Tuesday 12 April: Three weeks on, a Ukrainian family still awaits a promised British refuge

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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708 thoughts on “Tuesday 12 April: Three weeks on, a Ukrainian family still awaits a promised British refuge”

  4. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – Why are we still paying BT landline fees when we pay for BT broadband and have its Digital Voice service?

    S Smith
    Blean, Kent

    Good question, S Smith. Any telecoms experts amongst our Nottlrs?

    1. In most cases the broadband/VOIP will still use the existing copper wires into the house fed by pillars and cabinets all the way back to the exchange/data centre. If you are very lucky you will have fibre directly into your home which can give you very good speeds but it still needs that distribution infrastructure .It’s analogous to the electric/gas standing charge in that the structure carries the product,
      ‘morning BTW

  5. And just like magic Putin does what Zelensky stated he would.

    Russia ‘unleashes chemical weapons on Mariupol’: Liz Truss threatens to go after Putin following claims Ukrainian troops were hit by substance dropped from a drone that left them unable to breathe – just as Zelensky warned Moscow plans to use them

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10709143/Russia-unleashes-chemical-weapons-Mariupol-Defenders-claim-theyre-suffering-breathing-issues.html

    That can’t be a false flag, can it?
    Surely that can’t be possible, can it?

    2. As it’s an “Unidentified substance” how does Liz Truss know that it’s a chemical weapon?

  7. SIR – Lauren Almeida’s article on electric cars struck a chord.

    I pulled into the car park of a country hotel in Devon the other day, and got chatting to a chap sitting in his car in the next bay.

    I asked him about the hotel, to which he replied: “Oh, I’m not staying here – I am just topping up my batteries. The last two charging points were being used.”

    It turned out that he – like many others, one assumes – has a list of all the charging points in the country.

    Denis Kearney
    Lostwithiel, Cornwall

    Oh dear…they are on an app, Denis, and I believe that EV satnavs also hold the location of charging points.

  8. SIR – I am a supporter of electric vehicles. You just have to choose wisely.

    We bought a Tesla Model 3 a year ago. The fast-charging network is astounding. By the time we’ve had a coffee and a piece of cake, we’re off on our travels again, with – I admit – a smug grin as we watch the non-Tesla cars all queuing for dysfunctional charge points.

    Paul Rutt
    Trelawnyd, Denbighshire

    Well now Mr Smug, fast-charging is detrimental to EV battery life, so make the most of it until your car requires a new battery pack…

    1. And now to the BTL comments:

      Alan Lawrence
      6 HRS AGO
      Paul Rutt reckons you just have to chose your electric car wisely. He fails to mention the need for deep pockets in the case of the Tesla Model 3. Smug grin? Smug idiot more like.

      Edwin Pugh
      6 HRS AGO
      He’ll lose his grin when he finds his battery ruined with all that fast charging and a car that has no value on the second hand market.

      W Stevens
      2 HRS AGO
      The rush to run an EV has much to do with company car drivers paying ZERO BENEFIT IN KIND and zero Road Tax as it has them worrying about petrol & diesel car pollution.

      * * *

      I had no idea that EVs are exempt under the BIK rules. It cannot be long before this is changed, given the lack of duty and VAT revenue that is paid by owners of conventional cars. Not sure I am entirely happy about subsidising these highly questionable means of transport!

      2. Yes, I know an employee who uses a leased Evie, and he muttered something about the tax benefits.

    2. Good morning, HJ.

      Mr Rutt, follow the science. Now where have I heard that recently?

      Many years ago I came across some information from a submariner re the lead acid batteries used in those boats. To keep the batteries in shape for longer a regular complete slow discharge was required, followed by a slow full recharge. Battery life was more important to a submariner than to someone driving around in a Tesla – other EVs are available – it literally could be a matter of life or death. Is there a regime for maintaining Lithium-ion batteries similar to the lead acid type or are they, like so much today, throwaway items?

      1. ‘Morning, Korky. Excellent comment if I may say so.

        I believe that lithium-ion batteries dislike heat, hence the battery cooling system in an EV. And if they catch fire then they are difficult to extinguish. At the end of their usefulness in an EV I understand that some are ‘refurbished’ for use as storage in domestic solar pv systems. However, I have no idea what happens to the rest as their components are difficult to recover in the event of scrapping.

  11. SIR – I see that a local authority in Cornwall has, in its wisdom, decided to dig up daffodil bulbs for fear that children may come to harm.

    As a former coroner in Lincolnshire for more than 35 years I have no recollection of ever having a case referred to me involving death by daffodil, despite so many being grown in this county.

    Stuart Fisher
    Spilsby, Lincolnshire

    In Cornwall it’s even less likely now!

    1. SIR – In what parallel universe do the councillors of St Blaise in Cornwall live? Daffodils are everywhere in Cornwall. They are grown commercially for both flowers and bulbs, but the road verges and hedge bottoms are also full of daffodils.

      So if a child has a propensity to eat daffodils, the destruction of flowers in a recreation park is not going to be very effective at preventing this.

      Will the next thing to be removed be hawthorn hedges in case a child scratches themselves?

      Johnny Walkers
      Holbeach, Lincolnshire

      Well said!

  13. Steerpike
    Crispin Blunt’s extraordinary intervention
    11 April 2022, 9:35pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltcd2e031b03ce187e/62549eddb6785224e87af84c/GettyImages-1086972484.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    Grateful hacks everywhere will be thanking Crispin Blunt tonight after the Tory MP made an extraordinary intervention on the case of Imran Ahmad Khan. Following this afternoon’s verdict, which found the Wakefield backbencher guilty of the sexual assault of a 15 year-old boy, Blunt has decided to release a highly unusual and hyberbolic statement which will surely make all of the morning’s newspapers.

    Describing himself as a former British justice minister, Blunt lambasted the conviction as a ‘dreadful miscarriage of justice’ incited by ‘lazy tropes about LGBT+ people’ based in ‘Victorian era prejudice.’ He even claims that Khan’s guilty verdict ‘is nothing short of an international scandal, with dreadful wider implications for millions of LGBT+ millions around the world.’ It’s worth reading the bizarre declaration in full:

    “I am utterly appalled and distraught at the dreadful miscarriage of justice that has befallen my friend and colleague Imran Ahmad Khan, MP for Wakefield since December 2019. His conviction today is nothing short of an international scandal, with dreadful wider implications for millions of LGBT+ muslims around the world. I sat through some of the trial. The conduct of this case relied on lazy tropes about LGBT+ people that we might have thought we had put behind us decades ago. As a former justice minister I was prepared to testify about the truly extraordinary sequence of events that has resulted in Imran being put through this nightmare start to his Parliamentary career. I hope for the return of Imran Ahmad Khan to the public service that has exemplified his life to date. Any other outcome will be a stain on our reputation for justice, and an appalling own goal by Britain as we try to take a lead in reversing the Victorian era prejudice that still disfigures too much of the global statute book.
    Blunt’s statement of course makes no comment about Khan’s accuser at the centre of all of this. The court which convicted Khan earlier today found he had plied a 15 year-old with gin and tonic before dragging him upstairs to watch pornography and groping him in a bunk bed. The victim’s parents reportedly both broke down in tears when giving evidence as they told how their son was left ‘inconsolable’ and ‘shaking’ after the incident at a house in Staffordshire.

    As ITV reporter Harry Horton notes, Blunt only attended the defence and summing up of the trial; he was not present to see any of the prosecution witnesses. Already there are calls for Blunt to have the whip withdrawn for his extraordinary statement. At least two MPs, including Stewart McDonald and Chris Bryant, have now resigned as vice chairs from the LGBT All Party Parliamentary Group chaired by Blunt.

    Could Imran Ahmad Khan’s trial cost the Tories not one, but two MPs?

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

    estel • 8 hours ago
    Is this gay blokes trying to get sex with kids legalised again? You want to read old copies of Gay News in the 1980s. It argued for sex with pre-teens. Endorsed by another person I’d better not say, or I’ll get into a all sorts of trouble.

    opopanax estel • 8 hours ago
    It’s no secret that Harman and her husband supported PIE. I believe she has since claimed that she didn’t really understand the implications of the movement.

    Orson Cart opopanax • 8 hours ago
    Yep, even though she invited their top reps into meetings (filmed evidence of that). Her denials are really not convincing with the amount of evidence stacked up against them.

    1. I assume that there must have been overwhelming evidence of Khan’s guilt , a single unrecorded event from 14 years ago involving a disturbed 15 year old and not reported at the time might reasonably give some pause for thought.

      1. Actually, reading the case it doesn’t seem to me there is much evidence at all. He wasn’t even accused by the boy/man of touching his genitals or anything like that. I am certainly not going to defend Khan but it does seem to me to be a bit of a trial based on stereotypes of how gays behave. And the boy/mans reaction does strike me as being a bit dubious unless he was an incredibly delicate little flower! Khan touched his leg or some such and the boy/man has been traumatized ever since. But, you know, the “victim” must be believed, it’s trial by faux moral outrage, in which it is almost guaranteed that the person will be condemned.

    2. I assume that there must have been overwhelming evidence of Khan’s guilt , a single unrecorded event from 14 years ago involving a disturbed 15 year old and not reported at the time might reasonably give some pause for thought.

    3. 351941+ up ticks,

      Morning C,
      I was castigated on here for mentioning the harman/ Hewitt connection with PIE
      Hewitt apologised harman never has.
      It would not surprise me to see a children’s shirt lifting bill get a reading, the lowering of the age of consent has been mentioned in the past &with the pro muslim feelings of both politico’s and the majority of the electorate, who can tell
      whats in the future pipeline.

  14. SIR – Debrett’s has issued advice on coffee shop etiquette but there is a more pressing need for a guide to electric car etiquette.

    Consider the following scenario. You have an electric car and are visiting a friend or relative. When you get there, your car needs a top-up in order to get home. The person you are visiting has a charging point.

    How are you supposed to go about asking to use the charger? Should you even ask? If you do use it, how long can you use it for – and should you compensate your host? You wouldn’t expect them to pay for your petrol or diesel. And how much should you offer them? Electricity isn’t cheap anymore.

    Is giving them a £20 note considered rude? Similarly, if someone uses your charging point, and they offer you £20, should you accept ?

    It’s a minefield.

    Lee Angus
    London W4

    It’s okay, Mr A: a kindly BTL poster has come to your rescue…

    Simon Bell
    6 HRS AGO
    Regarding Lee Angus’s dilemma: should someone visit me with an electric car and want to “borrow” some of my electricity, I would most certainly expect a payment. As the owner of an electric car I would assume that they are wealthy and slightly gullible. I would therefore assure them that my electricity is of the greenest variety possible, having been generated from the gentle flapping of wild butterfly wings and charge them double the going rate.

    1. I wonder what the going rate is for electricity of the greenest variety possible, having been generated from the gentle flapping of wild butterfly wings?
      Probably a kilo of golden unicorn horn, made from the casts of the horns of live unicorns, per Kwh.

      1. But presumably, Mr Bell himself doesn’t own an EV (hanging clause at the beginning of the sentence).

  15. ‘Morning again.

    What an incredible life!

    Alan Jenkins, long-serving Gurkha officer and the last Western witness to the old Tibet before the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army marched in – obituary

    In Burma in January 1948 he lowered the Union flag for the last time at the Governor General’s residence when the country became independent

    ByTelegraph Obituaries11 April 2022 • 12:54pm

    Colonel Alan Jenkins, who has died aged 94, had an adventurous life in the British Army; he was thought to be the last surviving Westerner to have seen the old Tibet before the annexation by the People’s Republic of China, and in 1966 he was awarded an MC during the Confrontation with Indonesia.

    In November 1946, Jenkins was serving as Intelligence Officer (IO) with the 1st Battalion King George V’s Own Gurkha Rifles in the garrison at Razmak, Waziristan, a walled fort 7,000 feet up in the hills of the North-West Frontier Province.

    There were several battalions stationed at the base and their main task was to protect weekly road convoys carrying supplies from the railhead at Bannu. Soldiers were deployed astride the road and platoon-strength pickets posted on the high ground.

    Any slackness was an invitation to bands of Pathans who could be waiting in ambush, concealed in gullies or behind rocks, ready to fire a volley at close range before attacking with knives and running off with rifles and ammunition before support could arrive.

    Jenkins’s commanding officer encouraged young officers to be adventurous. Jenkins and a brother officer, Hugh Bailey, wanted to follow part of the route taken by Francis Younghusband’s 1904 British Army expedition to Tibet and they were given eight weeks’ leave.

    Tibet was almost a closed country but the British Political Officer at Sikkim could grant short visits and, in April 1947, armed with a frontier pass, they hired four sherpas at Kalimpong and set out on a trek to Gyantse, a distance of some 160 miles.

    They crossed the 14,100 ft Nathu La pass, travelling in the mornings to avoid dust storms. Passing Mount Chomolhari, they went through Phari.

    Jenkins wrote afterwards that the bungalow there was the highest post office in the world. The postmaster was an imposing Tibetan with a long plait and a heavy gold ring in one ear. If they met with a serious accident on the way, they realised, rescue would be almost impossible.

    At Gyantse, about 100 miles south-west of Lhasa, they stayed for three days. It was a British military base to protect the trade route, and stationed there was the Mounted Garrison Company of the 4th/5th Mahratta Light Infantry, equipped with lances and looking magnificent on parade. For Jenkins, it was the adventure of a lifetime which he never forgot.

    Alan Middleton Jenkins was born at Meliden, Prestatyn, North Wales, on June 14 1927. His father served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War. His grandfather, a Royal Marine in the RN corvette Encounter, was severely wounded in an attack on Ningpo, a Taiping rebel stronghold, in 1862, in an operation in support of the Chinese imperial forces.

    Young Alan went to Rhyl Grammar School and, after being granted an Indian Army cadetship, he completed his basic training and embarked on a troopship bound for India. He left the ship at Bombay and took the train to Bangalore, where he attended the Officers’ Training School.

    In April 1946, he was commissioned into the 1st King George V’s Own Gurkha Rifles (1 GR) and posted to Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills. After a move to Nagpur, Central Provinces, as IO on internal security duties, he joined the 1st Battalion at Razmak.

    In 1947 he was granted a regular commission, and after Independence, in November, the battalion, having left the newly created Pakistan, was stationed at Gurdaspur, 40 miles north of Amritsar, Punjab. Large quantities of rum were needed for the Gurkha annual festival of Dussehra and he was ordered to take a three-ton truck and fetch supplies from Saharanpur, about 450 miles away.

    He had been detailed to travel via Delhi and, arriving early one morning at Government House, he leaned out of the truck to ask the Gurkha sentry for directions. A large black limousine sped out of the gates and came to an abrupt stop.

    Jenkins was confronted by an irate Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief Indian Army, demanding to know “what a scruffy officer was thinking of addressing a sentry on guard duty”.

