Monday 12 December: Tony Blair and the health unions sowed the seeds of the NHS’s collapse

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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776 thoughts on “Monday 12 December: Tony Blair and the health unions sowed the seeds of the NHS’s collapse”

  1. Morning, all Y’all.
    Comment BTL to DT article on snow this morning:
    Piers Plowman
    4 HRS AGO
    Imagine someone who just came from a vibrant country with a bright future like Syria or Sudan. Britain: there is no power. It is not safe. No doctors are available. No reliable transportation. The army is on the streets. Bad government. Crooked leaders stuff their pockets with cash.
    Just like home.
    All comments universally derisive over the panic! panic! panic! of the article. Bah!

    2. Good morning.
      And it’s colder in Blighty as well, and less sunlight, so risk of Vitamin D deficiencies for people with darker skins!
      If you’re going to be poor in the environment you describe, it’s better if the climate is warmer.

  2. Good Morning Folks

    A couple of inches snow in the night, looks quite nice out there.

    Even global warming has gone on strike

    1. Shh!! That’s why they call it ‘climate change’. Reality didn’t match their marketing so rather than admit the truth – that it was merely a desperate attempt at forcing economic and social change – they change the marketing.

    2. As global warming was confirmed by Greta and co after a few days of hot weather in summer, I suppose that we can now reverse the conclusion and say that the world is cooling. As I often say, drawing conclusions from temperature profiles over less than a thousand years is absolutely meaningless.

        1. I’ll worry about the bill when the time comes, experts have been saying that it is just as economical to prevent the house from getting too cold by leaving the heating on low over night.

          Well that is until the power goes off, I suppose.

          1. The advice is completely contradictory – leave it on, only use it when you need it.

            All I know is, it’s bloody cold and the windows are awash with water from washing drying in the dining room.

          2. Martin Lewis said to use a dehumidifier rather than a tumble dryer. He said it works out a lot cheaper.

          3. It takes the same energy to dry clothes of a certain volume of water, whatever the source. That’s called “physics”.
            Use the CH – room is colder as a result, so heating works harder to maintain the thermostat set temperature. Plus you get condensed water on any cold surface, and that needs mopped up. You could also run a dehumidifyer, thus adding to the electrical load.
            At least with a tumbler, the water is kept in the machine / exhausted outside.
            It still takes about 2.26kJ/kg or kJ/litre to evaporate water, no matter how the joules are supplied.

          5. Another reason to not dry wet clothing over radiators, after that it lags the radiators preventing heat escaping.
            All that wet air condensing on cold windows, water every place. Yukk.

  4. Tony Blair and the health unions sowed the seeds of the NHS’s collapse

    Along with the collapse of everything else.

  9. The Left’s position on the migrant crisis is increasingly unsustainable. 12 December 2022.

    The UK is not obliged to offer safe haven to those leaving a stable, free society or travelling through several sound democracies to get here.

    We need a well-policed system, one that is sustainable and promotes integration. Last week’s separate report that counter-extremism officials are warning Islamists could recruit migrants housed in hotels ups the ante even further: this situation cannot continue.

    Oh look! The trains left. Let’s try and catch it shall we?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/12/12/lefts-position-migrant-crisis-increasingly-unsustainable/

    1. Nothing quite like stating the bleeding obvious.

      …this situation cannot continue.

      There exists millions who didn’t want it to start but here we are thanks to numerous governments following an agenda to change the UK’s demographic make-up.

  10. Morning, all. Cloudy, calm and chilly with a light covering of snow in N Essex.

    They’re at it again. They’re not giving up any time soon. It appears that children will be the target this time: CV-19, or whatever it was/is, didn’t greatly affect children. Now…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/92dbc27eb6ca2d00f8d35338d6edb755e0f9e4fa98b0aec1e7566622460dc9ff.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/10fca4a7d45eb5613208b5675b5e680c3db10d438e8b0af1ec436e8ff7532bf1.png

    Edit: link added

    Catastrophic Contagion

    1. I read somewhere else that they have been trying to recreate the 1918 flu, which did of course hit younger people.
      They are mad and evil.

  12. Good morning all.
    A rather chilly -5°C this morning but currently no more snow other than the VERY light splattering t’other day.

    I don’t think I’ll be doing a lot today, I had the dreaded Upper Nostril Syndrome through the night which not only kept me awake but has left me with a muzzy headache and my nose feels VERY bunged up.

    2. Daft Q – have you tried a towel over a bowl of steaming water? That can help clear gunk from the nose?

      2. Karvol capsules are effective, add to the hot water, towel over head, inhale. Makes your eyes run but does do the job.

    3. Have you tried a neti pot? Basically a tiny watering can to sluice warm salt water through your sinuses. Not the most tasteful of processes, but damned effective.

    6. Hate cold weather, the cold air brings on my sinus headaches. It you want to not get ahead, get a hat, to paraphrase…

    1. We had a lot of people whinging about a local hotel being given over to gimmigrants. A pile of Lefties complained how horrible we all were and how nasty it was to call them illegal immigrants and we should put up with them.

      Of course, those people don’t see the carpet of cannabis papers, the drug dealing, the intimidation, the thefts. I know one fo the complainants is getting married in a hotel somewhere over in Wickham. I suggested the immigrants be moved there.

      Cue uproar about how unfair that would be – on her.

    3. BTL Comment on the article:-

      Ivan Opinion
      5 HRS AGO
      Cut the poor exploited souls cr@p.
      They know exactly what they’re doing, they know who is providing the ferry service and the cash they pay for the dangerous passage wasn’t raised selling buns at the church fete.
      The only exploited souls here are the long suffering British taxpayer who fork out a couple of hundred k a year for a senior cop to sit around tut tutting.
      If I can get a threatening letter and court appearance for doing 24 mph in a newly created 20 zone then you can find something to charge these people with – putting an unsafe unregistered vessel into the middle of the worlds busiest shipping lane sounds to me like reckless endangerment

  14. I read that Junior doctors want a 26% rise. I’d love the same. Difference is I have to earn it through contracts rather than just have it given to me. If I go out on strike, the only person who notices is me – because I don’t get paid.

    Bluntly, the cost of living crisis is manufactured. Government has created it with every diversity hire, every tax, every green nonsense. Then it hikes taxes and inflation spikes yet again, so it prints money to give to some to keep them going – at the expense of others – and continues forcing a socialist economic model.

    Look at the state’s attitude after lockdown: the nation goes raring back to work and govenrment says ‘we need to hike taxes to get the lost revenue back’. They think every penny earned is their own to waste and we are permitted some. There’s no the private sector has been hit with a painful whammy for 2 years. No, the state sets about emptying the tank and then takes more and thinks the engine will keep running.

    This attitude is unsustainable. The arrogance and profligacy of welfare – the state pays Zimbabweans to come here to work in our care sector – when we have 5 million unemployed. Does it not occur to those fools in Whitehall that when you make not working more attractive than working that people will not bother? Again, it is socialism forcing our decline, socialism to force rechaining to the EU and socialism driving the state. That is why there is no money.

    1. ‘Morning, Wibb.

      “The arrogance and profligacy of welfare – the state pays Zimbabweans to come here to work in our care sector…”

      We really could do with the return of the 40,000 ‘Covid martyrs’ sacked for refusing the clotshot!

    2. ‘Morning, Wibb.

      “The arrogance and profligacy of welfare – the state pays Zimbabweans to come here to work in our care sector…”

      We really could do with the return of the 40,000 ‘Covid martyrs’ sacked for refusing the clotshot!

  15. I read that Junior doctors want a 26% rise. I’d love the same. Difference is I have to earn it through contracts rather than just have it given to me. If I go out on strike, the only person who notices is me – because I don’t get paid.

    Bluntly, the cost of living crisis is manufactured. Government has created it with every diversity hire, every tax, every green nonsense. Then it hikes taxes and inflation spikes yet again, so it prints money to give to some to keep them going – at the expense of others – and continues forcing a socialist economic model.

    Look at the state’s attitude after lockdown: the nation goes raring back to work and govenrment says ‘we need to hike taxes to get the lost revenue back’. They think every penny earned is their own to waste and we are permitted some. There’s no the private sector has been hit with a painful whammy for 2 years. No, the state sets about emptying the tank and then takes more and thinks the engine will keep running.

    This attitude is unsustainable. The arrogance and profligacy of welfare – the state pays Zimbabweans to come here to work in our care sector – when we have 5 million unemployed. Does it not occur to those fools in Whitehall that when you make not working more attractive than working that people will not bother? Again, it is socialism forcing our decline, socialism to force rechaining to the EU and socialism driving the state. That is why there is no money.

  16. ‘Morning, Peeps. A heavy but brief snowfall here yesterday evening, which obligingly turned to slush – but only after I had cleared a walking strip on the driveway. Not unexpectedly the whole lot froze last night, but not for long if the promised 4°C materialises around lunchtime.

    This from the DT:

    National Grid orders coal plants to fire up to avoid blackouts – live updates

    National Grid has given notice to two of its reserve coal-fired power stations to fire up as Britain tries to avoid blackouts.

