a global energy crisis that is only going to grow in the weeks and months ahead. Energy prices are already rocketing and affecting every household in the country. As the West removes itself from the teat of Russian oil and gas we are going to need all of the domestic and European energy we can if we are going to follow through on our threats and shut out Putin as punishment for his illegal invasion of Ukraine.

    group of people we might expect them to give us all a break in this season of closer, deadlier peril. But there is no bargaining with Extinction Rebellion. If there is one thing they have shown us over recent years it is that they are more than simply an irritant or something unsightly. They are a gaggle of utterly implacable fanatics. Of a kind that our society has often seen throughout its history, most commonly in some millenarian religious guise.

    Of course this is hardly the first signs of crazy that Extinction Rebellion have shown. In the past under various guises (including the banal-titled front group “Insulate Britain”) they have shown themselves willing to do absolutely anything for their cause. They have been willing to disrupt the lawful business of everybody else in the nation.

    Last year as the pandemic restrictions were lifting and this country desperately needed to be able to get back to work, Extinction Rebellion once again showed that they did not give a damn about anyone or anything else. Least of all the economy. They did all they could to clog our major road arteries again to stop the nation from working. On previous occasions they have been willing to block bridges and stop ambulances getting dying patients into hospitals. They have also blockaded the factories of the printing presses of major national newspapers, an egregious assaults on the free press.

    They have attacked public and private buildings, often egged on by multimillionaire celebrities who pretend that this is just the unpleasant sort of stuff you have to do if you are going to save the planet. For this and much more has all been done, of course, in the name of saving humanity. There is no inhumanity of which people aren’t capable once they have made such a vaunted goal their aim.

    But it is in their timing as much as their tactics that Extinction Rebellion shows the true nature of their extremism. Last year they did not care that this country’s economy needed desperately to stutter back to life. Likewise it seems to be of no interest to them now that a far bigger ailment has just arrived on our horizon: a war at the borders of Europe which has all the potential to turn into a full-blown conflict between nuclear powers. You would have thought that such a mortal threat – to millions of people in Ukraine, and many millions of others around the world – would make your irritant cause go away. But Extinction Rebellion clearly don’t think they are the irritant. Nor do they think that a Russian leader openly implying that he might use nuclear weapons is a more pressing problem.

    XR are too busy complaining about nuclear power to care about nuclear war. They are too busy talking about temperatures in the 2050s to think about people immiserated right now in the 2020s. They are too busy pursuing their opposition to almost all forms of energy to consider the possibility that at this precise moment in history we need whatever sources of energy we can get our hands on.

    But fanatics never can change their tune. And they do not mind everybody else suffering for it. One of the reasons why this country never got fracking in the past decade was because of actual Kremlin interference – a funding campaign of disinformation into which Moscow pumped tens of millions of pounds. But the other force that stopped fracking in this country (a process that would have transformed not just our energy supply but areas of our country that badly need the jobs) were fanatics like those of XR. They opposed fracking on environmental grounds. As they also oppose drilling, including further drilling in the North Sea. And as they also oppose nuclear power. And so on, and on.

    A wise person adapts to the situation around them. A judicious person recognises their own cause in relation to the other priorities of their time. But fanatics like those of XR will never do these things. Not just because they are injudicious and unwise, but because they are fundamentally selfish. They believe that they hold the only truth that matters and that everybody else must suffer – to the utmost extent, if need be – until such a time as everyone recognises the fanatic to be right. They are a great irritant, to be sure. And though there is no logic that could make them go away, still one wishes they would leave us alone now. At this moment, if not for good.

    * * *

    The BTLers don’t seem to be all that keen on the XR bullies either:

    Midget Gem
    13 HRS AGO
    Another good article. In the meantime, our weak Government, crooked human rights lawyers and the Left allow XR to run roughshod over peoples lives with no punishment. Not only does the Home Office need an overhaul, so does our judicial system. Is it any wonder Putin laughs at the West. There is no climate change crisis either.

    Henry Sunday
    2 MIN AGO
    Yes – XR are totally awful fanatics who must be stopped.
    No – shale fracking would never have had any serious change to our energy provision. It would only ever produce a sparrow’s guff of daily gas flow compared to our total consumption. An awful lot of people getting very enthusiastic about shale fracking being able to ‘make us energy independent’ for ‘fifty years’ I’m afraid have no comprehension of the flow dynamics and production characteristics of frack wells, nor any understanding of just how many wells would be required to be drilled each year (to offset very steep declines in first 18 months) to even offset the natural declines in North Sea production.
    Shale fracking is a complete red herring. It won’t have any impact on our insatiable appetite for energy.

    S Thomas
    11 HRS AGO
    Why not arrest them all and then rehouse them on one of the Isles up in Scotland with no electricity and a truck load of rock wool. They can insulate their burrows, get on with a bit of spoon whittling and put their high ideals into practice. And leave us in peace.

    1. Bugger you ,S Thomas! Why do Volvo-driving self-entitled ignorant cowpats think that Scotland is some kind of blank and empty canvas to be populated with trash?

      1. There are uninhabited islands all around our coast that might fulfil the requirement, apart from those in the Severn Estuary, the only ones I can call to mind are St Kilda and Grauniad (whatever – the anthrax island).

        1. Gruinard, the anthrax testing place. Well, its not London, so who cares?
          Why not fence off an area of Dartmoor, or the South Downs?
          Scots are often asked why they have a chip on their shoulder, or both shoulders. Part of it is the automatic assumption that other people can make decisions about Scotland. The Union was not a result of a democratic vote in Scotland, there was no democracy. After the 1745 the carpetbaggers arrived and stole huge chunks of land, helpfully placing the inhabitants on ships to the colonies.

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

          2. Dartmoor and the South Downs are too easy to escape from and Scotland mortgaged itself to England after silly investment in Darien left them bankrupt.

            The ‘carpetbaggers’ were the victors after defeating those who would usurp the Scottish Throne. I believe that they are still sulking in France.

          3. Ah, but who was the usurper? George I was placed on the throne (thus establishing the Hanoverian dynasty) only by Parliament ignoring 50 people with a better claim. History is written by the victors.

    3. Douglas is a little late to the party and hasn’t yet realised that XR are the activist arm of the PTB.

    4. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
      [George Bernard Shaw]

      Although I agree with Douglas Murray I find it amusingly ironic that his last paragraph is the antithesis of what GBS said! :

      “A wise person adapts to the situation around them. A judicious person recognises their own cause in relation to the other priorities of their time. But fanatics like those of XR will never do these things. Not just because they are injudicious and unwise, but because they are fundamentally selfish. They believe that they hold the only truth that matters and that everybody else must suffer – to the utmost extent, if need be – until such a time as everyone recognises the fanatic to be right. They are a great irritant, to be sure. And though there is no logic that could make them go away, still one wishes they would leave us alone now. At this moment, if not for good.“

    5. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
      [George Bernard Shaw]

      Although I agree with Douglas Murray I find it amusingly ironic that his last paragraph is the antithesis of what GBS said! :

      “A wise person adapts to the situation around them. A judicious person recognises their own cause in relation to the other priorities of their time. But fanatics like those of XR will never do these things. Not just because they are injudicious and unwise, but because they are fundamentally selfish. They believe that they hold the only truth that matters and that everybody else must suffer – to the utmost extent, if need be – until such a time as everyone recognises the fanatic to be right. They are a great irritant, to be sure. And though there is no logic that could make them go away, still one wishes they would leave us alone now. At this moment, if not for good.“

  17. More good news for Vlad – I see Jamie Oliver has closed his restaurant in Moscow!

    3. Morning! He closed his restaurant in Westfield White City too. Probably for the same reasons if the truth be told. The people who took it over seem to be doing quite well. Maybe the same will happen in Moscow.

      1. After all the hype people began to realise they didn’t want to pay £12.50 for a small bowl of pasta.

    11. He’s half my width and his legs are smaller than my arms.

      He’s also wearing a tie.

    12. Because I can actually dress myself properly (tie tied neatly, socks a pair and long trousers because I’m grown up).

  20. It will be interesting to see where any Ukrainian refugees are given accommodation.
    If what is offered is inferior to that given to the illegal economic dinghy migrants it will be a national disgrace, but I suspect that spare capacity is limited.

    Any family volunteering to take the money had better be careful that they don’t then get allocated fighting age Africans and ME parasites both immediately and in the future.

    1. Yes, I suspect once your name is on a list of “able to accept immigrants in my house” you will end up with whatever “they” choose to send you! On the same topic – £350 per month? How very generous – how much are they paying hotels PER DAY to accommodate illegals fleeing the war in France????

      1. My thoughts exactly. And how long until you are unable to refuse to put up anyone they send?
        No way would I ever put my name down for any government scheme.

        1. I like to keep my head well below the parapet as far as the state and nhs is concerned. The state can take the low-hanging fruit, i.e. those that offer themselves up for signalling their virtue.

        1. I have to admit that there were times when it was difficult to love my own offspring, let alone the products of dysfunctional families.

          2. I often wondered how it was that so few children were not murdered by their parents en route to adulthood.

      3. One wonders whether that £350 is to supply full board and lodging; food, power, water etc and whether it is tax free, or merely the roof and a bed.

          1. So definitely not a money spinner, unless it’s a UK based Ukrainian family putting up relatives they would have put up in any case.

      4. But not before the local council clipboard jockeys have insisted that you make huge changes to your life and your home. Changes that will eat up the £350 per month – per FAMILY!

    2. Morning Sos. You would have to be mental to put up any of these people! Despite the propaganda that they are all overgrown Hobbits seeking peaceful sanctuary they are actually Eastern Europeans from a poverty stricken wasteland with powerful Nazi sympathies.

  21. Good morning from a Anglo Saxon Queen with blooded axe and pursed longbow .

    A cloudy day but mild .

  22. Good morning, everyone. Last night we put on a Murder/Mystery play for 60 people at the bowls club. Nobody picked the murderer played by my beloved. We served a three course dinner in the intervals and the audience were very complimentary.

    1. ” Nobody picked the murderer played by my beloved”.
      Watch out, Delboy ! :@)

      Sounds like a splendid evening.

