Friday 20 May: The day of a consultant medic shows the benefits of working in person

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

531 thoughts on “Friday 20 May: The day of a consultant medic shows the benefits of working in person”

  3. I had occasion to go to the District Council Offices on Tuesday to deal with some business. I went to the desk and asked to see someone from the Housing Department. The woman; who I erroneously thought was a member of the said department, told me that no I couldn’t. I was momentarily flummoxed by this answer until she expanded on it and said there was no one. They all now worked from home and I would have to use the telephone. I pointed out that this was impossible since I am going deaf. After some further shenanigans she used one of their telephones with a loud earpiece and called for me. After waiting twenty minutes I got through and settled the matter in question to my satisfaction. I was lucky here. The system is disintegrating as we watch!

    1. And no doubt you will be rewarded for this substandard service with a nice fat increase in your Council Tax…

      ‘Morning, Minty.

    2. I tried that at my local “hub”. I was provided with a telephone and dialled the number. Eventually after about half an hour I got through. The problem was, the person on the other end couldn’t hear me, presumably because the telephone handset was faulty. I gave up.

  4. I had occasion to go to the Council Offices on Tuesday to deal with some business. I went to the desk and asked to see someone from the Housing Department. The woman; who I erroneously thought was a member of the said department, told me that no I couldn’t. I was momentarily flummoxed by this answer until she expanded on it and said there was no one. They all now worked from home and I would have to use the telephone. I pointed out that this was impossible since I am going deaf. After some further shenanigans she used one of their telephones with a loud earpiece and called for me. After waiting twenty minutes I got through and settled the matter in question to my satisfaction. I was lucky here. The system is disintegrating as we watch!

  5. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Warm and overcast for now. No more rain overnight, but we are promised plenty this morning.

    Today’s leading letter. Virtual ward rounds? Whatever next?

    SIR – As a retired consultant physician who spent 38 years working in hospital medicine, I found it disheartening to read that a significant percentage of consultants want to perform virtual ward rounds in order to avoid burnout (report, May 19).

    There are so many benefits to the consultant being on the ward every day, including: team-building, diagnosis of serious incidental medical conditions that the junior doctor might not have noticed, help with unexpected emergencies arising on the ward, and – not least – direct interaction with the patients. Often one could bring hope and even humour into seemingly desperate situations by virtue of experience.

    Before this new way of working is introduced, a thorough scientific evaluation needs to be conducted. Otherwise the public may feel that this is another profession that has become more interested in itself than the people it is there to serve.

    Dr David Walters
    Burton Bradstock, Dorset

  6. SIR – I wonder where the term “work/life balance” originated. My money would be on the United States, whose slogans are increasingly adopted without question in this country. If it is homegrown, I would guess either The Guardian or Cambridge University.

    But since when was work not part of life? Surely the “balance”, within life, is between work and leisure.

    The problem with admitting as much would be that those seeking to adjust the balance would implicitly be admitting that they expect to have more leisure time and do less work for the same money.

    James Stythe
    Pewsey, Wiltshire

    Yes, Mr Stythe, that is my understanding too. Sooner or later something has to give, but so far it has been only the employer and the customer.

    2. Yes, that is perfectly acceptable. The objective of the worker is to as efficient as possible to achieve the tasks set them in the shortest time possible to maximise their gain from the employer.

      The employer has a duty to ensure the worker can be as efficient as they can be to achieve the company’s goals. The more that gets done in the least time, the more can be done long term, the less exhausted the employee is and the more likely they are to stay. In addition, a worker given Friday afternoon off is more likely to spend that time training or improving themselves or playing frisbee/getting home early and infinitely less resentful when the employer asks them to carry on into the small hours to finish an obnoxious cabling project.

      If employees are allowed no down time,, they leave or you use them up – the Warqueen case in point. Work life balance is a daft term for trusting people to get the job done – not to watch them doing it.

  7. Russia says 771 more Ukrainian troops ‘surrender’ at Mariupol steelworks. 20 May 2022.

    Russia has said a further 771 Ukrainian troops have “surrendered” at Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steelworks, bringing the total number to 1,730 this week, while the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had started registering the Ukrainian prisoners of war who left the plant.

    Why are surrender and surrendered in inverted commas other than to evade reality and mislead the reader into thinking that it’s not really true?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/19/russia-says-771-more-ukrainian-troops-surrendered-at-mariupol-steelworks

  9. SIR – As a young planner dealing with people’s applications 50 years ago, I learnt the job working alongside, and being mentored on a daily basis by, more senior planners who sat in the same office as me.

    In turn, when I was a senior planner, I mentored and trained junior staff. I also had immediate access to highways, conservation, design and legal advice from people working in the same building. I would simply meet the person with the document or plan I wished to discuss, and we could thrash out the best way forward.

    Delays and errors were avoided, knowledge was gained and better planning outcomes were achieved.

    As a manager I would let members of staff have odd days working from home if there was something they needed to do that required undisturbed concentration, but that was the exception, not the rule. There is a role for working from home, but it is limited and should be used sparingly.

    R T Britnell
    Canterbury, Kent

    I can’t imagine how I would have acquired sufficient technical knowledge without be able to listen to, and question when necessary, more senior staff working alongside. The thought of setting out on my career while stuck at home for most of the time and therefore isolated from their interactions would have been to my detriment and my employer’s.

    1. You see, there are these things called ‘com-pu-tahs’ that have this thing called ‘con-fren-sing’ where you can share your screen, zoom in, collaborate, and do all sorts of new whizzy things. Some even let you speak to the other person, the really advanced models let you… gasp! see them!

      So go do one. It isn’t the wfh It’s the inefficient worker.

  10. SIR – As a young planner dealing with people’s applications 50 years ago, I learnt the job working alongside, and being mentored on a daily basis by, more senior planners who sat in the same office as me.

    In turn, when I was a senior planner, I mentored and trained junior staff. I also had immediate access to highways, conservation, design and legal advice from people working in the same building. I would simply meet the person with the document or plan I wished to discuss, and we could thrash out the best way forward.

    Delays and errors were avoided, knowledge was gained and better planning outcomes were achieved.

    As a manager I would let members of staff have odd days working from home if there was something they needed to do that required undisturbed concentration, but that was the exception, not the rule. There is a role for working from home, but it is limited and should be used sparingly.

    R T Britnell
    Canterbury, Kent

    I can’t imagine how I would have acquired sufficient technical knowledge without be able to listen to, and question when necessary, more senior staff working alongside. The thought of setting out on my career while stuck at home for most of the time and therefore isolated from their interactions would have been to my detriment and my employer’s.

  11. Good Moaning.
    Allison Pearson in the DT:
    Thank goodness she’s not writing about the Irish, or she’d be done for racism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/modest-proposal-save-beloved-nhs/

    “A modest proposal to save our beloved NHS

    “Burned out” doctors want to continue working from home. With apologies to Jonathan Swift, I have a better idea

    19 May 2022 • 7:00pm

    A review by the British Medical Association into the Government’s handling of the pandemic has found that it “failed in its duty of care” to doctors. One solution to their members’ burn-out, according to the militant doctors’ union, is for consultants to assess patients remotely via a “computer on wheels”. Come, come, that seems like far too modest a proposal! With apologies to Jonathan Swift, surely it would be better for all concerned to take the next logical step and protect doctors from the foul risk of meeting patients face to face?

    It is a melancholy object to those who walk through a hospital ward, crowded with sad sacks of humanity, all importuning busy professionals for a kind word, a test result or a glass of water. I think it is agreed by all parties that, in the present deplorable state of the health service, such sick persons are a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find a fair, cheap way of disposing of them would deserve so well of the public as to have his or her statue set up in Trafalgar Square or to be awarded an Avoidable Patient Death Related Bonus by one of the 9,327 strategic and analytics workstreams of NHS England.

    The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned at 67 million, I calculate there may be about 100,000 burdens in hospital at this time, and a further 6.4 million awaiting admission. The question is how this insufferable number – a preposterous 1 in 9 of our citizenry! – shall be provided for which, as I have already said, under the present circumstances, with so many doctors on the golf course, feeling fatigued or attending to pressing matters in the Dordogne, is very impossible by all methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither treat them nor fetch them from ambulances so encumbered, particularly by persons who failed, with a good degree of selfishness, to perish during the Great Lockdown.

    I shall now humbly propose a solution, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by one of our modestly remunerated management consultants (a mere £3,000 a day!) that, to the offices of NHS Improvement and NHS Transformation might now be added NHS Kindness, which may put to sleep as many as 5,000 adults a month. Some persons of a negative mind may be in great concern about the vast number of poor people who may be despatched prematurely, with considerable distress to their loved ones. But I think the advantages of the proposal I have made are obvious. It would lessen the number of patients, with whom we are overrun, and who interfere with the smooth running of our managerial operations.

    Secondly, the doctors will feel “safe” with the danger of diseased persons thus lifted, which would likely induce more to stay in the profession, and occasionally meet some of the surviving wretches by telephone within a stipulated period, which shall not be nearer than two weeks on Thursday.

    Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of millions of sick people cannot be computed at less than £190.3 billion per annum, the nation’s saving will be thereby increased, permitting the recruitment of more Equality and Diversity Strategy managers and other essential personnel.

    Fourthly, eventually, the patients may be eliminated entirely, encouraging a great deal of prudence among the public who shall clamour no more via 111 for hospital entry. Instead, they shall stay in their homes where they may make medicaments from dandelion leaf and spices and consult Dr Google at cost only to themselves.

    I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by other men, which shall be found equally cheap, easy and effectual. But I desire those cowardly politicians who dislike my answer (and have no reforms of their own) to first ask the relatives of these mortals whether they would not think it a great happiness to have been killed to support our NHS, and to have avoided the perpetual scenes of misfortune and waiting lists which might otherwise endure for all eternity, or until thine aged parent can procure an appointment with the General Practitioner in person, whichever may be the sooner.

    I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this mass euthanasia by NHS Kindness, having no other motive than advancing the cause of our our own dear health service and protecting doctors from the intolerable demands of their patients.”

  12. More on a windfall tax:

    SIR – Internal government polling has found that the idea of a windfall tax on oil and gas companies is “wildly popular” (Letters, May 19).

