Thursday 19 May: The Government must find Conservative ways to cut the cost of living

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

591 thoughts on “Thursday 19 May: The Government must find Conservative ways to cut the cost of living”

    1. Never knowingly Underpriced!

      Morning Folks — If the headlines are correct it seems we are all going to be Hyper soon…..

  4. Good Morning Folks,

    Cloudy start here, had some heavy rain and thunder over night.

    1. Here’s a disturbing view from the USA: Target’s and Walmart’s slump on the market, families buying half gallons of milk in place of gallons. Biden is without doubt a puppet being managed by others and the slump is being engineered by the latter.

      Start at 2 minutes 10 seconds to avoid adverts.

      War Room – Market Slump of Grocery Giants

      1. I saw one explanation that said that Walmarts was taking a cut in profits because they were not able to pass on all the price rises to their customers.

  6. 352718+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Thursday 19 May: The Government must find Conservative ways to cut the cost of living/

    As long as this current political mob stuck to the tory (ino) tag they are safe

    Their only saving grace now would be to QUIT en masse but methinks that is highly
    unlikely seeing they are in pursuit of the green reset.

  7. The Government must find Conservative ways to cut the cost of living

    How about abandoning the net zero carbon green energy scam that is the cause of most of our problems.

      1. The government has urinated decades of pensions on PFI, quangos and all sorts of waste – like that policeman’s helmet above.

        If NI were invested as a normal pension fund it would generate the average salary worker a million quid pension pot. The state sees that money as general tax revenue to spend as it wants. The state is utterly profligate and completely wasteful.

    1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff7341a0818bed4073d5f35107ceba851f2c436005d3b0d7284d7867a692c033.png I would have told him the same as I would have told this fucking idiot (who is, thankfully, now retired) and advised him where to shove it. The former Derbyshire chief was ridiculed when this appeared on the force’s website and officers took the piss out of his “big purple bobbies’ helmet”. It was soon removed from the site, but not before I took a copy.

      2. What a [expletive] waste of money. Stuff the gays, ignore them, they’re no more worthy of consideration than any other citizen. That’s the whole flipping point of justice being blind. Stop favouring one group over another based on where they stick their privates. It’s completely irrelevant.

      3. How about showing “solidarity and support” for the vast majority of normal people??

        1. What a quaintly old fashioned notion.
          Next you’ll be expecting the law abiding to be protected from marauding pikeys.

    2. He’ll probably come over all faint at the thought of his pink truncheon…….

    6. He should be immediately on a charge for:

      A) Being improperly dressed and
      B) Bringing the Police (Force, Farce or Disservice) into disrepute.

  9. Rape arrest Tory MP’s alleged victim is male politician who was teenager when they met. 19 May 2022.

    An allegation of rape against a Tory MP was made by a male politician who was a teenager when they first met, The Telegraph understands, amid growing pressure on the Conservative Party to name him.

    So this was an act of homosexual rape? I did wonder about the long delay in the accusations and after I read the alleged rapists Wikipedia entry that he was opposed to pretty much every LGBTQ piece of legislation over the last twenty years. A strange paradox! Is the accuser by any chance that nutter MP who identifies as female? There’s more to this than meets the eye!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/18/exclusive-rape-arrest-tory-mps-alleged-victim-male-politician/

    2. It’ll be used to bash anyone opposed to Stonewall and the march of gay rights. Might have something to do with the conversion therapy ban that is going through at the moment.
      Conversion therapy, the bogeyman that they love to wave in front of people, doesn’t exist in the UK as such – the proposed legislation is likely to catch people opposed to gay “marriage” and private conversations, eg between family members. This is probably exactly what the extremists at Stonewall are looking for; another excuse make out that anyone who opposes their demands is an unspeakably mean and wicked person – aided and abetted by the morally bankrupt legacy media.

  10. Good morning from a Anglo Saxon Queen with longbow and axe .

    A cloudy start to the day, there were thunderstorms over night .

    We’ll be off travelling to Devon early this morning, about 6 hours drive . Lots of winding very narrow lanes, with grass growing out of the centre with high hedges, in vert rural part with different type map for directions. I’ll take lots of pictures .

    1. ‘Morning Ethel. Which part of Devon are you heading for? (I promise not to tip off those pesky Vikings.)

    2. One of my favourite counties (even despite the fact that my ex is from Devon)! I got to know it quite well during my 16 year marriage…

    1. Morning, Elsie. Your forecast yesterday that rain would appear over night proved correct.

      1. Not my forecast, Korky, but rather the BBC’s Weather site. (At least one thing they [usually] get right.)

    2. And what is the demography of those who count as low paid – bet the gimmiegrants outnumber anyone else by a long way
      “oh but I have 4 wives and 18 children to look after”…among other plaints.

    1. Given the increased price of oil the next one is bound to be a watercolour……

  15. Why England should leave the UK instead of persuading the others to stay and embrace a golden future. Peter Hitchens.18 May 2022.

    What are we waiting for? All the other nations of the UK are set on tearing themselves away from England. I have given up trying to persuade them to stay. Let us leave them instead.

    Have a referendum if you must, but I reckon that any party that puts an English secession from the UK in its general election manifesto will win a smashing majority.

    There’s more than a little to be said for this. We subsidise and pander to their needs and receive nothing but abuse for our trouble!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10831007/PETER-HITCHENS-England-leave-UK-embrace-golden-future.html

  16. ‘Morning, Peeps,

    A welcome downpour here last night and more to come over the next couple of hours.

    The first four letters today are about the suggested windfall tax – and all are against it.  If selection of letters to publish is proportionate then, once again, some ministers and MPs are out of touch.  Here they are:

    SIR – Is it not time the Conservative Party rebranded itself as Labour-lite?

    Very few of its present or proposed policies bear any relation to Conservative values. That the idea of a “windfall tax” on oil and gas companies is even being discussed (report, May 18) is unacceptable to anyone with a sensible economic outlook.

    I am at a loss to think of any party worth voting for.

    Rupert Tickner
    Bordon, Hampshire

    SIR – The idea of a windfall tax on oil and gas companies is apparently “wildly popular” with the public.

    However, did the researchers check whether those contacted were aware of BP’s loss of £20 billion from leaving Russia? Or Shell’s losses from quitting Sakhalin-II and two Siberian oilfield projects (estimated at £4  billion), as well as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (estimated at almost £1  billion)? Had the researchers factored in the increased investments that these and other energy companies should be making in oil and natural gas around Britain and elsewhere (and hopefully in sound renewable energy schemes as well)? If our ministers are really “warming to the idea” of this tax they should be ashamed.

    Professor Michael Jefferson
    Melchbourne, Bedfordshire

    SIR – Oil exploration is a risky activity. In return for taking the risk of loss, companies are entitled to the profit, even if it is unexpected. To interfere would discourage enterprise – something of which we need more.

    James Pickthorn
    London SW6

    SIR – The idea of a windfall tax is not popular with me.

    The energy companies that the Labour Party and other Left-leaning politicians want to target provide millions of pounds to pension companies’ funds every year. A further tax on them will be a tax on pensioners.

    A better way to use the money would be to allow energy companies to invest in Britain’s many large, currently untapped, offshore gas and oil fields, and also start some serious fracking, thus reducing our reliance on imported energy. This would give consumers a much bigger windfall.

    Simon Perks
    Poughill, Devon

    1. Taxing someone else doing well is always popular with stupid people. These same people if asked ‘would you be prepared to pay more for energy’ would say no. Who then, do they think would pay this tax? It won’t be Shell or BP!

      Far too many people are plain thick. It’s a damning indictment of the species.

    1. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies. We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice, including attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.

      Morning Johnny. Yes. That’s right!

    1. Morning Oggy. My understanding is that it is gross incompetence and corruption!

      1. 352718+ up ticks,

        Morning AS,
        We in the United Kingdom have oodles of them ingredients within parliament
        along seemingly with a fair sample of daisy chainers bringing vaz to mind.

        To my mind they are ,the coalition, hell bent with the green reset and forming via Dover a political fighting force that can change any towns voting pattern once given the vote, who was it that wanted amnesty for the illegals ?

    3. This is how communism always ends. Starvation, chaos, mass slaughter. The Left never learn.

      1. 352718+ up ticks,

        Morning W,
        I cannot see it as “the left” & right in regards to the ballot booth, to me it is more like Right & Wrong.

        The wrong via the ballot booth being in this case the electorate majority vote
        again & again, voting in a segment of a coalition close shop, three parties identical, ALL pro eu.

        1. Problem is, they’re all the same. Every political organisation is exactly the same – big state spendaholic socialists.

          1. 352718+ up ticks,
            W
            UKIP under the Batten leadership was anything but the same The genuine UKIP gave the electorate BREXIT, Batten wrote road to freedom long ago, we was tagged as far right racist fruitcakes
            by the lab/lib/con political mongs & their treacherous leadership.
            Under Batten the party was building into a threatening force and that was not to be tolerated
            .

  20. SIR – Patients are asked to tick boxes to indicate what they need when ordering a repeat medication.

    Nowadays, every time I collect a prescription I am given everything on the repeat prescription, even though I have not ticked the boxes and they are no longer required. I tell the dispensary that I do not need the extra medication but am told that it cannot be taken back once the order is in the paper bag.

    No wonder the NHS is bust.

    Elizabeth Barclay
    King’s Lynn, Norfolk

    Why not cross out those not required??

    1. ‘Morning, Hugh.

      Or simply just tell the pharmacist, firmly, that you will only pay for (and take away) the ones you require. How hard can that be?

      1. I do not pay for any of mine and i can leave off what I do not need that month.

        2. I have to pay for mine over here in Sweden. However, they give me three months worth at a time and I only pay what it used to cost me (as an under-65) in England for a standard one month’s supply.

    2. Much more importantlierester, why, if you have a chronic need for medication, can you not get a 2 or 3 month supply when you re-order.
      Our local chemists are forever packed with oldies after thei pills, which are unlikely to be changed as the GPs are working form home, abroad,
      so no face to face consulatations.
      Re-ordering is all done on the ‘puter as well

  21. SIR – Patients are asked to tick boxes to indicate what they need when ordering a repeat medication.

    Nowadays, every time I collect a prescription I am given everything on the repeat prescription, even though I have not ticked the boxes and they are no longer required. I tell the dispensary that I do not need the extra medication but am told that it cannot be taken back once the order is in the paper bag.

