Thursday 30 June: Give Sturgeon her referendum – but under more rigorous terms

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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670 thoughts on “Thursday 30 June: Give Sturgeon her referendum – but under more rigorous terms”

    2. Getting a ball into the long rough is the easy part Bob …….🏌🏌‍♂️

  3. Early letters – Allow Nichola Sturgeon her referendum but with stricter requirements – ie a 2/3 majority and Scots in foreign countries [England?]to be allowed a registered vote. I would add votes should be restricted to people 18 years of age and over, and no marching school children to the polls with a bagpiper in the lead as happened at the last referendum.

    1. And a pledge from the Westminster Government to accept the vote – however it goes.
      If Scotland chooses to leave, there would be no after-independence funding; Scotland would be treated like Ireland – in a friendly manner, but no longer an intimate member of the family. Since neither country is in the EU (allegedly…) then border controls, with customs and passport checks.
      This needs made absolutely clear before the vote: Scotland will be another country, and expected to live independently.
      Oh, yes, and England to stop funding Indian and Chinese space dreams as well.

    2. How about only people over 18 who have a current Scottish address and can actually provide proof of residence are permitted to vote. And will be subject to scrutiny.
      After all it’s such an important issue.
      Or is she so obsessed with her small minded tribalism and singular attitude that she is the only one who thinks so.

      1. They allowed all and sundry to vote last time – except Scots living in England.

        1. It’s a well known fact that there are more people who associate themselves with Scotland live out side of Scotland the real Scots living there.
          I suspect that Olga Krankie is trying to cheat by letting them vote also.

      2. Sturgeon wants as many people to vote for her as possible. She’s after the quarter million tax free salary and the extra half million in expenses the EU will offer her. She couldn’t give a stuff about Scotland.

        1. Would her ‘friend’ in Brussels be glad to cut down on all that travel?
          In the interests of the planet, natch.

        2. I have nothing against the Scots I have had some good buddies from Scotland. But that mad ‘woman’ is a born and bred racist and trialist, that’s all she has in her head. Hate the English.

  4. Morning, all. Overcast with light drizzle here in N Essex.

    Biden’s popularity has plummeted to an historic low, especially with democrat voters. Policies that include ordering a huge number of monkeypox vaccinations for a rare disease do not inspire confidence in either him or his administration.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ad64ae932a67c9270d34e3148848d53e39439ab0cf525f59dddb31fd9bbb217.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fc04f0e12e877e4d3e06514bd5781fccc10c2d946ed4cfdaa500b6aea602280.png

      1. Biden, just like Boris Johnson, is merely a puppet whose strings are being operated by the ‘fat boys’ in the back office. The Yanks are learning – the Conservatives have been running the country like that for fifty years or more. Only Maggie Thatcher refused to do as she was told – and they got rid of here in the end.

    2. 1.6 million doses for 320 million people.
      Surely they’re not targeting a small section of the population?

  5. SIR – Like Jane Shilling’s family, we always had a pre-dawn start for our annual summer holiday in north Norfolk (Comment, June 27).

    In those days, we could park next to Ely Cathedral and use the public lavatories opposite, then sit astride a cannon on the grass while Dad got the camping stove fired up for a cup of tea. I have never really got the hang of foreign holidays and still return to north Norfolk each year.

    Sandra Hancock
    Exeter, Devon

    I would seriously suggest that you invest in a road atlas, Sandra. The AA one is a good one. It will assist in your education that Ely is not in north Norfolk.

    2. ‘Morning Grizz. Another holiday memory:

      SIR – Jane Shilling’s “prelapsarian” memories of eating hard-boiled 
 eggs during her family’s journey down to the West Country reminded me of our annual overnight caravan picnic in a wooded lay-by, half way between Buckinghamshire and south Devon.

      I will never forget the sucking sound that our cold sausages made when they were prised out of their fat in the roasting tin.

      Sarah Hellings Smith
      North Berwick, East Lothian

      1. ‘Morning, Hugh.

        If Sarah doesn’t want her cold sausages and hard-boiled eggs, I’ll happily take them off her hands. 😉

  6. Poetry will soon be lost for good. Spiked. 30 June 2022.

    Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ has been struck from the prescribed GCSE anthology, Conflict. No Owen, no Sassoon, no Brooke. Elsewhere, Philip Larkin’s ‘An Arundel Tomb’ has also been exhumed and walled up. One cannot help but feel it is the kids that have been robbed.

    It’s not just the poetry but the history as well since they incorporate the whole ethos of what might best be described as Englishness. The qualities exhibited in it, Patriotism, Compassion and the Futility of War are integral to it. It is probably the Apogee of Western Christian Civilisation. Its abolition is of course just a part of the Genocide that is now taking place as we are erased as a People from both the Present and the Past.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/06/29/poetry-will-soon-be-lost-for-good/

    2. Instead they’ll be taught godawful tripe from the Zephania or that tiresome bore Winterson.

  9. SIR – It is the season of strawberries and cream. One hears of additions people make to their berries, such as black pepper, mint or balsamic vinegar.

    My exotic touch is absinthe and caster sugar. Not everybody has absinthe in stock, but lurking unloved at the back of many cupboards are bottles of aniseed-flavoured spirit, such as Pernod or ouzo – relics of holidays in Europe. Here is a good use for them.

    James Reeves
    Bradfield, Berkshire

    Listen up, Jim, and Welcome To My World. The fresh, in season, English (or Swedish) strawberry is one of nature’s flavour delights; much anticipated after an interminably long dreary winter period. To “enhance” its delicious juiciness with a odd assortment of savoury items (balsamic vinegar FFS?) is bizarre to say the least. I want my strawberries unadulterated by anything like what you suggest.

    If I am going to accompany my fresh strawberries with anything, it will either be a large dollop of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream; or they will be popped, raw and whole, into a sweet pastry tart case that has been filled with crême pat (confectioner’s custard)!

    1. Good morning, Grizzly. Do you mind? Stop tempting me with delicious visions of food – I am trying to lose weight! Lol.

      1. Ey up, our Elsie.
        Eat proper food, and weight isn’t a problem. Unless one becomes a glutton, I suppose.

    2. Strawberries are best unadorned, not even sugar.
      We had far too many one year, and tried black pepper (excellent) and balsamic vinegar (OK, I guess, if you like that kind of thing). But completely naked is the best option of all.

    3. Morning Grizz. I always add a sprinkle of Demerera Sugar and a noggin of Vanilla Ice Cream!

      1. Morning, Araminta. Mum always sprinkled hers with sugar. I find that if they are sweet enough no extra help is needed.

    4. Morning Grizz. I always add a sprinkle of Demerera Sugar and a noggin of Vanilla Ice Cream!

    5. My old man bought two punnets of Ava strawberries from a stand at the Highland Show last week. They were the best strawberries either of us have tasted in about 30 years! Absolutely glorious they were!
      Oops! Sorry Good morning all!

    6. Even better, Grizzly, is to use Waitrose Cornish Clotted Cream ice cream.

      Better than Haagen-Daz, and cheaper.

      1. You’ll have to post me some to Sweden then, Janet. 😉

        You have given me an idea, though. I can make my own clotted cream then use some to make some ice cream using fresh vanilla. I’ll look into it and report back anon.

      2. Did you know that “Häagen-Dazs” is a completely made-up marketing word, that was coined simply to make buyers think it had a Danish origin?

      3. Better still is to make one’s own. You know what has gone into it. Whole milk, double cream, granulated sugar and vanilla essence is all you need. It does tend to melt slightly more quickly than shop-bought though. Which makes me wonder what chemicals we are consuming in order to slow down the melt. You could use clotted cream in place of the double cream, or 50:50.

          3. Yeah, and that’s not a punnet – it’s a plastic box – Swedish, I’ll be sure. I’ll Post the pic in a moment.

  10. Can a judge pronounce time of death?

    Mrs Justice Arbuthnot previously found that the schoolboy died at noon on May 31 2022, and gave medics at the Royal London Hospital permission to disconnect him from a ventilator.
    …
    ‘There is no clear definition of death in English law and a case like this has never come before an English court before.’

    https://metro.co.uk/2022/06/29/archie-battersbees-parents-take-fight-for-life-to-court-of-appeal-16910438/

    The heart is a unique organ in that it can keep.itself alive and beating without other organs as long as it can supply itself with oxygenated blood. That means that as long as this can be achieved through ventilation then the heart will die at the time ventilation is removed.

    Whist being treated for heart failure I remember my cardiologist instructing the nurse to reduce my oxygen supply rate, That night my chest started to feel heavy and I felt I had to do something to be able breathe easily enough to go to sleep.
    I got out of bed and turned up the oxygen delivery back to where it was and realised that I couldn’t die happy without ventilation.

  11. ‘Morning, Peeps. At last, a good splurge of overnight rain…perfick.

    SIR – After being threatened by a group of youths with a large knife on my own driveway last year, I called the police – to find that they were not interested. When they finally turned up 40 minutes later, they refused to take the CCTV footage of the incident. It took weeks of emailing for them even to assign a crime number.

    Indeed, the police are so busy in my area that last year the majority of burglaries apparently went unsolved. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when two officers arrived at my workplace this week, to investigate allegations of someone shouting at a parent outside the school opposite. It seems that this is now what counts as a police priority.

    James Martin
    Hailsham, East Sussex

    Sickening, isn’t it? Perhaps Sussex Police should be joining their Met colleagues in ‘special measures’…

    I expect Sussex Plod will find all necessary time to paint some police vehicles so that they can waste even more of it and cavort in the streets at some stupid, over-blown ‘Pride’ event. The one thing our police farce does not engender is real pride!

    1. Good morning, Hugh J. And the overnight rain was, as you say, “perfick”.

    2. It’s all to enforce the state line. Disobey big state and plod will respond in no time. Be a victim of crime and they couldn’t care less.

  12. Marine Le Pen latest tweet ( translated)

    Salah Abdeslam’s life sentence is a relief for the whole French nation. This evening I have a moved thought for the loved ones of the victims, whose pain will never cease to exist. Our duty now is to annihilate Islamist fundamentalism.

    2. 353 633+ up ticks,

      Morning JN,

      Good comment, strong touches of
      Anne Marie Waters there.

    3. I’m sure there are tea and cake Muslims. I’m sure most are probably decent, honest folk.

      Yet the majority are welfare dependent. They refuse to integrate, insisting we change to suit them and the state encourages this. It’s insane.

  13. It’s time to shut down the failed, vast, arrogant monster our police forces have become. Peter Hitchens. 30 June 2022.