    What did they think people would say if asked about taxing someone other than themselves, especially a corporation? Most people would view this as free money and wouldn’t understand the consequences, which would be to deter investment and limit future growth.

    Why doesn’t this Government understand that nearly all tax rises are bad for the economy, and that it should concentrate on lowering taxes by eliminating the waste and inefficiency of most public bodies, while improving productivity in the public sector?

    Adam Richold
    Findern, Derbyshire

    Welcome to Nottlrs, Mr Richold, but such an idea is far too novel for this government!

    1. You have two types of people in the economy. Those who know why taxes are bad and those who want other people to be taxed more, then complain they are unemployed/paying more and cannot join the dots..

      Sadly, it is often the low paid worker who keeps demanding higher taxes on other people, who squeals ‘wich fwends!’ about Conservatives, who complains bitterly about companies getting a tax cut.

  13. SIR – I will believe that this Government is serious about the cost-of-living crisis when it suspends all “green” taxes.

    Politicians of all persuasions seem to be more concerned about Britain achieving net zero by 2050 than about addressing the genuine suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. It would not solve the crisis, but it could make a real difference to fuel poverty and is within government control.

    Ian Holliday
    Shalden Alton, Hampshire

    Glad you have caught up with the injustice and sheer stupidity of ‘net zero’ Mr Holliday…keep spreading the word.

    1. This is because the green agenda guarantees them a 7 figure job after office, supports very wealthy donor landowners, free holidays in the homes of those people invested in green.

      In short, it’s blatant corruption, like all government policy.

  14. ‘Morning All

    UK,Spain,Portugal,Germany,Canada and now Sweden more or less simultaneously

    What a coincidence……….

    https://twitter.com/PeterSweden7/status/1527274849319665665?s=20&t=ddMq5mwTwVcnzjRZ36G7VA

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/86f8039a8214e078bedeee79b721f26c0795f8369cc2cbacff5edc59313ae865.jpg
    Thank God Gates and co developed a vaccine back in 2019……….
    Here we go again,they actually do think we’re idjits
    Edit
    Down under too……
    https://twitter.com/RitaPanahi/status/1527508590986088448?s=20&t=vY0JRJ65slTPIH7VEP4gxA

        2. As Bob tweeted, it’s Fauci’s first appearance but he only gave him a small part. ;D

      2. He started an Ask Me Anything on reddit and, to his credit answered some difficult questions well – the first one was about Epstein.

  15. SIR – As ever, Allister Heath (“Elite groupthink is driving Britain into a nightmare of inflation, idleness and rage”, Comment, May 19) hits the nail on the head – with one exception: “The voters’ revenge, when it comes, will be pitiless.”

    Who is it that we should vote for? The “green” social democrats pretending to be Tory are no longer an option, but to vote Reform or Reclaim would risk delivering into government a Labour Party that is still Corbynist in its bones, and would complete the destruction of our country.

    Cynical members of the Cabinet know this but continue on their path to self-annihilation, taking the rest of us with them. There is no Thatcher-in-waiting that I can see, no truly Conservative heir to the throne.

    Like many, I had such high hopes for Boris Johnson after the bland horrors he succeeded. What a fool I was. Do things really have to get worse before they get better? It seems that they do, like an illness that simply has to run its course.

    Nigel Price
    Wilmslow, Cheshire

    I imagine that his final paragraph speaks for many Conservatives, but unfortunately this now former Conservative is fed up waiting for the turning point between getting worse before getting better.

    1. As long as you carry on worrying about delivering Labour into 10 Downing St Mr Price, nothing will change!

    2. If things get any worse then it’s starvation and outright theft of our incomes.

      Well Boris, you’re nearly there.

    3. Sometimes you have to ask yourself whether a Corbynist Labour Party would really be any worse than Labour Lite Conservatives and just take the risk. One thing is sure, if you don’t vote for change you certainly won’t get any.

    2. Yes, but the economist is obsessed with climate change. It blindly follows EU nonsense – such as re-wilding and not dredging, in fact, no man management at all.

      Hell, perhaps the plan is to rewild so when we’re forced into abject poverty and our homes are given away to illegal immigrants there are fruits to live off?

  17. Well no jabs for me if there is a monkey pox epidemic.

    I’ll just have to lump it

  18. Good morning all.
    A dry start, but overcast with 8°C in the yard.

    Another run into Derby today.

    2. Yo Rik

      Loved the last bit, where she brought in the multi-culti, so she could get the act shown in UK

    3. Re the last question:
      “How many balls can you juggle if she trains you?’
      I’d definitely say two…..

    4. I wonder if the balls are especially made as the control, the bounce seems incredibly precise. While no doubt 95% is raw talent, I do wonder if the balls are ‘special’.

      1. I agree, Minty. I find most of GBN highly watchable, particularly Steyn and Mukori. Unfortunately our Nige doesn’t seem to me to be as good as he was, although Talking Pints is always worth watching – Bobby Davro last night was enjoyable amongst the doom and gloom.

    4. I despise the very term. In the 90s and noughties we have pretty much, as a society said ‘hello Geoff and didn’t care if Geoff was green, pink, yellow, brown or purple. Real strides forward had been made toward treating people as individuals rather than a label.

      Then the serpent of the Left reared up, sank it’s fangs into decent society and undid all that progress by demanding special treatment for the preferred labels. Ever since, tensions have got worse, people unhappier, and now folk see black, brown and so on again. We have to because the Left want us to. They want racism. It gives them something to turn a against b and create strife and misery.

    6. Goes for white ladies, too.
      A lack of self-hatred that’s taken out on the rest of humanity?

    7. Lucky Mercy. She grew up in Northamptonshire and regards Northampton as her home town. Growing up there she would have been, presumably, immersed in English culture in a way in which many others of black African ancestry, rotting away in the modern urban slums, have not.

      Her success is not really an argument in favour of immigration. It the failure of the large proportion of urban black people that is the argument against.

  22. SIR – Jemima Lewis (Comment, May 19) and her daughter might like to know that there are other, more “user friendly” avenues for maths.

    After five agonising grammar school years of maths, algebra and geometry, I was allowed to switch to a secretarial course, where I became acquainted with bookkeeping. Numbers suddenly made sense and became fun. An A-grade pass in my GCE was the result.

    Lindsay Gaskell
    Moorooka, Queensland, Australia

    No, Lindsay, your recollection of your school curriculum seems to be awry. You didn’t study “maths, algebra and geometry”. You studied arithmetic, algebra and geometry.

    Maths (mathematics — note the plural, Yanks) is the all-encompassing name for the subject which is broken down into various disciplines; those main ones being arithmetic, algebra and geometry. Further branches of maths: e.g. trigonometry, calculus and pure maths follow on for those devoted to the top end of the subject.

    1. Well said, Grizz. Our grandson apparently enjoys ‘maths’ but my attempts to explain that he is learning about arithmetic have made no headway so far. In fact, the ‘a’ word isn’t used by any of our grandchildren.

      1. ‘Morning, Hugh. The trouble is that many people think that arithmetic is simply an old-fashioned term for mathematics. And we know it isn’t.

        I think the fact that the word arithmetic isn’t used by your grandchildren clearly illustrates the declining standard of teaching.

          2. What gets me is the infantile use of “Times three by fourteen” rather than “three multiplied by fourteen”. Often used on ‘Countdown’ and its variations.

    2. Always hated maths at school. Was never good at the abstraction. I’m not very good at it even now. I cheat with subnet calculations. I’m not proud of it, I just don’t have a head for it. Some people are not good at maths. Some not especially creative. Some people are not academic at all.

      Ms Gaskell found her niche and excelled in it, and is rightly proud of doing so.

      (I can be nice sometimes).

    3. I have ‘O’ grades in Arithmetic and Mathematics. Mathematics comprised; Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry. I think it’s fair to say that I have made far more use of Arithmetic than the other disciplines throughout my life, though from time to time the others have proved useful.

      1. Morning, Feargal.

        From Wiki: Mathematics (from Ancient Greek ‘knowledge, study, learning’) is the science of numbers (arithmetic and number theory), formulas and related structures (algebra), shapes and spaces in which they are contained (geometry), and quantities and their changes (calculus and analysis). There is no general consensus about its exact scope or epistemological status.

        From OED: Mathematics: the science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, whose methods involve logical reasoning and usually the use of symbolic notation, and which includes geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and analysis.

        Mathematics has always been the general, all-encompassing term for the science of numbers and its branches are given separate titles. I’m guessing that your school separated arithmetic to a category of its own in order to show its importance as a life necessity.

        1. That was certainly the Scottish education system in 1975. Who knows what the hell they are teaching these days.

    4. I did a book-keeping course at college, but it did absolutely nothing for my numerical [lack of] ability! The only reason I passed Maths O Level was because trig was on the arithmetic paper (and they gave marks for working out, even if the answer was wrong).

  23. SIR – Jemima Lewis (Comment, May 19) and her daughter might like to know that there are other, more “user friendly” avenues for maths.

    After five agonising grammar school years of maths, algebra and geometry, I was allowed to switch to a secretarial course, where I became acquainted with bookkeeping. Numbers suddenly made sense and became fun. An A-grade pass in my GCE was the result.

    Lindsay Gaskell
    Moorooka, Queensland, Australia

    No, Lindsay, your recollection of your school curriculum seems to be awry. You didn’t study “maths, algebra and geometry”. You studied arithmetic, algebra and geometry.

    Maths (mathematics — note the plural, Yanks) is the all-encompassing name for the subject which is broken down into various disciplines; those main ones being arithmetic, algebra and geometry. Further branches of maths: e.g. trigonometry, calculus and pure maths follow on for those devoted to the top end of the subject.

    2. Continue the fights in the background. Have the lawyers apply from over there.

      If they knew it was going to happen, why didn’t they reform legal aid *first*?

    4. 352739+ up ticks,

      Morning Rik,
      The Gov. party are rather good at setting up these looking as if facades
      ( fodder for fools) then triggering opposition.
      Been doing it since 24/6/2016.

  25. ‘Morning again.

    To lose one aircraft is unfortunate. To lose three seems to have enhanced his career prospects!

