Friday 3 February: The war on wood-burners epitomises Britain’s illogical energy policy

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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610 thoughts on “Friday 3 February: The war on wood-burners epitomises Britain’s illogical energy policy”

  1. ‘Morning, Peeps and Geoff.  Dry and mild here.

    Below are both letters about RAF recruitment which, I trust, the Chief of the Air Staff will read and understand in his myopic pursuit of ‘diversity’.   However, the pursuit of this crazy and damaging policy has, I’m sure, come from our pitiful politicians, in which case its abandonment also has to come from the top.  I’m not, in the slightest, optimistic that anything will change..

    SIR – The problems raised by the RAF’s recruitment policy (report, February 2) encapsulate all that is wrong with the theory of “diversity”. If you have quotas for certain groups, you risk making people feel as if they are only there because of those quotas. You also risk missing out on the best recruits.

    There should be only one goal – to recruit the most suitable person for the job irrespective of sex, race, religion or any other factor.

    We need government and business to strive for excellence rather than token diversity, so we can arrest this country’s decline into mediocrity.

    Eric Gibbons
    Dunfermline, Fife

    SIR – During my RAF career I was actively involved with recruiting and selection, and we always chose the best person for the role to be filled.

    Achievements in earlier life were measured against the opportunities available to the applicant. Assessments were made as to the individual’s ability to cope with the training, as well as the mental and physical demands of the role. While most were rejected for not showing the necessary potential, some were rejected for being over-qualified – they were unlikely to achieve job satisfaction or “stickability”.

    These criteria were applied to all, regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion, in order to select the best. This should still be the case. There are no prizes for coming second in a war.

    Wing Commander Ivan Childs (retd)
    Martock, Somerset

    1. Indeed.
      It’s not a make-work scheme, it’s serious. Choosing anyone on the basis of irrelevant characteristics wastes time and money, and doesn’t give the desired result. Also, a bullet or missile doesn’t distinguish between skin colour or sex, it’ll blow your sorry ass away anyhow (other beasts of burden are available).

      1. And – selecting someone based on irrelevancies rather than a desire and ability to do the job does neither them nor the organisation any favours, it’s setting them up to fail – because they can’t do it.

        3. Though Crossants, Apricot jam and Coffee sound nice for breakfast you are getting sugar and caffeine spikes. Have a small bowl of porridge first.

  7. Good morning Ladies & Gentlemen.

    It must be the wrong time of the month for all but a handful of MPs willing to ask questions about the adverse effects of the Covid ‘Vaccines’:

    https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1621274788734943233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1621274788734943233%7Ctwgr%5E9371c4a57a4967eb0caf6939178c9bbf8515ee3b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fcovid-19%2Fscandal-would-be-enormous-pfizer-director-worried-about-vax-induced-menstrual

    1. Good morning S

      The menstrual cycle is all about ending up with stable clot after bleeding.
      This process is extremely complex and is bound to be tied up with the microcoagulation effects of COVID and inevitably the effects of trying to vaccinate against the virus and attempts to lessen its side effects.

      Here are the processes involved in menstruationn:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a8873ebe2611f96a9b43777a90f722b96fed936e1f63f6a6f10f1cdc95d2d2ae.jpg

      1. Thanks for posting but please promise us you won’t follow up with a time lapse series of photos 😉

      2. Glad I don’t have to worry about it any more.
        It does seem to be causing a drop in birth rates.

      4. That’s the term I wanted, ‘microcoagulation’, thank you.
        The internet is awash with papers about clots & Covid, but I have often pondered as to whether ordinary anticoagulants (warfarin based) and its replacements (eg edoxaban) were able to assist older people to overcome SARS‑CoV‑2.

        1. I think you are on the right track tim,

          I was already on an anticoagulant based on Factor.X.
          When I asked a registrar the implication of my drugs if I should get COVID he said they were using a more controlable anticoagulant, heparin, in the hospital to treat patients.

  9. The war on wood-burners epitomises Britain’s illogical energy policy

    Can’t have people surviving off the grid, can they?

  10. Good morning all.
    A blustery start outside, 4½°C on the yard thermometer and, whilst dry at the moment, the air feels damp and it looks overcast.

  12. SIR – I recently attempted to travel from Suffolk to Northumberland and back in my electric vehicle (Comment, January 31). The experience was not one I would wish to repeat.

    Finding chargers is hard when not on motorways. And even on motorways, there are problems: Tesla-only points, machines that are out of order or won’t read credit cards, and service areas without charging points. Off the motorway one must rely on supermarkets and coffee shops, and these don’t often have high-speed chargers. Shell and Starbucks seem to be leading the way.

    If the Government is serious about phasing out petrol, it needs to show some initiative and provide infrastructure that is ahead of the game, not lagging behind.

    Ian Cotgrove
    Westhorpe, Suffolk

    Surely these difficulties were entirely forseeable, Mr Cotgrove?  Did you not realise that the introduction of EVs under Net Zero was a means to an end – in other words to restrict car use and therefore our freedom to travel?

  13. It felt a bit like we were all taken on a bit of a fake narrative ride yesterday on the mainstream media, it all seemed too coordinated.

    First we were all supposed to get angry with British Gas for forcing prepayment meters on customers, where a cunning Guardian reporter successfully went undercover and filmed unsuspecting teams of operators breaking into houses of poor single families while boasting about how much they enjoyed doing this. Really is that for real or was it all part of a deliberate set up.

    Then just before we could all calm down Shell released their huge record 32 billion profits while politicians that are all fully signed up to very high energy costs so that we can meet our globalist imposed carbon zero targets that have caused all these propbems to begin with, went apoplectic with rage pointing their fingers at energy companies.

    Look they’re too blame for your energy misery they said and the mainstream media quickly fell into line.
    Trust us they inferred, we are on your side, we will impose windfall taxes on them.

    And the people all went to bed contented that someone was on their side, not realising that the windfall tax money was theirs in the first place and now government has it and not them.

    1. I just switch off if OH puts the news on. I can’t stand the ranting and gloating they come out with. I look at Sophie Rayworth in her latest outfit and that’s it.

  14. It felt a bit like we were all taken on a bit of a fake narrative ride yesterday on the mainstream media, it all seemed too coordinated.

    First we were all supposed to get angry with British Gas for forcing prepayment meters on customers, where a cunning Guardian reporter successfully went undercover and filmed unsuspecting teams of operators breaking into houses of poor single families while boasting about how much they enjoyed doing this. Really is that for real or was it all part of a deliberate set up.

    Then just before we could all calm down Shell released their huge record 32 billion profits while politicians that are all fully signed up to very high energy costs so that we can meet our globalist imposed carbon zero targets that have caused all these propbems to begin with, went apoplectic with rage pointing their fingers at energy companies.

    Look they’re too blame for your energy misery they said and the mainstream media quickly fell into line.
    Trust us they inferred, we are on your side, we will impose windfall taxes on them.

    And the people all went to bed contented that someone was on their side, not realising that the windfall tax money was theirs in the first place and now government has it and not them.

  15. Good morning, all. Very grey and dark skies – despite being later. Odd. End of world??

  16. 370658+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    If you want to stay healthy ,semi wealthy (optional) & wise repeal anything with a WEF tag on it, especially in human form

    This latest is part & parcel of the starve, freeze, seriously maim,
    campaign running in top gear to beat the indigenous dweller into submission and with, up until now, the electoral majority’s aid they are succeeding.

    Friday 3 February: The war on wood-burners epitomises Britain’s illogical energy policy

    The politico’s are warm enough in the pockets of the energy enema companies & I’ll wager good wonga they will have a blazing wood burner in their dacha in the forest.

    The only dangers the wood burner stove owners are in is from
    non lethal calluses, chilblains.& burnt toast.

    1. British stoves are practically useless and badly installed in my (provocative) opinion.
      Most people have wood burners that you can’t cook on, and that are shoved inside a fireplace, thus ensuring that most of the heat goes straight out up the chimney.
      On the Continent, they are typically in the room space, and connected to the chimney via a pipe, keeping more of the heat inside the room.
      Stoves with a flat hotplate on the top are very common, and you can buy kitchen ones that look like an electric hob, with hotplate and oven.

      1. Older ones were like that but the more modern ones are designed to look good in a room.
        Still we’re very happy we swapped our open fire for a wood burner just before the snow arrived in January 2010. It gives out a good heat and costs nothing to run on scrap wood.