    No wonder the NHS is bust.

    Elizabeth Barclay
    King’s Lynn, Norfolk

    Why not cross out those not required??

  22. Vladimir Putin ‘weaponising’ world’s food supplies. 19 May 2022.

    Vladimir Putin is “weaponising” global food supplies by stealing grain and destroying agricultural equipment as part of his war in Ukraine, Western officials have said.

    The Kremlin is believed to be dismantling infrastructure needed for food production and blocking ports that are vital in shipping cereals out of the country, which is known as the “breadbasket of Europe”.

    Officials fear Russia has embarked on a “deliberate policy” of disrupting food supplies, sparking a global crisis and raising the prospect of starvation in developing countries.

    Believed? This is just cheap propaganda, an attempt to lay their own incompetence and stupidity at Vlad’s door!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/18/vladimir-putin-weaponising-worlds-food-supplies/

      1. A person I know (as while I respect him, I don’t consider his views rational and his ardent fanaticism and self righteousness is putrid) had his vegetable garden emptied. I don’t know if it was vandalism or just a break in, but it’s unusual to steal a bag of carrots, spuds and pull up the cabbages and rip the tomato vines out of the greenhouse. Albeit, they smashed the greenhouse getting out, but seemed an odd thing to rob.

        Poor Lefty green was distraught. How could people do this! It was completely wrong and evil! No one mentioned that he was an ardent supporter of green taxes, socialism and ‘fairness’ that others should have what they need. I suppose that only goes as far as when the state takes it from *other people* and gives it to him, so another Lefty hypocrite.

    2. What utter nonsense. Lockdowns, inflation, sanctions on natural gas and Russian wheat, food plants burning down, farmers being paid to leave land fallow instead of producing food…the list of reasons why people can’t afford food is long, and the West is behind most of them.

      1. Never let a good excuse go to waste. Case in point, when energy soared the state said ‘Look! It’s the evil energy companies putting up prices!’

        Unless you were awake you didn’t see the Oz like hand of big fat state grubbily rubbing it’s hands together at the complete lack of energy generators, the atrocious waste of money that is windmills and the 40% taxes on energy.

    3. Even if we take this nonsense at face value, Ukraine aka ‘the breadbasket of Europe’ only provides three percent of the planets grain. A sensible move would be to seek out the remaining 97 percent, thereby averting such ‘weaponising’.

    1. Well, our lot of wasters have ignored both those rules – and many thousands more besides.

      Seriously, what would happen is achingly obvious. So obvious a fool could see it – but then Brown was told to stop fiddling with the banking code in 2008 and he carried on, so perhaps… Why, given how obvious the problem was, did the statist fools go on to make it worse rather than mitigate it?

      Are these people sharing a braincell?

  24. SIR – How dare Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, warn our Foreign Secretary against taking appropriate action in the Brexit negotiations (report, May 17)? Does the she not realise that at present the Northern Ireland Protocol denies a significant number of UK citizens their inalienable democratic rights?

    Furthermore, it would be appropriate to remind those who wish to interfere in the process of improving the Protocol that it was the EU which previously acted in “bad faith” by triggering Article 16, when it disagreed over the logistics of coronavirus vaccine deliveries.

    Malcolm H Wheeler
    Bonvilston, Glamorgan

    I greatly look forward to the downfall of Pelosi, and I don’t much care how it happens either.

      2. Yes, I remember when Pelosi and her coven were photographed kneeling in remembrance of the drug-fueled criminal Floyd. All those kneeling were wearing scarfs adorned in African tribal colours. Ironically, the tribal colours they opted for were those of the Ashanti; the Ashanti were slave wholesalers long before and during the shipment of slaves to the Americas.

  25. SIR – You report (May 14) that Boris Johnson wants to create “mini-Hollands” in towns and cities around the country to wean us off cars.

    Anyone who has been to Holland, or other bicycle-friendly countries, will have noticed that cyclists – an equal mix of men and women – wear normal clothes and use bicycles as a means of transport.

    In London, by contrast, the cycle lanes are mostly populated by young and middle-aged men in Lycra, who use the streets as a gym substitute, cycle aggressively and ignore red lights.

    Perhaps, then, it’s unsurprising that those encouraging cycling are the very same men in Lycra. If ever 
there were an argument for more diversity among decision-makers (women with children, pensioners, tradesmen) surely this is it.

    Rosalind Doye
    London SW18

    Having been to Holland and observed their delightfully patient and polite cyclists, I couldn’t agree more with the contrast between them and the lunatic Lycra-louts that infest our roads – and not just in London, either!

    1. It’s a measure of respect – one the Dutch cyclists are given room and space and so give it in return.

      Frankly, this country is just disgustingly overcrowded. It’s treated as the doss house for endless vermin who rock up, gabble on in foreign, abuse it’s then leave when it suits them.

      1. Hmm. Cyclists are given space in Germany, and use their status as Kings of the road to assume right of way in every situation.

    2. When I was stationed in Maastricht, NL, I was impressed with the conduct of cyclists and the provision of cycle lanes, often with cycle traffic lights. Amsterdam, however, is a different. Cyclists often don’t stop at red traffic lights, judging on approach when they can nip between pedestrians without stopping. I was once grazed by a cyclist while crossing a busy road in the museum district. The lights were on green for pedestrians. Half a second earlier….

  26. SIR – You report (May 14) that Boris Johnson wants to create “mini-Hollands” in towns and cities around the country to wean us off cars.

    Anyone who has been to Holland, or other bicycle-friendly countries, will have noticed that cyclists – an equal mix of men and women – wear normal clothes and use bicycles as a means of transport.

    In London, by contrast, the cycle lanes are mostly populated by young and middle-aged men in Lycra, who use the streets as a gym substitute, cycle aggressively and ignore red lights.

    Perhaps, then, it’s unsurprising that those encouraging cycling are the very same men in Lycra. If ever 
there were an argument for more diversity among decision-makers (women with children, pensioners, tradesmen) surely this is it.

    Rosalind Doye
    London SW18

    Having been to Holland and observed their delightfully patient and polite cyclists, I couldn’t agree more with the contrast between them and the lunatic Lycra-louts that infest our roads – and not just in London, either!

  27. SIR – Grammar schools (Letters, May 17) boosted social mobility in my family.

    My three cousins from the slums of Manchester all passed the 11-plus and went to Manchester Grammar School – which was then a direct-grant school – and on to university at Oxford and Harvard. One became a barrister.

    I was born into a middle-class family but failed my 11-plus so went to a secondary modern school. However, I was encouraged to take A-levels and later read engineering at the University of London. I took my opportunities, albeit later, and fully support the grammar system and its outcomes.

    Tony Manning
    Barton on Sea, Hampshire

    Yes, another 11+ failure (at interview) here too, Mr Manning. Somehow I made my way and, like many others, ran my own business for my last nine years of working. And yes, I too am still in favour of Grammar schools.

    1. Another letter on the same subject:

      SIR – While I am not against grammar schools, Jeremy Collis (Letters, May 17) makes it sound as though entry is a matter of choice. Most grammars select on academic performance, often through one pass-or-fail test.

      My parents would have chosen the nearest grammar over the secondary modern I attended, but I did not get in. My school did not offer O-levels, but I was rescued by the introduction of the comprehensive system, which helped me to achieve good A-levels and led to a degree at Imperial College. If new grammar schools are introduced, non-grammars must also be improved.

      David Pelham
      Surbiton, Surrey

    3. Grammar schools I believe give a town or a suburb a standard to try to live up to.
      Boroughs in London without Grammar schools have no gold standard to lead the way and become full of glum people with no sense of self improvement.
      I think this is because those families that believe in a good education move into the boroughs with the grammar schools.
      Mind you around my way that had meant mainly those of Asian heritage.

    4. Do not forget, another type of school that was shut down: the Technical College.

      We still need ‘working’ engineers and technicians: Mechanical, Electrical, Wrights, Smiths, Floyds, Electronics, Farmers, Miners etc

      We have off-loaded our industries to the Far East.and are now paying thr price

      1. Yes, absolutely. The technical college would suit those kids who are simply technical and are never going to be good at anything else. Instead of torturing them in mainstream schools, they need technical colleges!

        1. I went to one of the original Comprehensive Schools in 1956.
          When I started in year One, year Three were to ‘top of school.
          For management purpose, school divided into ‘Houses’
          For learning, each year divided into 8 sets, 1-4 GCE, 5-8 others
          Some lessons were ‘general’ others by Subject ability, ie set 1 for English, set 3 for maths

          Yearly exams, promotion/demotion throughout sets
          When I left in 1961, with 7 GCE’s one pupil form year Seven had been accepted in an Oxford college
          Then came doom and gloom. all must be equal

        2. There is nothing “simply” about being technical. I am technically useless, as is my OH. So we have to pay people to come in and do things that really we “ought” to be able to do. That is just at a household level – society needs technical people even more. Let alone the STEM subjects (where our parliament could do with some).

          My talents lie in other directions…(and no fnar, fnar-ing from any of the more dirty-minded Nottlers – you know who you are! ) :o)

    5. I remember the terror a teacher had of a child failing their 11+ in Kent. My first thought was – improve the non-grammar school.. Impose discipline, standards, rigor. Demand academic excellence. Stop treating it as a failure dump.

          1. Because they thought all should have prizes and competition was elitist (I taught in a comprehensive and a secondary modern and the pupils did better in the SM than they did in the comp because the SM followed GS ethics. while the comp had mixed ability classes).

    6. My two brothers and I passed the 11+ and went to grammar schools however we were not academic and all left school aged 15. The grammar schools, I believe, gave us the ‘can do’ ethic and we all prospered. I am in favour of grammar schools as well as technical colleges.

        1. My postcode was E1. Just down from St Katherine’s dock. Couldn’t afford it now.

          1. Mine was Clerkenwell and vw Canonbury, both now overrun with champagne socialists.

  28. Good morning, all. Grey.

    It did rain a bit in the night but not the nice long downpour we were promised.

    Yet another government pledge broken.

  29. There’s no case for Britain to pay reparations. 19 May 2022.

    It is one thing to blame Portugal, Great Britain and other European countries for their involvement in the slave trade, but the role of African rulers in capturing and selling the slaves cannot be ignored. Looking at the Irish Potato Famine, we find arguments that the British government acted callously and arguments that it tried to alleviate the problem.