    Captain Dickie Bates, Fleet Air Arm officer who survived three helicopter crashes – obituary

    He flew a Fairey Firefly in a record-breaking carrier attack in the Korean War and became the youngest captain on the Navy’s active list

    ByTelegraph Obituaries
    19 May 2022 • 5:00pm

    Captain Dickie Bates, who has died aged 91, was a Fleet Air Arm observer who survived three helicopter crashes, two in the sea, went on to command ships and, at 39, became the youngest captain on the Navy’s active list.

    He qualified as an observer in 1950 and soon joined 812 NAS (Naval Air Squadron), equipped with Fairey Firefly fighter-reconnaissance aircraft embarked on the light fleet carrier Glory in 1952 for Korean War operations.

    Bates flew with the squadron on March 17 1952 when Glory launched 105 sorties against targets in North Korea, a new record for a British Commonwealth light fleet carrier, surpassing the previous record of 89, set by HMAS Sydney off the east coast of the Korean peninsula the year before, while the Glory was being refitted.

    HMS Glory – inspiration for “The Song of the Dying Gunner AA1” and several other poems by the Cornishman Charles Causley, who served on her as Chief Petty Officer Coder in the Second World War – had been deployed to Korea in 1951, and returned to relieve the Sydney on February 1 1952. Glory was under orders to defend the islands of Chodo and Paeng-yong Do, held by the Allies, give air support and destroy logistical targets on the ground, such as the railway tunnel that its Fireflies blocked with 1000lb bombs on February 9.

    When Communists mounted an attack on Allied troops on the island of Sok-to, at the mouth of the Taedong river that flows through Pyong-yang, the Glory responded with the great operation of March 17. Two squadrons – 804 NAS and Bates’s 812 NAS – together dropped 68 500lb bombs and fired 408 three-inch rockets during the day. Fireflies contributed 40 successful sorties; Sea Furies 65.

    The last launch of the day involved every aircraft being airborne (bar one that had been damaged earlier). By the time they had all landed, every pilot had flown three sorties, and some of them four. The task force commander, Admiral Scott-Moncreiff, described Glory’s effort as “a truly remarkable achievement”.

    Richard John Bates was born on April 7 1930 in London to Richard Bates, a businessman, and Catherine, née Beadle. His love of aviation was kindled as a wartime evacuee in Weston-super-Mare, where he would gaze at the aircraft passing overhead. At 18, he joined the Navy and a year later was flying with the Fleet Air Arm.

    He became a specialist in airborne early warning and in 1953 flew the new Douglas Skyraider with 849 NAS, enthusing in his diary about the aircraft’s AN/APS-20 radar, an American innovation that could detect objects at then-phenomenal distances: a ship at 200 nautical miles and a low-flying aircraft at 65. Bates then re-specialised as an anti-submarine observer, flying in Westland Whirlwind helicopters.

    In 1958, he served in the first ever front-line anti-submarine helicopter unit, 845 NAS, which embarked in the carrier HMS Bulwark for operations east of Suez. On August 15, however, Bates’s Whirlwind suffered engine failure and crashed. He and his three companions fired a flare to attract the attention of a passing RAF Dakota, but to no avail, so, armed with rifles, they walked to safety instead.

    It was not to be his only crash. In 1959, as an anti-submarine helicopter training unit instructor, he ditched in the sea. In 1962, having returned to the front line flying the new Westland Wessex with 815 NAS in Ark Royal, he found himself in the water again. Mercifully, on both occasions, he and his crew managed to extricate themselves from the aircraft as it sank.

    In 1965 he was promoted to Commander, and given command of the destroyer Carysfort, a classic British destroyer completed in 1945 but still one of the fastest ships in the fleet, then serving with the Far East Fleet on operations against incursions into Malaysia during its Confrontation with Indonesia.
    In 1970 he was selected early for promotion to captain; at 39 he was the youngest in the Navy List at the time. He just missed selection for Admiral, but was made Aide-de-Camp to the Queen in July 1979. He retired from the active list in December 1980.

    An excellent sportsman, Bates had played cricket for Middlesex Schools, hockey for Dorset and Cornwall, and cricket, golf and hockey for the Navy, culminating in the captainship of the Royal Navy Golf Team in 1976-77.

    He married, in 1953, Jean Margaret (née Axford) and they had three daughters. After her death in 2002, he married Anne Sayer. She and his daughters survive him.

    Richard Bates, born September 25 1930, died April 7 2022

    * * *

    The BTL posts are rightly generous:

    Bertie Barking11 HRS AGO

    Yet another fine example of outstanding dedication, leadership and commitment.

    RIP Dickie

    John Huddlestone12 HRS AGO

    Just perfect, his career excelled in its achievements, job well done.

    2. To be fair he wasn’t flying the choppers that crashed…..the pilot was. he was an observer

    2. Bogey 5
      Wordle 335 5/6

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

      1. My fourth failure. On the sixth attempt I had a choice of two possibles. I chose the wrong one!

  27. Headline in today’s DT:

    Jon Snow’s ‘obscene anti-Tory rant’ hurt Channel 4, says Nadine Dorries

    At last! Retribution for Snow’s “F**k the Tories” chant. It’s been a long time coming…

    1. I think it hurt Jon Snow a lot more. While there was no backlash at the time, a lot of conservative minded folk who thought him sound suddenly realised he was a screaming hypocritical Lefty and thought very differently of his broadcasting.

    1. Has there been an outbreak in the US? I assumed it was coming here from the gimmigrants?

      1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_monkeypox_outbreak

        Totally without justification, I suspect it’s a problem within the community of very promiscuous gay and bi-sexual men. Looking at the transmission descriptions they can afford to travel freely and will hook up at any given opportunity; somewhat similar to what happened with HIV in California.
        Let us hope it doesn’t break into the general population as badly as HIV/AIDS did.

    2. Yo bb2

      My post from yesterday

      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)

    2. He’s very good. The clip cuts off before he explains the third concept behind the phrase “Black Lives Matter” but he talks very well.

  31. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9f502b10881a28b11cc25358f627a47a8fef4f9505ccc4b8e8548205a728f21f.png
    Rock Star Daly on a fairway to heaven.

    With his peroxide beard and psychedelic trousers, the 1991 champion hogs the limelight but also still has his golf licks

    Resembling a cross between a peroxide Santa and a washed-up Grateful Dead roadie, John Daly soaked up the Oklahoma humidity as only he knew, chugging gallons of Diet Coke inside the comfort of his buggy. Once, the denizens of Southern Hills would have shunned him as a garish interloper. This club was established as a bastion of Tulsa oil wealth, with a strict dress code that did not extend to slovenly 56-yearolds with a weakness for trousers covered in psychedelic skulls.

    And yet Daly, 31 years on from winning the USPGA as the ninth alternate, remains a figure who compels you to leave your preconceptions at the door.

    To study Daly in his natural habitat is to experience reactions akin to watching Keith Richards at a Rolling Stones concert. There is, first of all, faint astonishment that the man is still alive. Then comes admiration that he can perform his craft at the highest level with a cigarette clamped between his lips. Finally, you confront the greatest wonder of all: the fact that somehow, in defiance of every dictum about nutrition and alcohol and the forgoing of easy temptations, he remains capable of a standard that would embarrass men less than half his age.

    Daly would be at ease with the rock-star parallels. This is, after all, the figure who combined his appearance at Hoylake for the 2006 Open with a gig at the Cavern Club, backed by a Liverpool blues trio. That night, his lyrics mined the pathos of an unfathomably tumultuous life. One track, Lost Soul, featured a line about his fourth wife, Sherrie, being “in the pen” for laundering drug money. He followed this with a cover of Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, tweaking the final verse to lament: “Haven’t made a cut in weeks, my career looks so bleak.”

    For all the darkness that has engulfed Daly, a capacity for outrageous flourishes endures. This opening salvo on the edge of the

    Great Plains was one worthy of the canon: a round of 72 in which, confounding all expectations, he was two under after 13. He finished at two over, slightly bedraggled as the saturating heat took its toll, but still two clear of Tiger Woods.

    A more glaring antithesis to Woods you could scarcely hope to find. When the USPGA was last staged at this course in 2007, in August temperatures of more than 40 degrees, Daly claimed to be sufficiently hydrated by the ice cubes in his energy drinks.

    It was on this major stage that his legend was cemented. Daly hardly registered a blip on the radar before the summer of 1991, forced to drive through the night to make his USPGA tee-time at Crooked Stick. Come Sunday night, having won by three, he was depicted as the grip-itand-rip-it symbol of the game’s future. It is to this side of his nature that he has always clung, even when his 1995 Open triumph at St Andrews brought establishment kudos. Eschewing starchy dinners, Daly much prefers to give his public what they want, staging exhibitions in which he smashes drives off the tops of cans of Budweiser.

    Yes, he might have invited a few grumbles among traditionalists by using a buggy, which he insists is for medical reasons. But the moment he arrowed his approach to six feet at the first, you realised the old sorcery was intact. For one day, he tapped into his prodigious well of talent once more.

    Fat Daly should be told to stop eating carbohydrates, sugar, crap, and cooking his food in seed oils. He will then lose his obesity and not need to ridiculously drive around in a “buggy”.

    What next? Will athletes who have a “medical condition” be granted permission to “run” the 10,000 metres in a buggy? Or swim the 400m butterfly in a submarine?

  32. Good morning all

    Nice drizzle of rain here , light fine rain, we need it .

    Why is it that sometimes the light seems to enhance garden colours .. The sort of colours one sees in old colour films , like the Wizard of Oz.

    Even more amazing and beautiful are a pair of Bullfinches who have reappeared in our garden after a long absence.

    1. We haven’t seen Bullfinches for ages, but we do have a nice woodpecker visiting the nut feeder daily.

      1. Firstborn has a black & white with red cap, and a green woodpecker.
        Round us, we have the black, red & white ones – they love the telegraph poles, because they have a protective hub-cap on the top which makes a satisfying “BONG!!” when pecked… 😉

      2. I finally saw the squirrel I had suspected roamed my garden (I keep getting hazelnut seedlings sprouting in my veg plot) this afternoon. It walked up the path, bold as brass, then started investigating the lawn!

