Saturday 11 March: The Government must stop throwing good money after bad – and put the brakes on HS2

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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647 thoughts on “Saturday 11 March: The Government must stop throwing good money after bad – and put the brakes on HS2”

  2. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    What Deep Thinkers Men Are…

    I mowed the lawn today, and after doing so I sat down and had a cold beer. The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking on various topics.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/205638a09709c5f8eac5f1250ad5f7d38c1873d040ee1cf5673126277e79659c.jpg

    Finally I thought about an age old question:

    Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the bollocks?

    Women always maintain that giving birth is far more painful than a bloke getting kicked in the bollocks.

    Well, after another beer, and some heavy deductive thinking, I have come up with the answer to that question.

    Getting kicked in the bollocks is more painful than having a baby; and here is the reason for my conclusion.

    A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “It might be nice to have another child.”

    On the other hand, you never hear a bloke say, “You know, I think I’d like another kick in the bollocks.”

    I rest my case. Time for another beer

      1. 371948+ up ticks,

        Morning C,

        Baring the teeth of treachery as shown could fatally alter the majority voting pattern proving our only saving grace as a nation.

  5. HS2 is a total shambles – and reveals a rot at the heart of Britain’s economy.

    It isn’t just a bad idea. We look like a country that can’t get the job done – a nation of dither and delay when every penny counts.

    It’s not just HS2 though is it? Look around. Nothing works; particularly if it has any connection to government. All the Ministries of State are disaster zones. The Home Office. Defence; the NHS, Police, even the roads are unrepaired. This is a country poised on the edge of total collapse. It’s Haiti in the North Sea! The terrible part of it is that there is absolutely no sign that the Political Elites understand this, let alone are prepared to fix it. This myopia amidst disaster is not historically unusual. When faced with unpalatable truths politicians usually deny it or indulge in escapism. Hence the fantasies about stopping the Cross Channel Invasion and the War in Ukraine where they can pretend that they are somehow in charge of events.

    Sensible people should make some preparation for what is to come.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/10/shambolic-hs2-physical-embodiment-cant-do-britain/

    1. Oh, the Political Elites understand alright. They’ve engineered this situation and are, irrespective of party affiliations, predisposed to wreck this Country from end to end. Mass immigration, illegal or not, is encouraged; power supply being wrecked leading to terminal decline in industry; HS2; not completing Brexit by ignoring the will of the people. The list goes on.

    2. There’s no intention to build a railway. They’ve spent several times the cost of building a railway and still no railway. It’s just an element in their plans for the transference of wealth. Multi million pound contracts for family and friends all paid for from the public purse. As with the Covid PPE scam.

    3. For over 40 years, the politicians and bureaucrats did little more than rubber stamp diktats from the Brussels / Strasbourg gravy train. Now they’re expected to work for a living and they don’t like it. Add to that, the carrot of a plum EU pension, I mean position, was an easy bribe for any of the awkward squad and it’s easy to see why the establishment has been dragging anchor since 2016.

      1. Don’t forget Feargal, that EU pensions are untaxed.

        Although the Civil Service is loathe to admit it.

  6. HS2 is a total shambles – and reveals a rot at the heart of Britain’s economy.

    It isn’t just a bad idea. We look like a country that can’t get the job done – a nation of dither and delay when every penny counts.

    It’s not just HS2 though is it? Look around. Nothing works; particularly if it has any connection to government. All the Ministries of State are disaster zones. The Home Office. Defence; the NHS, Police, even the roads are unrepaired. This is a country poised on the edge of total collapse. It’s Haiti in the North Sea! The terrible part of it is that there is absolutely no sign that the Political Elites understand this, let alone are prepared to fix it. This myopia amidst disaster is not historically unusual. When faced with unpalatable truths politicians usually deny it or indulge in escapism. Hence the fantasies about stopping the Cross Channel Invasion and the War in Ukraine where they can pretend that they are somehow in charge of events.

    Sensible people should make some preparation for what is to come.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/10/shambolic-hs2-physical-embodiment-cant-do-britain/

    1. You cannot reason with a rabid dog: no combination of carrot and stick will persuade it to change its ways. You must put aside the fond memories you have of when it was a puppy and acknowledge that the only fair thing to do, for it and everyone it attacks, is to take it out in the yard with a shotgun and make an end of it.

      Ah! If only!

      1. Why the need for pundits? Just show the highlights of matches with commentary (I can’t remember pundits during the early days of MOTD). When each match has finished, just show the next one. The league table can be shown at the end of the programme. I’m sure there would be plenty of people queuing up to fill the match commentary slots, so just sack any current commentator who doesn’t want to compromise their ‘principles’.

          1. We will await the verdict of viewers, but one would hope it becomes a permanent feature.

    3. I do not recall a similar furore or mass hysteria when the BBC immediately and arbitrarily sacked Michael Vaughan for allegedly making a (non-proven and strongly disputed) remark.

      2. That is because the BBC wonks all think like Lineker and they do not think like Mr Vaughn.

        Lefties aer very selective in their concepts of free speech. They’re all hypocrites, after all.

  8. 371948+Up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    So a line has been drawn outside the mosque, compliance was shown to islamic arrogance before the TAKE OVER.

    A very strong pro English statement to islamic followers inclusive of ” shape up or ship OUT” from the kingly one should be the order of the day.

    Chew that over at breakfast.

  9. A tale of two Zulu war films
    By Henry Getley
    March 11, 2023

    ONCE again the epic 1964 film Zulu is in the line of fire. The movie, depicting the January 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift in South Africa, when 141 British soldiers repelled 4,000 Zulus besieging them at a mission station, was a big box office hit and made a star of a young Michael Caine.

    But in today’s age of wokery it has been assailed by allegations of racism, and in December 2020 – in the wake of the Black Lives Matter disturbances – a painting of the battle in the Royal Collection had its description altered to show its ‘links to colonialism and imperialism’.

    Now the Government’s shambolic anti-terrorism Prevent scheme has reportedly added its two pennyworth, apparently putting the film on a list of works that may incite extremism. Zulu is said to be seen as a ‘key text’ for ‘white nationalists and supremacists’.

    Caine, 89, has branded the listing ‘the biggest load of bull***t I have ever heard’. And, since Prevent also claims that the TV comedy Yes, Minister, the 1955 war movie The Dam Busters and even The Complete Works of Shakespeare are possible encouragers of extremism, we can but heartily agree.

    Strangely enough, though, there appears to be no Prevent warning for another film about the Anglo-Zulu War – Zulu Dawn, released in 1979.

    It depicts the Battle of Isandlwana, which preceded Rorke’s Drift by a few hours, when 20,000 Zulus wiped out 850 British soldiers and more than 400 of their African auxiliaries. The Zulus lost about 2,000 warriors, but they were mainly armed with spears against rifles and cannon.

    So why doesn’t Prevent warn that Zulu Dawn may be a key text for black nationalists and supremacists? If the Zulu depiction of Rorke’s Drift can be labelled as possibly inciting white supremacy, surely Isandlwana – a stunning victory over imperialist forces – can be flagged as an encouragement for black supremacy.

    Or is it just that in today’s world turned upside down by wokery, the British must always be the bad guys?

    ****************************************

    Pounce
    4 hours ago
    There’s a very interesting video clip doing the rounds on Twitter, of Bushra Shaikh a wonk ethical latte drinker discussing the very subject on GB TV and the presenter asks her if she has seen the film she wants to ban because it is racist and guess what her answer was?

    Do a search on her name on Twitter and the vid will come up

    http://www.conservativewoman.co.

    2. Yo and Good Moaning all

      and the christian oops forename ‘Will’ is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo racist

    3. In the Film “Zulu” the Zulu warriors withdrew from the conflict without killing the remaining British and African soldiers. The Zulus withdrew saluting their opponents for their courage.

    4. The Left hate history. It is full of examples of where their malice has failed. It provides endless mentions where big state, high tax socialism has caused misery and poverty. It exposes the reality of third world culture – and they hate having a mirror put up to them more than anything else.

      This is why they keep trying to erase it, so no one can ever know how vicious, violent and crass they are, how great the British empire was and how much better Britain was before the Labour horror ruined it.