    Like some dud bog-standard school, Britain’s most important law-enforcers, the Metropolitan Police, find themselves humiliatingly condemned to ‘special measures’. About time too.

    Now we have also learned that one in seven police forces is in special measures. Quite frankly, I’m not surprised.

    The howling, blatant failure of all Britain’s police forces to do the job for which we pay them so much has been a scandal for years. It has been at its worst in the capital.

    Now, at last, even our political class has begun to notice. If we have the sense to seize it, the moment has come to replace our failed police, who have traded for decades on a reputation won by others many years ago.

    Normally the liberal elite, cocooned by money and power, have little idea of what is going on in this country. They seldom visit anywhere outside their privileged enclaves, and dismiss reports from the real Britain as ‘moral panic’.

    Hitchens is cooking with Gas here though I would myself incline more to the idea that the Police are simply another example of a State Machine that is in the process of disintegration.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-10967333/HITCHENS-time-shut-failed-vast-arrogant-monster-police-forces-become.html

    1. What are the Police and crime commissioners supposed to be for? To commission more crime?

    2. 353633+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,
      Well past time one can truly say, but for that an opposition party platform is required, urgently.

      Maybe sound stupid but I keep ALL my renewed UKIP party membership cards up until the treacherous demise of the genuine party under the Batten leadership.

      ( currently uKiP ino) to prove where I was when the shite hits the fan.

    3. A retired police woman I know said ‘What did they expect when they introduced targets?’

  14. SIR – I am dismayed that Clare College Cambridge has renamed its Colony residences “Castle Court” (report, June 29) out of concern that the old name bears negative connotations to slavery.

    Built by the invading Normans in 1068, nearby Cambridge Castle was a symbol of oppression. The Domesday Book records that 27 houses were destroyed to clear the site. A further 15 families were made homeless when the castle was refortified in 1643. For centuries, the castle doubled as the county jail, where in 1554 conditions were described as “vile”.

    Until 1864 it was the site of public executions: thousands watched Daniel Dawson die in 1812 for poisoning racehorses at Newmarket, despite his plea that he only meant to nobble them. Some of the offenders were the age of today’s students. William Johnson (hanged for burglary in 1763) and Mary Reeder (executed for murder in 1850) were both 20.

    Forcing sensitive students to identify with this place of cruelty and conquest risks causing great distress.

    Professor Ged Martin
    Youghal, Co Cork, Ireland

    I thought for a moment that this was a wind-up, but I think the Prof genuinely wants to erase the unpleasant events in history. That won’t leave much!

    1. I am dismayed that Clare College Cambridge has renamed its Colony residences “Castle Court” (report, June 29) out of concern that the old name bears negative connotations to slavery.

      That the Colony was so called has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery. It was named this ironically because it was remote from the Main Residences of Cambridge!

    2. I think the Professor’s tongue was firmly in his cheek when he wrote the letter.

          1. Thank you, Maggie. Probably as a result of a good night’s sleep – for a welcome change.

      3. Ged as a boys’ name is of Old French and Old German origin meaning “spear rule; spear brave“. Short form of Gerald and Gerard.

    4. Of course, as the title infers, professors only profess to know, it doesn’t mean they actually know anything.

    5. If students are that sensitive then they are weak and should spend a few years growing up first.

  15. SIR – Michael Gove, the Communities Secretary, is soon to announce the final decision on the proposed coal mine at Whitehaven. Lord Deben, chairman of the Climate Change Committee, says it would be “absolutely indefensible” to proceed with the plan.

    However, there are two types of coal, and it is important to understand the difference between them. Thermal coal is used for producing electricity. This is the type that the Cop26 conference targeted for reductions.

    Metallurgical coal, also known as coking coal, is what we have at Whitehaven. It is essential for the manufacture of steel, and is used in the production of Tesla cars, wind turbines and many other items supported by Lord Deben and his colleagues.

    In decades to come, hydrogen may be able to replace coke in the process, but until then we can either mine this coal ourselves or import it. Let us hope that common sense prevails.

    Nigel Bunting
    Shelley, Suffolk

    Earlier this week I once again visited the same coal merchant I have been doing so for the past 30 years. I asked whether he is having trouble obtaining the stuff. One of his grades of house coal comes from…Columbia, and this week goes up by £200 per tonne, on top of £100 per tonne a few months ago. Later this year he won’t be allowed to supply non-smokeless coal. The cost of his sacks has shot up. Since April he hasn’t been allowed to use red diesel in his yard machinery and, as we know, white diesel is much more expensive now. He said in passing that the government has ‘declared war’ on his business and if, as he expects, he won’t be able to make it pay then he predicts that he will go out of business in the next 12 months, resulting in the loss of it and employment of two yard men.

    Will the last coal merchant in Britain turn out the lights and go quietly?

    1. How Deben is allowed to hold on to his position as chairman of the Climate Change committee when he has such an array of conflicts of interest is beyond me [/sarc].

      1. Me too, SB. I’m certain that his continued survival is a case of ‘who you know’.

    2. Deben – Gummer, really of course troughing massively off windmills. Odd, he got rich just as he sat on the board of a windmill company that as soon as the climate change nonsense started up he sat on the committee. But there’s no corruption, fraud or theft there.

  16. 353633+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Is that a fact,then the law is not seen to be done, let us remember ( on polling day) these Isles Guardians of the law “that should be seen to be done” on EVERY occasion, & the councils, local law makers, societies guardians of a sort were criminally lacking especially in the rotherham area resulting in many kids entering adulthood mentally damaged, courtesy of the continuing actions of the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella coalition party

    .Dover, Dungeness, decades of uncontrolled shite, view the state of the nation currently and we are only up to D
    these treacherous political bastards, parties, hard core member / voters are intending running through the alphabet until reset is taken as the norm.

    As with drug taking / supply paedophilia will be legalised but to salve consciences of lab/lib/con member / voters will be heavily frowned upon.

    https://twitter.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1542376351780552708?s=20&t=bUnE6tRObfZZlHPcxRGxbQ

  17. SIR – A very worrying and unsustainable situation has developed in general practice.

    It is reported (June 28) that the British Medical Association is not only encouraging GPs to strike for more pay but is also resisting contractual changes that would ensure services on Saturdays. This intransigence, compounded by the continuing reluctance to provide face-to-face consultations, is doing enormous harm to the reputation of a once honourable profession.

    It should be remembered that the BMA is essentially a trade union and does not represent the whole medical profession. Supporters of such militant action should be ashamed.

    Malcolm H Wheeler FRCS
    Bonvilston, Glamorgan

    The Letter Editor’s heading in this case is “GP strike would bring shame on the profession”. For some practices is there any room left for yet more ‘shame’? Yesterday Mark Steyn interviewed a statistician in the hope of finding out where the ‘excess deaths’ are coming from, given that Covid is but a shadow of its former self. The conclusion is that this is the result of un-diagnosed conditions. And GPs think they are worth another 30%??

    1. About time they changed the GPs contracts so that the get paid according to the number of patients they SEE rather than those who are on their list.
      I also wonder how many on their lists are dead or moved away. Who audits them?

    2. I had a lecture on missing an appointment. I rather thought ‘I’m paying you for a service you restricted so I couldn’t find out the next appointment, and paying you to lecture me. Learn your damned place.’

  18. Good morning, everyone. I have been unable to log in this week and was quite worried that I had lost contact with all of you. I was getting the message: ‘WordPress is unable to load disqus. If you are a moderator click here’. Did anyone else have trouble?

    1. I did on my phone. Then I cleared the third party cookies on this site only and now I don’t need to log in at all. I used to have to click the D for disqus but nothing there now.

    2. Good morning DB

      I had the same problems , I found a back door way in, for several days, then surprise surprise .. I am back here properly and no need to fiddle around .

    4. This is probably GCHQ harrassment Delboy. It just has to be endured. A part of living in a Police State!

    5. This is probably GCHQ harrassment Delboy. It just has to be endured. A part of living in a Police State!

    6. ‘Morning, DB, glad you are back. Yes, I had the same problem (phone) but persistence eventually paid orf…

    7. ‘Morning, DB, glad you are back. Yes, I had the same problem (phone) but persistence eventually paid orf…

  20. A couple of BTL posts that caught my eye this morning:

    Archie Crompton
    6 HRS AGO
    In two separate American prison cells tonight, two prisoners, namely R. Kelly and G. Maxwell are rueing the day they missed the opportunity to operate out of Rochdale or a handful of other hapless UK conurbations.

    Kevin Bell
    6 HRS AGO
    Isn’t it incredible Archie the level of coverage given to these two on our great media versus the almost nonexistent reporting of Rochdale. Only Farage and Steyn got into it. What a great pair of shows those two provide.

    * * *

    Yes indeed – Mark Steyn in particular was on fire yesterday evening. For me he is essential viewing these days, and he knocks all of the the more conventional programmes about politics, current affairs etc clean out of sight!

    1. Mark Steyn is openly challenging the PTB to shut him down. Let us hope that no accident befalls him.

    2. Someone tell me why we keep giving scum a free ride and refuse to deal with them and yet should the decent, honest man get a parking ticket the full force of the state lands on them – and then they complain bitterly about high street sales falling.

      It’s almost comical. The state is run by fools, the justice system by crooks.

  21. UK to give Ukraine further £1billion of military support to help fight Putin. 30 June 2022.

    The UK has announced a further £1billion of military support to help Ukraine resist Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion.

    The latest announcement, which came at the end of the first full day of the Nato summit in Madrid on Wednesday, takes Britain’s total economic and military support for Kyiv to £3.8bn this year.

    Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “UK weapons, equipment and training are transforming Ukraine’s defences against this onslaught. And we will continue to stand squarely behind the Ukrainian people to ensure Putin fails in Ukraine.”

    Well just as long as you are not the UK White Working Class nothing is too much to ask for!

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-give-ukraine-billion-more-military-support-help-fight-putin-b1009224.html

    1. Fataturk has gone beyond moron, and even beyond feckwit – he is an absolute danger to Britain!

        1. Approaching 100bn a year. In reality, long passed that figure. Money the state ‘borrows’ to pay.

          Given government wastes 2.4 billion a day, that’s 50 days spending. More than is spent on education, defence combined. The waste in the state is staggering. It is grotesquely overfunded.

      2. £3.8bn this year alone – and Liz Truss said on Radio 4 this morning that the government will support Taiwan if China gets uppity. The army is being reduced by another 10,000 (UK 275,000 total mil strength) and they are threatening war against China and Russia who have 3,355,000 and 3,569,000 total military personnel. The Ruskies and the Chinks must be sh*tting themselves at the thought of having to confront 73,000 British soldiers with a handful of tanks and rifles that fire nearly every time you pull the trigger.