    Role?! Lol! The Atlantic Slave Trade would have been impossible without the participation of the Africans. They were the creators of it! The founders. The facilitators. The people who maintained it for four hundred years. The Europeans were simply their customers.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/18/no-case-britain-pay-reparations/

    2. The squealing Lefty mobs should be ignored. Point to everything they’ve been given and tell them to feck off. They’re just another bunch of useless wasters, freeloaders the world could do without.

        2. We had several hours of heavy rain.
          Sadly, the thunderstorms that were working their way up the country missed us.

  31. Yesterday evening I think this raptor was trying to catch the last bus when it collided with the bus shelter…..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/26cda5987a78031986e1d8b11199ee212e0d83d3c465d9237c53905446159ac3.jpg

    Anecdote: In our previous house our children insisted we rescue an injured pigeon and take it to the lady what cares for injured birds. Her name Mrs Sparrowhawk. I swear she moistened her lips when opening the blanket revealed the helpless pigeon!

    1. Poor thing. It deserved a better life. Considering the damage windmills have done to the environment and ecology it’s a wonder we have any birds left.

      1. While we used to see and hear the odd sparrowhawk making lazy circles over the house, there seems to have been a population explosion and now I frequently see half a dozen or so doing the same thing. That BBC prat and the RSPB are to blame.

        1. Buzzards make lazy circles and occasionally give out a short cry . Sparrowhawks tend to flash by like greased lightning. No doubt Grizz will correct me if I’m wrong.

  32. We say goodbye to another courageous and highly skilled aviator, for whom the over-used ‘hero’ is fully justified:

    Stocky Edwards, great Canadian fighter ace who applied his duck-shooting skills to destroying enemy aircraft – obituary

    From his early days shooting prairie wildfowl with his father Edwards had learnt to lead his target – ‘not shoot at it, but lead the target’

    ByTelegraph Obituaries18 May 2022 • 7:02pm

    Wing Commander James “Stocky” Edwards, who has died aged 100, is thought to be Canada’s last surviving fighter ace of the Second World War, having been credited with the destruction of at least 19 enemy aircraft, the third highest by a Canadian.

    Edwards was posted to the Middle East in late 1941 and the following January he joined 94 Squadron as a flight sergeant. The squadron was exchanging its Hurricanes for the US-built P-40 Kittyhawk, a heavy fighter that performed better than the early Hurricanes but worse than the Messerschmitt Bf 109. That Edwards was able to get round the Kittyhawk’s shortcomings was a measure of his skill.

    On March 2 he was escorting Boston light bombers to the well-defended airfield at Martuba in eastern Libya when enemy fighters appeared. He attacked them and shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109. This was his first operational mission – a sign of his rare natural ability. Two weeks later he downed another Bf 109.

    Reflecting on what made a fighter pilot, Edwards later said: “Not everyone is aggressive enough. You had to be a certain type.” But those qualities might only become clear in the air: “You had to go up on a flight with him and see.”

    Edwards had first honed his marksman skills as a youngster shooting duck with his father on the Canadian prairie. He used to tell his friend Dave Mellin that “he was very fortunate as a fighter pilot because he understood to lead his target – not shoot at it, but lead the target.”

    In May 1942, having suffered very heavy losses, the squadron was withdrawn to regroup; Edwards was one of four pilots transferred to 260 Squadron. Throughout 1942 he saw a great deal of action in the Western Desert.

    On June 17, during heavy fighting at the Battle of Gazala around Tobruk, Edwards was in a fighter force escorting Boston bombers to attack German positions when they were attacked by Bf 109s. After a fierce fight, Edwards shot one down and it crashed.

    As he was leaving the scene, he spotted a lone Bf 109 at low level. It turned out to be the Luftwaffe Experten (“ace”) Oberleutnant Otto Schulz, who had just shot a Hurricane down and was strafing the wreckage. As Schulz took the risk of making a second pass, Edwards closed in, got the deflection for his shooting right (leading the target, in other words) and opened fire, sending the Bf 109 crashing into the desert.

    On returning to base, Edwards, a modest man, was concerned at the reception such a story, related without witnesses, would receive, so he claimed a “probably” destroyed. In the event, the Hurricane pilot, who had survived his crash landing, could confirm the attack: he had noted the letters on the side of Edwards’s Kittyhawk as it departed.

    By November Edwards had shot down six enemy fighters, eight others probably destroyed and a number damaged. Although still a flight sergeant, he led the squadron into action several times. By the end of the year he had been commissioned, and a few weeks later it was announced that he also had been awarded the DFM for “his outstanding coolness and courage.”

    Four days later it was announced that he had been awarded the DFC, by which time he had been credited with destroying eight aircraft.

    Just as the publication of Edwards’s decorations had been slow catching up with the pace of his successes in the air, so his promotions had also been slow to be announced. He was promoted from flight sergeant to flight lieutenant in a matter of weeks.

    During a visit to 260 Squadron in the desert, an RCAF air vice-marshal commented: “Edwards is a grand little fellow with a broad smile.” He went on to say: “His score is all the more remarkable because he had piled it up in a Kittyhawk, a slower machine than the Messerschmitts he was up against.”

    Edwards was finally rested on May 20 1943, the day the Germans were defeated in Tunisia. He had by now shot down 13 fighters in the air and destroyed another nine aircraft on the ground during strafing attacks. He often underclaimed – he always had to be absolutely sure. Postwar records suggest that he may have destroyed more. He was undoubtedly Canada’s most successful pilot in the Western Desert campaign.

    James Francis Edwards was born in June 5 1921 in Nokomis, Saskatchewan, and grew up in Battleford, where he was educated at St Thomas College. On leaving school he immediately volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force and in October 1940 he started training to be a pilot. He earned the nickname “Stocky” for his toughness in difficult moments despite his small stature, and the name stuck.

    After completing his tour with 260 Squadron in May 1943, Edwards became a gunnery instructor until November, when he joined 417 Squadron RCAF, flying the latest Spitfire type on the Italian front. A month later he was appointed as a flight commander on 92 Squadron. He gained further successes over the Anzio beachhead in February 1944.

    On the 16th, the fighting reaching a climax as the Germans launched a counter-attack against the Allied landings, he shot down a Focke-Wulf 19. Three days later he destroyed two more and damaged a third during a day which saw an upsurge in Luftwaffe activity.

    In March 1944 he took command of 274 Squadron and a month later the squadron returned to England to re-equip with the Spitfire IX. He began operations in May and led bomber escort missions during the build-up to the D-Day landings.

    On the day the Allied forces went ashore in Normandy, he made three patrols over the beachhead without meeting any opposition. In August the squadron started operations with the Hawker Tempest, and he flew seven missions chasing V-1 flying bombs at low level before he left for Canada on leave. In October he was awarded a Bar to his DFC, for “inspiring and courageous leadership.”

    Edwards returned to Europe in March 1945, when he was promoted to wing commander and appointed to lead 127 Wing, part of the Second Tactical Air Force, operating from airfields in the Netherlands.
    Flying a Spitfire XVI, with the American Packard Merlin engine, he had time to make three more claims, which included damaging one of the Luftwaffe’s formidable new jet fighters (the world’s first), the Messerschmitt 262. Two days before the end of the war, he shared in the destruction of a Junkers Ju 88 bomber. He was Mentioned in Despatches.

    By the end of the war he had flown 373 operational sorties without being shot down by the enemy. He returned to Canada in August 1945 and decided to remain in the RCAF, reverting to the rank of flight lieutenant.

    Postwar, Edwards became a flying instructor on the Vampire jet and served in RCAF search and rescue organisation, flying Lancasters and the Canso flying boat. In November 1951 he was posted to North Bay to form and command 430 Squadron, the first RCAF squadron to be equipped with the North American Sabre jet fighter.

    In October 1952, he was promoted to wing commander in command of No 2 RCAF (Fighter) Wing flying Sabres from Grostenquin in France. After returning to Canada and attending the Staff College, he served in the USAF Air Defences HQ in Colorado Springs.

    This heralded a series of appointments associated with the air defence of North America. He flew the CF-100 all-weather fighter, and served as deputy operations officer of the 41st Air Division. In 1966 he returned to Colorado Springs to take over as plans officer.

    Under the Canadian Forces unification program he became Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards, and his final posting was in command of Canadian Forces Station, Baldy Hughes, an air-defence early-warning radar station in central British Columbia. He retired in 1972 and took up residence on Vancouver Island.

    Edwards dedicated much of his spare time to conservation projects, including wetlands preservation. In collaboration with Michel Lavigne, he published his autobiography, Kittyhawk Pilot, in 1983.

    He was a Member of the Order of Canada and, in 2014, the French government appointed him to the Legion of Honour. In 2009 he was named as one of the 100 most influential Canadians in aviation.

    In a tribute in 2012, the Canadian historian Dave O’Malley said that during the war, Wing Commander Edwards “went from greenhorn to respected commander, from prairie boy to legend”.

    Stocky Edwards’s first wife Norma and a daughter predeceased him; he is survived by his second wife, Toni, a son and two daughters.

    “Stocky” Edwards, born June 5 1921, died May 14 2022

    1. A man pretending to be a woman is not a woman. To pretend he is, is unfair to all women.

      This trans nonsense has to stop. By all means, indulge your fantasy. Dress up, even do the surgical thing. In law, however, you cannot be recognised as a woman. You’re not. When a man is given anaesthetic suitable for a woman and wakes up screaming it’s his fault for demanding others ignore reality and indulge in fantasy.

      Live your life however you want but never, ever believe you have the right to demand I accept your perspective. That’s just your ego.

      1. I’m not a feminist, but when I hear men describing themselves as “a woman in tech” my hackles rise. I am a woman in tech; I’ve spent more than twenty years at the coal face programming things like protocols and competing with men. It is sometimes hard, as a lone woman, to compete with people who have a different way of communicating and thinking and earn their respect. I don’t have much sympathy with someone who claims to have has this experience when they haven’t.

        1. I must be weird as when I go and speak to ‘the devs’ I don’t really care if they’re a man or a woman, or a green blob. They’re a colleague who I’ll treat with respect and professionalism to achieve the end goal of better products for my users.

          It’s an odd thing, to just treat people as people rather than look at their gender first and their ability second.

          1. That isn’t it, most of the time. Very few men discriminate like that – I have only come across a few.
            Most of the time people just communicate in the way that’s most natural to them. Men communicate differently from women. It can be hard, as a woman, to adapt one’s communication and working style so that the men get it.
            A feminist would demand that the men change their way of working – I don’t agree with that, because I value how the men work. The software industry didn’t leap forward by telling men to behave more like women.