        1. I only ever seem to see the ones that are so far into the fireplace that you have to grovel around on your hands and knees to add a log.
          I’m glad to hear that common sense is finally prevailing!

          I have one that stands in the room, and is loaded from the top.

          1. We have a large fireplace in our old cottage so the stove is in the recess but accessible from the front.

          3. Well I might have a job to get down to it but if I was restricted to that extent I would probably have to move to sheltered accommodation.

      2. 370658+ up ticks,

        Morning BB2,
        Had one in the extended kitchen for about five years, part of the furniture, cooking hob and oven inclusive.

        Casts off a feel good factor as well as being now a, can’t do without kitchen appliance.

        1. Excellent! They keep the kitchen dry too, as they suck all the moisture out up the chimney.

      3. You? Provocative? Never!

        Our dining room and sitting room are linked – between them is a large chimney with an opening each side. The stove thus gives out heat on both sides, as well as heating the chimney on the first floor (where there is an open gallery). Admittedly some heat is lost to the skies – but most stays within the house.

        1. Sounds like a great set up. You’re lucky to have a chimney inside the house – most people have it on the outside wall, thus losing even more heat!

  17. Sweden has become a gangster’s paradise – and a case study in how not to integrate migrants. 3 February 2023.

    Max Åkerwall, a Stockholm police chief, spoke about it earlier this week. Locking up a gang leader, he said, creates a vacuum which leads to a violent power struggle among rival factions (police have counted 52 gangs). Hence more bombs, guns and murders. So it’s not a matter of a few Mr Bigs. It’s the emergence of a whole subculture of violence, unwittingly incubated by Sweden’s liberal immigration and criminal justice system.

    “We now have parallel societies in Sweden,” said Magdalena Andersson before she lost power as prime minister last year. “We live in the same country, but in completely different realities.” The phrase “no-go” area is deeply controversial in Sweden but certainly applies to neighbourhoods where authorities – even ambulance workers – cannot go for fear of attack.

    This is how it begins. First slowly then very quickly as Hemingway described the process of bankruptcy. There are minor variations due to the ethnicity of the newcomers and their interests but slowly the foundations of an orderly state are washed inexorably away. Then there is the chaos where no one dare oppose them and then finally the takeover. This may not necessarily be the perpetrators but anyone seeking safety and order. They will not be the former ruling class who are now thoroughly discredited!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/02/sweden-has-become-gangsters-paradise-case-study-how-not-integrate/

      1. Good morning, bb2.

        The people who concocted the plan, that’s who. The indigenous will either succumb of fight back. Either scenario will be very messy.

    2. Like all bad things, there’s a slow but sure development leading to a high inertia undesirable outcomethat’s difficult to turn around, abd takes a long time to do so. It builds up energy slowly, and so goes under the radar, until it’s so big that it’s in the open and very, very difficult to turn around.

    3. Had an email from one of my Swedish friends today; she was supposed to be training a replacement for when she had cataract surgery. She told me the trainee was unwilling to listen to anything she said and refused to do the driving (he was supposed to be learning the route). The more she told me, the more I thought, “he sounds like an immigrant”. Finally, she admitted, “he’s a foreigner”. Bingo!

  19. Rishi Sunak says people arriving in UK illegally will be deported ‘within days’. 2 February 2023.

    Rishi Sunak has said new laws will mean people arriving in the UK without valid documents will be deported “within days”, with asylum claims rejected and migrants returned.

    The prime minister also said he was committed to the Rwanda deportation policy, despite legal challenges, replying “yes” when asked if it would ever go ahead.

    One of the most interesting aspects of living in the present day UK is to wonder if these people actually believe the guff that they spout? It’s not impossible of course. Self-delusion is more common than one thinks, particularly among politicians. It would be aided in this instance because none of them actually see the need to limit immigration, indeed a majority are actually in favour. They cannot and dare not say this. It would be electoral suicide.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/02/rishi-sunak-says-people-arriving-in-uk-illegally-will-be-deported-within-days

    1. Sorry, haven’t time to read all that.
      My pet pink unicorn needs feeding and then a trot through the woods.

    3. “Rishi Sunak says people arriving in UK illegally will be deported ‘within days’. 2 February 2023”
      HA! HA! HA!
      Yeah, right. Lying bastard. Him and what’s ‘er name.

    4. Yo Minty

      May I fiddle

      Rishi Sunak says people arriving in UK illegally will be deported ‘within days’. 1 April 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

      2 February 2045, Last native born Brit exiled to Uganda

      1. British OAPs could live like royalty in Rwanda on a UK pension. The fear of freezing to death, due to eco-loons in government and it’s snivel serpents, would be removed. It could be like Eastbourne, with a better climate.

    5. Why bother with all the palaver of Rwanda? If they have no documentation they are obviously French. Just deposit them at Calais and let their ‘countrymen’ sort them out.

  20. Good Moaning.
    Briefly we had a gorgeous pink marbled sky.
    And talking of pink, that reminds me of the vision of pinkness that is Vicky MacPollard.
    There is a corker of an article by Madeleine Grant on proceedings at Holymad.

    And a short, thought provoking BTL comment throwing the Krankie’s latest logical backflip in her face.
    “What if he doesn’t identify as a rapist though? Does that mean he isn’t one?”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/02/gender-confused-nicola-sturgeon-stages-masterclass-alternative/

    “Gender-confused Nicola Sturgeon stages a masterclass in alternative reality

    First Minister got in a tangle over what makes a woman while her backers failed to self-identify as people of independent thought

    Madeline Grant2 February 2023 • 7:47pm

    The incidentals of sketching the Scottish Parliament are not immediately promising: it has the atmosphere of an inquest in a leisure centre. Today, however, the normal mist of petty grievance and proceduralism had lifted to reveal something else: we were in tautological Neverland, a gender wars Brigadoon.

    Scots’ Tory leader Douglas Ross began with a coldly accurate rehearsal of the clown logic that led to the SNP’s justice spokesman trying to maintain that a rapist, whose allocation to a women’s prison they later had to reverse, was still, in fact, a woman despite this move. There was a stark contrast between Ross’s precision and the preposterousness of what had occurred. It was like watching someone perform root canal treatment on Mr Blobby.

    “A rapist should be considered a rapist”, said the First Minister in a tone which I suspect she – wrongly – believed to be comforting. She didn’t want to get into that case because she “didn’t have enough information about that person’s claim to be a woman”. Presumably self-ID is being shelved in favour of an elaborate system whereby Nicola personally adjudicates on every case.

    Scenes of Dalí-esque surrealism ensued. The previous question was flipped on its head: did the First Minister agree that the rapist who raped two women was, in fact, a man? In the end, Douglas Ross – who doggedly refused to refer to the rapist by his nom-de-guerre of Isla Bryson – resorted to absolute simplicity and produced a piece of paper from which he read the SNP’s very own self-ID legislation to the First Minister. To no avail, no hint of admission or recognition: he might as well have read the laws of thermodynamics to an aardvark.

    Still more Lilliputian was Ms Sturgeon’s insistence that none of this should undermine the SNP’s “landmark” gender recognition reform bill – “passed overwhelmingly by this house”. Even in this world of opposites and paradoxes, the one cast iron rule of SNP lore remained: “none of this is our fault”.

    After a particularly convoluted detour through the outer frontiers of reason, Nicola sat down to rapturous robotic applause from the SNP representatives seated behind her. It might be beneficial to Scottish democracy if some of them could self-identify as capable of independent thought.

    One final time, Douglas Ross calmly articulated his frustration at the lack of answers to his question. The Krankie stared back, mute. An Easter Island head in a bright pink pantsuit. Finally she broke forth with a carefully-qualified, sort-of answer. She thought it “almost certainly was the case” that the rapist was faking his womanhood. This was as close to a statement of reality as we were going to get at Holyrood that day.

    Despite this, the perpetual circus cavalcade that is the SNP rolls on; but with perhaps a little less momentum than before. “

  21. Morning all, taking a break from loft sorting. I am going to visit a family member who is suffering from dementia, upsetting for me but hopefully less so for her.
    I always count my blessings when I leave.

    1. The worst part of getting dementia must be the realisation that you are getting demented.
      Mother has dementia – she lives in a happy state of anticipation that her parents and my Father have been visiting her Aunt Hilda, and are just a bit delayed in the traffic coming home. So, she’s happy, looking forward to their return, and doesn’t have the memory that her Mother died in the 1960s and her father in the 1980s. My Father died in 1997 – and they ain’t coming home.
      That’s quite comforting for me, at least, that she’s in a state of anticipation.