        1. But China doesn’t have the personnel or equipment to fight a protracted war against an island.

          Men under arms are irrelevant. A battle group should consist of about 5000 men with heavy weapons, divided into 500 standing groups of guerilla multi role fighters. We should have more war machines than vehicles. Treat each squad of 5 as a family of four. Transport, field support, gunship support, medivac, mobile armour support – not tanks, the Foxhound and Mastiff, only up-gunned.

      3. £3.8bn this year alone – and Liz Truss said on Radio 4 this morning that the government will support Taiwan if China gets uppity. The army is being reduced by another 10,000 (UK 275,000 total mil strength) and they are threatening war against China and Russia who have 3,355,000 and 3,569,000 total military personnel. The Ruskies and the Chinks must be sh*tting themselves at the thought of having to confront 73,000 British soldiers with a handful of tanks and rifles that fire nearly every time you pull the trigger.

      4. £3.8bn this year alone – and Liz Truss said on Radio 4 this morning that the government will support Taiwan if China gets uppity. The army is being reduced by another 10,000 (UK 275,000 total mil strength) and they are threatening war against China and Russia who have 3,355,000 and 3,569,000 total military personnel. The Ruskies and the Chinks must be sh*tting themselves at the thought of having to confront 73,000 British soldiers with a handful of tanks and rifles that fire nearly every time you pull the trigger.

      5. Its £2.3 bn actually, we have already sent 1.3. I’m incandescent and find the frittering away of taxpayer money in a financial crisis is unforgivable. Boris grandstanding once again whilst our allies hold back letting us do the heavy lifting. Nothing changes. When conflict with NATO eventually happens, I have no doubt about whose troops will be over the border first.

    3. Funny old World at the moment. Johnson & Co can find billions to splash out on a corrupt state and tens of millions annually to import illegal immigrants and keep them in the style they have been promised by their traffickers but I remain having to either remember where the existing trenches – some are long past being called potholes – are, or pay close attention on roads I rarely travel on for the traps that exist. Of course, there are many other more important issues that could use the cash being splashed around by the feckless Johnson but I think keeping one’s car roadworthy is important for both my and other road users’ safety. RTAs due to wrecked tyres, suspension etc. puts further strain on the other groups e.g. NHS, police and fire brigade. Hoping that Johnson will get a grip and actually DO something to benefit the people of this Country, resigning could help, is an activity doomed to failure.

      1. Morning KK

        A thought occurred to me that Boris and co could be similar to third world presidents who squirrel vast amounts of money out of the country , leaving their homeland ‘s infrastructure to rot .. with schools closing , hospitals unable to function properly , roads , sewerage, water quality polluted, and a new migrant influx of millions who are unqualified and illiterate with no technical ability and hands on experience .

        My son is an electrician , mostly industrial with years of experience .. Industry is so short of qualified bods that unqualified staff are drafted in as ‘mates’.. He has to keep an eye on them , they are inattentive and idle , and he has had 2 Nigerians and 3 Pakstani.. who vanish frequently to pray, and use the water from the drinking water containers to wash their feet.

        My son fears for the building industry … standards are being compromised .

    4. I presume this is all on a ‘lend-lease’ basis and the cost of materiel etc will all be reimbursed over time.

  22. Sorry, Boris, but if Putin were female he’d be just as brutal…
    Instead of facing the Russian leader’s ‘toxic masculinity’, would a world with more women leaders be nicer? Kinder? Quite probably not

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/06/29/sorry-boris-putin-female-just-brutal/

    The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
    [Rudyard Kipling]

    Boris Johnson’s judgement, rationality, integrity, intelligence and personality are all disintegrating before our eyes..

    Where is white van man – equipped with a straitjacket – who can take him to the ‘county asylum for mental defectives’.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzHtm1jhL4

    1. Good morning Wise one .

      Meghan Markle is just as toxic and callous … and the real truth will never ever be revealed ..

      I wonder what the pair of them are like to their staff in America?

      Cruel as hell, I can really imagine .

      2. I wonder if the Palace silence is deliberate; the details will filter out, just not officially.
        A perpetual sword of Damocles hanging over Whinge and Ginge’s heads.

          1. Good morning, Grizzly

            Did you play both sides incessantly to the poor sods while they were locked in police cells?

          2. Good afternoon, Rastus.

            Now there’s a (belated) idea. Unfortunately I was only XVI when that song was in the charts.

    3. I think he meant it as a joke, but we are now all too aware of Nut Nuts lurking in the background ‘guiding his thinking’.

    1. The shame and guilt of looking away. Ah, what a tangled web.

      Call Sturgeon’s bluff. Impoverish Scotland. Crush it under the heel. Leave it penniless and suffering, crippled with debt.

  24. SIR – Jane Shilling’s “prelapsarian” memories of eating hard-boiled 
 eggs during her family’s journey down to the West Country reminded me of our annual overnight caravan picnic in a wooded lay-by, half way between Buckinghamshire and south Devon.

    I will never forget the sucking sound that our cold sausages made when they were prised out of their fat in the roasting tin.

    Sarah Hellings Smith
    North Berwick, East Lothian

    When I read that letter , my goodness the memories flooded back to my childhood when my dear elderly aunt used to cook proper pork chipolatas (Yorkshire) in a roasting pan , and then put them in her nice cold larder room inside the meat cage with the cooked ham and dish of home made brawn .

    The taste of cold cooked sausages is one of those childhood memories one doesn’t forget .

    1. We still have Auntie Agnes’ meat cage. It’s in the shed and I use it for storing vegetables.
      (Obvious jokes about where MB lives will be ignored.)

  25. SIR – I enjoyed the recent Trooping the Colour without commentary, via the “Red Button” service on my remote control. Could this not be provided for Wimbledon (Letters, June 29) – and, indeed, all televised sport?

    Huw Baumgartner
    Bridell, Pembrokeshire

    There’s hope for us yet. I was going to ask if the red button might also eliminate the grumpy, grimacing Scot, but I see that he achieved this himself yesterday…

    1. Auntie could also save a few bob by restricting the commentators to no more than one per match. Its not as if we need to be told which player is hitting the ball.

  26. ‘Morning All

    A chilling read from ConWoman

    “We know that nearly 400,000 Jews died in the Warsaw Ghetto, but how

    many of us know why the ghetto was created? That it was a public health

    policy? When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 and bombed Warsaw, the

    city’s sewerage system was damaged and typhus quickly spread. German

    propaganda already blamed Jews for spreading disease, so, although

    typhus was found throughout the city, it was the Jewish neighbourhoods

    that became ‘restricted epidemic areas’. Although by the summer of 1940

    typhus cases were falling, German doctors persuaded the authorities to

    create a ghetto to prevent further spread. The creation of the ghetto,

    where overcrowding and lack of food were rife, caused a spike in cases.

    Fast-forward to 2022, and not everyone was content to go along with

    the narrative. Some of us wondered how so many could be so blind to the

    history repeating in front of their eyes.”

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/never-again-israels-mask-mob-echo-the-holocaust/
    I commend the whole article to this house………

      1. Never mind just Brixton – the whole of Londonistan.

        …and Birmingham, Bradford, Dewsbury and all other places with Mosques.

  27. 353633+ up ticks,

    Were the rear exits visitors to epsteins island able to decipher child talk when they asked ” was that good for you ” tis my belief that the voters supporting the toxic trio
    and all it’s odious actions in the paedophile department
    paedophilia will be taken as the normal route to follow.

    2. The corruption in our own political class is nothing compared to Soviet bloc. People are ignorant. We should simply leave them alone, same as we ignore the african tribes killing one another.

    1. A clear case for flogging. Hang all these effnik scum and just use them as whipping practice.

      1. A clear case for machine-gunning them down when caught in situ. Drop their carcases into the Atlantic from a Chinook. Job done. No trial. Little expense.

      1. No. He should be voted out of office and for TPTB not to prevent a man or woman of character from standing and for Londoners to start thinking again.
        I’m not holding my breath.

    2. This Special Measures thing is frustrating. It’s for the wrong things.
      There is no culture of homophobia or misogyny or harassment or racism or any of that stuff.
      But there is a culture of unhelpfulness which if you belong to any or these groups you could interpret as arising from such cultures. And if you are white you might assume the rude copper is responding to you in this way for this reason, especially if he or she is from an ethnic minority.

      But it was always thus. – And the unhelpfulness is at its worse between coppers. You would not believe how difficult it is to get some things done, which could take so much less time and energy if people would only raise their eyes from their keyboards and remember that their fundemental job is to keep the Queen’s Peace without fear nor favour.

      I think this Special Measures thing more about the mayor exacting retribution for the refusal to go after Boris for the 10 DS parties.
      Something good could come of this if they address the right problems. I don’t hold out much hope. I rather expect woke self-flagellation and apologising for Sir Robert Peel’s white heterosexuality.
      I would really hope I’m wrong.

  33. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/06/29/britain-fed-bitter-practically-broke-going-get-worse/

    Mr Stewart is right, but also wrong. There are two demographics breeding. The welfare and the gimmigrant (who are practically the same thing). Why? Because they’re the only ones who can afford to. The worker pays all the taxes, is the most put upon, receives no justice, has the poorest services, has their income destroyed, is forced to pay for the dross, is mugged if they save, receives no help when they need it, is the first to have plod around for a parking ticket or insurance but the last to get a crime investigated.

    We pay and pay and pay for others to trough on our efforts. We get nothing, we pay for everything. The wasters get more free money while ours is destroyed. The dossers breed to get a bigger house which we’re forced to pay for and we can’t afford it. Then council tax bills soar further punishing the worker. The criminal gets protection while the victim is ignored.

    Everything is back to front, and it needs to change.

  34. Off to Sodding Chipbury now to do a talk about hedgehogs to a women’s group. Catch you later!

    2. Sodding Chipbury? It used to be illegal but I think it is not only permitted now but encouraged by the BBC and Teacher’s Unions.

      1. On the signposts it says Chipping Sodbury……… anyway, they were a nice group of retired ladies who seemed to enjoy the talk and bought some of our stuff.

    1. Its an odd reaction by the BMA as about half the states in the US still allow legal abortion and will be somewhat easier to get to. It seems to be a modern affliction of those in charge that absolutely no consideration to budgeting is ever considered.