    2. Disgraceful discrimination. These poor young women need all the prizes they can win.

      1. Some of them are on swimming scholarships, so if they miss out on getting points, they lose their scholarship, and are liable for the whole lot of college fees. Conversely, any man who declares himself a woman is presumably eligible for the women’s sport scholarships.

      1. Curious that it has suddenly turned up in several countries at once – Spain has 8 cases and a few other countries I cannot remember.

    4. Bill Gates has been banging on about a smallpox pandemic for quite a while now.
      I wonder if this is a trial run, and if if some Dr Strangelove has found a way of making monkeypox mutate into variants in a similar way to covid.

    5. There’s probably a monkeypox mutation that spreads without close contact, sitting in some lab somewhere waiting to be released

      1. Cripes. The surviving monkeys haven’t been passed onto the Wuhan wet market, have they?

  35. I was amused a couple of days ago to read that preachy Woke William had FLOWN all the way to some poxy Gulf state to present the Queen’s condolences following the death of its local despot.

    Has the wanqueur never heard of zoom or skype? Or e-mail? Or the telephone? Or a letter? Or going (on his bike) to see the despot’s ambassador in London?

    These people make me sick.

    1. We need the oil, silly Billy…! (and we probably want to sell them more arms)

    2. India recently declared a day of mourning for some dead Arab leader – was it the same one, I wonder? Someone re-tweeted it, because they found it surprising, but I can’t find the tweet.

      1. Indeed – almost certainly. My brother in law flew there for work (he is a renowned sound engineer) – 9 hour flight. Was taken to his hotel and told the event was cancelled- and flew back to Blighty. 18 hours on two planes in 24 hours! But he did get paid for the job!!

      2. I was looking for your comprehensive analysis of the worlds grain supply. It appeared around the start of this week, can you let me know which day exactly. TY

        2. It’s interesting that Zimbabwe, which used to be known as “the bread basket of Africa” is now producing 1.5 tonnes of wheat

          per hectare on a much reduced acreage.

          I wonder why that is?

  37. Elite groupthink is driving Britain into a nightmare of inflation, idleness and rage. 19 may 2022.

    To the experts, economists and other idiot savants who inexplicably failed to see this storm coming, thanks for nothing. All of their acronyms, PhDs, fancy modelling and algorithms have proved useless: Britain and the world are plunging into the most terrifying economic, political and cultural crisis of the past 40 years. A bunch of intelligent amateurs couldn’t have done much worse.

    Inflation is out of control, a terrible recession is looming and higher interest rates are about to send house prices tumbling and unemployment soaring: the politicians are still in denial, unlike the voters, but the reckoning, when it comes, will be traumatic.

    This is like the financial crisis all over again, only worse: for the second time in less than 15 years, the public has been betrayed by a failed technocratic orthodoxy, an over-educated yet staggeringly ignorant ruling class convinced that it can defy human nature as well as the laws of economics.

    Allister Heath has turned into a Nottler!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/18/elite-groupthink-driving-britain-nightmare-inflation-idleness/

    1. £5 for a bunch of nice fat asparagus in M&S yesterday!. I bought it because it reminds me of those pre-covid Cornish holidays. On the way to our destination, we always used to take the back road through to Ruan Lanihorne and across the little bridge through the bluebell woods. At the top, before the woods there’s a farm called Tregenna where they used to sell the same sort of bundle for a pound in the honesty box.

    2. “All of their acronyms, PhDs, fancy modelling and algorithms have proved useless”

      This is only surprising if you believe that the cleverest people stay on to do PhDs. While some Drs are clever, many are just there because they were too stupid to know when to step off the education tracks!

          1. My deceased father’s last (and by far the worst) wife has a PhD. I think she must have bought it – she is not particularly intelligent and her English is not what I would have thought was needed for a PhD (she is Italian). She also has loadamoney.

          2. Ich auch.
            Had to fix mine in 2 years rather than the usual three (due to grant), so 3/2 as much work as normal.
            Managed to graduate in the same ceremony as a) SWMBO (M.Phil), and b) Frank Whittle (Honoroary Doctorate).

        2. I would have had a PhD, but I was doing it part-time (while still working full-time, teaching). Things went drastically wrong (not all my fault), so I pulled the plug and ended up with an MPhil as well as my original MA.

          1. Part-time whilst in employment is damned hard work – did MBA that way.

          2. Especially teaching with all the stress and the workload! I had arranged to run the tests in another school (which I would have needed in addition to my own for a PhD) with a friend who taught there, but unfortunately, she became ill (and subsequently died), so I had to pull the plug on extending the research (teaching modern language vocabulary through games). I thought I’d settle for something rather than nothing.

      3. Or had parents who were willing to help them through more lovely university…I know one who had her horse stabled down the road while she studied…

  38. I can’t get into The Conservative Woman this morning – is it just my phone? (Perfectly possible; am in the middle of a field with no reception and having tech problems, but I can get into other sites.)

    3. Morning A&D. They are being censored by three of their ISP.’s Mostly on phones.

    4. I have got TCW ok, via a VPN.
      They have had problems with one or two ISPs recently – I think 3 was mentioned?

    5. Three, EE and O2 now treat it as an ‘adult’ site (Blame the BBFC). If you can log on to your mobile provider account, turn off blocking, and you should be good to go. My mobile is on O2, and doing this worked.

    6. Thunder and lightning last night played havoc with t’tinternet and the TV. When will the boffins invent a signal that isn’t weather dependent?

      1. SubscribePast IssuesRSSTranslate
        View this email in your browser

        Logo
        TCW is NOT offline

        TCW has been blocked by three Internet Service Providers (ISPs): EE, Three and O2, their subsidiaries and anyone who uses these companies via a 4G router.

        We are appealing against this decision, which is based upon some comments sent to our site, not upon the site content.

        Meanwhile there are some ways to get round this block.

        1. You can ask your ISP to remove the content block.

        Here are the instructions for Three.

        https://support.three.co.uk/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBISAPI.DLL?Command=New,Kb=Mobile,Ts=Mobile,T=Article,Case=obj(16080)

        Here are the instructions for EE.

        https://myaccount.ee.co.uk/app/anonymous-content-lock

        Here are the instructions for O2.

        https://www.o2.co.uk/help/safety-and-security/age-restricted-content-and-age-verification

        2. You can take your business elsewhere and move to a non-censoring ISP such as Andrews and Arnold. https://www.aa.net.uk

        3. If you are on an iPhone, you need to update your phone to the latest version of the operating system, and turn on Private Relay for iCloud, assuming you have an iCloud backup plan. If not, the cheapest is £0.70 per month.

        Then follow these instructions.

        https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph499d287c2/15.0/ios/15.0

        4. You can use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) such as Urban, https://www.urban-vpn.com/locations/uk-vpn/ which is free and very easy to use.

        Alternatively, you can sign up to a paid VPN such as Nord VPN https://nordvpn.com/ or IVPN.net. https://www.ivpn.net/

        If you turn on your VPN, your ISP will not be able to censor what you see.

        5. You can access us via a proxy service. Click this link https://www.croxyproxy.com/ and enter https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/ as shown in the box below, and click Go.

        When you have done this, you can go to this link on our site and read the details of how we are censored.

        Facebook icon
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        Copyright (C) 2022 The Conservative Woman. All rights reserved.

        Our mailing address is:

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    8. I got into the site with my phone and now with my laptop with no problems. I think it’s part of their ongoing issues with some ISPs.

    9. TCW was having problems with the 3 network blocking their site.

      Edit: Others have pointed this out. I must keep up!

    1. Climate change over the last couple of thousand years of course. Must be all the Toshiba diesel pickups with machine gun mounts.

    2. They should ask the Israelis. They know how to make deserts turn green.

  42. A day or two ago the British and French press were celebrating the evacuation (BBC)/escape (French press) of 260 brave Ukrainian soldiers from the Azovstal steel works after their heroic resistance of 80 days or more. The total has now passed the one thousand mark but there is little mention of this heaven sent deliverance from the jaws of the fanatically rabid, murderous Russian horde. Why is this?
    Could it be that the truth is that all 1000+ actually surrendered and have been disarmed and transported to detention camps in Russian held territory? No, couldn’t possibly be that! The BBC wouldn’t stoop to low as to withhold unwelcome news, surely, there must be some other explanation I wonder what.

    1. Found a snippet on the BBC web site:

      1,000 Ukrainian fighters, who have been holed up in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol for weeks, have left their positions and handed themselves over to Russian forces and pro-Russian separatists, according to Russia’s defence ministry.

      Handed themselves over – To have surrendered to the evil Russians would have been truly shameful. How kind of them not to put the attacking troops to more stress and inconvenience then absolutely necessary.

      1. The media are overreaching themselves with the propaganda now.

        On a related subject, my daughter says that many of her contemporaries who got jabbed against covid now regret it. Why is that, I asked. She replied that it was because they felt that they had been persuaded by the government to do something that they didn’t really want to do.
        I said, well tell them that it won’t be for the last time, and they should beware of government propaganda.
        Mum, she said, I like having friends.

        2. I had lunch with friends yesterday – one was complaining about a very sore and stiff arm………. yes – she’d taken the kill-shot yet again. I refrained from spoiling lunch with my comment.

          1. Moh is having his Spring offer today… the Moderna .

            I have declined and told them so .

            My Covid cough, sinusitis , aching lethargy and mind fog has scared me , I feel I will never ever be the same again .

          2. I hope you are recovering now that you’ve got rid of the secondary infection. As for the jabs – clearly they are useless and maybe a lot worse than useless. As you’ve had the virus, you no longer need the jab anyway.

          3. I think Belle is wise to stay off any more jabs. A friend of mine has had every jab going – and has just gone down with covid for the 4th time. (We don’t talk jabs because we disagree, and neither of us is going to change our position – I have had no jabs and don’t intend to have any.) MOH had the first two jabs and almost immediately became ill with a bad cold, or some flu, or whatever. I didn’t even catch what he had…

          4. I had the two AZ ones last year – purely because I had a trip to Kenya booked and already postponed due to the lockdowns. That was enough for the jab passport requirements so I’m definitely not having any more.

            OH had his booster in December/January but he’s refused the latest one. Neither of us has been ill at all since the bug we had in January 2020, which may have been covid as the cough lasted several weeks. We weren’t particularly ill then.