    The network is facing a surge in demand as temperatures drop below zero and swathes of the country is covered in snow. Soaring demand sent day ahead UK power prices to an all-time high.

    The National Grid Electricity System Operator said the emergency plan “should give the public confidence in Monday’s energy supply” as millions are expected to work from home and turn up the heating.

    The notice does not mean the coal-fired power stations will be used but means they will be ready to produce energy if called on by the Grid.

    Snow covered London and the south-east of England on Sunday evening, with forecasters predicting up to six inches in parts of Essex.

    Travel disruption is expected during Monday morning rush hour, with six yellow warnings of ice, fog and snow in place for much of the UK.

    National Grid data suggests that power consumption is set to peak at almost 46,700 megawatts at 5pm on Monday, up from Sunday’s high of just under 43,000.

    The Grid is set to run another test of the so-called demand flexibility service between 5pm and 7pm tonight.

    * * *

    Dear DT, NG cannot “order” a power station to do anything.  The few remaining coal-fired stations will have been put on notice, although with coal already contributing for several days now there isn’t much more available.  And the ‘demand flexibility service’ includes farms of dirty old diesel generators.  Don’t tell the eco-loons…

    The BTL posters aren’t impressed with the whole energy shambles:

    Slightly Aghast52 MIN AGO

    Green is a nice idea till you start getting cold, can’t cook, or go anywhere, then everyone is gagging for fossil fuels again. Net Zero is for primitives and hypocrites. (had to edit out my original comment ) EDITED

    Tim Church46 MIN AGO

    All green politicians and activists on hearing this news should immediately stop using electricity in their homes to allow those of us who believe it all nonsense to carry on as normal. I thank you in advance and feel free to glue yourselves to your consumer units in the off position

    Gilbert Bellairs46 MIN AGO

    Carrie says its OK. We have 28GW of wind energy capacity and we’re only using 1GW…….. I don’t think she understands how it works.

    1. Surely ER will be gluing themselves to the ice covered roads leading to the coal fired power stations.
      Won’t they? Won’t they ……?

    2. There were some talking heads from the power industry this morning on R4. Strangely, no one mentioned that much of the generation capacity was not, err, generating, just that demand was high due to cold weather.

      1. You didn’t expect the BBC to point out the pointlessness of unreliables, did you? It’s pension fund is heavily invested in the green scam. It’s not going to admit the truth!

  17. 368912+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    May one ask WHY has it taken so long to come to light what has been so blatantly bloody obvious for decades.

    We have peoples still willing to support / vote labour regardless of mass rape & abuse ongoing mental anguish of children, & importation of paedophilia on a DAILY basis.
    Who was a main instigator of this EVIL campaign, the chief latch lifter, none other than anthony charlie lynton
    check out Bow Street Court records.

    Only complete morons can close their eyes to the history of the labour party these last near four decades.

    Their political compadres in the tory (ino) party have done their best, and an excellent best that is, on improving on
    labs. odious record of deceit & treachery, the coalition is
    a great success in it’s anti United Kingdoms agenda.

    Now the union elites are joining their in house colleagues
    in finalising the downfall of GB & the onset of repress.replace,RESET , seemingly with NO lack of herd support.

    Monday 12 December: Tony Blair and the health unions sowed the seeds of the NHS’s collapse

    1. Ogga, you’re ignoring the fact that most people don’t know any better. They believe what they are told and they do as they are told because doing otherwise is difficult.

      1. 368912+ up ticks,

        Afternoon W,

        I must admit it is somewhat like kicking the mentally afflicted.

        I really do believe a great many are suffering from political Stockholm syndrome glorifying a party that no longer exists in content, only in name
        impersonating its true owners, long gone.

      2. If you want a paper up here you walk/drive 3 miles to the local shop who may have them in by 11am
        BTW How is OH today J ?

        1. He’s OK thanks- now has a date for the op – Wednesday morning. Fingers crossed all goes well.

  19. The Russians locked up for refusing to fight. Steve Rosenberg. 12 December 2022.

    When his son was sent to fight in Ukraine, Sergei begged him not to go.

    “You’ve got relatives there. Just refuse,” Sergei recalls telling Stas, who is an army officer. “But he said he was going. He believed it was right. I told him that he was a zombie. And that, unfortunately, life would prove that.”

    Sergei and Stas are not the real names of this father and son. We’ve changed them to protect their identities. Sergei has invited us to his home to tell us their story.

    “So off he went to Ukraine. Then I started getting messages from him asking what would happen if he refused to fight.”

    It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this article is a complete fabrication from beginning to end. Phrases like; Back in his living room, Sergei tells me that what happened to Stas in Ukraine has brought them closer together, after the recital by another informant, reek of fiction. One is only surprised that he didn’t write Meanwhile back at the Ranch! It doesn’t help that all the subjects are anonymous complainants either. What one would like to ask Rosenberg is; do the Russians really send defeatist and defamatory messages openly from the front? An activity that even if true would certainly get you arrested in any Western Army! Is there no censorship? No control of communications to the rear? But also how did Rosenberg find the anonymous informants? How did he avoid the likely surveillance of someone who is reporting the War in a hostile major western outlet? He would certainly be followed by the Intelligence Services in the UK and US for such activities and his sources detained!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63916810

  20. Morning all, we had 2 grandchildren stay overnight as mum is undergoing scrub nurse training and had a very early start. They are most unhappy as the schools are open! Imagine that, a couple of inches and they are still open. 😄 I must show them the winter of 1963 video on YouTube and they can see how we managed during that winter.

    1. It must be awful for children who live within walking distance of a school where the teachers have made the effort. 😊

    3. I remember it vividly. We didn’t “manage”, we had lots of fun. Sledging down the ‘Lum’ (a very long grassy hill in our village); making snowmen; having snowball fights; making unfeasibly long icy ‘slides’ on the school playground; sucking the frozen milk out of our ⅓ pint bottles of school milk; and being miserable when (occasionally, not frequently) told by our parents, “It’s too cold to play outside!”

  21. Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – It is encouraging that Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, intends to take on “hostile” health unions (report, December 11).

    However, it is important to understand the causes of many problems affecting both primary care and the wider NHS.

    The first is the disastrous deal that Tony Blair struck with GPs in 2004, whereby doctors received a handsome increase in pay together with a reduction in obligations to provide patient care out of hours.

    The second is Labour and its union supporters demonising Tory attempts at reform as the intention to “privatise our NHS”, when they know this to be false. This has shifted the NHS into the “too difficult” pile for 40 years, the result of which is the near collapse we see today.

    It remains to be seen whether this Damascene conversion is serious, or a cynical attempt to make Labour more appealing to Tory voters in 2024.

    Nigel Short
    Thurlow, Suffolk

    It will surely come as no surprise that the Bliar creature’s appalling legacy has come home to roost yet again.  Perhaps we could also add to the charge sheet his abandonment of nuclear power which, as predicted, now brings us to the point of energy collapse – and much of our prosperity with it. I know what he can do with his ‘K’, another reward for his disastrous failures…

      3. No, it isn’t. A lack of evidence doesn’t mean you didn’t do it. If you did it, you should be arrested, charged, flogged, flayed, spiked and shot.

        If you’ll go that far to destroy and kill for your own ends, what the hell does it say about you as an MP?

        1. “If you did it, you should be arrested, charged, flogged, flayed, spiked and shot.”

          I was hoping for something really, really painful.

      4. Wasn’t New Labour above the law in 2004? They’d need to get back in to make it legal again.

      1. 4 inches of snow.
        We are supposed to be leaving home this morning to drive from St Albans to Herefordshire to meet up with old friends for four days at Warners Holme Lacy.

        2. Last winter when we had proper snow some berk was belting along the motorway while the rest of us crawled.

          He flew across the lanes and smashed into the barriers. Some people stopped. I thought ‘twanker’ and carried on going 20mph.

          Drive carefully, drive sensibly, come back safe.

          1. We avoided the motor ways on our journey for precisely that reason. A roads all the way it took a little longer than expected but we arrived safely.

        3. Last winter when we had proper snow some berk was belting along the motorway while the rest of us crawled.

          He flew across the lanes and smashed into the barriers. Some people stopped. I thought ‘twanker’ and carried on going 20mph.

          Drive carefully, drive sensibly, come back safe.

      1. I do not even mind having to do ‘a cludgey run’ at 0300 hours!
        Shows that:

        I am still alive
        Mobile
        Not incontinent
        Have not lost memory

    4. There was a time when I would have looked out of the window at the hoar frost on the trees and shrubs and thought, how pretty. But that was long ago.

  23. ‘Morning All

    Modern Life

    https://media.greatawakening.win/post/pZXB7ngppN01.png

    https://twitter.com/DVATW/status/1602037259431251968?s=20&t=jvJakp1EkyKVEOif6nosug

    https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f7bdfc8-d989-4b4f-858e-4f90f5a0f338_1586x1496.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/47e7f80016ff466926d1eeb1e4e0c39499ad90b6877f0dae3a9fe752cf6fc4b6.jpg
    I note the plans for the next pandemic to kill the children have already been posted below
    Edit
    Forgot this beauty
    https://twitter.com/TitterYeN0t/status/1602141516176437249?s=20&t=kegCTr8nYa0dEx6g8f_s9w

    1. Irrelevant and opinionated nobodies. Who would be daft enough to take advice from, or be bullied by, people like these.