    Jenkins returned to the battalion with his truck loaded with several huge rum barrels hidden under bales of straw after what he described as “a very important mission devoid of any military significance”. Coincidentally, Auchinleck, then a lieutenant, had been stationed at Gyantse in 1906, in command of the escort to the trade agent.

    1/1 GR was transferred to the Indian Army and Jenkins joined the 1st/7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles (1/7 GR) in Rangoon, Burma. In January 1948, on Burmese Independence Day, he was in command of the guard of honour at the residence of the Governor General and lowered the Union Jack for the last time.

    His battalion then moved to Seremban, Malaya, at the beginning of the 11-year Emergency to counter the activities of communist terrorists. In March 1949, he was leading a patrol in the jungle when his batman was shot in the head and killed.

    In June 1953, Jenkins returned to England to represent 1/7 GR in the marching contingent of the Brigade of Gurkhas at the Coronation.

    Early the following year he sailed from Liverpool to India in the troopship Lancashire where, at the height of a storm in the Mersey estuary, he encountered Flight Sister Julia Inkpen, who had been grounded after a Korean War evacuation air accident. 

    Months later, on February 12 1955,  the couple were married by the Bishop of Barrackpore. Posted to a Gurkha recruiting depot with Mt Kanchenjunga as a backcloth, “Julia soon got used to our metal bath tub and the ‘Thunderbox’ for ‘essentials’. ” The Jenkinses joined the village life of Darjeeling.

    His time in India ended in April 1957, and  he rejoined 1/7 GR in Malaya during the final phase of the Emergency. After staff and technical training in England, in 1963 he was posted to Sarawak, north Borneo, during the Confrontation with Indonesia.

    In August 1966, intelligence reports indicated that Lieutenant Sumbi, an Indonesian army officer, was planning a raid across the border into Brunei with a force of about 50 men. Jenkins, then a major, in command of a company of 1/7 GR, set off in pursuit.

    The terrain consisted of high, cliff-strewn mountains covered in dense jungle and ravines swollen with incessant monsoon rains. The operation took two weeks and resulted in the capture of most of Sumbi’s force. Sumbi was also caught and provided information of great value. Jenkins was awarded an MC. The citation paid tribute to his grim determination and inspirational leadership.

    In 1966 1/7 GR moved to Hong Kong, and in 1969 Jenkins assumed command of the battalion. A year later the 1st and 2nd battalions were amalgamated to form the 7th Gurkha Rifles.

    After an appointment as one of three Military Directors of Studies at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, in 1977 he was appointed Senior Military Officer at the high security establishment at Porton Down. In 1979 he took early retirement from the Army in the rank of colonel.

    He replied to an advertisement for the position of appeals officer and for the next 15 years worked tirelessly to raise considerable funds for two linked charities for the physically disabled, the Enham Village Centre in Andover and the Papworth Village Settlement near Cambridge.

    He was Regimental Trustee at the Gurkha Museum, Winchester, and with his wife Julia, to whom he was devoted, ran a rural Meals on Wheels service around Andover.

    In May 2008, the 14th Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in Dharamsala, visited Rhodes House, Oxford, for a group audience of “The British in Tibet”, represented by family relations of people who had travelled in pre-1950 independent Tibet.

    Jenkins was one of five old Tibet hands then still living; he was asked to join the Dalai Lama on the stage, where he was embraced.

    Alan Jenkins’s wife Julia predeceased him and he is survived by his elder sister, two sons and a daughter.

    Alan Jenkins, born June 14 1927, died March 14 2022

    A fitting BTL comment:

    no-one important
    16 HRS AGO
    One by one we are losing people of tremendous character, people who have endured much and learned the secrets and lessons of simple humanity. It occurs to me that a moment’s study would indicate that worthy replacements are somewhat thin on the ground these days.
    My mother is about the same age as Colonel Jenkins and his story has made me all the more determined to record, somehow, her memories of the last ninety years. Thank you.

    * * *

    Back in the mid-70s I had the privilege of working briefly with a Company of Gurkhas, and my admiration of them remains as strong as ever.

  16. The horrific final moments of three victims that lay bare the brutality of Kremlin’s thugs. 12 April 2022.

    Bucha has come to epitomise the horrifying war crimes perpetrated in Ukraine.

    The images which emerged from this town around 35 miles north-west of Kyiv at the beginning of this month gave the world its first glimpse of the viciousness of the Russian army.

    The Ukrainian troops who liberated it from the Russians discovered the decomposing bodies of civilians by the roadside.

    I’m not going to go through these three “cases” not least because one can not rely on either the neutrality or the accuracy of the reporting. I’m just going to make some general observations.

    The Ukrainians made much of arming civilians at the beginning of this business. A practice that is not only illegal but will get you; if caught, shot by any opposing force in any War. Weapons of course are the first thing to be removed when policing the battlefield afterwards so no evidence would exist to prove involvemment in such activity.

    The other thing to notice is that in all these stories of atrocities I haven’t read of the recovery of the body of a single Russian soldier; anywhere in theatre, let alone Bucha. This it must be remembered is on the site of a supposedly fiercely contested struggle, where we are told, they sustained heavy losses. The only reasonable conclusion is that they must all have been removed by the Russians themselves and disposed of. If true this could have been by the much publicised “Mobile Crematoriums” that accompanied their forces or they were shipped back to Russia. Either way one wonders why they didn’t remove all traces of their “crimes” at the same time.

    The “Mass Graves” one might also point out are not only hygienically essential to prevent the spread of disease but actually serve as the means of the preservation of the remains of casualties.Their incarceration in plastic bags, along with their belongings (identification, mobile phones etc.) even more so. If these were deliberate atrocities why didn’t they let them rot or simply burn the bodies and remove all the evidence? A solution easily available to modern forces.

    I am extraordinarily sceptical about the Ukrainian claims. That some incidents took place is almost certain, just on the basis of Statistics and a cursory knowledge of modern war. That the Russians set out with deliberate intent is almost certainly untrue.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10709259/DAN-RIVERS-reports-harrowing-scenes-uncovered-Ukrainian-liberators-Bucha.html

  18. Three weeks on, a Ukrainian family still awaits a promised British refuge

    The entrepreneurial spirit of the Cross Channel Human Traffickers should harness this by organising a route from Ukraine via Calais and other French ports so that these families can travel by dinghy to Dover where they will be given immediate refuge and 4 star hotel accommodation rather than the shabby domestic spare bedrooms that are currently on offer with weeks of delay.

  19. Tom Slater
    Why is Durham trying to ‘decolonise’ maths?
    11 April 2022, 5:02pm

    Is maths racist? That’s the question apparently troubling the department of mathematical sciences at Durham University at the moment. As the Telegraph reports, the department has put out a new guide on ‘decolonisation’, urging maths academics to ensure their teaching is ‘more inclusive’ and not dominated by a Eurocentric view on the world.

    Of course, exploring the overlooked contribution of non-western thinkers to mathematics would be no bad thing. But this guide goes a fair bit further down the ‘decolonisation’ rabbit hole. It urges academics to introduce more non-white thinkers into their classes, thus presenting their race as more important than their merit or impact. And it urges academics to ‘discuss how maths can be used to aid attempts to secure equality’ – that is, to turn what should be an objective, academic subject into a form of activism.

    One idea the guide floats is using non-western analogies when describing mathematical concepts: ‘To give an example from statistics, two common examples of Simpson’s paradox involve survivors of the Titanic, and enrolment in an American University, both examples from the western world. But there is also an example one can cite which is based on the representation of the under-representation of Maori in New Zealand jury pools.’

    It would be tempting to read this as the work of one administrator high on virtue or something stronger. But when it comes to wokeness seeping into mathematics, Durham isn’t an isolated case. Last year, in California, a state-education panel considered various reforms aimed at rooting out ‘white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom’. Woke educationalists even argued that ‘upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers’ was part of a nefarious, covert system of racial domination via long division and algebra.

    ‘Decolonisation’ has been a hot topic on British campuses since the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. It amounts to ridding various subjects of their alleged ‘Eurocentrism’ and championing alternative, non-western thinkers and ‘forms of knowledge’. Once a fringe academic tendency, ‘decolonisation’ activists now have the ear of our most esteemed institutions of learning. In June 2020, Oxford University announced plans to ‘decolonise’ its maths and science degrees.

    Many top universities have tried to have their cake and eat it here – to indulge the ‘decolonisers’ while not becoming complete relativists. ‘The maths curriculum our students learn remains the same’, said a Durham spokesman in response to the Telegraph story. ‘But we also encourage students to be more aware of the global and diverse origins of the subject, and the range of cultural settings that have shaped it. Two plus two will always equal four.’

    But the Durham guide still urges staff to essentially racialise maths, to treat race as a key consideration when compiling course materials and teaching students. This politicised approach to mathematics not only undermines what should be an objective discipline, it also patronises ethnic-minority students. They are presumed to be incapable of appreciating this subject unless it is presented to them with a more ‘diverse’ face.

    Elsewhere, as we saw in California last year, the attempts to introduce racial politics into maths is bred of a more clear-cut contempt for ethnic-minority people. Luckily, the state-education panel rejected the genuinely racist notion that expecting black children to get the right answer was itself racist. But across the US ‘gifted and talented’ programmes for high-flyers in various subjects are now on the way out, over claims that black children can’t possibly benefit from them.

    These attempts to rid maths of its alleged white supremacy make two things crystal clear. First, that identity politics in education is no longer confined to the arts and humanities – even maths and the hard sciences aren’t safe from such relativism. Second, for all their talk of ‘decolonisation’, it is woke activists who think of ethnic minorities as lesser beings, incapable of mastering ‘western’ subjects unless those subjects are completely rewired beforehand.

    Is maths racist? Of course not. But the woke assault on maths most definitely is.

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

    Sam • 15 hours ago
    When one of my closest friends attended Imperial College (where you find some of the best maths courses in the world) and studied pure maths – he found himself on a course with 110 people. Of that number, 103 were male, and 90 were either Indian or Chinese. Maths is about one of the least representative fields of study in the UK, and at no point did any of these non-Western students complain or struggle because the curriculum didn’t attempt to divine wisdom from their native cultures. This decolonisation is ideological, nothing more, nothing less, and (ironically) satisfies the ideological predilections of a bunch of narcissistic white activists with nothing better to do.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-durham-trying-to-decolonise-maths-

      1. Ho, ho, ho – wot wit so early in the morning! It DIFFERENTIATES you from the REMAINDER

      2. Perhaps more students with a TAN would help, COS then they would be more represented? Perhaps I ought to LOG off for a while?

      4. Fortunately not all universities are following this idea, Durham represents only a vulgar fraction of the possible establishments, and is the lowest common denominator of them.

    2. The Liverpool photo was some weeks ago, I think…. When masks were still worn.

      2. I ate my porridge with a Womble spoon this morning.

        (The runcible one was not available).

        2. It is a tricky matter as to the origin of the runcible spoon and the various designs that exist.

          But for simplicity your unavailable device is now marketed as a ‘spork’. (Spoon & fork, contraction of)

  24. Good morning all , very wet morning here .

    Why are MP’s lives more precious than their constituents.

    This government have allowed 4,500 people this year so far, who have turned up on on our beaches , bed and breakfasted , unchecked .. and previous arrivals have committed many terrible crimes .

    1. Been raining here but not much more than drizzle now.
      OH has an irritating cough now – running round the tennis court yesterday morning did him no good at all.
      I seem to have shaken it off but he’s had a relapse.

        1. “Every time I feel like exercising I lie down until the feeling passes. It works perfectly.”
          Oscar Wilde. If he’d moderated his absinthe habit, he’d have made it past 46.

    1. Activists. It’s always been like this since the days of Jack Straw. Though his leanings were in a different direction. Pres of the NUS job is seen as the route to power. It’s why respectable students have nothing to do with them.

      1. Quite – Straw was a rabble-rousing trouble maker at the NUS – and the rest of his career was downhill.

      2. Yes.
        I wonder how many remember the student protest movement of the ’60s to the ’80s and wonder where the ringleaders and participants are now?

    2. A Lefty union headed by an Islamic. Antisemitism is its default setting. The only surprise is why anyone is surprised.

    3. One wonders if the NUS is aware that all Arabs, regardless of faith or ideology, are also Semites.

  26. Just had a power glitch that wiped out the computer and the internet connection. EMP? GCHQ? Russian Cyber Attack? Who knows?

      1. Morning Phizzee. It hasn’t affected the Domestic Circuitry. The Microwave clock is still reading the set time and everything else is still on. Ergo my comment above!

  27. Just had apower glitch that wiped out the computer and the internet connection. EMP? GCHQ? Russian Cyber Attack? Who knows?

  28. 351964+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 12 April: Three weeks on, a Ukrainian family still awaits a promised British refuge

    Gettaway as long as that, the one good thing is we must,at long last filled the indigenous social housing list as in also every ex veteran has accommodation with a bed NOT in a cell

  29. Only a real killjoy would see the cricket tea as a hazard

    Henry Blofeld, DT 12 April 2022

    Whatever next. Cricket’s tea interval is under serious threat because of the fear that players’ allergies could be awakened by sandwiches, scones, cakes or even, I suppose, the good old cuppa. It is a bit like suggesting that Ian Botham, in his pomp, should not have been allowed to bat because he would bring the opposing bowlers out in spots.

    Recent times have not been easy on the cricket tea, with Covid prompting many clubs to take their own food to matches. This is a sad development indeed. Cricket teas have always been as much a part of the game as WG Grace’s beard. At grassroots level, where most cricket is played, the wonderful teas supplied so often, even in these politically correct times, by the players’ wives and partners are just about the most important part of the day – and woe betide any club that fails to pass muster.

    I well remember playing for Hoveton & Wroxham in my teens in deepest north-east Norfolk. At the tea interval we all trooped across a grass field to the large old barn where Hilda Hunn, the groundsman’s wife, and Joan Yallop, who was married to our captain, had their work cut out trying to restrict me to one cream cake. Hoveton teas were unrivalled, and all the players knew it.

    Village cricket was hard fought, it aroused great local interest and, above all, it was not standardised. No nonsense about a 20-minute tea interval. Hilda and Joan were every bit as important to the day as the players or the (often rather curious) umpires.

    Anyone who seriously advocates the dissolution of the cricket tea must be devoid of any romantic feeling or understanding of the game, especially the cricket played in so many villages and small towns. Unfortunately, one can see here the dead hand of bureaucracy and dear old ’Elf-an-safety. Only killjoys could consider the cricket tea as outdated and unimportant, let alone a health hazard.

    Having got that off my chest, it would be interesting to know how many people have suffered an allergic reaction to cricket tea. I am sure that Hilda and Joan never sparked off anyone’s allergy in all their years in the Barn at Hoveton.

    In these days of instant communication, surely visiting sides could alert their hosts of any allergy sufferers among their number. But maybe that is too vague a remedy and will not tick all the boxes our bureaucrats require.

    I suppose I am lucky to be here to write this piece after all the dangerous teas I must have eaten around the world in more than 50 years of writing and broadcasting about the game.