      As for the others – the exposure of the malice and stupidity of the state, the frenzied levels of incompetence and arrogance in statism and sheer pointlessness of what government does is simply embarrassing to the Left so they hate people who expose it.

    2. I don’t know enough about the case or the complaint, but this sounds far too much like ‘government didn’t like being told no and used law to get it’s own way and failed.’

      1. If you go through the link you can see the entire text. I wouldn’t bother if i were you.

  11. Morning all, light snow in Nor Zummerzet. Busy day today, things to do, people to see.

    2. You have to ask why. European farming is in a complete mess because of the EU. The truly insane green agenda is causing untold chaos with fertiliser costs. The EU is trying, desperately to force a command economy, to apply EU central planning to the nations of Europe.

      Our civil service is going along happily, but the ultimate goal is going to be the same as it ever has been – starvation, poverty and slaughter of millions. Is that their ideal?

  14. Medley Time

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1c7978a02563a576b7abd1ad065b9d2fb5791c519f00400cd57efadd36135808.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e348669d38f230c8fb675a3dcee02aee8f3b5ea4d07f25422a3886355223c68c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae99be446d5adc8f05dff46e427af1abdc2f823c41e894df5eb3bddb22bbef5d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1366fba8ec7ed306713faf81d03fb18959e4020cbf003a357629c8eea21b917f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c226f699f9069ff92ebdcec7a5bfe8e337a9bd0b208d82de5cce983ae5dd1027.jpg

    1. Half? Were that it only half! The effective tax rate is over 70%! Add in inflation and it’s even higher!

      Does no one else remember why Germany is not allowed, by law to create ‘lists’ of people? Why the collection of data by the state to ‘monitor’ individuals is prohibted?

      It’s because once, some 70 years ago the state machine used those lists to arrest, charge – with jumped up, usually invented charges – those people to send them to camps where they could be controlled and executed.

      Just how our state wants to now.

  15. 371948+ up ticks,

    Letters: The Government must stop throwing good money after bad – and put the brakes on HS2

    Double that up with funding rubber boat building via the french political cartel and even gary lineker heading up a party would be on a landslide win.

    Kill those two and a great many criminalised lifestyles will be fatally injured.

  16. Oof,cuts to the bone

    There’s no resistance in Britain today. No mass resistance, anyway.

    We conservatives act civilly, transparently, under the respectable

    banner of ‘opposition’. We lament the latest ‘woke’ lunacy. Perhaps we

    write to our MP, or join well-meaning alternative parties with vaguely

    rebellious names. There’s nothing wrong with this, and much right. It

    gives us purpose and fosters camaraderie. Above all, it helps expose and

    disseminate the truth, not least the fraudulence of the official

    ‘Opposition’.

    Yet when the state broadcaster and entire civil service promote

    ‘equity’, otherwise known as communism, is dignified ‘opposition’

    enough? When the Establishment plunges us into medico-fascism, class-war

    environmentalism, and foreign-war folly, is dogged ‘opposition’

    sufficient? When unchecked demographic change promises cultural

    oblivion, is spirited ‘opposition’ what’s required? And when bread and

    circuses, and other devious distractions, nurture a zombie population,

    is principled ‘opposition’ adequate?

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-british-resistances-time-has-come/
    I commend the whole article to this house

    1. I think that TCW is unwise and too late.

      Over the last couple of years the government has been tacitly encouraging young men of military age to enter the country.

      They are not being encouraged to work, so there is only one reason that the government wants them here.

      1. And the incomers seem to be split between Eastern European criminals who will prey on young and middle class idiots with drugs and prostitutes and robbery and Muslims who have no intention of integrating and whose culture and religion are the polar opposite of what we used to enjoy, who will prey on our women and social security services and welfare state..

  17. Silicon Valley Bank fails in largest bank collapse since 2008 crisis. 11 March 2023.

    US regulators rushed to seize the assets of top tech lender Silicon Valley Bank on Friday after a run on the bank, marking the largest failure of such an institution since the height of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

    Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the nation’s 16th largest bank, failed after depositors – mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies – hurried to withdraw their money this week as anxiety over the bank’s situation spread.

    Global institutions including the Bank of England are monitoring the situation closely amid concerns that the turmoil could put customers’ deposits at risk and lead to further panic across the financial system.

    Is it the beginning?

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/10/european-markets-spooked-by-us-bank-shares-sell-off

      3. These types get paid bonuses in shares or share options and they have to hold them for an agreed length of time, so although it might look dodgy it might equally be the hold time had passed and they were selling for that reason, unfortunate timing perhaps.

        1. True but given the state of the banks finances was it the right thing for the CEO to sell $3.5 million and the CFO to sell $565,000 at that precise time? It looks like they are responsible for the run on the bank.

          We need Citroen’s input.

          1. The timing could have been better, but I can’t help wondering if this run was engineered by competitors.
            Who were the biggest winners from this?
            Many of those hurt are in the high-tech industry, who benefits from US high tech companies forced out of business?

          2. Mortgage providers. They get to keep what you have already paid and resell the house to the next mug.

          3. That assumes that the house is still worth sufficient on the open market to cover the outstanding debt.
            I don’t know if it is still the case (America is different re foreclosure) but if there was any equity left after the debt and selling expenses had been cleared that belonged to the owner
            I had a case where a buyer acquired a house, never paid a penny on the mortgage but still made a handsome profit, because house prices were going mad.

  19. Good morning, all. Bright, frosty and cold here in N Essex.

    From the USA, an articulate young politician setting out his position the SVB collapse, Ukraine etc. Do we have anyone of his ilk in the HoC? Bridgen has put his head above the parapet and is being attacked and ignored; Redwood was once in this mould but with age he has sadly become an echo chamber and nobody in government takes any notice of him.
    We need people like Matt Gaetz here but the corrupt two party system and the ‘selection’ processes hinder the progress of anyone who would dare to have Firebrand as their social media handle.

    War Room – Matt Gaetz

    1. Wright and the others have come out in sympathy with Lineker.
      Protecting his right for ‘freedom of speech’.
      But nobody else is allowed to say what they think.
      I wonder how the person that Wright spat on feels about his exceedingly gobby stances.

      2. As a private citizen he has complete freedom of speech – of course, he wouldn’t permit any dissent form his view but hey, he’s a Lefty. As a BBC presenter he has to uphold the BBC charter. If he doesn’t want to be bound by that, he can resign.

      1. Sorry, Sr, didn’t see yours when I wrote. Still, it’s bloomin’ obvious, innit?

    2. I see Stapleford is in favour of child abuse and paedophilia. Not surprised really.

    3. Because some people have been encouraged by our ghastly state machine to become sick. God help the children – I dread the society that we’ll have in 10-15 years’ time.

    1. That’s Terrible.
      I’ll put Money on those disgusting creatures firing weapons are not even from Australia.
      That was suggested when the same thing happened in NZ and when the Canadian truckers demonstrated.

    2. Look how many police there are. Look how many protestors. Mob plod, ten to one. Divide them. Remove their radios. There’s nothing they can do.

      There are vastly more of us than them. If they’re armed, well, they’re going to have ot start killing people and expose themselves as the fascists they are. The state has got to learn that it is the dog, we the owner.

  23. Good morning, chums. As ever, these days, I have lots to do in my diary, so I will read Tom’s morning joke, then disappear until later tonight. Keep well and enjoy your day.

  24. 371948+ up ticks,

    breitbart,

    Danegeld: UK to Pay France Half a Billion to Police Own Beaches, Build Them a Migrant Detention Centre

    Ogga1,

    Danegeld: UK to Pay France Half a Billion to Police Own Beaches, Build Them a Migrant Detention and rubber boat construction Centre

    I do believe they, the politico scammers, are already working on the next instalment the collective teat of the United Kingdom is red raw with scamming abuse what is worse it is supported via the lab/lib/con/current ukip voters

      1. 371948+ up ticks,

        Morning Kp,
        The rubber boat building extension will be given priority.

      2. Good jobthe HS2 ‘mismanagement team’ are not involved then, or it would be 3026

        1. Which demonstrates that the government won’t do anything about the problem until after 2026

      3. It could be built in 2 weeks – all it needs is a 20 foot fence, barbed wire and benches and a rubber stamp labelled ‘rejected’. They’re choosing to waste the money.