      1. Don’t forget Canada and Mexico. Just drive over the border and abortion is legal.

    2. “Zoe Greaves, chair of the BMA’s medical ethics committee, said the move would be a “substantive step forward beyond our existing policy”.

      Why is a piece of furniture ‘speaking’ for the BMA’s medical ethics committee? Surely a human being would be more appropriate. Are all pieces of furniture at the BMA given personal names?

    1. Imagine Mrs. Maskabator Senior trying to explain away her latest reason for holing up at home.

      1. I do wonder how Lefties think sometimes. The doublethink they must suffer is hilarious – if it were not so dangerous.

    2. “Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, accepted the recommendation”. Tedros needs to be sent home to Ethiopia and face the charges against him. Is he guilty of attempted genocide or not and if he is, Gates must justfiy keeping him as DG of the WHO.
      Also from that article, ” Altering our planet’s biology”. These idiots really do have a God complex, don’t they.

  37. Good Moaning.
    Hurrah. The world (well, NE Essex) has returned to normal.
    Cold, grey and it’s nearly July.
    All that’s needed is a fortnight crouching in a tent pitched in a sodden field and it will 1950s revisited.

  38. Attack on energy provision, inflation rising, illegal immigration being promoted: sound familiar? Here’s Steve Cortes on the War Room explaining what is happening in the USA.

    There are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences.

    Steve Cortes on War Room

    1. No, high bills are NOT a price worth paying. Decades of mismanagement in defending this country and providing for it’s needs rather than the international socialist agenda have brought us to our knees.

      If you won’t begin a programme of change to defend this country, get out.

      1. Boris has already begun a programme of change – UK will be relying on electricity generated by coal to supply all those Shell lamp posts needed to power the net zero EVs the Government has previously persuaded us to buy.

        1. If we all bought an electric car no one would be going anywhere. To replace the energy demand, joule for joule would require doubling our energy generating capacity.

          1. Do you think they don’t realize that? Why else are they sticking to the bizarre green agenda?

          3. The Russians are puzzled. They’re moving from coal to gas because it actaully IS cleaner, not just pretend cleaner.

          5. Sometimes I can’t think of anything – other times it’s worth a punt! ☺️

    2. Thank goodness he and Carrie Antoinette bought their tasteless tat before the inevitable price rises.

  41. I wonder if Charles and William will be as callous in deserting Harry as they have been in abandoning Andrew who has not been found guilty of anything but, very sensibly, was advised by his lawyers that he would be stitched up by an American court.

    I wonder how long it will be before Megraine decides that mere castration and lobotomy was not enough for Harry and decides to go for the most expensive divorce in history.

    But in Caroline’s opinion the Palace is keeping its powder dry and will not release the details of the Megraine bullying of staff until it can be used against her to maximum advantage in the divorce case.

    1. She’s a narcissist, he’s rejecting good advice because he’s immature. She will use the children as weapons – if she isn’t already.

      The whole thing is tedious.

      1. Rumour has it that her first husband, Trevor Engelson, is about to spill the beans in a new book. That should be fun.

    3. From the Tellygraff:

      “When the FBI eventually investigated, what they discovered was one of the largest and widest-reaching sex-trafficking rings in US history. Princes, former presidents and celebrities had all moved in Epstein’s orbit. Hundreds of women began coming forward with near-identical accounts of grooming and abuse.”

      Despite all that, apparently the US legal system only discovered two Britons.

    1. The total figure is somewhat disingenuous as half of it was a one off payment to get rid of him.
      Even so, I cannot understand why in such cases he could not be paid statutory minimum for the redundancy

  43. 353633+ up ticks,
    Could it be right to say that plague & pestilence came galloping in via the ballot booth’s majority seemingly the lab/lib/con coalition, far from cleaning out the stable
    are up for amassing more political horseshit seeking more of the same while currying the favours of the four jockey’s, In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and Famine.

    The lab/lib/con coalition party are currently leading the field, in the largely “scammers stakes”.

    United Kingdom shortage of GPs, Dover, Dungeness & all points NEWS near 13000 potential patients, paedophiles, etc,etc, entered this country illegally so far this year, may one ask .was it with your consent or done in your name via the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella coalition party.

    1. Considering the current useless government are more interested in climate change and ‘equalities’ than making the military a fighting force shows how they really think.

    3. The man is an utter imbecile – he sounds off at the G7 about the need for more NATO combat ready troops in Europe, but then returns to UK where he appears entirely happy with plans to cut another 10,000 troops – talk about cognitive dissonance!

      1. It’s not cognitive dissonance. It is an assumption that we are unaware of what is happening and that we are anyway too stupid, grounded in his overweening arrogance.

        1. Most people are. There’s a strong collective of truly stupid people who think companies pay tax, for example.

  45. https://www.takimag.com/article/unfit-for-purpose/

    The magazine is aimed at an American audience

    When the British public voted to leave the European Union in 2016, it wasn’t just the result that shocked the liberal establishment; it was also the realization that the voters’ priority was illegal immigration. Now, with “Brexit” supposedly in place, it would be expected that the steady flow of migrants into the U.K. would dry up. Instead it is increasing, and this is due to collusion between Britain’s deep state (it does have one), the organizations tasked with guarding the coastline, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and lawyers.

    Border Force, the coast guard with a special remit for illegal immigrants, has been outstanding—as a taxi service for incoming migrants, that is. Their boats regularly take incomers from their dinghies in the English Channel and give them a ride to England. Perhaps their mission statement is the comment made by Paul Lincoln, outgoing head of Border Force: “Bloody borders are just a pain in the arse.”

    NGOs, in the case of immigration, work tirelessly to prevent deportations, fiercely dedicated to social justice and with the hatred of their own country that goes with that.

    The concluding paragraphs:

    It has become faddish for politicians and media pundits to describe an underperforming organization or government department as “unfit for purpose.” This is fine as long as there is agreement on what the purpose is.

    If the purpose of the immigration system is to protect Britain’s sovereign borders, it is unfit for purpose. If, on the other hand, its purpose is to abet a hybrid of Samuel T. Francis’ anarcho-tyranny and Yuri Bezmenov’s four stages of destroying a nation from within, the U.K. immigration system is very much fit for purpose.

    1. I am genuinely convinced that the sole intent of Whitehall is to flood the country out of sheer revenge.

  46. MP furious at plans to reopen immigration centre

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-61966401

    The MP is one of NOTTL’s favourite nutcases, Layla Moran. She is correct to say that ‘the decision reflects a failure of policy’ but, of course, the failure is not having to confine these people but the fact that they were allowed into the country. I doubt she’d ever think to say that.

    1. Much like the ‘housing crisis’. The statist solution is more houses, not to stop the wrong people having children or to get the state out of the housing market.

      Same for cost of living. She would say the government must help people – by taxing companies more.

      These people are fools. Actually, no. Stupid people don’t understand. She is plain ignorant. The problems this country has are entirely the fault of the state but as a statist she refuses, intentionally to see that.

    2. It was the UK government that decided that internment without trial was perfectly fine if you were Irish. These people who turn up on our beaches should be “processed” within an hour of arrival. As well as fingerprinting, photographing, measuring, confiscation of phones, and in depth medical checks they should also appear before a magistrate for illegally entering the country. A prison sentence could be handed down to every illegal immigrant within 48 hours of arrival allowing them them to be imprisoned until deported.

      Edited for Freudian slip. I put inter- ment instead of intern-ment.

      2. There was an old gardener from Ryde
        Who fell into a cess pit and died
        His unfortunate bother
        Fell down another
        And now they’re interred side by side.

    3. But ………It’s not immigration, it’s an unfettered government run invasion.

          1. Apparently, the late 70s were a bit of a blur to EC. He doesn’t even remember playing to me when he was the support to Bob Dylan at Blackbushe in 1978

      2. Shirley pansexual means she enjoys sex with anyone and anything. Put in a down to earth term, she likes to sweetly FA.

        1. If it is “pansexual”, I would have no problem in fucking it completely … with my frying pan!

    5. I wish some one would ask her where they are supposed to house the 600 foreigners who land from small boats on our Southern Coastline every day

    1. ‘Twas excellent news, Horace! We can but hope that the little witch is rumbled!

    2. Depends. If you’re a honest tax payer then yes, as the state wanted to steal the money from you. If you’re an MP, regularly claiming 200,000 in expenses you’re already a crook.

    3. Stupid woman. She stole it from politicians and political activists. If she had stolen it from the taxpayer she would have been laughed out of court as an amateur. Theft from the public purse usually starts at £250,000.

  49. Breaking News – Raab’s winking episode at yesterdays PMQ’s wasn’t a wink at all, but a bad reaction to the covid jab

      2. No one knows; here nickname at skool/colidge was seaweed, as even the tide wouldn’t take her out.

    3. It might be an old one, Sue, but just as applicable and true when you see it.

    4. Best put on the toilet flush – the BIG button – as the shermite goes with it.

  51. Remember the Wild West Show song?

    Raab reminds me of that rare exotic bird known as the winky wanky bird which has a bit of string connecting its eyelashes to its foreskin so when it winks it wanks and when it wanks it winks. Ms Rayner was throwing dust in his eye!

    2. Just shoot the scum. Do the same to pikeys. Stop funding these creatures, stop pretending they deserve ‘respect. Treat them all like the vermin they are – and that’s an insult to vermin.

  53. When I put a BTL comment up under a DT article saying that Boris Johnson was full of piss and wind it was censored and did not appear and so I said he was full of urine and flatulence instead and it went up!

    1. The other way of saying it, Richard, is to liken it to ‘The Barber’s Cat’

      This was that little squeezy thing that barbers used to dampen you hair, i.e., an instrument full of ‘piss and wind’

    1. This is an utter nonsense. Being vaccinated does not prevent transmission. You can do what like lass. What you stick inside you has no effect on your mother whatsoever.

        1. Technically that’s someone else sticking something inside her.

          But with people like this, who knows?

      2. What you stick inside you has no effect on your mother whatsoever.
        Biologically at least.

    2. That is utterly disgusting and sadly what I have come to expect from the nhs. The deliberate ignorance of the data (which Pfizer wanted to keep under wraps for 75 years and no wonder) and the emotional blackmail along with the empirical evidence that says the vaccine does not stop you from passing on ‘the virus’ – any one of these is mind boggling but wrapped up in an advert for actually taking the vaccine – blows one’s mind. In view of the very serious adverse effects and the very possibility of lethality, these people should be taken out and hanged. And their managers and complete line of control.