    And I have always gone for those enticing extras; the cornets and cakes gushing with cream and sprinkled with this, that and the other. I can remember a most interesting concoction of local fruit, masses of sugar, oodles of cream – at least I think it was cream – in Berbice, deep in the cane fields of Guyana. More than delicious and I am pretty sure some rum was involved. Thinking back, I am not at all sure ’Elf-ansafety would have nodded in approval.

    How sad it would be if the modern Hildas and Joans were to be outlawed and consigned to the history books. The charm of cricket has always gone way beyond the scorebook, and it is important that we find a way of preserving the cricket tea. Imagine Christmas lunch without the pudding and those old sixpenny pieces.

    Hilda Hunn, tea lady from North-East Norfolk? She can make my cricket tea any time. 😉

    1. BTL:

      Neil MacDonald
      10 HRS AGO
      Sometimes you read articles like this and you just want to fall to your knees and cry. Honestly, who are these absolute wet pansies, where do they come from and how do they ever achieve a position of power where they can influence such things. Utter cretins who should stay at home and let the rest of us get on with life

      Delphian Convolutions
      8 MIN AGO
      Cricket is under attack from many directions. The BBC see it as elitist and have decided against TV coverage. TMS has been reduced to screeching women and dreary conversations interrupted by the cricket. Now teas from the health and safety brigade. Soon lunch will be under similar attack. Is there nothing that can be left alone to be enjoyed as it used to be?

      1. The strange thing is that notwithstanding its colonial heritage it is played in over 100 different countries and must be one of the more popular team sports

        1. Nuffink like Wendyball. And Blair made enthusiasm for it compulsory for his entourage, despite none of them having had the advantage of attending Fettes College.

          1. Although it may be very popular it doesn’t require very much skill to play it and enjoy it, compared with cricket, where some level of skill is needed.

      2. How on earth has the population of Blighty increased by about 20 million in my lifetime?
        Are all those additional mouths avoiding cricket teas?

    2. Good morning Grizzly.
      That’s a new one – ‘allergies could be awakened by sandwiches, scones, cakes or even, I suppose, the good old cuppa.’
      Then surely those allergies would have been ‘awakened’ by consuming those everyday foods & beverages at home.
      Should pubs, cafes and restaurants now stop serving those foods in case it ‘awakens’ an allergy?

        1. After all the brainwashing and jabs of the last 2 years, ‘boggling’ is probably all many minds are capable of.

    3. Good morning Grizzly.
      That’s a new one – ‘allergies could be awakened by sandwiches, scones, cakes or even, I suppose, the good old cuppa.’
      Then surely those allergies would have been ‘awakened’ by consuming those everyday foods & beverages at home.
      Should pubs, cafes and restaurants now stop serving those foods in case it ‘awakens’ an allergy?

    4. Just another attack using safety as a disguise on our history and Institutions. You don’t see them banning halal slaughter in the back gardens of Bradford do you…

      Good morning, Grizz.

      1. Good morning Philip.

        And just when you thought that human stupidity could not plummet any further.

          1. If our leaders had inherited the genes of, say, Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Drake, Arthur Wellesley and Sir Winston Churchill; the security of the realm would never have been compromised, Eddy.

    5. Good morning Grizzly.

      Years ago we lived next to a cricket ground . Husband and eldest son used to play… and were members for a good few years .

      I used to prepare the cricket teas , freshly made rolls , sandwiches , home made scones , cakes etc … and best of all home grown tomatoes lettuce and radishes .. a veritable banquet. Eggs were free range , watercress locally grown .. and in those days our local butcher used to sell jars of potted beef ,tasty fresh , just right for rolls and watercress..

      The guys ate everything , nothing left ..

      1. Good morning TB, and the others.
        Hope you are fully recovered.
        I wonder if ham sandwiches might cause any allergies, or perhaps prawn & mayo? Silly me, even fresh bread can be unwholesome.

        1. That’ll be the thinking behind all this stupidity. Bacon sandwiches are far too obvious.

        2. Ham sandwiches?! Wash your mouth out. Can’t possibly serve ham sandwiches, especially if that cricketer who made all that fuss last year and his friends are in the team.

      2. Magical. Hope they paid you for your trouble. At least for the ingredients.

        Good morning, Belle.

        1. The only danger would have been from jam squirting from the scones onto the front of their whites.

      4. Good morning, Maggie. I wish I’d been there to sample your excellent fare.
        Mum (and her friends) did the same when dad played for his pit team.

        1. A functioning EV in the opening credits! I remember seeing some of the series and enjoyed them.

    6. Morning Grizzly. It is the same arrogant mentality that tells an architect living in a mansion, that his home needs to be upgraded in order for him to entertain a Ukrainian family as his guests. The petty mentality of power mad jobworth’s that make things difficult because they can.

    7. When MB and I are asked about food allergies, I give the waitering person a winning smile and reply “Sorry, we’re the wrong age”.

    8. While Miss Hunn filled her bun,
      All of Wroxham got some,
      Hmm, does ‘Yallop’ rhyme with dollop or scallop?

    9. The important principle here is that if you’ve got allergies, it’s up to you to avoid the causes of them. Other people are not responsible for your safety.
      A failure to digest cow’s milk runs in my family. I have had to sit by while other people enjoyed delicious food many times before I discovered lactase tablets and lactose free milk. I never required everyone else to starve as well!

      1. WE all love blue cheese, except Second Son, as it makes him throw… so, he doesn’t eat it.
        Simples.

      1. That’s what I was hoping for, Tom. I would have loved to have sampled her cricket tea.

  30. Prevent is ‘failing’, say terror experts after murderer Ali Harbi Ali deceived officials. 12 April 2022.

    Ali Harbi Ali was on Monday found guilty of murdering Sir David Amess during a constituency meeting in October 2021.

    He had been referred to the Government’s beleaguered deradicalisation programme, Prevent, seven years earlier, but after only one meeting was left unchecked to carry out the attack.

    Analysis by The Telegraph showed that the scheme has failed to stop numerous terrorists in the last five years, with six of the 11 most recent significant attacks carried out by individuals who had been referred to it.

    It was only ever a political distraction from dealing with Islam as an existential menace! The people who run it are PC Numpties who would believe anything that they were told!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/11/prevent-failing-say-terror-experts-murderer-ali-harbi-ali-deceived/

    1. They hear what they want to hear. At least some of them paid the ultimate price. Might be a lesson to others, eventually.

      1. Must have been a mis-trial or mistaken identity. We need to waste a few million more with appeals.

        1. Fortunately, the chap admitted that he had done it (despite pleading not guilty) ad said he’d do it again. An appeal is improbable…!

      2. Apparently, the evidence was overwhelming. By pleading not guilty, Ali Harbi Ali put Sir David’s family through unnecessary stress and pain by having to listen to what this Islamic scum did to their loved one.

    3. The whole idea of prevent is foolish. These people are motivated by religious fanaticism. Now I would count myself as religious but not a fanatic and you could not change my mind come hell or high water. People did not go to the stake to be burned by Bloody Mary out of fanaticism but because of sincere conviction. So how do these naïve officials really think they can change the mind of a fanatic who’s religious too? These people follow a religion which promises them heaven if they die in the process of taking out infidels, the more the better. And Muslims are taught this from the moment they are old enough to have a coherent thought. It is also a religion that teaches them it is OK to fool the enemy in pursuing your purpose. So by what criteria can you possibly tell when such a person has been “reformed”. The simple answer is you can’t. You either jail them for life, kill them, or you deport them back from whence they came.

    4. Like the two misguided young people who were murdered by the knifeman on the bridge a couple of years ago. ‘Prevent’ did nothing to prevent the killer from killing them.

      1. Those were the ones i was alluding to. Other innocents died too because of their misguided ideology.

    5. The only effective Prevent action is to deport every single muslim and never let them back in.

      2. “Take Matthew Taylor, for instance, the NHS Confederation chief executive. A grand title which makes him sound like a life-long health service professional.

        The ‘brutal truth’, as he would put it, is that Taylor is a longtime Labour Party hack, a failed parliamentary candidate who was head of Tory Blair’s policy unit and ran the so-called Rapid Rebuttal unit designed to expose Tory ‘lies’.”

  32. Nicked

    Education Secretary promises new Ofsted powers in crackdown on illegal schools

    The Education Secretary has pledged a crackdown on illegal schools, which
    it is thought tens of thousands of children in England could be
    attending.

    Nadhim Zahawi confirmed there would be “stronger
    powers” for the schools watchdog Ofsted to tackle such settings, with
    new legislation planned requiring councils to maintain a register of
    children who are not in school.

    Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda
    Spielman said such schools are often run by people from “very separate
    communities”, including religious ones, who view the separation as
    “extremely important”.

    She described conditions in some “that you wouldn’t want to put a dog in, let alone a child”
    That’ll be the “Far-Right” they’re so worried about I suppose?? You know,small arms training and readings of Mein Kampf and the whole “White Supremacy” thing……
    Oh wait…………….

    1. That’ll be Church of England schools they are gunning for.

      The cheek of it – teaching children the Lord’s Prayer.

      1. But they might then be getting Alan’s Snack Bar to serve school meals! 🤔

        1. 351964 + up ticks,
          Morning AOE,
          All busy on the parliamentary canteen halal inclusive menu

          2. 351964+ up ticks,

            Evening AOE,
            I recognise them as parliamentary
            porkies, pro election fodder for fools,
            very addictive.

      2. Let’s be honest Bill a lot of kids today don’t have the faintest clue who or where their fathers are.

    2. Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda
      Spielman said such schools are often run by people from “very separate
      communities”, including religious ones, who view the separation as
      “extremely important”.

      Well if that is the case muz Spielman they shouldn’t be in the UK should they.

      FFS our political classes seem to be in a queue to eff something else up.

      1. 351964+ up ticks,

        Morning RE

        With continuing input from a majority of the electorate they the politico’s / coalition have done extremely well in the f… up department.
        All carefully orchestrated.

        1. These political people are a total outrage nothing is safe any more.
          They have for the past 25 years (since Blair) been hell bent on destroying our social structure and long established British Culture.

          1. 351964+ up ticks,

            Afternoon RE,
            Lest we forget we could NEVER have got into such a state of shite as a country without the majority input of the electorate every time since Thatcher got knifed.

    3. They have absolutely no intention to do anything about it. The mass grooming and sexual abuse of young girls being a prime example.

  33. OT. Yesterday afternoon, the MR ordered 30 lavender plants (a lavender hedge planted four years ago has died). They arrived ten minutes ago. Beautiful plants – meticulously wrapped and packed. And P&P was LESS than it would have cost us in petrol to go over to Heacham and collect them.

    Smiles all round.

    1. What company Bill. I’m looking for lavender to put in pots to keep Clematis roots, also in pots cool.

        2. Nice selection too. But why is it I’m always attracted to the ones that are out of stock?

        1. They will be in separate pots. The lavender will be in smaller pots around the Clematis pots in order to keep the clematis roots cool. I would rather like to do box, but that would take to long.

    3. Do you know what killed the previous hedge? I would be wary of planting them in the same place.

      1. My outdoor staff deal with this.

        A previous hedge – 40 years old – had run its course. We took it out and, four years ago, replaced with new plants. About half of those have expired. We realised early on that they were not very healthy plants. Hence the new ones. Nothing wrong with the soil.

  34. Morning all.
    Some one yesterday mentioned their dishwasher had gone wrong and they might have to have a new one. But they were worried because it was integrated.
    The front panel comes off, there are a few screws that hold them in place you would be able to remove the front panel and use it on the new DW as long as the new one is integrated. I think you can get the replacements installed by the suppliers.

    1. Our integrated dishwasher failed due to the combined pump/heater bit going wrong as well, a replacement unit cost more than a new dishwasher. Fitting the new integrated unit was not straightforward and although I usually am quite happy to do most household repairs I’m glad I left this one to the two chaps who sweated and cursed for a good hour on the task .

      1. When we had our new kitchen we reverted to slot in dishwashers etc because of this problem. A clasic looks over practcality. It will be so easy to replace in the future.

        2. Problems can be caused by the pipework being too high up and stopping the DW from going back into the aperture it’s all a bit on the tight side, this to keep the margins in line the the adjacent units.

        3. My dishwashing sponge sits on the sink, my dishwashing brush hangs on a hook behind the sink, my dishwashing detergent is in a Sqezy bottle on the sink, and my dish-drying tea-towels hang on another hook beside the oven.

    2. That was probably me – sadly our front panel is rather more complicated – not just a few screws! We seem to have the same problem as Daz – while I did manage to replace a built in oven a while ago this looks a lot more complicated all round. The outfit that are listed on the NEFF website under – “new kitchens or replacment units”, who actually supplied the new kitchen, have responded to our enquiry with “we don’t do repairs [or replacement units], just whole kitchens” I doubt we’ll recommend them again!

      1. Ours was done by the fitting service of the appliance shop. They took the old one away, too, for scrap.

    3. Happened to us a couple of years ago.
      The door panel (kitchen style) came off the old one with about 3-4 screws and was screwed to the new. Pipes etc all attached, then just slid the new one into place.
      Remember to buy a dishwasher for fitting into the kitchen, not a freestanding – the doors are made differently.

      1. An old friend had the same problem Obs I fitted their new kitchen around 20 years ago they couldn’t get the replacement DW right back into the space and one of the base unit doors wouldn’t open. I was asked to go and sort it out but hadn’t been well enough. The poor bugger died from a Heart attack followed by a fatal stroke. My suspicion was from the covid booster.

    3. Because they are not the envy of the world. Its become just an activists organisation and far to large to manage.

    4. And, if the NHS is the envy of the world, how come no other country seems to have adopted the model?

    6. Cancer is now a public health emergency

      Restoring face to face appointments with GPs is only the start of what needs to be done to tackle it

      J MEIRION THOMAS • 10 April 2022 • 11:00am

      Lancet Oncology has reported that a third of cancer patients in the UK are diagnosed in A&E where they present with acute symptoms associated with advanced disease and a poor prognosis. A comparison was made with A&E admissions in six other high-income countries and the UK patients fared the worst. In other words, we are failing to diagnose cancer early enough in the UK and many patients are dying unnecessarily.

      The data was based on patients admitted to A&E between 2012 and 2017. For that reason, the authors warned that the pandemic has likely caused the situation to deteriorate further due to restricted patient access to their GPs and because hospitals were forced to give priority to Covid patients.

      Sadly, it is well known that cancer survival in the UK lags behind other comparable countries. The most likely cause is a delay in diagnosis following onset of symptoms and this must be tackled. Better still, the diagnosis of cancer in asymptomatic patients must be improved by screening. Earlier diagnosis and treatment offers the only hope of improving survival. This can be achieved if Government, doctors and the public play their part.

      First, it is essential that timely patient access to GPs is restored. Remote consultations may have a place but elderly patients especially are more likely to declare red-flag symptoms during a personal encounter which also offers greater diagnostic opportunities for the GP. Advancing age is the greatest single risk factor for developing cancer.