    4. I agree entirely. Now, all Ministers and MPs should have their homes, telephone numbers, all email addresses, incomes, savings children’s schools, homes and incomes published.

      No? What, do you not believe in removing the veil of anonymity?

    5. I wonder if swab would be so eager for statism if he were never allowed near power.

      I suspect he would be very, very unhappy living in his communist utopia when the jackboots kick his door in and take his homes.

        2. Rented a van in Aberdeen (Maryculter) February 1990. Not only was it colder that a witches, but some bastard stole my gas cylinder so when I came back Friday evening, there was no heat or cooking at all.

  27. Good Moaning.
    An example of the self regarding tolerant showing intolerance towards those they deem to be intolerant.
    Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili would fit nicely into our modern political system.

    “Come dine with me, rebel lord

    Lord (David) Willoughby de Broke, whose title dates back to 1491, commendably refused to undergo patronising ‘inclusion and diversity’ training, inflicted on peers at a reputed cost to the taxpayer of £105,000.

    As a result of his stance, the octogenarian peer, formerly of Ukip, has been banned from many of the facilities in Parliament, including the peers’ restaurant. Lord (Michael) Dobbs, the bestselling author of House Of Cards, has found an elegant solution.

    ‘I took him to the restaurant as my guest,’ he told The Spectator. ‘A small act of defiance in a world losing any sense of proportion.’”

    1. 368912+ Up ticks,

      Morning Anne,

      Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili would fit nicely into our modern political system.

      After face replacement and no mirror image he has been active for three plus decades one anthony charlie lynton,still in training but killing rate will improve
      over time.

      s

    2. Just been listening to the latest “Disaffected” podcast (from the US)(entitled “Love Speech” at about 53:30 minutes). It appears now you can’t rent an allotment in Virginia without signing up to DIE (“I will be proactive in educating myself…on my own privileged identities…”)

      Luckily in the US there is something called the “Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine” (apparently) which prohibits a requirement for Wokethink as a condition for awarding a public contract or lease – you are not allowed to be required to waive your First Amendment rights.

      I am not sure how we protect ourselves especially when it’s our so-calles protectors doing the requirring.

    3. Just been listening to the latest “Disaffected” podcast (from the US)(entitled “Love Speech” at about 53:30 minutes). It appears now you can’t rent an allotment in Virginia without signing up to DIE (“I will be proactive in educating myself…on my own privileged identities…”)

      Luckily in the US there is something called the “Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine” (apparently) which prohibits a requirement for Wokethink as a condition for awarding a public contract or lease – you are not allowed to be required to waive your First Amendment rights.

      I am not sure how we protect ourselves especially when it’s our so-calles protectors doing the requirring.

    1. Drat! I didn’t see that you had already posted the drawing – Disqus won’t let me edit my (later) post either.

  31. How much deeper can journalistic “standards” in the DT plummet?

    True grit needed to endure -10C big freeze

    Up to four inches of snow expected, says Met Office, as police urge drivers not to travel and airports close

    ‘We could see 2cm to 5cm of snow, perhaps up to 10cm in some places, with Kent and Sussex most affected’

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0241f26e0fc668a366a9aae3cda154a553d7990778a40832fdd65757ccefd3f8.png

    [And how clownish of the DT to illustrate the cold weather in London by publishing a painting (not a photograph) of a bus outside St Paul’s Cathedral! You simply couldn’t make it up.]

    Yet more evidence of the declining standards of the once-proud flagship of British journalism: The Daily Telegraph. On the very same page today (page 7) there are conflicting reports of –10ºC “Arctic” weather … and “Climate Change” due to melting ice in the very same Arctic!

    Public advised to give Thor the walrus a wide berth [Ruth Comerford]

    ‘People trying to get its attention are going to prevent the animal from resting and moving on’

    A MARINE charity is asking the public to keep their distance from a large walrus after it appeared on a beach in Hampshire at the weekend.

    The walrus, which has been nicknamed Thor, was sighted on Saturday at Calshot.

    Dan Jarvis, director of welfare and conservation at the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, told The Daily Telegraph the mammal has been travelling around Europe since Nov 6 and has been sighed in the Netherlands, Dieppe and Brittany. He estimates the mammal is not fully grown but could already weigh as much as three quarters of a tonne. Experts have not yet been close enough to determine its gender.

    Coastguards have cordoned off part of the beach to keep people away.

    Mr Jarvis is concerned the walrus could be at risk from the public. In August a walrus nicknamed Freya that attracted crowds to a fjord in Oslo was euthanised on the grounds that it could pose a threat to public safety. Her death caused an international backlash against Norwegian Fisheries, which made the decision.

    “We know walruses embark on long journeys, and often stop for periods of rest, to conserve energy and regain body weight,” Mr Jarvis said.

    “Repeated visitors and people trying to get its attention are going to prevent the animal from resting and moving on – it needs to be left alone to have a better chance of surviving.”

    Walruses are “bottom feeders”, eating a variety of razor clams, mussels and other shell fish found on the seabed. The mammals, which can live for up to 40 years, are facing increased threat from climate change.

    “The melting ice and warmer waters have forced them on land which makes them vulnerable to polar bears and hunting,” said Mr Jarvis.

    I commented: Where did the DT find this execrable and deplorable excuse for a journalist — “Ruth Comerford”? Is she a WEF placement? Dan Jarvis (mentioned in the piece) certainly appears to be so. They are still pushing (on whose behalf?) this idiotic and discredited propaganda euphemistically called “Climate Change” (aka “Global warming”), when all the evidence proves that it is hogwash. The ice-caps are NOT “melting”: Antarctica has just had a run of record low temperatures. Look at the unseasonably freezing temperatures, right now, all over Europe, with weather systems coming from the (warm?) Arctic! Moreover, that factual news is placed on the very same page as this tediously erroneous “report” by a not-fit-for-purpose hack who is simply being paid for perpetuating a scandalous myth.

    1. They are probably aware, since they have sent me an email, that my sub has expired so their plummeting standards are no longer vetted by myself.

    3. The mammals, which can live for up to 40 years, are facing increased threat from climate change.

      Greeniacs blubbering over a walrus that’s decided to go walk-about. Anything to push their diaphanous agenda.

    5. After reading this article I’m very worried that the walrus ashore at Calshot is in danger from polar bears.

    6. Is Thor the reincarnation of John Lennon or a Norse god?

      I remember the story of the young woman with a lisp who went to The Orgy of the Gods and spent the night with the hammer-wielding god of storms and thunder. In the morning he said simply “I am Thor!” to which she replied “Tho am I but I’m thatithfied.”

  33. 368912+ up ticks,

    Schools close and trains cancelled amid further warnings of snow and ice

    The state run peoples will use WINTER, a yearly recurrence, as a self applied lockdown, tis NOT the seasons that have changed but the peoples.

    Our enemies home and abroad fight a seven day,
    24/7 war NOT letting the weather deter them as we on a 40 hour, if the climate is right week do.

          1. Caught cottaging behind the Old Bailey. The Police response was to stop that particular patrol. Can’t have Judges banged up now can we…

          1. MeToo.

            After the film of the exotic Marigold i looked into a move to South Asia. Cheap as chips. Property is cheap. Their healthcare is excellent and much cheaper than here. Staff wages are so cheap you can employ a cook and a gardener. And a punkah waller. I could easily live there on my savings.

    2. The Warqueen and I made a pact that when we can’t function, we want to go. Junior is already the inheritor of ‘our stuff’ and owns the house. The dogs have their own bank accounts and get half my life insurance each (now there’s two).

      I don’t want some kindly but alien person wiping my bottom or putting me in a nappy. Let me go as I want to: riding a bomb aimed at Westminster.

  37. Good morning all.

    0c this morning .. snow still on ground , birds are feeding , gloom and grey

    Our house was built in the 80’s , we have no central heating upstairs , so Moh has been sealing the little doors that we have leading into the eaves in the bedrooms .. The house can feel very cold ! We use those portable oil filled heaters to take off the chill.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2bef25e30093ac925b35e90f52878e2d17e12fd47503bfd43e3b44df370795ea.jpg

    2. Plenty snow on the roof, so not much heat escaping upwards. Or, is there no heat to escape upwards?

    3. Why was a house that was built in the “80s” [presumably the 1980s] not provided with central heating on the first floor?

      I live in a converted cowshed that was built in the 1880s. It was converted into living accommodation in 2000 and has 15″ thick insulated walls and triple glazing. It has no carpets, no closable curtains, is open-plan (we never close the bedroom door), warmed by a warm-air converter, and it remains at a very liveable temperature of 18–20ºC in the worst conditions (with no draughts) inside. When the outside temperature rises we have to shut off the heating system as the insulated walls and triple glazing retain heat very efficiently.