      1. Before dementia was properly diagnosed, my father inlaw was recognised as forgetful. Until the police found him out on the street in his pyjamas at 3am on a freezing winters night.
        After that the front door had to be locked and all the larger windows.
        Then the ‘chemical cosh’ was administered. The poor old war hero went down hill very rapidly after that. And mother in law had a stroke she never recovered from. Such sad ways to go.

        1. Mother always said that she’d rather finish herself than get dementia. She left it too late to do anything about is, as now she doesn’t reember…

          1. Strokes are the worse thing that happen. Before the treatment became more successful my poor old father ended his life as a head in bed.
            No recognition at all.
            My tough old loving mother wouldn’t let him go into a care home.
            I hated seeing him hoisted out of his
            bed into the bathroom by the carers.
            He did pass away peacefully.

      2. My mother-in-law, with whom I got on well, got dementia and it was terrible. Her husband died of a broken heart and could not cope with the fact that after nearly 60 years of marriage she did not even recognise him. Her children thought it would not be a good idea telling her and she went on living for two more years in a nursing home never knowing that she was a widow.

        1. Mother knew she is a widow, but I’m sure she has forgotten. Most of the time, she has forgotten me, too, and my boys. It’s not much fun, as many here know from personal experience.

      3. Most sufferers of dementia don’t know they have it Paul, yet, as you say, they are happy in their own little bubble. It’s a horrible condition which is worse for their loved ones.

  22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi8PO2D65Js Just listening to the latest Irreverend episode, apparently the Archbishop of Canterbury has been deputed to arrange a way for Ginge and Whinge to attend Charles the third’s coronation. The chaps said presumably they will have to be in another building in case the Taliban mount an (Apache) attack!!

  25. Good morning, all. Pink sunrise earlier and now cloud is building. Dry.

    Damascene conversion, revelation, sensing a change in the wind of truth or just plain arse covering? Whatever, there appears to be something of a shift happening.
    Biden ending the ‘pandemic’ appears to be a political response to a number of Bills coming up in the Congress. However, he is retaining the EUAs for “vaccines” and anti-virals thus maintaining their protected status.
    Courtesy of The Highwire and Jefferey Jaxens’ investigations.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/580652d7d2768931f76277005b733e01f082891587a9c2d223b046afc657d125.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52e8747ae7874a291ee7916ba9dab03cddee0a055fd0307cb590d90584a3531f.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/54ad504501b1992fd4b7788b39368b6c978564fa566d4079edc93d01d96b937d.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ccc50a20a6777a49e2a96fa8b12d6d80fa47a910f1b6ec7dd3f315825cbccd70.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/df8961cf7c338f07cf58cb4255ee79d25c76d8b73322c6ad52e004394c9ca034.png

  26. Good moaning all,

    Fine start at McPhee Towers, partly cloudy, Westerly breeze, 7℃. Nuthatches have chased the blue t1ts off the peanuts.

    I’m not sure which topic from the Gatesograph letters I should rage about this morning – the proposed ban on wood-burners, the attempted banning of the singing of ‘Delilah’ at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff (let them try to stop it), the anti-white Rainbow Air Force or the difficulties of driving the length of the England and back in an EV. I was going to choose the RAF because being an former RAF pilot myself and the son of a WW2 RAF pilot it matters to me. However, Alison Pearson has done a good job of that in her article which finished by calling for Wigston to resign. So should the rest of the so-called ‘top brass’ of all three services who go along with this stuff.

    Instead I’m going to pass brief comment on the rapid change in the demographics visible in the afternoon at school-out time in my nearest town, Newbury. There are far more people of a dusky hue present than there were just two years ago. This is a town in the home counties that was once a market town with a pleasant park, canal wharf and an attached race-course. Now it has a modern retail developent with plandemic-emptied retail premises. John Lewis quit here and Debenhams went bust. The main street is awash with empty units, charity shops, ‘fone bitz’ and nail bars. Even Starbucks has left. It has changed and not for the better. And it has all been very rapid.

    1. And these queued up scroungers costs us all millions and are better treated than our elderly who worked for years for a reasonably happy retirement.

  29. ‘Morning All

    Mixed Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67ea3f7585206e4e2e9380ceef7c56a44e3e4f47ce36b3997263c4202cd51aa9.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f7d9229d4d7ce3e1f8a4defa336846529b67e6a14a4b2b468cfcdebaaa857666.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5bc7dd799dedfaaf29a3985fbc9499fd9fc1426a6b6b3a84c1b21c01ba172d7f.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2608262a4847555121779ff34392a106af9104f00de56aa5f28bb3e2cae1e83.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/590b258a669d507347c6ff2ff7c8d81a8cbb8e25ae73d2fd41472c3d71ca2eb0.jpg

  30. BTL Comment:-

    Mike Brighton
    8 MIN AGO
    True but the *real* issue is that David Cameron then copied New Labour and in effect the Conservatives become New Labour with different branding. This is why the current ‘Conservatives’ and in fact socialists.

    I’ve said this for years.

    2. The big disaster for the Conservatives was that David Davis lost the party leadership election to Cameron who then made his alliance with Chlamydia Clegg to form a government.

      And the current disaster was set in motion by the fact that Johnson needed to have had an alliance with Farage in order to be kept up to the mark on Brexit but Farage let him get away without one. Yes, Johnson never believed in getting a proper Brexit done – indeed he did not dare give us details of the fact that his ‘oven-ready Brexit withdrawal’ was Evila May’s surrender deal – but Farage knew that Johnson was useless and he cravenly withdrew his candidates from contesting the 2019 general election in Conservative held remainer seats.

  31. Lafffs

    https://scontent-den4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/327747459_866462157944598_7445414390921799935_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=m0zNhPmkX8wAX9R5Vnz&_nc_ht=scontent-den4-1.xx&oh=00_AfDVWi1DjYbhc7MCvqjMk0ktcK8LZfvcHalF8M2uldwTLw&oe=63DFDD9D

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/947a45fffd9eb666ba35669a889db56f2d942492d02240c798bd79c05e72109b.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7d2d3c6ab56b91dc26a6a9879352e6659694eadc06772c41a4c65e85978817ee.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9515317af6ab322ca584e8beeb070a3cacf3ca8d1f6864164d54104243af779f.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e90e772fa86e3a29c623824cf7dcb4446ceb670eb2c10425a5d1d1db26e259de.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5d11826f95e1d9fd323b81ed49a5d716090f3f535932aea3e104e65563155d5a.jpg

    1. 370659+ up ticks,

      Morning Rik,

      The same can be said for sheep, I have yet to see a sheep in a polling booth.

  32. Morning all 😊😉
    Oh dear The ‘government’ has effed it all up again.
    Log burners,….. I think it rather more than emphasises how stupid they really and actually are.
    What next bbq’s.

      1. I mentioned that the other day, we import thousands of tonnes of wood pellets from the US to supply our electricity.
        When with these morons in Westminster get any thing right ?

  33. Crikey. Remembered to weigh myself this morning. I’ve put on 8 pounds over the autumn and Christmas particularly sedentary period. Up to 12.5 stone… It’s back to 1 sugar, no shortbread fingers with my coffee and no chips… I hate winter.

      1. That’s what I used to think! But my belts happily mould themselves over my expanding paunch.

      3. There are some gremlins in my wardrobe who keep altering my clothes to fit a smaller person

  35. Sneaked an extra 3 hours in bed.
    Good Morrow, Gentlefolk. Here is today’s story:

    A little Aussie humour.

    An Italian, a Frenchman and an Aussie were talking about screams of passion.

    The Italian said, “Last night I massaged my wife all over her body with the finest extra virgin olive oil, then we made passionate love and I made her scream, non-stop for five minutes.”

    The Frenchman said, “Last night I massaged my wife all over her body with special aphrodisiac oil from Provence and then we made passionate love. I made her scream for fifteen minutes straight.”

    The Aussie said, “That’s nothing! Last night I massaged my wife, y’know, all over her body with a special butter. I caressed her entire body with the butter, and then we made love and I made her scream for two long hours.”

    The Italian and Frenchman, astonished, asked, “Two full hours? Wow! That’s phenomenal. What did you do it to make her scream for two hours?”

    The Aussie replied, “I wiped my hands on the curtains.”