    2. We haven’t seen Bullfinches for ages, but we do have a nice woodpecker visiting the nut feeder daily.

  33. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ceb4e44787e666c39a0b0b693c5abd157a65007c9e90d557c1024b8a78f813b5.png Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture.

    Is this the end of the thought police?

    Police forces are “not the thought police”, declared the new Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Andy Cooke, on Monday 16 May: “Thoughts, unless they become actions, aren’t an offence.” (Daily Mail). It felt like a big moment in the fight for free speech and freedom of expression. Yet as The Spectator pointed out, the fact Cooke felt he had to make this intervention – in his first public interview, no less – reminds us just how bad things have become in English policing in recent years.

    Cooke was appointed as HM Inspector of Constabulary in April 2021, and the role includes overseeing the assessment of forces and making recommendations for improvement. He’s clearly keen to push back – or at least be seen to be pushing back – against the rise of thought policing in our country. A good example of that type of policing would be the ‘non-crime hate incident’ (or NCHI). According to College of Policing guidelines drawn up in 2014, NCHIs are any non-criminal act of hostility towards someone with a ‘protected’ characteristic that’s perceived to be motivated by hatred of that characteristic. NCHIs can be reported by the victim or by anyone who witnessed the incident and are recorded irrespective of whether there is any objective evidence to identify the hate element. NCHIs can show up on advanced criminal records checks, preventing people getting jobs.

    Thankfully, in December of last year, the former police officer Harry Miller won a landmark legal battle against the recording of NCHIs, and the College of Policing guidelines were ruled unlawful. The Free Speech Union was proud to back Harry in that case. Had he lost and had to pay the other side’s costs, we’d pledged to help with that bill. More recently, the Free Speech Union helped Kevin Mills. Two years ago, Kevin was handed an NCHI by the police after he refused to work with a customer who he feared wouldn’t pay the bill. The FSU intervened and Kent Police have now deleted the NCHI from his record.

    There is, however, still plenty of work for the FSU to do. That’s because police forces in England and Wales aren’t required to notify someone if an NCHI is recorded against their name – and for all we know, the police are continuing to log ‘non crimes’ in the same way. Given that an estimated 250,000 NCHIs have been recorded since 2014, it’s likely that hundreds of thousands of people still unwittingly carry one around on their records. If you’d like to know more, the FSU’s detailed briefing on NCHIs can be accessed here. If you’d like a quick, five-minute read on the topic, our FAQs on NCHIs is here.

    Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, the police are proudly boasting about continuing to investigate and record NCHIs. You can read what our General Secretary Toby Young had to say about that in the Belfast News Letter here.

    Douglas Murray event – tickets still available!

    Tickets are still available for our exclusive members only online speakeasy on Wednesday 25 May with bestselling author, award-winning political commentator and founding Director of the FSU Douglas Murray. Douglas will be discussing his latest book – The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason (2022) – and answering questions from the audience. If you’re not yet a member, but would like to attend, then you still can – just click here to join the FSU and you’ll be able to secure your place at the event. Discount membership only costs £2.49 a month. If you’d like to know a bit more about Douglas’s work prior to the event, you can watch a clip of his appearance on Fox News earlier in the week here. Last month, Douglas also appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast. You can download that episode here.

    James Esses fundraiser – show your support

    The Times ran an interview this week with an FSU member, James Esses. As many of you will know, James is a former barrister who was (and still is) hoping to retrain as a therapist. Last year, he was expelled from his university course at the Metanoia Institute for launching a public petition that expressed reservations about encouraging children who identified as trans to undergo irreversible, life-changing medical procedures. A few weeks later, Childline removed him from his volunteer role as a counsellor on the same grounds. James’s worry is that all of this has “irretrievably damaged” his professional standing in a career that he “wanted to spend the rest of [his] life doing”. James is currently bringing a case against his university course provider for the discrimination he faced on account of his gender critical beliefs. You can show your support for James by donating to his CrowdJustice fundraiser.

    Are algorithms currently the biggest threat to online free speech?

    Social media platforms will often place ‘viewing constraints’ on content that automated moderation systems have flagged for breaching their ‘community standards’. One of the chief disadvantages of the viewing constraint, however, is that it commits social media companies to a contestable form of censorship. Where a platform asks its users to give explicit consent before viewing a piece of content, for example, it performs an action that is visible to the producers – and consumers – of that content.

    According to an article in The Conversation, however, most user-to-user platforms are now capable of deciding what content gets seen, where, when and by whom, without that decision-making process ever becoming visible. It’s only in the past five years that this technique of ‘algorithmic audiencing’ has taken off, which perhaps explains why its interference with online free speech has so far largely gone unnoticed. To put the scale of that ‘interference’ into context, censorship techniques like viewing constraints are only adopted in cases of ‘inappropriate’ content (which makes up a tiny fraction of all content on any given platform), while algorithmic audiencing is now systematically applied to all content hosted by a platform.

    As the article’s authors go on to explain, the fact that social media newsfeeds still appear to be ordered chronologically is not because they actually are, but because an algorithm is working away in the background to feed users particular types of content that ‘align’ with their known preferences and tastes. Alignment of that kind is important to social media companies because it keeps users engaged… and engagement can be monetised, “yielding up more user attention on targeted advertising, and more data collection opportunities”.

    But is monetisation the only motivating force behind the rise of algorithmic audiencing?

    Writing for the Spectator this week, Laura Dodsworth isn’t so sure. (An extended version of that article can be found over on her Substack page.) There are, she said, “growing concerns that the political and ideological preferences of the platforms may also be shaping what we see online”. Although there is a danger that the Online Safety Bill will stifle the freedom of the press once it passes into legislation, the fact is that news companies are “already self-censoring and serving up content that they know will work favourably with social media algorithms”. Perhaps it could be argued that the motivation in those cases is still largely financial – news companies do, after all, have to turn a profit. But what about the inner logic of the algorithms themselves – is it really all about ‘monetisation’, or might they have been built to pursue other goals too? It’s certainly curious that one social media producer Laura spoke to told her that “environmental protesting is ‘pushed upwards’ on Twitter – ‘XR content takes off like a rocket’ – while immigration and race are pushed down”.

    The platforms themselves “insist that this isn’t the case, and there’s currently no way of knowing for sure”. Why? “Because the algorithms remain closely-guarded secrets”; secrets that – for now at least – remain beyond the purview of regulators.

    The Living Freedom Summer School is now open for applications!

    The applications deadline of 29 May is fast approaching for the Living Freedom Summer School taking place in London this summer. Organised in partnership with the Free Speech Champions project, this is a fantastic opportunity for young, critical thinkers to meet one another and debate the key freedom issues of our times. The full programme is now available. Speakers include the FSU’s own Toby Young and Karolien Celie, former cop and free speech campaigner Harry Miller, James Esses, writer and campaigner Caroline ffiske, Professor Frank Furedi, journalist Bruno Waterfield, Professor Arif Ahmed, writer Ella Whelan, author Dr Joanna Williams, journalist and historian Dr Zoe Strimpel… and many more.

    Is Netflix on the road to recovery after catching a “woke mind virus”?

    Back in April when Netflix reported that it had lost 200,000 subscribers during the first financial quarter of 2022 and expected to lose a further two million subscribers before June, Elon Musk was on hand to offer some valuable context: the problem, he explained, was that Netflix had been infected by a “woke mind virus” that was making the streaming service “unwatchable”. This week, however, Netflix launched what the Daily Mail described as “a crackdown on woke workers trying to silence artists such as Dave Chappelle”. As is well known, staff at the tech company had previously targeted the likes of comedian Chappelle for jokes about transgender people with the aim of cancelling him. Last year, some of the firm’s activists also staged protest walkouts, and, on one remarkable occasion, even tried to force their way into an executive meeting to make their feelings known. More recently, they published a letter with a list of demands that called on the company to “avoid future instances of platforming transphobia and hate speech, and to account for the harm we have caused”.

    Long suffering Netflix bosses, Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, finally appear to have had enough. The Telegraph, GB News and Metro all ran stories about the streaming service circulating an all-staff ‘culture memo’ in which it was made clear that there would be no “censoring of specific artists or voices” no matter how ‘harmful’ certain employees considered the content in question. “Not everyone will like – or agree with – everything on our service,” it conceded, before emphasising Netflix’s commitment to “supporting the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with, programming for a diversity of audiences and tastes, and letting viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices”.

    Is Netflix finally starting to recover from its “woke mind virus” and fight back against millennial authoritarians? Writing for Spiked, Brendan O’Neill doesn’t think so. “Free speech warriors” should calm down, he said. One “positive sounding memo” isn’t enough to be getting excited about. Context (and a good memory) is everything, he adds, because in its past and present editorial choices, its HR actions, its sacking of the actor Frank Langella, “this hyper-woke streaming giant has constantly consolidated the post-traditional, post-reason cult of vulnerability that passes for ‘liberal’ thinking in the 21st century”.

    Still, the memo ends rousingly enough for “free speech warriors” of simple tastes. Addressing the company’s hardcore of perennially disgruntled staff, it notes that “you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful”, before offering the following, tacit reminder that what they signed up for when they joined the company was contractual employment: “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, then Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

    The “woke mind virus” at girls’ private schools

    There was a shocking story in the Daily Mail earlier this week about a pupil at an independent girls school who was set upon by 60 of her classmates after she challenged a female member of the House of Lords who visited the school to talk about transphobia in Parliament. According to a teacher, the girl suggested to the speaker – a well-known political activist – that critical theory was taking precedence over biological reality when it came to defining women. The exchange was polite and respectful, but when the girl returned to the sixth form, she was surrounded by 60 pupils who screamed, swore and spat at her. She had a panic attack, ran to the toilets and collapsed. The school initially supported the girl, but in a volte-face that’s all too familiar it changed its mind and apologised to her classmates for failing to maintain a ‘safe space’. The girl was told that if she said anything ‘provocative’ in lessons she would be removed and forced to work in the library. After being repeatedly bullied, and with no pastoral support from the school, she eventually left. Needless to say, the school is a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme.