      2. Perhaps TB should have had her house converted into (habitable) living accommodation in 2000? The global warming zealots began their march towards year zero in the 1980s. I’m sure the companies building new houses saw the opportunity to reduce their building costs. After all, who needs CH when your palm trees need watering?

    6. I looked at buying a place that was built like that. I viewed it on a hot summer’s day – it was boiling hot upstairs. I didn’t fancy freezing in winter so I bought a different house.

  38. There’s lovely. The MR has just brought me a crumpet. Nothing like a bit of crumpet on a cold morning….

  41. Great take down of the world cup of wokeness and hypocrisy.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/queering-the-pitch/

    As the 2022 soccer World Cup finally ends over in the Gulf state of Qatar, it brings to a conclusion three weeks of not only sporting action but also, much less entertainingly, an entire stadium’s worth of colossal moral grandstanding.
    Qatar was the first Muslim nation to host a World Cup, which means, amazingly, that Islamic law prevails there, making homosexual acts illegal, counterproductively punishable by several years’ imprisonment in the exclusive close-quarters company of other men’s bodies. Naturally, Qatar’s stance provided an unmissable opportunity for woke Western sportsmen to try to enforce their personal liberal pieties upon a captive global audience of billions.

    The desert state of Qatar was a ridiculous place to hold a World Cup for many different reasons, such as what its blazing sun did to the thousands of unfortunate quasi-slaves who reportedly built its stadiums. But if one key criterion for being a host nation is now that you have to be a free country, then the event’s organizers won’t be able to hold any future editions in the West, either, will they?

      2. ‘Always Worth Saying’ on going-postal.com has put up a couple of articles on the Patron Saint of School Dinners, mentioning that it is the Nike sponsorship that obliges the England football team to kneel. Colin Kapernack (sp?) was their prototype ‘protestor’.

        The absurdity of it all was when the England team knelt and the USA team did not. After all, the kneeling is meant as some sort of memoriam to a drug-fuelled, American convict.

        As for the England team kneeling to the French…

          1. OK Bill — perhaps he should spend more time with his pink acquaintances that he’s so fond of.

            Better now?

  42. It’s coming home

    Experts warn of World Cup ‘camel flu’ – which kills up to a THIRD of everyone it strikes – as England fans make their way home from Qatar
    Football fans returning from Qatar are advised to watch out for signs of camel flu
    Symptoms of the respiratory illness include a fever, coughing and vomiting
    2,600 sufferers have been recorded since the disease was identified in 2012
    England fans who enjoyed camel rides in Qatar may be at risk of acquiring it

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11527577/Experts-warn-World-Cup-camel-flu-kills-strikes.html

  43. Very slight thaw. Just taken the ash from the stove up t’garden and was dripped on… Won’t last.

  44. Global warming strikes the French Riviera. “Sub zero temperatures expected even on the coast…” (Nice Matin)

    1. The same numbskulls who howled that the earth is on fire when we had a few hot days in the summer are now bleating, “Don’t you know the difference between climate and weather” all over Twatter. Of course all definitions are fluid, to fit the agenda. Apparenly we’re seeing unprecedented extremes. Excep that we’re not of course.

        1. Farringdon Station was closed but St Paul’s was open and the Central Line was running OK. Nice and warm deep underground! Candle holding went OK. My first big service as a server at Barts. There were four young men to be confirmed and one of them baptised and confirmed, plus one little lad taking first communion. Dame Sarah talked a lot in her sermon about being present at the Accession Council on 10 September. She managed to tie it in with the OT reading!
          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/66ea512d4a2518c547f9a668d00c73debf4e7a9a7afbbe79303064b3e5379467.jpg

          2. Quite. The pic has been published on Facebook and Twitter, so I figured it’s OK to reproduce here too.

          9. I went to a crammed carol service yesterday. The minister spent most of her time saying “Angels! Step AWAY from the candles!!” 🤣🤣

  45. Good morning all
    As Christmas draws closer I thought I’d put the recipe for Forcemeat Stuffing on here. It’s a recipe from the Stork margarine cook book my mum had.

    2 oz margarine butter or any other fat of your choice
    4 oz breadcrumbs from stale loaf
    Zest of 1 lemon
    1 teaspoon parsley dried or fresh
    1 teaspoon mixed herbs dried or fresh
    Season with salt and pepper
    1 egg with milk to bind

    Or any other mixture of fresh or dried herbs to your taste and quantities

    We use a couple of teaspoons on mixed herbs rather than the parsley and sometimes add ham also grate nutmeg on top and cook separately from poultry. It’s very good cold as well or crumbled into leftover meals.

    Edited to take account of all the other suggestions below. The ordinary type are the ingredients from a book that was published when the choice of fresh herbs was very limited in the ‘50s and 60s.

    1. Assuming you haven’t changed the first line it’s a sign of more honest times.
      Nowadays it would simply read:
      2 oz of Stork margarine.

      1. I did change it from stork margarine. It not surprising that a sponsor would use their own brand. This is not Miracle on 34th Street. :-))

          1. Yes there are mixed herbs in the list. Of course all sorts of other things could be added to suit your own taste but it is good.

          3. Paxo’s history!

            He’s being replaced on University Challenge by a diverse BBC Indian chappie.

        3. 🤣This pleb uses fresh sage and fresh onion. I mix them with breadcrumbs, salt pepper, butter (sometimes pork dripping but never margarine) and hot water before mixing together and baking in the oven in a small sandwich-cake tin.

          For a more festive approach I add some of my home-made pork sausage meat, and (occasionally) some chopped up chestnuts.

          I remember that mum had a copy of the Stork cookery book, from the 1950s, when we were still bombarded with all that idiotic propaganda that margarine is ‘healthy’.

          1. An distant echo (pun intended) of the idiotic propaganda that covid vaccines are “vital”.

    3. Our family recipe includes grated onion and suet instead of butter. And only fresh parsley – lots of it!

  46. Morning Nottlers, another becalmed, freezing day on the Costa Clyde. A quick look at Gridwatch has demand running at 44.89GW (amber warning is 45GW!); CCGT is providing 55.13% of power with 24.75GW (amber warning is 27.5GW); Nuclear is providing 12.85% of power with 5.77GW (amber warning is 6GW); the French interconnector is 5.48% of power with 2.46GW; the multitude of windmill farms are providing 2.98% of power with 1.34GW; hydro and solar panels about 0.9GW each.

    Meanwhile, I read above that two coal power plants are being put on ‘standby’. I’d suggest they remain ‘active’ until HMG actually sort our power requirements out. Or will they opt for the Swiss reaction to lack of power generation and ban electric vehicles from charging during this period of high demand?

    Note to self; learn how to screengrab the gridwatch page.

    1. The state has no interest in meeting our energy needs. In fact, we all know it’s trying to run them down by making energy so expensive we are forced to use less. Then it can proclaim it has met net zero and all will be well – for the troughers swanning off to six figure non-jobs.

        2. Isn’t there a screen capture mode in your camera? There is one in mine (although that may not be android).

  49. Phew!
    11 blocks hoiked on top of the woodstack and carried up the “garden”. Amazing how much of a sweat you can work up even in this weather!! Even if your toes & fingers get a bit cold!
    Only another 9 blocks to shift!

      1. Peter O’Toole treated Sian Phillips very badly. I went to the Theatre for ‘An evening with Sian Phillips’. She told the story of the great love between Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

        After Tracy’s death Hepburn would go around in his clothes. Sian was so taken with this that she asked O’Toole to allow her to do the same. O’Toole’s response was to throw all of Sian’s clothing out into the street. It was raining.

        Another anecdote was about Brian Blessed walking along Old Compton Street. Peter O’Toole was walking towards him blind drunk (as usual) and he went to grab Blessed. Blessed punched his lights out.

        1. When he was appearing in Manchester my son worked with him as his assistant.
          Apparently he was very good fun to be with and a very generous individual, not quite the Hell-raiser sometimes painted; although by then he would have been in his late 70’s.

          1. He had done most of his hell-raising by then. Back in Ireland when he wasn’t working he would get drunk every day and start bar fights for kicks.

          4. A Moderator showing moderation…
            I’m usually OK if I stick to one type of drink: wine, or beer or fortified wines, seldom spirits, other than gin.

          8. It was Brian Blessed that did the most impressive death scene ever seen on TV without moving a muscle.

            He was playing Augustus Caesar in ‘I Claudius’. Caesar had just been lethally poisoned by his wife Livia (played by Sian Phillips), who then gave a three minute monologue gloating about it. Normal directors would have concentrated on her, but not this sadist. The whole scene was played out in extreme close-up, where even the slightest breath or twitch would have been picked out by the camera. Therefore, not only did Brian Blessed not move, he could not breath or do anything a corpse would not do, and with his eyes open. During this scene, he had to indicate to the view the point of death

  52. When shifting the concrete blocks just now, I notices a couple of clumps of small feathers below the holly bush bird feeders.
    Looks like something’s had an early Christmas Dinner.

    2. Some birds entrails are draped over my gatepost. The cat denied all knowledge so I guess it was the hawk I saw earlier

  53. Just heard a snippet of gossip from the company Christmas party. Apparently, there has been more absence due to sickness this year than they have ever had before.
    The person who told me this, said it was because everyone had been so stressed since the start of covid, so they are getting sicker.
    I have come to the conclusion that there are some people that can’t be saved. The kindest thing is just to murmur something noncommital, and move on.