    2. Sunak should provide that £500 million out of his family ‘s pocket. He throws, willy-nilly, the taxpayers’ money, disregarding the abysmal state of the UK economy. He is not fit to be our PM. Perhaps only long standing UK citizens can legally become our PM or Mayors in major UK cities. Sunak was hardly elected PM.

      2. Unelected, unwanted. A WEF stooge. The BBC has never mentioned that the economy and pound have never risen above the lowest point the BoE plunged Truss. It’s an establishment stitch up. A big state, high tax spendaholic socialist failure.

      3. ‘Morning, Clyde, “Perhaps only long standing UK citizens can legally become our PM or Mayors in major UK cities.“.

        I would amend that to read, “Perhaps only long standing UK citizens with 4 UK born Grandparents can legally become our PM or Mayors in major UK cities“.

        1. “Perhaps only long standing UK citizens with 4 UK born Grandparents can should legally become our PM or Mayors in major UK cities”.

  25. Morning all 😊🙂
    Very frosty.
    Good money after bad, hasn’t Richie suntax just handed half a billion to Macron to pay for even more boats ?
    And they call themselves a government.
    They don’t have a clue.

    2. It’s all about posturing. Sunak doesn’t care about the invading horde. Macron wants the gimmigrants gone. The Home Office is forcing them on us out of revenge.

      Bluntly, they are in France. If every country they have passed through hasn’t dealt with them that’s their problem, not ours. Return them to their origin. If Albania won’t take them, put them on a boat and kick them off in French waters.

  27. Good morning all. A rather overcast start with not quite -4°C outside. Not as cold as I was expecting.

  29. 371948+ up ticks,

    May one ask,

    Regarding the Dover invasion, commencing on the 7th March and the new law came into being how many illegals have entered ?

    2. Lol. Was out with my lefty friends night (if you recall, i am surrounded by them where i live). One stormed out when i dared suggest he should keep his political opinions to himself if he wants the Beeb’s money (she is a sports journalist and knows him apparently). By all means disagree with me and put up a counter argument. But the lefties don’t like debate.

    2. Overcome with sexual urges. That has worked as a defence in court before. Not for white people though.

    1. Part of a 2.2 billion pounds financial initiative.
      Interpretation ….
      Some one had a few bungs.

  33. Right, that’s me shutting down and going to catch the Transpeak into Derby and the Red Arrow to Nottingham.
    See you all later.

  34. The Telegraph has an “interview” (encomium more like) with the London Caliph.. Not a WORD about the daily slaying of blacks by blacks. Not a WORD.

    Funny that.

    1. Obviously pre agreed boundaries.
      “Don’t mention the war” !
      “I think I got away with it”.

  35. Police blame drivers as heavy snow and ice cause ‘absolute carnage’ on M62.

    Motorists say officials were ‘ill-prepared’ for weather but they are accused of making ‘unnecessary’ trips.

    I blame stupidity. Here in Sweden winter tyres are required on all road vehicles between December 1 and April 15. Pig-headedness in resisting change to a more common-sense solution will continue to cause countless road deaths and carnage.

    1. The trouble with that is that in many years in the UK we have perhaps one or two days when roads are dangerously icy. To expect people to spend hundreds buying four wheels with winter tyres against the chance that they may have to be oin the road in icy weather – seems to me to be extreme.

      In the Alps, or Russia or Scandinavia – where icy conditions are normal and long-lasting in winter – fine.

      1. Au contraire. Here, in southern Sweden, we have similar snowfall patterns to the UK, and around as many days when we have snow on the roads, yet we still are obliged to have winter tyres on our vehicles.

        Wintry conditions can occur any time, from late October until June — at times — (and that is in the UK). Also what is cheaper: the purchase and use of winter tyres; or the cost of carnage, damage and loss of life and limb?

        The irrebuttable fact remains: normal (summer) tyres are ridiculously inefficient [nay: lethal] when it comes to their use on roads covered with ice or snow. They simply cannot grip. As a direct consequence lives are lost and cars are wrecked. If that is not gross and utter stupidity, I don’t know what is.

        1. There are different grades of winter tyre, too. European, as used in Germany are harder compound and stiffer tread (designed for more asphalt driving) than the Nordic we have in Norway which are softer compound and softer, very slitty, treads designed to trap snow crystals for grip, and still be flexible at arctic temperatures.
          UK could easily use th European type.

        2. My walk yesterday was interrupted by trying to help a family in a 2WD car that was stuck in a nearby lane – no shovel and they’d effectively got stuck on top of drifting, compacted snow. Thanks to a very kind woman who reversed to them and loaned us 2 spades they got moving again but it took a while – common sense and winter tyres would have made a real difference.

          1. Depends where you live. IN the last 15 months, in North Norfolk, there have been NO days here roads were impassable because of ice or snow.

          2. We moved to Brittany 34 years ago. We hardy ever get any snow and the little we do get has never made the roads near us impassable in all the time we have been here.

          3. Even here, the main roads are usually well gritted and passable. Even so, I carry a shovel in the boot if it’s likely to snow.

      2. One is told that certain tyres cause more air pollution, which over the years might cause more deaths and health damage than the few accidents caused by idiots driving stupidly or venturing out when they don’t need to.

    2. Some years ago when my normal tyres cost about £50 each, a set of winter tyres would have cost in excess of £400. It was cheaper to stay at home during bad weather.

      1. Back in 1990, bought a set of Vredesteins for my Polo, for use in the Highlands. Quite reasonably priced, they were.

    3. Some years ago when my normal tyres cost about £50 each, a set of winter tyres would have cost in excess of £400. It was cheaper to stay at home during bad weather.

  36. On the subject of Zulu, will the use of Christian oops forename ‘Will’ now be classed as a racist event

      1. Or Will Do. Mind you, African tribes (or those who pretend to be from such tribes – like the Ngozi Fullanzis) are perhaps not the people who indulge in such heinous attitudes most frequently?

      2. Or Will Do. Mind you, African tribes (or those who pretend to be from such tribes – like the Ngozi Fullanzis) are perhaps not the people who indulge in such heinous attitudes most frequently?

  37. Soft rain here , 3c, no frost during the night .

    We could discourage Muslim incomers by telling them that lamb and chicken are off the menu.

    2. Or by just deporting them. When they go on holiday, refuse to let them on the plane.

      1. Better still, refuse to let them on the plane for their return journey. Mind you, then they would just all fly back with Air France…

    4. We could discourage them even more by not giving them the elevated protected status that they seem to be given here. Plus no benefits AT ALL unless they are here legitimately and obey OUR laws.

  38. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1899dd3ffa631c80f5f3fff1c9a92d71f5c4558727f14489f525733365480d10.jpg
    The above image is from a social media post by a trans organisation.
    I find it a bit worrying, because it is ramping up the aggression another notch.
    There have always been people who tried to pass as the opposite sex – with considerable success, as they were more or less silent and undetected. But about ten years ago, a group of activists launched a war on society and started demanding access for men to women’s spaces, even when they make minimal efforts to pass as women. Their demands have been extreme, and their language has been a mixture of extremism, aggression and victimhood.
    This has triggered a matching response from normal people.
    Now the trans political groups are upping the ante again with language that mimics a war situation.
    Most of the headlines in this composite are written by trans sympathisers.
    “weaponize” “coming to eliminate us” “survivor” all suggest a fight to the death.
    The one single headline from an anti-trans campaigner speaks about “eradicating” transgenderism, which mimics unpleasant progressive talk about “eradicating” Downs Syndrome.
    (Interesting that the left is capable of interpreting the former to mean killing trans people, but makes no such connection to killing people with Downs Syndrome)

    Where is this all going?
    Most of the trans campaigners are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. With their black and white thinking, emotion-driven victimhood, poor mental health and failure to face up to reality, they appear to be trying to whip up a full scale violent civil war out of their resentment against society.
    I doubt they understand how irresponsible and stupid this is.

    1. By the different application, Transgender is an attack on women by inadequate men. Everything is about allowing men to invade women’s spaces, so prison, toilets, sports, whatever. Why do they hate women so? This should not be tolerated.

      1. Not a proper investigation, but anecdotally, a lot of trans people I have come across appear to have had dominant mothers or be from single parent families.