      But patients must also take some personal responsibility for earlier diagnosis. The UK offers screening services for breast, cervix and bowel cancer but uptake hovers at 70-75 per cent for breast and only 55 per cent for bowel. The incidence of cervical cancer is rapidly on the decline as a result of efficient screening and vaccination of girls (and boys) before they become sexually active against the human papilloma virus. This has been a significant success story. The highly effective UK National Breast Cancer Screening Programme offers women aged 50-75 regular mammography which diagnoses cancer early and, in most patients, will avoid the need for a mastectomy.

      Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer and the second most common cause of death from cancer. It is particularly amenable to screening because benign polyps are the precursor. Usually over five years, the polyps grow and become malignant. They bleed as they grow and blood can be identified in the stool by the FIT test (Faecal Immunochemical Test). Patients over 50 years of age are offered this test every two years and patients who do not participate may be doing themselves a huge disservice. Once bowel cancer spreads beyond the bowel wall, the prognosis plummets.

      It is now well recognised that life-style choices contribute to as many as 40 per cent of cancers and heading the list of risks are obesity, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. Obesity, an avoidable personal choice, is associated with breast, uterine (endometrial), prostate, kidney, bowel and oesophageal cancers. Smoking, as every packet warns, is responsible for lung, oesophageal, head and neck and bladder cancer. Alcohol is related to pancreatic and oesophageal cancer. Many of these behaviour patterns occur together, resulting in a significant and increasing burden to the NHS.

      It would be a start if the importance of life-style induced cancers were stressed in schools. If children are old enough to be introduced to sexual education, they are old enough to know that smoking, alcohol and obesity can cause cancer.

      Early cancer diagnosis is a public health emergency that can no longer be ignored. Tackling it will require proactive public education, improving GP services, rapid access to investigations, timely delivery of results and urgent referral to specialist care.

      J Meirion Thomas is a consultant surgeon

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/10/cancer-now-public-health-emergency/

    7. I caught a glimpse of the Doctor on Morning TV and he was telling people to get in touch with their GPs if they thought they had a health problem.
      Perhaps he hasn’t heard yet what has been going on …………..

      1. Even when you do manage to get past Cerberus the receptionist, the doctor just ignores what you say and says it’s irrelevant and nothing to worry about (even though the reason you sought a response in the first place was because your original doctor – who has since retired – said to seek medical help if it happened!).

        1. With ours it’s like talking to a brick wall.
          We have used the same surgery for over 40 years and the now retired doctors use to be brilliant.

  36. Liz Truss threatens to go after Putin following claims Ukrainian troops were hit by substance dropped from a drone that left them unable to breathe – just as Zelensky warned Moscow plans to use them.

    Liz Truss WOW…….Go Girl!

    1. This is yet another one of those things that the West has been rattling on about for weeks now. If you are rational you do tend to think that all the preparatory work and false claims by Truss, Biden, and the usual suspects, is a set up. It’s all part and parcel of depicting Putin as a latter day Hitler with his own Mein Kampf. Which is exactly how they have been trying to portray him. A bunch of disgusting frauds pointing the finger to divert from their own guilt.

      1. Exactly – reports say the “substance” is unidentified, and the Ukrainians apparently on the receiving end claim it left them unable to breathe. Well, they would do!

  39. Oh dear. It never rains but it pours.

    Lunch out at the garden centre yesterday. Two hours later i had chills, nausea, stomach cramps and my forehead was hot. Classic symptoms of food poisoning. I won’t go in to all the gory details. Suffice it to say i had to change the bedding in the middle of the night and my underwear several times.

    I have contacted the local regulatory body and copied to the garden centre. I told them i personally do not intend to take any further action but my concern was a lot of their customers are elderly and may not fare so well.

      3. Because it has a restaurant and i have eaten there before with no trouble. Silly boy !

        1. Our local garden centre has a restaurant and it is quite good too. It’s actually a very pleasant place for somewhere to eat, surrounded by plants and the fragrance of flowers.

      1. Better today but i daren’t stray far from the loo. At least the nausea has gone. That was horrible.
        Thanks.

        1. I was told that you should always eat, preferably plain things like dry toast. It helps to get rid of the bug apparently. But steer clear of sugars and dairy products. I have taken that advice and it does seem to help.

        2. I was told that you should always eat, preferably plain things like dry toast. It helps to get rid of the bug apparently. But steer clear of sugars and dairy products. I have taken that advice and it does seem to help.

        3. I was told that you should always eat, preferably plain things like dry toast. It helps to get rid of the bug apparently. But steer clear of sugars and dairy products. I have taken that advice and it does seem to help.

        4. I was told that you should always eat, preferably plain things like dry toast. It helps to get rid of the bug apparently. But steer clear of sugars and dairy products. I have taken that advice and it does seem to help.

      1. Don’t be cruel to the poor chap. Running out in your underwear can be very embarrassing.

      1. I don’t believe it was a serious bout but it was most unpleasant. The symptoms were quite clearly a dose of poisoning.

        2. Hope you kept the evidence in a polythene bag for the Public Health Lab to analyse.

          2. Then send it by DHL to the outfit that denies that you have had food poisoning.

          3. I am waiting for the email from the council to tell me where to send it. If they don’t respond today i’m sending all the correspondence to Souella Braverman my MP. She is already going after the skiving GP’ here.

    5. It’s nasty- I had a bout of food poisoning after a meal in a popular restaurant in CT. Up all night with all the usual symptoms. Thank gawd for an en suite loo!

    8. Oh dear that’s horrible Phizz.
      There was a feature on TV last week about council inspectors in restaurant kitchens, they hadn’t been out checking for some time, it looked as if the damage was long ago not in the recent past. We are in the hands of the owners but in many cases it’s perfectly obvious they don’t value their customers.

      1. I don’t live in Portsmouth now but when i checked the food standards agency ratings on takeaways not one of them scored more than one. That was pre-pandemic.

  40. No BTL comments allowed:

    Parents should question their attitudes on race if their toddler only has white friends, according to the BBC’s early-years guidance.

    The BBC’s Tiny Happy People website, a bank of resources for parents, includes a section on talking about race and religion with young children, written by the author and activist Uju Asika.

    The site says that “for white mums or dads, it might be time to examine your own internal biases”.

    It explains: “Did your family express negative thoughts about foreigners and immigrants? What is your social circle like today? Does your child have Black or Brown friends over for playdates? Could you be doing more?”

    Educators described the resource as “inappropriate” and “clearly not impartial”.

    The guide was drawn up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and written by Ms Asika, author of the book How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World which gives advice on microaggressions.

    Ms Asika wrote last year on a blog about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey that “the Royal family is racist” and “sitting on a legacy of global subjugation, pillaging and slave trading wealth”.

    She suggested that parents could explain Megxit to children by saying “real life isn’t a fairytale, look how the prince and his duchess rescued each other”.

    The Duchess of Cambridge helped to create Tiny Happy People, describing its launch in the summer of 2020 as “gold dust for families, giving tips and tools to use particularly in those first five years”.

    The Duchess of Cambridge in a primary school play garden
    The Duchess of Cambridge meets parents as she marks the launch of Tiny Happy People in 2020 CREDIT: Kensington Palace/AP
    Parents are told in the BBC resource that “studies reveal that by age two, children start sorting themselves into groups showing what is known as in-group bias”, such as “excluding” children who are less like them in the playground.

    “According to research, even babies at three months old can tell different races apart,” the webpage says.

    Parents are urged to introduce children to racism by being kind, using inclusive language, being as direct as possible and being role models by “educating yourself” through books and TV shows.

    It is also suggested that parents “could talk about how being white might give you certain advantages – for instance you are more likely to see people who look like you on TV”.

    HAVE YOU NOT SEEN ANY TV ADVERTS IN THE LAST FEW YEARS DUCKY?

    “However, white people can choose to use their advantages to help make people a fairer world for all,” the guide says.

    The guide was criticised for singling out white people. Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, a former teacher and education expert at the campaign group Don’t Divide Us, said: “It’s clearly not impartial, it’s putting an intolerable burden on schools and on teachers.

    “It is inappropriate and can very easily have unintended negative consequences.”

    She advocated a “colour-blind” approach to racism by viewing everyone as fundamentally equal, “rather than trying to create a false plurality from the top through division and micro-management which kills curiosity and creates fear of asking the questions”.

    ‘Self-styled experts’
    A mother of two young children, who wished to be anonymous, told The Telegraph: “It assumes that self-styled experts are needed to educate everyone on racial difference. I’m of mixed ethnicity and find this kind of article from the BBC extremely condescending.”

    The BBC was previously criticised over resources on its BBC Bitesize schools website describing “white privilege”, an ideology that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities rejected as potentially helping white working-class pupils fall behind.

    A BBC spokesman said: “Tiny Happy People offers a wealth of resources, covering a variety of topics that parents can access, should they wish, for help and advice on all areas of development and well-being.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/11/bbc-guide-tells-parents-examine-biases-toddler-has-white-friends/

    I reckon we’ll have to wait till Hell Freezes Over before the Conservatives would ever scrap the BBC Licence-Fee.

      1. Tell me about it, Phizzee! One of our sons in law is black, and so our grand-twins are mixed race! (Yes, that is what they are called this week!) His family are the most racist bunch I’ve ever come across! The wedding was excruciatingly segregated and they all stuck together, with no mixing with the whiteys. Apart from our guest footballer, they just didn’t talk to anyone except the family!
        Edit: sorry Phizzee! I hope you’re feeling much better! Read the response from the cooncil! What a load!

        1. A missed opportunity. Sad really. Still, at least you have two beautiful grandchildren. Sod the rest of them.

    2. 86% of the population in England are white. Does this ignorant women have any idea that there are many places, like the village I live in, where everyone is white apart from the local Indian Restaurant and the Chinese Take Away. So, are the parents here supposed to demand that non-native children be bussed in like curiosities from a zoo, so that the native children can be taught how to be racists and suffer white guilt in their own native country? Just to cater to the perverse real racists like this woman who would be better off returning from whence she or her ancestors came.

      1. The small town in CT in which I lived and worked was 95% white. There were a handful of black and Asian kids in the schools but not many. It was decided to bus in some black kids from Hartford City Schools, a couple of days a week. It was a resounding failure. The Hartford kids resented being there, no matter how pleasant everyone was and I think they felt like a sort of exhibit. It was discontinued fairly soon.

        1. The situation though, I think you will agree, is different in England. There really is such a thing as a native population, it goes back according to DNA studies, to the end of the ice age. We have been here a long time and we are white and we are, by far, the majority of the population. I resent a black Nigerian lecturing me or any other English person about racism. We have the right to be who we are and she does not have the right to tell us what she wants us to be. I would not, and I doubt that you would, go to Nigeria and tell them to change their “racist” ways toward whites simply on the grounds that you were in a minority there. You would respect that it is their country and not for you to tell them how to act in it. The English should start retaliating. Write letters to such people telling them where to get off or return to. If nothing else, they suffer from arrogance and plain bad manners.

          1. That’s true to a point. NE was largely white and states like Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire are still majority white- from the white settlers in 17th century. CT, Mass and RI are closer to NY and there’s been more redistribution.
            The native population in the US has been badly treated for many years but are getting their own back by opening casinos on their reserves in CT and making a fortune. The Mohegans in particular are doing very well and even sponsor a women’s professional basketball team 😉

        2. Since the ANC took over the country has gone to the dogs JHB was a bustling metropolis but now it’s an absolute dump but for where the whites and probably political classes live in gated guarded communities.
          My neighbour is often flying to CT to see her family and she told me of the problem on the trains from Simons Town to CT the drivers are threatened with hand guns and warned told not to stop if a passenger has been robbed and they pull the Communication Chord.
          one of my nieces lives in Somerset West.

      2. I never saw a black child when I was growing up. When my own children were small we had a couple of mixed race families nearby and they played with their children. There were no issues about it.

      3. Only time I ever see a non white person is on the TV… That’s how I like it, I am surrounded by people like me, even including stores like Tesco and M&S..

      4. Black and minority ethnic players account for an estimated 25% of players in the 92 professional football clubs of the Premier League and the Football League.

        White footballers should claim under-representation in their sport.

      5. Our small village, Population estimate, 130, is completely, 100% white.

        Probably too quiet and, at night-time too dark for the BAMEs.

        1. I was trying to think of a word or phrase that described them, along the lines of city parochials, any suggestions would be much appreciated.

    4. Well last night the grand final of Mastermind was hideously white but for the presenter and QM Clive (a decent bloke) Myrie. But what can be done if that actually happens ? The BBC i expect must have tried their very very best for that not to happen.

        1. I saw him Anne it’s stupid there are plenty of reporters who could stand some where and red the script.

    5. “However, white people can choose to use their advantages to help make people a fairer world for all,” the guide says.
      Whoops.

    6. “…for white mums or dads, it might be time to examine your own internal biases.”

      And all the black and brown ones as well. By leaving that part out and just addressing ‘white mums and dads’ she (Ms Asika) is totally racist herself.

      1. Only white people can be racist.

        Of course, this si the shield they hide behind. Quite clearly, she is deeply racist herself and wants a free ride. Typical of Lefties, she’s spoiled, jealous and petty and expects someone else to change to make her life easier.

    7. What happens if you live in an area which is happily free of “diversity”? Do you have to ‘bus your kid to where there are bleks or else?

  41. Is Putin using chemical weapons in Ukraine? 12 April 2022.

    Many, therefore, believe that Putin and his top brass are willing to tolerate unconventional warfare when waged by their allies, and will be asking whether Moscow would be prepared to sign off on such an attack in Ukraine. The country is a signatory to the 1997 Convention on Chemical Weapons and insists it has destroyed its stockpiles of mustard gas, sarin and other toxic agents, while accusing the US of dragging its feet on its own commitments.

    Clear the way there! False Flags coming up!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-putin-using-chemical-weapons-in-ukraine-

    9. Thanks all…… probably won’t make any difference but there certainly should be an enquiry into the jabs.

  44. Crispin Blunt is a silly old fart and made a stupid remark. But why on earth is he being hounded as though he was a mass-murderer? Surely to God we can allow people to say stupid things. What has happened to us?

      1. Of course it is unwise. He is a silly old fool. But in my way of looking at things he is STILL entitled to express a mad view.

        2. Nail on head. We have Freedom of Speech or we have Censorship. There are libel and slander laws for those who libel or slander. Confections such as ‘Hate Speech’ are just Cultural Marxist tools to prevent alternative points of view, or more importantly to the Marxists, have any one else be ‘exposed’ to alternative points of view.

          The other bonus of Freedom of Speech, as you suggest, is that silly old tubes like Blunt can be exposed for their lunatic ways.

  45. Just had a response the the regulatory authority/food. See below.

    They said the place in question has a 5 rating and food and so was unlikely to be the source of the food poisoning. They also said that food poisoning takes between 18 and 24 hours to develop and sometimes up to 10 days.