    1. The man is an utter feckwit, and worse still, a dangerous one, as far as we are concerned.

    2. Thick as three or four short planks, that’s what a classics only education does to you.

    8. A complete t*sser – and the Tories want him back in office. I’d be happy to see him in No 10 . . . skinned and stuffed ; alongside his fat bedmate, as a warning to other would-be W⚓s who think they can run the country with a festering green mandate.

  37. I note that the former BPAPM – having declined to be interviewed by Tucker Carson – is to be “grilled” by the forensic Dardeen Norries – I am sure she’ll give him what for…..

    1. He’ll give her a ‘good seeing to’ in the green room beforehand. That’ll pacify her.

      1. She clearly adores him – thus ensuring that she is totally objective in her interview!!!

    2. He’ll give her a ‘good seeing to’ in the green room beforehand. That’ll pacify her.

  38. A separate, properly funded agency should be set up.to Fraud

    I thought we had one: the police, but

    wearing proper ‘uniform’/plain clothes not Multicoloured ones

    Driving police cars, not carnival Floats

    Arresting road squatters and others of that ilk

    Obeying the Law, not what biased minorites want

  39. Funny Old World
    I’m sure we remember the AZ jab being quietly withdrawn in the light of subsequent events I was musing
    Was it withdrawn because it was dangerous??
    Or was it withdrawn because it wasn’t dangerous enough??

    1. I’ve often thought about that – I had two jabs of that with no apparent side effects but the list of adverse events is horrendous. I got off lightly there. I hope.

  40. Why is the NHS asking me what sex I was ‘assigned’ at birth? [Judith Woods, DT.]

    “… And so I settled down to fill out the lengthy online lifestyle questionnaire – and my heart sank. The first question was: “What sex were you assigned at birth?”

    Huh? I was infuriated by the way this bogus pseudoscientific phrase has become the accepted language of the NHS. I’d rather the health service dealt in concrete facts – namely that sex is not assigned by a midwife or doctor at birth, it is determined by nature at conception.

    Then came a slew of questions about whether I was married to someone of the same or opposite gender. Not sex, but gender.

    I know the study is all about information gathering and, given the proliferation of ever-more esoteric labels, health professionals need to know who or what (I’m not sure how to address a self-styled “it”) they are dealing with in any situation, but it was dispiriting nonetheless.”

    If I was asked to fill in such an idiotic questionnaire, I would simply get a black felt-tip pen and erase all the cretinous parts of the questions and write above them: “My sex is naturally* male and has always been so and will forever remain so.” and “My wife is naturally* female, has always been so and — guess what — will always remain so!”

    I would also add, in capital letters: “”WHO IS THE EDUCATIONALLY SUB-NORMAL IMBECILE WHO FORMULATED THESE HALF-WITTED QUESTIONS?”

    *“If you do not comprehend what I mean by ‘naturally’ then you need to go back to (a proper) school and become educated.”

    1. On any such ‘form’, I ALWAYS state that I am pregnant.

      The State will have to spend a fortune looking after me:

      Male,

      78 years (young),

      Preggers,

      Heterosexual

      The experts will besiege OLT Towers to find out how it happened
      The last similar occurence was, I think to Mary, with her boy child

        1. Those of us who identify as penguins are going to strike because we aren’t getting enough fish. That’ll show ’em!

          2. I am sure you have heard about the constipated mathematician? Worked it out with a pencil.
            (Sorry folks- feeling a bit lighter hearted today!)

          3. and ‘old’? or showing your age?

            You chose No 7 from Noah’s Fave Joke Book

            Modern day “Worked it out with his Mobile Phone”

          5. When I was walking the dogs today, I saw a woman (or a person with large t*ts) wearing a tee shirt on the front of which was printed “I’m not short, I’m a penguin”.

  41. The clip of ex-BPAPM below. Yet again he was talking bollox. In the Battle of Britain, 1700 German plans were shot down. 58 by Polish 303 Squadron.

    Hardly “One in seven”….

    3. It is noticeable that the cretin in the baseball cap (typical of the generation that has been procreated by morons) is only interested in filming the child’s discomfiture on his mobile phone.

      In long-past generations, his more intelligent (and compassionate) ancestors would have rushed to provide assistance.

  43. Britain would run out of ammo in a day if it fought Russia: Top former General says years of cuts have left military’s stores bare – as Ben Wallace warns UK’s forces have been ‘hollowed out’
    General Sir Richard Barrons said years of cuts have left cupboards almost bare
    Meanwhile, Ben Wallace said military spending may have to rise for two decades

    According to The Sun, Britain is buying ammo from South Asia to support Ukraine. 5 yeah yeah I know)

    Dr Jack Watling, at military think tank Rusi, said Ukraine had been firing around 6,000 shells a day, but we rely on imported explosives for tank and artillery shells.
    Our ammo plants, run by defence contractor BAE, would take a year to make a day’s shells for Ukraine, sources said.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11708161/Britain-run-ammo-day-fought-Russia-Cuts-left-militarys-stores-bare.html

    1. Old soldiers never die – they simply whinge away…..

      (NoTTLers excepted, of course).

    2. Trouble is when a retired senior army officer is interviewed by the bbc and speaks out against their ongoing adgenda and theories, the bbc don’t like it.

    3. And Fataturk, the bumbling fool, thinks it woudn’t take the Ukrainians long to work out how to use Typhoons or F16s or whatever we can give them. Take it from me, a former RAF fighter pilot: It would.

        1. No, mud-moving varieties but I had a trip in a Frightning T5 once – bloody fantastic!

        2. I remember the Lightnings at Gutersloh occasionally breaking the sound barrier over our camp on the other side of the town. It sounded as if the giant metal garage doors had been thrown to the ground. RAF Guterloh was the nearest fighter station to the Soviet East German border.

      2. Give him a week’s simulator training and send him to the front line. A waste of a good plane but if Johnson went with it, it might be beneficial in the long run.

        1. Only give him a plane that’s just about fit enough to fly. We don’t want to waste good materiel.

  45. Good morning all

    We have had a rotten 24 hours again and very little sleep last night .

    Old Jack had a repeat of his vestibular disorder .. vomitted , then staggered around looking as if he was on a rolling ship ‘s deck .

    Half a Stugeron , helped and another half later during the night gave him his balance back .

    Pets , goodness me , their various ailments cause anxiety and near exhaustion , and I cannot really think straight this morning .

    1. Sorry to hear that, Belle. They really do mean so much to us. Sending good wishes to you all! 💐

    1. Er…possibly!

      Wordle 594 4/6

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

      1. Bogey Five, again!

        Wordle 594 5/6
        ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
        ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
        ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩
        ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Got there eventually in 6 having explored several other words with the same last three letter! Quordle completed

    3. Bogie for me, too many alternatives.
      Wordle 594 5/6

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

  47. This is important. It was put up here yesterday but here it is again, it is that important.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mBC873TSEE&t=2013s

    “The authority to judge what are the powers of the Government and what are the liberties of the People must necessarily be vested in one or other of the parties themselves, the government or the people, because there is no third party to whom it can be entrusted. If the authority be invested in the Government the Government is absolute and the People have no liberties except such as the Government sees fit to indulge them with. If on the other hand the authority be invested in the People then the People have all liberties as against the Government except such as substantially the whole People through the Jury choose to disclaim and the Government can exercise no power except such as substantially the whole People through the Jury consent that it may exercise”.

    American Lawyer Lysander Spooner in 1852.

    Go to: https://www.commonlawconstitution.org

    2. There are some mighty big polished lumps of rock making up the ‘roads’ in Pompeii. I expect the wheels were often stuck in ruts.

  51. Tories will regret surrendering power to the ‘experts’
    You can’t take the politics out of politics – as the investigation into Dominic Raab surely demonstrates

    Lord Frost: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/02/tories-will-regret-surrendering-power-experts-dominic-raab-nadhim/

    That odious woman Gina Miller is exploiting both her race and her sex and making herself a ‘victim’ of Raab’s bullying. Most of the BTL comments are fully in support of Raab and full of contempt for Miller.

    Percival Wrattstrangler is banging on as usual in his BTL comment:

    Why oh why, Lord Frost, did you capitulate when you had been holding firm on UK fishing and Northern Ireland? Was it because you were coerced or blackmailed when at the last moment Gove and Johnson arrived in Brussels to undermine you? Please tell us the full story of what these two vipers did to destroy your negotiations.

  52. Joining the dots?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7be598d48c7ea4b7d6ef7b0c64098235634ba57eee5c8cdf298e1468b35e4258.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4748db08c15cd16f2101b7f788707324b5ebeae12c21149b9a8114e95e64f32a.png

    Then there’s avian flu.