            We both had a very minor cold about a month ago – lasted two to three days but as I can’t be bothered with testing, we didn’t.

          5. I think Belle is wise to stay off any more jabs. A friend of mine has had every jab going – and has just gone down with covid for the 4th time. (We don’t talk jabs because we disagree, and neither of us is going to change our position – I have had no jabs and don’t intend to have any.) MOH had the first two jabs and almost immediately became ill with a bad cold, or some flu, or whatever. I didn’t even catch what he had…

      2. RT have footage of them receiving medical treatment. Many in a bad state apparently and grateful to be cleaned up and fed. Their commanders, it seems, are still holding out. Fools.

      1. A waste of tax payers money. An abomination. A mockery of the public. A slap inn the face to libertarians and people with common sense.

        The reason for my blood pressure medication.

    3. I was forced to pay for that. Council or not, Hampshire or not, that’s on me. Now, someone please tell me government has no money? I need to punch something.

    4. Not shown in the pic above but he is wearing a dildo and his bum cheeks are exposed. Obviously appropriate as a children’s entertainer

  44. Good Moaning.
    Happy one for the aspidistra which is lounging on the lawn and slurping up the rain.

      2. It’s old: both our aspidistras are descended from a 150 year old plant.
        Real Victorian front parlour plant.

  45. Cost of Living Plan.
    Ministers prepare plan to help three million of the lowest paid, offer relief on energy bills and announce pledge to ease burden on business in a bid to stave off recession as inflation hits 40-year high of 9% in cost-of-living crisis
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html

    Anyone seen the cost of dying recently..?

    1. The last people I want giving me advice on the cost of living are Satan’s little helpers who caused the crisis in the first place.

          2. You’ve just twigged that I’m a budding economist? [B.Sc (Econ) me]……

    3. Debbie McGee says that it is over £5,000.

      https://youtu.be/79xFIhXrl6c

      However, it is cheaper than you think! With a snap of the fingers and a bit of magic you can refit your old spent carcass with brand new bits of cardboard and plastic moldings that will look good even in a posh funeral.
      Plus it won’t cost the earth – after all, you’ll soon be opening the oven door and saying “Goodbye World!”

      1. Well, he’s got the evidence on film should he want to claim reparations when he’s older.

          2. That’ll be us. It was always us and us alone. It is always us alone.

  48. We bought a wardrobe!’ Joe and Jess Thwaite unmasked as biggest ever lottery winners of £184m
    Joe and Jess Thwaite from Gloucester won an astonishing £184 million on the EuroMillion.

    A married couple have been unmasked as the winners of Britain’s biggest EuroMillions lottery jackpot of £184 million, revealing the first thing they bought was a wardrobe.

    Joe and Jess Thwaite, from Gloucester, scooped a record-breaking £184,262,899 with a Lucky Dip ticket on the draw on Tuesday May 10.

    Joe, 49, a communications sales engineer, and Jess, 44, who runs a hairdressing salon with her sister, have been married for 11 years and have two primary-school aged children.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/euromillions-uk-biggest-lottery-winner-184m-couple-gloucester/

    3. When I was teaching in Manchester the Head of Domestic Science won 3/4 million £ on the pools. She was a lovely person and had one daughter. She took early retirement but came in often to see us all. One time she brought some of the letters she’d received from the public- oh blimey. Some were nice, many were begging and some were downright vicious. The one that made us all laugh was from that other winner, Viv Nicholson (?) who’d won a huge amount and blown it all. Her letter simply said, “Spend, spend, spend!”

      1. Late 50s when my father gave up running a post office he went to work for his elder brother as an accountant, who was already a millionaire through his ownership of several stationery outlets. They had a Football-pool syndicate in the business he worked at. Some how his brother had two shares in the syndicate, so when they won a few thousand to be shared. We had a family night out in London. And a better car uncle Arthur was already up there with the wealthy hierarchy.

    4. Oh dear………. they may regret that and i’ll have every sympathy for them.
      And my bank account transfer number is………………..

    6. Apparently they live in a £600,000 house in the Cotswolds…….”The house features four bedrooms, a kitchen and breakfast room and
      lounge area fitted with a fireplace with oak beam mantle and a log
      burning stove that leads to the garden”

      Our log burning stove leads to the chimney!

    1. Some of the images I’ve seen look more like poison ivy blisters rather than the early images.

      1. The images I’ve seen on Twatter today definitley look like blisters and not pus filled pox.

      2. Daily Mail – nhs stocking monkeypox vaccines.
        Comment on Canadian cbc – there is no cure for this serious disease.

        Someone is telling porkies!

    3. The truth might be that it’s caught by listening to Radio 4 and watching the BBC tv news.

    4. If this kicks off we need to have serious discussions about immigration control forty years ago. That’ll work, won’t it? It will won’t it? Please say it will…

  52. If anybody would like to sign a letter to the NHS against masks in healthcare settings, you can find it here:
    https://smilefree.org/nhs/
    You can sign as a medical professional or as a member of the public.

    1. As i like my Dentist i complied and wore a mask. The staff still wear them but since restrictions were lifted i have stopped wearing one. They didn’t say anything. A woman in reception gave me a funny look and walked as far away from me as possible. Silly cow.

      1. I cancelled my scheduled dental checkup earlier in the month because I realised the fellow would probably still be wearing all the heavy weather protection gear, including his special stereo glasses. I’m sure he can’t see or properly manipulate things while wearing it all…

      2. “A woman in reception gave me a funny look and walked as far away from me as possible”

        Could be nothing to do with the lack of mask….

        Just saying!!

    3. I attended the local hospital this morning. I put my “I am exempt” lanyard on and had no trouble (apart from understanding what the physio said to me because she was masked up).

    1. Yep. It’s intentional. Notable to look at the different class sizes and how many more there are in the bottom one.

      Things change, people say. Well, they didn’t need to. Immigration has done nothing but harm everywhere. The really sad bit, is that statistically, 80% of those black kids have no father, 70% are dependent on welfare and despite vast amounts of public money being spent on them, they will not become net tax payers.

      1. Actually, Wibbs, I think the second photo is more likely an assembly for summat or other. My final class at primary school had 40 kids; and that was in 1965. I frequently had classes at the secondary that were 30+ , often 35.
        Even in the US, class sizes varied and only the special ed. classes were really small. Most were 25+ or more.

        1. We had classes of 35-45 back in the 50s but parents instilled good behaviour in their offspring. I wouldn’t dare go home and tell mum and dad that I’d had the ruler or slipper as I would be punished again.

          2. I tried to get into the girls’ grammar school but they wouldn’t have me. Had to go to the boys one down the road. My dad said to me ‘if you are fit and healthy you should become a Boy Scout. If you remain fit and healthy and normal at the age of 15 you will become a Girl Scout’. :-))
            A wise man, my dad.

      2. Actually, Wibbs, I think the second photo is more likely an assembly for summat or other. My final class at primary school had 40 kids; and that was in 1965. I frequently had classes at the secondary that were 30+ , often 35.
        Even in the US, class sizes varied and only the special ed. classes were really small. Most were 25+ or more.

      3. Well, according to the advertisements, the black men go on to marry white women…

      4. Well, according to the advertisements, the black men go on to marry white women…

    2. I watched a recording of the Platinum Jubilee Celebration last night. Most of the presenters were either foreign or black (or both). I fast forwarded through most of it except the horses. I pitied HM as she had to sit through the lot and pretend to be amused by the unfunny “Herald”.

  55. A Diverse point of view:

    “It all started a long time ago. Tune in, turn on and drop out. If it feels good do it. Wear a flower in your hair. There is no such thing as society. Rock against Racism. Property is Theft. There is no such thing as an obscene profit. Greed is good. The Third Way. Phone hacking is a lot of invented left-wing poppycock. Only White people are racist. The China Syndrome. Only a feminist recognises the need for equality. The climate crisis. The extinction emergency. Brexit means Brexit. Your personal liberty is my millstone. A man who doesn’t menstruate can still be a woman. Britain has an Islamaphobia problem. An identity card is just like a passport. If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. We are suffering a plague of the unvaccinated. A good part – and definitely the most fun part – of being a feminist is about frightening men.

    The last half century has seen two closely linked and mutually supportive trends: the surreal escape from all things natural, and the post-empirical approach to analysis which insists that “awkward” facts should be ignored in favour of strictly redefined ideological loyalties.

    The time has come for adults to say “The King is in the Altogether”: most men do not want women who look as if they have a bicycle panier strapped to their ass; a lot of negro social problems are caused by feckless males; 95% of all climate propaganda is based on models that have again and again been proved wildly inaccurate; what purpose is graphene nano-debris serving as a constituent of mRNA?; Jane Fonda married the founder of CNN; public health-threat fearmongering has driven State élite thinking for 2.5 years, but every hidden fact that comes to light about what they’ve done shows a minus 90% interest in public health services; and making a hero out of jobbing NATO actor Zelenskyy is a hostage to fortune.

    When even 1in8 of us has to bite the tongue when discussing those fierce social issues above, we are not living in a liberal culture, our democratic values are under threat, and a hundred minorities are in danger of creating a Dictatorship of the Vanities.”
    J Ward

    1. “I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”

      1. I wonder how she would have dealt with the problems we’ve lived through in the last couple of years.

        1. I don’t think she would have seen a problem in the first place and there would not have been a lockdown or any other nonsense of the past 2 years.

          1. MT was a scientist by training – conspicuously unlike the current shower. She also wasn’t on the WEF payroll.

        2. I think if she were young nowadays, she would recognise the bloated public sector as the problem.

      2. (c) the same person who said that socialism fails when it has run out of other people’s money.

    1. I agree with every word he says. But where are the influential dissenters, where the media to publicise the call, who is there who could command a following?

  60. Boris Johnson will not face further fines over lockdown gatherings, says No 10. 18 may 2022.

    Boris Johnson will not receive any more fines for lockdown-breaching parties, it has been confirmed, after the Metropolitan police said they had completed their investigation into gatherings in Downing Street and Whitehall.

    It was interesting, but not reassuring, that the lead story on all the television news outlets was that the Prime Minister of the UK is not to be prosecuted further! This reporting of non-events will open a new chapter in Public Relations! Must we look toward announcements that he is not be hanged, drawn and quartered? Impaled? Disembowelled? Or even defeated in an Election?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/19/met-police-conclude-partygate-investigation-into-downing-street-gatherings

    1. I think there may be many people not looking forward to those non-events…..

  62. Have all the “millions” of Monkey Poxers been vaccinated against Corvid?

    Just asking…!

