Friday 6 January: A Sunak sceptic won over by the Prime Minister’s pragmatic approach

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

675 thoughts on “Friday 6 January: A Sunak sceptic won over by the Prime Minister’s pragmatic approach”

  4. Good morning all. A chilly by, as yet, dry start with 2°C outside.
    Just having mug of tea & breakfast before doing a couple of small jobs and then off to pick up my purchase.

  5. Ukraine rejects Putin’s 36-hour ceasefire for Orthodox Christmas. 6 January 2023.

    Talking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, the US president, Joe Biden, said Putin was “trying to find some oxygen” by floating the idea, while Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said if Putin really wanted peace “he would bring his soldiers home”.

    “A so-called ceasefire brings neither freedom nor security to people living in daily fear under Russian occupation,” Baerbock tweeted.

    And British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly wrote on Twitter: “A 36 hour pause of Russian attacks will do nothing to advance the prospects for peace.”

    Easy for politicians to say! If I were trapped in a war zone I would welcome a thirty six hour ceasefire if only because it would give time to Get Out or Stock Up. It does nevertheless give us an insight into the real intentions of the West beyond its propaganda. They think that they are on the up and intend for the war to continue!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/05/putin-orders-36-hour-truce-in-ukraine-for-orthodox-christmas

    1. This is the latest of several cease-fire/peace talks that have been rejected out of hand. The only conclusion is the West wants the war to continue, forgetting that the end comes with either Armageddon or negotiation.

        1. Yup. They aren’t aiming for a win on points, but a knock-out. That means prolonging the war until Russia uses nuclear weapons, and we’re all knocked out. Schwab 1 – world nil.

      2. Just a little bit of agreement might pay dividends but the Americans want all out victory and to utterly humiliate Vlad. He knows it, so unfortunately, we have a fight to the death.

        1. The death – of America. Nuked to death, as is Russia.

          Just what the WEF want.

          Don’t play into their hands, negotiate.

    2. I do sometimes wonder what the reaction would be if Russia was a black nation. I suspect the West would be crawling on its hand and knees in appeasement, blaming itself for centuries of prejudice and provocation.

      1. Morning William. If they were black the government would be apologising and bringing them in to enrich us with some diversity! One aspect of the Wests’ hostility to Russia is its adherence to traditional i.e. Western Thought and Culture. They are an enemy both of Cultural Marxism and Globalism!

    3. If this were a humanitarian gesture – to suspend war for Christmas – Putin would have ordered it for 25th December. Russian Christmas suspension on 6th January is for the benefit of Russian soldiers and no-one else.

      2. Ukrainian orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on the same day as the Russian ones.
        Oh wait a moment. Zelensky banned them.

    1. Morning Paul & all.

      We don’t need an inch of snow anymore to bring the country to a halt. We revel in strikes instead.

      (OMG I’m beginning to sound like the Major!)

  8. Majority have no confidence in Rishi Sunak’s ability to solve migrant boats crisis. 6 January 2023.

    The majority of British adults have no confidence in Rishi Sunak’s ability to solve the migrant boats crisis, a new poll has found.

    Just four per cent believe the Prime Minister will get a handle on Channel crossings, with 57 per cent saying they are not at all confident in his ability to do so, according to the survey.

    Four percent? I assume that was the cabinet! Lol!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/05/majority-have-no-confidence-rishi-sunaks-ability-solve-migrant/

    1. Sunak’s ability to solve the migrant boat crisis?
      Able or not, it’s the determination to achieve the goal that matters. IMO Sunak has neither the ability nor the determination to stop the invasion.
      It’s clear that the invaders are being funded by outside forces and when has cutting off the cash supply ever been mentioned? This useless government hasn’t even been able to cut off the supply of boats. No boats, no crossings; is that too difficult for those in authority to grasp? Certainly, the invaders would turn to other methods. Hang gliders, perhaps?

  12. Common sense at last. It’s a shame that noisy no-nothing commentators have very vocal opinions to the contrary, however,

    “ SIR – It is welcome news that the Elgin Marbles may be subject to a loan agreement with Greece.

    I was also interested to learn that a 3D recreation of part of the marbles has been achieved by the Institute for Digital Archaeology. However, its director, Roger Michel, is mistaken in describing the marbles as “plunder”.

    The facts are: in 1800 Athens was under the control of Turkey, not Greece. The Parthenon had been a munitions dump and Turkish workmen were grinding down the marbles to make mortar. Lord Elgin, recognising their priceless heritage, negotiated the release of a section and a number of carved figures (at his own expense). Without him, the marbles would not exist today.”

  14. Yesterday I was diagnosed with a benign tumour on my back, and have been referred for further tests.

    Also yesterday, a particularly beautiful woman in church with unspoilt waist-length hair is having it shaved for a cancer charity. Now, I know I am supposed to applaud this self-sacrifice, like some trained seal clapping for the NHS, but I don’t think I could bear to be there for that. I am made to feel at fault here – making a lot of fuss about nothing, and I should be ashamed of myself. What right have I to criticise the choices of others? They are right of course; I have no right, and must respect their freedom in the same spirit I wish mine to be respected.

    I do feel there is some coercion here. Because it’s for charity, there is this moral pressure and to say anything negative is not a nice thing to do.

    These donations raise a couple of hundred pounds, but the hair itself, which for me is one of the loveliest things I know if it has not been got at by the hairdressers and may have been there since childhood, may well take five years or more to get back to where it was, and most women never recover it, since the growing-out process is actually quite hard.

    Something beautiful is lost – why celebrate it? It is like the piano smashing contests of the 1960s, comprehensive redevelopment of the same era, or even the desecration of churches during the Reformation. There is a lot of moral righteousness in the destruction. Afterwards, a long long period of rebuilding what was lost, if it can be. Christians can point to the cross, but they also believe that the process of rebuilding the Christian message after the execution of their founder can be achieved in three days.

    If someone I loved had to lose her hair during cancer treatment, I would mourn the loss, but like a road accident or a house fire or a war, it is what fate has delivered. Making the best of a bad situation is often the only way to stay sane, and the human is adaptable if nothing else. Doing so by choice though is perverse, Masochism or self-martyrdom may be admirable in some circles, but I don’t think it is healthy.

    2. Also yesterday, a particularly beautiful woman in church with unspoilt waist-length hair is having it shaved for a cancer charity.

      I’m suspicious of these sacrifices. There is an element of flagellant psychology in it and quite possibly personal vanity.

      1. It does have a mediaeval feel to it.
        C21 version of groups dancing from one town to another or deliberately destroying personal possessions.
        But then the NHS has become a religion.

    3. Also yesterday, a particularly beautiful woman in church with unspoilt waist-length hair is having it shaved for a cancer charity.

      I’m suspicious of these sacrifices. There is an element of flagellant psychology in it and quite possibly personal vanity.

  15. 369365+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Nobody wants to confront the truth: Britain is becoming a poor country
    It is good that Rishi Sunak wishes to reverse our decline but his solutions so far are dangerously limited AKA as CUD, fodder tor the foolish peoples, a menu of repeated vows, promises,& pledges
    of yesteryear.

    Dt,
    Nobody wants to confront the truth: Britain is becoming a poor country
    It is good that Rishi Sunak wishes to reverse our decline but his solutions so far are dangerously limited

    Reality,

    Nobody wants to confront the truth: Britain has become a poor country
    It is that Rishi Sunak not so covert wishes are to excellerate our decline he is a continuation of the long live of political treachery
    artist, as major, the wretch cameron, leg over clegg, treacherous treasa, johnson the turkish delight.

    ALL WEF active participants inclusive of wives that between them
    have a rap sheet that would make a mafia godfather blush with shame.

    Well past time the herd majority hit the confrontation button….hard.

    1. Nobody wants to confront the truth: Britain is becoming a poor country

      While Rishi and all the other globalists are getting infinitely richer

    2. I guess we are reaching the impoverished depths one finds in the third world .. and the more we import illiterate people of another colour with limited intellect , the further we will sink .. less tax payers , less of everything .

      1. 369365+ up ticks,

        Morning TB,
        That is the WEF agenda and sadly, it will continue to find support through the party before Country voting brigade.

    4. I suspect one of the reasons why £Sterling isn’t lower than the current rates is because a lot of folk from overseas need Sterling to buy up large properties, businesses and land. In short the UK is being sold off as if at a car boot sale for a penny a pound…..

  16. Good morning all

    Mildish , 7c.

    I woke up far too early. Jack spaniel had a terrible cough, he coughed and coughed .. and then he went back to sleep .

    Moh and I were wide awake , and through chink in the bedroom curtains , the moon illuminated the garden and the bedroom , so I got up , gazed out of the window and marvelled at the brightness.. Closed the curtains , Moh managed to nod off again , and I couldn’t settle ..

    Son woke up an hour later , he leaves the house at 06.30 , kettle on , coffee etc.

    The sound of next doors wagon driving down his driveway as he leaves to go to his small holding to let his goats out always at 7am , and and the cries of another neighbours cockerel and the sound of their quacking ducks means the start of another day.

    1. We have discovered that the council have installed new light bulbs in the lamps.
      They give a weird light that makes it look as if the road is covered in snow or frost.

    1. Good morning Anne

      Harry is as crazy now as his poor mentally disturbed mother was .

      I hope the poor chap doesn’tend up in similar tragic circumstances , a bad ending , and of course infecting his young children with the same troubles he has accumulated ?

      1. Particularly given his age.
        MeGain has already trashed and ditched her family; she is on course to do far worse to Hazza.

      3. Some very bad genes in that family. His mother’s brother is not the most pleasant of people.

        1. On his father’s side we have Edward VIII and his brother the Duke of Kent who was a drug addict.
          On his mother’s side – as you have mentioned.
          We all have dodgy relatives, but we don’t have the money to indulge the faulty genes.

      2. MeAgain was using it as a rein, but it’s broken now, the strain was just too great.

        ‘Morning, Sue.

        1. Patera canis (the phrase should be ‘in pateram canis impulit’. And it should be ‘Principem Haroldum’ or more properly ‘Henricum’. William could be translated a number of different ways e.g. Gulielmus.

          Here endeth the pedantic Latin lesson.

    8. You have down-voted your own entry. You can remove it just by clicking on it again. If you have trouble up-voting because the other voters names keep getting in the way just move the entry to near the top of the screen. It works for me.

    10. Why are both the princes in the nominative case? One should have been in the accusative (Latin is not an SVO language, it relies on cases to make the meaning clear).

  19. Not for one moment would I wish to prolong the Ginge and Whinge media feeding frenzy, but there is great amusement to be had in the BTL comments under this article, the headline of which reads:

    Prince Harry lost virginity in field behind pub with woman who treated him ‘like a stallion’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/01/05/prince-harry-lost-virginity-older-woman-field-reveals-book/

    I think the moderators have either decided to let it rip, or are so convulsed with laughter that they are no longer able to act!

      1. Prince Harry has admitted that it was a ‘mistake’ to look up Meghan Markle’s sex scenes in Suits when they first started dating.

        In his new bombshell biography Spare, which accidentally went on sale in Spain today, the Duke of Sussex revealed that he Googled his girlfriend’s love scenes, and regretted doing so.

        The couple first started dating in mid-2016, when Meghan was still starring in hit US legal drama Suits.
        In the early days of their relationship, Harry made the ‘mistake of Googling and watching some of her love scenes online’ and joked that he needs ‘electric-shock therapy’ to burn the images from his brain.

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11604113/Prince-Harry-admits-mistake-watching-Meghan-Markles-sex-scenes-biography.html

        1. ECT might be a good idea. And not just to expunge the vision of a writhing MeGain faking an orgasm.

          1. No hope for him now. Those magic mushrooms have addled his brain. As far as Meagain is concerned he should have ‘jumped and dumped’ then married a sloane ranger.

          2. I believe he was emulating his mother , she enjoyed the thrill of dark flesh .

            Strange isn’t it that he hasn’t mentioned his mother who cleared off for holidays with her lovers , and who also had temper tantrums and who threw hersel down the stairs . and her sons wondering when she would reappear after an amorous date ..

          4. “Actresses are for a bit of fun NOT for marriage”

            [The Duke of Edinburgh]

            How sad that the old chap’s dim grandson was too stupid to heed his words.

        3. Will Harry re-enact the scene in the field behind the pub with a camera crew handy?

    2. “I shudder to think how many more details we would get if he wasn’t trying to avoid publicity...” pretty much sums it up!

    1. Good for you, Bill. And when the Wise Men have finished their visit to you may we borrow them please? They will never be short of work in the Westminster area!

      1. I hope Baby Jesus takes to Frankenstein as a baby sitter.
        And that Joseph and Mary don’t let Gordon Brown get his hands on the gold.

      2. Talking about wise men, here is a quote from today’s Press:

        “There are many who, after reading Spare, will have a measure of sympathy with anyone wanting to hit Harry”.

  21. We have come to a sorry pass when the Letter of the Week – possibly of the year – states sheer common sense.

    “NHS overhaul

    SIR – When the NHS (Letters, January 5) is working it is outstanding. I speak from experience, having recently been diagnosed with cancer and two possible secondaries.

    A great deal has been written about the ills of the NHS but little about solutions, though much could be done, and quickly. For instance:

    1. Conduct a review of world health systems, including structure, cost and staffing. This should be carried out by a team drawn from industry and the military. No present Civil Service or NHS administrators should be involved.