          1. Could be. Feminism plays a role as well, I think. They wouldn’t want to be women if women had no rights and just worked hard in the home.

          2. But trans rights seem to trump women’s rights – certainly in the eyes of the transtw@s. Their portrayal of “women” is completely offensive. It is the only way gamma males can get back at women, for the fact that some of them are so wholly inadequate as men.

  39. Brendan O’Neill: “What’s really going on in the online Lineker love-in
    is not a fight for free speech, but a fight by the correct-thinking
    liberal elites to further turn the BBC into their political plaything,
    to complete its transformation into an outlet for their beliefs and
    their beliefs only.

    Their cringe-inducing cheerleading for Lineker,
    and for Maitlis before him, has nothing to do with the great old cause
    of defending the liberty to utter, and everything to do with colonising
    the Beeb so that it becomes little more than a mouthpiece of the
    right-on middle classes.

    This isn’t a fight for free speech – it’s a
    moral coup by noisy political influencers determined to turn
    everything, even the public broadcaster, into a platform for political
    preening.”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-lineker-row-isnt-about-free-speech-its-a-moral-coup/

    1. If you read the DM articles about all the BBC staff walking out in sympathy with Lineker, you get quite a different impression from when you read the comments below!
      “Good riddance” appears to be the majority view!

    2. It occurs to me that the BBC should offer Gary Lineker a political commentary programme which he will jointly host with either Lee Anderson or Marc Steyn. Of course this would be dependent on him making no political comments whatsoever in his football programme.

  40. Pretoria – The City of Ekurhuleni said electricians who were brutally murdered by community members after being mistaken for cable thieves had produced paperwork to prove that they were duly hired to attend to electrical problems in the area.

    Ekurhuleni MMC for Water, Sanitation and Energy, Senzi Sibeko, said an investigation is now underway into the murder of the four electrical contractors.

    City of Ekurhuleni electricians requested assistance from city-approved electrical contractors to assist on the site of an electrical outage in Sarel Hattingh Street, Klippoortjie AH, Germiston. These electrical contractors were attacked by an angry mob of community members who wrongfully assumed that these contractors were cable thieves,” said Sibeko.

    “Despite the contractors producing their paperwork in the form of wayleaves and other documentation, the community proceeded to attack them, which tragically resulted in the death of four contractors.”

    Sibeko said the ongoing investigation is led by the South African Police Service and the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department.https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-and-courts/senseless-killings-ekurhuleni-electricians-killed-by-mob-who-thought-they-were-cable-thieves-016c973c-6423-4437-b6f4-aa45a99a2811

    1. Is there a possibility that the power cuts were caused by unlawful connections to the network, which would have been disconnected by the unfortunate contractors?

  41. This from a former Wall St big-hitter. Ed Dowd has done remarkable work on CV-19 death and disability statistics in the USA. He has been predicting a collapse.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/009d4895bc6f669134d19068a2f477826b9c8b1cf99ad73ae84b5f40176588ed.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/29aab618d345ebf0ad6a8c91be9153e54f44dadcb4f40f7047845985a9644b18.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1fac1b0f37f60f07be353875fbb790e18eaf240b180d28615d2bb5d7a547e50d.png

    1. See my post below! I would have posted it as an answer to yours if I’d seen it first!

        1. Hobson’s choice! My comment bb2 was merely an observation nothing something I could endorse.

          1. My answer was flippant! Reality as we both know is that they will print, with all the devastating consequences that will bring.

    1. They do this already with knock offs, but they can’t run the operating system, so no matter what, they would be Android devices.

      As for trademarks – again, it’s already done. The most hilarious is a Chinese BMW. Thing is, you don’t see them here so we can’t buy them and, honestly, would you want to? https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/dead-ringers-history-chinese-copycat-car

      However, our governments are infested with utter morons, so I wouldn’t put anything past them.

      1. knock offs

        Back in the 70’s ,I was in Singapore. On sale in small shops we

        T shirts by La coste

        Sweaters by P.ringle

        Watches by Sieko

        Any LP that you wanted, put on cassette tape, within 24 hours

        Pens by P.arker from USA, Not U.S.A.

    2. Nixon may have visited but over the years the Democrats have encouraged trade with China to the detriment of working Americans. It got a huge push with Carter, continued though the Clinton administration and was accelerated by Obama All shipping out American technical know how and jobs.
      It’s coming home to roost, but I’m certain Biden will contrive to make it worse.

  45. Meat pie back on the menu at British Pie Awards after steak and ale beats vegan title holder

    Brockleby’s steak, ale and stilton pie crowned 2023 winner after lastyear’s award went to Pieminister’s gluten-free and vegan Mooless Pie

    By Gabriella Swerling, Social Affairs Editor

    Colour me stoopid, but should not this article be by a Chef/Food Critic etc NOT Social Affairs Editor

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/10/meat-pie-back-menu-british-pie-awards-steak-ale-beats-vegan/

    2. Gluten free, meat free pie. May as well eat vomit.

      Although, that said, made properly some pastry can be nicer with a gluten free flour for the pastry – it’s a crispier rather than flaky build.

  46. Meat pie back on the menu at British Pie Awards after steak and ale beats vegan title holder

    Brockleby’s steak, ale and stilton pie crowned 2023 winner after lastyear’s award went to Pieminister’s gluten-free and vegan Mooless Pie

    By Gabriella Swerling, Social Affairs Editor

    Colour me stoopid, but should not this article be by a Chef/Food Critic etc NOT Social Affairs Editor

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/10/meat-pie-back-menu-british-pie-awards-steak-ale-beats-vegan/

  47. Just risked going into the garden. Gorgeous. Sunny. Still. 22ºC in greenhouse. Will make the most before winter returns on Tuesday for two days. How where I did I put those winter tyres?

  48. Afternoon, all Y’all.
    Late today… unavoidably detained.
    Anyhow, I have an Elton John pun for you… it’s a little bit funny!

    1. Defrosting your winter tyres, I expect.

      (How’s yer health after the “fall”??)

      1. Blue-light trip to Horsepickle last night from Firstborns local restaurant – fortunately, finished dinner first. Heart stopped & I collapsed (The things a Yorkshireman will do to escape paying..). Apparently it did so again during the hight when I was asleep (how I managed that, all trussed up in monitoring, I don’t know). Now waiting for transport to local specialist horsepiddle for pacemaker to be fitted tomorrow or Monday – the Dr has gone to get a brochure about the pacemaker – does that mean I get to choose the colour & trim level? If so, I like V6 turbodiesel with 4WD and DSG 7-speed… 😉
        Ambulance medic was well tasty, in her (unnecessarily) tight uniform – perhaps that’s part of the treatment?

        1. Ah pet! I think I’ve missed something! Sending love and good wishes to you, Paul! You’re an awful lot more important to us than old whiney Lineacher! 💕

        2. Ye Gods – you do do these things well! Just take it EASY for a change. And be glad you are NOT in Blighty….

          As for the brochure -= as it is not summer – make sure you get the “winter” version of the pacemaker..

        4. “ Dr has gone to get a brochure about the pacemaker”. Is that to find out how it works? 🤔

          Hope all goes well. Bet you gave everyone a fright.

        5. OMG.

          Thank goodness you are okay .

          What on earth were you eating .. something saturated in MSG?

          Word of advice ,keep your mind off things you don’t really want and that includes medical staff.

        6. Gosh, that must have been a fright, I hope you’re properly sorted out.
          In the nicest possible way, naturally.

          2. Good to know you’re in good hands, Paul.

            Just keep asking for a dram of neat whisky – opens the small veins and stimulates the heart – good luck old pal.

          1. Good job he’s in Norway; their health service appears to work weekends – unlike our own.

        12. Gawd! Only you could make a joke of it. 🙂🙂 May you get the pacemaker you desire; hope it fixes things so you can carry on rollicking through life!! Sending love from afar x

    1. And the originator of the observation about the BBC being hideously white, no wonder the al-beeberistas lurve him.

    2. It’s only money, and they can easily print some more. One of the problems is that SVB clients were keeping too much on deposit and not investing it.