      1. I have to say that I haven’t heard the radio adverts for quite some time. I only listen when in the car but previously there was rarely a journey when I didn’t hear one, either for the adult booster or later adverts aimed at the 12 – 15 year olds’ booster. I do not believe that the senior managers authorising these adverts are not aware of the high risk of bad outcomes with this inoculation. Now, we have ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome’ as a cover for the later effects of this toxic potion, and doctors et al. ‘are puzzled’? It’s hard to believe that so so many utterly ruthless and/or uncaring people are in positions of authority in this Country.

      2. Most of my work colleagues are jab-happy but one told me that her husband took it against his better judgement, so as to be able to travel and having been perfectly healty before, his heart muscles became swollen – myocarditis? They tried to get their doctor to acknowledge the cause and report it on the Yellow Card system but the doctor refused. I asked her a few days ago how he is and she said much better. She commented some time ago on how awful it is living in a world where we can’t trust anything we’re told.

        1. I tend to keep off the topic when with friends and former colleagues for lunch, as they are all jab-happy. It was difficult not to say something when Mary told me on Monday that her ex husband, with whom she is still on friendly terms, was recently at a family gathering and was looking better, following Bell’s Palsy and shingles. I assumed he’d had the jabs but didn’t say anything.

    1. I don’t think it’s a full moon for a while so you’ll have to wait to try them out…

        1. MH had Ken Bruce on earlier (groan) and the traffic came on. Road in somewhere closed because of a vampire. Then it dawned- a van fire. Not clear diction at all.

          1. On our way to Chipping Sodbury this morning we passed a car which was belching out clouds of smoke. The people were on the roadside hoping for assistance. All had gone by the time we came by on the way home.

          2. I was on an Interstate returning to NC from GA when a truck with a trailer pulled onto the shoulder. The trailer had a pile of mattresses on it and they had caught fire. I accelerated to get past because otherwise I would have been stuck in a tailback for hours.
            By the time I was beyond it, I could see in my mirror that the whole trailer was ablaze.

      1. It’s a partial denture. Not tried eating with it yet but i trust my dentist to do his best
        I had the usual fear of dentists after experiences with the school dentists but now i’m entirely relaxed about it because of him.

          2. The liquidiser is your friend. You can use it to turn any food into a suckable mush, mush! 🤓

          3. That doesn’t help with the metal scraping my gum. Dentist will adjust it for me tomorrow.

    1. Import the third word, get the third world.

      These savages should be killed. Yes, it’d halve the population of Luton, but oh well.

    2. This is precisely what the government (and WEF) want. It is the very reason they are importing more and more of them.

    1. One day we will live in a just society. On that day, all past crimes with lenient sentences will receive true punishment.

  58. Two separate and unrelated crimes.
    In Aberdeen a policeman is sentenced to community work for five separate sexual assaults.
    In Leicester two old, and probably mentally ill men are sentenced to two years in prison for allowing their sister to die from neglect.
    Horrible stories, both, but the story of the old men is very, very sad.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-61950424
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-61996227

    1. Terrible story about the old men and the woman who died.
      The two year sentence for the older man was suspended, the younger man was given three years. I can’t believe either of them were in their right mind.
      The fact social services didn’t at least have someone visiting once a week is shameful, given what they apparently knew of the family.

      1. Social Services were not making visits and working from home. Quite a few babies and toddlers were murdered. Covid dontcha know.

    2. The unwanted touching used to be normal male behaviour in the 60s and 70s but these days probably warranted at least a suspended sentence, particularly as he was a policeman.

      As for the two old men – they clearly couldn’t cope with life or their sister, and that is just very sad. How will that mentally ill man cope in jail? And his father will need care.

      1. In the 50s and 60s it resulted in a slap. something more maybe, if the lady’s boyfriend was around.

    3. The unwanted touching used to be normal male behaviour in the 60s and 70s but these days probably warranted at least a suspended sentence, particularly as he was a policeman.

      As for the two old men – they clearly couldn’t cope with life or their sister, and that is just very sad. How will that mentally ill man cope in jail? And his father will need care.

    4. …and that of the sexual copper, and his sentence, is nothing short of a miscarriage of justice.

  59. Whatever happened to handpicked….?

    Robots employed to pick strawberries

    The strawberry-picking robots doing a job humans won’t – BBChttps://www.bbc.co.uk ›

    2. Whatever happened to the ‘pick your own’ strawberry farms? They might have lost a few to people popping them in their mouths while picking, but at least they didn’t have to pay the pickers.

    3. It does prove that people in receipt of welfare benefits are lazy good for nothings. You can work 16 hours a week and it doesn’t affect your benefits. Or was the case in my day. You could earn £25 a day if you put your back into it.

      1. It’s not worth their while as the earnings are offset against benefits. I don’t know what the level is now with Universal Credit but in my day at work only the first £5 was disregarded.

        1. I am talking abot the 1980’s

          As i am sure you are aware the strawberry farmers cooked the books (Jam).

    4. There are no hands with hands willing to use their hands except when receiving hand outs

  60. The Blob is back with a vengeance – and the Tories aren’t ready for it. 30 June 2022.

    But one thing does work well: the House of Lords. When I wrote about the horrors of the Schools Bill, I was contacted by a few Tories appalled at this lack of control – one of them asked who had briefed me, suggesting that I was somehow the pawn of someone who hated Zahawi or Boris or both. I replied that no one briefed me: it was all in Lords Hansard because that upper chamber had lots of former schools ministers – Baker, Agnew, Adonis – who blew the whistle loud and clear. They made their case in parliament and forced the government into an immediate retreat. That’s why I’m no great advocate of Lords reform: as a chamber it shouldn’t work, but it does. The rest of the government should work, but doesn’t. Dangerous times.

    This article might almost have been written by a Nottler.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-blob-is-back-with-a-vengeance-and-the-tories-aren-t-ready-to-beat-it

  61. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4aab1a8594b95d422eb22a0ced957d0d291dc75f3fc89af9ca638719eacab83d.jpg You know what it’s like. You wake up and really fancy some crumpet. Really fancy some. But you know you live in a crumpet desert. Nothing much else to do then but to make some. After a marathon session in the scullery I decided to bag four up and take them across the road to my neighbour and good friend, Gertrude, who popped in last week with a plate of freshly-baked delicious sockerbollar (a soft, sugared dough ball filled with custard).

    As I crossed the road Gertrude was sitting chatting outside her house with Ann, another neighbour. I couldn’t give Gertrude some without giving Ann some also. So I nipped back across the road and emerged with four more. I then had to explain exactly what a crumpet is, how to toast them (to eat them hot), spread them with butter that melts and drips down the chin, possibly with the addition of raspberry (or cherry) jam, or honey or even a bit of cheese. I left both ladies salivating in anticipation of what was to come.

    The funny shaped one at the bottom of the picture was made from the left-over batter without using a ring. It is a pikelet: different shape, same flavour.

      2. I took the photo after I’d given some away to my neighbours. I made a batch of 36 in all.

    3. Mother always used pikelet & crumpet interchangeably… But then, she is a Leicester girl.

    4. Grandma used to make pikelets .

      We used to have them for Sunday tea , with potted beef spread ( home made or from the butcher ) celery sticks and Wensleydale cheese, and trifle for pudding .Oh and I meant to say , potted shrimp which was lovely

      1. Gadzooks! I’ve not had potted beef since I left merry England, forsooth. Methinks it is time to make some, perchance.

  62. Three little guys dead….Arthur, Star and now Logan- and these are the ones we know about. I just wonder how many others have fallen through the cracks because of the over reaction to a flu bug by this asinine government.
    Poor little kids.

    1. ‘Timothy Winters’

      Timothy Winters comes to school
      With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
      Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
      A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

      His belly is white, his neck is dark,
      And his hair is an exclamation-mark.
      His clothes are enough to scare a crow
      And through his britches the blue winds blow.

      When teacher talks he won’t hear a word
      And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,
      He licks the pattern off his plate
      And he’s not even heard of the Welfare State.

      Timothy Winters has bloody feet
      And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
      He sleeps in a sack on the kithen floor
      And they say there aren’t boys like him anymore.

      Old Man Winters likes his beer
      And his missus ran off with a bombardier,
      Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
      And Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin.

      The welfare Worker lies awake
      But the law’s as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
      So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
      And slowly goes on growing up.

      At Morning Prayers the Master helves
      for children less fortunate than ourselves,
      And the loudest response in the room is when
      Timothy Winters roars “Amen!”

      So come one angel, come on ten
      Timothy Winters says “Amen
      Amen amen amen amen.”
      Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen

      Charles Causley

          1. Have you sold your house Anne , and have you found another to buy?

            Houses are selling so quickly around here .. it is frightening , because one would have to move away from the area to down size ..

        2. Reminds me of Billy Pimble – a boy at primary school who stank to high heaven but was actually quite a gentle soul.

          2. I don’t think we thought of that at eight or nine – but nobody wanted to sit next to him.

            There were also two brothers called Grubb……… and they were in a play called “the Turnip”……. some wag commented on that.

          3. We had a whole family, in Ditchingham, called Buggs.

            My father was heard to comment, “Mr Buggs and Mrs Buggs and all the little Buggers.”

      2. I’m struggling with the ultimate word on the first line of the seventh verse: “helves”.

        Every dictionary and resource states that a “helve” (noun) is the handle of an axe or tool; and that “helves” (verb) refers to fixing such a handle onto said tool. The poet’s use of the expression, “..the Master helves” simply makes no sense to me.

        Is anyone here any wiser?

          3. Interesting, thank you. Although I still cannot find any reference to it in litt.

    1. A swinish 6 for me, a close run thing, again!
      Wordle 376 6/6

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

    2. #MeToo sweetie … x

      Wordle 376 5/6
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Not so bad today. It’s random of course.

      Wordle 376 4/6

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

    4. #metoo

      Wordle 376 5/6

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

  64. This made Oi larf.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/29/wink-raab-rayners-playful-fight-brings-commons-life/

    Raab and Rayner hold an edgy flirtation while their bosses are away

    With Boris Johnson away, a fun tussle between the deputy leaders ensues with plenty of smirking and side-eyed glances

    29 June 2022 • 7:30pm

    “With the PM still in Madrid, participating in (if the photos are anything to go by) the world’s worst stag-do masquerading as a Nato meeting, Wednesday’s PMQs was a battle of the deputies. Wind being out of the country, fire and water got to have a go. Step forward Angela Rayner and Dominic Raab.