    2. Son of Convid
      On Masks
      Lockdown
      out on Thursday giving the NHS the Clap
      Track and Trace compulsory WHO and Gates

      No one allowedto leave UK (but gimmegrants still welcome)

    3. What Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca contains
      “…modified human embryonic kidney (HEK) 593 cells” from a baby aborted in Holland.

      1. Injecting “modified human embryonic kidney” cells grown on a cell line that came originally from an aborted baby is sick, especially for an injection that gives little or no protection. Gut feeling says that the Universe will get us for that at some point.

  66. I wonder how much property in London is owned by CCP apparatchiks? And how they will manage to get round this rule…
    https://twitter.com/niubi/status/1527256881764384769

    I thought they wanted to take over the world, so we’ve been told for the last decade or so. They’ve got people in every media organisation, they’ve got people in our universities…but if you want to take over a country, surely you’d encourage your people to own property there?
    China seems to be reverting to splendid isolation a little.

    1. I’m all for splendid isolation (especially countries such as China, the USA, Germany/France, and nowadays Russia) – and just get together and co-operate from time to time for trade, research etc. It’s a pity we didn’t stick to it last time we tried it in this country.

    1. Why do the God-damned Yanks have such a fixation with Russia, when the far greater threats are elsewhere.

      2. Because Putin explicitly is not going along with the great reset and the WEF agenda. Besides, he has pegged the rouble to gold, so he must clearly meet the same fate as Gadaffi.

        1. Figures for 2015: Africa 19.5% Former USSR countries 15.9% Middle East 14.5% North Sea 5% Other 1.5%

          Russia is the largest oil producer in Europe and is among the top oil producers in the world, with an annual oil production of about 540.7 million tons. Russia has the eighth-largest oil reserves in the world.

      5. They need an enemy. The Cold War finished and there was no country to fill the vacuum.

      6. Rather like the British generals during the Crimean War who thought that the French were the enemy.
        (They had a valid point, but not officially in that particular scuffle.)

      1. Me too. Super speed reading. It’s maddening reading in a foreign language, as I have to revert to spelling out each word.

      1. I think the idea is that slow readers can read faster if selected letters are in bold. A bit distracting, I would have thought.

    3. Bullet points?
      Underlining?
      Bold print?

      Just a variation. Reads a bit like hiccuping.

  70. Nigeria’s Christians are under attack, but does the West care? 19 May 2022.

    The scene is medieval in its horror: a woman stoned, beaten and set on fire by a mob shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. But this didn’t happen hundreds of years ago: it took place a week ago in Nigeria.

    The victim was a Christian student named Deborah Samuel, from Sokoto in the north west of the country. Samuel’s ‘crime’, for which she paid with her life, was to have allegedly posted a ‘blasphemous’ comment on a WhatsApp group against the prophet Mohammed.

    Well they couldn’t stand up for Batley Man so I don’t suppose that Nigeria is going to get much of a look in! The future looks truly horrible. I’ve become aware of a change in my views recently. It’s not one that I like. Vlad was really my last hope. I thought that if he could just hang on then Russia might make it through the coming Storm and something of what we were might survive. The war has changed that. We are heading for some form of Armageddon, whatever we do, and it might really be best if that ending were a western one and the whole rotten mess were destroyed.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/nigeria-s-christians-are-under-attack-but-does-the-west-care-

    1. Look, publicising this sort of thing isn’t welcome or wanted. That’s why the MSM have ignored it. Muslims good, not violent, vicious, nasty thugs who like killing people. That’s all lone wolf mentally ill folk – who are also often muslims, but the facts are unrelated.

      The sad thing is that many muslims are not crazed nutters. Most just want to get on with their lives. They worry about getting their kids to guides, about paying the mortgage and whinge about tax. The Left, ‘liberals’ by forcing them on us and preventing rational debate have made us all wary. Then some nutcase fanatic goes and blows himself up and we’re proved right.

      1. Those “most” who just want to get on with their lives don’t turn their backs on those of their belief who won’t let us just get on with ours. Plus they will vote a muslim into political power, with all that entails (for example, look at the new mayor of Tower Hamlets). Plus they know that a proportion of what they pay for halal food goes in encouraging and arming (whether mentally or literally) fanatics.

        There is very little “not in my name” in the Islamic communities here.

      2. Excuse me, but speaking as someone who had privileged access to hearing what muslims say when they believed there were no westerners around, they really do have a different mindset from us. The basis of it is the belief that they are superior, and that we are decadent, godless and worth less than they are, and that mixing with us is something they should not do.
        Your average normal muslim who worries about paying the mortgage is operating off this basic belief, in my personal experience.

        1. The 2006 Danish cartoons and BBC2 ‘Newsnight’.

          Anjem Choudary on being in Britan: “If I go to the jungle, I am not going to live like the animals. I’m going to propagate what I believe to be a superior way of life.”
          Jeremy Paxman suggested he might be happier in a country where sharia law was in place. Choudary: “Who said to you that you own Britain, anyway? Britain belongs to Allah.”

        2. Those beliefs are just following the koran. The kuffar is “lower than cattle” and should be beheaded. Certainly NOT for befriending.

  72. Today is the anniversary of the execution of Queen Anne Boleyn; 19th May 1536. RIP.
    What a nasty sod Henry VIII was.

      1. Yes, his problems in the boudoir are fairly well documented. But blame it on the women. He was a horrible man- Catherine Howard was 17 when he had her executed! At least Anne Boleyn had a sham trial- Catherine Howard didn’t even get that!

        1. We escaped from Rome. We no longer had to pretend the Sun went round the earth.

          1. Yes but we really didn’t. Henry may have created the so called Church of England but he lived the rest of his life and died as a Catholic.

          2. I stand to be corrected, but I believe he did not create the Church of England, he removed it’s subservience to Rome.

          3. As far as I know Bob, you’re correct. Papal authority was re-established when Mary Tudor (avoiding confusion: Bloody Mary) became Queen.
            Elizabeth I. finally separated England from any Papal authority over the church in England.

          4. The Church of England dates back to the Celtic Church and Synod of Whitby saw the beginning of their subjugation to Rome.

          5. Romish practices with Hal as the supremo.
            He bought a lot of ‘loyalty’ with the dissolution of the monasteries.

          6. Yes, but we no longer owed allegiance to Rome. That was the point. The Pope became “the Bishop of Rome” and lost his power in England.

          7. A proto-Brexit, you mean?
            Maybe we can persuade Boris to execute Carrie…?

          8. If the story is correct and they are living apart, possibly he already has…

          9. If the story is correct and they are living apart, possibly he already has…

        2. Catherine Howard was a tidbit thrown in Henry’s direction by her revolting uncle and aunt.
          She was sacrificed to family ambition.

      1. That annoyed me also. I don’t care how talented an actor/actress is but they should fit their historical counterparts. Anne Boleyn was a white woman living in the Tudor era.
        Yes, there were some black people in England then but none in the royal house.

        1. She was called “The Crow” though (because of her black hair). She was not popular at the time.

      2. Othello, the Moor of Venice, was black. He has, though, been played by countless blacked-up white actors over the centuries.

    3. Most of yer nobs were back then. It’s how they got to become, and stay, nobs.

    4. Have to be careful not to compare what happened nearly 600 years ago with what happens now. I know there are a lot of people who would like to do that with some of the present Royals and some of them on this site.

      1. I would be content to see Charles working as a Librarian….or perhaps on the State Pension, given his age.

      2. Whatever one thinks of the Monarchy, it is the only government department that makes money. I know folk think they’re a waste, but they bring in more than they cost – by about 50:1. Thus we should keep them.

        Frankly I rather hope Charles says ‘thanks, but no thanks. Over to you, Billy.’

        1. I can’t bring my mind to see the Monarchy as a government department. There are some things that are only in the gift of the monarch as Blair found out when he tried to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor.

    5. Putting on my psychiatric nurse head, he was torn between duty and love/lust. So I have some sympathy for him.
      The system ostensibly gave him total power, but hedged with caveats like producing a male heir and keeping his supporters sweet.
      I doubt he was relaxing company, but I can see that his life wasn’t a bed of roses.

    6. Our of interest, are these dates “converted” from the pre-Gregorian calendar? Or do we have to do a mental conversion into “modern” dates. I’ve always wondered.

  73. 26.C predicted for here on the anniversary of the Queen’s coronation, June 2nd. The original was rainy and cool but that was some years ago!

    1. It was rainy and BLOODY COLD.
      My parents, of course, chose that event for a camping holiday.

  74. The west must break Russia’s blockade – or the world will starve. 19 may 2022.

    The United Nations may not be very good at stopping wars, but at least its present secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, is a brave and decent man who is ready to tell it like it is.

    And how it is is that Vladimir Putin, not content with torturing and laying siege to Ukraine, is now trying to starve the whole world into submitting to his will. Guterres says that the Ukraine conflict, combined with the climate crisis and the post-pandemic disruptions, “threatens to tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity followed by malnutrition, mass hunger and famine”.

    So suddenly this cruel war isn’t just about the freedom of Ukraine, the security of Europe and the future of Nato. It’s about famine – global famine. The stakes are getting much, much bigger.

    The West has looked on with utter indifference (well when they weren’t actually helping) as Yemen has been starved for the last five years!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/russia-ukraine-famine-food-security-b2082565.html

    1. I may have this arse-about-face, but I thought the West was blockading Russia.

      1. I think people who make comments like that must have their heads where the sun doesn’t shine or listen BBC news or both.

    2. I was suspended from our local Nextdoor site, for pointing out that Ukrainians weren’t the only people needing help in the world – so where were all the offers of help for other people?

      (Actually my view is that we owe the Ukrainians nothing, that is deflection by the PTB of what they are doing to us, and rather misplaced virtue signalling by people in this country who ought to know better. But I didn’t even mention any of that – I was still suspended. I have now barred that site from being able to contact me as I have no wish to participate in its wokefest. Mind you, many of the people where I live who want us to pay for/subsidise/welcome every Ukrainian in the world here, are foreigners themselves. Says it all, really…)

      1. After several reports yesterday about ‘fallings out’ between refugees and their hosts in Britain, I’m afraid I would say ‘told you so’!