    In the United Kingdom, there have been 166 confirmed cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 since 1 October 2022:

    144 cases in England
    18 cases in Scotland
    3 cases in Wales
    1 case in Northern Ireland

    Source Government Avian Flu in UK

    1. Our next door but one neighbour seems to be keeping his chickens quiet, or has got rid of them.

      1. In the US, bird flu was used in some states to ban backyard chicken keeping.
        I assumed it was something to do with cutting off the protein supply and forcing people onto bugburgers.

      1. Recently there was a fire at a corn storage depot in the US; 3,000,000 bushels of corn lost. Middle of the night, nobody on site and up it goes in flames. That’s close on 100 major food production and storage sites gone in a year or so.

  54. Man caught with crossbow at Windsor Castle trying to kill the Queen admits treason
    Jaswant Singh Chail claimed his actions were in revenge for the 1919 Amritsar massacre

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/03/man-caught-crossbow-windsor-castle-trying-kill-queen-admits/

    Jaswant Singh Chail shouldn’t worry too much – the current UK penalty for treason is probably no more than 35 hours of community service.

    (Unless, of course, you are a white, middle-aged, male Christian in which case it is life imprisonment and a bread and water diet.

    1. What if you are you are a white, middle-aged, male Christian whose name happens to be Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair?

      You know, the mover who abolished the death penalty for the crimes of high treason and piracy on the open seas. Would he be awarded an Earldom?

  55. That’s two hours up the “garden” doing a bit of log sawing and splitting done. 4 x builder’s buckets filled & stacked.
    Now need to get up the hill and drag more wood down from the fallen trees I’m currently clearing.

      1. Yo RE

        Do not say ” moving house” to Bob

        He will move it

        stone, by stone
        Door by door etc

        and rebuild it

        Just ask him if “He is Moving”

  56. I measured the Hyundia.Kona’s 12v battery this morning and it momentarily went green (>12.6v) and then went yellow (<12.6v).

    This is consistent with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Priciple where the closer you try to observe something the less accurate you wiil get.

    This is why you can measure an EV auxiliary battery as being good whereas it has in fact started dying and will end up as a Ghost Drain of about 3 amps that will kill the battery emptying it completely.

      1. But iit does explain this where a Leaf 12v battery is getting old, tests OK but doesn’t work in the vehicle:

        ‘https://youtu.be/k_EHoLTIIAE

  58. The media blackout over Qatargate. Spiked. 3 February 2023.

    This EU mega-scandal has been largely ignored by the UK’s Remainer media.

    Qatargate, the huge corruption scandal engulfing the EU, seems to be of little interest to the mainstream media in the UK. Far more column inches and airtime have been devoted to Rishi Sunak’s failure to wear a seatbelt than to this mega-scandal in Brussels, in which numerous members of the EU oligarchy and their friends in NGO-land stand accused of taking cash bribes from the Qatari government. Eva Kaili, the former vice-president of the European Parliament, was arrested and charged with corruption in December, and is currently being detained in a jail just outside of Brussels.

    I have to confess to some ignorance myself here. I knew about the arrest of Kaili but that’s about it. The problem about the EU is that it was corrupt in conception so one shouldn’t be surprised that it dogs it in practice. We are cursed with modern governance. Everywhere you look it is as bent as a corkscrew!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/03/the-media-blackout-over-qatargate/

    1. While he was spending some time in the Biesbosch wetland in the Netherlands, the foundation received photos showing that G463 had lost his right leg below the knee.

      Using data from the accelerometer in the eagle’s tag, Mr Dennis’s team deduced he sustained an injury while in north Norfolk in December 2021, as he was ‘more sedentary than usual’.

      BILL!

      1. Quite extraordinary journey he made. Interesting that he chose the short Channel crossing. I assume that when over Dover he could easily see Calais.

        1. I can vouch for the fact that when flying over Dover, given clear conditions, one can, indeed, see Calais 🙂

          3. A fish that tastes as if it has been grazing on the wall of a particularly polluted harbour wall and smells even worse than it tastes.

  60. Alexandra Phillips: The new female face of Reform UK
    The lorry driver’s step-daughter promises to hold the Conservative Party’s feet to the fire so that ‘its skin crackles’

    Christopher Hope: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/03/alexandra-phillips-new-female-face-reform-uk/

    I am still waiting to be convinced that Richard Tice has not lost the plot vis-a-vis those damaged by the Covid gene therapy and his ill-considered attack on Andrew Bridgen.

    Ben Habib was a prominent member of the Brexit Party as was Belinda de Lucy and both of these speak coherently and lucidly on GB News. They should both become active in the Reform Party and it is certainly time this party proved that it has the stomach for a no holds barred battle with the Conservatives. There are surely enough completely disaffected Conservative MPs who should certainly be seriously considering resigning from the Conservative Party

    1. I thought Zelenski was just a very corrupt chancer who was unable to stop the worst excesses of his forces and the Azoz Brigade, but it seems he’s actually insane!

    2. Thought for the day.
      NATO nukes Kiev and takes out Zelenski, then blames the Russians and both sides sue for peace.
      Russia keeps the nuclear wasteland and the rest of Ukraine and Joe Biden orders helicopters to evacuate people from the roof of the US embassy as in Saigon and Kabul.

      Win win

      Cherry on the cake would be if it happened during a Johnson visit.

    3. Oh a bit like the judge in the Aaron Banks libel trial, who agreed that Banks had been libelled but ruled that it didn’t matter. Absolutely bonkers. And we are supposed to believe justice is blind. We are no better than the third (“developing”) world.

    4. Oh a bit like the judge in the Aaron Banks libel trial, who agreed that Banks had been libelled but ruled that it didn’t matter. Absolutely bonkers. And we are supposed to believe justice is blind. We are no better than the third (“developing”) world.

      1. I thought it was the only truth allowed to be spoken on campus.
        A Freudian slip by the headline writers, perhaps.

    2. No headline maybe, but my mother (d1989) used to complain about the spelling and grammar in the Telegraph years ago.

  64. I’m no great fan of the current Pope, but I find the media silence over his visit to the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo very odd.

    When he arrived last Tuesday on a State visit, the roads were lined with people, four-five deep, over 25 km. Any other heads of state get this kind of welcome when they are on an official visit?

    He celebrated a mass at an airport in Kinshasa with a congregation of two million, a thousand priests and 9000 volunteers. Two million people, assembled peacefully, in a war-torn country. Not worthy of news?

    And yet there were 200 foreign journalists there.

    Later that day he received, in public audience, a number of victims of violence from the East of the Congo where there are over a hundred armed groups of rebels who are all fighting each other. Total chaos there. There was one story that really got me, of a woman who was kidnapped at the age of 7 and made to be a sex slave. She said that there were a whole lot of girls there, kept naked so that they wouldn’t run away; each girl was abused by between five and ten men every day. For food, they were given the cooked remains of men that their guards had killed and, if a girl refused to eat it, she was killed herself and then fed to the other girls…

    Why, why, why, are the media only interested in historical slavery? Surely we should all be shouting from the rooftops over this kind of stuff that is going on today under our very noses?

    1. You know the answer of course. Obsessive selective outrage over historical wrongs is facile virtue signalling narcissism that carries no risk.

      1. My father died 39 years ago this month.

        Selective indignation was a phrase he frequently used.

    2. Because they’re black and we’re white. Racism for the activist Left only goes one way, and they’re blind to the truth.

      Lefties live in perpetual doublethink. To be rational and accept the world as it is causes them painful cognitive dissonance.

    3. That’s utterly repulsive, Caroline. Where did you get that piece of appalling information?

        1. What is it with the ruddy French? Why can’t they write in English like everybody else? Time to teach them another lesson. {:^))

          2. Do you do a crumblies course, with NoTTLer discount? My French is awfully rusty, esppecially when I remember 30 ears ago conducting crane tests in Tunisia in French…

        2. I won’t read that again. It’ll take me a while to get over the first time. I haven’t mentioned it to SWMBO, either, it’s too horrible for words.

          1. We have students coming to us in a week’s time.

            If any of them go on about slavery from 200 years ago and paying reparations to the descendants of slaves Caroline will show them this story and suggest that when they get their “A” levels and want to take a GAP year before going on to university they should go to the Congo and sort out the barbaric slavery that is going on today unremarked upon by the MSM or anyone who thinks that woke is virtuous.

          3. He needs to be a lot more forceful than that.
            Should call down a Fatwa or whatever the Christian version is on people who do such things.