    Politicians are an odd bunch. A few minutes before the session, Rayner had tweeted a photo of her stiletto heels – emblazoned with Kung Fu Panda decorations – in a banterous jab at Raab’s karate black belt. Which hapless bag-carrier had been made to photograph the back of Rayner’s feet, I wondered? And more to the point, what if this becomes a thing and every minister starts to tweet out a picture of their shoes before giving a statement? (Though with Tory sleaze rearing its ugly head again, the last thing we want to do is give the foot-fetishists any encouragement.)

    But Rayner’s tweet rather set the tone for what followed – a fun tussle, light-years away from the moribund dynamic of a normal PMQs. Keir vs Boris can sometimes feel like watching a slow-paced undertaker trying and failing to pin down Ronald McDonald in a game of tag. This was more like a frisson at a work party; plenty of smirking, light ribbing and side-eyed glances. Eventually the sexual tension got the better of the Deputy Prime Minister. He attempted a roguish wink at Rayner, though not being one of nature’s rogues, Raab’s angling wasn’t quite clear. This was a skewed sort of a wink, an unparliamentary spasm of the eye that could just as easily have been intended for Ian Blackford, seated on the other side of the aisle.

    “It’s no wonder that the Prime Minister has fled the country”, began Rayner, grinning hungrily across the despatch box, “and left the Honourable Member to carry the can”. The Labour faithful hooted, louder than they normally do for the undertaker. Yet both sides seemed remarkably upbeat; the Tory backbenches were also back to their usual 1,000-decibel farmyard lowings of agreement.

    With a sassy sideways-lean against the despatch box, Rayner delivered a series of ever-louder broadsides – from airhorn to foghorn to sonic boom. “Call a general election and see where the people are!”, she bellowed. Next to her Rachel Reeves laughed the nervous titter of the sensible one in the group on a night out whose rowdy friend is playing up to the bouncer.

    Raab had gone for his trademark slightly-too-shiny blue suit, like something the work experience guy would wear. With an unctuous air, he teased the opposition by citing Tony Blair “who’s actually got some experience winning elections”.

    “There’s a smile coming over her face, all the while she’s revelling in it”, smarmed Raab. And so she was, pouting like a movie villainess – shades of Caroline Munro’s sultry helicopter pilot from The Spy Who Loved Me, smouldering as she fires rockets at Bond’s fleeing car. The dynamic between the pair had become almost flirty. Peter Bone, bobbing up and down to get the Speaker’s attention, looked momentarily like an elderly Latin master who’d been roped in to supervise the slow-song slot at the school disco.

    Rayner took a few pot-shots at the Government over the state of the armed forces. “Less troops, less planes and less ships”, she cried. (Fewer!) Raab, predictably, would take no lectures from Rayner on defence, because she’d campaigned to make Nato-hating Jeremy Corbyn prime minister (an oldie but a goodie). Rayner would take no lectures from Raab either, because when Afghanistan was falling “he was on a sun lounger” (a slightly newer oldie, but a goodie nevertheless).

    In an effort to seem a man of the people, Raab pretended not to know what Glyndebourne was. While Rayner’s colleagues were out on RMT picket-lines, he crowed, she was quaffing champagne “at the Glyndebourne music festival”, which made it sound like the sort of place you’d do lines of ketamine in the portaloos between acts of Cosi Fan Tutte. “Champagne socialism is back in the Labour Party!”

    No doubt the perma-aggrieved will call snobbery, but in the Commons everyone chuckled away, privately dreading next week’s return to normal.”

    1. Which hapless bag-carrier had been made to photograph the back of Rayner’s feet… Hmmmm, is that the same as upskirting .

      What a rude raucous bunch they all are , and I expect Angela Rayner is wearing a really tarty perfume ..

      The country is in crisis, and they are all messing around .. whilst Boris is giving £billions away to an equally ferocious regime .

      2. “and I expect Angela Rayner is wearing a really tarty perfume …”

        …and no knickers!

    2. Lines of Ketamine? He seems on trend. What a witfuck. No wonder he’s wanking at her ‘said officer Crabtree’.

    1. Far worse, they continue to cost a fortune in crime, police, endless welfare, prison, social services, you name it.

  66. Good afternoon, NoTTLers. Here is a (long) excerpt from

    The Ideology of the Madhouse – Part two in a series on Bonapartism and the Radical CentreGlobal Middle Management by Frank Wright

    The political brand of globalism is centrism. This is the idea, in elections, that you speak to the greatest possible number of people in canvassing, only to follow the same agenda as before once in power. To the self identified ‘centrist’ this position is the epitome of wisdom: balanced, not too far in either bogeyman direction.

    To us in Britain centrism is Blairism. This is pursued by leaders brimming with self belief – sometimes messianic – with a sense of entitlement to lead the population into outcomes for which it did not vote and for which it will bear the cost in obligatory silence.

    This centrism – the attempt to capture the maximum votes by the broadest appeal – presents itself according to the moment when seeking power, but pursues a perpetual agenda once that power is secured. The moment for Blair himself was the malaise around the Major government, when ‘Things can only get better’. Cameron’s Conservatives went Green. Recently, for Boris, it was to Get Brexit Done.

    What did get done? Did things only get better? New Labour, itself an advertising slogan, had great branding. What it set in motion was the kind of politics for which Emmanuel Macron is now the global figurehead: open borders, mass immigration, the destruction of the traditional way of life.

    It offered a model of a ‘stakeholder society’ – which replaced the real one. Obviously, people whose ancestors built the country had a stake both in the industry and architectural vernacular, as well as in the institutions and customs developed from the Christian habits of their forebears. This was supplanted by a Rawlsian idea of fungible nobodies – replaceable, abstract people from anywhere, believing anything or nothing – to make a nowhere of the somewhere we used to called home.

    The green industry and its convenient message of levelling down for the masses is also a feature. To this are added the deeply illiberal and outrageous policies surrounding COVID, whose safetyism flatters the most timorous, selfish and unprincipled people of all – while garlanded in sentimental and even heroic propaganda. Almost every liberal democracy in the world voted for these measures.

    When understood as a process of liberalisation – of the deliberate removal of all norms – the result of centrism has been a great misnomer. What has been done in its name is nothing short of extremism. In a generation the countries it has dominated have become unrecognisable – demographically, culturally, politically. Our customs and culture have been eroded by centrism and its virtue-by-arithmetic to amusing relics to be mocked at a distance.

    The Dependency Model
    Centrism has concentrated power in national and supra-national bureaucracies which act in their own interests – it is the expression of managerialism in political terms. The EU and NATO are attempting to provoke escalation in Ukraine to preserve their relevance. The WHO is attempting to supplant national sovereignty in its claim to lead future pandemic responses. This is the typical mission of the bureaucracy – to seek greater power – a process of perpetual self aggrandisement.

    Healthcare has become a vaccine delivery service and largely prohibits the sale and prescription of Ivermectin, along with other drugs, which have been proven to accelerate healing as well as being an effective means of treating COVID cases, known to cause remission of symptoms within days.

    The civil service, which is the permanent bureaucracy of State, is beholden to unconscious bias training, diversity promotion and the rainbow agenda. These are minority obsessions whose large scale adoption by the corporations have rendered them a condition upon which your career has become contingent. No one voted for this.

    For these reasons I argue that centrism – far from being some sensible middle path between the Scylla of Socialism and the Charybdis of conservatism – is an extreme ideology which has established its power base in government, institutions and corporations. It results in a managerial society – we are managed, not led – where the decisions of the management are non negotiable and are decided independently of the wishes of the people who nominally elect them.

    Managerial centrism is the system of power administered through autonomous bureaucracies motivated by their shared ideology. It promotes dependence, dissolves independence, and is assimilationist. It presents the individual with a false dilemma – to join the programme and repeat its slogans, wave its flags – or to be excluded. Both outcomes result in atomisation.

    To acquiesce in the New Values of the New Reality is to celebrate your own humiliation. You are accepting the terms of a group of refugees from reality, who hate facts and wish to make us all inhabit a world where their mention is prohibited when contrary to their beliefs. This is the reason these organisations – educational, public services and private corporations – are dominated by broken people. They are hives of resistance to the outside world, and epitomise a state of war against the consensus reality outside their flat-art, pastel coloured walls.

    The values promoted by this Regime celebrate weakness, vice, incontinence. To be resentful and unstable is a positive adjustment model in a system which lionises destructive behaviour, which is termed ‘progressive’.

    You will find every bureaucracy of the Regime acting in a way reminiscent of self-harm. The most obvious such trait is the rote promotion of candidates for any reason other than their competence. This akin to adding sand to your own petrol tank. The engine is indeed misfiring and soon it will seize up altogether.

    Regime bureaucracies mirror the neurosis of their preferred employees in their schizotypal behaviour. The ideology insists on a contradiction of basic facts of reality, making it the worldview of choice for those animated by resentment at their own personal failure. It is a vast convalescent home for the casualties of its own campaign.

    This is the reason they are now closed to the mass of normal people. No sane person would break into an asylum in order to join the inmates.

    https://frankwright.substack.com/

    1. Blair = Things…can only get better.
      Johnson = Sunlit uplands.
      Politicians = Habitual liars.

      1. Johnson’s ‘Sunlit uplands’ nicked from Churchill – who he wishes he was, but is more like Adolf and Goebals

    2. The best explanation of what is happening in the western world.
      Frighteningly true.

  67. ‘That 2003 drop-goal’: Nadine Dorries says Jonny Wilkinson kick her ‘favourite rugby league memory’
    Ralph Rimmer, the Rugby Football League chief, refused to criticise Dorries for her awkward faux pas – but it certainly raised eyebrows

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-league/2022/06/30/2003-drop-goal-nadine-dorries-says-jonny-wilkinson-kick-favourite/

    She should have known better.

    BTL

    There is considerably more difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union than there is between the Conservative Party and the Labour party which are virtually the same.

    2. It’s a weird question. I’d have no idea what to answer, much like ‘what is your favourite cocktail’. No idea, no interest.

  68. Just had an email from Fen Farm Dairy which i believe is in Suffolk. They do make nice cheese but i laughed at their latest offer. A 190gm jar of Artisan Ghee for £12.50.

    As butter is now around £5 for 500gms they are having a laugh.

    Top tip. If you see double cream in the supermarket on offer or marked down you can make your own butter in a food processor in just a few minutes. You can also turn it into compound butter (flavoured herbs and spices of your choice to go on steaks and suchlike) and it is freezable. Just make sure you squeeze out the whey as it can turn it sour. The whey is also usable in many recipes.

      1. Drop a pack of sauasges in there. They close it and have to sterilse everything.

        The obvious of course is not to have the revolting thing in the first place and tell muslims where to shove it.