        1. So would I – but they get off scot free. All they lose is the money (£350per month – a lot less than most dinghy divers cost to house). They have encouraged and enabled immigrants to come here, who are now homeless, and no doubt will be given priority over the other immigrant priorities.

    3. A lot of people from Guantanomo Bay went to Yemen. The Sauds used cluster bombs against Yemen. The UK sold them the cluster bombs before they were outlawed by treaty.

    4. I was quite impressed with Guterres’ speech as well. It’s rare to hear anyone with the ear of the western media saying the right thing, these days. Of course, they probably only allowed him to because he has no power!

  75. Good afternoon Chums.

    I have just heard and seen a splendid sight . . . A perfect formation of six
    Spitfires led by a seventh, slightly larger, aeroplane, heading East from
    Sywell [ where they have been practicing for the Fly-past for some weeks.]

    What a treat!

    1. Lucky you. We benefit from the actual flypasts as they pass over Allan Towers.
      I believe they take in Buck House as well.

      1. Hello, Belle.

        We are fortunate, invariably we have two flying over during the spring and summer;
        they are allowed [under normal circumstances ] to fly from Wednesday to Saturday,
        planning permission… if you have ever heard such rubbish! We have had a bird’s eye
        view for some weeks. No, I did not get any pics.

    4. How many engines did the slightly larger aeroplane have? I suspect it may be Aerolegends. They have a BoB Air Show coming up at Headcorn (in Kent) shortly, but they also operate out of Sywell.

      1. Good day Conway.

        It had two engines, the Spitfires have been practicing for the Jubilee Fly Past,
        they are based in East Anglia , we usually see two or three but this was a
        splendid sight . . . and sound.

    1. Wordle 334 4/6

      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. A ridiculously undeserved 5. I played like a complete muppet, forgetting the basics! D’oh!
        Wordle 334 5/6

        ⬛⬛🟩⬛🟨
        ⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛
        ⬛⬛🟩⬛🟩
        ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

          1. There was a clear letter indicated to me on line 1. Unfortunately the muppet in me unfathomably disregarded it for the next two goes! What a clown! 🤡

    2. #MeToo, sweetie … x
      Wordle 334 5/6

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

    1. The Big Short was an excellent film and had the double advantage that it explained what was going on very skilfully.

  81. Just got back from jab centre 6 miles away.

    Moh has had his Moderna jab this afternoon , I did some shopping because I declined . I have too many health issues to consider at the moment re the prolonged Covid infection, still coughing , tired and feeble , and my head and hearing are affected.. smell and taste have returned thankfully.

    Moh is mowing the grass, and I can smell the fumes from the mower.

    2. Next door neighbour was out this afternoon strimming his weeds – he said he’s recently had covid for the third time – and this time it produced diarrhoea! I told him that’s the jabs working….

  84. That’s me for this day or two halves. Nice afternoon. Also heard that a holiday may be in the offing. One has to balance health isshoos against the world crisis that may bring holidays abroad to a sudden, permanent end.

    Much to ponder. Over a glass of beetroot juice.

    A demain.

    2. Two utterly repulsive skunks. Johnson has proven time and again to be in Gates’ pocket.

      What more could we expect from Fataturk, possibly the worst ever British Prime Minister. He would sell his grandmother for a few shillings, disgusting heap of excrement that he is.

        1. Remarkably, Corbyn remains the only British politician to suggest that the two sides, Russia and Ukraine, meet and attempt by discussion to resolve the long running issues.

  87. Very last post today. Just seen this BTL in The Grimes. It made me smile:

    “Do the winners of Vardy vs Rooney meet the winners of Heard vs Depp in the final?

  88. Off topic

    I was enjoying myself considering which 10 people I would eliminate with utmost prejudice if I could.
    I was slightly surprised that keeping it down to 10 was almost impossible. In fact I could almost certainly put together 10 packs of 10 without too much effort.
    A starter for 10, just to show how easy/difficult it is.:
    Tony Blair.
    Xi Jinping
    Joe Biden
    Bill Gates
    George Soros
    Emanuel Macron
    The Pope
    The Archbishop of Canterbury
    Justin Trudeau
    Gary Lineker.

    Over to you!

        1. Be fair, there is actually nothing wrong with Blair.
          That a bullet to his head wouldn’t cure

    5. Klaus Schwab
      Bill Gates
      George Soros
      Barack Obama
      Hillary Clinton
      Tony Blair
      Emmanuel Macron
      Justin Trudeau
      Jacinda Ardern
      Boris Johnson

      Edit: I have many others. These swine are determined to destroy us, our civilisation and our humanity. They are self seeking supremacists who consider the rest of us as mere trash.

      1. Can’t quarrel with any of those.
        One can create political/economic/”entertainment”/sporting/writing lists that’s the fun of the game.

    6. Ridding the world of Blair might give brief satisfaction but it won’t put right his wrongs.

        1. I hit the bloody B but obviously not hard enough.

          Note to local monitoring constabulary. Bloody B refers to the letter on my keyboard…

    1. Three today. Got lucky again.
      Wordle 334 3/6

      ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  90. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/17d3e6d34f38692c185f1692abf07abf34c881351dcef5937171498b3ffc4cb9.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8c4bb2d4818679635dedd8fc51af4d26184b52271358042612a8d6aeff6dc05d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/29c35284c9dda6e583a1f680826150ec0f9a2f6e200ba25d4ce32824c8788329.jpg I gave my two home-cured bacon joints a 20-hour cold-smoke overnight and then, this morning, I sliced them up into countless rashers for portioning and freezing. Of course I had to taste some so I made a type of croque monsieur [quite English (I used some of my bacon instead of ham, and cheddar in place of gruyère), so more like a crocked bloke,] and served it with a red cole slaw. Nevertheless it was scrumptious. I chopped all the offcuts of bacon into dice for future use in an Amatriciana pasta-sauce.

      1. It’s when you smoke meat (or other foods) at a cold temperature so that the product smokes but does not cook. Most smoked bacon is cold-smoked, you then fry it to cook it. Hot-smoking is at a higher temperature so it actually cooks the food as it smokes (Arbroath smokies or kippers, for example).

          1. The smoke is generated in a small box of slowly smouldering sawdust. It is kept remote from the food, which is hung well above it inside the smoker. The smoker is kept in a cool environment therefore no heat approaches the food, only the cold smoke.

          2. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/979ed1e843518ba28cbe6d6a56ded56e1c636f38d3f615012373860329bb096f.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/42f681ebdacc371dddc6c3294dcc139f176071788fbf11a3f9106dfdfc1e3f8b.png This is my Pro-Q smoker (with which I can cold-smoke, hot-smoke, barbecue and roast); and the small device is filled with sawdust and ignited in one corner. The sawdust slowly smoulders giving off smoke and it passes along each side then into the middle as it burns away. It takes 10 hours to finish. I filled mine up twice to make a 20-hour smoke.

          5. The Weald and Downland living museum used to show how hams were smoked in the chimneys of buildings. It was fascinating hearing the history of the process. We used to be frequent visitors in the early 80’s.

            The place has become more famous (deservedly so) because of “The Repair Shop” programme.

            https://www.wealddown.co.uk/

      1. Thanks, Mrs Macfarlane. It is quite delicious. I need to do this since the “bacon” over here is not of the quality I’m used to. The same goes for sausages, bread and countless other yummy British things it is impossible to buy here. Vanilla slices, Eccles cakes, Battenburg …

        The list goes on.

        2. We make our own sausages, and as of last autumn, bacon. Bread. Sauerkraut. Lemon curd. Cheeses various.
          By “we”, I of course mean the talented ones in the family. I just eat the outpourings…

          1. Have you got a sauerkraut ceramic pot? I saw one in a youtube video, but it was bought in the USA, I think.

          2. Big glass jar with a bubbler in the lid. Two half-moon stoned to press the cabbage. By Kelner, I think.
            Use fresh cabbage: I tried with an old one, therewasn’t enough liquid, and it was all floppy and ucky. Fresh has plenty juice, and crispy too!

        3. WE found it just the same in Germany. Remember sitting outside the English shop in Colne eating English pork pies. The Germans do not spice anything as you know.

        4. I love the fact that you’ve got off your a**e and done something about it, instead of just whingeing. I learned to make crumpets pdq in Germany.

          1. Oh, ATD. You don’t know just how much I love crumpet [singular or plural 😉]

            I’ll have to get off my a**e again now and make some. 👍🏻

  92. Just watching a repeat of a ghost-finding programme – it’s a series I rather like, as they deal with locations I know, and occasionally the ghost frightens the carp out of the presenter!
    This programme deals with the next-door farm to Firstborn, so the landscape is familiar… some of the characters have familar names, too, called for the farm they lived on. A character in one of the old photos on their wall is the same bloke as in a photo in Firstborn’s place.
    Seems there were two ghosts – one complaining that he was blamed for a murder he didn’t commit, the other saying the farm was his by right, and was taken from him unfairly. He attacked his wife with sheepshears, and was locked away in his house, attacking and killing a 15-year-old lad to escape. Recaptured, and had his head cut off. That was about 1730s according to the medium – about when Firstborn’s farm was split from the main farm, and buildings raised. Such as this one… which has 1732 over the door! History, eh? The neighbour the other side ha the same name as the farm, so her relatives have lived there ever since the place got a name! How’s that for continuity?
    The building is a combined storage for food and temporary accommodation for itinerant workers – the wee pillars reduce the ingress of mice.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b6f3b7c159a140525931b1f8c69f7be7642769124f364137f3e30af40094d81c.jpg

    1. The tree to the left,a maple, blew down last winter, sadly. Fortunately fell away from the building, and has left a split stump just like an upright chair! Grand place to sit and enjow the countryside!

      Brings this to mind:
      Leisure, by William Henry Davies, 1911
      What is this life if, full of care,
      We have no time to stand and stare.
      No time to stand beneath the boughs
      And stare as long as sheep or cows.
      No time to see, when woods we pass,
      Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
      No time to see, in broad daylight,
      Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
      No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
      And watch her feet, how they can dance.
      No time to wait till her mouth can
      Enrich that smile her eyes began.
      A poor life this if, full of care,
      We have no time to stand and stare.

  93. Evening, all. Been a very sunny and hot day today after a dull start. I took Oscar up to a local garden to chill out and get inspiration before tackling mine. I sat on a bench in the sun and read a book, while Oscar slept under the bench in the shade. The problem with the headline is that this government is not, in any way, shape or form, Conservative (with a big or small C)!