    4. To answer your (rhetorical) question: it’s much easier to signal your virtue by banging on about historical slavery. Actually “doing something” about modern day slavery is hard work and might involve judging non-hwite people, which, as any fule kno, is verboten.

  65. Could this be a reason why there is a lack of availability of eggs? Why egg plants and factories and farms in the US have been destroyed?
    pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33191178

    1. There were plenty of eggs in Morrisons today but the price of each loose egg has gone up by 5p. I didn’t note the prices of the packaged eggs. The loose ones are good, and you can choose the ones that look slightly larger or browner or whatever.

    1. Tell me, how will they be stopped? The council has no interest in democracy, after all. What can the citizen do to stop these malignant fools?

    2. Cripes, we don’t need any more reasons for incest in Bill’s county. Anyway, I thought speed dating was something done at home up there…

  68. 370658+ up ticks,

    Worth a looksee,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    3h
    It’s worth taking 25 mins to watch this entertaining & informative video – which shows the links between the ideas carved on the GGs & the anti human policies of the Club of Rome, Bilderbegers, WEF etc.

    Just a few years ago I did not take seriously the idea that the people who run the World wanted to erradicate 90% of its population – now I find it difficult not to think that is exactly what they are doing.

    Georgia Guidestones Darkest Secrets Revealed | Destroyed by a villain or a hero?
    Georgia Guidestones Darkest Secrets Revealed | Destroyed by a villain or a hero?

    Georgia Guidestones Destroyed by a Villain or a Hero?On July 6, 2022, a bomb detonated on a 5-acre plot of farmland in Elberton, Georgia. The explosion destr…

    m.youtube.com//

    https://gettr.com/post/p276h75a812

        2. Yes, well the word sneak seemed to apply a degree of sneakiness whereas snuck implies a gentler sort of sleight of hand…

  70. 370658+ up ticks,

    Will be found guilty by a head, you DO NOT obtain a head like that on a weekly stipend.

    Take a gander.

    breitbart,

    EU Socialist MP Suspected of Taking Over $100,000 in Bribes

    A socialist MP working within the EU is suspected to have taken over $100,000 in bribes over the past two years, a report from the bloc’s parliament has claimed.Report

    2. As I have been pointing out here for the last couple of weeks the pound is now at a far lower level than it was in the worst days of Truss as PM.

      The British have been completely conned into believing that Hunt and Sunak would be better for the economy – they are proving to be far worse.

      1. The pound/dollar ratio did sink to £1.03 to the dollar, and went up to £1.24 earlier this week, though that seems to have been the high point.

        1. Because our course fees are paid in pounds and our expenses are made in euros then the pound/euro rate is more significant to us than the pound/dollar rate.

          Last July there were over 1.21 euros to the pound so effectively we have suffered an 8 percent drop in earning since then on top of the fact that lockdowns and absurd rules almost destroyed our business completely. It is hard to muster much sympathy for strikers who were still paid in full during Covid and are now demanding over 10% in pay rises when we received no money at all and had an 80% fall in our income!

          1. My sympathies to you and Caroline, Richard. I wish I could help out. Hang on in there, R & C.

          2. Our work(?) from home civil servants are not getting much support for their 40+ percent pay demands.

            They need to be treated like Reagan treated the Air Traffic Controllers.

          5. Absolutely yes – I appreciate that you are more interested in the euro /pound rate because it’s your business.

            My interest and monitoring of the dollar rate over the last few months is driven by the fact I’ve booked another trip to Kenya (priced in dollars) and also needed to get some cash (dollars). I waited till it went up to £1.24 but then came down a bit – obviously I didn’t get that rate from Barclays but at least it was more than I would have done a few months ago. My trip later this month has cost me a lot more than the last one did! Still, each time I think it could be the last one……..

            I don’t have much sympathy for the strikers who are mostly quite well-paid compared with pensioners like me.

          6. I find the economic ignorance of those people quite staggering. They want a massive hike in pay, yet no doubt support the crippling taxes on business – the people paying their wages.

            Where do they think the money for their horrific pay demand will come from?

      2. “The British have been completely conned into believing that ignored in the imposition of Hunt and Sunak.”

      3. It is all part of the plan. Lower the value of the pound and increase exports.

        You will find that foreign aid payments to third world countries is increased to match the lowered purchasing power.

      4. It’s thenCon MPs who should be kicking up a fuss and Con party members. After all they roundly rejected both these slime balls. Joe Public is pretty well helpless.

      5. It’s thenCon MPs who should be kicking up a fuss and Con party members. After all they roundly rejected both these slime balls. Joe Public is pretty well helpless.

      6. And of course, nothing from the screeching Left, al beeb or any of the usual suspects. No summons to the IMF.

        Why? Because enforced decline is policy. They don’t want growth. They want debt, tax and waste.

    2. At least he has a farm that produces viable products.
      Unlike cabinnet ministers who produce absolutley nothing.

      1. Do you realise he pisses away £45,000+ a year on the upkeep of his ‘natural’ wildflower meadow at Highgrove?

          2. Oh gawd! I absolutely hated Sugar Puffs! The smell made me retch! Same as sesame does to me!

          3. But, but, but… Jeremy the Bear, who loved his Sugar Puffs, is much more likeable than Jeremy the Coryby, Sue Mac.

          6. We had porridge! Double pan on the stove overnight! Couldn’t afford packet cereals!

          9. No, but I have seriously considered it! We are very close to some lovely moors and hills and our garden is fairly bee friendly!

          10. A long time ago I once worked with a chap who kept bees. He had all the regulation regalia for protection against stings. He also had a hole in the crotch of his trousers…….

          12. You should take a course, join a group and get a couple of hives.
            The wee stripy buggers even thrive in cities – there’s an Oslo bee-herd group called By-bi (City Bee) that keep hives on rooves all over the city.
            A hive of healthy bees is a great thing to see – and nothing sadder than a couple of years ago when a large animal knocked over one of Firstborn’s hives in the winter, killing all the bees. Sad little stripy bodies everywhere when it thawed. We were very upset. Now, the hives are tied down with aircraft tethers!

          13. I know there are ‘city’ bees on tower blocks! Urban honey! And there is a bee keeper around here! When I have a little more spare time…. I must make enquiries!

        2. But He loves his trees.
          He’s probably quite selective when he chooses which logs to burn 🔥 🤣

        3. Talking of pissing money away. There was a heart warming story yesterday on the Beeb website of an elderly disabled woman who couldn’t afford to heat her home. A youngish chap offered to pay her energy bills in the sum of £10,000. However, she turned the offer down saying there were others in a worse position than her so it would be better to give the said sum to Charity.
          “Anne asked John to donate the money he wanted to give to her to National Energy Action, a fuel poverty charity, instead. It aims to eradicate fuel poverty and pushes for better investment in energy efficiency to help those who are poor or vulnerable.
          I thought I’d take a peek at said charity which employs over 80 people has charitable donations of £8 million (including sizeable amounts from UK taxpayers) and seems to be some sort of research organisation rather than distributing dosh to those in dire need of help. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

  73. 3 hours put in up the hill getting a couple of elms, 24″ and an 8″ diameters, cut into manageable pieces and dragged down. Stopped early as the saw needs sharpening.
    Managed to move the smaller stuff up to the saw horse and was cutting the large main trunk bits into logs small enough to carry when the saw began cutting off to one side, so put the tools away and came inside for a bath and mug of tea.
    Feel MUCH better now, but I do need another mug of tea and a bite to eat.

    1. You know, I am already rather tired- more stuff today & more later about that- but after reading your posts….I feel I need a sleep;-))

    2. I have spent around 8 hours daily on de-cluttering my house this month so far. And, Nno I am not moving in with Annie and her Bill in 11 days’ time!!! Lol.

    1. Let’s talk about reducing corporation tax from 19% to 15% as you said you would do when you were running for the party leadership.

    3. None of them need pay rises. We all need tax cuts. Tax cuts help everyone. How about scrapping fuel duty. Capital gains tax. Instead of hiking corporation tax, reduce it by 6%. Scrap IR35 completely. Stop rigging the market for energy. Leave private landlords alone. Scrap VAT entirely. Massively simplify the tax code. Scrap the upper and higher rates of tax and reduce the basic rate of tax to 23%, combining national insurance as well.

      Abandon net zero, the climate change act, all the woke nonsense. Put the state is a blender.