    2. Abolish “diversity” committees and the more than 800 diversity officers on salaries of up to £70,000 per annum.

    3. The top salary for an NHS administrator should be no more than £110,000, which is approximately that of a senior NHS consultant.

    4. Nurse training should revert to the former, well-tried model, whereby every teaching hospital had a nurse training school in which consultants lectured on their specialities. Degree courses could be made available as a post-graduate qualification.

    5. Wards should return to being run by a sister and matron.

    6. The “firm” system should return, meaning that there is continuity of care and career advice for junior staff, and the patient knows who is looking after them.

    7. During my career, most hospitals had associated cottage hospitals and houses staffed by trained nurses and visited by hospital doctors or local GPs. I visited as a house physician and continued to do so as a consultant. The re-introduction would have an immediate effect on the availability of beds.

    These proposals are based on what worked in the past. They could all be implemented in a matter of months, and would save money and boost morale.

    Leon Sebastian Illis FRCP

    Lymington, Hampshire”

      1. No. But I wouldn’t mind his pension.
        Conversely, I wouldn’t want what else he’s got.

    2. Morning Anne. There’s no doubt that a great deal could be done to salvage the NHS. It is the will that is lacking because any measures would contradict Cultural Marxist doctrine.

    3. I err towards his examples 2 to 7, but if the conclusions and recommendations of 1 go counter to that, are they wrong?

      And if so why have the review, unless he is hoping that 2 to 7 will be what is recommended.

      1. They will be different, but not necessarily wrong.

        Private hospitals are run in combination, but the business does not have precedence over the medical provision. The goal of both sides is the same – profit. In the NHS, the goal of the medical staff is to meet the pointless targets the administration provides. The administrations goal is to expand and get paid more money by government, so it implements every moronic policy going then complains it needs more money to do the pointless work it creates for itself in the process of doing pointless work.

  24. SIR – The Prime Minister’s speech was bereft of ideology, lacking in long-term vision and far removed from the traditional Conservative principles of small government, low taxation and wealth creation.

    It was, however, pragmatic, responsible and an example of accountable leadership. Moreover, his five key pledges correlate exactly with the primary concerns of most swing voters, who decide elections.

    In a few weeks, Rishi Sunak – to my surprise – has steadied the ship, settled the markets and improved the Conservatives’ political position. He appears to possess that rare combination of qualities in a leader: confidence, eloquence, composure, mastery of detail and likeability. He deserves the support of all Conservatives, who should focus their fire on the big-state, even-higher-tax, eco-fanatical, class-warmongering opposition parties, all of which would make Britain’s problems much worse.

    Philip Duly
    Haslemere, Surrey

    Today’s leading letter…

    Hmm…one speech containing five vague ‘promises’ does not a government make, methinks.

    1. When it comes to having letters published, Mr Duly is up there with Esther Rancid and Lord Lexden (who is the son of a late Colchester GP).

        1. TBF – he doesn’t get published as often.
          Maybe he should wear a set of goofy teeth and flash a few phallic vegetables.

          3. Ooh! A well baked cob!! Not sure I can deal with that ….my necklace has just exploded…gawd..watch the dog bo……

    3. If the Government can address the divisions in society through an education system based on merit, not wealth; an immigration system that harnesses the talents of the indigenous population above foreigners; and a housing market that is open to the young, Mrs May will be re-elected in 2020 with a large majority and be seen as the saviour of the free market.

      Philip Duly. 7 October 2016
      Haslemere Surrey

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/10/06/letters-mrs-mays-idea-of-state-interference-is-what-we-voted-bre/

        1. Mrs May is evil. I suspect that there are some very nasty skeletons in her cupboard but they will probably not come to light during her lifetime.

      2. Yet the school system is designed as an all must win prizes approach. Wealth should be the divider – of ability. Which means grammar schools.

        Sadly, a class of 30 is not going to help children succeed. Labour’s policy of massive uncontrolled gimmigration ruined education. The state just hurried it along.

        1. I beg to differ about a class of 30 not helping children to succeed. There were 30 in the class in the A stream of my grammar school. We all went on to achieve!

    5. A BTL comment with which many here will agree!

      Trevor Anderson
      4 HRS AGO
      Philip Duly is deluded to believe Sunak (with NHS, Strikes, prices, immigration, energy, etc etc etc) “has steadied the ship, settled the markets and improved the Conservatives’ political position.” Designed to give a message of hope and confidence to scam the struggling masses, Sunak’s speech was total, utter rhetoric.
      This government is bereft of the talent and ability to turn around what is a sinking ship. Our MP’s are noticeable only by their crass inefficiency and incompetence. The majority are missing in action.
      Top of the list of our problems is allowing the Green minority to drive the downtrodden majority with what is an unnecessary False Alarm with Climate Change and Net Zero. The UK’s target of zero carbon emissions will make not an iota of difference when the ongoing, unstoppable Chinese and many other nations that cannot afford, or even care about Net Zero, continue as they are. Well, apart from bankrupting and impoverishing the nation.
      It will take at least a generation, but we should be developing new as well as reopening any and every means of producing our own energy outside of inefficient wind and solar (producing only 2% of our energy during the recent freeze). EV’s are a waste of time, even UN Climate scientists predict that by 2050, whilst the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be reduced by these red herrings, the only difference to global temperature will be a reduction of one 10,000th of one degree C. How many politicians know or care about info such as this? None, apparently.
      What is never mentioned is the CO2 produced when digging up lithium – or the fact that every net zero product is produced with fossil fuel energy. Also, every tree, plant and food crop needs CO2.
      Continuing as we are means serious chaos will ensue.

      1. Quite right. It wasn’t just rhetoric, it was a series of meaningless soundbites strung together randomly. Sunak has no idea what people want – he just does what he’s told.

        1. No, he knows what people want and he has no intention of doing anything useful. Mr Sunak has a greater intellect than PMs such as D Cameron, T May and E Truss, so he should be able to achieve something, but he won’t.

          1. Rather going to say the same as Tim. He is taking his orders from his masters. That’s why nothing will get done. They’ve demanded the decline of this country. Thus Sunak will carry it out.

    6. I must try to track down Philip – he seems dim enough to buy that bridge I’v been trying to sell!

  25. SIR – I am dismayed by the performance of Rishi Sunak, and the fact that he was selected as Conservative leader in the first place.

    During my career in business it was nearly always the beginning of the end when an accountant got the top job. While Mr Sunak may be good with numbers, there is a lack of strategy, vision, leadership, creativity, risk-taking and enthusiasm.

    Nor does he appear to have the ability to galvanise people to believe in the direction he wishes to take. We need a dynamic and visible leader to lift the country out of its present malaise.

    David Coverdale
    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    Mrs T was booted out of office in 1990 and so far there is no sign of a replacement.

    1. If he’s an accountant he’s got a double first in anagramation.

      Hi risk anus who’s also a no act cunt

    3. Is he good with numbers? He seems not to understand that spending more than you are taking in doesn’t make for sound finances.

  26. SIR – My mother didn’t just recycle Christmas cards as gift tags (Letters, January 4); she used a flat iron, heated on the Rayburn, to iron the Christmas wrapping paper for reuse next year.

    Jeff Smith
    Abergavenny, Monmouthshire

    Mrs HJ produces handmade and bespoke cards, with the proceeds going to charity. As part of that activity any cards we receive are carefully scrutinised before disposal, and anything usable is removed for future use. I am forever surfing suitable online suppliers for bargain offers of coloured card and so on, and our spare bedroom is known by the family as the Card Factory. It keeps her busy (and out of the way!) but she has yet to take up my suggestion that it would be quicker just to send a monetary donation every so often…

      2. Posted well before Christmas we received a card from an old friend in Melbourne yesterday.
        It must have floated across.
        We have a friend here who makes her own cards. They’re lovely.

    2. SWMBO makes cards from her photographs, and sells them. There are very few around, so the chances of getting two the same are minimal.

  27. Skimming the press this morning – it looks to me as though Brash’s appalling bragging about slaying 25 people MAY be the cause of his complete self-destruction.

    One lives in hopes.

    1. I said yesterday he has made himself a target. Let’s hope it’s a head shot.

      Good morning.

        1. Just one, and you missed out a letter!
          In truth I have swung around to Team Montecito because publicity is good publicity. Mocking the Royal Family is an ancient and relatively harmless pastime, but PM Sunak continues to do infinitely more damage to UK Plc.

    2. Given his admissions of drug use, the US administration may be pondering on the legality of his residency.
      Which, I suspect, is madam’s plan. He’s given her the money and the 2 hostages; time to spit him out. Along with the rest of her family.

      1. Perhaps her former family, friends and husbands should form a Survivors’ Club. Though Trevor Whatshisname appears to have moved onwards and upwards quite successfully.

        Harry has destroyed himself with this Netflix/publishing deal.

    3. The idea that you’d brag about killing people is disgusting. Military snipers can be proud of the long shots they make, but never the reason they’re performing them.

      As an ex special forces chap told me ‘It’s just not done.’

    4. I shouldn’t wonder if half of Afghanistan decides to sue the berk in the US Courts for ‘reparations’…..

  29. 369365+ up ticks,

    Will we see the strength through joy camps with updated variations make a return ?

    Gerard Batten
    ·
    18h
    WhenI see a headline like this & read the article I think ‘surely this cannot be true?’ It’s to evil & horrific.

    But we do know the that the WEF is anti human & evil. The question is, why aren’t the World’s media & politicians exposing them?

    The only answer has to be because they are part of it, they are controlled, or they are just to fearful of the consequences of to speak out.

    World Economic Forum Declares Pedophiles ‘Will Save Humanity’ – News Punch
    World Economic Forum Declares Pedophiles ‘Will Save Humanity’ – News Punch

    The World Economic Forum is now calling for the decriminalization of sex with children, arguing that laws against “age gap love,” more commonly known as pedophilia, “violate human rights.”

    newspunch.com

    https://gettr.com/post/p23yin73e9c

    1. Another attempt to distract and rot the West?
      Or more evidence of the Satanists at the WEF pushing their true religion?

    2. Nutters always expose themselves. Of course, it’s about normalising perversity. About making the abnormal normal. It doesn’t help that the demographic these creatures are forcing on the West think bestiality and paedophilia normal. It’s all a long term plan to destroy the West. Race replacement, cultural genocide, the continual, repeated assault on the family unit, mass welfare to force dependence, crippling taxation to remove individual freedoms, removal of personal autonomy and mobility.

      1. 369365+ up ticks,

        Morning W,
        “Nutters always expose themselves.”

        For confirmation see one anthony charlie lynton, Bow Street Court.

        1. We’ve had a few what might be called dodgy ones, in positions of power. Another past pm liked sailing around the bouys.

    1. It’s a really good article. What stood out for me is the rejection of ‘the other’. We shouldn’t us ‘their’ terms! We are not machines!

      The principles do not define this. It is the ethos that you need to adopt. The way of thinking about efficiency. They may not like it, but Toyota makes more cars than most other manufacturers, has a more cohesive attitude toward production – because anyone can contribute toward these productivity gains. It’s notable that monolithic, expensive, public sector organisations fight these changes most.

      In one of my first jobs I made suggestions of re-arranging the tape backups into pull out draws rather than shelves. This was rejected. ‘We don’t do that here’. Consequently to find an older tape you had to tape all the tapes off the shelf and hunt for the one you wanted on the floor.

      2. I had an experience like that just before Christmas.
        The customer is using another app that’s installed on the phone to connect to the VPN and use our app.

        So I said, we need to support VPN connection in our app.

        Huge explosion; can’t be done, will not be done EVER, heavy implication that I am a fool for raking up a policy that was decided before I joined the team. The customer must make the VPN connection via the operating system!

        Except that they aren’t. They are making it via another app.
        In fact, it is perfectly easy and possible to do for selected customers. In my opinion, it’s a very bad look when the customer has to open another app in order to enable some functionality in our app.

        2. Aye, folk refuse to think laterally, not just about their own software, but about the requirements it has on other systems.

          This is somewhere Android and iOS continually fall down.

          1. Everything on iOS takes at least twice as long as the same functionality on Android or Windows. Should be priced accordingly.

  31. Morning all, there is this bright shiny thing up in the sky, I plan to make the most of it today for as long as it lasts.

    Perhaps then I will find time to read all about a sad individual in the Lame Stream Media, or perhaps enlighten you all how I lost my cherry, it seems to be the fashionable thing to do.

    Edited for typo.

      1. Good morning Wibbling and everyone.
        Ignore the soap opera, keep your eyes on Downing Street.
        At least Ginger is earning his living and avoiding the perils of IR35.

      2. Just look for a lady with a smile on her face.
        Happy I am out of her life no doubt. 😉

  32. EU dear. Trouble in EUtopia (and as an aside, Jeremy Warner, for whom I usually care not one jot, has an interesting piece in today’s Terriblegraph).

    “IRELAND plans to sue the EU for “overreach” as a row between Dublin and Brussels over how to regulate big tech escalates.

    Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced plans to take the European Data Protection Supervision Board (EDPB) to the EU Court of Justice, accusing the Brussels-based body of overstepping its authority.

    It highlights the growing tension between Brussels and Dublin over how to regulate big tech companies such as Apple, Google and Meta.