    2. There’s 7 of us when we’re all together – ignoring the remote fellows – and we have had one Christmas party. It was an impromptu affair where we opened several bottles of wine and had to have the other half’s take us home.

      I remember it because the Warqueen was taking the train at the time and did not appreciate the 4 mile walk in the rain with her not drunk enough to be funny but drunk enough not to be allowed to drive husband in tow.

      And 4 miles isn’t far – if you’re in boots, with a coat in winter, but after a 10-12 hour day and a 2 hour train journey in office garb it’s pretty hideous.

  54. 368912+ up ticks,

    Pictured Britain wakes up to snow and travel chaos,
    But,

    Britain went to sleep on overall chaos, the snow is just a yearly occurrence that means it reoccurs yearly, as in every twelve months.

  58. Latest Breaking News – The ball from Harry Kane’s penalty kick has just surpassed Voyager 1 as the deepest that a human object has travelled through space

          1. That’s reserved for when they lose.
            Or if they win the cup.
            Or just for the Hell of it, of course.

          1. Rorke’s Drift … yes I was thinking along those lines, and worrying that in late-2022 we are getting pretty near the ending of the film … hope there’s some good music and credits to play the English out

          2. Afternoon Lewis. Yes we are getting near the end! I did hope that I would make it out before it crashed but it looks as though i’m going to be disappointed even about that!

    2. And Amsterdam, Den Haag and Antwerp. At least the Dutch send in a water cannon and make many arrests, unlike our plods.

  60. Just heard – on Radio 3 – the heart-warming words: “Welcome to the up and coming performer William Thomas….” {:¬)))

    Unlike me, he has a tremendous voice.

      1. I said to the wireless – “Just get on the Jimmy Young Prog, matey – then you really have made it!!”

    3. I was at the Wigmore when he won the Kathleen Ferrier prize in 2018. It was a strong line-up that year but he was a clear winner.

  63. I’m still on the UKIP mailing list, and got this email today. Rebecca Jane said previously that she wanted to try and promote alliances between the various small parties – NtN and others have several times made the same point!

    “The first role I decided to undertake when I became Deputy Leader of The UK Independence Party’ was to try uniting all ‘centre right’ and ’splinter parties’.

    Within the first three days, I was delighted to make headway. I think the time has come to inform you all my progress.

    Let’s start by saying, that to align us all is an incredibly large task and will take a considerable amount of time. However, I am absolutely, increasingly aware that we have deadlines approaching and frankly, if this amalgamation is going to happen, it needs to be soon.

    The process of alignment, and the conversations we have are happening in various ways. What I can conclusively say is that ALL parties who align to our values have agreed to talk, except for Reform.

    Reform is the only party to absolutely ignore all attempts at conversation. We have however been given indirect ‘no’s’ and shown leaked information giving us strong indications they will not be responding any time soon. Not only that, they believe they ‘do not need’ an alignment with other parties and stand every chance of winning a general election on their own.

    If this continues to be Mr Tice’s stance, I wish him all the best.

    In politics, we have a lot of egos. We all have one, including myself. The degree of our ego varies. I am happy to admit we have no chance of winning a General Election on our own. I will absolutely say, with every fibre of my soul, no centre right or splinter party stands any chance of winning a General Election alone. Reform has a fantastic marketing strategy, and they deserve credit for that. Even their stellar marketing plan will not seriously challenge the mainstream parties alone.

    Every splinter, centre right party need to come together, and we need to do it now.

    We have further talks planned, with relevant leaders in January, and I hope to update you all after that.

    Please understand that a degree of confidentiality is required to make an amalgamation happen, meaning that I can only share limited information. One thing I will always be is authentic and transparent with the public. They put their trust and faith into leadership, and I will never take that for granted.

    Trust in the government is at an all-time low. We can only rebuild political faith by being honest, I start with myself.

    I remain hopeful, and the journey is long and hard. I’m not afraid of the hard work involved.

    With all that in mind. I will only declare that UKIP will go alone into a General Election if an amalgamation is entirely impossible, or it does not benefit the best interests of the people we represent.

    Today, I can say, it looks possible, and I remain committed to delivering what our people are asking me for.

    Stay tuned for January!

    Yours,

    Rebecca Jane
    UK Independence Party Deputy Leader”

    1. In the recent Chester by-election, Reform 773 votes, Ukip 179 and Freedom Alliance (I believe that’s a centre right group) 91. Reclaim shows nothing.
      Is this all of them?

    2. I still think UKIP speak much sense. The trouble is that the MSM just crucify them wherever they appear and they have no hope of any electoral success. Unfortunately, the answer has to be a complete makeover rebrand but I cant see that happening.

      1. The trouble is that Richard Tice is probably right in thinking that uniting with other parties would be tying a dodo (UKIP) and an albatross (Reform) around his neck not to mention a turkey or two.

        1. Don’t apologise! You were probably first to post it, anyway. I read newest first. It cannot be said too often anyway. We do need a concerted campaign. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate that isn’t living in the real world.

    1. There’s no reason why snow should disrupt us. Equally there’s no reason why strikes should disrupt the country. It’ a simple matter of crippling the unions.

  66. BBC Red Button news:
    Following the revelation yesterday that coal (now reckoned to be carbon neutral) can rescue both the planet and the nation from freezing to death this winter by substituting for renewables, National Grid has sanctiined the powering up of Drax’s two massive power plants.

    Thankfully the UK Government made a six month reprieve on the destruction of this life saving coal plant.

    Out of interest here’s a US video of the modern technology employed by Drax in the UK in which coal is ground to a fine powder in order to achieve its carbon neutral net zero status.

    https://youtu.be/45jB4_qy8bo

    2. Coal is mainly carbon. Burning it creates carbon dioxide, or “plant food”, as my scientist friend calls it.

        1. We do, but will we re-open any soon? This Cumbrian mine for steel coal which is closing/opening/closing/opening will be a start, but it’s coal for the power stations, as well as gas and oil exploration increases that we need.

        1. They tried … but I beat them to it by resigning and jumping out of the fireplace (and into the pan of the constabulary).

    2. My son was first trombone in his high school band and we had a Golden. My niece’s husband is first trombone in a well known orchestra. They have a black lab.

  69. Christmas dinner around England:

    Let’s start in a works’ canteen in Nottingham. Looks like something the cat rejected:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc0614b5bd1de12b8879150535a7ffcbeea3a130021b21efbf193d2faf329ad2.png
    Meanwhile, over in Manchester. Roast beef and Yorkshire pud … on a pizza!:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/103d60e11851259906ca7d87579eb01a581c35d49c2d46c24bbc8543595c8f21.png
    Finally, down to Hampshire:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/102bacca2f0a8038466a3a8159e5bd1fd3911c5edac29c98c69860711afde511.png

  70. A Victor Meldrew moment this afternoon at Lidl. Here is a message I deposited on their autohelp customer relations page (like most companies now, they daren’t give out any way of accessing real people):

    “Dear Lidl

    I wish to report an incident that occured at your shop in Malvern Link at 2pm today.

    The large baguette was priced on two different shelves, one for 79p apiece, and one for 89p apiece. I took the item from the 79p shelf and took it to the till.

    It then went through the till at 89p despite being displayed quite clearly at 79p. When I queried this, I was told that it was company policy to disregard what the advertised price, despite this being a violation of the Sale of Goods Act. The cashier admitted that this happens all the time, and that there was nothing he was prepared to do to reimburse me the difference. When I asked to speak to the manager, he told me he was the manager, and was not prepared to make any concessions other than for me to return the item for a refund, leaving me having to go somewhere else for a baguette. He then left the till to remove the lower priced label.

    I attach an image of the moment he did this, where “79p” is clearly displayed, and also a photograph ot the relevant part of my till receipt charging me 89p.

    Is it indeed company policy to defraud your customers in this manner, and is this a frequent occurence?

    I am less concerned about losing 10p than I am feeling when I enter a Lidl, that I run the risk of being cheated and my concerns dismissed so flippantly. I have been a regular customer, and would hate to have to shop elsewhere in future.

    May I suggest that the correct procedure should have been to refund me at least 10p without quibbling, thank me for my vigilence, and then remove the incriminating label without delay? Indeed, a £1 credit could be on offer to any customer that spots such an anomaly. I do not imagine the company would want this to happen very often.

    If I do not receive a satisfactory explanation within the week, then I intend to circulate this email to your competitors, and also on social media, where it can be discussed online.”

    I don’t think the great man could have put it any more succinctly. “I don’t believe it” doesn’t really cover all the options, I fear.

    1. I hope you took the manager’s name? I am sure he would love to have his name passed up the chain of command, so he can be promoted.