    4. Good morning DB

      Sounds as if you had a wonderful evening .

      I have heard that bowls clubs have an exciting social diary , we know a few who thoroughly enjoy the competitions and afterwards.

  23. The attack on Russian individuals calls to mind the treatment of Jews in Germany in the 1930s. When you add the attack on all things Russian: their music, their culture – even their cats and dogs – we must ask ourselves whether we ourselves are civilised people or barbarians.

    1. Are we the bad guys?
      In all my vague wonderings about wars that might happen in my lifetime, I never pictured one against the Russians where I would think that the Russians actually have a fair point.
      It’s much easier for people I know who simply maintain that anything that casts a favourable light on Russian activities is just Russian propaganda.
      Eg all stories of neo-nazis in Ukraine since 2014 – Russian propaganda
      All Guardian headlines about imprisoned journalists in Ukraine – Russian propaganda
      Caualties in the Donbass since 2014 – Russian propaganda
      etc.

        1. As far as I can see, those headlines are all post 2014?

          I am willing to believe that the above headlines are likely to be Russian propaganda. They include vague terms like “hate crimes against LGBT” and “far right” that are typical of our media’s propaganda campaigns. Plus, well, it’s the Guardian isn’t it.

          However, some indisputable facts are
          – the biolabs (listed on US gov websites)
          – the referendum in the Krim where they all wanted to re-join Russia
          – the number of US Democrats on the boards of Ukrainian companies
          – the noises from Europe and the US about Ukraine joining NATO and/or the EU.
          – the independently verified records of attacks on the Donbass and casualties there.

          It’s difficult to know how much of the stuff said about the Asov battalion is true, and how much might be faked by the Russians. The fact that the German government issued a statement about German neo-nazis travelling to Ukraine suggests that there is a core of truth to the idea that they are neo-nazis.

          1. The snag with that label ‘neo-narsi’ is that no-one uses the term ‘neo-marxist’ or ‘neo-maoist’ etc. It’s as if one type of authoritarianism and thuggery is wrong, but another version is acceptable, indeed praiseworthy.

  24. My husband doesn’t watch the news very often but he had the television on ( we don’t watch live TV much at all ) well anyway, he’s heard much about Ukrainian refugees but saw pictures of them. He said there were hundreds of them and they were African and Indian young men waiting to leave. I assumed they’d all be white Christian but alas !

    1. Those they want to get rid of then! Oh, my aching sides….. those virtue signallers are in for a surprise….

    1. A host of people are now thinking ‘Heh, I get it, I’m really self aware, but *because* I’m a free thinker AND I understand th eirony, I’m still going to like it because someone will notice how I clever I am.

  26. There is a very funny review in The Sunday Grimes of the fake Ipcress File. The writer thinks that the chap playing Michael Caine looks like Wayne Rooney!!!

      1. Tom Hollander is also a short-arsed man with a massive head, quite out of proportion to the rest of his body.

  27. Apropos the discussion, yesterday, about the different methods that men and women employ when doffing a jersey (a.k.a. jumper, pullover, etc); I was reminded of discussions I had, at an earlier age, about how men and women tend to do things differently. Two things came immediately to mind.

    1. Striking matches. Men tend to strike the match towards themselves. This was when smoking was a popular habit and doing so tended to protect the match from being blown out in the wind. Women, on the other hand, tend to strike matches away from their body; ostensibly to mitigate the chance of setting fire to themselves, their clothing, or their hair lacquer.

    2. Wringing out wet cloths. Men tend to grab the cloth in both hands with their thumbs next to each other. Whilst they think that this looks more macho and efficient it is, in reality, anything but. A series of tests carried out by some consumer organisation (I don’t know if it was Which?) proved that the women’s method, that is, grabbing the cloth in both hands with the little fingers next to each other, tends to exert more force on the cloth during wringing and, consequently, extracts more water from it.

    As a ex-smoker I still strike matches towards me; however, since I read (and accepted) the advice on cloth wringing, I now invariably wring them out with my little fingers next to each other.

    1. Striking a match towards you requires more control, and therefore more strength in the wrist and hand. Certainly I rarely do it, because I don’t want to have to stop the match before it sets fire to my jersey. If you strike it away from you, then you don’t have to do this last movement because it doesn’t matter where the match ends.

      1. I had a lighter when I used to smoke. And when I tried a pipe in my 20s. I must have looked ridiculous. And it made my jaw ache so I stopped. It was that tobacco in the yellow packets that got me started. I liked the smell.

          5. That’s it, highly scented…
            “A charming mix of Liquor & Citrus essence are added to a Ribbon Cut blend of Burley, Cavendish and Virginia leaves.”. I see you can still get it even in our puritanical times.

      2. I had a lighter when I used to smoke. And when I tried a pipe in my 20s. I must have looked ridiculous. And it made my jaw ache so I stopped. It was that tobacco in the yellow packets that got me started. I liked the smell.

      1. I do know, D-cup. I find it quite nifty having a multi-directional nozzle and no necessity to get half undressed when I feel the urge! 👍🏻🤣

          1. I bet you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of women who would be prepared to use one of those.

    4. Striking the match towards you tends to shield the light from the flame with your hand,
      Learnt the hard way in the trenches in WWI

      1. Also blow the match out after lighting two fags, as the third light would allow a sniper time to draw a bead.

  28. I saw a clip of the England bloke’s contact with the Oirish player. One of those things that happen in a contact sport, I thought. How out of touch I clearly am.

  29. Morning, all!

    I woke early with Rachmaninov’s ‘Isle of the Dead’ thrumming round my head in its wonderful 5/4. Waiting until.9.30 to play it and not at all woŕried that anyone on the campsite will recognise it as Russian music 🤣

  30. 351387+ up ticks,

    It is a proven fact that people power is a force to be reckoned with the Brexit victory proved that.

    Why not give the politico’s a serving of “manipulation” a dish they have had on their menu regarding the peoples for decades.

    Try YOUR hardest to kick the habit on swallowing shite in the name of the lab/lib/con mass controlled by the party immigration coalition.

    People power works to benefit the peoples / Country and surely MUST be given a try.via the ballot booth.

    1. People Power? That would be Demos Kratos then. Nah, Dominion voting machines will take care of that.

  31. And so it grows.
    Iranian made missiles, allegedly.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10606833/Multiple-rockets-smash-Army-base-Kurdish-news-channel-office-Erbil.html

    Kurdish and U.S. officials confirmed that there were no casualties in what they’re calling an ‘outrageous attack,’ adding that no group has immediately claimed responsibility for the strike.
    U.S. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie had warned about attacks in the area back in December, when he told The Associated Press that while American forces in Iraq switched to a non-combat role last year, Iran and its proxies ‘still want American troops to leave the country.’
    As a result, McKenzie said, ‘that may trigger more attacks’ on American bases.
    No further details were immediately available, but videos posted online appeared to show several ‘Iranian-produced’ ballistic missiles hitting the base in Erbil.
    Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Twitter: ‘Erbil is under fire… as if Kurds were not Iraqis.’
    The attack came during a pause in Vienna over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    1. There has also been bombings in Syria. The war in Ukraine is very convenient for distracting people from other things going on.

    1. “Popsicle”, do they still make them?
      I used to love them when we lived in Canada

      1. Should have been “Corpsicale” from the Cryogenics fad,is that still a thing these days??

      3. Those were the lolly ices frozen in a triangular tube weren’t they? I remember Lyons used to do them in the 1950s.

          1. You could be right, probably seeing them in American cartoons of the time has confused me.

        2. My recollection was that they were fairly long and “straight” and often came in a double with two sticks so one could share.
          I think it may have been a generic term for them in Canada, rather as ice lolly is in the UK.

          1. I think it was an American Term and Diana Krall sang about ‘Popsicle Toes’. I don’t know if that was a nod to the awful Sarah Ferguson toe-sucking incident.

          4. Which reminds me that you had Saturday morning films at the local cinema. But that is so long ago it must have been the late 40’s early 50’s. But you would get frozen lollies during the intervals when a lady would stand at the bottom of each isle with a tray of goodies. I wonder how many people here remember that?

        3. Those Jubblies were advertised with the (correct) expression “Lubbly Jubbly” that was bastardised elsewhere.

      4. Raspberry Mivvi my fave when Henry VIII drives round in the summer. Do they still make them?

        4. As I recall, Lyons Maid’s Mivvis were in Strawberry or Banana.
          Wall’s (similar) Splits were in Lime or Raspberry.

        1. I beg to differ.
          A lollypop is a hard sweet on a stick, a popsicle is an ice lolly.

          1. That might well be the case across the Atlantic; but in the UK, ice lollipops (also called ice lollies) were the only name they were known as when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s.

          2. I never heard them referred to as ice lollipops, only ice lollies.
            And a lollypop was always a hard sweet on a stick in the UK.

          3. I’ve just asked my wife, who is a Lancastrian, and she had heard of them as ice lollipops to differentiate them from lollypops, which were hard sweets on a stick, so it may be a regional thing.

      1. I wonder if you are right? fifty-fifty, I guess. I did believe it….anything is possible nowadays!

        1. Morning Annallan. I’m afraid you’re right. It really is impossible to tell now a days.

  34. Ireland has hidden behind the blanket of NATO but not paid a penny into to it ..

    Here they are spouting out about Ukraine !

    Oh I forgot to mention, they are supplying protective helmets to Ukraine .

        1. Never misses a trick. Though he was unable to fix University Challenge so that his lad’s team could get to the final!!

      3. Once they get their feet under the table your home wouldn’t be your own. All the eastern Europeans I have met, east German, Polish, Bulgarian, Turkish and one from Ukraine have been very, very assertive. Their culture, manners and hours that they keep are different from ours. My home is my refuge from the world; I have no intention of inviting the world within.

      1. Ah! The Trigglypuff event!
        Apparently the heckler was shouting out, “Keep your hate speech off this campus”. Sounded more like the “Ausgenomen Zugmaschine” you see on No Overtaking road signs in Germany!

        https://youtu.be/BY1H1rZL53I?t=101

          1. Unsurprisingly, Cora Segal (the young lady’s name) apparently had her legs amputated due to diabetes complications.
            As much as it goes against the grain to wish ill on someone, I find it hard not to be unsympathetic.