    Division has been apparent for years but the escalation to legal action comes after the EU allegedly tried to pressure Ireland into broadening an investigation into Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram…”

      2. That would obviously be the best and most sensible answer but few Irishmen and Irishwomen would ever admit it. Mind you when the rate of corporation tax in the ROI is 15% and the evil Hunt has risen this tax from 19% to 25% in the UK it would not be such a good prospect.

      3. People are queuing up to join the UK Bill, it must be something that was said to them in France.

  33. Great programmer on climate change just started on Radio 4 – completely unbiased, listen up!

    1. Are you sure or are you being sarcastic?

      Ok have looked it up, it’s “Rethink Climate” so will listen up…

    2. They have run a series for the week. This morning someone stated that renewables are cheap as chips, lies, as they are selling their lecee at the market rate. Yesterday it was followed by Mrs Obama reading her book. I nearly threw..up

  34. Morning all 😉 😊
    Not quite sure which sceptic has been won over by Sunak’s Pragmatic approach. He hasn’t actually done anything yet.

    1. That’s modern politics, innit?

      Make a grand-standing speech promising to DO things.

      Then lie doggo. Everyone forgets.

  35. January brings the snow.
    Makes our feet and fingers glow.

    [‘The Months’. Sara Coleridge]

    2. I’ll tell that to my neighbour who has had to cancel his plans for a week of skiing in Austria. 😉

      1. Austria is on the equator! 🤣

        He should have come somewhere nearer the Arctic Circle, like here in Sweden, or nearer Spikey in Scotland.

  36. UK sets new record for wind power generation. 6 January 2023.

    Britain has set a new record for wind generation as power from onshore and offshore turbines helped boost clean energy supplies late last year.

    National Grid’s electricity system operator (ESO), which handles Great Britain’s grid, said that a new record for wind generation was set on 30 December, when 20.91 gigawatts (GW) were produced by turbines.

    This represented the third time Britain’s fleet of wind turbines set new generation records in 2022. In May, National Grid had to ask some turbines in the west of Scotland to shut down, as the network was unable to store such a large amount of electricity when a then record 19.9GW of power was produced – enough to boil 3.5m kettles.

    If you keep adding turbines then it is inevitable that new records will be set both in daily output and annual yield. The problem is the cost. Without the massive subsidies granted to them by government they would be uneconomic even to erect. There is also the point that no matter how many you have you must at the same time have the equivalent capacity available in conventional generating plant. This because on the day there is no wind there would be no electricity at all! The cost of wind power is thus even higher than the subsidies would suggest! This explains why UK electricity is among the most expensive and renders its industry uncompetitive in the world.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/03/uk-sets-new-record-for-turbine-power-generation-after-period-of-low-wind

    1. And still they vote for the ConLab uni party, obviously content to keep the scam going and pay the bills.

    2. Of course. The obviouse answer to “20.91 gigawatts (GW) were produced by turbines” is for how many minutes and at what cost? Looking it up, I’ve found the first part. It was for 30 minutes.

    3. There is also the point that no matter how many you have you must at the same time have the equivalent capacity available in conventional generating plant. This because on the day there is no wind there would be no electricity at all!

      An obvious point that is lost on those advocating the use of renewables.

      1. Yet it was only two days ago the Government announced that the last coal powered power station would be closed by 2024.

        1. It’s imperative that we elect a government that has a grasp on common sense (which means a clear out of all the usual suspects).

    1. Gold Loves Chaos

      As I’ve argued throughout 2022, an artificially rising USD has been an obvious headwind to USD-priced gold.

      But should the USD rise even further and longer under a fork-tongued
      Powell, and even if the DXY resumes its bumpy gyrations south and then
      north again, not even a stronger Dollar (or rigged COMEX market) can
      keep gold forever repressed.

      This is because a too-strong USD under continued Powell tightening will expand the aforementioned deficit
      levels and GDP growth ratios to a breaking point which cripples credit
      markets, destroys equity markets and knee-caps economies.

      When this happens, faith in the system, as well as the individuals who run them, will rightfully disintegrate faster than SBF’s weird sex life.

      It is precisely at such moments of lost faith, as I recently discussed with Grant Williams, in which gold shines brightest.

      Alternatively,should Powell try to restore illiquid markets with a pivot toward more
      QE, the net result will be an inflationary and historic tailwind of
      currency debasement which will send gold in an equally northern
      direction.

      Quite amusing too.

      My gold has gone up £40 an ounce this in the last 7 days.

        1. Sam Bankman-Fried who is looking at a 110 year stretch in prison after the collapse of the crypto company FTX.

        2. Sam Bankman-Fried, erstwhile CEO of FTX. He and his air-headed girlfriend who was playing at being CEO of FTX’s sister company Almeda apparently lived in some free love commune (funded by the companies of course) in the Bahamas.
          Gates – Zuckerberg – SBF; the elites’ tools are often very strange and surprisingly stupid people.

      1. I was talking to someone who lived through the last wave of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe the other day. She said that there was a period of about two weeks when you could buy masses of Zimbabwean dollars with US dollars, and everyone paid all their debts and mortgages. The window then closed off quickly.
        The similar situation in the Weimar republic only lasted a few weeks as well.
        In Venezuela, they have now made the buying and selling of gold illegal – but funnily enough, they are not clamping down on the illegal gold kiosks that buy gold at under spot price. Someone seems to be hoovering up all the gold in the country on the cheap.

  38. Not quite a military obituary (which I had missed until today) but one that certainly raises a smile as a result of his activities after leaving the Army.  I’m sure he was from the same mould as my first CO, whose motto was “Everything can be fixed with a small charge of PE” (plastic explosive) and he regularly got himself into similar scrapes, much to our amusement but not that of his superiors.  His wartime training in the Desert had endowed him with a ‘never say die’ approach to problem solving…

    * * *

    Major Sir Michael Parker, pyrotechnic showman who was the Queen’s pageant master for jubilees and royal tournaments – obituary

    Parker had a flair for explosions, and his motto was ‘Never tell people what is supposed to happen, then they won’t know when it hasn’t’

    ByTelegraph Obituaries 29 December 2022 • 5:07pm

    Major Sir Michael Parker, who has died aged 81, described himself as “accidental showman” to the late Queen Elizabeth II, having served as her pageant master and merrymaker in chief for more than 40 years.

    During military service in the Queen’s Own Hussars he had discovered a flair for putting on plays and organising spectacular pyrotechnic military events, and acquired a reputation for attempting – if not always achieving – the impossible. The more “experts” warned him things could not be done, the more Parker became determined to prove them wrong.

    After retiring from the Army in 1971, he became an antiques dealer, but was soon drafted in to organise national events, including the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Working for many years without an office or any fee, he went on to produce more than 320 events, including the Queen Mother’s 80th, 90th and 100th birthdays, the Hyde Park fireworks for the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, the VE and VJ Day celebrations, and 26 Royal Tournaments.

    In a rollicking memoir entitled It’s All Going Terribly Wrong: The Accidental Showman (2013), Parker gave an account of some of the risks he had taken and the joy it gave the Queen when things did not go according to plan.

    One of his most memorable mishaps occurred during his first royal spectacular – the lighting of a nationwide chain of beacons in 1977 to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee which would begin with the monarch lighting a vast beacon at Windsor Great Park, using the 1948 London Olympic torch.

    Worried that the beacon would not light fast enough, Parker had stuffed it with fireworks and positioned a Royal Signals major to press the detonator. The man did so prematurely, and the beacon burst dramatically into flames – as the Queen’s ceremonially lit fuse was still fizzing on the ground 60 yards away. “Can’t think why you bothered to ask me!” she exclaimed.

    The beacon lighting was to be followed by a series of live satellite television links around Britain and the world, broadcast to the Royal party and tens of thousands of well-wishers gathered in the park – but the sound system malfunctioned. Then a firework mortar went off instead of a flare, deafening the spectators.

    “You can bullshit at moments like this,” he told the Telegraph’s Elizabeth Grice, “but the best decision I made in my life was to be honest: ‘Your Majesty,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid it’s all going terribly wrong.’ Her face lit up. ‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘What fun!’ ”

    In a foreword to Parker’s memoir, Sir Cameron Mackintosh observed: “America may have given us P T Barnum and Florenz Ziegfeld, but Michael Parker in full military flood makes Andrew Lloyd Webber and me feel like wallflowers.”

    He was born Michael John Wilkins on September 21 1941 to Captain John Wilkins of the Intelligence Corps and Vera, née Parker. His father had abandoned his mother before he was born, and as she suffered from TB and was largely confined to a sanatorium, Michael was cared for by strangers and aunts. He had, by his own account, a miserable childhood, and he later took his mother’s maiden name.

    At Hereford Cathedral School he joined the CCF and to avoid returning “home” during the holidays volunteered to attend a instructor’s course, and became a cadet sergeant. Leaving school, he decided to join the Army and in September 1959 entered Sandhurst, where he cut his teeth as a showman by writing and presenting the Sandhurst Revue.

    This was a great success, and after joining the Queen’s Own Hussars, Parker quickly turned his talents to organising dances for the officers’ mess.

    At Detmold in 1964, he staged a dance with an 1812 theme in which “Moscow” was created in the garden of the Colonel’s house and burnt as the finale. As the fire took hold, however, the trees began to catch fire, threatening the house itself, which was somewhat singed. The local German fire brigade had to be summoned to douse the flames.

    Despite this near disaster Parker was soon applying his skills to the annual Berlin Tattoo, and for one such event he decided to return to the 1812 theme, almost provoking a diplomatic incident as the Russians objected to their city being burned in effigy. When it was pointed out that this was their victory and a French defeat, the French boycotted the tattoo.

    After postings as Adjutant in Singapore and at the Bergen-Hohne Garrison, Parker decided to resign his commission and to sign out in style at a regimental dance featuring a son et lumière performance based on the Battle of Trafalgar, on a small lake behind the officers’ mess at Schloss Bredebeck.

    Borrowing four assault craft from the Royal Engineers, he had them transformed into ships of the line of Nelson’s era, to be manoeuvred by clerks dressed in wet suits. Cannons made from old beer cans and packed with explosive would fire “broadsides”, and an accelerant of Parker’s concoction was poured into the bottoms of the “ships”.

    Everything progressed according to plan until a broadside caused one of the English ships to catch fire. The conflagration spread, and to resounding cheers both the British and French fleet sank because Parker’s accelerant mix was too hot and had melted the assault craft hulls.

    A board of enquiry ordered that the officers of the Queen’s Own Hussars should pay the considerable bill for the damage. The hat was passed round and guests at the dance paid up gladly, declaring it the best party they had ever attended.

    After leaving the Army Parker established a profitable antiques business with his aunt Maggie, but was called out of retirement to produce the Royal Tournament in 1974. Over the next 25 years he transformed the tournament into one of the most popular events of the year with plans based on his own intricate working models.

    But accidents would happen. At the wedding fireworks for the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer, Parker attempted to recreate the 1749 Royal fireworks display with sequences reflecting different aspects of the Prince’s life, controlled by a mass of cables leading to the control box.

    Unfortunately, just before the display the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery rode through the park, and sliced through the cables. Although they were repaired, many were connected incorrectly, so that the display bore little relation to the one described in the programme.

    “Fortunately, the Queen seemed to think it funny, and turned round from time to time to say, ‘Those don’t look like violet star bursts to me’, or ‘Was that a flight of chrysanthemum shells?”

    Despite this near disaster Parker was soon applying his skills to the annual Berlin Tattoo, and for one such event he decided to return to the 1812 theme, almost provoking a diplomatic incident as the Russians objected to their city being burned in effigy. When it was pointed out that this was their victory and a French defeat, the French boycotted the tattoo.

    After postings as Adjutant in Singapore and at the Bergen-Hohne Garrison, Parker decided to resign his commission and to sign out in style at a regimental dance featuring a son et lumière performance based on the Battle of Trafalgar, on a small lake behind the officers’ mess at Schloss Bredebeck.

    Borrowing four assault craft from the Royal Engineers, he had them transformed into ships of the line of Nelson’s era, to be manoeuvred by clerks dressed in wet suits. Cannons made from old beer cans and packed with explosive would fire “broadsides”, and an accelerant of Parker’s concoction was poured into the bottoms of the “ships”.

    Everything progressed according to plan until a broadside caused one of the English ships to catch fire. The conflagration spread, and to resounding cheers both the British and French fleet sank because Parker’s accelerant mix was too hot and had melted the assault craft hulls.

    A board of enquiry ordered that the officers of the Queen’s Own Hussars should pay the considerable bill for the damage. The hat was passed round and guests at the dance paid up gladly, declaring it the best party they had ever attended.

    After leaving the Army Parker established a profitable antiques business with his aunt Maggie, but was called out of retirement to produce the Royal Tournament in 1974. Over the next 25 years he transformed the tournament into one of the most popular events of the year with plans based on his own intricate working models.

    But accidents would happen. At the wedding fireworks for the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer, Parker attempted to recreate the 1749 Royal fireworks display with sequences reflecting different aspects of the Prince’s life, controlled by a mass of cables leading to the control box.

    Unfortunately, just before the display the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery rode through the park, and sliced through the cables. Although they were repaired, many were connected incorrectly, so that the display bore little relation to the one described in the programme.