  51. 371948+ up ticks,

    Did you know there is I believe a regulating valve in the PM office
    regarding illegal channel crossers it connects to the welfare department & has I believe four settings, one quarter turn diminishes the influx by a quarter, two, by half and so on, full SHUT position = NO WONGA / NO BOATS.

  52. Some commenters are saying that the US government will turn on the money printers again to bail out Silicon Valley Bank, in order to try and prevent a domino effect.
    That would be the end.
    And the British newspapers are preoccupied with the silly Lineker nonsense!

    1. Displacement activity. Just as, within my circle of acquaintances, NOBODY knows about the WEF and its adherents. You would be astonished (well, YOU wouldn’t be, because you are switched on) at the total ignorance of the malignant powers controlling us.

      1. This morning, I went into a health food shop looking for nattokinase, which Dr McCullough says is the only thing that looks promising at clearing persistently produced spike proteins out of people’s bodies. She didn’t have it, but I took a chance (she looked fairly alternative!) and told her what I was interested in it for.
        She was extremely interested and grabbed a paper and pencil to write down the details!

          1. I’m sure the authorities have infiltrated the dangerous Stand in the Park movements. Standing around talking is a well known terrorist activity!

        2. Seems to be available online from Simply Pure Ltd. They say it’s for blood pressure management.

          1. And on Amazon.

            Web MD say there have been no clinical trials but the Japanese have been taking it for 100’s of years in its natural form.

            Clearly if it reduces blood pressure and dissolves clots it has its uses. Obviously big pharma want everyone to stay on their synthetic drugs for these conditions as it makes them billions.

            Correction..People diagnosed with DVT or clots should Not take nattokinase as can dislodge them causing heart attack

          4. Are you two trading in illegal substances again? I told you before not to talk to old men sitting on park benches

          7. People diagnosed with DVT or clots should Not take nattokinase as can dislodge them causing heart attack..

        3. People diagnosed with DVT or clots should Not take nattokinase as can dislodge them causing heart attack.

  53. I am only still sitting here because I am trying to postpone the evil moment when I have to open up a roof space (half-heartedly sealed by the last owner) to see how much insulation is there (probably 10 cm or none) and add more. We have already had all the dead body/hidden gold jokes in the family.
    Go on! just do it!! Back later 🙁

        2. My dad put his foot through the ceiling when he was up in the attic doing something. He wasn’t hurt but the language was fairly colourful.

      1. Since they changed my meds from morphine to oxycodone I’m definitely on planet Earth now, more specifically about a mile from my home in a modern BUPA run care home in the town of Clevedon near Bristol. I see that you had a scare with your ticker , it’s a bugger when your bod starts pulling these tricks

        1. Really inconvenient, I’d call it. Weekend of hard labour scheduled that now won’t happen.
          😡

      1. They’ve been made very welcome and having met them for the first time in 3 months recently they exhibited no interest in me whatsoever , bloody ingrates

      1. Nice to be back amongst the living, I was In an appalling state when I was discharged from the hospital and just wanted to curl up and die but the care and nursing have restored everything from the waist up to it’s previous emotional and intellectual vigour and the girls are doing their best to sort the rest out.

        1. Good to see you back and nice to know that all is progressing well. KBO, old chap.

          1. It’s delightful and the staff are a dream , I am at the moment temporarily bedbound due to (slowly being resolved) medical issues but moves are afoot ( unintentional pun ) to get me up and about fairly soon

        3. If they threaten to chuck you out again when you aren’t fit, tell them it is an “unsafe discharge”. That should get them worrying about their insurance policies (information from someone who works in the NHS).

    6. Hallo Datz – it’s very good to see you here! I hope Mrs Datz and the doggies are doing ok. We did miss you for months, and it was a shock to find you’ve been so ill. I hope things are as good as they can be now.

      1. My long term prognosis is uncertain but in the here and now I’m immeasurably better than I was a month ago and am enjoying tiny but consistent improvements in my various annoyances.

          1. When I left Hospital there were vague muttering of months but I have recovered so much from the Hospital’s bad practices that I can see a lot further now. I don’t know if it’s months or years but at least I’ll spend them in a happy frame of mind and in max good health.

            My Daughter ( who is in the NHS and knows a thing or too) took up the cudgels on my behalf and had my case reviewed. We now have an admission from the Clinical Director that the standards were well below those that could be expected and apologised for the outcomes.

            If I were a malicious person I would sue the NHS for the max but I’m keeping that in abeyance should my care costs ever be threatened

  56. Going out in the scorching heat to wash the greenhouse. Back much later (and much wetter).

  57. A petition calling for Lineker to be reinstated by the BBC has amassed more than 150,000 signatures. Metro

    A worthwhile expenditure of licence payers money, said a BBC executive. We didn’t have enough staff on duty to complete the paperwork involved.

    1. Lineker’s reinstatement should be adequate grounds for anyone to refuse to pay the licence fee as it would mean that the BBC accepts it is a mouthpiece for woke propaganda.
      It has been for years, but the Lineker episode shows it clearly and unequivocally so a court case should surely collapse.

    3. Perhaps there needs to be another petition from those opposed.
      Clearly stating if you bring him back we are withholding payment until he’s been dismissed.

    4. As I said below he should be given his own political chat show co-hosted with either Marc Steyn or Lee Anderson.

      I don’t want to be given political indoctrination on sports programmes but if the BBC want him to air his views he should be allowed to do so on a political chat show as long as someone with opposing views are given equal time on the same programme so that the BBC can actively prove its impartiality.

  58. Rastus is fond of posting Rude limericks, so I thought he’d appreciate this one. If easily offended suggest you ignore.

    Jack and Jill went up the hill,
    so Jack could lick her candy,
    But Jack got a shock,
    and a mouth full of ****,
    Cause Jill’s real name is Randy    .

      1. When Jack and Jill went up the hill
        To fetch a pail of water
        Jill came down
        With half a crown
        And now they’ve got a daughter

        1. Mary had a little sheep
          To cuddle when she went to sleep
          The sheep turned out to be a ram
          Now Mary has a little lamb.

  59. I had to give the proposed ‘coffee morning’ meeting with part of the family a miss.
    My BP took a dive. Makes me feel uneasy and wobbly. Had to return to bed.
    Post came from cardiology department this morning. I’m going to have to try and read the letter again and again until I am able to understand what he is trying to say. As it makes no particular sense at all. One thing that stands out is a possibility for an appointment in side 6 months. Give me strength, this is precisely what I have been attempting to avoid for the past 18months. FFS. 🥱

    1. You’ll need to get somebody to interpret that for you and hopefully an earlier appointment.

      1. I notice there is a mention and contact number of two cardiac nurses.
        I shall contact them Monday.
        The letter is the opposite of everything I had expected.
        It’s so disappointing.

        3. Sorry about that, Eddy. Don’t be too downhearted, at least you identified the problem to solve.
          Courage, mon brave! 😄

      2. We sat down together over lunch and both found it impossible to understand what the letter was actually telling me.

    2. The most significant heart intervals can be found on an interpretive ECG printout that can be output on ECG on a wide variety of profesional monitors. In the event of any doubt when a second opinion is required measurements should be evaluated by hand from the ECG strip itself.

      I have done the latter myself from my own digital ECG analyser and I waa convinced enough from the measurements that medication I had been prescribed was harmfully elongating my QTc interval. I sent the results to the MHRA and my medical records were subsequently amended to include an allergy to that particular drug.

      I have asked my cardiologist and registrars for an interpretive ECG for my annual checkup but none have been forthcoming.

      Here’s the sort of output from an interpretive ECG that I have been able to discuss with patients in the USA on patient.co.uk who routinely get these ouputs from their cardiologists:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ecb86365c5883f09d9ba6d47328e9430afac23a19c96e874e520f35ba011df91.jpg

      1. I’ve had every test and examination available and imaginable.
        This has to be another admin management cockup.

  60. We were playing some old DVDs the other night and came across the musical adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion. Rex Harrison didn’t realise the hornets’ nest of transgenderism to which this song would give rise.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+can%27rt+a+woman+be+more+like+a+man&oq=Why+can%27rt+a+woman+be+more+like+a+man&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13i512l2j0i13i30j0i390l2.22544j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:3a225442,vid:Doz5w2W-jAY

    1. Impeccable timing. The way things are going they could soon be ‘rebuilding’ from scratch…..

    2. Erm…Why did you stop investing in America? Why did you outsource all your production? What folks will be buying will be Chinese tat as usual.