  75. Lovely afternoon. Mild and still. Got all the existing logs stacked – and the trimmings taken to the bonfire area. Half as much again will appear when Colin comes to finish off the maple tree…

    1. Well done!
      I’ve got most of the lightweight stuff beside the saw horse ready for the morning, but left the larger diameter stuff at the bottom of the bank I had to drag it down as the petrol chainsaw need sharpening.
      Will probably get the round files out and do both the petrol and electric saws tomorrow.

          2. One of the reasons I try to stay so active is to stave off total decrepitude!

            Just had a bit of good news. A pair of tree climbing spikes I bought 2nd hand from the USA a decade and a half ago needs the leatherwork renewed. Took them to a shoe repair/leatherwork shop in Allenton, Derby and they sent them to a saddle maker for a quote.
            Got the quote today, £65! VERY worth while getting done.

  76. Spoke too soon earlier in the week, when I said winter here in WV so far has been mild. Bitterly cold this morning at 23 degrees F. and the wind blows right through you. But looking on the bright side, the sun is shining in a clear, blue sky.

    1. Ooh lucky you. It is now up to 10F in these parts. Thanks to being near the lake, a friend was reporting that it was around minus 27C in Ottawa last night.

        1. I just hope that those tree hugging country destroying liberal politicians up in Ottawa have trouble starting their EVs as they head into parliament to tell a few more lies and spread despair.

          Rumour is that despite polls showing the conservatives way ahead of the liberals, Trudeau is so vain that he thinks that he can win an election.

          Bring it on
          ,

          1. Hi Richard. I don’t know anything about the Canadian Conservatives but if they are anything like ours God help you all….

            (Edited for silly typo!)

          2. Hi Richard. I don’t know anything about the Canadian Conservatives but if they are anything like ours God help you all….

            (Edited for silly typo!)

    2. I gave up on religion when I was at C of E school. They all believe in something that has never been proven in over 2000 years.

  78. Beeb Headline:

    “Bill Gates would rather pay for vaccines than travel to Mars”

    I for one would rather Bill Gates traveled to Mars…….

    2. I for one Two would rather Bill Gates travelled to Mars…….and took his vaccines with him

    3. I wonder who (ho ho) and / or what persuaded Gates that vaccines were the answer to so many of the world’s problems?
      Is there an even more sinister Blofeld lurking in the wings or is Gates the Uberfeld?

      1. Did he not fly on the Lolita express more than once apparently? If the island was indeed an underage Honeytrap I suspect any compromised male would do whatever is asked of them….

        1. Funny that the only “visitor” held to account has zero real power and next to no influence.

          As the meme noted the other day, the only piece of classified information that isn’t in the public domain is Epstein’s client list.

    5. “Pay for vaccines” my ….. foot!
      Gates is heavily invested in vaccines – the money goes into his pocket when people pay for vaccines!

        2. Couple inches snow today, refreshed the existing back to bright white.
          Just in from shifting it from the steps outside.

          4. Saw a really interesting programme about the bodies a few weeks ago on TV. I’ve been to Pompeii and was fascinated by the plaster casts. Inevitably, it was the dog that got me most, just like the skeleton of “Hatch” in the Mary Rose.

  80. And today- yesterday a clinician came to see my husband because he had some swelling in his right foot and ankle. This was after the nurse came and took out the staples. She has to be one of the most obnoxious females I have ever met, and I have met a few. Loud and bossy, didn’t listen to anything either of us said.
    Upshot, she was convinced MH had a blood clot in his foot and she was trying to get him for a scan that afternoon. We said NO. Friday instead which was arranged.
    He was picked up by hospital transport and 9.15 and called me at at 11 to say he was heading home, once he was picked up. NO CLOT!!!!
    He finally got home at about 3- most of which was spent waiting for the ambulance.
    Funny- the lady driver on the home trip asked if she could have the dandelion leaves that were in the flower bed outside our back door. She has a tortoise and wanted the leaves for him. Help yourself, I said.
    So no worries on that score to our great relief although neither of us thought it was a clot.
    It’s strange that so many of the NHS people we have encountered are terrific and some others are horrible.

    1. Obnoxious though she was, a clot might have been serious and she was doing her best to get it sorted out promptly.

      Did the staple removal go quickly and reasonably painlessly?

      1. Yes, it was OK and he didn’t wince much.
        I take your point about the potential seriousness of a clot but there are ways of behaving. A few people we have met in our various visits to the hospitals have been unnecessarily unpleasant.
        I think they develop a power complex.
        However, in the main, most of them are great.

    2. I’m sure she was just making sure that all was progressing as it should be. Her attitude wasn’t the best, but she was doing her job. Some people really shouldn’t be in front of the public. Glad there was no clot!

      1. Yes, but she should have paid attention to what we were saying and not talked over us all the time. Anyway, we won’t have to see her again.
        I don’t like being critical but people working with those in poor health etc should be a little more sensitive- as indeed most of them are.

    4. I’ve had blood clots. My chest CT looked like a shotgun blast. When I arrived, I was sat down and hooked up to endless tubes to bring my blood pressure down and heart rate under control – it has sat at about 150 for 2 weeks.

      I went to go to the loo and a volley of nurses almost sat on me, to the point a security man stood beside me to stop me moving. I was that close to death.

      I appreciate the healthcare worker was an arse, but blood clots are serious and you don’t muck about with them. even if there isn’t one, the suspicion should be treated as an emergency.

      1. Glad you are OK Wibbs. We weren’t taking it lightly but her attitude was not necessary.

      1. I had two tortoises as a child and they ate anything green and loved carrots. One of them, Rosie, used to follow my dad round the garden. It is quite surprising how fast they can move when they want to.

    1. I think Nottlers would have made good detectives with our suspicious minds and rejection of the obvious

      1. It’s different eyes looking at a situation, bringing experience from all sorts of lives!

          2. I’m fine, as far as I can tell, Sue – thanks. Follow-up today by the travelling rehab team not needed.
            Still slightly disturbed that various body parts described as being those of a 30 year-old – were they sizing me up for spares? 😮

          4. Lots of heart & artery/vein ultrasound… I did offer to negotiate a price, but the technician just stared at me.
            Horsepiddle humour obviously not his forte.

          5. I ‘spect you and my OH would get on! He has a ‘different’ humour! I larf a lot – other people not so much!

          6. I had to hide my humour in a box – people didn’t/don’t understand, and get all huffy and sour-faced. So, I bite my tongue. So, I’m dull. Huff!

          7. Colleagues in CT and GA always called my humour “edgy”. Took it as a compliment.
            And, talk of prescient- the Goons did a song in the late 50s or early 60s called The Russian Satellite Moon.
            “Where is this satellite moon?”
            “It’s over Arkansas Mr. President.”
            “Thank goodness it’s not over America.”
            Long live the Goons.

          8. SWMBOs parents loved the shows, on radio, that was. Me, I never got into their humour. It seemed to me to consist entirely of saying the same thing every show, in a funny voice.

          9. In the 50s I was a great fan of the Goon Show and had a couple of LPs, now recorded onto the ‘pooter

          10. I am too young (boast, boast) to remember the Goons on the radio but my ex and I bought them on CD- I love the nutty humour and I can do a fair few of the voices.
            One of the best is The Rent Collectors.

          11. One of the advantages of living in the backwoods – aka South Africa in the 60s/70s) – is that the SABC broadcast the Goons every Sunday evening for years. Great fun 🙂

          13. Good man Conners. I know not everyone appreciates them but they really make me laugh. They were just so nuts.

          14. I understand, pet! Dull!! I don’t believe! I’ve even stopped rolling my eyes…40+ years on!

          18. Lots of heart & artery/vein ultrasound… I did offer to negotiate a price, but the technician just stared at me.
            Horsepiddle humour obviously not his forte.

    2. I have a suspicion that it is known what happened to this lady….. and we might be rather annoyed if the truth gets out. The police seem to want to wrap it up with ‘she fell in the river’ and that’s it. End of story.

        1. Someone had to say it, so it might as well be me….. hark! Is that a knock on the door…?

  83. I do sometimes enjoy watching “Pointless” but whoever thought that Connie Huqwit would be a good guest presenter needs sacking!

      1. He’s still there – Huq is one of the “celebrities” who appear now that the much missed Richard has defected to his “House of Games” and being an author!

          1. Osman was the lefty pal of Armstrong at Trinity, Cambridge (who got a distinguished 3rd in English)

        2. She won best Blue Peter presenter award a few years back! I’d never heard of her…. I felt diversity might have something to do with it.