    “Fortunately, the Queen seemed to think it funny, and turned round from time to time to say, ‘Those don’t look like violet star bursts to me’, or ‘Was that a flight of chrysanthemum shells?”

    For the Queen Mother’s 100th Birthday Parade in 2000, Parker corralled a huge procession of soldiers and civilians, featuring more than 300 charities she supported, and arranged for members of the Grocers’ Company to ride into Horse Guards Parade on camels, to represent Britain’s historic links with the spice trade:

    “Suddenly,” he recalled, “the camels spied the expanse of sand, and obviously thought they had somehow been transported home. Two of them went down on their knees, and the others followed suit. The Worshipful Grocers were all abruptly flung forwards in a flurry of blue velvet, then lurched back again as the camels’ back legs folded.”

    The jamboree to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 was Parker’s apotheosis. Among other attractions, the programme featured 22,000 performers; a rocket fired up the Mall by the Queen; the Tiller Girls; Concorde and the Red Arrows flying over Buckingham Palace at 1,500 ft; a steel band accompanying the state procession; fireworks ignited on the roof of Buckingham Palace; 5,000 gospel singers and a pop concert featuring Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Pop Idol Will Young, S Club, Atomic Kitten and Tom Jones – and the inevitable beacons.

    It was “all nicely understated”, Parker pronounced, and he was proud afterwards to be presented with a lifetime achievement award for his lifelong advocacy of Spam, the chopped pork and ham delicacy with which, he explained, he fortified himself when things seemed to be going wrong.

    In his foreword to Parker’s book, Sir Cameron Mackintosh described how, during abortive talks about how to reflect the achievements of the Armed Forces inside the Millennium Dome, Parker offered “to recreate anything from the Charge of the Light Brigade to the bombing of Dresden”, adding: “He thinks PC is an abbreviation for an officer of the law.”

    Parker never ran out of ideas. In the run-up to the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot in 2005, he announced that he wanted blow up the Houses of Parliament: “Obviously it wouldn’t be the actual building: I’d have to create a replica in Hyde Park and blow that up.”

    Major Sir Michael Parker was appointed MBE in 1968, CVO in 1991 and CBE five years later. His CVO was advanced to KCVO in 2000 following his production of the Royal Military Tattoo at Horse Guards Parade for the Millennium celebrations, and the Queen Mother’s birthday pageant.

    Late in life, he married his PA, Emma Bagwell Purefoy, who survives him with a stepson, Oliver, a stage manager.

    “I have always tried to live by my motto: Never tell people what is supposed to happen, then they won’t know when it hasn’t,” Parker wrote.

    Major Sir Michael Parker, born September 21 1941, died November 28 2022

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c65df4da26ed6ae575a83b8b05ab8348c20594e042cad478f356665b8df5cad3.jpg

    1. Her Majesty’s court jester……………You can tell from his face he very much enjoyed the jolly japes.

    2. A couple of our friends worked with him on the arty side of the Royal Tournaments. They always had a very funny – if somewhat exhausting – time with him.

  39. Yo All

    Leon Sebastian Illis FRCP had better watch his back

    Stating the obvious puts him on a par with another Doctor, David Kelly, and we all know what happened to him

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

    Debating Free Speech and the Right to Protest

    Members may have read over Christmas of the arrest of the anti-abortion campaigner Isabel Vaughan-Spruce for standing silently in a street near an abortion clinic in Birmingham (FSU Advisory Council member Prof Andrew Tettenborn wrote about it for Spiked). She has been charged with four breaches of the ‘Public Space Protection Order’ (PSPO) imposed by Birmingham Council which prohibits certain activities in the area around the clinic. It’s a fascinatingly complex case – and highly charged because the Government is about to impose ‘buffer zones’ around every abortion clinic in England and Wales. Isabel’s defenders argue that her case represents a worrying suppression of silent prayer and is a free speech issue; supporters of Birmingham Council counter that the ‘buffer zone’ within which Isabel chose to stand has been imposed to protect women from harassment while accessing legal medical treatment.

    The debate about abortion clinic ‘buffer zones’ (or ‘censorship zones’ as their opponents term them) raises many important questions about speech and protest. What constitutes protest? The anti-abortion side say they are not protesting but praying or offering ‘counselling’ to the women about to go into the clinic. What constitutes speech? Does it include images, silent prayer or singing? How does the location of speech affect society’s willingness to tolerate it? Is this the thin end of a censorious wedge, whereby it will soon become illegal to protest within ‘buffer zones’ surrounding other places? Or is it fine for the Government to legislate against a specific set of protestors because it strongly disapprove of their views?

    We are delighted that two of the main protagonists in this debate have agreed to join us at a live event in London at the end of this month to thrash out these issues: Ryan Christopher, director of pro-life group ADF International, and Ann Furedi, author of The Moral Case for Abortion and former chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). They will be joined on stage by the FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel, Bryn Harris, and FSU Case Officer Tim Cruddas, who was a serving police officer for 26 years and has, on numerous occasions, been responsible for the policing of protests and other public order incidents.

    Members who are able to get to central London on Tuesday 31st January can book tickets here. The event is open to the public, so please feel free to spread the word and encourage others to come along. Members can also join the live event free of charge via Zoom. Please register here if you’d like to watch it.

    Regional Speakeasies

    We look forward to seeing as many members as possible at our series of Regional Speakeasies taking place around the country during January and February. Please visit the Events page on our website to find the event nearest to you. Don’t forget to register for your free place and, even better, book a ticket for a friend or colleague who might be interested in finding out more about the FSU. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions of senior FSU staff and engage in discussion about the biggest free speech issues of 2023.

    Maths professors at top UK universities urge Government to protect academic freedom

    A dozen leading maths professors at top UK universities have written to Claire Coutinho, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Education, whose brief includes universities, urging the Government to pass the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill in its original form, despite opposition in the House of Lords and from the well-funded (and well-connected) higher education lobby (GB News, Telegraph, Times).

    Signatories of the letter include Prof Abhishek Saha of Queen Mary University of London, Prof Jane Hutton, a medical statistician who works at the University of Warwick, Dr Yuri Bazlov from the University of Manchester, and Prof Alan Sokal of University College London (who is arguably best known for the so-called 1996 ‘Sokal Affair’ in which he mercilessly skewered the woke-before-woke-was-a-thing field of ‘postmodern cultural studies’).

    The intervention comes in the wake of a letter to the Education Secretary that was pulled together by the FSU and signed by over 50 academics that had a similar message: “now is not the time for the Government to lose its nerve” (Telegraph).

    As the FSU has long pointed out, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is a vital piece of legislation that will strengthen the right of academics to discuss, debate, and debunk other views (you can read our most recent briefings here, here and here). Although there are already several laws protecting academic free speech on the statute books, they are more honoured in the breach than the observance. What is so promising about this Bill – at least as originally drafted – is that it provides for the enforcement of these laws. Specifically, Clause 4 created a statutory tort to enable academics and students to sue universities and students’ unions for compensation if they breach their new duties to protect free speech on campus, as set out in the Bill.

    However, this element of the legislation met with strong opposition during the Bill’s second reading and report stages in the House of Lords. In an attempt to strike a compromise, the Deputy Leader of the House, Earl Howe, subsequently tabled an amendment that would require students and academics to only seek compensation in the courts as a last resort, after first pursuing complaints through the procedures of the relevant university and England’s higher education regulator. (You can read the Government’s amendment here.)

    Commenting on the amended version of the Bill in their letter, the mathematicians wrote: “We do not think this would give us the protection that we need. Universities have vast resources and power compared to individual academics. If academics are required to exhaust all internal processes (which can take a long time) and then spend up to 12 months taking their complaint through the Office for Students before they can begin the lengthy process of going to the courts, we believe that the personal cost of raising any complaints would be far too high, rendering the system ineffective.”

    Prof Jo Phoenix, a professor of criminology and gender critical feminist who quit the Open University after it failed to protect her right to free speech in the face of attacks by transgender activists, was inclined to agree. “Horrendous” was how she described the amendment to the Telegraph, adding: “To now think that I would have to go through a lengthy complaints process, well let’s just say that this process is an excellent way that university managers can kick the problem in our universities into the long grass.”

    As it happens, this attempt by the Government to win round its critics in the Lords by essentially defanging the statutory tort didn’t work, with peers voting to scrap the clause in its entirety after Lord Willetts, who led the opposition to the statutory tort, successfully argued it would cause an excess of burdensome and costly litigation for universities to deal with (Telegraph, Times Higher).

    Claire Coutinho has since suggested that the government will now “dig its heels” in over Clause 4. But the question remains: which version of Clause 4 does Ms Coutinho have in mind? The minister has since stated that the Government remains “resolute in our commitment that academics and speakers will have the right to go to court where this fundamental right has been denied”, which leaves open the possibility of the tort being restored in its original form (Telegraph). Yet while speaking at an Office for Students event in December, Ms Coutinho also stated that the right to sue should be a last resort, which effectively brings back into play the ‘compromise’ the Government proposed but which the Lords rejected.

    The FSU believes the statutory tort is what gives the legislation’s new free speech duties teeth, and if that’s defanged, the Bill will be much less effective. As Baroness Fox pointed out during the debate at report stage, one only has to look at the FSU’s case files to find hundreds of examples of students and academics who were suspended and went through disciplinary procedures for misspeaking or saying the wrong thing that would have been treated a lot better had they had the right to sue universities in the county court.

    Why? Because as the mathematicians explain in their letter, “The very existence of the possibility of legal remedy will send a clear signal to universities that they must take academic freedom seriously. A new statutory tort will incentivize higher education organisations to prioritise values around free speech in the same way that the tort in the Equality Act 2010 has incentivized them to prioritise values around anti-discrimination.”

    MPs will consider the Lords’ amendments when the Bill returns to the House of Commons later this month. In the meantime, the FSU will be lobbying Ms Coutinho to restore the tort as it originally appeared and not in a neutered form.

    Arif Ahmed shortlisted to be Government’s new Director of Freedom of Speech

    Prof Arif Ahmed, a professor of philosophy at Cambridge, is the frontrunner in the race to become what the Telegraph are calling “the Government’s new Free Speech Champion”. The position, formally known as the Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom, will be created via the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, with the chosen candidate appointed to the board of the independent regulator for higher education in England, the Office for Students (OfS).

    The very fact that this role exists is a timely corrective to the claim frequently made by the Bill’s critics – both in the House of Lords (Collins, Coventry, D’Souza, Wallace, Willetts) and the professional higher education lobby – that the establishment of a new statutory tort enabling students and academics to sue their universities if they breach the new free speech duties will cause an excess of frivolous, burdensome and costly litigation for universities.

    It is virtually certain, for instance, that a judge would pressure any claimant to exhaust the OfS route before proceeding with a claim in the civil courts – and the claimant would risk significant adverse costs if he or she proceeded in those circumstances. In that sense, the Director will be the first port of call in any complaint procedure, investigating possible breaches of free speech legal duties, such as universities no-platforming speakers or dismissing academics because of their views, and advising the OfS on imposing fines. The scheme will be informal and free to use. Like any public decision-maker, the legality of his or her decisions will be reviewable by the High Court. This is a proportionate, sensible solution for those many cases where someone has been treated unfairly and court proceedings would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut – for instance, a student disciplined for saying the ‘wrong’ thing. But for the more serious cases, the alternative remedy – taking a university to the county court – also needs to be in place.

    Prof Ahmed has said that one of his biggest concerns about freedom of speech on campuses is the “direct intimidation and cancellation of speakers and academics” (FT, Mail, Times). He has also criticised universities “race awareness” training, which asks academics to “assume racism is everywhere”. He said some universities are taking “a corporate position on contentious issues” and are demonstrating a micro-management of speech, typically via harassment and discrimination policies (Times).

    In December, the professor was appointed to the board of the Government’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, a group of experts charged with enforcing equalities legislation (Telegraph).

    Will he get the OfS role too? He certainly faces tough competition from other shortlisted candidates, including Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank and a former special adviser to Lord Willetts, the Conservative peer (Times Higher). The Telegraph says that Lord Willetts is among those pushing for Mr Hillman to be appointed to the role.

    Psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson ordered to undergo political re-education by Canadian regulatory body

    Canadian psychologist and best-selling author Dr Jordan Peterson has been told by a government-regulated licensing body for practicing clinical psychologists in Canada that he must undergo “social media communications retraining” or face an in-person tribunal and potential suspension of his medical license (Epoch Times, New York Post, Reclaim the Net, Spectator Australia). Naturally, he’s refused.

    “I practiced for 20 years without being investigated, this only started when I became a prominent public figure,” Dr Peterson told the Toronto Sun. He has a point. Only around a dozen complaints have apparently ever been made about him to the regulator, and they’ve all occurred in the past four-years – a period that coincides almost exactly with his rise to fame following a series of viral video lectures that were highly critical of ‘woke’ politics (Spectator). The psychologist also alleges that many of the complainants “falsely claimed that they were or had been clients of mine”.

    The College of Psychologists of Ontario is apparently obliged to consider any written complaint filed against a member, but can decide to take no action upon completion of a preliminary investigation (Daily Wire). However, having reviewed the latest tranche of complaints made by woke activists concerned members of the public, College Executive Director Rick Morris decided they warranted a full investigation. Following this high-level inquisition, the College of Psychologists of Ontario has demanded that Mr Peterson repent, acknowledging he “lacked professionalism” in public statements, and undergo a “coaching program” (Daily Wire).