    I contradicted them on that statement and provided a link to the NHS website that food poisoning symptoms can be as little as 2 hours. Which is what i experienced. I have heard o f cases of the symptoms developing while still in the restaurant.

    They said they couldn’t investigate anyway without a stool sample.

    I said my stomach is still upset…where do i send it?

    They also called it alleged food poisoning.

    I pointed out i had the classic symptoms.

    They said it might not have been the last thing i had eaten.

    I said the only food before that was a home made roast beef dinner the day before and no one else had become ill.

    Feels like a tennis match.

    Sounds like they don’t wish to leave the sofa.

    2. The technocrat/group-think/appeal-to-authority mentality dictates that if you take a corrupt academic and make him Chief Scientist then he must be the ultimate authority. I see the same line of thinking here. The venue has been given a 5 star rating therefore must be infallible. I miss Collis Browne’s Mixture but of course we can’t be trusted with morphine.

    3. For what it is worth, the 5* rating in my experience is meaningless.

      I surveyed a Chinese restaurant in Brighton a few years ago for a restaurateur. There was no lighting in the basement and I worked using a laser and torch. I dropped the torch accidentally and it fell on a duvet in a room where presumably the Chinese cook slept. The duvet was covered with dead bed bugs.

      I waded through excrement where the drains had become blocked with grease and overflowed.

      On leaving the premises I noticed that it had boasted a 5* rating.

      1. This place was last inspected 2nd March 2020 and the council have the cheek to hide behind that.
        There is a butchers shop below the restaurant last inspected 5th September 2021. It got a one.

    4. For what it is worth, the 5* rating in my experience is meaningless.

      I surveyed a Chinese restaurant in Brighton a few years ago for a restaurateur. There was no lighting in the basement and I worked using a laser and torch. I dropped the torch accidentally and it fell on a duvet in a room where presumably the Chinese cook slept. The duvet was covered with dead bed bugs.

      I waded through excrement where the drains had become blocked with grease and overflowed.

      On leaving the premises I noticed that it had boasted a 5* rating.

      1. Oh…thanks. In that case i hope all the elderly diners there at the same time die horribly of food poisoning.

    6. If you’ve had food poisoning you’ll know within 12 hours – because your body will get rid of the poison – that’s why you vomit and have poo.

      Food doesn’t take 10 days to go through your stomach.

      1. Yes. Now they have put another hurdle in the way by saying even if the stool sample does show food poisoning it cannot be linked to the garden centre because i and they don’t have a sample of the food.

        Sounds ludicrous to me. It’s for them to go and collect samples not me.

          1. Already sent to ‘her’. As you well know ‘it won’t make any difference’. That last one was a quote from Alien 2. Poor Newt.

    7. You would hope that behind the public denials of a problem someone will be running around and checking the kitchen for potential problems.

      Sorry, just being an optimist!

      A shame that they no longer sell kaolin and morphine, that always settled the stomach!

      1. There are some chemists around here that still sell that but i’m not sure it would have helped unless i had it for dessert.

        Last inspected 2nd March 2020. My only concern other than having to cope with feeling bloody awful was people with other issues. Lots of elderly diners there when i was.

    8. Yo, Pip. I missed your earlier posts. But, since just before Christmas, a Fish & Chip van has parked outside every Tuesday evening. It’s part of a large operation. I tend not to have the chips, since even a small portion goes off the carbohydrate scale. So last Tuesday I opted for just a cod. Tasted funny. I managed to eat less than a quarter of it. Put the rest in the food waste bin. Opened the bin on Thursday to toss a teabag in, and the stink of rotting fish was overwhelming. Meanwhile, no ill effects, thankfully.

      The van is outside now. Against my better judgement, I ordered another fish. I mentioned last week’s issue to the Asian chap who runs the van. I asked those queuing whether their fish was OK last week. No-one had a problem. Today’s fish was perfect. Think I’ll put it down to experience. While he showed some concern, he didn’t exactly fall over himself to offer a refund for last week’s fish. But he did ask me to let him know if today’s fish wasn’t up to standard.

      On balance, I’d be more concerned if he tasted each fish before he cooked it. Besides, he’s convenient.

      1. I was in Grimsby and three portions of fish were ordered. One of them was quite obviously off and inedible. Fish doesn’t stink unless it is off. Never went back.

        I think it is about storage, timings and temperatures and if they are not on top of those they have no business cooking for the public.

        The fish in batter i had in this instance tasted nice but the batter was very blond which gave me pause. I should have relied on my instincts and sent it back. Eggs old and undercooked even in batter can make you ill.

        When are you coming my way again or do i have to hang around GunWharf and get a worse reputation than i already have !

  47. Johnson and Sunak are fined by the Metropolitan Police for breaking lockdown rules. They wrote the rules and foisted them on the rest of us. Johnson compounded his errors when he lied to Parliament about his partying at Downing Street.

    Johnson should resign.

    2. I disagree. There are lots of reasons why Johnson should go – not least the ridiculous lockdowns. But a slice of birthday cake is trivial. They won’t hang him for that. Should Nuremburg 2 ever take place, it will be a different story.

      1. The difference, Geofff, is in the size of the fine, £50.00 for Boris and his cohort, as opposed to the £10,000 fines meted out to civilians who broke the lockdown laws.

    2. Most people (men and women), these days, take the banal American line and routinely refer to a vulva as a “vagina”. They evidently don’t know their arse from their elbow!

  53. Oooh, Met Police announce that BoJo AND Sunak are both to be fined. ….. Liz Truss delighted ,,,

    2. Good for them, “Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”

      1. This quotation came up in a discussion we were having with our students last week. I found to my surprise that it was attributed to Douglas Bader, the heroic WW2 RAF fighter pilot.

        1. I seem to recall one commentator referring to him as “the famous legless war hero” – I’m not sure if he was offended ir not!

        2. Having attended the Douglas Bader Rehabilitation Centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, I concur. And Still Bleau (below), I honestly believe he would have laughed…

    3. Especially since it wasn’t the £10,000 levied on mere civilian lockdown law breakers.

    5. Not as delighted as Lady Walney, over at the Speccie. If there was a hidden camera at Old Queen Street, there’d be a convincing “When Harry met Sally” tribute.

    6. Although I deplore partying while people were forbidden from seeing their loved ones, there is something equally unpleasant about the politician who supported the draconian rules and didn’t disobey them.
      I would forgive the person who voted against the rules and was caught partying!

  56. Are the police in cahoots with Labour and Khan re bringing Sunak, Boris and his Mrs to heel?

    I feel very uneasy about the rumpus caused , and I cannot bear the idea of Mr Christmas Island Labour head and his team jumping around gleefully.

    1. Six foot wide? I’m amazed any of our “super-sized” residents could squeeze into it.

    2. Hi Maggie. It makes more sense viewed from above…

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b73a7ba7c6dabe8ae656270da258e8897b9bbdd0ac1866f43e92e25e07539bf5.jpg

      Triangular buildings are not uncommon. Locally, I can think of examples in Aldershot, Guildford, and I even had a role in building one in Leatherhead.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/232097f2cc2b587a54f45bc7d7d0a4a65cca289768bb337b12a44252ab001e33.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aa15d372fbbac70e1abe96b0f64a8ee7f469700ac1111ec00dae5329ebf75881.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/383567b83d79b080bd8f7d6f0c1af747a2fba6f6e59a9bcade87a02349d40fa2.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e1e986752c179c10b75fa252813689f103b14fc8b1eb14d9be3ae95bc067ff44.jpg

        1. What I don’t understand is that I went in and out of South Kensington tube station loads of times and never noticed that building!

  61. Oh well. I have thrown in the towel. Local council stonewalling and being difficult. I only mentioned my recent experience of food poisoning because i was concerned some elderly diners there that day wouldn’t fare so well. Possibly resulting in more serious symptoms.

    I might still send the stool sample to them in a plain parcel with happy Easter written on it.

    1. Good for you, sweetie! … x
      I’m goin’ backwards …

      Wordle 297 5/6

      ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟨🟩🟨
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      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

        1. All these results are a complete waste of space to serious NoTTLers.

          Shades of “Look at me.”

    4. A foul five for me.
      Wordle 297 5/6

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      ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨
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      1. Back to five again for me too.
        Wordle 297 5/6

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  63. Afternoon, all. Here earlier than usual as I am hosting a meeting in my sitting room tonight (our usual venue has closed). As for the headline, as far as I’m concerned if it were years rather than weeks I wouldn’t be bothered. We’re full. I’ve just read in my local rag that they are going to squeeze 70 more houses (on greenfield, natch) on the outskirts of the local town. The ambulance station has been shut down, they are trying to get rid of the cottage hospital and the fire station (run by part-timers), the driving test centre is going and the police station is now merely a comfort stop for passing patrols (who come from 13+ miles away when they do deign to grace us with their presence). It’s enough to make one want to take an AK 47 to Westminster (after one has dealt with Shire Hall, of course).

      1. We mentioned that tonight. We used to have a village ethos in the local market town, now, thanks to mega-building schemes, that is being eroded.

    2. AK-47? Pah! I’ve tried to persuade a former Chief of Joint Operations’ Mum that tanks were needed in Downing Street. And a now-retired Typhoon pilot that SW1A would be a worthy target. I failed, miserably.

  64. An agreeable first this afternoon. We have had no rain for a week and none is forecast. So I took the pump out of the shed, connected to well hose, primed it and plugged in. Bingo – worked first time!

        1. Moi?! You are always banging on about ‘barging in’. Everyone knows that most canals are only 30 inches deep. Fat chance of plumbing those depths!

    1. If you, Ms. Patel, and your spineless predecessors, hadn’t let this situation develop over the past 20(?) years, David Amess would still be alive.
      And we still have thousands flocking up the Kent beaches with no let or hindrance. People on whom there are no checks and who largely have absolutely no sympathy or understanding of our culture.

        1. They are greeted by financial/benefits advisors who coach them in all aspects of the system.

        2. Only because full details are available in dozens of wog languages. But NOT in English, of course…

    2. …and the murderous jihadists who saw off your, “dear friend Sir David Amess.”

      What are you doing about them? I want them ALL kicked out, I don’t trust a one of them.

      1. Stick it on the plastic, don’t they. Buy now – worry about paying for it later.

      3. TBF they may be taking extremely delayed holidays, already paid for. We know several people just like that.

    3. Dad. “This is the holiday”.

      What on earth do they expect after the massive disruptions, protests and strikes. I bet those people who wanted to fly to another country are remainers.

  69. I am off. Good day – no rain, so forecast wrong again. Got the new lavenders planted. Lovely plants with massive roots. Impressive. I can’t think why we didn’t use this firm in the past.

    Greenhouse doing well. Well doing, er, well. All too good to be true…

    Watched the end of the Thatcher/Reagan prog last night. Not at all bad – apart from the bloody MUZAC throughout. Why DO they do this?

    Have a jolly evening if you can. Try writing BPAPM’s resignation speech. Or Fishi Rishi. I bet Halfcock cantt wait for a chance to bid for leadership of the sinking ship called Conservative.

    A demain.

    1. Hi Bill,

      We have had rain here all day, what is the name of the plant company you are happy with ?

      Canalzoner meeting and lunch today .. it was lovely to see the happy handful again.. Usual cries about this and that , politics , BBC and the thou sands who are landing in Kent and Sussex .. It was suggested that a cruise liner would be preferable to the border force , and we should request a rebate back from the French … Keep them all at sea for a few weeks!

        1. If our move to Whissonsett is successful Norfolk Lavender is one of the first garden centres on our list for lavender, plants and herbs.

          Regarding your previous comment: our new bungalow is in the former pit but I am assured by the authorities that it is built on piles. It is adjacent to the churchyard and set back from the High Street. It will be more manageable than our present home of the past thirty years. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25736cfb40b8bd1756edd70c656d972f488ae5c8a89e1f37786507b0d09e528c.jpg

          1. Lovely house – you must be sorry to be leaving, but I can see that it would be a constant worry and drain on finances.

          2. Precisely Ndovu. More of a worry now we are both retired and in an age when fools celebrate ‘Bonfire Night’ in their back gardens or else release Chinese Lanterns into the air without regard to where the damn incendiaries will eventually land.

          4. Yes Sue, we are sorry to have to move but have enjoyed 30 years of living in what at times has felt like a holiday cottage.

            I always say that it takes a particular sort of narcissist to live under thatch nowadays but that doing so improves the soul. It is the same with the leaky frame and windows and the preponderance of spiders.

          5. Ha! Yes indeed! Our cottage was built in 1789 (according to the sun dial we found in the wall) which is part of the original Drovers Loan from the Highlands to Glasgow! We love it here but the maintenance is constant! I wish you happiness in whatever new home you find.

          7. I was either brave or stupid. A pantile roof and underfloor heating awaits. We will need to do a lot to the ‘garden’ to humanise it but Carol is an excellent plantswoman.

          9. Thank you. We shall visit. I commuted from our present home in Ashen to Norwich for two years in the mid nineties. I worked on the restoration of the tower of Norwich cathedral for a year or so and then on various Norwich Union Fire Assurance projects.

          11. Present home is too large and now that we have retired more than we wish to afford. I had the place re thatched ten years ago and it took about 8 tonnes of Maris Huntsman longstraw, specially grown in Norfolk, and cost £60k and almost a year’s labour by two master thatchers to give it a smart look.

            The house was a petite mediaeval hall house in its origins but the chimneys and first floors were inserted from Tudor times and the building extended in the C17. The oak floorboards to the inserted floors measure as much as 15” in width and are less than 3/4” in thickness. The late Oliver Rackham suggested that the boards were cut by circular saw in Silesia and imported. Several of the inserted floor beams and joists are Elm.

          12. How lovely! And I thought Firstborn’s 1750s 2 storey log cabin house was old! (some beautiful hand-smithed nails…).

          13. Our house is testament to the strength and longevity of English Oak. There are all sorts of forged Rosehead nails, straps and cleats and I have used similar nails on some new ledged oak doors but made using Victorian machinery. Lots of French nails too on later interventions.

          14. Makes sense. I lived in a 70’s terrace in Thetford for a few years. It was repossessed.

            I lived for fifteen years in a Verger’s Cottage in Surrey. It was endowed by Miss Dorothea S Courtauld of the fabric empire. The parish had to make savings, so as to be able to afford the Diocesan demands. The Parish resolved to sell it, but – having met resistance from the locals – are now renting it out for £2,250 pcm. Clearly, no expense was spared in the building of the same.

            I’m now in a retirement bungalow, courtesy of Puttenham and Wanborough Housing Society. The charity was founded by Lord Taylor (think Taylor Woodrow).

            All in all, I’m grateful to several benefactors, none of whom are still alive…

          15. When I worked on the Restoration of Christ Church Spitalfields a Courtauld ancestor was discovered in the crypt. Her bones were sent to Birmingham University for examination and thereafter she was to be re buried in I assume either Braintree or else Halstead. The Flemish weavers from Spitalfields, forced out of London, mostly resettled in Haverhill, Glemsford and Sudbury.