          2. That is sad but it is a fate entirely of her own making due to what appears at any rate, her indiscipline with regard to food. I wonder what her politics are now?

          3. The eternal irony is that without vast quantities of white sugar, diabetes would be much less prevalent.
            And who were the people who toiled to produce and export all that sugar?

          4. Type 2 diabetes—the most common form of diabetes—is caused by several factors, including lifestyle factors and genes.

            Overweight, obesity, and physical inactivity. You are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes if you are not physically active and are overweight or obese.

            Self inflicted?

        2. When I think of the debates and talks I attended as a student, where everyone listened to what the speaker had to say even if they didn’t agree with it…!
          Those “students” are just badly-disciplined spoilt brats.

  37. Here is the real enemy and why in Gods name would Putin and the Russians want this world. I posted this before listening to Neil Oliver below. So I’m adding this remark on.

    It strikes me this is one aspect of the evil he speaks of. A manifestation that turns death and destruction into a fashion statement with people who obviously have no idea of how obscene their behaviour is. Or, even worse, perhaps they do and don’t care.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIcbrFuRfzc

  38. Doing a bit of a test with my 2nd Disqusting id.
    Can someone upvote this please?

    3. Back to my main id, ever since the upvotes were deleted by a bot attack, my upvote total on my profile has stayed at zero, so I thought I’d use my alternative id on the other browser and see if that begins to acquire votes.

      1. The bot attack gave me so many downvotes I could no longer post on other sites like GP or Breibart as I was now “Low Reputation”
        The “New Me” has been well supported as I’m sure you will be Bob

      3. My main one has been at zero votes since then but my alternative one (in use on my phone) does accrue votes I think. Not that I ever check.

        1. It tells me to choose file. I do that then do “upload from computer. I do that and nothing appears in the icon ‘box’

          1. I don’t know what the problem is. Could be adblocker. Try click and drag the image.

          3. After you have transferred the image don’t forget to click save at the bottom of the page. I would then log out and back in again to see if the image has taken.

          4. Thank you pip. I didn’t notice the save at the bottom. I assumed it was automatic when I picked the icon. My favourite flower, the humble and beautiful wild poppy even though I like exotics.

      3. 1: Go to your Disqusting profile page
        2; click on the gear wheel in top right corner and a menu will drop down
        3: select “Edit Profile” and a new page appears
        4: Avatar is top item of the new page with a box advising you to “choose a method”
        5: Click on that and follow instructions.

        1. That is exactly what I have been doing Bob. I choose a picture follow those instructions. The code for the picture appears next to the avatar box and that is it, nothing happens!

  40. As Gove announces £10K per Uke refugee for councils…………

    “Mr Gove said it is expected the Government’s new sponsorship route will bring tens of thousands of refugees into the country.

    Local authority areas will be entitled to more than £10,000 for each Ukrainian refugee taken in.

    Asked for his estimate of the number of people who could come to the UK through the scheme, he said: “Tens of thousands.””

    https://www.countypress.co.uk/news/national/uk-today/19989464.uk-welcome-tens-thousands-ukrainian-refugees-next-week/

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0557e9057bba0571658b271e8dab3d1fdfcbdf3f45150d9c7ec9facf85ecfe8e.jpg

    1. When was the last time Gove ever did or said anything sensible?

      Bill Thomas violently dislikes Gove’s ex-wife, Sarah Vine the DM journalist, but at least she finally had the sense to dump Gove who must be one of the grubbiest and nastiest people in the government.

    2. Perhaps he’ll let us know when every MP has taken at least two into each of their taxpayer funded properties.

    3. Perhaps he’ll let us know when every MP has taken at least two into each of their taxpayer funded properties.

    4. £10,000. Of our money, money already borrowed.

      This refugee thing is serious, and Ukraine has a genuine need but they are pouring across the channel in waves of sewage. We can’t afford ot house the world. Why don’t all the aid quangos hand on some of the cash they’re sitting on in expensive offices and manager salaries?

      1. None of of them should be coming here they should all stay in Europe that’s their home land. Not a little island across the channel.
        We already support half the bloody world in benefits.

        1. And yet… we keep tolerating that. Why are we housing eritreans, Iraqis, Sundanese, Iranians? Why?

          This country is overrun by people who don’t love it, but who do like living here. They gabble on in foreign endlessly and you want to say ‘Shut up! Speak English! If you don’t want to, sod off! This country is better than you. You’re here, show some damned respect to the best nation in the world or bugger off!’

          1. I absolutely agree, most not all have come here cap in hand for help and not long after arrival join a group of expats and set about moaning about everything they find unfavourable to their culture. I have been an immigrant twice and had to pass medicals and generally comply, have a means of support and cash in had. Our political classes are totally useless they don’t have a clue what they are doing. Everything they try to invent goes whole heartily against the grain of our long established culture and really seriously couldn’t run a bath between the lot of them.

          2. Yet when we try to move to another country, we have to have all that documentation and cash. Yet arrive on a boat and you get free everything.

          3. Individually these people are given more money every year than the basic pension. Most pensioners have worked for decades to earn the right to sit back and relax if they’d arrived here recently they be quids in. What our government and civil service have done is more insulting than being flogged naked and left to die. For instance one boat person has free accommodation food and drink for as long as they want it’s probably costing the tax payers in excess of 200 pounds per person per day. We do not need any of this. I believe this is the main reason our living expenses has increased beyond sanity.

          4. The trouble is many of them are hostile to women.

            I visited an ethnic shop for a particular fruit .. I ended up buying some spices , 2 large pomegranite the size of a small football , some delicious apricots and figs.

            I have received better treatment in a Souq overseas than I did by the chaps in the shop who were either Iranian or Northern Pakistani types.

            No eye contact , no smiles and no social niceties , and they were on their mobile phones .

          5. I wonder, Maggie, if you’ve read, Prey by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is a Muslim refugee from Somalia, she highlights this preying on women by muslims and the like and the effect that it has had on the indigenous womenfolk, who won’t go out alone even in daylight.

            Is that how you feel? I empathise.

          6. I was in a small shop in London once buying some wine and beer. MH was outside finishing his cigarette. The man in the shop was rude and surly and only served me when MH came in to see what was taking so long. The shop man was not English.

          7. They are so hostile , their public face has alot to be desired .

            Even some of the foreign doctors are like that , they are curt and robotic .Why are they here ?

          8. Why do you think – our politicos and the PTB all have private medical cover. That applies across the rest of the board too.

          10. We can’t – because of our ghastly, actually I would now say evil, politicians. For decades.

    5. £10,000. Of our money, money already borrowed.

      This refugee thing is serious, and Ukraine has a genuine need but they are pouring across the channel in waves of sewage. We can’t afford ot house the world. Why don’t all the aid quangos hand on some of the cash they’re sitting on in expensive offices and manager salaries?

    6. Just waiting for the naive people’s shock when half a million middle eastern and african young men arrive…

      1. Won’t make much difference here. Our Lib-ninny mayor will take in as many as poss.

        3. When I go out, Mongo makes afuss when I come back. When I walk with him, he snuffs about and answers me when I talk to him. He asks for nothing (apart form tummy rubs), eats whatever he’s given, causes no arguments, never complains, never starts a fight, is kinder than any human I’ve ever known.

          when he’s had enough does he rant, scream and shout? No. He finds a quiet corner and goes to sit in it.

          1. Oscar is starting to greet me now when I come back (although I usually have to wake him up first).

    3. The highlight will be the execution of a Borzoi every hour for peace in Ukraine.

    4. Another bunch of wicked people who ruin the health of animals for their own vanity and corrupt ego’s.

    1. I definitely need a beer!

      But that’s probably because there is no number in that yellow circle.

      1. I read I Corinthians XIII at my father’s funeral and again at my mother’s eighteen years later. Maybe one of my sons will read it at mine? (Only the King James Authorised Version is acceptable)

      2. I read I Corinthians XIII at my father’s funeral and again at my mother’s eighteen years later. Maybe one of my sons will read it at mine? (Only the King James Authorised Version is acceptable)

  44. Meanwhile in other news Douglas Murray
    Extinction Rebellion’s eco-fanatics are the very definition of dangerous extremism
    As the writer Dennis Potter was dying of cancer he memorably mentioned that he felt unjustifiably surprised that his psoriasis hadn’t now had the decency to leave him alone. Surely to God, now the cancer was here, this wretched skin condition would give him a break?

    I hope it is no insult to the late, great screenwriter if I mention that I had a similar thought this week when I read that the fanatics of Extinction Rebellion were planning a fresh set of protests in our country from the beginning of April. According to the eco-extremists, from April 9 they plan to “flood” London with activists and “create the most roadblocks we ever have”. They have also promised, with their usual grace and charm, to be “disruptive and impossible to ignore.” They also plan to blockade oil refineries.

    With all the things going on the world right now, it is the mark of a true extremist – as members of Extinction Rebellion are – that even now they will not alter their demands. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has precipitated a global energy crisis that is only going to grow in the weeks and months ahead. Energy prices are already rocketing and affecting every household in the country. As the West removes itself from the teat of Russian oil and gas we are going to need all of the domestic and European energy we can if we are going to follow through on our threats and shut out Putin as punishment for his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
    If we were dealing with any reasonable group of people we might expect them to give us all a break in this season of closer, deadlier peril. But there is no bargaining with Extinction Rebellion. If there is one thing they have shown us over recent years it is that they are more than simply an irritant or something unsightly. They are a gaggle of utterly implacable fanatics. Of a kind that our society has often seen throughout its history, most commonly in some millenarian religious guise.

    Of course this is hardly the first signs of crazy that Extinction Rebellion have shown. In the past under various guises (including the banal-titled front group “Insulate Britain”) they have shown themselves willing to do absolutely anything for their cause. They have been willing to disrupt the lawful business of everybody else in the nation.