    The alleged Twitter transgressions include Tweets in which Peterson called Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau a “puppet”, described Trudeau’s former senior aide, Gerald Butts, as a “stunningly corrupt and incendiary fool” and a “prick”, and clips from Peterson’s January 25th, 2022 appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast in which he claimed that acceptance of radical gender theory is a sign of “civilisation collapsing”, and that climate change models are unreliable (Mail).

    In other words, it’s perfectly lawful speech, which is all that should concern a professional licencing body. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “professional bodies are supposed to ensure that practitioners are competent, not enforce political orthodoxies or act as language police outside the office”.

    Not that the College of Psychologists of Ontario sees it that way. “The impact risk in this case is significant,” the body’s clinical inquisition concluded, because the comments “may cause harm”. It counselled Mr Peterson that a stint in a re-education camp would help “mitigate any risks to the public”. And there it is. The mantra that woke progressives clutch to like a tiny amulet against interrogation by post-Enlightenment logic and reason: “Language is a weapon, words can wound.” From the moment the intellectual titans of the 1970s ‘linguistic turn’ in the social sciences and humanities started exploring the ‘postmodern’ implications of Nietzsche’s aphoristic claim that reality is nothing more than “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms” it was only a matter of time before third and fourth rate minds in the generations that succeeded them started taking literally the throwaway military metaphor that everyone’s favourite nihilist had used in order to articulate his broader, philosophical point about truth, power and epistemology. As the Chinese proverb so aptly reminds us, when someone points at the moon, only a fool looks at their finger.

    In a scathing letter to Justin Trudeau, Mr Peterson has since vowed not to participate in the process and condemned the regulator’s effort to stifle free speech. “I simply cannot resign myself to the fact that in my lifetime I am required to resort to a public letter to the leader of my country to point out that political criticism has now become such a crime in Canada that if professionals dare engage in such activity, government-appointed commissars will threaten their livelihood and present them with the spectacle of denouncement and political disgrace,” Peterson wrote. “There is simply and utterly no excuse whatsoever for such a state of affairs in a free country.” (National Post).

    Dr Peterson’s experience highlights the changing role of professional organisations in regulating the behaviour – and speech – of their members. Where once these bodies would restrict themselves to upholding professional standards in the workplace, they now seem intent on collapsing entirely the distinction between occupational and private life.

    In Canada alone, for instance, the Law Society of Ontario has been pushing for a mandatory diversity pledge for all lawyers, while the province of British Columbia recently passed a law that can result in doctors being jailed for up to two years if they are found to have spread certain types of “false or misleading information”, e.g. face masks don’t prevent transmission of Covid-19.

    Similarly, over in the UK the FSU has had a glut of recent cases in which employees from a wide range of occupational backgrounds have got into trouble with their professional associations simply for expressing their entirely lawful beliefs outside the workplace.

    Social worker and FSU member Rachel Meade, for instance, was recently sanctioned by Social Work England (SWE), the regulatory body for social workers, for Facebook posts on her private account that criticised some aspects of the transgender rights movement. SWE found Rachel Meade’s “fitness to practice was impaired by way of misconduct”, and argued that her actions had the potential to undermine public confidence in social workers even though there was no evidence her actual work had been affected (Mail, Times).

    Barrister Sarah Phillimore was investigated by the Bar Standards Board over a period of two years over complaints that she had caused ‘offence’ by tweeting about her gender critical beliefs – thanks, in part, to our help those allegations have now been dismissed.

    Then there’s James Esses, a former barrister who we’ve helped in the past. James recently won the right to sue the UK Council for Psychotherapy for discrimination over allegations the regulator instructed the Metanoia Institute in London, where he was studying, to have him thrown off his Masters course in psychotherapy for expressing gender critical views (Mail).

    The FSU is campaigning for an amendment to the Employment Rights Act 1996 to make it impossible for companies to discipline staff for saying non-woke things outside of the workplace. Increasingly we’re finding that it isn’t HR departments per se, but external professional bodies and regulators that give the policing of this out-of-office behaviour the momentum that it otherwise might not have.

    Happy New Year,

    2. “…and Ann Furedi, author of The Moral Case for Abortion and former chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).”

      Shouldn’t the British Pregnancy Advisory Service be renamed “The British ABORTION Advisory Service”?

  42. Seems another ‘local derby match’ is on the verge of kicking off again….

    “Turkish media is confirming a major incident between a Turkish coast guard vessel and a Greek coast guard patrol boat on Thursday, describing that the Greek patrol was harassing Turkish fishing boats before Turkish coast guard authorities intervened. But Athens has countered that it was the Turkish side harassing Greek vessels.

    Both sides are saying warning shots were fired and are attributing acts of aggression to the other side: “A Greek coast guard patrol boat’s crew fired warning shots early Thursday to deter a Turkish coast guard vessel that was trying to ram them in the eastern Aegean Sea, authorities in Athens said, as tensions between the two neighbours remain high,” the Associated Press reports.

    The Greek coast guard statement continued by saying “the crew fired warning shots in a secure sector and the Turkish coast guard vessel withdrew” toward the Turkey’s coast line, indicating the shots were not fired directly toward the opposing vessel, but in the air.

    It further said the Turkish side “carried out dangerous manuevers with the intention of ramming” the Greek vessel. Greece is saying the encounter occurred just off the Greek islet of Farmakonissi, describing that it was 1.5 nautical miles (or 1.7 miles) inside Greece’s territorial waters.

    These types of ramming incidents have become more frequent over the past years, despite there being relative quiet throughout much of 2022 in comparison with past years.

    However, there’s been persisting threats coming out of both sides, with speculation in Greek media that Erdogan could be planning war, and to take control of Greek territorial waters especially in the Aegean. Cyprus has also condemned frequent incursions into its waters as illegal.”

    1. FFS Where are the navy gunners?
      What did our parents and grandparents fight a war for. Not to be invaded by this scum.

  44. Morning All

    Specccie Aus on the clotshot…..

    “At the World Health Summit in 2021, Stefan Oelrich, head of

    pharmaceuticals at Bayer said ‘mRNA vaccines are an example of cell and

    gene therapy,’ and marvelled that ‘If we had surveyed the public two

    years ago (and asked) ‘Would you be willing to take a gene or cell

    therapy and inject it into your body we would have probably had a 95 per

    cent refusal rate’. But as the unexplained excess death rate continues

    to rise alarmingly in Australia, it’s long past time for the gene

    technology regulator to halt the use of the Covid vaccines until their

    safety can be demonstrated.”

    https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/are-genetically-modified-vaccines-safe/

    An Oncologist speaks out…….

    https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1610199630545039363?cxt=HHwWhsDRwYyCytgsAAAA
    The evidence mounts inexorably no matter how they try to repress it…..

    1. I would advise mature post clotshot gents to get their PSA checked. I am hearing the odd disturbing anecdote.

      1. That’s ominous, my GP has sent me for further blood tests after my appointment and check up, and specifically mentioned PSA.

        Do you have any other information or links on that please?

        1. The PSA is not terribly accurate.
          What is more worrying if a patient whose PSA has been burbling along quite happily starts rising for no apparent reason.
          There can be reasons other than the dreaded Big C, but given that the clot shot is new and comes in different forms, I think it’s a good idea to keep an enquiring mind; and discus any disquiet.

    2. I read recently that Covid was engineered in US funded research laboratories as a bio-weapon. The mRNA vaccines were similarly engineered as counter-measures.

      There were no animal trials, no testing and no clinical trials. Government funded contracts for the manufacture, supply and administration of the Covid vaccines gave exemption from liability to all parties.

      A perfect recipe for disaster as we see unfolding before our very eyes.

    1. Horse?
      More horse’s ass. Or just ass.
      What ever prompted him to publish this drivel? BTW, he gets a drubbing in Aftenposten, who call it embarrasing.

    3. They were clearly just muling about which explains why she spanked the stallion’s donkey?

  46. Common Purpose works its magic,,,,,,,,,,Spiked

    The fact that Hussain appears to have settled into senior

    diversity-and-inclusion roles in the NHS tells an all-too-common story

    of failed governance in modern-day Britain. It is a reminder that there

    are far too many public-sector officials who are steeped in sectarian

    identity politics. And as the grooming-gangs scandal illustrates, this

    is a politics that often comes into conflict with the state’s other

    duties, to promote genuine social cohesion and to look after the most

    vulnerable.

    It is high time that Britain challenged this identitarian ideology

    that runs so counter to the wider public interest. Sectarian activists

    should not wield such influence in the British state.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/01/05/rotherham-and-moral-rot-of-identity-politics/

    1. Clearly he has learned lessons from his previous experiences and is rehabilitated, and thus ideal for his new role
      /sarc

    2. Basically both seen to be undermining our social structure and long established culture, at the same time.
      No good will come to light from the inheritant ongoing mistakes made by public sector officials. And their partners in crime. Politicians.

  48. BBC Headline news.

    Census data has for the first time revealed the size of LGBT+ populations in England and Wales. .
    The results of the questionnaire reveal that 748,000 people say they are gay or lesbian, and 624,000 identify as bisexual.
    On gender identity, 262,000 people said their gender identity was different to their sex registered at birth.

    They should have asked outside of the BBC, they might have found a few more. Good ‘ole YouGov.

    Ministerial Foreword

    This government is committed to making the UK a country that works
    for everyone. We want to strip away the barriers that hold people back so
    that everyone can go as far as their hard work and talent can take them.
    The UK today is a diverse and tolerant society. We have made great
    strides in recent decades in our acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
    transgender (LGBT) people, who make a vital contribution to our culture
    and to our economy.
    This government has a proud record in advancing equality for LGBT
    people. From changing the law to allow same-sex couples to marry to
    introducing Turing Pardons, we have been at the forefront of change.
    The UK has consistently been recognised as one of the best countries
    for LGBT rights in Europe.

    1. Ermmm it seems they selected their targets to answer the questionnaires. Not unusual for the BBC.
      And the government have backed this ?
      Who voted for this ?

      1. I’m presuming they’re talking about the 2021 Census, so there shouldn’t be any cherry picking.

    2. What an ENORMOUS number. Almost a majority of the population. Shows why we need to adapt…(sarc)

    3. I often wonder what proportion of these providing the information are telling the truth.

      Recall that in one census Jedi was listed as their religion by over 300,000 people, down to few hundreds in the most recent.

    4. Given that, whatever the official figure, the population of the UK is now at least 80m, that’s approx 2%. Of course some think it right and proper to judge the 98% by how they treat the 2%. Not that there can be much evidence of the 2% being treated badly?

    5. “The UK today is a diverse and tolerant society. We have made great strides in recent decades in our acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people …” Have they told the muslims?

  49. More sense from Dalrymple

    The university has almost as many administrators as students, in the way that the Bolivian navy had admirals; and in the absences of any other or higher purpose, administrators do not administer, they manufacture administration. They do so both to give themselves things to do and, if possible, to create a need for even more of their kind. A director of something or other soon needs a deputy director; he or she then needs an assistant deputy director, and he or she needs a personal assistant who will soon be so overwhelmed by work that he or she will need a deputy also. And all this, of course, requires the hard work of the human resources department, to ensure that the appointed persons are demographically representative of the general population—only more so, some groups needing special protection like endangered species.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/cuckoo-policies/

  50. Dear Nottlers,

    We hope that all Nottlers’ New Years have started well and will continue well.

    Poppiesmum tops the list on January 2nd but we shall have nine more January birthdays this month..

    Please let me know if there are any Nottlers who would like to be added to the list and please let me know of any errors or omissions?

    Best wishes,

    Rastus (Richard)

    02 January – 1947 : Poppiesmum
    07 January – **** : Lady of the Lake
    08 January – 1941 : Rough Common
    09 January – **** : thayaric
    10 January – 1960 : hopon
    16 January – 1941 : Bill Thomas (Legal Beagle/Eeyore)
    18 January – **** : Stormy (Strm in a D Cup)
    21 January – **** : Nagsman
    23 January – 1951 : Damask Rose (Ruth)
    23 January – 1960 : Kifaru
    27 January – 1948 : Citroen 1

    10 February -1949 : Korky the Kat (Dandy Front Pager)
    11 February- 1964 : Phizzee
    22 February- 1965 : AW Kamau
    22 February- 1951 : Grizzly
    24 February- 1941 : Sguest
    28 February- 1956 :Jeremy Morfey
    29 February- **** : Ped

    02 March- **** : Garlands
    05 March—– 1957 : Sue MacFarlane
    08 March—– 1957 : Geoff Graham
    26 March—– 1962 : Caroline Tracey
    27 March—– 1947 : Maggiebelle
    27 March—– 1941 : Fallick Alec

    19 April——- 1954 : Devonian in Kent
    22 April——–1950 :Jay Sands
    26 April——- **** : Harry Kobeans

    18 May———****: Hertslass
    24 May——– 1944 : NoToNanny (Tom)

    02 June——–1939: Clydesider
    08 June——– **** : Still Bleau
    09 June——- 1947 : Johnny Norfolk
    09 June——– 1947 : Horace Pendleton
    23 June——– 1961 : Oberstleutnant (Paul)
    25 June——– 1952 : corimmobile

    01 July——— 1946 : Rastus C Tastey (Richard)
    12 July——— 1956 : David Wainwright/Stigenace
    18 July——— 1941: lacoste
    19 July——— 1948: Ndovu (Jules)
    21 July———-1960: Tier5Inmate
    26 July——— 1936 : Delboy
    29 July———- 1944 : Lewis Duckworth
    30 July———- 1946 : Alf the Great

    01 August—— 1950 : Datz
    03 August—— 1954 : molamola
    10 August—— 1967 : ourmaninmunich
    14 August ——-1944 jillthelass
    18 August—— **** : ashesthandust
    19 August——- 1951 : Hugh Janus

    04 September- 1948 : Joseph B Fox
    07 September- 1946 : Araminta Smade
    11 September- 1947 : peddytheviking
    12 September- 1946 : Ready Eddy
    13 September- **** : Anne Allan
    15 September- **** : veryveryveryoldfella
    26 September- **** : Feargal the Cat
    30 September 1944 : One Last Try

    07 October—– 1960 : Bob 3
    11 October—– 1944 : Hardcastle Craggs
    24 October——-1948: Jonathan Rackham
    25 October—– 1955 : Sue Edison

    12 November- ***** : Cochrane

    01 December– 1956 : Sean Stanley-Adams
    06 December– 1943 : Duncan Mac
    10 December– **** : Aethelfled
    16 December– **** : Plum
    21 December– 1945 : Elsie Bloodaxe

    (E&OE)

    1. I’m a 1979, the Warqueen 77. And seeing you folks, I wonder how I’ll cope when we dwindle away. You’re all incredibly special to me. The jokes, the asides, the support, the wisdom, the experience of simply knowing you all.