            I briefly met Lord Taylor as he was one of the party presented to Nicholas Ridley, Christopher Chope etc., at the opening of Richmond House Whitehall, for which I was project architect and which I mostly designed.

            The contractor for Richmond House was Taylor Woodrow Management Contracting. Their own staff joked that their company logo showing four men tugging on a rope implied that it took four of them to pull a bird. I responded that it more likely represented the fact that for each one of you, four of them were pulling against you.

  70. Well, when the rain started this morning I thought, “Bugger it!” and went back to bed for another 2½h.
    Then, when I got up, went & finished off the digging out I started yesterday.
    I still have to get the shuttering in and the trench leveled off before I begin mixing concrete, but I ought to be able to get a 6½ to 7′ base put in when I do.

    1. Have you every thought of getting the Garden Rescue team in to sort matters for you.

      My wife is glued to iPlayer watching their exploits. It might help if you either blackened up or else adopted some foreign mannerisms, expressed a wish to have a Japanese garden in order to contemplate your navel etc. etc.

    2. Bob,
      What is shuttering … I don’t understand what you are attempting to build .. or please provide some photos.

      It sounds like back breaking work ..be careful .

      2. When you are pouring concrete into a hole to form the foundations of a wall, be it garden wall or building wall, you need to put what is also called “formwork” in to hold the concrete where you want it. That, is shuttering, usually 3/4″ ply for what I’m doing.
        After the concrete sets, i.e. goes hard, the shuttering can be removed for use elsewhere.

        I’ve four bits that I use, each just a tad under 4′ by 6″ high with a couple of stakes that I drive into the ground to support them. This first picture shews the downhill side in place:-
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/df9f8034aacae9e1275ef3231c523f6448d0365eada0323a3563418b6a1f523c.jpg

        And this one shews both sides, all be it with the uphill side still needing to be hammered down level with the downhill side.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8dc96a81c287274b6b56a721ad66eb151352c181529d32b6706b89fb4ef1f45.jpg

        Today I finished digging out a similar sized extension to the trench with now need the 3rd & fourth bits of shuttering put in place, the shuttering leveled off and then the bottom of the trench leveled off.
        Today & yesterday I dug about 20 buckets of 10 shovelfuls of soil which was spread over where the backfill needed levelling off.

        2. Well done, BoB, I congratulate you on using ‘shew’ in the ‘Old-fashioned’ but correct way – as a verb.. Show being the noun and much mis-used these days.

  71. Heck. I thought I was tougher. Did a pre-Easter visit to elderly chum.
    Since I saw her some three weeks ago, she has deteriorated. For the first time, where she is concerned, I internally debated the value of medical advances.
    Surprised how shattered I feel.
    Oh, and the home has resumed some – but not all – of the covid measures. That did not exactly improve matters.

    1. Dear Anne. I am so sorry to hear that. We can’t rely on the the health service as much as we once did. Many people in homes degraded rapidly under covid regs and life expectancy in a home was only three years before covid. I am sorry to sound so brutal but if i had an elderly friend or relative in a home i would try to get them out. Appalling.

      1. Fortunately not all homes are like that.
        Everyone at the funeral we attended who had had contact with the home where the relative finally died couldn’t praise it highly enough.

        1. Mother’s home is well renowned locally to be good.
          They put photos and videos of the inmates on Arsebook, and are open for vists whenever you like.

          1. HG was sometimes employed to inspect them, she reviewed numerous homes and unfortunately there are far more bad ones than good ones and occasionally she had to recommend closure. A difficult call, because many residents would find it difficult to be placed elsewhere.

          3. Unfortunately that is the reality.
            In some instances patients/residents lived in beds in what were effectively basement barracks. The sight of them was heart-breaking and they had nowhere else to go. No relatives, LA funded, a nightmare.

          6. My godmother was in a home that was excellent too. It’s just a pity that most of them are not. I never could figure out how they managed to make the staff so motivated and cheerful – training? good pay? Don’t know, but I wish everyone in a care home could have such a positive experience.

      2. She had one fall too many. In the couple of years before that, it was taking at least ten people to keep the show on the road – family, friends, neighbours, medics – and she would never have accepted live-in help; even if we could have found such people.
        The staff at the home are doing their best, but she really isn’t co-operative. I would imagine that ‘Human Rights’ probably stop the staff doing things that would be for her own good e.g. having her hair cut.

        1. The lady that comes to clean for me on a two weekly basis speaks to me of her 90 year old mother. She told me how the doctor had said to do the twice daily bp and how her mother screamed about how painful it was. There is more but i won’t go into it.

        2. Mother has a hairdresser visit every few days… costing me a fortune, so it is, but if it makes her happy…

    2. You must have been so shocked Anne .

      So sorry your friend has taken a downward turn .. dreadful for you as a friend and also her family to witness changes like that .

      Stay strong if you can because you are needed as a familiar face . 🙏

    3. That is so sad, and a story that is too widely the case since march 2020. The lack of contact with family and friends is a killer. How many older people have simply lost the will to live in the last 2 years?
      Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I had tried to persuade my husband that we could manage if we brought his mum here. We would have needed to set up a care package and move furniture around to accommodate a bed/commode etc downstairs. Her constant needs were hard enough when she used to be here for a few days over Christmases; we knew there was no way we were fit enough for that every day.
      We had no issue with the home – lovely, caring staff going the extra mile during lockdown & restrictions – but it was the isolation from family that hastened her decline.

      1. That’s what has been dreadful and inhuman, keeping elderly and infirm people away from relatives.

        1. And not being even able to speak to them on the phone- because of “covid rules”. I should have followed that up- my dear late uncle. Mea culpa Uncle P.

          1. Covid rules not allowing phone calls – what nonsense. Probably meant they didn’t want assorted residents all touching the phone – even though those same people would all be touching the hand rails and so on.
            Mother-in-law’s home tried Skype calls – my husband talked them through setting it up. Unfortunately, MiL didn’t ‘engage’ with us – it was explained that those with dementia often don’t grasp that the people ‘in the tv’ are actually their family. Very sad. But it did work for some of the residents, so not a wasted endeavour.

          2. Thanks but my feeling is that this was an overweight Scots bi*** who could not be bothered to get off her fat arse and waddle down the hallway. And I am half Scots!

          3. Sounds a likely enough reason. A lazy McLard :))
            I’m half Scottish too. I slag the tight-fisted Scotland’s People charging for old BMD records, not allowing Ancestry to hold more than transcriptions of census returns, even then only up to 1901.

          5. Good morning! Thanks for reminding me – it’s a few years since I used freeBIES.
            And now, goodnight.

      2. Please don’t beat yourself up over it.
        Caring for the demented is an intolerable burden for most families; in fact, unless you have somewhere like Broadlands and the income to match, I would say it is nigh impossible.
        I’ve seen many families – particularly the children – have their lives constricted by the presence of someone whose needs are incompatible with everyday family life.

        1. Thank you for your kind words. I know what you say is true but it does prey on my mind. The only saving grace is that we trusted the staff and knew they were doing their best and came up with all sorts of extra little activities, games, entertainments (as the usual outside musicians etc were banned from entering), competitions.
          Had we been able to bring her here, it was unlikely to have been more than 2 or 3 years anyway as she was so frail, but it would have been far more comforting for her to have family around, comforting for us too.
          All the best to your elderly chum.

          1. Mother hasn’t known me for a year or two now; when I call, she is polite and chatters away, but she still doesn’t know who I am. She keeps on about how her parents will be back from visiting her aunt soon, and they’ll all be going out to dinner… never asks about her grandchildren. Makes it a bit easier, I guess.

          2. So sorry, Paul. Mine was increasingly unable to walk, and was rather less than compos mentis, towards the end. She would have hated a care home, and I rather prolonged her stay at home by phoning her every week, and organising a Tesco delivery. In the end, a secondary cancer in the neck paralysed her. Years of smoking prolly didn’t help – the primary cancer was in the lungs. As I drove North, Larkin’s poem re. Mum and Dad was on BBC R4. Dad died when I was five. Mum tried her best. But Larkin had a point, nevertheless.

          3. I managed to keep Mother at home until she had a fall, then even I could see that she needed more care than could be provided there. Live-in care might have worked, but the cost was horrendous, and no equity release agency would touch the house, as she didn’t have long enough to go to really build up a debt. So, result is, a nice home in the centre of Penarth (where she had been trying to buy a flat a few years ago), with proper food, drink, and a nurse or two as needed.

    1. I think it is getting exciting. At least there will be something to watch on the telly.

    2. Same old story. Whenever any of their ‘community’ commits a murderous crime, the silence is deafening. I simply don’t trust any of them.
      If they really wanted to be a part of this CHRISTIAN based country, they would obey our laws, learn our language, get a job and ensure their children grew up supporting the country that has given them freedom and civilisation. And they would stop wearing their ridiculous tents and covering their women from head to toe. We need to stop giving in to their endless demands.

    3. “Their silence makes them complicit.” As always.

      I detect an under-current that despises these people enough to want them (forcibly) removed from our shores.

      Time to give the lead, Boris, Pritti and Liz.

  78. One Eurocrook supporting another.

    Marine Le Pen closes the gap with Macron in latest French presidential election poll as Nicolas Sarkozy backs current president and praises his ‘commitment to Europe’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10710805/Nicolas-Sarkozy-backs-Emmanuel-Macron-Marine-Le-Pen-French-election.html
    Wow, with friends like this who needs enemas? Hey Phizzee offer your lunch! {;-O
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy_corruption_trial#:~:text=The%20trial%20concluded%20on%2010,appealed%2C%20which%20suspends%20the%20ruling.

    3. The Frenchman at our meeting didn’t want Le Pen at any price. He was all for Macron and thought he’d done a good job! We changed the subject …

  79. Good evening y’all. Went for my ECG and it seems there is a heart. She was a lovely nurse and let my husband come in with me. Spanish I think. She explained everything and what she was going to do and apologised before any and every touching. I asked if I should take off my sweater and also my bra she said. She said sorry to MH who, Mr. Charm that he is, said it was nothing he hadn’t seen before.
    No results as it has to go through the GP. So another wait.
    Then we went for our treat at the bistro. Lovely grub, slightly slower service but that was OK as we were not in any hurry.
    I had grilled chicken breast with blue cheese sauce and fresh veggies. MH had some herbed sausages and the mashed spuds that came with my meal that I didn’t want.
    So we’re home, thank gawd and the only blot on the landscape is a trip to Asda tomorrow- maybe- and MH going for another procedure on Thursday.

          1. MH was humming under his breath Boom boody boom, while I was being “done”.

          2. My sister and I had that as a party piece – in fact, my Indian accent is pure Peter Sellars.

            In fact, I think I’m still word perfect.

        1. I’m mellow Anne, couple of glasses of Pinot work wonders….for now anyway.

      1. Thanks Mola. How was open mic yesterday? I hope you did your duty and had a pint and a half for MH and moi;-)

        1. Certainly did, Ann. The musicians and the singers were excellent. The odd thing is that we’ve lived here for 18 years now and I’ve gone from being a relatively young pub regular to one of the old git regulars. I don’t feel any different in my head, it’s just the body that deteriorates.

    5. having friendly staff at a procedure makes all the difference. Good luck for the results – will your GP deign to actually speak to you?

      1. Yes, once the restrictions were lifted they have been OK. And they have not fussed about masks either.

        1. PS – To be honest, I am not worried about my heart- that is stress and worry and pain. Once this sh*t on my face is removed, I reckon all will be well.

          3. Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I probably missed that as haven’t been here much recently. Do you have an appointment for the surgery?
            I really need to get a lesion on my nose checked too. Getting a bit worse. I’ve had basal cell carcinomas removed from other places in the past.

          4. No worries- we all do have problems of our own. I am waiting for the biopsy results but it does seem that it’s benign. Hope so.

          7. The downvote may have been me, MumisBusy. As I clicked on the / symbol the post moved to the left and so I ended up clicking on the / symbol. I immediately cancelled this mistake of mine. Apologies.

          2. Not in this parish…

            NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE

            No coward soul is mine
            No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
            I see Heaven’s glories shine
            And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

            O God within my breast
            Almighty ever-present Deity
            Life, that in me hast rest,
            As I Undying Life, have power in Thee

            Vain are the thousand creeds
            That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,
            Worthless as withered weeds
            Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

            To waken doubt in one
            Holding so fast by thy infinity,
            So surely anchored on
            The steadfast rock of Immortality.

            With wide-embracing love
            Thy spirit animates eternal years
            Pervades and broods above,
            Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

            Though earth and moon were gone
            And suns and universes ceased to be
            And Thou wert left alone
            Every Existence would exist in thee

            There is not room for Death
            Nor atom that his might could render void
            Since thou art Being and Breath
            And what thou art may never be destroyed.

            Emily Bronte

          3. Two hundred upvotes. She only wrote one novel but a lot of poetry. I have no expert knowledge of poetry but I knows what I likes.

    1. Nothing wrong with the £10,000 fine for the student because, as the police stated, it was meant as an example and disincentive for others. What is wrong is derisory fines (£50 each I understand) for politicians who broke the law.

      1. Well, if the law is going to be arbitrary and use fines as a way to send a message on behaviour, how about we slap those two with the same £10,000 fine?

        After all, if anyone should be above reproach it’s the state machine that forced the lock up on us all.

        1. I totally agree with you, wibbling, except that with a much greater income than the student, perhaps the fine for Boris and Co. ought to be more like £100,000.

          1. They wouldn’t actually suffer any hardship though. Small change for Sunak and Boris would just get a rich friend to pay it. Then give them a multi-million £ government contract as a thank you.

      2. A fine that is likely to bankrupt most ordinary families was not proportionate in my opinion. And a derisory £50 for the person who was going on TV every night urging us to ‘not kill granny’ is a further insult.

  81. A poster on one of the links referenced in this forum refers to what I understand to be the possible use of a nerve agent used by combatants in Ukraine which is suspected to induce vestibulo-ataxia in those subjected to it.

    It is a plausible weapon insofar that it would create disorientation in an enemy similar to known existing genetically derived diseases leading to ataxia.

    Here are two references to the mechanisms involved in the development of ataxia and indeed if such a causative agent has been developed as a weapon in warfare it amounts to pure evil.

    https://iliveok.com/health/vestibulo-atactic-syndrome_95715i88403.html
    https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/ataxia

      1. There was a Mocking Bird in CT that could imitate our phone exactly. Before mobiles. I lost track of the number of times I went indoors to answer a bloody bird!

    2. That was lovely, the starling accompaniment was so delicate. Beautiful. I love starlings, their garrulousness and the way they gather together, their flight murmurations. Birds of a feather.