    Last year as the pandemic restrictions were lifting and this country desperately needed to be able to get back to work, Extinction Rebellion once again showed that they did not give a damn about anyone or anything else. Least of all the economy. They did all they could to clog our major road arteries again to stop the nation from working. On previous occasions they have been willing to block bridges and stop ambulances getting dying patients into hospitals. They have also blockaded the factories of the printing presses of major national newspapers, an egregious assaults on the free press.

    They have attacked public and private buildings, often egged on by multimillionaire celebrities who pretend that this is just the unpleasant sort of stuff you have to do if you are going to save the planet. For this and much more has all been done, of course, in the name of saving humanity. There is no inhumanity of which people aren’t capable once they have made such a vaunted goal their aim.

    But it is in their timing as much as their tactics that Extinction Rebellion shows the true nature of their extremism. Last year they did not care that this country’s economy needed desperately to stutter back to life. Likewise it seems to be of no interest to them now that a far bigger ailment has just arrived on our horizon: a war at the borders of Europe which has all the potential to turn into a full-blown conflict between nuclear powers. You would have thought that such a mortal threat – to millions of people in Ukraine, and many millions of others around the world – would make your irritant cause go away. But Extinction Rebellion clearly don’t think they are the irritant. Nor do they think that a Russian leader openly implying that he might use nuclear weapons is a more pressing problem.

    XR are too busy complaining about nuclear power to care about nuclear war. They are too busy talking about temperatures in the 2050s to think about people immiserated right now in the 2020s. They are too busy pursuing their opposition to almost all forms of energy to consider the possibility that at this precise moment in history we need whatever sources of energy we can get our hands on.

    But fanatics never can change their tune. And they do not mind everybody else suffering for it. One of the reasons why this country never got fracking in the past decade was because of actual Kremlin interference – a funding campaign of disinformation into which Moscow pumped tens of millions of pounds. But the other force that stopped fracking in this country (a process that would have transformed not just our energy supply but areas of our country that badly need the jobs) were fanatics like those of XR. They opposed fracking on environmental grounds. As they also oppose drilling, including further drilling in the North Sea. And as they also oppose nuclear power. And so on, and on.

    A wise person adapts to the situation around them. A judicious person recognises their own cause in relation to the other priorities of their time. But fanatics like those of XR will never do these things. Not just because they are injudicious and unwise, but because they are fundamentally selfish. They believe that they hold the only truth that matters and that everybody else must suffer – to the utmost extent, if need be – until such a time as everyone recognises the fanatic to be right. They are a great irritant, to be sure. And though there is no logic that could make them go away, still one wishes they would leave us alone now. At this moment, if not for good.

    Douglas Murray’s new book ‘The War on the West’ will be published next month

    1. When the extinction rebellion and other green fools pop up, the police should do one of two things: shoot the feckers or, as I’d prefer, allow the public to deal with them however they wish.

      A few thorough beatings would soon remind them that they are unwelcome, unwanted and verminous.

  46. Morning all!

    We’re connected again – lost our internet connection last Thursday and it makes you realise how much we rely on it! I had just a small amount of data on my phone and that ran out this morning. Anyway we finally got through to somebody in Delhi or somewhere and he “refreshed” the hub and told me what to do and it worked!

      1. We were with TT for a few years – but their service was so abysmal that we went back to BT in 2011. i don’t know what happened – it suddenly stopped working , althtough the network said it was connected. Anyway, the Indian guy was quite helpful, though I couldn’t understand much of what he said. He got it working, anyway.

        1. How have you got on with BT? I am with TT (I started out with Tiscali who were taken over by them). I have considered moving to BT as I have a landline with them but they’re not much cheaper and it’s a lot of trouble changing e-mail addresses.

          On the rare occasions that I have needed TT support it’s been a painful experience.

          1. We’ve not had an issue before – it was a bit of a nightmare as we had no idea how to get back online – as everything is online…….. I found a BT bot by using my mobile, but it wasn’t much help. There was also a video that suggested what to do but also no help. Then OH managed to find a number to ring and ggot through to the Indian guy who fixed it. Still don’t know what the problem was but at least it’s working now.

            I use a gmail email address so it’s portable and not reliant on the internet provider. I never bothered with a BT email address. Terrible withdrawal symptoms for those few days.

      2. Loads – the internet kept on falling off and the last straw was when we were given weeks to fix it. Customer service in some sub-contient where they just went through the same questions until they got to the end and then started at the beginning again – they couldn’t venture outside those and actually think. Cheap and Awful.

    3. If in doubt, restart.

      For some things it will make no difference. For others, it’s vital. For a router things like logs are flushed, the connect disconnects and reconnects – forcing a new negotiation. Sometimes it just ‘hangs’ if there’s a blip at either end.

      When you get used to it working and suddenly find it doesn’t it’s a little disconcerting as to why but as the warqueen tells me – stop upgrading the firmware. Restart the bugger.

      1. That’s the first thing I tried but it made no difference. After the chap had “refreshed” the router/hub, he told me to log in to the phone or my laptop, and so I did – he asked why the password had changed and I said it had never been changed, but to get back in I needed to put in the original password on the card on the back of the BT hub which we’ve had for the last two years. Then it seemed to connect with our network.

  47. I was thinking about that marvellous group Instant Sunshine and so I looked up Miles Kington, the bass player, journalist and inventor of Franglais who died tragically young.

    He is commemorated by a memorial bench, located alongside the Kennet and Avon Canal, near Blackberry Lane, Conkwell. It bears a plaque, with the inscription:[6]

    In Memoriam

    In fond memory of Miles Kington, who hated this spot, because there was never anywhere to sit down and enjoy it from. Miles Kington, humorist. 1941–2008

    1. “”Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

    2. I wonder when the ref from yesterdays England Ireland rugby match will get the keys to his Monte Carlo apartment ?

      1. Professional rugby union is a business, owned by investors. The tournaments are owned by investors. The lowest paid men in the whole financial pyramid are the referees. Who is the one person on the pitch who can determine the outcome? The referee.

        1. That sending of was outrageous. The french ref was trying to give Australia the advantage in Sydney 22/11/2003 · Australia 17-20 England. England won the Rugby World Cup with a breathtaking Jonny Wilkinson drop goal just 26 seconds from the end of a thrilling final in Sydney. The ref was a snail eating frog, then he kept awarding the Aussies penalties for no reason except he didn’t want England to win.

          1. What I find odd is that only one goes for a Head Injury Assessment after a clash of heads.

          2. And another thing, the Italian match against Ireland was destroyed by the ref enforcing the unopposed scrum law, thereby reducing the Italian side to 13, subsequently 12.

          3. I didn’t watch that one i’m disappointed in the TV commentators and reviewers they don’t seem to mention anything so obvious.

  48. 351337+ up ticks,

    Woke Labour Leader Starmer Insists ‘Trans Women Are Women’ Amid Rowling Spat

    Surely a “cough” test would be enough unless they have undergone the two brick treatment.

    e they have had the two brick treatment.

      2. 351337+ up ticks,

        Afternoon RE,
        To a horse I believe as with the lib/con overseers, fed & given succour by the majority voter.

        That is the Trojan horse, goes by the name of TREACHERY.

          1. 351364 ) up ticks,

            Morning RE,

            It is my monitor, when it down votes votes me I know
            i’m on target.

      5. Starmer’s wife of 14 years? Married since 2007, the husband and wife are both trained lawyers, with Lady Starmer previously working as a solicitor, while her husband earned his knighthood thanks to his work around abolishing the death penalty globally. I think that’s her on the left with her two ‘kids’. Note the placard – indoctrinated already.
        https://i0.wp.com/latestbios.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Victoria-Starmer-and-her-Children.jpg?w=630&ssl=1

      6. Yes, and I know people who know her. Believe that she is employed by the NHS. Keeps herself out of the limelight because she is a Mum with two children.

    3. That’s fine for a man to say!

      And the women who say that are ill and deluded. I mean real women, not pretendy ones.

    1. It’s good that Dr John Campbell can now see that we’ve all been had. I’m so glad I didn’t bother with the booster – but they’ve still been bombarding me with texts and emails to have it.

      1. I’ve not had the first nor second, but a couple of weeks ago I had two voicemail messages over several days offering nhs ‘support’ for making an appt for the 3rd and 4th. I was really annoyed as I regard it as an invasion of my privacy and a total, unbelievable lack of regard for the facts coming out, which I had suspected when I first heard about the so-called vaccine. I have blocked so many nhs numbers from my mobile but I think they can still get through on voicemail.

        1. Poppy, did you see my post the other night of my husband’s visit to the hospital? We assumed it was only for blood work but he got a once over before a procedure on Weds. The specialist nurse who examined him asked about some red spots on his neck which he had no idea about. He told her about the red spots that have been appearing on my arms since about a month after jab 2. She asked about our vaccine status and he told her we were twice jabbed but had refused the booster.
          Good thing you did she said, it gets into your circulation and ends up in the liver where it does harm. NHS specialist nurse. I think the jabs have hurt our innards anyway.
          No-one is going to inject me with anything anymore- unless it’s pain killers on Weds when I go for my procedure.
          This government can shove their so called boosters where the sun don’t shine.

          1. I didn’t see your earlier post, lotl. I am so sorry and it is all so frightening. I didn’t trust government on this, it was all so speedy and I didn’t trust their motives. Everything seemed decidedly off about it. Johnson saying ‘we’ll have a vaccine by Christmas’ when these are usually eureka! moments; Gates’s meddling and knowing his views and his involvement in Africa and India with polio and tetanus vaccines; those of his father, Johnson’s father and his views and those of Johnson – DT article Oct 2007 – I found it all very worrying. I checked the ingredients – as much as they would reveal – and decided these were not something I wanted injected inside me. Now the nhs is advertising these boosters as ‘Come and get your spring booster!’ as if it were a regular treat. I firmly believe that there is a depopulation agenda and young people who have had this jab will be infertile, and that it is a vaccination against longevity. The zeal for getting this into people is over the top, counter this with when have they actually really cared about us as a people? I also listened to Dr Mike Yeadon, a former CEO of Pfizer and Reiner Fuellmich Grand Jury is worth listening to for the facts on all this. Can be found on places like Bitchute, Brandnewtube, Rumble, Odyssey – channels like that. Use Brave, I think it is, as your browser. Duckduckgo has gone the way of the rest.