    Writing for website Transgender Trend, a teacher at the school who is sympathetic to the girl said: “It was probably somewhat naive of her not to realise that this is indeed an ideology and one with which you’re simply not allowed to disagree, however respectfully. To question its basic tenets is simply heresy and heretics in one way or another need to be exposed, attacked and gotten rid of. Even if they are such notable and seemingly untouchable figures as JK Rowling.”

    JK Rowling later came out in support of the girl.

    The Latest Free Speech Champions event is now available on YouTube

    If you missed the FSC’s most recent live event, you can now catch-up with the video of ‘Self-Censorship on Campus: Comparing Notes Across the Pond’ over on the group’s YouTube channel (available here). On the night, Karolien Celie hosted four fascinating guest panellists: US students Emma Camp (who made waves recently with a New York Times article describing the culture of self-censorship on US campuses) and Stephen Wiecek, UK student Sam Bayliss (who has written previously on the topic of free speech for the Critic) and Canadian student Niloo Daliri. Along with a live audience, they explored the many ways in which students and academics are often pressured to avoid expressing their views, before then considering how they might work together to defend free speech and academic freedom.

    Academics for Academic Freedom – University of Derby branch launch

    Monday 16 May saw the launch of the University of Derby branch of Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF), with scholars from a variety of disciplines in attendance. The branch emerged spontaneously out of shared concerns regarding the growth of intellectual conformism within the UK academy, and the many recent attacks on public intellectuals such as, for instance, Professor Kathleen Stock. Derby is the second local AFAF branch to be formed this year, and others will be launching shortly. The branch hopes to work with the University to defend and promote free speech and academic freedom but has stressed that it will remain an independent voice. To find our more you can email the branch by clicking here, or following them on Twitter (@DerbyUniAFAF)

    Sharing the newsletter

    As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below to help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    Best wishes,

    1. Morning Anne. They all look Horribly White in the photographs! Isn’t that illegal?

      1. Good grief, whatever next? A white Othello?

        Good morning Nursey and Araminta.

    2. Based on The Brothers Menaechmus by Plautus. That was my introduction to the story, back in the sixth form. From memory, it actually IS funny too?

      1. Unusually for Shakespearean comedy – yes.
        But it needs to be treated as a farce, which is what it was originally.
        Our generation was brought up on Shakespeare in aspic; a museum piece rather than entertainment. A text to be memorised and picked over in an exam paper.
        You always need to remember that the Globe audience largely went to theatre because the near-by bear pit was full up. Not even standing room.
        The audience was not delicate academics looking for subtlety; they wanted to be entertained. This was an audience that enjoyed a good hanging or beheading.

        1. Nothing I ever read or saw that came from Shakespeare was in the remotest way comedic. And I saw a lot, as a theatre technician.
          Maybe the lines needed spoken in a silly voice – but that didn’t make the Goons funny, either.

    3. Thanks for the recommendation, Annie. I’ll see if there are any seats left. I enjoyed the last Mercury production you recommended. (“Blackmail”) very much.

      1. As I have to remind the grandchildren – the station is part of the railway and not the train…

        Puzzled looks always follow.

        1. Spot-on, Paul. Many steam engines simply do a static job (as in pumping water). The engine in the above locomotive may be steam, but the vehicle itself (which moves about) is a locomotive.

  37. It appears to be relentless….

    “Three months after denying an injunction over a mandate requiring healthcare workers to present proof of full vaccination, Germany’s Supreme Court ruled that the mandate is constitutional.
    On Thursday, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court rejected complaints about compulsory vaccination for health workers, arguing that the need to ‘protect’ vulnerable populations in hospitals outweighs ‘my body, my choice’ arguments.

    Edit for a BTL Comment:

    “Just as here in the US, their “protect their patients” arguments is a load of crap. How am I protecting my patients from anything if it’s a well-established FACT that I can still get COVID & I can still transmit COVID to my patients DESPITE having taken the “vaccine”?”

    1. What is the point of having a constitution if it gets overruled at the first challenge?
      “The common good” can be used to justify ANYTHING.

    2. Addendum: a friend of my daughter’s was a nurse in Germany – she is now pursuing another career, as she didn’t want to get vaxxed.
      She had an antibody test shortly before she left nursing, and despite never having tested positive for covid (daily tests for the unclean), she had similar antibodies to someone who had been vaxxed, probably from constant low level exposure.
      Apparently, this did not count.
      The whole thing is dishonest and foolish.

    3. It would have been Ironic, if the decision to make the mandate constitutional had been signed at Nuremburg!

    4. Then they should all resign.
      Their health service will start to collapse, the authorities might care to reconsider.

  38. I might take a break,………. i’m having untold unexplainable problems with the NHS again and Virgin media, who tell me that they don’t recognise my login details and it’s absolutely impossible to send them something as simple as an email. Funny how the both know my address and send (VM) me bills and other countless piles of paper work regarding appointments i have cancelled (NOT) and other such inane nonsense. Like wise the department i am trying contact at the E&N Hertfordshire trust. Forgive them ? Why ? Because none of them appear to live in, submit to, or use the technology of the 21st century. WTF are we supposed to do ?

    1. Hope you can sort it all out. Your problems with the NHS especially sound awful!

    2. I circumvent lack of email addresses, mail boxes, voicemail recorders and unanswered telephones, by writing a letter, sent First Class, addressed to the specific nurse or doctor as applicable.

        1. Yes, but then again…
          I sent my electricity meter reading on the 31st March to the CEO of Scottish Power as all the phone lines and Scottish Power websites were down. Scottish Power sent me an invoice. I am on 3 monthly billing and invoice for March/April/May was due in June not 14th April. To avoid being chased ruthlessly and blacklisted by credit agencies I paid up.
          I also wrote to my MSP suggesting that this £6bn revenue company was in “breach of contract” and that I was too little to fight them. My MSP wrote to them around the end of April.
          Yesterday I received a phone call from Scottish Power executive office. They apologised. The amount was sent as an invoice instead of just being added to the account for payment in June along with April and May.
          It was their mistake triggered by my unorthodox approach, perhaps.
          The lady who phoned me said that the reason that all Scottish Power communications systems crashed is that Martin Lewis advised people to send in their meter reading. Lewis did not make it clear that only variable rate/three monthly billing customers needed to do this. Fixed tariff customer were unaffected by the price increase, although they would be at the end of their term. Lewis did not say this and apparently everyone tried to lodge a meter reading at the end of March. The systems could not cope.
          I received an apology and that’s that. Ho-Hum.

    3. Contact us
      East and North Hertfordshire CCG, Charter House, Parkway, Welwyn Garden City, Herts. AL8 6JL.
      General telephone enquiries call 01707 685 000.
      If you are a member of the press and have a media enquiry please call 01707 685 140.

      Pretend you are the press..

      Complaints and feedback
      We always welcome your feedback. If you would like to make a complaint or provide us with feedback on our services, please send this in writing to: Chief Executive, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, Lister hospital, Coreys Mill Lane, Stevenage, SG1 4AB Find out more about making a complaint.

      patcomplaints.enh-tr@nhs.net

    4. When no method exists to contact a group the intent must be that they don’t want to be contacted.

      Stop paying Virgin media. They won’t leave you alone then. The NHS is simply inefficient. It claims that having a direct email address would be overloaded and yes, it might be – that’s where efficiency and working practices comes in.

      If a customer emails our support people it creates a ticket which instantiates the SLA. If someone emails me directly for assistance nothing will happen and they will be told so by automated reply. We got that workflow sorted in our second month when some twit emailed all five of us nigh every 2 minutes. After drowning in his own emails he stopped.

      We also close old tickets and prevent the customer re-opening them, too.

      At the moment we have 16 open tickets – 9 for new business, 6 I’ve responded to today (as they came in today) and the last one is from a serial whinger who thinks that a single gigabit card will mean the ten connect gigabit clients get ten gigabit in aggregate connectivity.

      The NHS doesn’t want to serve. That is expensive, involves change and improvement. More, the state – the department for health – doesn’t want the NHS to improve.

      1. SLA as in Service Level Agreement? I spend my working days generating SLA’s but they’re Sequence Licence Agreements.

        1. Not Special Liqourice Allsorts? (I wish people would stop using TLAs (Two [or Three] Letter Acronyms.)

          1. ‘Afternoon Elsie, I shall paraphrase:

            I also wish people would stop using TLAs (Two [or Three] Letter Acronyms without explanation. Grrr

          3. to cover all ‘LA’s ….. Initialisms

            ie TLI’s

            Initialisms are another type of abbreviation. They’re often confused with acronyms because they are made up of letters, so they look similar, but they can’t be pronounced as words. “FBI” and “CIA” are examples of initialisms because they’re made up of the first letters of “Federal Bureau of Investigation” and “Central Intelligence Agency,” respectively, but they aren’t usually pronounced as words. Insiders
            sometimes call the FBI “fibby” and the CIA “see-uh,” but most of the world says “F-B-I” and “C-I-A,” so they are initialisms.

      2. Once described as a ‘stupid lazy arse’ by one delightful co-worker. Mainly because he wouldn’t lift a finger to answer the phone.

        And apologies, yes, it is a service level agreement. We make most of our money from supporting customers after installation, monitoring and log tracking for errors. Some folk pay more, some less some nothing. It keeps the lights on once we’ve charged our extortionate per port (network port) fee – which I honestly don’t know what it is. Beryl does the invoicing. She tells me where to go, what they want and when I’ll be finished.

        Six weeks after employing her she was spot on the money and we started making a profit, then I sold up to her and 5 others and now I work for them!

    1. I continue to be frustrated that people think Ministers and MPs generally have any purpose. People don’t seem to know that they’re pointless figureheads who do practically nothing. It is civil servants who usually set and implement policy. Idiots suggesting Sunak can’t understand what it’s like to live on a normal wage are completely missing the point.

      It’s the treasury that’s to blame. It just says we want 5 trillion to waste this year, and sets about destroying the economy to get it. It doesn’t care about the consequences.

      As a genuine question, why don’t people understand this? Why do they think Ministers do the work? Why do they think companies pay tax? Is it a lack of intelligence, education or are we surrounded by morons?