  83. What No Demands for an apology????

    “On 11 April 1822, the Ottoman fleet, under the Kapitan Pasha, Kara Ali, arrived on the island of Chios.[120] The Ottoman sailors and soldiers promptly went on a rampage, killing and raping without mercy, as one contemporary recalled: “Mercy was out of the question, the victors butchering indiscriminately all who came in their way; shrieks rent the air, and the streets were strewn with the dead bodies of old men, women, and children; even the inmates of the hospital, the madhouse and deaf and dumb institution, were inhumanely slaughtered”.[121] Before Kara Ali’s fleet had arrived, Chios had between 100,000 and 120,000 Greeks living there, of which some 25,000 were killed in the massacre, with another 45,000 (mostly women and children) sold into slavery.[122]

    The Chios massacre shocked all of Europe and further increased public sympathy for the Greek cause.

  87. Right, that’s it for today for me. A very enjoyable afternoon spent with Korky the Kat and three other friends. I got through a full bottle of Merlot which was not my intention, but I enjoyed it (and the food and the company) which was a good thing. So now I’m off to bed. Good night, everyone.

  90. We can’t keep turning a blind eye to Islamist extremism

    The Government needs to stop worrying about appearances and ensure its Prevent programme has the right focus

    ROBERT JENRICK • 12 April 2022 • 7:00pm

    Following the verdict in Ali Harbi Ali’s trial on Monday, we must all now acknowledge what was clear from the outset: the murder of my friend and colleague Sir David Amess was an act of terrorism. More specifically, it was the product of Islamist extremism which this country – and the West – continues to face more than 20 years after 9/11.

    Yet in the immediate aftermath of Sir David’s murder much of our political and media class entered into a worthy but spurious debate about the tenor of political discussion in this country, particularly online. Even after the police detained Ali under the Terrorism Act, many were unwilling to countenance extremism as his motive.

    Instead of discussing the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy, we debated removing online anonymity and implored one another to be kinder – as if we bore some responsibility for the actions of this despicable murderer.

    We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words and hashtags.

    In its most dangerous form, this twisted ideology poses a direct threat to life. Despite a disturbing rise in far-Right extremism [*sigh*], Islamist radicals still make up the vast majority of suspects on MI5’s terror watchlist. And there remains a less violent but more pervasive strand of Islamist thought interwoven in our communities that needs stamping out.

    It should be a continual source of outrage that a teacher from Batley Grammar School remains in hiding to this day, fearing for his physical safety, after showing depictions of the Prophet Mohammed in a religious studies lesson.

    In recent years, we have become accustomed to cultural extremism – be it the divisive community politics in Tower Hamlets or the Trojan Horse controversy in Birmingham – which serves as a petri dish from which more violent forces can grow. In each instance, fear of political correctness or of causing offence has weakened the fight to defend sacred liberal principles.

    Open societies such as ours should not be taken for granted. We have to constantly renew our battle against those who seek to undermine our values.

    Two decades of recommendations and reports have equipped us with the solutions needed to grip this issue. Back in 2011, David Cameron outlined a less tolerant and more muscularly liberal vision for tackling hate groups [Yes, by bombing them…in Libya! That worked out well.]; in 2016, Baroness Casey produced a persuasive report on the need for greater social integration which remains largely unimplemented; and as communities secretary I appointed Sara Khan (who also produced important and unimplemented recommendations for the Home Office on toughening the criminal law) to see how we can better protect the victims of extremism – like that teacher from Batley – whose fate we too often neglect.

    It’s clear that Prevent, the Government’s counter-radicalisation strategy, needs urgent reform. In Ali’s case, he had been correctly referred to the programme but only went to one meeting and, despite continuing to be radicalised online, Prevent concluded he did not pose a significant danger and closed his case. This fits into a wider pattern.

    Of the 11 most recent terrorist attackers, six had been referred to Prevent. And while the far-Right and Islamist extremists may despise our values in equal measure, it is irresponsible to draw equivalence in the cumulative threat their ideologies pose. Islamist extremists make up three quarters of offenders in prison for terror-related crime but only 24 per cent of all Prevent referrals and 30 per cent of Channel cases, that is those taken to the next level of intervention.

    If Prevent is to succeed it must be focused on the greatest risk to life, without fear of appearances. It cannot afford to be passive and it needs to place the police and the security services in the driving seat.

    We are doing the victims of extremism a colossal disservice by glossing over what really happened and failing to embark on the serious and sustained programme of work required to address it. Extremism of any kind, and certainly Islamist extremism, is a cancer that grows in our society. We must acknowledge it and summon the strength to fight it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/12/cant-keep-turning-blind-eye-islamist-extremism/

    BTL:
    Mr T Clarke
    Please tell me Mr Jenrick, what exactly is an ‘Islamist’?
    Perhaps you could also explain the differences, if any, between an ordinary ‘Islamist’ and the ‘Islamist extremist’.

    J Hodson
    The classic liberal mistake is to start with the fatuous assumption that people are basically good, therefore potential terrorists are basically good and if we give them a big enough hug they’ll snap out of their abusive upbringings and become ever so nice. This lunacy is further strengthened by the insistence that we, the liberal establishment, are ever so nice ourselves and to wave the big stick would be oh so infra dig darling, not to mention waycist and wight-wing.

    So determined are we to wallow in this pretence that we deliberately ignore warning signs wherever possible, and when warning signs become murders, downplay them as much as possible. When the rape of young girls by immigrant gangs can no longer be ignored, downplay the immigrant bit wherever possible, or claim it’s probably just as prevalent a problem with the native population, or pretty well any other lame drivel rather than face up to reality.

    All this just to cling to the belief that we’ve evolved and have become a better class of people than those awful Victorians, Elizabethans, Romans, whatever. In other words, all this for a bit of moral snobbery.

    1. 48 comments later and the DT closed the article down ..

      How dare they , as a national newspaper do that . There has to be a way for indigenous protestant whites to vent their anger.

      Stop wrapping pyjama clad bottom waving Mosque worshipping fanatics in cotton wool .

      Their stone age culture DOES NOT sit tidily with ours .
      I am sick and tired of hearing about their hate driven murder tally.

      They are the bogey men that are costing this country £ millions in keeping us alert to the fear and danger they can cause in the air , road, train bus or even sea.

      Idiot DT closed the thread.

      1. It’s their growing political influence and numbers that worry me, Belle, along with an all-party willingness to ignore the (or even support) Muslim encroachment.

    2. I see he raised the growing threat of ‘right-wing extremists’. Clearly he doesn’t understand ’cause and effect’.

  91. We can’t keep turning a blind eye to Islamist extremism

    The Government needs to stop worrying about appearances and ensure its Prevent programme has the right focus

    ROBERT JENRICK • 12 April 2022 • 7:00pm

    Following the verdict in Ali Harbi Ali’s trial on Monday, we must all now acknowledge what was clear from the outset: the murder of my friend and colleague Sir David Amess was an act of terrorism. More specifically, it was the product of Islamist extremism which this country – and the West – continues to face more than 20 years after 9/11.

    Yet in the immediate aftermath of Sir David’s murder much of our political and media class entered into a worthy but spurious debate about the tenor of political discussion in this country, particularly online. Even after the police detained Ali under the Terrorism Act, many were unwilling to countenance extremism as his motive.

    Instead of discussing the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy, we debated removing online anonymity and implored one another to be kinder – as if we bore some responsibility for the actions of this despicable murderer.

    We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words and hashtags.

    In its most dangerous form, this twisted ideology poses a direct threat to life. Despite a disturbing rise in far-Right extremism [*sigh*], Islamist radicals still make up the vast majority of suspects on MI5’s terror watchlist. And there remains a less violent but more pervasive strand of Islamist thought interwoven in our communities that needs stamping out.

    It should be a continual source of outrage that a teacher from Batley Grammar School remains in hiding to this day, fearing for his physical safety, after showing depictions of the Prophet Mohammed in a religious studies lesson.

    In recent years, we have become accustomed to cultural extremism – be it the divisive community politics in Tower Hamlets or the Trojan Horse controversy in Birmingham – which serves as a petri dish from which more violent forces can grow. In each instance, fear of political correctness or of causing offence has weakened the fight to defend sacred liberal principles.

    Open societies such as ours should not be taken for granted. We have to constantly renew our battle against those who seek to undermine our values.

    Two decades of recommendations and reports have equipped us with the solutions needed to grip this issue. Back in 2011, David Cameron outlined a less tolerant and more muscularly liberal vision for tackling hate groups [Yes, by bombing them…in Libya! That worked out well.]; in 2016, Baroness Casey produced a persuasive report on the need for greater social integration which remains largely unimplemented; and as communities secretary I appointed Sara Khan (who also produced important and unimplemented recommendations for the Home Office on toughening the criminal law) to see how we can better protect the victims of extremism – like that teacher from Batley – whose fate we too often neglect.

    It’s clear that Prevent, the Government’s counter-radicalisation strategy, needs urgent reform. In Ali’s case, he had been correctly referred to the programme but only went to one meeting and, despite continuing to be radicalised online, Prevent concluded he did not pose a significant danger and closed his case. This fits into a wider pattern.

    Of the 11 most recent terrorist attackers, six had been referred to Prevent. And while the far-Right and Islamist extremists may despise our values in equal measure, it is irresponsible to draw equivalence in the cumulative threat their ideologies pose. Islamist extremists make up three quarters of offenders in prison for terror-related crime but only 24 per cent of all Prevent referrals and 30 per cent of Channel cases, that is those taken to the next level of intervention.

    If Prevent is to succeed it must be focused on the greatest risk to life, without fear of appearances. It cannot afford to be passive and it needs to place the police and the security services in the driving seat.

    We are doing the victims of extremism a colossal disservice by glossing over what really happened and failing to embark on the serious and sustained programme of work required to address it. Extremism of any kind, and certainly Islamist extremism, is a cancer that grows in our society. We must acknowledge it and summon the strength to fight it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/12/cant-keep-turning-blind-eye-islamist-extremism/

    BTL:
    Mr T Clarke
    Please tell me Mr Jenrick, what exactly is an ‘Islamist’?
    Perhaps you could also explain the differences, if any, between an ordinary ‘Islamist’ and the ‘Islamist extremist’.

    J Hodson
    The classic liberal mistake is to start with the fatuous assumption that people are basically good, therefore potential terrorists are basically good and if we give them a big enough hug they’ll snap out of their abusive upbringings and become ever so nice. This lunacy is further strengthened by the insistence that we, the liberal establishment, are ever so nice ourselves and to wave the big stick would be oh so infra dig darling, not to mention waycist and wight-wing.

    So determined are we to wallow in this pretence that we deliberately ignore warning signs wherever possible, and when warning signs become murders, downplay them as much as possible. When the rape of young girls by immigrant gangs can no longer be ignored, downplay the immigrant bit wherever possible, or claim it’s probably just as prevalent a problem with the native population, or pretty well any other lame drivel rather than face up to reality.

    All this just to cling to the belief that we’ve evolved and have become a better class of people than those awful Victorians, Elizabethans, Romans, whatever. In other words, all this for a bit of moral snobbery.

  92. Just catching up with BBC news. Does anyone seriously expect Johnson and Sunak to survive given that they flagrantly broke the laws they made and which caused many tradesmen and other workers to go bankrupt or in some instances to commit suicide?

    What sort of Age are we now living in, where liars, dissemblers and charlatans, elected to represent the people, when exposed, decide their own fate?

    This present load of parliamentary excrement need to be shovelled out of office and deposited on the midden forthwith.

    1. The DT comments are infested with CCO trolls. I lost count of the number of times ‘confected outrage’ appears.

    2. Oh really,

      Whilst an even worse smelling load of Shite rise up out the midden to replace them ..
      I never ever want to see a Labour or Lib dem government in power whilst I am still able to function .

      2. There’s been no better time to be over 65 so as not to have to endure for that much longer the witless (or perhaps something more sinister than that) actions of recent governments.

    3. It was said on the Daily Mail that Johnson could not resign, because of the war in Ukraine.

      The very same war that Johnson is doing his best to prolong by sending weapons to Ukraine.
      How very convenient!

  93. The BBC must end its addiction to divisive racial politics

    If the corporation wants to survive, it should at least try to understand the country it supposedly represents

    CALVIN ROBINSON

    The BBC is at it again [see below], exposing a bias rooted in Left-wing politics imported from the United States. This time it has told parents to “check their bias” if their children only have white friends. One of the assumptions made by the corporation’s Tiny Happy People website – ostensibly a bank of educational resources for parents and children – is that any child who has a group of white friends must come from a home where “negative thoughts about foreigners” are openly expressed.

    You might think it was a slip-up to be quickly rectified, but this isn’t the first time the corporation has indulged such drivel. Two years ago, its Bitesize website published a video by John Amaechi, an American psychologist, telling children that “there is nothing but benefit to understanding our own privileges, white or otherwise”.

    They are practicing the language of Critical Race Theory (CRT), an American academic thought experiment that attempts to solve racial inequalities but, in fact, ends up exacerbating them. It centres on the belief that whiteness itself is the cause of many of the issues that we face – and thus to negate racism, whiteness must be diminished. Its full logic ultimately changes the fundamental question from “was this situation racist?” to “how was this situation racist?” The result is self-explanatory: we end up seeing racism everywhere, even where it doesn’t exist.

    Such a dangerous way of thinking should be given no truck within a public-sector broadcaster with a duty to remain balanced. The BBC has pledged, through its charter, to “bring people together and help contribute to social cohesion and wellbeing”. That could not be more divergent from the radical ideology that seems to have captured New Broadcasting House.

    Even if many of us have grown used to the metropolitan obsession with CRT, this latest advice takes matters to another level, for it is quite another thing altogether to bring its divisive language into the arena of parental advice.

    Parents access these websites hoping for fun activities and helpful guides, not patronising and arguably racist language. Nor is it at all helpful for CRT to be presented as if it were established fact, like gravity, rather than the often unverifiable musings of a few academics.

    Wouldn’t it be great if our nation’s broadcaster, to which we are all encouraged to pay a fee, played a unifying role for once? It could remind families that in this fair nation they all have a share in society, regardless of their colour, ethnicity or religion. If we focussed on Britishness and spent less time obsessing over our immutable characteristics, every community would be freer and more united.

    In fact, I would encourage the BBC’s new diversity team (now that June Sarpong, its £267,000-per-year diversity tsar is departing) to read the Government’s Inclusive Britain strategy, which outlines 74 actions aimed at tackling racial disparities in the UK. It is built on the fantastic work of Dr Tony Sewell, whose report last year, while identifying many areas where equality can be improved, highlighted that a racial disparity is not necessarily evidence of racism.

    Obsessing over race misses the bigger picture: that class, geography and upbringing all have far more impact on one’s life than the colour of our skin. If the BBC wants to survive, it should at least try to understand the country it supposedly represents.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/12/bbc-must-end-addiction-divisive-racial-politics/
    _________________________________________________________________________

    BBC guide tells parents to ‘examine their biases’ if their toddler only has white friends

    Education expert calls BBC’s early-years parenting advice ‘clearly not impartial’, whilst one parent labels it ‘extremely condescending’

    By Ewan Somerville

    Author and activist Uju Asika has written guidance for parents on race and religion that has angered some visitors to the BBC website. Parents should question their attitudes on race if their toddler only has white friends, according to the BBC’s early-years guidance.