    3. Instantly restarting the battle to allow Canadian goods across the border.

      When Trump came up with buy American, Trudeau had a hissy fit and started applying tariffs and duties to goods from Republican states. Diddly squat from the emporer about Bidens refresh of the program.

  62. Here’s a story to warm the very cockles of your heart….

    “Most Roma families in Bradford are originally from Eastern Europe, and settled after 2004 when citizens of new EU states were allowed to move to the UK.
    However, some have not obtained settled status required by the Home Office since Brexit for EU nationals permanently resident in the UK.
    That means they are not entitled to access services and benefits.
    In one case we followed, Bradford council took several young children from one family into care six months ago.
    The father is abroad and told the council he wanted the children to live with him outside the UK. The father had not instructed a lawyer and did not participate in the proceedings.
    The mother was in prison, and was expected to be released shortly. Her barrister told the court the mother wanted the children to live with her again.
    The mother was learning English, and wanted to turn her life around, the lawyer said. She added, “She has shown me that she is really determined”.

      2. More than likely they will end up in the favoured country of the the Blair Witch and all HR Lawyers
        Remaineria

    5. Oh no, you definitely should laugh about it Rik and become outright hysterical about this one! It’s glorious. She’s soooo ghastly

      iSource News
      @isource_news
      ·
      8h
      >>>>>>>>>>>>>>ALERT<<<<<<<<<<<<<< OPRAH STANDS TO LOSE $590 MILLION AFTER COLLAPSE OF SVB "All her biggest accounts were with the bank." said a source familiar with her finances, "Like other tech savvy investors she banked with SVB and now it's all gone." https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1f5df02fd2aa2c1808a81d78073939a6e00d837a9ff8b7ebc085b1c3b06aaed.jpg

          2. As far as I can see, the Cloons have kept well away from H&M since the wedding when they figured out that they weren’t the only non-friends being put on parade and just what Meagain’s game was.

      2. If that is the case all the uninsured depositors will breathe a huge sigh of relief in the certain knowledge that the President will order the bank to be bailed out…

      5. I am glad that I am not tech savvy

        Perhaps they were enamored with the glamorous trappings of the SVB Private banking service, fancy having your own personal banker.

    7. They would have been fools to put a lot of money into a bank that specializes in venture capital funding for startups.

      He might get $250,000 back but that is the limit for insured deposits. Will we see a less woke Harry looking for a way back into the royal family coffers?

      1. Harry is a fool – a vindictive fool controlled by his ghastly wife. Nothing can make Harry less woke except for a lobotomy – even then, it’s not certain that he has enough brain for such an operation…

  65. Early in my admittance to the Hospital in November I occasionally had to ask staff to briefly remove their masks as I couldn’t hear them very well ( due to my somewhat depleted hearing and their heavy East European / Indian /African accents)
    I thought no more of this until a couple of weeks back when unannounced a lovely young lady from Audiology trundle into my room with lots of equipment and said she’d come to test my hearing. After a lot of headphoning, peeps and rumbles and clattering of keyboards she produced a chart of my hearing response which qualified me for NHS aids, a bit more clattering of keys a brief pause and she presented me with a pair of very discreet fully programmed digital and Bluetooth enabled aids. I mention this as before disaster struck I was contemplating buying something similar but as they run into 4 figures I couldn’t make my mind up quite what t do.

    That’s one small but very positive outcome from my experience of the last few months.

    1. It wasn’t until everyone was masked up that I realised just how much I rely on lip-reading.

      1. It’s sometimes more difficult to understand people if I haven’t got my glasses on. Same thing really.

    4. You hear with an East European accent? Have you had your ears adjusted recently?

      1. That’s what I thought then it occurred to me that given my circumstances and the fact that they came out of a plastic bag with half a dozen other pairs made me think I may not be the first or even the 2nd 3rd or 19th owner.

        1. When lockdown and masks were ‘compulsory’ many were the people i saw on their hands and knees, around their cars, playing “Hunt the Hearing Aid” after they were unmasked.

          1. He probably dropped his in the street on a busy day last summer when there was a festival going on. I did try to see if anyone had found it and handed it in but was unsuccessful. He just uses one now.

    7. I have a pair similar (I requested them of audiology so I could hear my riding coach). All they do for me is make the background noise (creaking of leather, snorting of the Connemara, thud of hooves) louder. My instructress still has to get close so I can make out what she’s saying! Glad I didn’t have to pay extra (I’ve already paid a small fortune into the NHS over the years) for them.

  67. Well that nasty white stuff is vanishing off the pavements outside. I nearly fell over a couple of times this morning on my way back from town. It had frozen hard overnight and made walking both arduous and difficult. Should be the last this year with any luck!

    1. It had all vanished from here by yesterday evening. This morning dry and windy and no trace of white stuff. Not too cold but the wind’s strong.

    2. Yo minty

      nasty white stuff is vanishing off the pavements outside.

      That about sums up what is happening to us Brits in UK, 2023

    2. Those who fail to take note of history are doomed to make the same mistakes again.

      1. Yes thank you – I posted an update above. Not sure why I have suddenly started sharing information on t’internet – must be my general nervousness about the b***y roof.

  69. BBC apologises to football fans after scrapping live coverage amid mutiny. 11 March 2023.

    The BBC has apologised to angry sports fans for ripping up its schedules amid a mass exodus of presenters, pundits and commentators over the Gary Lineker impartiality row.

    A BBC spokesman said: “The BBC will only be able to bring limited sport programming this weekend and our schedules will be updated to reflect that
    .
    Mutiny? They should string them up from the yardarm me hearties! With any luck at all the Good Ship BBC will sink without trace.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/11/gary-lineker-tweet-bbc-match-day-latest-news/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

        1. And all the jaw-jaw before the game about what might happen. After, a summary can be good, but short!

          1. I don’t know why we actually bother Obs.
            It seems that now everything is taken to dubious and over exaggerated extremes. At the rate of 10 words a second.

    5. Any person supporting Lineker should be sacked. It is precisely the conflation of those wishing to have secure boarders and a decent immigration policy with Nazis and the Holocaust that defile those who experienced the horrors and the memory of those who perished..

      This is the stupid Liberal narrative that needs debunking along with its supporting act where we are labelled racists and white Supremacists for simply wanting an orderly and safe society.

    6. My local rag has an article about a couple of [left wing loonies] people stopping their direct debits for the TV tax licence because of “pro-Government/conservative bias” at the Bbc! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Apparently the treatment of Lineker and Attenborough was “the final straw”. I’ve no idea what they’ve been watching, but it certainly wasn’t the same Bbc as I had the misfortune to observe before I gave up on it.

  71. How mischievous Prince Charles ‘got his paws’ on the crown at his mother’s coronation
    Ahead of the King’s investiture, we delve through the archives to reveal the unique memories of royals watching their parents being crowned
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/03/11/prince-charles-imperial-state-crown-queen-elizabeth-ii-coronation/

    BTL from Percival Wrattstrangler

    I do feel sorry for King Charles in that he has a sister who is far more attractive as a personality and far more competent than he is. Added to which she has common sense and good judgement which he so clearly lacks. It must be difficult for him knowing that many people would prefer her to be queen than for him to be king.

    6. OMG. Do men find that attractive? She’s had so much botox her whole face looks fake. (I know you men are not looking at her face!).

      ETA: It is/was a man apparently. How innocent/naive am I!

      3. I certainly checked out the face, vw, but then I’m a bum and legs man, meself but, above all, it’s personality that attracts me.

  73. State of the financial world today….
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/954c8b34db83e82d1a15f8c6a66b544842522bf6660e349f41b4d57ec9890a35.jpg

    Well, I am quite optimistic about the roof space…it has 10cm of rockwool in it, so I will only have to add another 40. Seems to be in pretty good shape, no bodies up there.
    My plan was to go down to the local DIY warehouse, buy the rockwool and install it; scuppered by discovering that the only rolls of insulation that they sell which I thought were rockwool are actually some cottony sort of stuff that isn’t fireproof. Will have to buy it next week.