      1. I realise it’s a rhetorical question but…we’re surrounded by ignorance compounded by vanity.

        2. Agreed. He does a lot more good for the country with the money he’s allowed to keep than the Government does with what it robs him of.

  41. Bradley Walsh rocked up on Desert Island Discs this morning.
    I was surprised the presenter managed to get any questions in let alone 7 records.

      1. Desert Island discs is apparently a radio show where people are invited on to discuss the records they would take on to a desert island.

        All a bit odd, as if it’s a desert island there would be no gramophone to play them, let alone the electricity for said gramophone. .

        2. No, it’s a programme to enable gay, bendy, woke, left-wing, ecowánqing, BLM supporting, Brit hating, Mooslim loving morons and their Scotch and Oirish Nat allies to pour out their hatred of the people who pay for their exorbitant lifestyle and wages.

      3. Good afternoon, Grizzly. I think it’s the World Health Organisation. Lol.

    1. The expansion of NATO and the European Union was the root cause of the Russian attack on Ukraine. Putin recognised a push by the Americans, aided and abetted by the idiots heading the EU, to justify placing US nuclear weapon and and missile units on Russia’s border thereby shortening the times in both attack and defence. Global warming has become a genuine threat – but not from farting cows or belching diesel engines. Something much, much more instant than that.

        1. My parents and I were at sea, on the way to Nigeria, crossing the Bay of Biscay. Good place to be, if there was to be a nuclear war.

          1. I was serving in the Royal Air Force at West Raynham in North Norfolk – being a prime target, not a good place to be!

      2. I’ve just read a snippet from a Japanese WW2 pilot who had just arrived in Hiroshima before the bomb dropped. Ironically he was a Kamikaze given leave before his mission. He was 16. Although he was buried in rubble for about six hours, he did survive.

  44. A senior police chief has admitted officers are consulting with counter-terrorism experts about threats from the far right at a military base in North Yorkshire where the Home Office is planning to house 1,500 asylum seekers.

    On Thursday night a meeting of residents in the small village of Linton-on-Ouse was told that the first people were due to move in in less than two weeks. The chief inspector for Hambleton and Richmondshire, David Hunter, also acknowledged at the meeting that police were being assisted with advice from Counter-Terrorism North East to prepare for the threat of far-right activity which could put the asylum seekers at risk.

    Home Office officials, along with their sub-contractors Serco who will be managing the accommodation, attended the meeting of Linton Parish council to answer questions about the plans from concerned villagers and campaigners. Approximately 10 far-right protesters gathered outside but were barred from entry by police.

    Asylum seekers held at other military barracks such as Penally in Wales, which has now closed, and Napier in Kent have experienced harassment from far-right demonstrators.

    The Home Office is planning to move 1,500 asylum seekers into the military base, a former RAF station which closed in 2020,in the village which has just 700 residents. The first 60 people are due to move in on 31 May.

    Villagers and activists who oppose the plans have launched a campaign against the Home Office using the slogan “wrong plan, wrong place”.

    On Wednesday evening Conservative-controlled North Yorkshire county council passed a vote of no confidence in the Home Office “due to the lack of consultation of local communities and stakeholders”.

    At the parish council meeting on Thursday evening residents were told that there would be guards on the gates at the base and an increased police presence in the village between 8.30am and midnight seven days a week.

    Home Office officials who attended the meeting said there would be multi-agency forums and sub-groups for local people to raise concerns. The home secretary, Priti Patel, is also to visit to hear their concerns, the meeting was told.

    Hunter said in response to a question about whether police are prepared for far-right activity at the site: “Counter-Terrorism North East are assisting us and advising us.”

    Nicola David, chair of Ripon City of Sanctuary and a member of the Linton-on-Ouse action group, said to Home Office officials at the meeting: “You treat asylum seekers like animals, like pawns in your political game.”

    https://twitter.com/timwarby61/status/1527558281648119808

    1. It’s hardly extremism to oppose the complete takeover of an area by a large group of young men from completely different cultures. One could almost say that it’s “extremism” to blame the people protesting about it!

      1. No guards between midnight and breakfast. What could possibly go wrong?

          1. The locals should create posses to protect the womenfolk. Armed, if possible. It must not be allowed to become a place where women and girls fear to go outside.

          2. Locks on windows. Pressure alarms around the garden. Women should not go out alone. Carry an attack spray of an indelible bright colour or pepper spray. Learn self defense. Or move home.

          4. I think that’s already a given. Who is going to go for a peaceful walk at sunset, knowing that it might put your men in jeopardy if they have to defend you?
            Invasion without a shot fired, courtesy of the traitors in the civil service.

      2. What have we done for the British government to hate us so much?
        Other than dare to exist.

          1. It goes back in time long before 2016, though. The result of the Referendum simply reinforced their hatred.

        1. Look, St Kilda sheep and the indigenous Wren and local field mice need protection from intruders.
          The immigrants might be able to survive on the birds, if they could catch them using the methods of the people who used to live there.
          3 minutes 30 seconds in, per film time

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cbWI_n04cA

        2. Drive them into the sea at bayonet point.
          I have a good, sharp’n for my Mauser K98k. Not matching years, though.

    3. Having read on here, (I do not t read hardcopy MSM) , about the ‘wrongs’ carried out by gimmegrants,on Brits,
      within hours of them landing on these hallowed shores, I would asy the local inhabitants are more at risk then the lodgers.

      The Gay dressers aka Perlice, must up their presence (not presents) in the area when the camp starts to fill up, but to protect the
      locals, NOT the incomers.

      We are still (nominally) a White Christian Heterosexual Country: the Perlice must not try to change this

    4. The ‘Senior Police Officer’ needs to understand that these are NOT asylum seekers but illegal immigrants anxious to suck on the teat of the British Taxpayer.

      EDIT: I’ll add Nicola David, chair of Ripon City of Sanctuary and a member of the Linton-on-Ouse action group to that bunch of ignoramuses called the Perlice.

    5. An increased Police presence to protect the locals??

      Surely if the “asylum seekers” commit illegal acts they should be deported immediately.

  45. Good morning (just – it’s 11.45 am), everyone. Late on parade today. I got up and went straight into the garden to mow the front lawn before the rain started, and then busied myself indoors with various odd jobs before settling down to a morning coffee. Enjoy your day.

    1. It absolutely hissed down here, Elsie. Just as I was about to take Oscar out. I decided to have another cup of coffee until it stopped!

    1. One law change: Applications for asylum may only be made outside the borders. Once inside without visa, that’s a criminal act that will be rewarded with deportation to wherever the government chooses.

    2. ‘Afternoon, Maggie, might I guess that your husband was there, training to be a ‘Fish-head pilot’ as we RAF bods would refer to them?

        1. Thankfully, we only got wet marshalling aircraft in the rain, whereas the Rum, Bum and Baccy boys being at sea most of the time (mentally and physically) must be more qualified as WAFU – especially the carriers and their pilots, making bad landings – the sea.

          1. I went round the very aptly named Cape Wrath, onboard (the old Phantoised HMS Ark Royal) the the Flight deck was nearly touching the incoming waves, as the shippitched down at the front.
            All ‘cabs’ were double lashed and the Flight Deck Sentries stayed inboard

    2. Hang on a bloody minute the “Open Borders” loons justify the Channel invasion by saying “There are no legal routes” to immigrate
      It’s all so tiresome
      Afternoon Belle

    3. 352739+ up ticks,

      Afternoon TB,

      “What on earth is going on”
      The electorate are getti
      ng precisely what they voted for.
      THEIR PARTY in office
      no matter the fall out

  49. Again,I’m shocked,shocked I tell you…………..

    https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1527596831974236162?s=20&t=STTVoV7KdouOLtFUZD0OJw

    https://twitter.com/alisonannyoung/status/1527374799122890753

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f585e726c4e0b2aab5470eaff17a901b4142755d9db37865b6acd60d6bf669c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d6e9c7eeb4aeb3b7dc120c54ca36a056932dc5d03644e0f62646efbb3b6c820b.jpg
    Now about that treaty handing all power to WHO……………..

    2. Doesn’t Col McGregor realise that Ukraine won the Eurovision song contest, they must be slaughtering the Russians who were found to be unfit to compete even in that.

  52. Putin cuts off gas supplies to Finland. 20 May 2022.

    Finland will become the third European country to be cut off from Russian gas after it refused to pay for the fuel in roubles.

    State-owned energy company Gasum said it had been told by Gazprom that flows through a main pipeline will stop in the early hours of Saturday.

    Putin has not cut off their gas! The company that supplies it has done so because the Finns have not paid their bills! The Austrians have experienced no such qualms!

    (Reuters) – Austrian energy group OMV joins other European companies that transfer euro payments for Russian gas to Gazprombank, it said on Friday, adding that it expects no problems through a conversion to roubles.

    “We have now implemented a sanctions-compliant payment process that ensures gas deliveries can be paid in a timely manner,” an OMV spokesperson told Reuters. “We consider our payment obligations fulfilled with the transfer of the euro amount.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/20/ftse-100-markets-live-news-inflation-cost-living-recession/

    Austria’s gas importer OMV to transfer euros to Russia for payment (msn.com)

    1. What is wrong with the Finns? The largest Italian company is also paying in roubles. Apart from rouble payments not being an unreasonable requirement, why start a fight over gas, that can only end up harming their own citizens?

        2. That’s what they say about a man. ” A man is not complete until he is married. And then he is completely finished!”

      2. Afternoon BB. The Finns have been able to make up the shortfall with other sources. I’m not certain that the Austrians and Italians can do that!

      4. The Finns apparently hate each nation according to the length of border they have.
        So, they absolutely hate Russians, hate Swedes and dislike Norwegians…

        1. When I worked in Sweden, the Finns were described to me as the equivalent of the Southern Oirish.

    2. BTL Comment:

      SonOfSammm
      55 minutes ago
      Doesn’t mater what “side” you’re on. Europe is sticking a fork in itself to find out just how very done they are….

    3. BTL Comment:

      SonOfSammm
      55 minutes ago
      Doesn’t mater what “side” you’re on. Europe is sticking a fork in itself to find out just how very done they are….

  53. Stepson’s post dropped off at the hospital and a bit of shopping done on the way home.
    An absolute downpour as I drove in, though it did clear up and never even got to Bonsall!