            Check out the Zelenko protocol online; white pine needle tea (buy online, don’t go gathering yourself); dandelion leaf tea, is supposed to be good for flushing this stuff out of your system as is NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine) – dose as on bottle. It must have an effect as the US is making NAC difficult to buy otc, you now need a prescription for it but you can still get it here easily. Vit D+K2, Vit C to support your immune system. There is online help and protocols but you have to seek it out, you will get little assistance from the nhs as they simply don’t want to know or admit there is a problem.

            I know so many people whose past illnesses have been brought back to life and exacerbated by these jabs.

            I am hearing rumours that the Pfizer HQ in the US has been abandoned, I don’t know how true this is though.

        2. The longer you can put if off the better.

          So much bad news about the consequences of the gene therapy has been suppressed that when the whole truth comes out the wisest people will prove to be those who did not get jabbed. That of course is just my opinion!

          1. I am cautious by nature, they will have to tie me down to inject this stuff into me. I was wary from the start, I recalled reading a paragraph from the DT regarding Gates saying vaccines could be a way to control world populations. I knew that these things are usually a eureka! moment and not ‘we’ll have a vaccine by Christmas’ as per Johnson. I was also aware of Johnson’s father’s views on population and Johnson’s own article in the DT Oct 2007. The WHO downgrading ‘the virus’ as no longer a threat to public health; three days later Johnson gave a speech saying ‘some of you are going to lose loved ones, some of you are going to die”

          2. Oh, so sorry Rastus, I was replying to you but Poppie who was sitting next to me moved my arm and before I knew what had happened my reply had taken leave. I can’t find it to amend by edit as I am replying via notifications but similar experience in the past has told me that replies usually get to their destination eventually. I replied to lotl without Poppie’s assistance so if you read that reply it may fill in the information gaps.

        3. I’ve had letters that I’ve ignored. A couple of days back I had a phone call.
          When the caller asked me why I didn’t want a third jab, I told her it was a waste of time.
          End of call.

      2. Covid has ruined our business, Covid has ruined our social liife, Covid has stopped us visiting our sons who have both bought their own homes in the last two years, Covid has ruined our ability to go to our boat in the Mediterranean.

        But Covid has not ruined our health because by taking zinc, Vitamin C and Vitamin D and not taking the gene therapy we only had a very mild disease when we got it.

        I responded to John Donne’s holy sonnet – Death Be Not Proud – when I studied it as a Sixth Former. It is now Covid which should not be proud of itself.

        Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
        Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
        For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
        Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
        From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
        Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
        And soonest our best men with thee do go,
        Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
        Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
        And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
        And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
        And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
        One short sleep past, we wake eternally
        And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

      3. They been ringing my mobile, as i don’t walk around with it strapped to me head i missed 3 calls, tried to ring back twice but they don’t accept incoming calls. Oh well, that’s a problem of their own design.

        1. I have the sound switched off on my mobile as I never andwer calls on it. So far I think they’ve only sent texts and emails.

          1. I had a what i think was a dodgy message today something about hello Ian ( i’m not Ian) your auntie gave me your number and ……..blah blah blah Blocked.

          2. I do get the odd dodgy text – though the fake messages about parcel deliveries seem to have stopped.

  50. Phew! I’m sweating my gonads off!
    I’ve just been up the hill and, after strapping it up to make sure it does not fall on the sheds, I’ve dropped a 4½” elm that died off a couple of years ago.
    Still got to cut it into lengths, but had to come in to check on the mince & onions I’m doing, so have made myself a mug of tea.

    2. On first reading I thought you were having to strap up one of your gonads in case it fell on the sheds! ☺️

    3. Just back from the far end of the garden. The skies opened suddenly for a very hard hailstorm.
      On the plus side, at least it bounces off as one retreats to the house as opposed to getting a thorough soaking.

  51. This is getting silly now

    “Dozens killed after Russian military attacks base just miles from NATO’s eastern flank”.

    Isn’t that the sort of thing you are supposed to attack in a war?

    “Ukrainian authorities Sunday reported the death toll following a Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian airbase rose to 35 confirmed dead and 134 wounded.
    The airbase is located in the Lviv Oblast, some 30 miles from downtown Lviv and only 13 miles from Poland’s border.”

      1. Thank you. My favourite flower. I grow all sorts of exotics. Orchids and South African proteas etc but I’m obsessed by the ordinary wild poppy. Filled my front garden a couple of years ago with them but it didn’t really work, they lack discipline. They seem to prefer junk soil in order to grow well.

        1. Mine is the rose that was in our last place’s garden. This picture was taken when it flowered at Christmas one year.

          1. Had several David Austin roses because I’m really in to scent. Scent is the primary consideration in my gardening normally, but I gave them to my next door neighbour. They were his reinterpretation of Edwardian roses, that period, more or less. Didn’t really like them the flowers were rather floppy.

            Everything is cleared out now, getting ready for summer. But I’m doing sweet peas, clematis, including miniature clematis from Thompsons, look fascinating, no staking, they just spill over the container. Tubs filled with begonias. A Brugmansia as a dot plant, pinks, hydrangeas, miniature philadelphus and miniature lilacs. Not sure what else yet. I grow most things in containers because a lot is off beat, i.e. sub topicals that go into greenhouse in winter. Containers are great because you can change things every year or throughout the year if you want to do something else, store what you don’t want and trot out what you do. My main tool is a Sack barrow for trundling things around.

  52. PARIS, March 12 (Reuters) – France is to introduce a rebate of 0.15 euros ($0.16) per litre of transport fuel to help drivers cope with soaring pump prices, Prime Minister Jean Castex said in an interview with daily newspaper Le Parisien.

    The measure, to apply for four months from April 1, is expected to cost the government just over 2 billion euros, he said.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-offer-fuel-rebate-cushion-soaring-prices-pm-2022-03-12/

    Why isn’t our Chancellor offering a similar relief, but instead is also going ahead with income tax and National Insurance rises?

    1. Because Fishi Rishi is VERY RICH and doesn’t understand about things that worry the little, poor people

      1. I don’t think it’s him. The fundamental problem is a treasury that thinks of itself first in terms of ‘what can we get’ rather than what is the absolute minimum we must spend?

    2. Because they’re hapless morons who share a braincell.

      We’re talking about people who said ‘we’ve spent your money on you, now we have to get that back – from you’.

      They’re fools, lazy, greedy, self obsessed, useless fools. The vast majority of the pump price is tax. That should be scrapped. The danger, of course, is that having fought so hard to get the tax in – and destroying the economy in the doing – they cannot now conceive of letting that cash go – so they waste it on things we do not want or need and hold their hands out for more.

    3. How very generous. Here it was €1.66 in February, now it is €2.12 and even more in other areas – a rise of €0.46. By April it could be much more – if there is any to be had then. Frog politicians are as thick as all the others.

  53. A classic example of a government cock up.

    Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert.

    Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.” So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

    Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.

    Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One was to do the studies and one was to write the reports.

    Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?” So they created two positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer then hired two people.

    Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?” So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.

    Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $918,000 over budget, we must cut back.” So they laid off the night watchman.

    NOW slowly, let it sink in.

    Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter. Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY during the Carter administration?

    Anybody? Anything? Anyone?

    No?

    Didn’t think so!

    Bottom line is, we’ve spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency, the reason for which very few people who read this can remember!

    Ready??

    It was very simple… and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.

    The Department of Energy was instituted on 8/04/1977, TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

    Hey, pretty efficient, huh???

    AND NOW IT’S 2022 — 45 YEARS LATER — AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS “NECESSARY” DEPARTMENT IS AT $242 BILLION A YEAR. IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES; AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!

    (THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY, “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?”) 34 years ago 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports. Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports.

    Ah, yes — good old Federal bureaucracy.

    NOW, WE HAVE TURNED OVER THE BANKING SYSTEM, HEALTH CARE, AND THE AUTO INDUSTRY TO THE SAME GOVERNMENT? What can possibly go wrong?

    Hello!! Anybody Home?

    Signed…. The Night Watchman

    ——————————

    2. They denied us the Right to Freedom of Speech aka the Race Relations Act
      of the mid sixties….if we complained,They yelled Racist and we were silenced.
      Now we have a problem? We cannot speak about…. mmmmmmmmmmmm.

      1. That’s the political classes for you. The ‘THEY’ continually f0ck up everything they come into contact with. And then lie about their mistake.

  55. 351557+ up ticks,

    Seems like the packemin campaign is growing legs with a sum granted to each Ukrainian head given accommodation and the councils receiving a payment.

    Keep in mind RACHMANISM.

  56. British Airways is set to let male cabin crew wear ‘man buns’ and paint their nails following uniform policy review
    Source said new rules may let men have long hair and wear nail polish next year
    The airline confirmed last night that it is examining its strict uniform guidelines
    Some male crew already sport stubble or tie their hair up at work, says a source.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10606889/British-Airways-set-let-male-cabin-crew-wear-man-buns-paint-nails.html

    Our flag flying airline … oh dear .

    2. …and allow mincing up the aisles amid limp-wristed cries of, “See you, you bitch…”

    3. “May” it said; doesn’t mean it will happen, although many stewards bat for the other side anyway.

  57. We will put Russia’s war criminals behind bars. 13 march 2022.

    We have a clear message to Russian leaders and Russian soldiers on the ground in Ukraine; your actions will have consequences and the UK will stand firmly behind Ukraine throughout its journey to justice.

    We will always defend the Ukrainian people’s right to choose their own future. They have chosen freedom and justice. And Russia’s war criminals have chosen to be behind bars.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Scarlet Pimpernel.

    Put them behind bars-don’t make me laugh. You don’t put British criminals behind bars.

    We’ll believe you after you send Blair, Brown And Bush to the Hague!

    There you go!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/12/will-put-russias-war-criminals-behind-bars/

    1. The only way that Russia’s ‘war criminals’ could be put behind bars would be as a result of the complete defeat of Russia.