    Only got to wash up, re-organise the landing, do a few minor repair jobs, paint a cupboard and plant vegetable seeds now…

    1. Read that as “… paint vegetable seeds now”. Maybe I’m more crook that I thought!

      2. Do you know how long you will be incarcerated, Paul? Have you started a tunnel yet? Seriously, I hope it all goes according to plan and soon.

        1. Op due tomorrow or Monday, out the following day all being well.
          No tunnel needed, can smuggle myself out in the buckets of sputum coughed up by the old lady over the way (heart & lung dept).

          4. Thanks! Problem identified, heart stopped & I fell down. Then restarted of its own accord, blue lights tour to nearest hospital, overnight for observation, now waiting for op for pacemaker.

          5. Oh – blimey! I thought they’d got it sorted last month! Let’s hope it’s a success.

          7. I know the feeling of indiscriminate falling over while suffering from chronic heart disease.

            I’ve been hospitalised several times and have had it dismissed as, “He’s pissed again.”

            I now refuse to go to horse piddle because of that attitude and, personally, I don’t give a shiite and will happily embrace death to escape that and the rest of the current, cultural attitude, as I see it in the near future.

      3. Here’s a poem for you, to test your comprehension skills:

        Extracted from A Grandchild’s Guide to Using Grandpa’s Computer by Gene Zeigler

        If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
        And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
        And the address of the memory makes your floppy disc abort,
        Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

        If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
        And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
        And your data is corrupted ’cause the index does not flash,
        Then your situation’s hopeless and your system’s gonna crash!

        If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
        Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
        But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
        That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,

        And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
        So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
        Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
        ’cause as sure as I’m a poet, the suckers gonna hang.

        When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disc,
        And the micro code instructions cause unnecessary risk,
        Then you have to flash your memory, and you’ll want to RAM your ROM…
        Quickly turn off your computer and go and tell your Mom.

    2. Won’t you need to employ a certified installer (with up to day accreditation!) – and get planning permission, notify your insurers AND do a risk assessment? Then there are the rules about using ladders…..

    4. Check the hatch size against the roll diameter. Makes a terrible mess to have to open them on the landing & pull it up in lengths.

        1. I found the natural wool loft insulation pleasant and easy to use. It is treated against pests.

  74. Well – that’s the greenhouse scrubbed and disinfected. The bloke who designed it (a very good greenhouse) obviously NEVER had to do an annual cleaning!!

    Wonderful to have been outside and NOT shrimmed with the cold. Two more mild(ish) days – then cold again.

    2. Too cold to go topless here and the water is also too chilly. I like warm water to skinny dip.

    5. She’s welcome to show her boobs if she wants – nobody would want to see mine. They’re staying covered – I don’t swim anyway.

    6. She’s welcome to show her boobs if she wants – nobody would want to see mine. They’re staying covered – I don’t swim anyway.

      2. I’m with you there Sue. There are enough slebs showing most of their boobs in the DM and DEx on the front page. You don’t actually have to look for them!

  78. A bonny Birdie Three today.

    Wordle 630 3/6
    🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
    🟨🟩🟩⬜🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. I stared at the three correct letters in the wrong places for ages, then…

      Wordle 630 2/6

      🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  79. Sussex children’s royal titles announced officially ‘to make up for Frogmore eviction’

    Friends claim Royal family only named Archie and Lilibet as prince and princess online after news broke about Windsor home

    By Victoria Ward, ROYAL EDITOR
    11 March 2023 • 2:39pm

    **********************************************

    Lady WooHoo
    1 HR AGO
    Princess Lilibet sounds like some tribute rapper act in da hood innit

          3. Don’t know the answer. All I can say is my nephew (blonde) and his Swedish wife (red haired) have three, now adult children, each with the same red hair.

          4. Dominant gene. You’ll find lots of ginger haired people in the Middle East – descended from Crusaders.

  80. The heart monitors are having some kind of conversation in morse, with their alarms.
    Opposite me beeps “S”, and one in the next room beeps “SA” in reply.
    Aargh!

    1. SA -S ? Maybe they are having a competition to see which one’s alarm goes off first – “Who Scares Wins!”

  81. England making the most of their home advantage.

    Great to see the running Rugby being rewarded.

  82. Sent to me this afternoon. Not sure who the person is at the bottom or where the blog is published.

    UK Gov. confirms England & Wales have suffered 63k Excess Deaths in just under a year & BBC News has accidentally admitted the COVID Vaccine is to blame – The Expose

    COVID-1984 PCP Update

    https://expose-news.com/2023/03/11/bbc-admits-c19-jab-blame-63k-excess-deaths-uk/

    By way of a brief introduction to my next explosive blog post, we are about to launch a new application to have Hancock arrested for Covid Crimes against the People.

    But this will be a two-pronged attack because we are also preparing charges that will be presented before Parliament, one way or another, seeking the immediate impeachment of unelected Prime Minister, Sunak, for criminal misappropriation of the public purse.

    In the event that just one MP agrees to lay the charges before the House of Commons, the evidence we have amassed will have to be publicly debated in the Commons and then the House of Lords, at the very time the Private Criminal Prosecution of Hancock et al will have finally gained its legs.

    The Bernician 2023

  83. Off to ‘Baby sit’ now, the little fellas mum and dad are out for a meal together.
    Slayders.

  85. How the Left-wing elite used Britain’s museums to distort history

    From ‘racist’ plants at Kew Gardens to ‘sexist’ medical exhibits, venues are deliberately reshaping how we view the past

    By Tim Stanley
    11 March 2023 • 8:00am

    Last November, the Wellcome Collection, in central London, announced that it was closing its Medicine Man gallery after 15 years. The display, said the museum on Twitter, perpetuated “a version of medical history that [was] based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language”. A month later, Cambridge University declared that it would be returning more than 100 Benin bronzes to Nigeria as they were “illegitimately acquired artefacts”. Two years prior, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum removed its shrunken heads from display following an “ethical review”.

    Today, discussion abounds over whether it is still acceptable to use the word “mummy” to describe an embalmed corpse; the term, say some, is colonial and dehumanising. Meanwhile, Kew Gardens has pledged to acknowledge the exploitative or racist legacies of some of its specimens. Progress has been made towards “queering” Manchester Museum (making the venue more welcoming to members of the LGBTQ+ community). And the assistant director of Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology fears that calling Australian marsupials “weird” risks “othering” them – “this language … is essentially an element of the colonial framework”. What on Earth is going on?

    When the Telegraph asked me to make a short film about ‘woke’ museums and art galleries, produced by our excellent documentary maker Steven Edginton, I was sceptical at first. Was this a serious phenomenon, or just a Right-wing talking point? Increasingly, it appears to be the former.

    Watch Tim Stanley’s video documentary below: How British museums are transforming history
    https://youtu.be/cz4HrewwykQ

    You might have thought that the museum was a “neutral” space, where beauty and knowledge are collected from around the world and put on display for visitors to interpret as they wish. But many of the people who run our museums see them as political theatres, even “weapons” that can – and must – be used to transform society. They are not just curators, they are activists. Their mission is to shape the future by challenging the way we think about the past.

    Sir Trevor Phillips – the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission who now exposes wokery in the arts via the think tank Policy Exchange – told me that the impetus for these cultural edits comes from “a white graduate class … by and large under 30”. The older curators and directors are effectively held hostage by this cohort, he said, because they are terrified that if they don’t play along, they’ll be called racist and put into storage, too.

    The word “graduate” is important. Take a look at the online prospectuses for Museum Studies courses and you’ll find language that is strikingly familiar, suggesting a clear link between classroom and exhibit.

    The MA in Art History and Museum Curating at the University of Sussex offers the opportunity to “evaluate diverse interpretive-approaches” to the subject, including “feminism, iconology, agency, gift giving, and post colonialism” – and to tackle issues such as “disability and access”, “Black Lives Matter”, “queer heritage and erotic art”.