          1. Only the savings of those sucked in to invest in these ‘enterprises’ … Telephone call for Mr Musk, paging Mr Musk…

          2. Only the savings of those sucked in to invest in these ‘enterprises’ … Telephone call for Mr Musk, paging Mr Musk…

  96. Watching Citizen Kane … Orson Wells… crazy , have never seen it before ..

    Not sure what to make of it .. made in 1941.

    1. On BBC4 and about time too. The BBC owns the UK rights to the RKO Films catalogue yet hardly ever seems to broadcast those titles, which also include lots of Fred and Ginger and Bringing Up Baby (Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant). And King Kong of course:

  97. Make War not Peace!

    ‘Because apparently the unprecedented and outrageous $40 billion that the Senate just approved for Ukraine aid wasn’t enough, the Biden White House has just announced $100 million more in military assistance to the Ukrainian government Thursday afternoon.

    As The Hill emphasizes, this came literally “moments after the Senate sent a $40 billion supplemental aid package to the president’s desk.” More, more, more will now be the order of business, the American taxpayer and debt placed on their children’s children be damned.’

    1. Arms dealing and money laundering. None of it will aid anyone in the Ukraine.

  99. Surprise surprise, the NHS has spent its windfall on yet more waste and wokery

    They’re too busy adding more meaningless layers of management when its vast budget should be spent on the patients who need and pay for it

    ALLISON PEARSON • 17 May 2022 • 7:00pm

    The phone must have woken me. I reached out a bleary hand for it and saw the time: 3.04am. A text had just arrived from Sophie. She said she was in Accident & Emergency with Freddie, aged 19 months, who had a raging ear infection (a recurring condition) and, just to add to the fun, this time he had a swollen penis as well. “We’ve been here for six-and-a-half hours. It’s unreal,” Sophie said.

    “Go to the desk right NOW and tell them your baby has a fever and needs to be seen,” I typed furiously.

    “I did,” Sophie replied. “They said it could be a 12-hour wait.”

    The previous afternoon Sophie had Googled “baby with swollen penis” and read that it was “very important to see your GP”. She drove to the surgery with Freddie and banged on the door. The surgery was deserted. Eventually, a doctor wearing full PPI appeared, opened the door and asked Sophie: “What are you doing here?”

    “My baby’s got a temperature and there is pus coming out of his…”

    “Go home, and call 111,” said the GP, shutting the door.

    Sophie called 111. The operator said: “Your baby sounds ill, we’ll call you back in 30 minutes.”

    Three hours later, Sophie got a call back from 111. “You should take your baby to A&E.

    “Thanks,” she said. “We’re in A&E.”

    “Well, we would have told you to go there anyway.”

    The chaos and delays that Sophie and her baby experienced are sadly familiar now. Because people struggle to see a GP, they call 111. The bar at 111 is set very low for advising callers to go to A&E. Because A&E is rammed, ambulances are backing up in hospital forecourts. (It used to be part of the social contract that, if you dialled 999, help would come quickly. People are now dying waiting for an ambulance.) What is less well known is the scandalous rationing of healthcare that is affecting even our youngest citizens.

    Freddie suffers from chronic ear infections so excruciatingly painful that he can’t sleep. Sophie and Dom are haggard with exhaustion. Their son is already big enough to qualify for grommets which will ease the pressure on the eardrum and improve his hearing. But, as his stunned parents were told, a child needs to have had 13 acute infections before they qualify for grommets.

    Recently, Freddie had his 13th lot of antibiotics and his parents breathed a sigh of relief. Now, they’ve been informed there’s a nine-month wait to see an ENT specialist.

    At least, with Covid behind us and the Government raising National Insurance to fund a Health and Social Care levy – giving the NHS a stonking extra £12 billion – we can expect to see a big improvement in waiting times and patient care.

    A1Think again. According to a report by Policy Exchange, NHS bureaucracy has doubled since the pandemic with almost no change in the number of much-needed frontline staff. While officials in the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England are busy creating more meaningless layers of management, with hefty salaries attached, the number of nurses rose by just seven per cent.

    To your average person, it seems obvious that, with 6.4 million on waiting lists, the new funds must be be ringfenced and channelled as a matter of urgency to clinicians and social care. A lack of beds (and staff) in residential homes means that around 12,000 hospital patients a day who are fit for discharge remain in hospital.

    Unfortunately, NHS managers appear to see their role of overseeing the delivery of healthcare as superior to that of care itself. I asked “George”, Planet Normal’s senior source within NHS England, to paint me a picture of the organisation’s structure. After reading the email, I needed a lie down in a darkened room.

    Essentially, NHS England – main offices in London and Leeds, but with lots of satellite buildings in places like Leicester and Taunton – is a Hydra with all of its multiple heads turned inwards looking at all the other heads.

    NHS England does no routine hospital management; it is responsible for implementing government policy. For every type of healthcare “workstream” – elective, mental health, screening, primary care – there is someone in NHS England in charge of overseeing the delivery. Each of those national leads has a team of people and each region (of which there are seven) has a set of people overseeing delivery from a regional perspective. That’s a hell of a lot of staff who are not actually providing any medical care, but are busy reporting on how others are delivering it.

    Wait, there’s more. An executive board covers operations, finance, information technology, human resources and analytics. Each of those functions has a similarly extensive national and regional structure. The function of departments called things like Improvement, Strategy and Transformation is “murky”, says George, but “essentially, a lot of resource goes into looking at how can we do things better and more efficiently while never appearing to make any progress in that direction”.

    I’m not sure I can bring myself to type what follows, it’s too depressing. But I think you should know – after all, you’re the ones paying for it. In between NHS England and the hospitals, there are now Integrated Care Systems, which are basically a partnership between the hospitals, GPs, some local authority services and healthcare commissioners. They too all have boards, heads of delivery, finance structures and business intelligence functions. (Of course, they do!) As George wryly observes: “This is yet another in a long line of organisational configurations that may or may not deliver any real improvements or change.”

    In theory, NHS England can support, cajole, even threaten those organisations actually doing the frontline delivery. Ultimately, says George: “We are fairly powerless to bring about any real change. So you have to wonder, how much money should this organisation consume and does it provides any real value?”

    Yup, that is the £190.3 billion question. Which happens to be the planned spending of the DHSC in England in 2021/22 with the majority of that deafening amount (£136.1 billion) passed to NHS England and NHS Improvement to distribute with maximum magnanimity to thousands of mediocre jobsworths.

    Only joking! I’m sure a few quid find their way to some oncologists and toddlers with a temperature of 100.4.

    One of the most outrageous things (it’s a long list) is how many more people are employed at the higher pay bands within the central organisations than on the frontline. One equality and diversity manager absorbs the pay of two nurses. Policy Exchange revealed that the total pay bill at the DHSC and NHS England actually doubled in the two years since February 2020, from £42 million to £83 million, with the number of senior officials multiplying by a frankly astonishing 125 per cent.

    What do they actually do? “I don’t know what the point of my job is,” says George, “other than to tell the people leading the oversight of various workstreams how bad things are (or how little they have improved) so that they can have “conversations” with their counterparts in the Integrated Care systems who, in turn, will have conversations with their healthcare providers. It’s like a massive, futile game of Chinese whispers.”

    And that, dear reader, is where the rise in National Insurance, the one few can afford right now, is going.

    In his new book, Zero: Eliminating Unnecessary Deaths in a Post-Pandemic NHS, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt talks about an “omerta” or code of silence within the health service that means staff are not honest about scandals like avoidable deaths. Mr Hunt had six years to do something about this “major structural problem” and failed. Still, any honesty from a politician about a service which is letting down the British people while obscenely feathering the nests of its apparatchiks is to be welcomed.

    NHS England is a bureaucratic monster, no doubt about that, but where is our Hercules to take a sword to the multi-headed Hydra? Retired Royal Marine, General Sir Gordon Messenger, is the latest candidate, sent in to do battle. The NHS must be rescued from its cankerous officer class, and its vast budget spent on the care of patients who need and pay for it. I know an adorable baby boy who should not be in pain for another nine months.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/05/17/surprise-surprise-nhs-has-spent-windfall-yet-waste-wokery/

    BTL:
    Raymond Gott
    Go into a private hospital. OK, we know they don’t have A+E so let’s just look at the elective surgery side of things. You are greeted by one (very experienced) receptionist who checks you in and sends you where you need to go. You sit in a waiting area that doesn’t look like a 1940’s railway waiting room. Your appointment time comes round and the nurse/doctor sees you. You come out with a plan. You see two or three people.

    Compare with NHS. A waiting area (likely a corridor overflow area) that looks like Mumbai domestic airport just before Diwali. An appointment system that is simply a basis for negotiation. And a constant flow of people, back and forth, carrying boards, files and bits of paper†. And one poor blighter in the middle doing his/her best to see everybody.

    And here’s the rub: the most efficient (and least unpleasant) part of the whole NHS experience comes when you turn up at a private hospital for your surgery. Our local private clinic has 90% of its rooms taken up with patients paid for by the NHS. The NHS is already privatised!

    † I have seen this many times. It reminds me of third-rate TV crime dramas where a scene is set on a building site and extras cross the background with something on their shoulders, such as a single scaffold pole or a length of timber. Keep a keen eye out and you might see them later on crossing the site in the opposite direction with the same item!

        1. I have been in a similar situation regarding getting treatment. What can one do but wait?

          1. I got into the habit of paying health insurance when I first started working on the Continent. The NHS is a ball and chain shackled to the ankle of every taxpayer, that might deliver if you need healthcare – otherwise, people should start thinking in terms of funding their own healthcare, either privately or via a reputable insurance (and none of the British insurances are comprehensive health insurance, they are all only top-ups).

      1. It staggers me that the NHS management is so utterly useless that they manage to create such a clusterfcuk of an operation. Glad I’m not subject to it. The only solution is to privatise the whole shebang, let the market fire the useless management and administrators, and get back to core business of fixing broken people – where “no see patient, no see fee.”

    4. Raymond Gott forgot one element of the crowded corridor, and that’s the NHS staff member who barely speaks English, wandering back and forth scolding patients in a disdainful voice.

      Why do people put up with this nonsense?
      Partly, because nobody really knows how much they’re paying for it, and nobody factors healthcare into their monthly bills. I would take my child accross to France if necessary to have the treatment done privately.

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