      Happy birthday, and thank youto everyone in advance

    2. Thank you, Richard, but there seem to be many on that list (11) who don’t contribute any more or very rarely. They are

      09 January – **** : thayaric
      10 January – 1960 : hopon
      22 February- 1965 : AW Kamau
      19 April——- 1954 : Devonian in Kent
      22 April——–1950 :Jay Sands
      26 April——- **** : Harry Kobeans
      09 June——– 1947 : Horace Pendleton
      01 August—— 1950 : Datz
      10 August—— 1967 : ourmaninmunich
      11 September- 1947 : peddytheviking
      12 November- ***** : Cochrane

      2. All the best people have a birthday in April.

        Just saying (as the kidz would say)

      3. Some of them do pop in from time to time (thayaric, Devonian in Kent, hopon have posted recently).

  51. Dear Nottlers,

    We hope that all Nottlers’ New Years have started well and will continue well.

    Poppiesmum tops the list on January 2nd but we shall have nine more January birthdays this month..

    Please let me know if there are any Nottlers who would like to be added to the list and please let me know of any errors or omissions?

    Best wishes,

    Rastus (Richard)

    02 January – 1947 : Poppiesmum
    07 January – **** : Lady of the Lake
    08 January – 1941 : Rough Common
    09 January – **** : thayaric
    10 January – 1960 : hopon
    16 January – 1941 : Legal Beagle
    18 January – **** : Stormy
    21 January – **** : Nagsman
    23 January – 1951 : Damask Rose (Ruth)
    23 January – 1960 : Kifaru
    27 January – 1948 : Citroen 1

    10 February -1949 : Korky the Kat (Dandy Front Pager)
    11 February- 1964 : Phizzee
    22 February- 1965 : AW Kamau
    22 February- 1951 : Grizzly
    24 February- 1941 : Sguest
    28 February- 1956 :Jeremy Morfey
    29 February- **** : Ped

    02 March- **** : Garlands
    05 March—– 1957 : Sue MacFarlane
    08 March—– 1957 : Geoff Graham
    26 March—– 1962 : Caroline Tracey
    27 March—– 1947 : Maggiebelle
    27 March—– 1941 : Fallick Alec

    19 April——- 1954 : Devonian in Kent
    22 April——–1950 :Jay Sands
    26 April——- **** : Harry Kobeans

    18 May———****: Hertslass
    24 May——– 1944 : NoToNanny

    02 June——–1939: Clydesider
    08 June——– **** : Still Bleau
    09 June——- 1947 : Johnny Norfolk
    09 June——– 1947 : Horace Pendleton
    23 June——– 1961 : Oberstleutnant
    25 June——– 1952 : corimmobile

    01 July——— 1946 : Rastus C Tastey (Richard)
    12 July——— 1956 : David Wainwright/Stigenace
    18 July——— 1941: lacoste
    19 July——— 1948: Ndovu
    21 July———-1960: Tier5Inmate
    26 July——— 1936 : Delboy
    29 July———- 1944 : Lewis Duckworth
    30 July———- 1946 : Alf the Great

    01 August—— 1950 : Datz
    03 August—— 1954 : molamola
    10 August—— 1967 : ourmaninmunich
    14 August ——-1944 jillthelass
    18 August—— **** : ashesthandust
    19 August——- 1951 : Hugh Janus

    04 September- 1948 : Joseph B Fox
    07 September- 1946 : Araminta Smade
    11 September- 1947 : peddytheviking
    12 September- 1946 : Ready Eddy
    13 September- **** : Anne Allan
    15 September- **** : veryveryveryoldfella
    26 September- **** : Feargal the Cat
    30 September 1944 : One Last Try

    07 October—– 1960 : Bob 3
    11 October—– 1944 : Hardcastle Craggs
    24 October——-1948: Jonathan Rackham
    25 October—– 1955 : Sue Edison

    12 November- ***** : Cochrane

    01 December– 1956 : Sean Stanley-Adams
    06 December– 1943 : Duncan Mac
    10 December– **** : Aethelfled
    16 December– **** : Plum
    21 December– 1945 : Elsie Bloodaxe

    (E&OE)

  52. On the back of the CV-19 “vaccines” the USA regulator, the FDA, is surging ahead with new moves to cut corners and save money.
    Coming in a needle to an arm near you, or maybe in a bubble pack or even an old fashioned bottle, no matter, they’re out to target you.

    Courtesy of the Jaxan Report from this week’s The Highwire.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0cb6cfc6a2f674d4c39d92075b4501ac34bc4e56d0ba95d5c2804f2a44f234c.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5b28c2a2f56fcacfb64ecedd497549006f9aebc3cb15e30f88904c75731411d.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a5d69e9f1fedaed885aa5a0ad3d1c5cf5d5ef4b83b5eab9f5620e7dc32e67019.png

      1. Yo Minty

        The Tests are still carried out, on the masses.

        If they fail, ie you die, the WEF/Great Reset lower population levels, which is why they introduced Convid in
        the first place

      2. Yo Minty

        The Tests are still carried out, on the masses.

        If they fail, ie you die, the WEF/Great Reset lower population levels, which is why they introduced Convid in
        the first place

    2. Because computer modelling has proved so reliable of course, not! As for the virtual patients created and programmed to produce the desired result, maybe that makes it safe for R2-D2 and C-3PO (should there be a covid outbreak on Tatooine) but if it kills humans well, hey, there’s 8 billion of those. So what if we lose a few billion.

    4. The only way of testing the safety of a drug in a population is to try the drug on a representative sample of the population and see how many suffer harm over a defined period as a consequence.
      There are various reasons why this is impossible to realistically achieve but one of the better alternatives to measuring drug safety was to evaluate a patient’s susceptibity to heart failure given the elongation of their heart’s QTc interval.
      This however was only achievable by knowing the patient’s QTc interval and the drug’s evaluated QTc elongation.
      This was indeed the case when Trump waa assessed for the safety in precribing one of his COVID remedies.

      The safety of drugs thus required all new drugs to be assessed for QTc elongation. This was known as a total QT assessment. To my knowledge this idea never really took off and I believe that the uptake was suppressed because it would dramatically inhibit the rollout of experimental drugs by Big Pharma.

      Instead there was the prevalent use of existing tested drugs that were not specically developed for treating a known diagnosed illness but seemed to have possibilies of working for some parts of a population in treating their specific illness. These are repurposed drugs and are prescribed as being off label because their use for a condition is not printrd on the label.

  53. Leak reveals Roman Abramovich’s billion-dollar trusts transferred before Russia sanctions. 6 January 2023.

    Trusts holding billions of dollars of assets for Roman Abramovich were amended to transfer beneficial ownership to his children shortly before sanctions were imposed on the Russian oligarch.

    Leaked files seen by the Guardian suggest 10 secretive offshore trusts established to benefit Abramovich were rapidly reorganised in early February 2022, three weeks before the start of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

    The sweeping reorganisation of Abramovich’s financial affairs commenced just days after governments threatened to impose sanctions against Russian oligarchs in the event of an invasion.

    Good! I don’t doubt that he had insider information here and I don’t mean from Russia! I don’t personally have any objections. As far as I’m concerned these seizures of private assets are straightforward theft. If the Russians or Chinese threatened to steal Bill Gates’s or Elon Musk’s cash there would be screams of fury.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/06/roman-abramovich-trusts-transfer-leak-russia-sanctions

    1. It was said that Russian money was moved before the banks in Cyprus executed a ‘hair cut’ on those with more than €100k a while back.

    1. It’s hard to believe that they would spread anything like that, because it would be completely undiscriminating in its victims.

      1. I suppose it depends if certain people have been inoculated against possible infections from bites.

    1. Dr Lutchmedial…HA! HA! HA!
      breathe
      HA! HA! HA! (a pity the text doesn’t get louder)
      I really resent that these bastards have made me a hard-hearted bugger. I wasn’t before, but now I hope he woke up (sic) and realised he was dying of a heart attack likely brought on by his precious clot-shot.
      Now he saw what it was like for Brother-in-law.

      1. It is sad, that he had the ability to pass exams, yet was unable to think for himself, even given the advantage of specialist knowledge that the rest of us didn’t have.

        1. One of our good friends isn’t just gormless – he lacks any gorm at all. He has a first class degree in Modern Languages from Oxford and is exceptionally well-read and widely travelled and yet he seems to have no common sense at all.

          However he writes very well and has a very good sense of humour when he writes; but he is clumsy and inarticulate when he speaks. He is kind-hearted and generous-spirited and is always very attentive to the ladies but with absolutely no success at all because he lacks charm as well as gorm.

  58. Good Morrow, Gentlefolk. Here is today’s story, a men-only one for vw:

    DfWP Interview

    Paddy McCoy, an elderly Irish farmer, received a letter from the Department for Work & Pensions stating that they suspected he was not paying his employees the statutory minimum wage and they would send an inspector to interview them.

    On the appointed day, the inspector turned up. “Tell me about your staff,” he asked Paddy.

    “Well,” said Paddy, “there’s the farm hand, I pay him £240 a week, and he has a free cottage.

    Then there’s the housekeeper. She gets £190 a week, along with free board and lodging.

    There’s also the half-wit. He works a 16-hour day, does 90% of the work, earns about £25 a week along with a bottle of whisky and, as a special treat, occasionally gets to sleep with my wife.”

    “That’s disgraceful” said the inspector, “I need to interview the half-wit.”

    “That’ll be me then,” said Paddy.

  59. Warning for Harry. Sky News reporting that a Senior Taliban leader has hit out at Harry’s
    over “25”Taliban kills. The leader says they were not chess pieces

      1. Probably too lazy to read the script that was written for him by some Californian American Literature graduate working for the publishing house.

    3. Not only has he painted a target on his own back he has painted the rest of the RF including the King and Queen Consort. Chess pieces indeed.

        1. After their books that will probably be the only option. Talk about burning bridges. They will be so toxic not even Hollywood will touch them.

          1. The US media is already criticising them. My friends have no time for them.
            Hell, if I want to read fantasy, I’ll read Harry Potter not Harry Windsor.

  61. That was rather a pleasant drive!
    Into Derby, picked up Stepson for the drive to the auctioneers, stopping off en route at Asfordby to buy some things from the butcher’s there and have a tea & bacon & egg cob in the village cafe.
    Then through Melton Mowbray and on to Colsterworth.

    The drive along the A6006 to Melton goes through some beautiful countryside and, with the rising sun, was looking at its best! Sadly, it has now clouded over and turned wet. Having a mug of tea at the moment and am heading into Matlock to pick up some strops from Twiggs.

    1. Still quite nice and sunny here. If we hadn’t been out all morning I’d have done some washing & hung it out. Probably be wet again tomorrow.

  64. Tricky five today

    Wordle 566 5/6

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

    1. Me too.

      Wordle 566 5/6

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

    4. Par Four for me.

      Wordle 566 4/6
      ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟩
      🟨⬜🟨⬜🟩
      🟩🟨⬜⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    5. Par, but think I should have done better.
      Wordle 566 4/6

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

  65. Afternoon all! Busy morning – first outing for OH since his release from hospital – first to the pharmacy to collect his prescription, then to the surgery, for the appointment with the nurse, for his 3 monthly injection. She thinks he’s doing well, and as I’ve told him, it’s completely normal to be feeling tired after the assault his body has been through.

    Then to Morrisons, where a funny thing happened – I came face to face (or trolley to trolley) with my ex-husband for the first time in 10 years. I said “Good morning” and he stared at me and said “Do I know you?” I replied “Well you used to!” and an old chap nearby said “must be memory loss!” I just walked on. Not sure if his partner recognised me either, but at least she smiled.