      2. Glad I never shop there. But at least it’s labelled and kept separate from normal food.

      3. Just keep putting pork and bacon in their ‘Halal’ section and see how long that lasts.

      4. They made money out of petrol stations with shops. They bought ASDA with leverage and I think there will be a lot of debt. As ASDA will not achieve the margins that petrol station shops do, and all supermarket prices are going to be squeezed down I think ASDA may be on sale before the end of the year, maybe even in administration.

    2. Did you know that Fenn farm use a special variety of low burp emission e-cow known as the Montbéliard that is so British that even the French import Fenn farm products because they are cheesed off with their own. 🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄

        1. boff1
          /bɒf/
          INFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN
          verb
          1.
          have sex with (someone).
          2.
          hit (someone).
          noun
          1.
          an act or instance of having sex.
          2.
          a blow or punch.

          WTF?

          1. Too many effs. :@(

            Bof is a spoken interjection that translates more as a feeling of disinterest or mild unhappiness than an actual word. French.

    3. I make a trip to Tesco’s about once every couple of months for a few items. One of them is ‘East End Ghee’ in 500g tins. Can’t remember the price but more like £4.50 a throw. Can’t see where its origin is.

      2. Ghee is good for cooking at higher temps but you are not saving any money at that price.

        1. It’s the only place I know that has ghee. Not quite sure about the saving of money as I wasn’t trying to.

          1. To make your own, Mola, plus a good recipe, copy and paste:

            Chicken Liver Pâté

            Ingredients
            220g/8oz butter
            1 onion, chopped
            1 garlic clove, crushed
            450g/1lb chicken livers, trimmed and cut in half
            1 tbsp brandy
            1 tsp mustard powder
            Salt and freshly ground black pepper
            1 bay leaf, to garnish and
            2-3 fresh cranberries, to garnish or
            85g/3oz clarified butter
            Method
            1. Melt 110g/4oz of the butter in a pan over a medium heat, then add the onion and fry until softened, but not coloured.
            2. Add the garlic and chicken livers and fry the livers until golden-brown all over and cooked through. Add the brandy and mustard powder and season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
            3. Place the liver mixture and 55g/2oz of the remaining butter into a food processor and blend until smooth. Season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
            4. Transfer the pâté into a serving ramekin or small dish and decorate with a couple of cranberries and a bay leaf or
            5. Melt the remaining 55g/2oz of butter in a clean pan. Skim off the froth and pour the butter over the pâté. Transfer to the fridge to chill, then serve from the ramekin when ready.

            To make clarified butter:
            Method 1
            Put the butter into a saucepan with a cupful of water and heat until melted and frothy.
            Allow to cool and set solid.
            Lift the butter, now clarified, off the top of the liquid

            Method 2
            Heat the butter until foaming, without allowing it to burn.
            Pour it through fine muslin or a double layer of ‘J’ cloth.

            Method 3
            Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan
            Skim off the froth with a slotted spoon

            Note: Clarified butter will act as a seal on pâtés or potted meats and is useful for frying, as it will withstand great heat before burning.

        2. It’s the only way to make good parathas, but the ghee must be fresh, non of this tinned stuff.

      3. There will probably be a big sign outside the supermarket, usually illuminated.

    4. Oh, they mean ‘clarified butter’. easier to make at home. I have recipe if it helps.

      1. I make my own Ghee/clarified butter thank you. Making butter cheaper from cream to put in sandwiches and scones at the moment.

  70. I’ve just come back from Tesco, I’d run out of wine.
    While there I heard a running commentary about a staff member who had ‘come out’ I think that’s the term he used and how wonderful it was that management had been so supportive.

    It inspired me!
    I am sorry but I have to admit, I’m a sleeper agent for:
    The KGB, FSB, NSI, NSA, FBI, CIA, MOSSAD, MI5, MI6. Have I forgotten anyone, its been a busy time working with all these agencies.
    Ho yes, while in Tesco, I awarded myself a CDM and bar: I almost gave it back! what has become of Cadbury chocolate? have not had it for years, maybe I’ve been fortunate.

    1. 353633+p ticks,

      Evening AL.

      For services rendered these last three plus decades I do believe that ALL lab/lib/con politico’s should be awarded the DCM.& barred.as in

      Don’t Come Monday.

    2. Why should the sexual proclivities of their employees be of any concern to employers? Why should they feel the need to ‘support’ such employees?

    5. You should have told them/they to go for a job on Aldi tills. They/them are fast and loose.

    6. Perhaps you got a Hershey version?
      Hershey, the world’s foulest chocolate experience in my view.

          3. I went out with a GI for about thirty years. He always bought me Hershey’s Kisses for Christmas. Bleugh

    7. Oh wow, he was supported by management – big f***g deal. in this day and age, one non congratulatory word would have had the rainbow elite calling for a ban on Tescos.

      It must have been about thirty years ago when one of my team decided to announce that he was gay. OK no one Caledon way or the other, now get back to work!

      1. I certainly don’t understand this desire for telling the world about ones sexual preferences.
        It seems to me that it indicates a serious feeling of insecurity in the mental state of the individual.

    8. It was bought by Kraft and has never been the same since. Galaxy chocolate much nicer.

  71. Listening to Lyn Truss ‘Today BBC’ my heart sank then Sir Tony pops up!
    After listening to him telling us how we got it all wrong…I’m warming to the Lady with the Truss….

  72. Re babies in HoC…..I would not have been permitted to take a baby or small child into a classroom or library. Nor would people be allowed to take little ones into a factory or busy office.
    Maybe they could take them in once a year- a sort of Take Your Sprog to Work Day.

    1. Many organisations have facilities for looking after young children whilst the parents are at work.
      I am sure there is sufficient suitable accommodation in the HoC – all that is necessary is sufficient staff to take the required crèche course.

      1. I’ve never come across one in 35 years of work at large FTSE companies.

      2. With 20+ bars, I’m sure that there is room for the little tykes and their over-bloated mamas.

        1. Wow!
          That’s as many bars as on a modern cruise ship – and they even have a mortuary!

      1. Afraid I don’t agree with that- however, I have spent a lot of time in the bedroom recently, sleeping!

          4. If I refresh, I have to go through all the ‘ads’ nonsense again and lose the earlier posts.

    4. Pre-Covid there used to be a children’s Christmas party at Television Centre. Mostly tiny tots, with lots of goodies in the canteen and their fave cartoons on big screens.

  73. Just imagine the outcry if one of his targets said the same about people like him!

    Enough is enough! Lewis Hamilton calls for F1 legends like Sir Jackie Stewart, Bernie Ecclestone and Nelson Piquet to be SILENCED amid a series of controversial comments, as he insists ‘I don’t know why we’re giving these older voices a platform!’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10970201/Lewis-Hamilton-calls-Sir-Jackie-Stewart-Bernie-Ecclestone-Nelson-Piquet-SILENCED.html

      1. I think I should identify as an ism or an obia, then I can be perpetually offended every time anyone shouts ….ism or ….obia and claim vast amounts of compensation.

    3. Is that multicoloured thing a condom as it sure looks like a pr1ck inside it.

    1. “Dear lacoste,
      I’m sorry you’re now missing out.
      I’m sure there might be other lady Nottlers looking for an alligator handbag and matching shoes…”

      Good luck.

    2. How weird. I just sent that to a friend in the village before seeing your post. We were discussing brass music and I also sent him Holst’s Suites Opus 28 No.1 and No.2.

  77. Par four today

    Wordle 376 4/6

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

    1. Second Son shared his JW Black label last weekend. Superb after-dinner whisky, smooth, flavoursone and a tiny bit sweet.
      Never tried the blue.

        1. My fave is Bunnahabhain. That JW Black was vastly better than I remember.

          1. The best I ever had was Laphroig (? sp). Smoky, peaty and delicious. Can’t afford it now.

          3. On my list of ‘one to avoid’. I cannot abide that smokey, peaty taste. I much prefer a good, clean Speyside.

          4. Now that was a good whisky, unfortunately the latest expressions have been rather more like a 12 year Lagavulin.
            Not a bad thing, but 15 years ago Laphroaig was the ‘marmite’ of whisky. For those that liked it, nothing else came near.

          5. I always preferred Red Label but maybe because it was more Isle in its blend.

        2. If you see it, try Connemara Irish single malt Whiskey. I think you might like it.

      2. I’m not a whiskey expert, but Aldi do single malts that I find very drinkable for the price. The interesting fact being that if you google the names, the places do not exist. I suspect they are buying excess capacity somewhere and selling on what is known as the ‘grey market’. Could be a real bargain, or not! But for a price, a little more than a blend, its pretty good, imho.

  79. Ave atque vale, amici. Firefox has crashed three times in succession, so I’m giving up. It’s frustrating in the extreme, especially when I have to keep logging back in to Disqus.

    1. Sorry, Connors, but I’m happy with Google Chrome – it just keeps going.

      When I’m done I clean everything out with the ‘hamburger’ history and then CCleaner.

      Pretty well no problems.

      2. I’ve recently switched to Chrome after first trying Opera as a replacement for the ‘jump around the screen and add in unwanted lines when pasting’, Firefox browser. Opera is OK but had a default ‘third party cookie’ set and I couldn’t be arsed to sort that out at the time. Chrome does not have a very efficient screenshot tool, the shortcut crashed after a few efforts, however, I was able to load a free extension that works well. Happy with Chrome at the moment.

      3. Google wants to know too much. I think it’s my PC rather than Firefox. I’m on one of the laptops now because it just collapsed again. Maybe some of the memory has gone faulty and it doesn’t have enough to cope. I’ll have to take it in for an overhaul if they will take it on (it’s ancient).

  80. Octopus boom’: Cornish fishermen report bumper sightings for first time in 70 years
    Fishermen have reported finding dozens of octopuses in their lobster pots and cuttlefish traps daily

    The cephalopods are said to be consuming large amounts of lobster and cuttlefish, leaving fishermen hauling up the eight-legged sea creatures instead.

    There is a strong European market for the muscular mollusc, especially in Spain and Portugal where it is a delicacy, but the sudden boom means British consumers may find octopus legs easier to come by than their usual Friday night favourites.

    During the previous octopus explosions the ocean predators were seen as a plague, devouring fishermen’s traditional catches, said Matt Slater of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust (CWT).

    Now, with healthy European demand for octopus, the fishermen were more relaxed.