  54. Time to revive the Agincourt salute!

    “Boris Johnson’s father Stanley says he has become a French national, telling a Belgium news website he wanted to keep “a link” with the EU after Brexit.
    Mr Johnson, whose mother was French, told BFMTV getting citizenship was “something precious” and allowed him to “claim part of my identity”.
    Unlike his son, who led the campaign to leave the EU, Mr Johnson voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum.”

    1. With an 80 seat overall majority Boris Johnson could have easily rewritten May’s catastrophic WA and gone for No Deal, No Northern Ireland Protocol, no ECHR, control of British borders, honouring his pledges to the fishermen, wiping away of EU rules wherever necessary etc. etc.

      That he did not do these things suggests to me that :

      i) Boris Johnson did not believe in Brexit in the first place and did not want to get a proper one done;
      or
      ii) He lacked the testicular strength to stand up to the snivel serpents after his wife ordered him to get rid of Dominic Cummings.

    2. Surely Turkish, the land of his forefathers would have been more appropriate if we wishes not longer to be British?

    1. Mr Roberts needs to point out that the Germans started bombing British cities first::

      “Germany began aerial bombing of British cities immediately after the British declaration of war on Germany in September 1939, while the first British bombing raids against Germany were on the night of 15/16 May 1940, with 78 bombers against oil targets, 9 against steelworks and 9 against marshalling yards

    2. He is summa cum laude in talking bo**ocks.

      Roberts is a strong opponent of neoconservatism, saying, “the neocons are the worst thing that ever happened to the United States. (They’re) really the scum of the earth… They should all be picked up and shipped out of the country. They all belong in Israel. That’s where they should be. Pick ’em up, ship ’em to Israel, revoke their passports. He disagreed with the control of drugs and is sceptical of the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks saying it was a pretext to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would fit in well with the tossers in the Lords and Commons.

  56. Monkeypox has recently been reported in the UK, France,Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, USA and Canada. I have never heard of it before, or noted it. Why now?
    Were there occurrences last year, or five years ago? Were they reported at all or was it too trivial, too small a matter to report?

      1. The AZ contained a gmo chimpanzee adenovirus. There were several cases of monkeypox in the Wrexham area just after the ‘vaccine’ roll-out in March/April 2021. These seemed to be quickly hushed up and nothing more was heard from them. Compare with now!

          1. I remember because I kept an eye open to check progress, but nothing more was heard. They obviously didn’t want the news of that to get out at that time, too early, not useful at that stage in their plotting. I don’t think it made the national news, it was in a local paper(s) posted on Twitter.

        3. Ah, Wrexham – lots of foreigners there (as well as the Welsh, who aren’t foreign in Wrecsam).

      3. Funny you should say that. I was speaking to my tailor and asked him if he could make me a leopardskin outfit for my camping holiday. He did give me a funny look.

    4. Son of Convid……here to maintain the fear and give control to WHO + Gates

  57. Good afternoon. Brighter later. I won’t bore you with my problems; just to say that I filled in the online thingy to the surgery at 8.30. 10 am they rang to say that I could see the Dr who saved my life in Aug 2020 at 2.45. It may be that he has done so again!

    Useful drop of rain. Popped into Morrisons – wich is 200 yards from the GP. Most people masked……

      1. Much, thanks. I took a decision to stop taking one lot of tablets – and the GP agreed that it was not inappropriate.

          4. ‘Clopidogrel’ – conjures up image of a dog with horseshoes telling stories … !

          6. It’s pronounced clop-I-dogrel with the emphasis on the I, not the DOG 🙂

          8. Apixaban, perhaps?

            I take it after diagnosis of Atrial Fibrillation; it could prevent a stroke …

          9. But it meant for me that a nose bleed (and I get them frequently) will last 2 HOURS.

          12. Hire a lawyer, that’ll bleed you dry,
            As Depp, Heard, Rooney, Vardy et al will all be able to testify!

  60. Where’s Plum? Good day today.
    Wordle 335 3/6

    🟨🟨⬛🟨⬛
    🟨🟩🟨⬛⬛
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Me too.

      Wordle 335 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
      🟨🟩⬜🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      2. Another ‘Efin’ Five for me …
        Wordle 335 5/6

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

  62. I see that rt.com has been blocked on the internet. Not only are the west bad losers of their disgusting proxy war, it seems, but they want to censor our information to limit it to the infantile lies that the media have been churning out. The Russian news output has no doubt got its own propaganda, but I prefer with many citizens not to have my own judgment pre-empted by the criminals and braggarts of government.

    Things have sunk very low in our country for freedom of thought and freedom of speech.

    Let the Rule of Law be reestablished, and let Johnson and his friends find more suitable employment sewing postbags!

  63. Man approached lone woman and shouted ‘I want a f**k, give it to me’ before attacking her
    Rahman Akhtar, 33, targeted the woman – who he’d never met before – as she walked to her local shop in Oldham

    SHARE
    BySophie Halle-RichardsReporter
    07:21, 20 MAY 2022

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/man-approached-lone-woman-shouted-24005432

    More mental illness, it appears to me they ALL suffer from that .. and what useless excuse from the judiciary.

    2. There weren’t any boats from the Border Force to rescue welcome the German army.

      2. But they were the same colour! If they were visible, what are the other hued lot?

  65. Tell me it ain’t so….

    NoDebt
    2 hours ago

    “Speaking of letters, the ‘K’ in Monkeypox is silent.
    Which also explains how it spread around the world so quickly.”

  67. First Wills in Jamaica, now Charles in Canada – these royal tours are forcing the Windsors to confront the past. 20 May 2022.

    Canada’s indigenous communities have appealed directly to Prince Charles for an apology from the monarch for past colonial genocide during his tour of the country.

    This cry for atonement from the palace serves as confirmation – if ever it were needed – of how incumbent it is for the royal family to finally pay their dues by addressing the atrocities of the past.

    If they think this is genocide they should cross the border into the United States or better still Mexico! That’s what genocide looks like!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/william-charles-camilla-royal-tour-b2082954.html

    1. You mean to say Prince Charles committed colonial genocide during his tour?

      Golly! If so, he should certainly apologise….{:¬))

      1. Indeed. It’s a bit pointless trying to guilt-trip a man who employed a malthusian as his advisor. Still, it will embarrass him!

    3. I felt sorry for William and Kate, but actually – they all deserve it! Especially Charles, who is pushing the great reset on all of us with all his might. Serves him right!

      1. Charles who wants to be the defender of ‘all’ faith! He is a complete disgrace to everything the Crown stands for. I detest him and his tart.

        1. Diana, you mean? She was the one who slept around. Camilla only had one lover (whom she subsequently married – and should have married him in the first place).

          2. I knew who was meant, but I think you’ve got your epithet (and your opprobrium) wrong. Neither was whiter than white, but in my view, Diana was the worse offender (she was married to the heir to the throne and playing around – as she admitted she did – could put the succession in jeopardy). Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion. I suspect we’ll have to agree to differ on this.

          3. We’ll need to disagree on this. He was always a numpty and she should have been nowhere near him. She was 19! Look no further than the excruciating tampon incident. A revolting entitled man.His great claim to normality was drinking cherry brandy at Gordonstoun? What a tosseur!

          4. Charles is the one I blame. Weak, poor decision-maker, selfish, played both women.

          5. He is all of those things, but Diana was manipulative, sly and set her cap at him (I have that on good authority), so really between his family and Diana, he didn’t stand a chance given how weak he is. He should have married Camilla in the first place.

    4. They ain’t after no stinking apology unless it comes with money.

      I assume that Trudeau had a hand in the arrangements and the species. Totally sickening bias towards indigenous whiners.

    5. In the meantime a few folk are beginning to wonder about Genomecide courtesy of ye tried & tested ‘vaccines’

      1. I had a chat to an elderly neighbour this morning as I was walking Oscar. He said he’d had a heart attack and now had heart problems. He had hitherto been very active (a keen gardener) with no previous heart-related incidents and these health issues were recent thing (he ascribed it to old age). I’ll bet he was double jabbed and boostered (his wife has breathing problems and would be considered vulnerable).

    6. Perhaps they should go for Trudeau instead – the French were far worse to the indigenous.

      1. I’ve often wondered what happened to the outdigenous – were they all gay?

    7. There’s nothing to apologise for. Or, say yes, of course. Now about rent for our property…..

  68. Flights to and from Geneva Airport have been disrupted after a major fire broke out just beyond the perimeter fence.

    A spokesman for Switzerland’s second-busiest airport told AFP told how black smoke could be seen spewing into the sky from the site.

    ‘There is a building – the new reception centre for asylum-seekers – which was under construction… it is on fire. It is outside the airport perimeter,’ said airport spokesman Ignace Jeannerat.

    ‘It is creating a lot of smoke,’ he added. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10838117/Huge-fire-breaks-Geneva-Airport-building-near-runway-explodes.html?ito=push-notification&ci=OUNSudarNX&cri=5thil_pES0&si=26738248&ai=10838117

    4. Just put the fence up round it, move the asylum seekers in and tell them to finish it themselves.

  69. That’s me gone for this odd day. Feeling much cheerier – won’t last, of course.

    We watched a very interesting prog on PBS America about Tutankhamun’s funerary stuff. Much of it had been prepared for other members of his (extremely odd) family and was recycled by the “cartouches” being re-done. Fascinating.

    1. “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”

      [GBS]

    2. Actually, ‘gotten’ is old Tudor.
      The Yanks continued with it, we dropped it.

    3. Grrr,

      Many American things I can accept but some of their language really grates.

      1. The American destruction of our language is dreadful – the accents sometimes almost unbearable. But a soft New Englnd burr is lovely.

          3. Good, but I still think the one from “Deliverance” is the best I’ve heard

    4. Have a look at Psalm 98 in the King James Version. “O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.” In 1611.

    1. Golly Gosh. Anyone would think the whole shebang was planned.
      Pre-planning, anyone?

        3. Let’s put it this way: Covid is losing its sting and the peasants have to be kept in a state of fear.

    1. Haven’t you trained them to use their knives and forks that you’ve so thoughtfully provided?

    4. Mongo has his dinner in the laundry cupboardy bit. I very quickly learned he should eat from a very deep bowl, with a cut out at the front, lifted up off the floor.