      1. On the other hand, it is a misleading price description. A criminal offence.

        Try your local trading standards department. I know, I know – but try…

          1. Maybe not to you – but if the shop is doing it 100 times a day, every day, seven days a week…..

          4. Indeed.
            What I wondered was whether the genuine price actually is 79p, and the manager has discovered a cunning wheeze to bump up his own store’s profits.
            Very few people will bother to tick off their till slips against the prices displayed when they get home, let alone as they stop to pay at the till.

          5. That is the problem, accepting the situation. We have had a similar thing happen in supermarkets and they have always honoured the lower price.

          3. I think the Geordie Lass was making a joke…! Unusual, I know…but this time, I think I’m right!!!

          5. How dare you make assumptions about my gender. I have rung the Polis – they are on their way. See you, Hen…

    4. I never accept fob-offs from supermarkets. I once bought a frozen Pizzaland pizza at Morrison’s in Fakenham. I kept it frozen ready to eat the following day but, when I had defrosted it, it was covered with a blue mould. I drove the ten miles back to the shop and handed it in to customer services. They immediately refunded me the price of the item … but I was not yet done. I told them that I required recompense for my return journey to complain. They handed me a £10 voucher.

      I next wrote letters to both Morrison’s head office and to Pizzaland, showing them photographs of the offending inedible item that had been placed on sale. In all I received at total of £38 from both organisations in cheques and vouchers for the original £4 pizza.

      On another occasion I bought some dry-cured bacon from Tesco in Norwich. When I fried it the pan became full of oozed water! I marched into the shop with the frying pan, still full of water and bacon, (other customers present were both highly amused and disgusted). On that occasion I got some proper dry-cured bacon, a full refund and further vouchers for my trouble.

      I never take ‘No’ for an answer.

        1. I believe that one of our Nottler friends here calls. his better half SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) inspired by John Mortimer’s gloriously seedy barrister, Rumpole, (after whom we named our Boxer) who chose this name for his wife, Hilda, and was inspired by Rider Haggard.

          1. It is the person who, in this conversation, would refer to himself using the perpendicular pronoun.

          3. Surely that would be “thou, thyself, thee” if you were consistent instead of switching between the second person plural and singular.

          5. Surely that would be “thou, thyself, thee” if you were consistent instead of switching between the second person plural and singular.

    2. What better way for all those Moroccans to celebrate/commiserate their achievements in the world cup than by offering up a few churches and synagogues to Allah in thanks?

    3. And we’re constantly told that massiv euncontrolled gimmigration won’t affect our way of life at all.

    4. I was in Strasbourg after the priest was murdered saying Mass in Normandie. There were armed police outside the churches on Sunday during Mass. There is only one reason for that and it isn’t atheists.

  77. The rumblings continue in Rotherham:-
    With BTL Comment.

    Steerpike
    Labour’s troubling Rotherham selection
    12 December 2022, 11:57am
    Earlier this month, the Rother Valley Labour party made its pick for the next election, selecting Dominic Beck as its candidate for the Tory-held seat. Who he, you might ask? Well thanks to the work of GB News’ documentary-maker Charlie Peters, we now know.

    Beck is a local politician who has served on Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC) since May 2011. In August 2014, Professor Alexis Jay published her report which found that at least 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The RMBC cabinet resigned: Beck was appointed in the subsequent reshuffle with responsibility for business growth and regeneration in September 2014.

    Beck subsequently served in the new cabinet until February 2015 when he, along with the rest of the team, subsequently resigned following the publication of a second report by Dame Louise Casey. He featured on the frontpage of the Times newspaper the following day. Casey’s report was damning of the council, even after the 2014 reshuffle when Beck joined.

    Her report found that ‘despite Professor Jay’s findings… RMBC demonstrates a resolute denial of what has happened in the borough. This took several forms – notable in their recurrence…. when asked 70 per cent of the current Rotherham councillors we spoke to (including those in the cabinet) disputed Professor Jay’s findings.’

    Now though, seven years on, all that seems to have be forgotten. Beck subsequently rejoined the council cabinet a year after his resignation: his biography on the RMBC website makes no reference to his first spell which ended in disgrace, stating simply: ‘in May 2016 Dominic was first appointed to the Cabinet and currently serves as cabinet member for transport and environment.’

    Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham, appears to have forgotten that Beck was even a councillor during the time when the scandal broke. She tweeted last week that ‘I don’t think he was a councillor at the time’ that the child sexual exploitation revelations came to light. Indeed, he had been a councillor for almost four years before the Casey report found that RMBC was not fit for purpose.

    The question must surely be asked: if Beck was forced to quit the council cabinet in 2015, is it right that he should sit in parliament just seven years on? In a letter to the local paper, one resident described the selection as a ‘betrayal’ of victims, adding ‘it is an insult to the electorate and puts the Labour party even deeper into the sewers’.

    There is a further Westminster angle to all this too. As Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer admitted in 2012 that the justice system had betrayed a generation of girls, thanks to a flawed approach to sexual exploitation.

    He blamed ‘a number of assumptions, myths and stereotypes’ about sexual assaults that proved deeply misleading when assessments were made about the credibility of victims. Starmer also praised the work of the Times in highlighting the plight of these vulnerable girls.

    It was a very different approach than that offered by Rotherham Council: the Casey report into RMBC noted how councillors dismissed the Times reporting as a ‘Murdoch press’ smear story.

    Peters tells Steerpike that: ‘My first documentary for GB News on the grooming gangs scandal is coming out in January and it makes for sorry watching if you’re Labour. Everyone from local councillors right up to central government and the home office has ignored and failed victims of the rape gangs for decades. Beck’s selection as a Labour candidate is yet another insult to all those who have suffered at the hands of the gangs and the evil incompetence of the authorities.’

    So what exactly does Labour high command – which has been keeping a close eye on candidate selections – make of all this? Hopefully they will make that clear pretty sharpish.

    WRITTEN BY
    Steerpike
    Steerpike is The Spectator’s gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labours-troubling-rotherham-selection/

    Interesting.
    Despite evidence of the systematic and organised abuse first being noted in the early 1990s, following reports that children in Local Authority care were being picked up by “Asian” taxi drivers, the first real public comment on the matter was not until 2003, made by Labour MP Anne Cryer about concerns in Keighley. Shockingly, instead of taking action, she was, effectively, ordered by her Party not to make a fuss on the matter to avoid giving the “Far Right” a cause to campaign on.

    However, her exposure of the abuse had been picked up by the Times’s Andrew Norfolk, who was then advised not to run with the story for the same reasons that Anne Cryer was silenced.

    Despite growing concern by parents and people within the towns where the abuse was occurring, the lid was kept on the matter for another 8 years, largely by threats against those employed by the Local Authorities trying to speak out and total ignoring of parents.

    It was not until 2011, in response to growing BNP involvement in exposing the scandal in Rotherham, that the Times published the first of Andrew Norfolk’s articles on the matter. Even after he, finally and at long last, blew the whistle, Rotherham Council still tried to cover up what was happening and their involvement with it by getting the Police, already implicated in the cover-up, to investigate the “theft” of the confidential information Norfolk used.

    Even as recently as 2017, when Sarah Champion was forced to resign from her post as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities after her opinion piece in the Sun, where she discussed what she termed the “problem” of white girls being raped and exploited by British Pakistani men, was criticised as “incendiary and irresponsible” by fellow Labour MPs.

    So far as I’m aware, and I do stand to be corrected on this, no elected councillor, no Police Officer, no council official has ever been prosecuted for their connivance in covering this scandal which, incidentally, covers over 14 Labour controlled local authorities with thousands of girls being sexually exploited by these gangs.

    So far as I’m aware, and again I do stand to be corrected on this, there appears to be little effort being made to investigate the culpability of those involved in the cover up.

    Perhaps it is too late, but I think credit ought to be given to the late Marlene Guest who, after being stonewalled by the Powers That Be who wished to continue the cover-up, was, at least in part, instrumental to the involvement of the BNP that, at long last, forced the Times to publish Norfolk’s story in 2011.

    1. One other group of child abusers was readily idenified by thir religious associations in that they were Catholic priests. Nobody tried to hush that up.

      3. They were all individual cases, not members of organised gangs like the Muslim rape gangs. The Church did try to hush up these cases by moving the offending priests to other parishes or dioceses.
        The Church of England has also had its child abuse problem with individual priests.

        1. They were all individual cases, not members of organised gangs like the Muslim rape gangs.

          And that is, by & large, the crux of the matter. If it had been individual Muslims, they would have been picked up a lot quicker, but Labour was putting too much into pandering to it’s Muslim voter base.

        2. I accept your point that they were not a joined up network and that the church did cover it up.

    2. 368912+ up ticks,

      Well pointed out Bob, tis very hard to convince many that, not acknowledging and continuing to support & vote lab is sheltering an ongoing crime scene, the current overseeing political elites tory (ino) party are equally to blame holding aloft the sheltering paedophile umbrella
      at Dover.

      At this moment in time a very successful
      political crime syndicate is running the United Kingdom.

      The abused girls are in what could be termed comfort zones for the foreign covert troops.

  78. Spot the loonie.

    M-i-L lives in a block of flats and sees that the paths are slippery, so she dresses up warm and goes out to grit them all, because there is a container of grit at the back of the block.
    She thinks her doing so will encourage others to do so too.