    The BBC’s Tiny Happy People website, a bank of resources for parents, includes a section on talking about race and religion with young children, written by the author and activist Uju Asika. The site says that “for white mums or dads, it might be time to examine your own internal biases”.

    It explains: “Did your family express negative thoughts about foreigners and immigrants? What is your social circle like today? Does your child have Black or Brown friends over for playdates? Could you be doing more?”

    Educators described the resource as “inappropriate” and “clearly not impartial”.

    The guide was drawn up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and written by Ms Asika, author of the book How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World which gives advice on microaggressions. Ms Asika wrote last year on a blog about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey that “the Royal family is racist” and “sitting on a legacy of global subjugation, pillaging and slave trading wealth”. She suggested that parents could explain Megxit to children by saying “real life isn’t a fairytale, look how the prince and his duchess rescued each other”.

    The Duchess of Cambridge helped to create Tiny Happy People, describing its launch in the summer of 2020 as “gold dust for families, giving tips and tools to use particularly in those first five years”. Parents are told in the BBC resource that “studies reveal that by age two, children start sorting themselves into groups showing what is known as in-group bias”, such as “excluding” children who are less like them in the playground.

    “According to research, even babies at three months old can tell different races apart,” the webpage says.

    Parents are urged to introduce children to racism by being kind, using inclusive language, being as direct as possible and being role models by “educating yourself” through books and TV shows. It is also suggested that parents “could talk about how being white might give you certain advantages – for instance you are more likely to see people who look like you on TV”.

    “However, white people can choose to use their advantages to help make people a fairer world for all,” the guide says.

    The guide was criticised for singling out white people. Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, a former teacher and education expert at the campaign group Don’t Divide Us, said: “It’s clearly not impartial, it’s putting an intolerable burden on schools and on teachers. It is inappropriate and can very easily have unintended negative consequences.”

    She advocated a “colour-blind” approach to racism by viewing everyone as fundamentally equal, “rather than trying to create a false plurality from the top through division and micro-management which kills curiosity and creates fear of asking the questions”.

    A mother of two young children, who wished to be anonymous, told The Telegraph: “It assumes that self-styled experts are needed to educate everyone on racial difference. I’m of mixed ethnicity and find this kind of article from the BBC extremely condescending.”

    The BBC was previously criticised over resources on its BBC Bitesize schools website describing “white privilege”, an ideology that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities rejected as potentially helping white working-class pupils fall behind.

    A BBC spokesman said: “Tiny Happy People offers a wealth of resources, covering a variety of topics that parents can access, should they wish, for help and advice on all areas of development and well-being.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/11/bbc-guide-tells-parents-examine-biases-toddler-has-white-friends/

    1. “for instance you are more likely to see people who look like you on TV”.
      Hahaha!

  94. The BBC must end its addiction to divisive racial politics

    If the corporation wants to survive, it should at least try to understand the country it supposedly represents

    CALVIN ROBINSON

    The BBC is at it again [see below], exposing a bias rooted in Left-wing politics imported from the United States. This time it has told parents to “check their bias” if their children only have white friends. One of the assumptions made by the corporation’s Tiny Happy People website – ostensibly a bank of educational resources for parents and children – is that any child who has a group of white friends must come from a home where “negative thoughts about foreigners” are openly expressed.

    You might think it was a slip-up to be quickly rectified, but this isn’t the first time the corporation has indulged such drivel. Two years ago, its Bitesize website published a video by John Amaechi, an American psychologist, telling children that “there is nothing but benefit to understanding our own privileges, white or otherwise”.

    They are practicing the language of Critical Race Theory (CRT), an American academic thought experiment that attempts to solve racial inequalities but, in fact, ends up exacerbating them. It centres on the belief that whiteness itself is the cause of many of the issues that we face – and thus to negate racism, whiteness must be diminished. Its full logic ultimately changes the fundamental question from “was this situation racist?” to “how was this situation racist?” The result is self-explanatory: we end up seeing racism everywhere, even where it doesn’t exist.

    Such a dangerous way of thinking should be given no truck within a public-sector broadcaster with a duty to remain balanced. The BBC has pledged, through its charter, to “bring people together and help contribute to social cohesion and wellbeing”. That could not be more divergent from the radical ideology that seems to have captured New Broadcasting House.

    Even if many of us have grown used to the metropolitan obsession with CRT, this latest advice takes matters to another level, for it is quite another thing altogether to bring its divisive language into the arena of parental advice.

    Parents access these websites hoping for fun activities and helpful guides, not patronising and arguably racist language. Nor is it at all helpful for CRT to be presented as if it were established fact, like gravity, rather than the often unverifiable musings of a few academics.

    Wouldn’t it be great if our nation’s broadcaster, to which we are all encouraged to pay a fee, played a unifying role for once? It could remind families that in this fair nation they all have a share in society, regardless of their colour, ethnicity or religion. If we focussed on Britishness and spent less time obsessing over our immutable characteristics, every community would be freer and more united.

    In fact, I would encourage the BBC’s new diversity team (now that June Sarpong, its £267,000-per-year diversity tsar is departing) to read the Government’s Inclusive Britain strategy, which outlines 74 actions aimed at tackling racial disparities in the UK. It is built on the fantastic work of Dr Tony Sewell, whose report last year, while identifying many areas where equality can be improved, highlighted that a racial disparity is not necessarily evidence of racism.

    Obsessing over race misses the bigger picture: that class, geography and upbringing all have far more impact on one’s life than the colour of our skin. If the BBC wants to survive, it should at least try to understand the country it supposedly represents.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/12/bbc-must-end-addiction-divisive-racial-politics/
    _________________________________________________________________________

    BBC guide tells parents to ‘examine their biases’ if their toddler only has white friends

    Education expert calls BBC’s early-years parenting advice ‘clearly not impartial’, whilst one parent labels it ‘extremely condescending’

    By Ewan Somerville

    Author and activist Uju Asika has written guidance for parents on race and religion that has angered some visitors to the BBC website. Parents should question their attitudes on race if their toddler only has white friends, according to the BBC’s early-years guidance.

    The BBC’s Tiny Happy People website, a bank of resources for parents, includes a section on talking about race and religion with young children, written by the author and activist Uju Asika. The site says that “for white mums or dads, it might be time to examine your own internal biases”.

    It explains: “Did your family express negative thoughts about foreigners and immigrants? What is your social circle like today? Does your child have Black or Brown friends over for playdates? Could you be doing more?”

    Educators described the resource as “inappropriate” and “clearly not impartial”.

    The guide was drawn up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and written by Ms Asika, author of the book How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World which gives advice on microaggressions. Ms Asika wrote last year on a blog about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey that “the Royal family is racist” and “sitting on a legacy of global subjugation, pillaging and slave trading wealth”. She suggested that parents could explain Megxit to children by saying “real life isn’t a fairytale, look how the prince and his duchess rescued each other”.

    The Duchess of Cambridge helped to create Tiny Happy People, describing its launch in the summer of 2020 as “gold dust for families, giving tips and tools to use particularly in those first five years”. Parents are told in the BBC resource that “studies reveal that by age two, children start sorting themselves into groups showing what is known as in-group bias”, such as “excluding” children who are less like them in the playground.

    “According to research, even babies at three months old can tell different races apart,” the webpage says.

    Parents are urged to introduce children to racism by being kind, using inclusive language, being as direct as possible and being role models by “educating yourself” through books and TV shows. It is also suggested that parents “could talk about how being white might give you certain advantages – for instance you are more likely to see people who look like you on TV”.

    “However, white people can choose to use their advantages to help make people a fairer world for all,” the guide says.

    The guide was criticised for singling out white people. Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, a former teacher and education expert at the campaign group Don’t Divide Us, said: “It’s clearly not impartial, it’s putting an intolerable burden on schools and on teachers. It is inappropriate and can very easily have unintended negative consequences.”

    She advocated a “colour-blind” approach to racism by viewing everyone as fundamentally equal, “rather than trying to create a false plurality from the top through division and micro-management which kills curiosity and creates fear of asking the questions”.

    A mother of two young children, who wished to be anonymous, told The Telegraph: “It assumes that self-styled experts are needed to educate everyone on racial difference. I’m of mixed ethnicity and find this kind of article from the BBC extremely condescending.”

    The BBC was previously criticised over resources on its BBC Bitesize schools website describing “white privilege”, an ideology that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities rejected as potentially helping white working-class pupils fall behind.

    A BBC spokesman said: “Tiny Happy People offers a wealth of resources, covering a variety of topics that parents can access, should they wish, for help and advice on all areas of development and well-being.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/11/bbc-guide-tells-parents-examine-biases-toddler-has-white-friends/

  95. The BBC must end its addiction to divisive racial politics

    If the corporation wants to survive, it should at least try to understand the country it supposedly represents

    CALVIN ROBINSON

    The BBC is at it again [see below], exposing a bias rooted in Left-wing politics imported from the United States. This time it has told parents to “check their bias” if their children only have white friends. One of the assumptions made by the corporation’s Tiny Happy People website – ostensibly a bank of educational resources for parents and children – is that any child who has a group of white friends must come from a home where “negative thoughts about foreigners” are openly expressed.

    You might think it was a slip-up to be quickly rectified, but this isn’t the first time the corporation has indulged such drivel. Two years ago, its Bitesize website published a video by John Amaechi, an American psychologist, telling children that “there is nothing but benefit to understanding our own privileges, white or otherwise”.

    They are practicing the language of Critical Race Theory (CRT), an American academic thought experiment that attempts to solve racial inequalities but, in fact, ends up exacerbating them. It centres on the belief that whiteness itself is the cause of many of the issues that we face – and thus to negate racism, whiteness must be diminished. Its full logic ultimately changes the fundamental question from “was this situation racist?” to “how was this situation racist?” The result is self-explanatory: we end up seeing racism everywhere, even where it doesn’t exist.

    Such a dangerous way of thinking should be given no truck within a public-sector broadcaster with a duty to remain balanced. The BBC has pledged, through its charter, to “bring people together and help contribute to social cohesion and wellbeing”. That could not be more divergent from the radical ideology that seems to have captured New Broadcasting House.

    Even if many of us have grown used to the metropolitan obsession with CRT, this latest advice takes matters to another level, for it is quite another thing altogether to bring its divisive language into the arena of parental advice.

    Parents access these websites hoping for fun activities and helpful guides, not patronising and arguably racist language. Nor is it at all helpful for CRT to be presented as if it were established fact, like gravity, rather than the often unverifiable musings of a few academics.

    Wouldn’t it be great if our nation’s broadcaster, to which we are all encouraged to pay a fee, played a unifying role for once? It could remind families that in this fair nation they all have a share in society, regardless of their colour, ethnicity or religion. If we focussed on Britishness and spent less time obsessing over our immutable characteristics, every community would be freer and more united.

    In fact, I would encourage the BBC’s new diversity team (now that June Sarpong, its £267,000-per-year diversity tsar is departing) to read the Government’s Inclusive Britain strategy, which outlines 74 actions aimed at tackling racial disparities in the UK. It is built on the fantastic work of Dr Tony Sewell, whose report last year, while identifying many areas where equality can be improved, highlighted that a racial disparity is not necessarily evidence of racism.

    Obsessing over race misses the bigger picture: that class, geography and upbringing all have far more impact on one’s life than the colour of our skin. If the BBC wants to survive, it should at least try to understand the country it supposedly represents.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/12/bbc-must-end-addiction-divisive-racial-politics/
    _________________________________________________________________________

    BBC guide tells parents to ‘examine their biases’ if their toddler only has white friends

    Education expert calls BBC’s early-years parenting advice ‘clearly not impartial’, whilst one parent labels it ‘extremely condescending’

    By Ewan Somerville

    Author and activist Uju Asika has written guidance for parents on race and religion that has angered some visitors to the BBC website. Parents should question their attitudes on race if their toddler only has white friends, according to the BBC’s early-years guidance.

    The BBC’s Tiny Happy People website, a bank of resources for parents, includes a section on talking about race and religion with young children, written by the author and activist Uju Asika. The site says that “for white mums or dads, it might be time to examine your own internal biases”.

    It explains: “Did your family express negative thoughts about foreigners and immigrants? What is your social circle like today? Does your child have Black or Brown friends over for playdates? Could you be doing more?”

    Educators described the resource as “inappropriate” and “clearly not impartial”.

    The guide was drawn up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and written by Ms Asika, author of the book How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World which gives advice on microaggressions. Ms Asika wrote last year on a blog about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey that “the Royal family is racist” and “sitting on a legacy of global subjugation, pillaging and slave trading wealth”. She suggested that parents could explain Megxit to children by saying “real life isn’t a fairytale, look how the prince and his duchess rescued each other”.

    The Duchess of Cambridge helped to create Tiny Happy People, describing its launch in the summer of 2020 as “gold dust for families, giving tips and tools to use particularly in those first five years”. Parents are told in the BBC resource that “studies reveal that by age two, children start sorting themselves into groups showing what is known as in-group bias”, such as “excluding” children who are less like them in the playground.

    “According to research, even babies at three months old can tell different races apart,” the webpage says.

    Parents are urged to introduce children to racism by being kind, using inclusive language, being as direct as possible and being role models by “educating yourself” through books and TV shows. It is also suggested that parents “could talk about how being white might give you certain advantages – for instance you are more likely to see people who look like you on TV”.

    “However, white people can choose to use their advantages to help make people a fairer world for all,” the guide says.

    The guide was criticised for singling out white people. Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, a former teacher and education expert at the campaign group Don’t Divide Us, said: “It’s clearly not impartial, it’s putting an intolerable burden on schools and on teachers. It is inappropriate and can very easily have unintended negative consequences.”

    She advocated a “colour-blind” approach to racism by viewing everyone as fundamentally equal, “rather than trying to create a false plurality from the top through division and micro-management which kills curiosity and creates fear of asking the questions”.

    A mother of two young children, who wished to be anonymous, told The Telegraph: “It assumes that self-styled experts are needed to educate everyone on racial difference. I’m of mixed ethnicity and find this kind of article from the BBC extremely condescending.”

    The BBC was previously criticised over resources on its BBC Bitesize schools website describing “white privilege”, an ideology that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities rejected as potentially helping white working-class pupils fall behind.

    A BBC spokesman said: “Tiny Happy People offers a wealth of resources, covering a variety of topics that parents can access, should they wish, for help and advice on all areas of development and well-being.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/11/bbc-guide-tells-parents-examine-biases-toddler-has-white-friends/

  96. Good night (or good morning @ 00:32,) to my NoTTLer family and God bless. We meet again in the morning’s light.

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