    1. Your answer should have been in the biblical sense. That would have raised a few questions.

      After my heart surgery, my GP told me to forget all of the quick recovery estimates they gave me before I left hospital. He said that it takes several weeks for the anesthetics to really wear offend a few months before I would feel normal.

      Recovery was made worse by the number of drugs I was supposed to take. – beta blockers, ace inhibitors and so on. Once we got away from better safe than sorry, things improved.

      1. He has an enormous number of drugs to take – trying to get even a telephone appointment to discuss then with the GP is difficult. They gave him a two week supply from the hospital, but the earliest phone appt is 14th Jan.

        1. You should be able to get a repeat from the hospital if you contact the surgeon’s secretary or department.

          1. I’ve asked the GP receptionist to enter them on their system so he can order them directly.

    3. Keeping it cordial is best for everyone. He may have been being sarcastic but still best ignored.

        1. A few years back, at my sister-in-law’s funeral, my niece arrived with an unknown woman. Being sociable, I asked who she was – “I was married to you for 15 years,” she replied. I simply did not recognise her. She had completely changed her appearance.

          1. I was married to my ex for nearly 24 years, including time separated before the divorce went through. I don’t think I look that different, apart from white hair now.

      1. They never discuss him! They went over on Boxing day and stayed the night then were back here for a couple more days.

        Another funny incident a few years back – they’d met him for a drink in a local pub, and I went to pick Ed up later on. He said they weren’t ready to leave and I might as well come in. So I did, and sat down at the same table and he ignored me completely. We’ve now been divorced 30 years I’m glad to say. But I seemed to catch him off guard this morning. I really can’t imagine what life would have been like if I’d still been with him.

    5. The older you are, the longer it takes to get back up to strength after a hospital stay.
      Keep encouraging the old boy – he’ll likely get quite down as a result of waning powers.
      Maybe even take a leaf out of Harry’s book, and think stallion…? light the fire with it?

      1. He’s never come to terms with his real age – if anyone asked he was always 42. But this really has knocked him for six – he’s lost a lot of muscle ( and he was always small and slight). The nurse suggested some gentle yoga excercises to build himself up a bit, and plenty of good protein.
        He seemed a bit institutionalised when he first came home, but he’s doing more things for himself now.

        1. Had similar when I came home after the stroke… lots of sleeping in the sofa whilst what was left of the brain rewired itself, but refused to allow myself to ease off – was at work, as hard as I could remain standing, as soon as I could, to try to get back up to speed – but I can’t. No way. It’s a real downer so be sympathetic and kind and positive to him, it’ll (mentally) be like emasculation, I suspect. It was for me.

  66. Passport renewal update.

    Application made yesterday afternoon. Old passport arrived at the Passport Office this morning.
    This just through:
    “Your passport application has been approved.
    What happens next
    Your new passport is being printed. We’ll let you know when it’s ready to dispatch.”

    1. Submitted driving licence renewal application on 31st Dec. Arrived by Royal Mail today

    2. And you say that the UK us in a mess?

      Canadian passport office bought some more plastic chairs so that people waiting to join the queue inside the passport office have somewhere to sit!

      1. I suspect the apparent efficiency is due to the UK driving licence rapidly morphing into the formal ID document.

      2. I think the Passport Office got a major rollicking a year or so ago so wouldn’t be at all surprised if a lot of dosh was shovelled at it to recruit more staff….

    3. Ours took about 8 days start to finish at the beginning of summer last year to renew, unbelievable!

    4. Latest passport renewal, to here in yer Norway, was about 10 days from initial application & sending in the old one to receipt of the new. They seem to have finally got their act together.

  68. Nice walk on a grey day – but relatively mild. Just had the bill for leccy for three weeks in December. = £482 (before the “rebate”…. Thank God for my private pension. And that the MR still works…..

      1. If you haven’t had an electricity bill for a while you may be in for a shock. My last Gas bill for 4 weeks was £502.36 (and that was after a £199 Energy Price Guarantee subsidy!!!!)

        1. We were paying £66 a month. That spiked to £170. It’s utterly criminal. Worse, there is no interest from the state in making energy affordable ever again. It wants this to force down demand.

        2. We were paying £66 a month. That spiked to £170. It’s utterly criminal. Worse, there is no interest from the state in making energy affordable ever again. It wants this to force down demand.

          2. Massive acceleration forward, slam the brakes on, lift the prowl, haul her over and be facing the other way?

          3. Just one small technical point – even gunning the engine at 3,000rpm a boat that length weighing around 20 tonnes is unlikely to achieve more than 10mph…..

          7. The well known Hamilton turn or “jet spin” is a high-speed manoeuvre where the
            boat’s engine throttle is cut, the steering is turned sharply and the
            throttle opened again, causing the boat to spin quickly around with a
            large spray of water.

        2. Well, why can’t the rowers move to the other end of the boat and start rowing the other way? Train drivers seem to do that, don’t they? Lol.

      2. One would need a 70foot winding hole or a junction of two canals to complete a U turn in that length of boat…

    1. Perhaps they all have afternoon tea? We always did at home when I was young. Dinner was at midday.

    4. I have been munching chicken wings with blue cheese sauce. After doing a lot of jobs the last two days I needed an early snack.

      1. I don’t normally anything until my elevenses, Ann, but this morning I was very hungry so had a bacon sandwich. Not a good start to the New Year’s diet.

    5. Moh came home from golf at 15.30 , rather damp , he had a cheese roll and a mug of tea , I fed the dogs , put the drier on to dry the laundry . Sat down watched the Repair shop .. nodded off , Moh was also asleep , woke up , realising we had forgotten to collect my car from the garage , 12 miles away, and have no idea whether it passed its MOT.

      Gave the dogs a walk on the heath at lunchtime , older dog is very slow now , but still loves to sniff for rabbits . The last time I visited
      there , younger dog rolled in fox poo .. the knack is to keep him away from rabbit burrows where the fox must hang out .

      Then I did some shopping , the courtesy car I was given was an old tiny Peugoet.. so the dogs sat in the front, the younger one was on the front seat , pheasant spotting .. My own car has a nice comfy dog crate in the back .

      Pouring with rain from about 14.30 and a stiff breeze .

      What a total Wassock the idle prince is .. he has endangered us all , I hope the Taliban stay clear of our RTRand the ranges .

      1. I wormed the dogs this morning. Oscar wolfed the tablets down, thankfully. Kadi left them (I’d put them in their meat), but he didn’t offer any resistance when I put them down his throat. Thank goodness it wasn’t the other way round!

    7. I’ve been preparing a Beef Stroganoff to eat at around 7 pm on a bed of rice with a glass of white wine. (The Beef Stroganoff will be on the bed of rice; the glass of wine will be in my tummy.)

        1. It was very yummy, Ann, but I am quite tired after a long day and will now go to bed to have an early night. Good night, everyone. Sleep well.

  71. Lots of light, slippery snow out there – white & fun!
    SWMBO wonders about “the blonde-ness of snow” – why does snow on the ground turn folk into idiots? Both on foot & in cars.

  72. The House Representatives are voting on the Election of Speaker Live: https://live.house.gov

    Up to the e,s in the name roll call and so far it appears 5 of the 20 holdouts have just voted for Kevin McCarthy…..

      1. That was then, back to the gamesmanship.

        I wonder what is being offered to the anti McCarthy reps to vote for him.

        1. I guess the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. He’s not there yet though…. off to the 13th Round of voting shortly….

  73. The House Representatives are voting on the Election of Speaker Live: https://live.house.gov

    Up to the e,s in the name roll call and so far it appears 5 of the 20 holdouts have just voted for Kevin McCarthy…..

    1. The William memes are very funny. Poor Harry. He has been living in the world where nobody ever has to face consequences.

  75. I am a fairly forgiving person but there are some things beyond the pale. One is how this government has lied and lied to us over the last couple of years. I was not allowed to speak to my dearly loved and missed uncle on the phone, when he was on his way out, because “of covid rules.”
    Nor will I forgive Harry who was popular until he hooked up with this woman. I will not forgive him for the danger he has placed his family in.
    And yes, I was quite supportive of the marriage when it happened, thinking it would be a positive for this country. Well, we can all make mistakes.
    Am very disappointed in Harry-not too surprised about her- but it is all so sordid. Poor Queen is well out of it.

    1. With you on this, Ann. And, I’m sorry for your trauma.
      It revealed the extent of Fascism in the worls, and it’s huge.
      How could a phone call spread Covid? I’m afraid, it’s made me nasty and revengeful, when I didn’t used to be.
      Fuck Harry. Maybe Taliban will do us a favour.

  76. Second Son has just been telling us about the apartment that he and a mate hope to rent.
    Excellent for him, it’s essential to go and live away from parents to finally finish growing up… but the place will be very quiet and dull with him gone, even if “gone” is just a few miles up the road. Only SWMBO to say “good night” to, for example.
    Sigh…

    2. After having three sons living with us for quite a long time. We feel quite relaxed about them living elsewhere 😌 👌
      One of them is on the phone to his mother at this very moment. He and his lady are off to Venice early next week.
      But all are popping in to see us Sunday afternoon.

        1. We are and topped off with three lovely grandchildren and another on the way. 8 months time.

    3. Had daughter and son in law living with us since lockdown
      There might be a little addition coming our way later in the year too.
      Saying no more.

    4. HG has always said I was a good father.

      I encouraged them to be independent, they left home to go to university and did exactly that.

      I’m still not sure whether that was a compliment or a complaint!

      1. I almost never lived at home. Aged 8, off to boarding school, the another, then university then another, then my owned house… I wonder what it’s like to have lived full-time with parents? Our two lads were a joy to have at home… now one is 2 hours away by car, the other about to move.
        It’s been a joy and a priviledge.

        1. I’m the opposite, Paul. My Mum was widowed in 1963, and well-meaning relatives impressed on six-year-old me that I was ‘the man of the house’ now and needed to look after her. Which I did. Until 1987, when work offered me an escape to pastures new. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands. I still visited Mum on a regular basis until she died in 2003, and in the latter years did all her shopping from Surrey via the Tesco website, and they would deliver to her in Carlisle.

          Christmas was always ‘fun’. Upon leaving work, I would circumnavigate England to pick Mum up, and return to Norfolk/Surrey/wherever, usually within 24 hours, and somehow fit in the printing, stapling and folding of hundreds of orders of service, then play for umpteen services before cooking the Christmas dinner.

          So the first 30 years were at one address, give or take a couple when I was working away. Since when I’ve had 6 addresses. As I’m now in a retirement bungalow, I guess this is the last…

          PS. I’ve heard today from a never-quite-actually-a-girlfriend (the girl next door 32 doors away) that her Mum died yesterday. She was 103, and had hardly changed from the late 80’s when I lived up there. I’ll go to the funeral. If asked, I’ll play the organ – I did for her Dad, who was a Corvette commander in the Arctic Convoys, an absolute bloody hero, and a regular drinking partner at the White Ox (which no longer exists).

          1. Man… no words. I’ve read about the Arctic convoys, and am damned glad I wasn’t any part of it. Corvette Commander… respect.
            Also, always wondered what it is /was like to have more than minimal family. Mine all died young.

          3. My old Headmaster, Joe Rawlings, also served in the Arctic Convoys. He also lived well into his eleventh decade.. Perhaps that experience makes one more resilient?

            As for family, all the uncles and aunts on Mum’s side have gone. We cousins – now down to four from five – resolved to meet up each year, to keep in touch. Covid buggered that up to some extent. On Dad’s side, I get an annual phone call from one somewhat demented Welsh cousin. Of the eight others, zilch. I think some have shuffled orf…

    6. My son is in NC and I am on the south coast of England. I cannot fly to the US for several reasons; one- I am not vaxxed enough- two- given the state of my knee and swollen leg, I would be at high risk of a DVT en route. Also, it would mean changing my passport to my new married name and, given what I have just said, I can’t see the point.
      My hope is that my daughter in law who is a prof of medieval Lit will bring some students over here in the summer. She has done that before and my son could accompany her and we could meet up. Let’s hope so!

  78. Just heard that another friend has had a recurrence of breast cancer after being clear for many years – the second one in a week. What’s the betting it’s the toxic jabs – as revealed by Professor Dalgliesh that he’s seeing many resurgences of aggressive cancers.

    Also on telly news tonight – Bionech developing mRNA cancer cures!!

    2. I suspect it’s a timebomb waiting to hit many of all ages. I know somebody who was diagnosed with very early stage breast cancer. Surgery to remove it, lymph nodes and all other tests came back clear. Within 2 months, she found out there is cancer (metastases) in her bones. She has had 4 jabs, the latest just as she got the all clear from the breast cancer.

    1. I just read this one………https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/01/06/prince-harry-spare-claim-king-charles-jealous-meghan/

      They really are a ‘piece of work’ aren’t they!

      “While Prince Harry turned to the King for help, the Duchess of Sussex
      phoned Queen Camilla only to be told that, if they wished to escape the
      press’s attention, the Duke should take the job of governor-general of
      Bermuda, the tiny mid-Atlantic island.

      That, the Duke said, would come with the “added bonus” of making him and his wife disappear from the picture.”

    1. Managed to read most of it, by scrolling past the annoying pop ups and banners and then the blank screen when it identified I had ad block running – but when i closed that i could read the rest.

      Llet’s hope Peterson sticks to his guns and resists these attacks.