    1) If they have not done so by now, what on earth makes her think that by her doing so it will make them more rather than less likely to act?
    2) She has done it where she doesn’t need to walk under normal circumstances!
    3) She’s already had a fall and if she had fallen today chances are she would have died of exposure.
    4) She’s 96 years old

      1. in one ear out the other.
        If I try to point out the folly, the response is always, “If I don’t who will?”
        She’s forever moving and/or tidying the dumpsters and pushes them back into place when the binmen have been.
        She won’t be told.

        1. A similar thing to me at the supermarket trolley covered points when I’m returning a trolley. I can’t think of a week when they haven’t been just shoved in hickledypickeldy. If it’s not too horrendous I try to tidy them up.

          Edit for a finger fudge.

          7. They need a coin or a token here, so the tidying is dictated by whether you want your money back.

            But I do move waste bags left around the communal bins on to the top of the bins, because the wild boar and foxes tear them apart and scatter the rubbish.

          15. That is on of the few benefits of the convid bollox. The all stopped demanding a coin. And have never returned to that system.

          21. In France virtually all supermarket trolleys are only released by the insertion of a € coin – this is to encourage people to put their trolleys back in the right place when they have done their shopping.

          22. Our local places work with plastic tokens as well, but people still put them back to get their token.

          24. It isn’t just in.France, most of the supermarkets (there is one that doesn’t) here use the same system with a £1 coin or a trolley token,

    3. The salt in the grit is not good for soil or plants; finely crushed glass would be better for the environment.

      2. Possibly so, but I know what I would rather get scraped by and it sure as Hell isn’t ground glass!

    4. God bless her feeble old bones.

      Get her back in doors with a nice hot toddy and a warm blanket around her.

      A big kiss and a hug from me,
      ,

    1. Blimey, you wor locky. Par for me.
      Wordle 541 4/6

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

      2. 5 for me.
        Wordle 541 5/6

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

        1. Moi aussi – encore!

          Wordle 541 5/6
          ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
          ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
          ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
          🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
          🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  80. That’s me gone for yet another day. The slight thaw ended. It will be just below zero tonight – so all the water that came off trees etc will freeze nicely. For forecast tomorrow as well.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

      1. Only -7 here, but the car hasn’t been starting well.

        I did not know that the life expectancy of a car battery is only 3 to 5 years. Mine is now nearly 7 years old, so I’m hoping a new one will change matters for the better.

        1. MB – or rather his car – needed a new battery today. The past few days really highlighted how knackered it was; was as dead as a dodo. Neither of us can remember when the last battery was fitted, but I bet it was far longer than 5 years ago.

          1. I had to look it up.
            The last one lasted even longer but gave up the ghost on the way back to the UK, very, very inconvenient.

  81. I find it surprising that I am often in agreement with DT readers who post their BTL comments and yet the Conservative Government seems to be blissfully unaware of the views that its former voters supporters have and why their positive views have changed to negative ones..

    I also find it hard understand how unaware the King is of what ordinary people think. Has it yet sunk into his thick skull that his reaction to the Hussey/Ngozi affair was not just treacherous and disloyal to an old family servant but was totally and utterly crass.

    I share the view of this DT BTLiner:

    The woman who adopted an African sounding name, an African looking wig and African looking clothes set out to entrap somebody and she was very successful because she was trying to assist the Sussexes’s claim that the monarchy is racist.

    But the monarchy is far less likely to be destroyed by a woman like Ngozi Fulani but by its own enemy within – the King and his Heir – who instinctively betrayed an old and loyal servant without even bothering to enquire into the facts.

    Unless the King can do something about his appalling lack of judgement I cannot see the monarchy surviving for much longer.

    1. Charles knows alright – but I have a strong impression that he simply despises us and our pathetic little opinions. He belongs to that elite that see themselves as above the rest of us.

      1. Yes, neither the government nor the Royals care, becasue why should they? What can we do? Burn them and cut off their heads, I suppose, but it’s been a long time since the English did anything like that.

    2. I reckon that the expeditious replacement of King Charles by his sister – Queen Anne II – would be hugely popular – but a trifle difficult to achieve . . .

      The Princess Royal is popular in Scotland; she would certainly improve the future prospects of a United Kingdom.

      1. Anne is 16th in the line of succession, so it would have to take a miracle or an Act of Parliament for her to take the throne. Mind you, it’s been done before – George I was 50th or thereabouts in line of succession when he was made King.

        2. Be that as it may, apart from Harry the Numpty 1, oops sorry, Edward the eighth, the line from George the first was pretty robust, apart from Harry the Numpty 2
          Until recently!

          2. The trick is to hook into a “major” line which most people can.
            My family allegedly goes into the line of Kenneth of Scotland back to circa 843 ad

            It looks good on the parchment but I suspect it’s mainly rubbish, notwithstanding lots of evidence that some elements certainly are true. That’s taken from family bibles and the like.

          3. Mine goes back to Egil, King In Sweden, Uppsala 530 AD so I guess with those Kings and Queen (Matilda) I should be in with a shout.

          6. No Toms but plenty of Dicks and Harrys!
            Six King Georges and counting … 😉 [Plus eight Harrys and Teds; four Billys; three Dicks; three Charlies; two Jims; one Steve and one Johnny]. Yer royals seem to be lacking a bit in imagination when to comes to names.

  82. Elton John has revealed that he will never again wear standard denim trousers.
    So it’s goodbye normal jeans.

    1. Good one. Hancock has a hide like a rhino.
      As I noted earlier, Tice was photographed laughing with him at the book’s launch. Isabel Oakeshott has also been criticised by Abi Roberts for giving Hancock a very easy time, even though she (Oakeshott) is supposed to be a Conservative journalist.
      Oakeshott is in a relationship with Tice.
      A glance at her Wiki entry shows that she’s a fully paid up member of the establishment, private school, connections etc.

      Anyone still feel like voting Reform??

      1. Apparently, UKIP has been trying to get all the centre right splinter parties to come together to talk about a concerted campaign. The only one that hasn’t responded (and in all likelihood won’t respond) is Reform. They think they can win the election single handed. Pride comes before a fall.

        1. So, they are polling better than the others. Still nowhere near enough to form a government on their own. So, it must be ego, after all.

        2. It’s that which I’ve advocated for years but Farage’s ego is too big to allow him to consider amalgamation,

          As you so rightly say “Pride cometh before a fall.“

          2. Just the USUAL problems with BT and moving the router. I’m on a Mini-Hub, until they can get Open-Reach to wake up. Otherwise yes, less stairs, view of the Garden rather than rooftops and direct access to Summer-house (ha ha) and Car Park. (-6°C at the moment).

      2. I certainly don’t trust Tice. He is one with them. I found his views on ‘immigration’ perturbing.

  84. Prince Harry: They lied to protect William
    The Duke claims Prince of Wales was protected by the Palace in new trailer for Volume II of Sussexes’ Netflix docuseries

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2022/12/12/watch-harry-meghan-netflix-trailer-part-two/

    Harry looks pie eyed .. his pupils are like pinpricks .. and his grasping narcissistic fibbing woman has decided there is more money to be made by bringing the monarchy down .

    Do you remember how she expected to be paid for her role in public as a hand shaking Duchess .

  85. Good to see Farage yet again driving home the stupidity of our so-called energy policy. £6,000 per MW hour paid today by this country for some of our power from an interconnector. The usual price is nearer £50 per MW hour – and this eye-watering cost goes on our bills.

    Unfortunately there is no prospect of ridding our statute book of the ludicrous net zero rubbish, because we will never get a majority of MPs to vote for any attempt to repeal or modify Milliprat’s stupid act, such is the hold that the greenie wreckers have over them.

    1. This law is completely and utterly stupid for two reasons at least. 1. In and of itself obviously it is stupid. 2. If the U.K. does not reach the target by the required time all that will happen is that a minister, or some minion, will come to the HoC and say – we have failed to reach the required target and we are sorry …or some such. There will be no penalty – how could there be.

      The repeal of this law is not necessary. Just ignore it. (I wish). In the meantime HMG continues to freeze and/or starve us. Of course, thankfully, there will soon also be elective euthanasia.

  86. Are there any consumer experts on here? My bl**dy fridge has just died on me. Any recommendations other than putting the contents in a coolie box outside the back door?

    This is the day after I had a new PC monitor delivered. The old one failed late on Saturday and with no backup (and no TV) I had to rely on the radio for news!

      1. Yep, Sos, been off-line for 3 days waiting for BT Mini-Hub which is only now started working.

        Stories in the morning.

    2. I’ve never had a fridge break down, but I would ask – where is it? Former neighbours took my old fridge-freezer and put it in their garage. ,WHen the cold weather arrived, it stopped working. There usually needs to be a temperature differential. Put a fridge in an ambient temperature of (say) 4 degrees, and it won’t make the contents any cooler.

      1. Thank you. I took it with my iPad camera. If I had used my Fuji camera, you would have been able read the road sign (slightly right of centre).

  88. Evening, all. As I’ve said on many occasions (but at the risk of being boring, it needs frequent repetition), just about everything in this country that is broken or doesn’t work as well as it should will have Blair’s hand on it somewhere.