          1. ‘Afternoon, Lass, it seems as if they died in their hearts a long time ago, when they took National Socialism (NAZI) to that heart and it killed it.

          2. Wotcher, Nanners!

            MOH thinks that because Ukraine was on “our” side in WWII – eventually – that they are not NatSoc. What’s the best piece you know that I can show him, to show that Ukraine and its PM are not really that nice.

          3. Wotcher, Nanners!

            MOH thinks that because Ukraine was on “our” side in WWII – eventually – that they are not NatSoc. What’s the best piece you know that I can show him, to show that Ukraine and its PM are not really that nice.

  59. Good afternoon, all!

    Anyone else had this: there is a local person, whose Ukrainian grand- or parents came over here. He is on a local site starting a thread which adds his bit to the offers of local help to Ukraininan refugees, which are being set up locally.

    One person mentioned that Ukrainians weren’t the only people who were in such a position and yet nothing had been even reported, let alone done about them. He immediately took umbrage, called her a Karen and said that Ukrainians were coming, like it or not, and that they would probably take the jobs of racists like her. At that stage I thought, that’s a bit much, so I put in my bit, saying that being rude to people who merely pointed out that there were many worthy of help, was not the really the right way to go about garnering sympathy for a worthy cause.

    I was then called a Karen as well and told that I should go away.

    To be honest, IMO that person only wanted to help Ukrainians because he was of Ukrainian stock himself. We are overrun with East Europeans here, walk down the street or go into A&E and you won’t understand what anyone is saying. What I object very strongly to, is that a person who actually writes that he wants to “give back” for the help that his family got, should dictate what we should be doing. If that’s what foreigners (or immediate descendants of foreigners) who come here and are taken in, paid for, and generally looked after think and do, then I’m afraid my sympathy has evaporated.

    We do not owe the world a bed and breakfast. Especially not to ungrateful people who then tell us that we MUST take more of them. Dubbs is the same – he came over with kindertransport and then tells us that we have to take all and sundry. Whose country is this? It is certainly no longer ours.

      1. I don’t care about being a Karen, Karen! it’s the sheer gall and entitlement of these people. They should go away and stay away. Our mayor is a Liberal drip, and of course the whole place has become a big collection point for help for the Ukrainians.

        As far as I’m concerned the Ukrainians can stick to countries like Poland, Hungary and other similar countries. Ater all, those countries don’t take anyone else. Why foist them on us? (Rhetorical question: because we’re namby pamby do-gooders who are prepared to lose our own country in the process of doing good to everyone else – including many undesirables.)

        1. They had a collection for the Red Cross and Ukraine when we left the racecourse. I ignored it. The Red Cross helps bring in the gimmegrants for a start and we don’t need any more people, frankly. Church has the right idea – they want paracetamol and Elastoplast for the Ukraine and I’m prepared to donate that. At least it’s unlikely to be skimmed off.

      2. I don’t care about being a Karen, Karen! it’s the sheer gall and entitlement of these people. They should go away and stay away. Our mayor is a Liberal drip, and of course the whole place has become a big collection point for help for the Ukrainians.

        As far as I’m concerned the Ukrainians can stick to countries like Poland, Hungary and other similar countries. Ater all, those countries don’t take anyone else. Why foist them on us? (Rhetorical question: because we’re namby pamby do-gooders who are prepared to lose our own country in the process of doing good to everyone else – including many undesirables.)

      3. I don’t care about being a Karen, Karen! it’s the sheer gall and entitlement of these people. They should go away and stay away. Our mayor is a Liberal drip, and of course the whole place has become a big collection point for help for the Ukrainians.

        As far as I’m concerned the Ukrainians can stick to countries like Poland, Hungary and other similar countries. Ater all, those countries don’t take anyone else. Why foist them on us? (Rhetorical question: because we’re namby pamby do-gooders who are prepared to lose our own country in the process of doing good to everyone else – including many undesirables.)

    2. Hi Lass…
      Whose country is this? It is certainly no longer ours.

      We gave it away in 73…….Thankyou Ted Heath!

    4. I would post what you have posted here. Especially what you say about the entitlement of foreigners. Are we doormats?

      2. No point in our namby pamby “we’re just being nice, why are others out to spoil that” local Neighbourhood network. To be honest, it’s only really decent to find a plumber who is recommended, or something for sale, or that kind of thing. Most of the names who post are foreign, but there are a few who sound indigenous.

  60. Good afternoon, all!

    Anyone else had this: there is a local person, whose Ukrainian grand- or parents came over here. He is on a local site starting a thread which adds his bit to the offers of local help to Ukraininan refugees, which are being set up locally.

    One person mentioned that Ukrainians weren’t the only people who were in such a position and yet nothing had been even reported, let alone done about them. He immediately took umbrage, called her a Karen and said that Ukrainians were coming, like it or not, and that they would probably take the jobs of racists like her. At that stage I thought, that’s a bit much, so I put in my bit, saying that being rude to people who merely pointed out that the were many worthy of help, was not the really the right way to go about garnering sympathy for a worthy cause.

    I was then called a Karen as well and told that I should go away.

    To be honest, IMO that person only wanted to help Ukrainians because he was of Ukrainian stock himself. We are overrun with East Europeans here, walk down the street or go into A&E and you won’t understand what anyone is saying. What I object very strongly to, is that a person who actually writes that he wants to “give back” for the help that his family got, should dictate what we should be doing. If that’s what foreigners (or immediate descendants of foreigners) who come here and are taken in, paid for, and generally looked after think and do, then I’m afraid my sympathy has evaporated.

    We do not owe the world a bed and breakfast. Especially not to ungrateful people who then tell us that we MUST take more of them. Dubbs is the same – he came over with kindertransport and then tells us that we have to take all and sundry. Whose country is this? It is certainly no longer ours.

  61. Good afternoon, all!

    Anyone else had this: there is a local person, whose Ukrainian grand- or parents came over here. He is on a local site starting a thread which adds his bit to the offers of local help to Ukraininan refugees, which are being set up locally.

    One person mentioned that Ukrainians weren’t the only people who were in such a position and yet nothing had been even reported, let alone done about them. He immediately took umbrage, called her a Karen and said that Ukrainians were coming, like it or not, and that they would probably take the jobs of racists like her. At that stage I thought, that’s a bit much, so I put in my bit, saying that being rude to people who merely pointed out that the were many worthy of help, was not the really the right way to go about garnering sympathy for a worthy cause.

    I was then called a Karen as well and told that I should go away.

    To be honest, IMO that person only wanted to help Ukrainians because he was of Ukrainian stock himself. We are overrun with East Europeans here, walk down the street or go into A&E and you won’t understand what anyone is saying. What I object very strongly to, is that a person who actually writes that he wants to “give back” for the help that his family got, should dictate what we should be doing. If that’s what foreigners (or immediate descendants of foreigners) who come here and are taken in, paid for, and generally looked after think and do, then I’m afraid my sympathy has evaporated.

    We do not owe the world a bed and breakfast. Especially not to ungrateful people who then tell us that we MUST take more of them. Dubbs is the same – he came over with kindertransport and then tells us that we have to take all and sundry. Whose country is this? It is certainly no longer ours.

  62. That’s a 2nd 4″ elm dropped. A bit of a bugger as it was leaning towards one of the sheds and needed one strap to pull it back from the shed and a 2nd to pull it in the direction I wanted it to fall in and sorting the two pulls out and having to go up & down the hill a few times does get a bit knackering.
    I’ve still got to get it cut into lengths as well get a strap onto the 1st one I dropped and pull it out of the bloody tree (another elm) that it’s hung up on.
    Still, it’s got me doing things out of the house and stopped me picking out of the fridge!

  63. Kifaru1 posted this earlier on today. Which thank you Kif. James Delingpole talking to David Murrin. https://odysee.com/@JamesDelingpoleChannel:0/murrin:f
    It is one of Delingpole’s most important contributions so far, in my opinion. I would encourage people to listen. Not so much because of his analysis of what is happening in the world but because he offers solutions, difficult though they may be to implement. Well worth listening to.

    I have somewhat changed my mind in the last half hour since I posted the above. On going to his website he wants £50.00 per month, £300 for six months and £480 for a year. This sort of mercenary financial behaviour immediately puts me on alert when that person is purporting to be helping mankind. Rather like the Guru that offer you a weekend seminar for the paltry sum of £1000.00. Nevertheless I agree with what he is saying and I agree with his solutions. But his solutions can also be found elsewhere in the thinking of other people who aren’t demanding dosh for their pearls of wisdom. So worth listening to as a starting point but go to others on the net who don’t block you unless you cough up the requisite.

    1. That does seem rather excessive. I subscribe to the Delingpod for 2.50 a month which is not a lot, but if all the listeners subscribed for that, then JD would be rolling!
      I want to subscribe or donate to several worthy publishers, and I can only do that if I keep the subscriptions small. So fifty a month for one website would be out of my range.
      Looking forward to listening to this Delingpod!

      1. It’s rather vexing. There are a lot of good websites out there but if you had to pay for them all you would quickly end up impoverished. What really annoys me is the papers. I read papers from around the world but I have to find those that don’t want a fee otherwise it would take a large chunk of cash every month.

        1. Grizz uses press reader for a fixed monthly fee. Don’t know how much press it covers though.

          5. Mmmm….26 quid to be told to ditch sequins to be kind to the planet…no point my setting that up, as I would cancel it fairly quickly!

          9. After reading the other comments there are other news services on the net. Take a look at PressTV. It’s Iranian. They showed more of what was and is happening in Europe than the BBC. The Gilet Jaune protests for instance. The BBC after a complaint responded with ….they didn’t consider it newsworthy.

    2. He needs the money to pay for the work of the orthodontist to sort out his rather bitter and twisted teeth. (Do you remember The Dyke on a Bike told a Grand National winner that the money he got from his win could sort out his teeth!)

  64. Well I’m sitting here listening to the Third Movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and the Stasi haven’t battered my door down yet!