  83. Well Harry, what are you going to say when the Taliban start killing the less well protected royals and call them chess pieces?

    What are your celebrity friends going to do when the Taliban kill a few of them, and call them chess pieces?

    How are you going to react to all the class action lawsuits, when the Taliban blow up the primary school your children attend and lots of youngsters get killed, and they are called chess pieces?

    Where are you going to hide, and who are you and Meghan going to blame, particularly after you’ve both been bankrupted through lawsuits.

    1. I don’t think for a minute that either have a clue for what they have done to UK or their own families. Time for them to be gone.

      1. I agree, and I suspect that anyone who is associated with them to even the slightest degree will be trying to distance themselves as far and as quickly as possible; the types they are trying to move with won’t hesitate to dump them, and that is the moment when they will discover who their true friends are.
        If any!

        1. Given the way they have behaved I don’t think they deserve friends! Fiends perhaps?

    2. As I said to our Rector before the Epiphany service this evening, ‘Harold’, his wife and family now have huge targets painted on their backs. He’s a former Army chaplain, and he’s disgusted. Apart from the fact that such revelations simply aren’t done in the military, there’s a view that he’s broken the Official Secrets Act in so doing. And I’ve learned that Sparkles is not the only abusive bully in that marriage. I can say no more.

      1. The thing that is so despicable is that he’s painted targets on many other people’s backs too.

      2. Same here, Geoff; we have in our congregation a former Army chaplain (Major) of 12 years service and he’s far from impressed with these crazy ‘revelations’. I can’t help thinking that, very soon now, the whole thing is going to explode. He is bringing untold disgrace upon his family and this country. It is said that Charles would not tolerate anything that involved Camilla. Will these now be sufficient to finally ditch his son? He is clearly a few rounds short of a full magazine and there is every chance that this outrage will continue all the time he can make millions out of these stories.

        2. Some years ago, I was a Churchwarden at a small Suffolk benefice, during a long interregnum. We interviewed a potential incumbent, who was an Army chaplain at the time. We were keen, but I think we scared him with our frankness. He went on to be Chaplain General…

          Our Rector served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I strongly suspect that he was somewhat less protected from the enemy than our ginger spare.

          KiiiC is obviously torn between familial and constitutional duties. I’ve been somewhat sceptical about Charles’ desire to be a defender of (all) faiths, and his support for the WEF Great Reset. But since his accession, he hasn’t put a foot wrong. He must exclude H&M from the Coronation.

          1. The scenes being played out by the younger one remind me of the scenes in the film ‘The Lion in Winter’….

          3. Good evening Geoff

            He has certainly put a foot very wrong with the way he did not support Lady Susan Hussey who had served his family loyally for over 60 years preferring the fake African woman Ngosi Fullanius who was dressed in Fake African clothes, used a fake name and who clearly set the old lady up in order to support Migraine’s claims that the RF is racist.

            Disgracefully his first son, William, also betrayed Lady Hussey who was his godmother.

      3. He’s neither “Harold” nor “Harry”, Geoff, his name is “Henry”. It’s just that his parents gave him one name at his christening but then said they wanted him to be known by another. Maybe his crazy behaviour is inherited!

          2. I never knew that, Geoff. Did she tell you that, or did you read it in SPARE (not published until Tuesday but already massively leaked)?

      4. I visited a housebound friend this afternoon. Even she brought up unprompted what an idiot Harry was!

    1. Why do golfers carry extra socks? In case they get a hole in one…..I’ll go quietly

  85. Firstborn T-boned another car on the way home from work today. :-((
    No injuries, just a bit of bodywork, but he’s really upset because he hates breaking stuff (always was a careful child, even when tiny), and it’s his pride & joy that got damaged. Lots of blue lights at the scene, although nothing much to see… now insurance paperwork etc to deal with. Sigh.

    2. Sorry to hear that, at least he was not hurt. Hope insurance, paperwork etc does not prove too difficult.

      1. Mostly OK. It’s the pride and the truck fender that’s hurt.
        He loves his truck… like stepping on your pet’s paw and breaking it so you need a vet… 🙁
        He’s a huge tough Metal lad, with a very soft centre…

    3. Sorry about that, Paul. It’s always a rotten feeling even when you know it’s just a lump of metal.

      1. Indeed. He didn’t see the other car, behind the pillar, dark, after overtime… 🙁
        Clumsy.

          1. Who knows?
            Polive, fire brigade & ambulance all turned out – clearly nothing useful to do.
            Sigh

          2. Surprised Plod wasn’t out trying to catch commuters on their way home from work doing 23 mph on Queens Ride in Putney on the only stretch of road in a 12 1/2 mile journey that wasn’t gridlocked. But they were doing that last night so maybe they had a bit of free time today.

            Lucky me. I got let off trespassing in the not-advertised-till-you-are-in-it “experimental” “low traffic neighbourhood” in SW6 with just a warning.

            Sigh. Role on finding my replacement so i can give up on this rat race.

          3. Surprised Plod wasn’t out trying to catch commuters on their way home from work doing 23 mph on Queens Ride in Putney on the only stretch of road in a 12 1/2 mile journey that wasn’t gridlocked. But they were doing that last night so maybe they had a bit of free time today.

            Lucky me. I got let off trespassing in the not-advertised-till-you-are-in-it “experimental” “low traffic neighbourhood” in SW6 with just a warning.

            Sigh. Role on finding my replacement so i can give up on this rat race.

          4. Surprised Plod wasn’t out trying to catch commuters on their way home from work doing 23 mph on Queens Ride in Putney on the only stretch of road in a 12 1/2 mile journey that wasn’t gridlocked. But they were doing that last night so maybe they had a bit of free time today.

            Lucky me. I got let off trespassing in the not-advertised-till-you-are-in-it “experimental” “low traffic neighbourhood” in SW6 with just a warning.

            Sigh. Role on finding my replacement so i can give up on this rat race.

  87. I think Im ill. Weird symptoms. Old shoulder injury suddenly hurting like hell. Bout of manic sneezing yesterday. Very tired today. Only occurred to me it might be a bug when I was on th phone just now and suddenly felt so tired I was about to vomit. Early night wth hwb here.

    hot water bottle, Elsie!!

    2. Oo-er.
      Early bed, see how it goes tomorrow, BB2.
      Hope it’s just something you ate and it’s soon over.

    4. Thanks for the explanation of hwb, bb2. Sorry to hear of your ills. I too am feeling rather tired, so I abandoned watching JOHNNY GUITAR this evening and am now off for an early night as well. Sleep well all NoTTLers, I hope to see you all tomorrow.

    5. Are you on your own Bb..

      Any pains in neck , chest , arm … besides your shoulder ?

      Do you feel faint ?.. Is your face alright .. lips etc ..

      Cup of tea .. do you have any aspirin?

      1. Only shoulder, but the pain has now spread from the joint (site of the original injury) into the muscles of my upper arm as though they are bruised, which I don’t understand. Maybe I have been keeping them tense in my sleep, or something like that.
        The rest is normal.
        Thank you for your thoughtful posts – I feel way too ill to struggle with going to the doctor!

        1. Hello BB

          Could be Rotator cuff injury, sounds like it .

          I believe our much missed Plum had that a few years ago as well as me .

          With mine , I couldn’t even fasten my bra nor pull up my knicks and jeans , socks nor lift or carry with my left arm .. I was given a long lasting pain injection , lasted 3 months .

          1. I went to the osteopath a few months ago, he said that he couldn’t do anything and gave me the name of a shoulder specialist.
            Have been putting it off because of the cost. But this little glimpse into how my life could be in the future has rather motivated me to get an appointment.
            Can they do anything more constructive than pain injections, do you know? My arm is almost useless at the moment.

    6. BB,

      I am going to hope you read this , okay, don’t want you to panic , might be just a bug .. please take care , you know your own body .

      Heart attack symptoms for women
      Neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or upper belly (abdomen) discomfort.
      Shortness of breath.
      Pain in one or both arms.
      Nausea or vomiting.
      Sweating.
      Lightheadedness or dizziness.
      Unusual fatigue.
      Heartburn (indigestion)

      1. Thank you for this post Belle.
        There is too much overlap between that list and my symptoms for my liking!
        But in the night, I had a fever, and I know that a fever bug is going round at the moment. Also, I am not jabbed (might have picked up spikes shed by my dearly beloved though), and have no history of heart problems.
        I have had covid twice though, which I believe is a risk factor.

        Slept for 10 1/2 hours in four sections last night – just kept dropping off again!
        (Some NOTTLers will be asking how they can get this bug now…it is wonderful to sleep for so long!)

        I’m definitely not well today, so will be taking it very easy. Am more worried about my children getting it now.

      1. Interesting. I used to live in Germany but don’t remember them having hot water bottles. I shall poll my UK-based German friends on this matter.

        1. Don’t be silly, MIR Sind eine farauen mit problemen and, veilecht wir hilfenn kann.

          Ich will seit sie mit problem ed fur hat mir hilfen hat mir auch hilfen.. Now I’ve run out of German and must do the best I can in English, Give me a moment, was ist hwb Nicht verstein?

          1. Aah voellig aus der Schleife/completely out of the loop. Will bow out gracefully-good night all

    10. BB2, 90% probability it is a variant of Covid, doesn’t matter which, so do not bother to test.
      The hot water bottle is vital, ditto plenty of water to drink; you may sweat whilst asleep. I avoided analgesics, and caffeine beverages, although I did consume vitamin pills. One of my symptoms was sudden exhaustion, but a 45 minute siesta solved that. (or even 2 hours….)
      True Belle is wise to ask if you, even though a youngster, have any underlying probs, such as an achy breaky heart.

      1. Thank you. Fever in the night, so am now convinced it is a bug that I know is going round – a friend had a fever the week before Christmas.
        Threw a covid test away yesterday, we only bought it out of curiosity, but I decided I am not interested in contributing to panic statistics ever!

  88. Ooo… snowplough/blower again! A tractor (the size of my house) mounted job!
    Snøfres in yer Weegie.

  89. You know you’re getting old when it feels like the morning after, but there was no night before…

      1. Indeed.
        First sign of arthritis a few days ago.
        Maybe I’m not invincible after all…

          1. Doesn’t stop me shovelling snow – shit, it’s the only way to get out of the house & up the stairs!
            Weirdly, I enjoy it. Grew up with sub-sahara hot as a child, love the cold & slippery!

        2. Arthritis is not fun and mine is, apparently, mild right now; still means I need a stick. And two bent fingers- the Agincourt salute fingers as luck would have it.

          3. Luckily I am somewhat ambidextrous and can do a few things with my left hand- thank god. I can only peel tangerines etc with my left hand, unscrew bottles ( essential) also and other things. I am right handed but can cope with the left.

        3. I know how you feel, Paul. I now know that I’m not invincible, either. Come on death. bring it on.

        4. Or perhaps you’ve just got the lurgy that’s going round.
          My shoulder started hurting about ten days ago. Now blossomed into fever and tiredness.
          I have been feeling about 100 years old for the last couple of weeks, but hope it will be better soon.

  90. Remember when we had to smack the telly because the channel wan’t coming in too clearly? I feel that way regarding too many people…

    1. I think the problem we all suffer from in this age of mass media is the information overload. We are all made aware of an infinite number of problems that we have an inability to do any thing about. It leads one to conclude that there is an awful lot of smacking to be done – but smacking has been banned!!

      1. An overload of what they want us to hear/read/see and a dearth of what they don’t want us to hear/read/see.

    2. Our first colour tv had a habit of going off colour. Mr T of the A Team used to turn green, a smack on the top of the tv reverted him back to black.

          1. Easy to remember Mother’s birthday. Same day.
            Late Father was bornon 4th July. Easy to remember as well.

        4. I remember being on a platform (Brae A or Brae B, a big ‘un though) in the late 80s, on a core-catching job, just me and my mate on what turned out to be a 36 hour shift. We were taking a short breather at the near end of the the flare boom when they decided to flare off. We looked like burnt scarecrows after we’d stopped running.

  91. My friend suggested horse poo on my strawberries.
    I’m not doing that again – next time, cream for me.

  92. A new study shows that humans eat more bananas than monkeys.
    Don’t remember the last ime I ate a monkey…

  93. Right, I’m off to bed. If weather permits tomorrow I plan trying out my new purchase and then shifting some of the sawing detritus. Good night all.

    2. I understand, Stephen and stand 100% with you.

      Families can and will be so judgemental that you have to stand up and make your point.

      God help us, I’ve been there and understand the position you’re in

      Be strong. don’t give in and fight to the end, no matter how bitter it may be.

  96. Evening all. Just back from airport run to pick up the two granddaughters back for university. Dropped one off at friend’s house for friend’s 21st party (g.d. surprise visit) the other home with us to take her to Bath on Sunday.

    Just to say having read further down the thread about illness (sorry to hear blackbox is unwell) but the conversation did make me laugh. It was just so funny to read.

    Gnight all, sleep well. Playing indoor bowls tomorrow – should be interesting.

    1. Harpy, happy birthday, Ann and enjoy it for the remaining 365 days until the next one.

    2. Happy birthday Lottie!! Hope it’s a good one with Kanga juice flowing!
      Seriously, all the best and hope you soon get your troubles sorted. (with the NHS I mean) and start feeling your normal penguin self!
      Cheers…

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