  89. Good evening, Gentlefolks, Looks like BT’s much vaunted ‘Mini-Hub’ might be fulfilling it’s task but forgive me for a few minutes or so,while I check-out some 32 e-mails in my in-box..

    Stories tomorrow, providing that this temp system holds up.

      1. Thank you, Paul. Good to know some are awake. 3 stories lined up for to morrow and then, hopefully, when it’s over, back to normal.

        Off to do some on-line shopping. Beer and other necessities.

      1. Still working, BoB, but getting there.

        Thanks BT, three days later, for the mini-hub, while you sort out the incompetence of Open-reach.

    1. You do realise I only up ticked you to see the red thumb. Don’t be offended when I down tick to see what colour that is!!
      I down ticked myself, it is still red. No flair shown by the designers.

    2. Relentless scrolling and two comments on a screen. Just so we can see our names in heavier print, with more stylish space.

      Who is pushing all this screen hogging dreadfulness of design?

        1. I been battling vainly with the restylers for ten years. One by one, good designs are ruined like some young woman given a makeover with turkey teeth, trout lips, padded bottom, fake tan and tattoos as if this is what we must now consider “beauty”.

          There was the BBC Homepage, then Yahoo! Answers. I refuse to update my mac after Snow Leopard because of the way Apple ruined Apple Mail and made it unusable. Then there was Windows – the last usable version of that was XP. 7 is an improvement on Vista and vastly better than 8. 10 and 11 ,but even 7 is a resource hog and laggy compared with XP.

          What matters most to me is how much information can be displayed on one screen. My laptop’s screen is about the size of one A4 sheet of paper. It ought to be possible to get a decent lot to see on one A4 sheet.

  96. That was a rather a vigorous rendition of Bruckner’s 6th just ended on BBC R3.
    Very enjoyable.

  97. I was trawling the Speccie site when BTL changed beyond recognition. It’s taken place across the entire Disqus platform, totally beyond my control. I found this post, but I can assure you that we weren’t consulted. Better get used to it, I suppose…

        1. All the colours, icons and big fonts distract from the text of the posts. Can’t help feeling Disqus misjudged this.

  98. I was trawling the Speccie site when BTL changed beyond recognition. It’s taken place across the entire Disqus platform, totally beyond my control. I found this post, but I can assure you that we weren’t consulted. Better get used to it, I suppose…

    1. Conservative Woman is all blue BTL. It seems to just pick up on a dominant colour in the site design. Our headers are red.

        1. This looks a lot cleaner than the last one. The only people who like change are babies. :-))

  102. Well, the earlier snow didn’t come to anything and it’s a tad above -3½°C outside so now I’m off to bed.
    G’night all.

  103. Goodnight, folks. I’m overwhelmed by all the red – even the “comment” box and the “more comments” have turned red. Are we about to have a snap election and a Labour landslide?

        2. Forget Blue. Red, Green or Yellow, either NOTA or Reform if you have a candidate in your constituency.

    2. Depending on your browser there’s an extension to automatically expand threads and images.

      I don’t understand why Disqus hides them. Try disqus auto expander and disqus-unredirect.

  104. D1squs says this new look makes them look open and friendly.
    There is more space for writing but it looks tacky. The enlarged avatar pictures are awful.
    There was nothing wrong with the old format- this just causes headaches.

    2. It hasn’t changed here yet but I’ve seen the new format on TCW and it’s hideous. I don’t like it at all.

      1. The giant avatars are awful. It looks all pasted together and the bright colours are nasty. No elegance whatsoever.

    3. The Germans have a word for this – Schlimbesserung – making things worse by “improving” them!

  105. 368912+ up ticks,

    Lest we forget many are trying to colour the odious picture, but the truth shows up in
    black= lies white = truth.

    The only concession given is, little white lie.

  106. I am still off to do other things, despite the improved colour change. Goodnight. See you tomorrow, DV.

      1. Noooooo! Get rid of the cake. Or at least go for a Victoria sponge or maderia. I made one of those battenburg cakes once. The complaints varied from having a cm of marzipan all the way around to too much jam.

        Everyone’s a bally critic.

        Love me some marzipan and icing.

  108. 68912+ up ticks,

    The grand old duke has done a 180 since 2019

    London / Europe
    ‘We’re Led by Idiots’ – Farage Slams Green Agenda as Reserve Coal Power Stations Fired Up.

    Be taking a stokers job next.

  110. I have a confession to make.

    Tonight, I ate sprouts, voluntarily, after 60 years of avoiding hating them.:I even cooked them!

    I parboiled the sprouts, then shallow fried them in butter with chopped fresh orange segmentts and black pepper.

    (it was a variation on a Brian Turner recipe)

    My credibility has gone

      1. Don’t be daft, sprouts are disgusting. hard yet mushy, tasting like furry day old stewed sick, smelling like old bottled farts and you’ll still be chewing the damned things 6 months later.

        Burn the things. Pay the farmer for his work and then destroy them.

      2. It hurts me to say: very nice, but they only took Ten Minutes to do,

        not the ‘normal 10 months in the presure cooker

          2. This weird vegetablist Stockholm syndrome can be over come with therapy and a strong support network. We’re here for you! Don’t go any further down this road. It’s not worth it.

            Before you know it you’ll be eating cabbage and in real trouble!

            (Sorry, I need to be ill).

    2. Dear life. Whatever posessed you? No one eats sprouts voluntarily. Ah, I see, it’s one of those hostage situations where you’re in great pain and need help and are pretending you’re ok?

        1. We had sprouts on Saturday – they were delicious. The secret is not to overcook them – Caroline has got it down to a T.

          1. I, too, am a Brussels Sprouts fan, Richard. The business about putting them on the boil in April so that they are ready for Christmas is just a joke.

    3. Not sure about the orange but parboiled, halved and sauteed with chopped smoked streaky bacon is my favourite. Drizzle the bacon fat over the finished dish when serving.

        1. That’s great news, Tom. (That you’re settled in your new flat and are back on NoTTL. Also that the we have more morning funnies to look forward to.)

    2. What ho dear. However, at the moment his fluffiness is refusing to go outside for his ablutions.

    3. Good to see you back, Tom. Sleep well. I look forward to you returning to your early morning jokes which set me up for the day.

      1. No – my car is still under a snowdrift – but he had some news for me – his op is booked for Wednesday morning. Fingers crossed he survives it and we can get him home sometime next week. The nurses celebrated his birthday with a card too.

        2. So pleased you have a date at last and can start to look forward. I hope all goes well with the op, we will be thinking of you, and him.

    2. It is like buying your favourite ready meal in the supermarket every week only to discover one day it has a “new and improved recipe” only it hasn’t!,

  113. Aaaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhhh – I had to refresh the page because it jumped back to the link I just shared and now I’ve got the horrible new format!!

  115. The new format looks better on the phone than the laptop. I suppose that’s how it was designed.

    1. I’d like to wake up without feeling that I’ve got shards of glass stuck in my throat, Elsie. I’m into Day 5 of this lurgy. Sleep well. We can hope for tomorrow. They can’t take that away from us. Night night.

      1. Sorry to hear that, poppies mum. When I had that kind of “throat” I bought an over-the-counter linctus which really helped.

      2. A little besion, Mum, you are not only respected here but loved as well.

        Sleep well and feel better for it. We love you, Mum.

        1. Thank you, NTN. I hope you are settling in to your new quarters and that it really does feel like a different place to be.

        1. Thank you, Bob. I think I picked up this little number from the younger members of the audience of our grandson’s school nativity play last week.

          1. Most cough medication is predominantly honey. A spoonful of honey will have a good effect. Hope it works.

          2. Thank you – I’ll try it neat when I go down, I’m still lurking in bed atm. I had a honey and lemon drink last night – very carefully.

  120. A blt from TCW, for anyone interested in the vaccine débâcle:

    Truth Social is the place to go. Also you don’t have to sign up just to read the truths. The news covered is global, and, as the chips are going to fall first in the USA, before we in the UK will see change, it is a very good place to pick up vital information. Fauci’s days are numbered, and the whole Covid scam also, once Musk reveals the mass of material on Twitter apparently showing collusion between Fauci et al and Twitter’ s old regime to effect the scam.

    Very heartening news from Brian Cates (very reliable source of info) about how Fauci will be exposed via The Twitter Files being released :

    https://truthsocial.com/@BrianCates

    Brian Cates ️️️
    “Almost EVERY SINGLE FAMILY IN AMERICA has been and is being affected by these crimes against humanity.

    When the concrete documented evidence is rolled out about how HARD Fauci and his coconspirators worked hand-in-glove with Twitter’s old regime at these coverups of their crimes, a mass awakening event will reach and pass a tipping point.

    This is how we get to Nuremberg 2.0”.

    1. It was always inevitable that a bunch of completely incompetent politicians and the few megalomaniacs in charge of the Medico industry in America would be exposed as the money grubbing fraudsters we had them down for from day one of the Covid ‘pandemic’. A fraudulently constructed device designed to dupe the masses.

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