      2. Do you remember Ken Russell’s film The Music Lovers? Glenda Slag was particularly unimpressive in it.

        3. Dostoyevsky. My favourite. The Idiot, here is an extract from a review. “Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him.” A cheerful romp through the corruption of human nature.

          2. Masochist! But seriously, it is a good story, worth reading. But it has to be 40 years since I last read it.

      1. I’m just wondering. Joanne Rowling is a long-term donator to the Labour Party’s coffers. I wonder if she will now change her political leanings?

          2. I wonder just what you DO with £700 million quid. After you have paid off the mortgage!!

          3. Just let it sit there and you live off the interest (even at the current paltry rates).

          5. The only thing I would do that I don’t do now – is take private aircraft and limos when I travel. (assuming travel still exists…{:¬((…)

          6. I fly from my local airport which is Bournemouth/Ryannair. Never any long queues. No problems at all. But once i arrive it’s limo’s all the way. The limo’s in Malta are just a few euro more than their taxi’s. Plus they will carry your bags.

            London Heathrow and Gatwick are absolute nightmares. Depends where you want to go i suppose.

            And i still get to keep all my millions !

        2. I wonder what the wealth threshold is to become a Labour Party supporter? Clearly, if you have J.K. Rowling’s level of wealth then it does not matter which party is in power. Anyone earning between £30,000 and £500,000 probably could not afford a Labour government. Have any Nottlers got the answer?

    3. I’ve got a 14 x 7 shed. What will that get me? £2k a month?

      Our politicians are the most unworldly-wise cretins. Apart from us, who keep voting for them!

  68. “Workplace inclusion can be life-changing for LGBTQ+ people, and this impact should not be dismissed as ‘woke’.”

    The above is the last sentence of this article:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/12/competition-regulator-ignores-demands-stop-wasting-taxpayer/

    Will I live long enough for some bureautwat to write.

    “Workplace inclusion can would be be life-changing for White, English Speaking, Heterosexual people,
    and this impact should not be dismissed as ‘woke’.”

    1. If this is inclusivity, then in the words of Samuel Goldwyn – “Include me out”.

  69. “Workplace inclusion can be life-changing for LGBTQ+ people, and this impact should not be dismissed as ‘woke’.”

    The above is the last sentence of this article:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/12/competition-regulator-ignores-demands-stop-wasting-taxpayer/

    Will I live long enough for some bureautwat to write.

    “Workplace inclusion can would be be life-changing for White, English Speaking, Heterosexual people,
    and this impact should not be dismissed as ‘woke’.”

  71. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/92adfda07cb1946824cc43274605b152d89d377e6fc02b7dbb67eaa541800059.png Sunday Telegraph: your half-witted “Royal correspondent”, Hannah Furness, need to be educated to the fact that a British Land Rover (as pictured in the article) is not a “Jeep”. A Jeep is a vehicle invented and patented by the American concern, Willy’s, and used in the American army. It would behove you to employ journalists with intelligence and education. I see very little of either within these pages these days.

    1. IT’S NOT A JEEP! Louder, Grizz, louder!
      It’s a Series 2.
      Edit: Looking at the bonnet, might be a 2A.
      Argh!

    2. Twerp , I guess ignorance is bliss.

      She doesn’t know the difference between a Landie and a Jeep, she would be hounded out of the village …

    3. It is the same when they refer to other ranks in the Armed Forces as “officers”….

    1. Why don’t the politicians face up to the problem? Maybe a special Muslim Rape Squad needs to be set up to rape the wives, mistresses and daughters of all politicians until something is actually done to resolve the problem.

      1. Richard

        Well, you know what , if we end up with lots of Ukranian women and children, I hope and pray that they won’t fall into the clutches of those filthy B#####s

      3. Yo Rastus.

        We need is a Inquiry ino the whole sad episode, carried out by a Seniort Officer of the ‘armed’ Forces.
        Certainly not a Snivel Serpent, or police from another Constabulary
        The remit for the ‘chosen one should include,
        the way ahead
        investigation of what has happened up unitil now
        Prosecution of Rapists
        Prosecution of Police who failed to do their job
        Prosecution of Politicians who allowed the current state of rape to happen
        Investigation into MSM who refused to raise the subject

        If the BAMES want equality, that must include obeying our laws and respecting OUR customs

      4. There are many that sit in Westminster…That would be the place to start…
        That place definitely needs to be cleansed.

  74. That’s me for today. Wine o’clock coming up. Supper is venison (shot by elder son) with leeks and broccoli from the garden. Sowed four varieties of tomatoes and a tray of beetroot. Fingers crossed.

    Have a splendid evening doing what you all do best.

    A demain

    1. Venison shot by your elder son? Why did he shoot a dead animal? I like venison, but don’t have it very often, as it’s too dear.

        1. Only 7 minutes to go. I do hope that wine has been breathing. Unlike the venison……

      2. Firstborn has half a freezer (the half that’s not filled with pork) filled with venison & moose.

          2. Fred Gwynne aka Herman Munster wrote a book for children called A Chocolate Moose for Dinner. It was great and all about words that sound the same but have different meanings. The cover illustration shows a large moose sitting at a table eating chocolate mousse.

          1. Yes, afraid so.
            Sheeps head, however, boiled with cabbage (får i kål) is popular in the western valleys and is very good.

      3. Some friends gave us some sanglier (wild boar) which was delicious and they have recently given us some chevreuil (venison) which is in the freezer awaiting Caroline’s culinary attention.

        1. Chevreuil would be roe deer, I think.
          In Bill’s neck of the woods muntjac are endemic. A pain in the arse but good eating. Need to be cooked slowly.

    4. I did a venison stew t’other day. Very nice too.
      Today was mince and onions.

      1. They breed 3 legged chickens in Sussex. I asked the owner what they tasted like. He said no idea as have not been able to catch one.

      2. They breed 3 legged chickens in Sussex. I asked the owner what they tasted like. He said no idea as have not been able to catch one.

  77. MOH was talking to our two grand daughters about getting all the family together for this coming Christmas and how busy and exciting it would be with the new twins that our youngest daughter is expecting in August. The six year old piped up: “One would have been enough!”

    2. My son when young was a real fan of the Mister Men books. One day in the car I heard on the radio that Roger Hargreaves, the author of the books, had died. My son was in the back seat and, very gently, I told him that the author of the Mister Men books had died. There was a pause and then a little voice asked, “Will he write anymore books then?”

      1. Both our two loved the Mr Men books – and I enjoyed reading them as bedtime stories.
        Just long enough for a bedtime story, too.

        1. My brother, one Xmas, gave family members a Mister Man book that he deemed appropriate. My dad got Mr. Muddle but, for the life of me, I can’t recall which one I received.

          3. In CT, we planted a small pine on the bank to the left of the driveway. My son named it Mr. Tickle. There is a children’s book by Eve Bunting called The Night Tree. On Xmas Eve a family goes into the woods and decorates a pine tree with popcorn, coconut, veggies and fruit etc for the forest creatures.
            They go and sit a way back with hot chocolate and wait. Slowly the animals come and eat the goodies off the tree.
            My son and I did that one Xmas- we strung Mr. Tickle with all sorts of goodies and then went and looked out his bedroom window. Nothing. But next morning, everything from the tree was gone and there were all sorts of animal prints in the snow. Magic.

  78. The Treasury must reverse this tax raid

    Conservative governments that raise taxes as the country heads into a recession are courting economic and electoral disaster

    TELEGRAPH VIEW • Friday 11th March 2022 • 10:00pm

    Even now, Rishi Sunak does not seem able to admit to the full scale of the challenge facing the UK economy in the coming months. Yesterday, he warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had created significant economic “uncertainty”. That is putting it mildly. Well before Vladimir Putin launched his murderous assault households were experiencing severe financial pain because of runaway inflation. Now, some analysts are forecasting that the UK will fall back into recession, in part because of the threat of retaliatory sanctions from the Kremlin.

    The Government has often been criticised for not having a serious plan for economic growth. It has appeared to complacently believe that the nation’s prosperity is almost guaranteed, and that taxpayers can be squeezed in order to fund massive new public spending and “investment”. That was always misguided and a betrayal of Conservative principles. Now, however, it threatens to push ministers into an economic and political error of historic proportions.

    It is extraordinary that the Government is apparently resolved to push ahead with its plans to launch another tax raid on working people with a sharp rise in National Insurance contributions.

    The Treasury is said to believe that it is too late to change course. This appears to be as much to do with bureaucratic inertia as anything else. Is the Government really so in hock to the interests of the Civil Service† that it cannot abandon a policy with weeks to spare before it is meant to come into force? Especially as the consequences of proceeding are so dire. Council tax, energy, food and fuel prices: all are rising at an alarming rate. Households must fund the extra expense out of their post-tax income.

    Do ministers seriously believe that voters will shrug off the impact of significantly higher personal taxation in such circumstances? Increasing the burden on businesses, at a time of some economic peril, could also result in higher unemployment.

    The Prime Minister has been lucky. Partygate allegations have fallen from view and he has impressed on the world stage with his handling of the Ukraine crisis. He now has the opportunity to reset his premiership, with defence, energy and economic policies that befit the perilous new era we are entering.

    If he persists with his injudicious tax plans, however, he risks throwing that opportunity away. Conservative governments that break their promises not to raise taxes do not tend to fare well in subsequent elections. Conservative governments that raise taxes as the country heads into a recession are courting economic and electoral disaster.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/03/11/treasury-must-reverse-tax-raid/

    † The same Civil Service that encourages Channel raiders but discourages Ukrainian refugees, presided over the PPE shambles and, had it had control of the vaccination programme, might just have announced in the last month or so the awarding of contracts. Plenty of other failures come to mind, notably the Child Support Agency, passports, NHS ‘universal’ IT system, Single Payment Scheme for farmers, the London Underground public-private partnership etc.

    BTL:
    Cheshire Red
    It used to be the Left you couldn’t reason with. Idiotic policies, absurd ideologies and never-ending activist loons demanding everything under the sun for free, but now the so-called but entirely fake ‘Conservatives’ are at the same sub-prime level.