      With sheeting over everything up to 5 foot, and along the floor. A tidy eater he is not.

  73. Daily Mail story………..

    We met these two girls at this camp – this incident happened later on the day we left. You take these trips at your own risk – the camp is open and anything can walk through at any time. If she saw the elephant walking along the path, flapping its ears at her, she should have waited till it had gone, not approached it, invading its space.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10836577/University-lecturer-36-sues-luxury-safari-operator-200-000-elephant-attack.html

    University lecturer, 36, sues luxury safari operator for

    over £200,000 after a rampaging bull elephant shattered her pelvis

    during terrifying 60-second attack at £4,400-a-week tented camp on the

    Serengeti

    1. Always someone else’s fault. Nobody takes responsibility for anything nowadays. I despair.

    2. Elephant awarded £2 million damages for trauma.

      Judge says ” if you must be silly be sure the elephant’s musth isn’t greater”

    3. Silly bugger not recognising that an elephant is big, and dangerous, especially a male.
      Bet she’d just finished petting the hippos.

    4. Stupid bint. What did she think was out there? marks and flippin Spencer? Stupid, ignorant, moronic fools.

      1. She should backed off as soon as she saw the elephant. Ear flapping is a classic sign of aggression.

  74. A tip: I can’t help you with your fuel bills. However, if the white keys on your computer keyboard are looking rather grubby (take a look) apply a.little rubbing alcohol on a soft cloth and wipe over the keyboard and it comes up like new. Best switch off the keyboard first….

    2. I have some 99·5% isopropyl alcohol that does a wonderful cleaning job. I’ve not tried drinking it with angostura bitters yet though! 🤢

        1. I intend to. It will fire up a stove that I shall use to boil a large pan of borscht to hand out to the crews of passing tanks.

          1. Borscht is great food! had some really good borscht in a swanky hotel in Samara a decade or so ago.

          2. A good one is delicious. I had a bad one, made by a Ukrainian neighbour, that was simply pink water!

      1. Indeed, but his points are valid, particularly that man adapts.

        If the whole scam was true do you really think that the globalists would be spending millions on waterfront properties?

        Oh, silly me, these bastards can afford to buy whatever they like and if it vanishes in a puff of smoke or a wave of water, what the Hell, it’s only a couple of weeks earnings.

  78. The murder of a nice English white boy has not created any riots , why not .. Oh right ,,,only Black Lives Matter , don’t they .

    Four men who savagely beat a university student, 24, at a New Year’s Eve party before throwing him to his death from a balcony and dousing his body in bleach are jailed for life over his murder
    Three men and teen jailed for life for murdering ‘gentle and peaceful’ student
    William ‘Billy’ Henham, 24, was brutally beaten to death on January 1, 2020
    Gregory Hawley, 29, Dushane Meikle, 28, Lamech Gordon-Carew, 20 and Alize Spence, 19, were unanimously found guilty and jailed for life

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10838305/Four-men-murdered-university-student-24-New-Years-Eve-party-jailed-life.html?ito=push-notification&ci=xCSPkcMECe&cri=Y5-PASCmo1&si=26738248&ai=10838305#newcomment

        1. I’ve read some sickening accounts in my time, but that one is definitely one of the worst.

      2. Blatantly obvious it’d the usual suspects. Deport them, get rid of the vermin trying to get here. If border farce won’t stop them, then get rid of border farce!

    2. What a horrific story! and although they were arrested, they were released and not charged for over a year.

  79. Steerpike in the Spekkie on the Moggster encouraging snivel serpents to actually work:

    “As part of this crusade to get back to the offices, Rees-Mogg last month toured his department and left calling cards on the empty desks of absent civil servants. ‘Sorry you were out when I visited,’ they said ‘I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.’ Their discovery subsequently prompted a deluge of rage on Twitter from the usual suspects, enraged that a minister would dare to leave a courteous note for his officials. The fact that it took 48 hours for the note to be discovered perhaps told its own story… “

  80. Evening, all. Been a dull, miserable damp day – I’ve capitulated and lit the Rayburn to take the chill out of the air. My neighbour said he’d been lighting his wood burner at night. Global warming? Bring it on! I see the PM has been bumping his gums in the West Midlands and claiming that he can’t fix the energy crisis. Why not? He caused it in the first place; he just needs to ditch the lunacy of net zero.

      1. It isn’t as if they are Einsteins or great contributors to the well being of mankind .. they won’t be contributing to European greatness.. they will become trouble makers , they will cripple the great civilistations and their history .. most of all they are trying to conquer Europe again . we are being harmed and manipulated … and they have the permission of all the white traitors to beat us into submission , to replace us .. and our intellect .

        2. Most are paedophiles, rapists and murderers, all are criminals. They hav eno value, no use, no worth. They are effluent. Yet the state continues to bring this tide of turds into this country, happily feeds, clothes and houses them. All to destroy us. All out of spite.

          1. I would say that was hyperbole, except that I heard from a reliable source in the late 90s that there wasn’t a pickpocket left in north Africa after Blair opened the flood gates to Britain.

      1. He’s very tired! His sister is staying and she moves rather quicker than him! All he can do is steal her tennis ball!

        1. Great, some of them were up jiving with the staff, those that couldn’t were hand jiving

          1. Wonderful stuff! Loving your music! My car has the last remaining CD player!

    2. Grim stuff.

      Among other things, notice it is no longer ‘going to school’, but the ‘learning experience’.

    2. Sleep tight and sweet dreams, I’ve just logged on but am too tired to read now, so land of nod for me too.

      I’ll get to catch up – sometime…

  88. When will the Tories give up socialist economics?

    Britain has in effect adopted a command-economy view of the world that discourages businesses from investing

    NIGEL FARAGE

    Another Downing Street U-turn is coming and Sir Keir Starmer is leading the charge. Never mind that this impending volte face is socialist and anti-business. And who cares if it hits those with private pensions? Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, appears to be in favour of this counterproductive policy shift and the matter seems to have been settled. I’m talking, of course, about the threatened windfall tax on profits generated by oil and gas companies.

    Whenever Boris Johnson claims he is reluctant to act on an issue, whether lockdowns or tax rises, just know that in the end he will buckle. His is a government that follows opinion polls rather than trying to lead them. The evidence for his vacillation is that on 3 May he told the Good Morning Britain programme: “If you put a windfall tax on the energy companies what that means is that you discourage them from making the investments that we want to see that in the end will keep energy prices lower for everybody.” Nine days later, he told LBC radio the Government would “have to look” at the windfall tax proposal if not enough investment was made. Johnson has zero business experience, but even he ought to be able to see how nonsensical his position is.

    The fact is that there is an attractive alternative to the windfall tax that would boost the economy, successfully “level-up”, and also help to reduce energy prices. It’s easy to tax oil and gas companies that have seen their North Sea profits rise by £30 million a day purely in order to cut household bills. But everyone seems to be forgetting that from April 2023, corporation tax will rise from 19 per cent to 25 per cent. All that extra taxation will do, even if it only affects the energy sector, is deter foreign investment. Johnson seems to be aware of this, yet the noises he is making suggest he doesn’t much care.

    Since the financial crisis of 2008, it seems to me that the British state has bailed out scores of businesses which have got into terrible financial trouble – often through their own recklessness – and at the same time threatened those that are successful. Britain has in effect adopted a command socialist economy view of the world that discourages businesses from investing.

    On Wednesday night, Rishi Sunak gave a speech to the CBI in which he appealed to businesses to “invest, train and innovate more” in order to lift productivity and improve the long-term prosperity of the country. Well, I have an idea that would help to achieve this. There is a dire need for a more constructive relationship to exist between central government and successful businesses. The only relationship between the Conservative Party and business that I can see at the moment revolves around the habit of tapping rich donors and businessmen for money.

    There is a reason why, as things stand, businesses are lukewarm at best towards Cabinet ministers: they know how few ministers have ever been entrepreneurs or run any sort of business themselves. They also see a Prime Minister who appears to have not a clue about economics. As recently as October, Johnson said in a Sky News interview that fears about inflation were “unfounded”!

    A new, creative dialogue is needed to hatch a plan that would help the UK economy to flourish. Johnson should begin by calling the gas and oil chiefs into No 10 immediately. He should explain to them that the political pressures for a windfall tax were becoming hard to resist but, if they are prepared to work with the Government in a new energy partnership and promise to reinvest their profits in new offshore and onshore projects, the Government will do all it can to fast-track the applications.

    Voters could then be told that three birds were being killed with one stone: tens of thousands of well-paid jobs were being created; tax revenues would increase; and the UK would become self-sufficient in energy rather than being reliant on foreign powers. This plan would work. It would show that the government had been proactive in putting the national interest first. It would bring cheaper, more reliable energy to all consumers.

    Boris Johnson badly needs to regain some credibility. This is one way that he could do so.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/will-tories-give-socialist-economics/

    3. A new plan isn’t needed. An old one is. Cut taxes, shred the state, get out of our lives. People are wedded to welfare because they’re taxed too much. See the irony?

      Oh, and corporation tax is going up to remain aligned with Eu regulation. They don’t want us cutting taxes to 5% to soar ahead, oh no. Can’t have that. They know what that would do to our economy.

      We are being kept poor by an obese, corrupt, incompetent, greedy and fundamentally useless government – either side – they’re both the same.

  90. I’m up bright and early – owls still adding to the tapestry of birdsong when I woke – to (hopefully – car’s a bit dodgy) slither down to Bath to hear, inter alia, Neil Oliver and Nick Hudson (of PANDA) speak at a conference. The latter has even kindly agreed to let me buy him a drink. I don’t do hero worship, but there’s a smile on my face and a lightness in my heart. Have a good day, everyone!

    1. You groupie, you! Have a wonderful time! Tell Neil I know his chimney sweep!

        1. He sweeps our chimney as well! The sweep, not Neil!
          Sorry pet! Good morning to you!
          Daughters dog decided 5.15 was a good time to get up!

    3. Oh, I’m envious! Saw that conference and wanted to go! Hope you have a great time!

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