    1. It has been very mild in CT so far this winter. My friend Patty is pleased about that!

    2. I am about to walk over to the bank. It’s minus 21C outside (bloody cold Isreal terms). Apparently windy with a windchill factor of minus 30.

      I may be some time!

    3. I am about to walk over to the bank. It’s minus 21C outside (bloody cold Isreal terms). Apparently windy with a windchill factor of minus 30.

      I may be some time!

  87. That’s me gone. Very good day in the garden. Nice tomorrow – then the weather deteriates (sic) from Sunday onwards – COLD nights….

    So make the most of it.

    A demain

  88. For anyone interested, and I can’t see why anyone would be, the fallen trees I am currently clearing are up a fairly steep bank at A;
    After cutting them into manageable pieces, I drag them downhill to B;
    Then they are further cut into pieces I can actually carry and carried to the saw horse and chopping area at C;
    After further sawing and chopping, they are dragged down to the woodstacks at D.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8873436c5f8bb7f9b2697465a70cc111cfb4a1683df15786ab59068974e22f93.png

    1. I didn’t realise you were so close to the road, Bob. Do you get a lot of headlights shining into the house? Would drive me ape.

        2. My brother used to live with the Waterloo-S’oton railway at the end of the garden. After a short time, he never noticed the trains. So I can see how that works!

          1. My sister and brother in law lived just outside the centre of Athens for years and when they stayed with us, couldn’t sleep as it was so quiet!

          2. Firstborn had real problems in the summer, when we spent a night in Cardiff hotel. His place is totally silent, and he couldn’t sleep for the noise.

          4. The owls and the muntjacs and foxes keep us awake here. It is a busy rat-run during the day. We are separated from the road by the village green, the longest in England.

          5. I thought Frampton on Severn in Gloucestershire had the longest village green in England?

            We’re both going a bit deaf and sleep with the window shut at this time of year so we don’t hear the animals so much now.

          6. “Barrington has the longest village green in Europe and is maintained by the Green Charity. There are stunning little roads that weave their way through the Green giving access to the many beautiful homes that surround it.” Some reports say it is 22 acres, other say 30 acres – it did have some common land given to the Green Charity a few years ago so that may account for the discrepancy in acreage. Whether it is the longest in England or Europe I have no idea, but it does extend to half a mile in length.

          9. We live on a busy road but are back from the road somewhat. It bothers my husband more than it bothers me- I can tune it out.

          10. When I was touring Europe in the ’70s. it seemed that every guesthouse I stayed at was next to a church with the hours and quarters chiming regularly. I found them intrusive at first, but after a week or so, I stopped noticing and again, I missed the sounds when I got home.

          11. We found the same travelling through France. There was a wonderful
            Church across the street from one hotel, Hotel Salmon, in one small market town where we stayed repeatedly over a decade or more. (My brain cannot recall the precise name).

            Edit:
            I looked it up: Hotel Saumon in Verneuil-sur-Avre.

          12. Same as, we lived on a fairly busy road, moved to a private Cul de sac. Couldn’t sleep. But we soon got use to it. Now the milkie wakes me up before day break ….sometimes.

          13. We had a Postman problem.

            It soon abated after this:

            A Plea to the Postman
            Bless you Mr Postman,
            We respect your early run
            Delivering, as you do,
            Letters for the family Hunn.

            You arrive at five-fifty
            Every morning on the dot.
            We hear your diesel motor
            Through the window, quite a lot

            But we don’t wish to rise
            At such an early hour
            And sleep, when once disturbed,
            Is well beyond our power.

            So please, we beg you, please,
            No matter what your load,
            Please leave your diesel motor
            Outside – upon the road.
            At Southview, Kelsale

            (Please feel free to keep this complimentary copy.)

            …and he did.

          14. Try sleeping with the Catapult Track track, fpr launching Phantoms, about a foot above your head.

            That was back in the late 60s. early 70’s, when we had proper Aircraft Carriers, with proper aircraft

          15. When I stayed with one of my Canadian friends, the railway marshalling yard was not very far away and clearly audible. After a couple of weeks I no longer noticed it – in fact, I missed it when I went home!

          16. Spending many years in the Royal Air Force, you got used to night flights and landings. After a time you just didn’t notice them.

        1. You’re lucky.
          The locals her get quite upset if one takes fallen branches, even though they don’t want them themselves.

          Perhaps they like the idea of the rotting wood providing food and shelter for insects and the rest of the food chain

  91. Good night, everyone. It’s been a good and productive (indoors) day. Sleep well until morning’s light.

  94. Evening, all. The British government (as opposed to Britain) does not have a coherent policy when it comes to energy; all they want to do is make it unaffordable for the plebs.

  96. I am saying goodnight now. It has been a long 3 weeks and a long day today. Husband has already gone up, full of steak, mashed spuds with fried onion in it and tenderstem broc.
    Badly need sleep and not too early a start tomorrow.
    Forgot to get detergent on Friday and need it so, sadly, another trip to supermarket is likely.
    I wish you all well and hope y’all sleep well. If you hear snoring….it will be Paul in Norway! ;-))

  97. There’s a fantastic Delingpod this week with Alex Krainer. He’s very switched on, and also quite optimistic about the future. He thinks the banksters will lose.

  100. I think I’ll pop off now as well.
    Meeting part of the family for ‘coffee’ late morning.
    Egg and Bacon sarnie for breakfast first, treat of the week. ☺

      1. Talking of which…..I’ve been thinking about buying one and learning to play. But they are awfully loud.
        I suppose I could go to the bottom of the garden and sit by the shed 😉🪕🤡 yee haar.

      1. The way to check, if ‘It’ is a transgal, or a man

        Strip ‘It’ naked and let naked females parade in front of it

        If ‘it’ gets an erection it is a man

        Then, give “It” a good (de) bollocking for telling lies

    1. I reckon the people at large have sussed what is going on and will have none of this nonsense.

      There is only so much that intelligent people will allow and witness before adopting severe reactions to the politicos and civil servants pushing this stuff.

      A few examples from our current travails:

      We are told that Ukraine is winning in the conflict with Russia, that we are obliged to give away billions of taxpayer pounds to assist Zelensky and to send British Chobham armoured tanks to assist the ‘righteous’ war effort against Russia.

      We have the repulsive actor Bunter pontificating to the Americans that the brave Ukrainians can learn to fly F16 fighter planes in a few weeks when it actually takes 36 months to adequately train an F16 fighter pilot pilots selected from an elite pool. The fat turd, Bunter, references a Polish squadron flying Hurricanes and maybe the odd Spitfire in WWII, flying from his Ruislip constituency downing ‘1 in 7’ of all German planes in the Battle of Britain. The despicable dolt has not researched the numbers freely available on the web, from memory just over 50 from a total of 1700 or more like 1 in 35.

      Lately we have been told that the EU, a monstrous assemblage of unelected tossers, is presently promising admittance of the failed ‘country’ of Ukraine into the EU despite adamant French opposition. We have to question why on earth the European nations want to admit it and subsidise a country about to fall in large parts to Russian forces when it is proven the most corrupt and bankrupt entity and run by a puppet and clown sponsored by an equally corrupt Biden. As I write the silly clowns at the EU are dancing in the streets of Kiev with Zelensky, seemingly oblivious to their perfect bubble about to burst.

      On the vaccine front we now have conclusive proof that national governments have been subverted into promoting the clotshots. These political and medico actors have profited greatly from the scam as have their sponsors and friends. The clotshots demonstrably cause the proliferation of a wide variety of harms , including many deaths, yet the perpetrators persist as though nothing untoward has occurred.

      On climate change our foolish government have fallen for the next gigantic scam. Man has no effect on the sun and the relation of our planet to both the sun and other planets. These are the factors that drive changes in our climate. Yet they persist with the Net Zero projections which are total nonsense. There are many scientists, astrophysicists and other experts who have been silenced by MSM on this topic. We are entering a Cold Period within that cycle, neither a warming cycle and none of this has anything whatever to do with carbon or carbon dioxide.

      At some point soon we will have to reassert our Rights and Liberties. Our politicians and government are not Sovereign. We the people are Sovereign. These politicians work for us.

      1. 370721+ up ticks,

        Morning C,
        I do agree wholeheartedly with your post every word an arrow of truth aimed at the heart of these odious political overseers, well penned.

  105. At 8.25pm the thermometer is showing 18F and feels like 7F so it’s a bit chilly out in West Virginia this night!!

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