    Net Zero is too insane for words, identity politics is out of control, Covid was the worst peacetime policy in UK history while Brexit and NI has been shamefully betrayed. Runaway spending and the highest taxes for decades complete the picture.

    Oh, and the small matter of completely abandoning any semblance of border or immigration controls doesn’t help either. Has anyone mentioned this to Mr Nut Nuts?

    Any conservative policies amongst that lot? Not from where I’m looking. A joke party led by a joke soft-left leader whose demonstrated he’s not a Conservative at all. They thoroughly deserve to be thrown out next GE.

    Be careful what you wish for…

    1. I gave up after the biased language at the beginning , but Sunak has no idea and it isn’t the Ukraine situation that’s caused the damage, it’s Bojo and his lockdown “following the science” plus high tax, big spend and borrow Labour Lite policies allied to green lunacy.

  79. That was a well deserved and much needed bath!
    First tree I dropped hung up on an adjacent tree and, even after lopping off a couple of logs from the bottom of the trunk steadfastly refused to budge! As I do not like leaving lumps of tree like that, I ended up having to use a ratchet strap to pull it down.
    Probably more work than cutting it down the first time!

  80. PETER HITCHENS: I keep telling you that Russia isn’t strong. This stupid, brutal war has proved it

    I shall never see it again now but I always loved a particular quiet, modest street in southern Moscow. For once, there were no gigantic buildings or tower blocks, just low, graceful old houses, trees and churches, especially one movingly called ‘The Consolation of All Sorrows’ which, I expect, is pretty full just now. There, you could – just – believe that the old, kindly Russia, raped and murdered by Communists, might one day come back. How I wish it could have done. That belief is all gone now.

    Yet for years, I thought I owed that hope to the people I had known and liked in Russia, where I spent two of the most astonishing years of my life. Living in a foreign country, especially a remote and exotic nation, is a great gift. For the rest of your life it informs everything else you ever see or feel. I am stuck with that now. I am forced to care about Russia and the Russians. I don’t ask you to do the same, only to understand that it is, to me, a duty. And if you think, as some spiteful people do, and have said, that I do all this because I am in Russian pay, or a Putin supporter, or because I am not a British patriot, then you are terribly mistaken.

    Generations of my family have faced real danger in the Armed Forces. My father (who hated Stalin and all his works) ferried tanks to the Soviet Union on the terrible Murmansk convoys, pausing on the way to help sink a German battlecruiser. My daughter served with the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards as an Intelligence officer, in a forward base in Helmand, in Afghanistan. Her husband, my son-in-law, fought the Taliban face-to-face and was wounded in combat. I am impossibly proud of them all.

    The truth about patriotism, by the way, is that you feel it far more intensely if you have lived abroad than you do if you have not. And I find the thing about those who have actually faced danger is that they are the least noisy, and the most genuine, about their love of country. I say what I say about this conflict – especially that Western stupidity helped to bring it about – because I believe it to be true. I also say it because my forebears fought, among other things, for my freedom to say what is unpopular. So I would be betraying their legacy if I did not use that freedom.

    I will not dwell on it. The important thing at the moment is to stand against the wild hysteria that is raging among us. It is almost funny that music by Peter Tchaikovsky has been removed from a concert because he was Russian. But it is not funny when individual Russians are shunned, as one hears they have been. It is genuinely tragic when sanctions are imposed which will, as usual, ruin the lives of the poor while doing little to harm powerful villains. And it is deadly serious when unthinking hysteria grips politics and the media. Too many people think that it is somehow noble and good to call for more war, more weapons and more fighting. Have they seen war? This conflict must end at some point. For those caught up in it, the sooner it ends the better.

    I had the bizarre experience last week of being attacked for not being compassionate enough, by one Kelvin Mackenzie, who was the editor of The Sun newspaper during its not-very-compassionate ‘Gotcha’ period. Too many people seem to find war attractive. More serious still are continuing calls to widen the war with ‘no-fly zones’ and other unhinged follies. If your concern is (as it should be) for the innocent Ukrainian victims of the war, give and do all you can to help them. But do nothing to extend or prolong war, for the longer and deeper the war is, the more people will die and be maimed.

    Do not forget the most basic rules, that the first casualty of war is truth and that the only mercy in war is that it ends quickly. Resist attempts to get you to stop thinking. Perhaps the single biggest thing we have learned from this attack is that Russia is (as I have long argued) not very big, not very rich and not very strong. Its army cannot achieve its aims. Putin has, without meaning to, destroyed the Russian bogeyman which we have been told to fear for so long. It would be good if somebody learned something from that, but I don’t suppose they will.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10606263/PETER-HITCHENS-telling-Russia-isnt-strong-stupid-brutal-war-proved-it.html

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b19706b2072c6a58c1cc544714181b038f8f152867bb141fed7741e2ca7fbf66.jpg

  81. PETER HITCHENS: I keep telling you that Russia isn’t strong. This stupid, brutal war has proved it

    I shall never see it again now but I always loved a particular quiet, modest street in southern Moscow. For once, there were no gigantic buildings or tower blocks, just low, graceful old houses, trees and churches, especially one movingly called ‘The Consolation of All Sorrows’ which, I expect, is pretty full just now. There, you could – just – believe that the old, kindly Russia, raped and murdered by Communists, might one day come back. How I wish it could have done. That belief is all gone now.

    Yet for years, I thought I owed that hope to the people I had known and liked in Russia, where I spent two of the most astonishing years of my life. Living in a foreign country, especially a remote and exotic nation, is a great gift. For the rest of your life it informs everything else you ever see or feel. I am stuck with that now. I am forced to care about Russia and the Russians. I don’t ask you to do the same, only to understand that it is, to me, a duty. And if you think, as some spiteful people do, and have said, that I do all this because I am in Russian pay, or a Putin supporter, or because I am not a British patriot, then you are terribly mistaken.

    Generations of my family have faced real danger in the Armed Forces. My father (who hated Stalin and all his works) ferried tanks to the Soviet Union on the terrible Murmansk convoys, pausing on the way to help sink a German battlecruiser. My daughter served with the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards as an Intelligence officer, in a forward base in Helmand, in Afghanistan. Her husband, my son-in-law, fought the Taliban face-to-face and was wounded in combat. I am impossibly proud of them all.

    The truth about patriotism, by the way, is that you feel it far more intensely if you have lived abroad than you do if you have not. And I find the thing about those who have actually faced danger is that they are the least noisy, and the most genuine, about their love of country. I say what I say about this conflict – especially that Western stupidity helped to bring it about – because I believe it to be true. I also say it because my forebears fought, among other things, for my freedom to say what is unpopular. So I would be betraying their legacy if I did not use that freedom.

    I will not dwell on it. The important thing at the moment is to stand against the wild hysteria that is raging among us. It is almost funny that music by Peter Tchaikovsky has been removed from a concert because he was Russian. But it is not funny when individual Russians are shunned, as one hears they have been. It is genuinely tragic when sanctions are imposed which will, as usual, ruin the lives of the poor while doing little to harm powerful villains. And it is deadly serious when unthinking hysteria grips politics and the media. Too many people think that it is somehow noble and good to call for more war, more weapons and more fighting. Have they seen war? This conflict must end at some point. For those caught up in it, the sooner it ends the better.

    I had the bizarre experience last week of being attacked for not being compassionate enough, by one Kelvin Mackenzie, who was the editor of The Sun newspaper during its not-very-compassionate ‘Gotcha’ period. Too many people seem to find war attractive. More serious still are continuing calls to widen the war with ‘no-fly zones’ and other unhinged follies. If your concern is (as it should be) for the innocent Ukrainian victims of the war, give and do all you can to help them. But do nothing to extend or prolong war, for the longer and deeper the war is, the more people will die and be maimed.

    Do not forget the most basic rules, that the first casualty of war is truth and that the only mercy in war is that it ends quickly. Resist attempts to get you to stop thinking. Perhaps the single biggest thing we have learned from this attack is that Russia is (as I have long argued) not very big, not very rich and not very strong. Its army cannot achieve its aims. Putin has, without meaning to, destroyed the Russian bogeyman which we have been told to fear for so long. It would be good if somebody learned something from that, but I don’t suppose they will.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10606263/PETER-HITCHENS-telling-Russia-isnt-strong-stupid-brutal-war-proved-it.html

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b19706b2072c6a58c1cc544714181b038f8f152867bb141fed7741e2ca7fbf66.jpg

  82. Bugger.
    SWMBOs little red car has broken a spring – front left. Cannot be driven, needs recovered to a workshop.
    More expense we can do without, even if a new spring is £50 each – plus fitting.

  83. Just back from Bedford, after a long, full, exhausting but very enjoyable weekend. So I’m now straight off to bed and wish you a “Good night, everyone”.

  87. Evening, all. My local rag says the “refugee pathway” will bring in tens of thousands of Ukrainians! Don’t they know we’re FULL? On a personal note, it’s been a brilliant day; small fields, but exciting racing, good company and I backed a winner in the “getting out stakes” (the last race), which beat the odds on favourite by a short head. Since my stake was a £5 voucher that came with my membership, I was more than pleased! I don’t normally bet, but my friend likes to so we wagered it on Donald McCain’s runner.

    1. Reintroducing wolves to Scotland after 400 years ‘would help control deer numbers’…

      And wipe out sheep farming…

      1. Exactly! What wolf is going to go for a deer that can run away, when there’s a nice fat sheep that runs half the speed?
        Oh, perhaps the greenies think that the wolves will stay where they tell them to stay.

      1. ‘They’ also don’t want the general public hunting with guns and they certainly would wet their knickers if they thought people enjoyed it.

  89. Backlog of criminal trials faces further delays as barristers vote to take industrial action over funding

    It is only the second time the Criminal Bar Association has ever taken action, coming amid a row with the Government over legal aid

    Simples, no National Insurance Number/Tax Record/UK Birth Certificate //naturalisation Papers etc No legal aid

    Bliar again

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/13/backlog-criminal-trials-faces-delays-barristers-vote-take-industrial/

  91. Goodnight nottlers, one and all. May you have a peaceful night’s sleep. Night-night.

Comments are closed.