    “Octopuses are amazing, intelligent animals, they can get into the pots eat the crustaceans and leave,” said Mr Slater. “But a lot of them fall asleep and then get caught so they are large numbers that are coming up in the pots.”

    Octopuses have no clear distinction between what is brain and what isn’t, with neurons dispersed all across its body including its eight limbs.

    They are known to be sophisticated problem solvers and some researchers even argue that they have displayed signs of humour.

    “They are such amazing, alien creatures – one of the most intelligent animals in our oceans – and to witness a population explosion in our local waters would be incredible,” Mr Slater said.

    While this boom may prove short-lived, the underlying number of common octopuses may slowly creep up as British waters warm due to climate change.

    OB

    Ollie Bear
    32 MIN AGO
    As a scuba diver they are my favourite sea creature and i love to watch them when ever I can. I cannot understand why they are eaten as they are an intelligent creature, they build a small wall of rocks in front of their holes in the reef or seabed to hide themselves and they change their colour and skin texture to camouflage themselves against the background of their environment . If you ate a dog or a cat you would be imprisoned, the same protection should be offered to octopus. EDITED

    JE

    Janmyfanwy Evans
    33 MIN AGO
    Stop eating these things they have the Intelligence of a three-year-old child! Trust the continentals to want to eat these creatures , they eat larks tongues as well!! Take them to the local kindergarten for three-year-olds and asked them if they’d like to eat those instead it might give them some idea of the intelligence of these animals. There is no limit to depraved human gluttony on the continent the French especially are very good at this perhaps. it beats forcing food down the gullets of geese!

    Okay

    Now some humour

    DN

    darrell nicholls
    7 HRS AGO
    Reminds me of the shark who offered to give an unwell octupus a ride, ” hop on says the shark”, ” no you will eat me” replies the cephalopod, “I absolutely promise not to” says the shark, so said pod jumps on his back, after 5 minutes they meet up with an Orca, shark say “hello Dave, (that was his name) here is that sick squid I owe you”.

        1. There is a long series of such experiments, well worth watching. I particularly enjoy the escapology ones.

    2. “and they change their colour and skin texture to camouflage themselves against the background of their environment .”
      They also use the colour changes to communicate with others of their kind.
      Here’s a video of an excellent angler, as well as a pot setter, who recently confirms that large octopus are among us. He’s a Yorkshireman who now lives in Cornwall. His videos are always informative. The octopus catch can be seen after 10’30”, but the video is interesting and informative throughout.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA4yAZe2KDw

      1. Have you seen the film about the octopus? I ca t remember what it’s called but it’s very good.

        1. Not sure. There is a good recent scifi novel involving octopods called Children of Time and a sequel, Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky that Rik and Phizzee put me onto.

    3. Octopuses have no clear distinction between what is brain and what isn’t, with neurons dispersed all across its body including its eight limbs.

      Does that mean that if you ate an octopus’s brain they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on?

  83. https://youtu.be/auD7AlDrHgI
    A quiet evening without a care in the world: Arvo Pärt.
    I don’t watch TV much, a good book and my hifi is generally all I need for a relaxing evening: a glass or three of wine helps, 🙂

    If people find my music posts a bore, I’m sorry but it’s how I spend my time.
    Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and the late John Tavener help when I really stick a middle finger up to the world.
    Otherwise anything goes, Vivaldi, Handel, Purcell and Jazz (Trad Jazz – don’t like) are high on my list.
    Led Zeppelin 🙂

    1. We are playing our music game right now- tonight’s topic is seasons and or weather.

      1. It’s contemplative music (minimalist) and not appreciated by many.
        But if you can listen to some of his other work, you may come to like his music.

  84. I have been thinking about the States’ laws around a woman’s right to abortion. I expect once the scientists sort it so that males can have babies abortions will be allowed again the minute one has an unplanned pregnancy.

    2. The UK Government now permits harassed husbands to get the moaning after pill without a prescription – it’s an over-the-countermeasure!

  85. Lewis Hamilton responds to Bernie Ecclestone and Nelson Piquet: ‘Why are we giving older voices a platform?’

    Did he object when Niki Lauda spoke up or is it just those older drivers that he disagrees with that he thinks should be gagged?

    1. “Why are we giving people who have little life experience a voice?”

    2. Why are we giving older voices a platform?
      Is it because it’s perfectly clear that just because for instance a person drives a car and has a vastly experienced professional team and millions of pounds/dollars of financial backing and income. It does not mean by any stretch of imagination that you actually or really know what you yourself are talking about.
      Possibly because of a lack of life’s all round experience possibly due to having lived in a social and financial void for decades.

      1. Jim Clark, Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher would have beaten Hamilton with equivalent cars. I suspect James Hunt, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Jenson Button would have bettered him and in the case of Jenson Button, Jenson proved the better driver when they were on the same team.

        Although I admire some sportsmen and celebrities such as some Hollywood actors for their performances (Tom Hanks and Samuel L Jackson being obvious examples) I just wish they would keep their politics to themselves when they denigrate Trump and eulogise Obama.
        By contrast Clint Eastwood speaks the truth when he proclaimed Obama to be the biggest fraud ever unleashed on America.

        I know, I cannot have it both ways.

        1. I Agree and there is also a connection in what you say.
          Both Obama and Hamilton have many times maligned their mothers by insisting on many occasions they are black. There are also quite a few ‘celebrities’ and sports people who have joined in with that terrible trend of a racially offensive mind set.

          1. I do agree. Hamilton is a particularly offensive individual and ignorant with it.

            He thinks that wearing Black Lives Matter slogans on his vest and ‘taking the knee’ are virtuous actions. They are not. They are nothing but the actions either of a fraudster or else of an ignoramus living in a protected bubble and unawares of the reality.

            The eulogising of the murderous criminal George Floyd and the destructive criminal actions of the Democrat funded Black Lives Matter crooks in the States are a mark of rank stupidity.

          2. Floyd was a criminal of the first water and the Policeman who took him down was acting in service to that community, he had sworn to uphold and protect. For that he got a jail sentence.

            Isn’t American (corrupt) justice fcuking wonderful?

    1. What on earth, is it with these weird MPs?

      Why cannot we recall them as they’re all exhibiting very ‘queer’ traits?

      1. It used to be mainly the Lib/Dums who went in for kinky sex – now they’re all at it

    2. He’s got previous.
      “The MP previously stood down from the whips’ office in 2017, when he was accused of making an unwanted pass at former Olympic rower and Conservative activist Alex Story.”
      I assumed this Alex Story was a female, but evidently not. What a bunch of twisted bastards we have in power, and he’s appropriately ‘The Whip’!

      1. 353633+ upticks,

        Evening M,
        Groping two other blokes ?
        he sees it as putting out feelers in regards to forming a daisy chain.

      2. What an absolute pile of shite we are forced to support as members of Parliament. Members being the operative word.
        But in fact useless limp dicks.

      1. Hah!

        There would have been a time for such a word.
        Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
        Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
        To the last syllable of recorded time,
        And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
        The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
        Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
        That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
        And then is heard no more: it is a tale
        Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
        Signifying nothing.

        Shakespeare – Macbeth

      1. 353674+ up ticks,

        Morning NtN,
        Tis said that he helps those that help themselves, is yje majority electorate worthy of this ?

    2. In earlier times this wretch would have been dressed in a straight jacket and carted off in the back of a Black Maria to the nearest Mental Hospital and there consigned to indefinite secure detention.

      Nowadays these Epsilon Semi Morons are walking the streets and scaring the shit out of our children with the apparent blessing and financial support of the State.

      Are all of our politicians queer? Every single one of them appear to be perverts or bent in some way or other.

      They do not represent the ‘silent’ majority by which I mean normal heterosexual people who would rather the sodomists we always tolerated and other mentally ill folk kept their predilections to themselves.

      Pride Month. A Pride Day would be too much of this bullshit.

      1. 353674+ up ticks,

        Morning C,
        Complete agreement, this is why the like of the Gerard Batten leadership, showing in a year just what COULD be achieved that was NOT to be tolerated by the coalition, the party;s own nec & farage.

        The treacherous close shop
        self destruct voting lemmings.

    3. If a person’s born with bollocks he’s a bloke,
      If a person’s born with bollocks he’s a bloke,
      If a person’s born with bollocks,
      Though they call him Betty Swollocks,
      If a person’s born with bollocks he’s a bloke!

      Chorus:-
      You can shove your Trannie bullshit up your arse,
      You can shove your Trannie bullshit up your arse,
      You can shove your Trannie bullshit,
      It’s really such a farce,
      You can shove your Trannie bullshit up your arse!

      If a baby’s got a fanny, it’s a girl,
      If a baby’s got a fanny, it’s a girl,
      If a baby’s got a fanny,
      Just like your dear old Grannie,
      If a baby’s got a fanny, it’s a girl!

      If a baby’s got a willie, it’s a boy,
      If a baby’s got a willie, it’s a boy,
      If a baby’s got a willie,
      Don’t start being silly,
      If a baby’s got a willie, it’s a boy!

      1. 353674+ up ticks,

        Morning B3,
        Curses, that will keep returning to my canister ALL day now.

  89. A Pinch and a Punch. White Rabbits!. A brand new month starts. And now I’m off to bed – Good Night, everyone.

    1. Goodnight, Elsie and God bless. I’d say I’ll soon be joining you but, be it understood, in a different bed and in a different county. God bless us, one and all.

      1. Good night, Tom. I hope the different bed is with friends rather than in a paid for B&B or hotel.

        1. Same old, same old, until we get the Scottish adventure sorted out – it seems well on the way.

          1. You’ve lost me I’m afraid. I need to trawl through a couple of weeks of your posts to catch up on your “Scottish adventure”.

  90. A Pinch and a Punch. White Rabbits!. A brand new month starts. And now I’m off to bed – Good Night, everyone.

  91. I give up,…. I’m usually in bed before 10pm
    But I’ve been reading and joining in here.
    We had a violent thunder storm earlier. At least I won’t have to water the garden for a few days.
    Had an hours chat this morning with Brucie from Victoria Oz. And we have possibly proven that no body was listening in. No swat team arrived on either of our door steps, as we rightly slagged off our political classes and systems and put the world to rights once more.
    So it’s good night from me. 😴

  92. Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolk, one and all. I’m also away to my lonely little bed and hope to join up with you all in tomorrow’s little forays into the world of unreality, as proscribed by our lords, masters and the stupid ‘woke’ brigade. Love you all.

        1. No, not bothered, nor intending offence – just joining in, for once…

          1. Good to see you John – Tom’s a bit fragile at the moment, as you’ve probably read. Hope you’re ok.

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