    At University College London, one of the compulsory modules in the Museum Studies MA investigates the museum’s part in “nation building”, its “social roles and responsibilities, from wellbeing to climate change”, and “confronts the legacies of colonialism”. The course provokes students to ask “what a museum is and does, and what it can be”. These are good questions. The story of how the Western museum evolved, and how Left-wing ideas reacted to and then reshaped it, helps explain why woke won.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/03/10/TELEMMGLPICT000315791331_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=1280
    The University of Cambridge promised last year to return its Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

    The museum as most of us understand it is a product of the Enlightenment, of the desire to collect and display for the betterment of the public. In 1753, for example, the physician Sir Hans Sloane gave his vast collection of “rarities”, manuscripts, coins and medals to the nation. The new British Museum was open to “all studious and curious persons”, a fine, egalitarian ideal.

    But Sloane’s income partly derived from slave labour on plantations, and he exploited the growing reach of the British Empire to expand his collection. Some of the Museum’s current objects were dug up, purchased or stolen. It also houses some of the controversial Benin Bronzes, looted by British soldiers when they invaded Benin City in 1897 – a “brutal, violent colonial episode”, as the Museum admits.

    With the collapse of the European empires in the 20th century, and the flourishing of civil rights campaigns, critics argued that the great museums – relics of Victorian patronage and splendour – sustained a false narrative of Western superiority. As young people flooded into the expanding university sector to study art history or curation, they were exposed to ideas that suggested the Enlightenment museum was a fraud.

    The French historian Michel Foucault (1926-84), for example, argued that public institutions are never neutral; they are places where the elite reinforces its order of society through acts of “show and tell”. Foucault’s fans applied this critique to the museum, noting that rich donors decide what’s in it, curators choose what goes on show and how it is labelled, and the visitor is expected to soak up information that is little more than elite propaganda. There was a need, said the new theorists, to debunk objectivity, to shift power away from the institution and towards the visitor and the wider community.

    Still, there was room for fudge. In 2014, discussing the eternal call to repatriate the Elgin Marbles to Greece, Neil MacGregor, then-director at the British Museum, said that when the marbles were in Athens they had been “architectural decoration”; once unveiled in London they were visible as “great sculptures”. The meaning of objects, said the art establishment, can change over place and time. But this liberal consensus – that objects and art belong to the world, and the museum, for all its faults, is the world’s showcase – could not hold.

    In 2020, George Floyd was killed by police officers in America. That same year, Dan Hicks, curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, who teaches at the Oxford School of Archaeology, released an explosive book called The Brutish Museums, calling out the MacGregor argument as preposterous and setting himself the task of exposing the anthropological museum as “a weapon, a method and a device for the ideology of white supremacy to legitimise, extend and naturalise new extremes of violence within corporate capitalism”. The only way to rescue the museum, argued Hicks, is to “dismantle, repurpose, restitute [and] recognise” its status as a “site of conscience”.

    Many museum staff, radicalised by Trump and Brexit, and bored rigid by lockdown, saw Floyd’s killing as a chance to force a reckoning within their workplace. “Many of our collections were founded on inequality,” declared the Cambridge Museum of Zoology. We want to stand “with those who are actively anti-racist”, said the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, in Glasgow. “We have a responsibility to our black and minority employees … to better amplify and showcase their perspective,” said the V&A.

    In Bristol, protesters dumped a statue of a slave trader into the harbour, symbolising a new era of impatient, hands-on activism. Sir Trevor says that if you counted the heads of the people who did the deed, about “80 per cent were white”. This movement, he argues, “is a phenomenon driven by clever, affluent, white young people” – and for at least two decades, they’ve been pushing at doors with well-oiled hinges.

    Charles Saumarez Smith – who has run the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy – recalls that during the 1980s, the older art-gallery establishment was “very conservative” because they “tended to be experts in a particular field of study, such as furniture or textiles”; beyond that “they weren’t really interested in how things were displayed or interpreted”. This began to change thanks to growing intellectual interest in the “cultural context and the history of how things have been interpreted”; the rise of “communication” experts who saw a more social role for the museum; and the Blair government’s insistence “that collections should encourage visits from a much broader range of people”. Interactivity, plain language, even hyperbole, became popular. Those that, like Saumarez Smith, think one should “put things on display, provide the information and allow the public to make an interpretation according to the interests that they bring to the collection” were increasingly regarded as old-fashioned.

    Meanwhile, private companies – ie the donors – started to be subject to an Environmental, Social and Governance score. Alexander Adams, a writer and artist who agitates for the abolition of Arts Council England, explains that this rating system gives high marks for companies that can show “they have diverse workers or engage in environmentalism or [donate] to certain charities and so forth … That means that their stock [value] is improved, they’re more investment worthy.” In other words, there is now a financial motivation for companies to invest in “progressive art” or museums. In short, state and private sector have fostered an environment within which youthful and politicised staff can make the leap from a museum that curates a culture to a museum that seeks to deconstruct that culture.

    This is what Robert R Janes and Richard Sandell argue for in their 2019 influential collection of essays Museum Activism: in the context of poverty, ecological collapse and Right-wing populism, inaction has become immoral. If you wondered why a Cornish pepper pot museum might feel obliged to address climate change, herein lies the answer: “To persist with the status quo of unlimited [economic] growth is to perpetuate the privileged position of the elitist museums.”

    One organisation trying to overcome our society’s “white fragility” is the Museums Association, which represents hundreds of institutions, including the British Museum and the V&A. Among its campaigns advertised online are “anti-racism” and “climate justice”. The association is aware of potential consumer resistance. One document, entitled Understanding Audiences, divides likely public responses into “Engaged/Passive Allies”, “Curious Neutral/Passive Critics”, “Engaged Critics”, and “Malicious Critics”, whom one must not “engage or amplify”.

    Within the document online is a link to a text called “Divide and Rule” by the New Economy Organisers Network (Neon) that seeks to “help social justice movements win”. The so-called culture war, says Neon, is “the result of a toxic combination of a purposeful campaign from the reactionary Right and a media environment that is bent towards dangerous sensationalism and bigotry”. Labour, it laments, is almost as populist as the Tories. In the hands of such people, the past becomes a terrain upon which to pitch contemporary battles.

    But history – good history – resists playing out as good vs evil. The record of empire is morally mixed; it eliminated cultures but it also studied and preserved them. Historian Zareer Masani argues that before the British arrived in India, “there was no indigenous tradition of exploring or conserving antiquity. The rediscovery of a classical past and the romantic appeal of its ruined remnants was a European sensibility.”

    It is paradoxical, the American conservative David Frum has observed, that Westerners have spent decades promoting African art in our museums – insisting it is a serious contribution to global culture – only to decide it must now be repatriated, potentially to countries that are too poor, corrupt or violent to guarantee its protection. Museums, he argues, flourish in “stable states” that provide “unmatched security for fragile and valuable treasures”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/03/10/TELEMMGLPICT000260308574_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqA7N2CxnJWnYI3tCbVBgu9T0aesusvN1TE7a0ddd_esI.jpeg?imwidth=1280
    The defaced statue of slave trader Edward Colston, which was toppled by protestors in 2020, was put on display after it was retrieved from the Bristol docks

    But if that’s true, it’s tempting to ask if modern Britain really is more stable than, say, Nigeria? This is now a country that topples statues and removes complicated art from galleries. The Tate closed its Rex Whistler restaurant because it contained a mural featuring slaves. It is when beauty has been clumsily politicised that we’ve seen some of the stronger critical backlash. Tate Britain’s William Hogarth show was spoiled by an obsessive attempt to find something to be upset about: a label for a self-portrait of the artist sitting on a chair said that “the chair is made from timbers shipped from colonies via routes that also shipped enslaved people”. Was it possible that this humble piece of furniture stood for all those “unnamed black and brown people” who made such creativity possible?

    Such attempts to reframe almost everything through the lens of activism commits the cardinal sin of being boring – monotonous, uncommercial. Pushed too far, might it leave the museums empty of visitors?

    If the complaint about the Enlightenment museum was that it told people what to think, then things have gone full circle. A genuinely inclusive sector would find space for conservative or religious voices. Instead, the professional curator class is locking millions out by speaking a language it requires a graduate degree to understand, implementing a political agenda that has never been tested at the ballot box, and enforcing new standards for what we can see and how we’re supposed to interpret it.

    **************************************

    David Allen
    9 HRS AGO
    If only we’d had a Conservative Government with a large majority, the malign influence of the left wing elites could have been curbed.

    Richard Thirkell
    8 HRS AGO
    It’s not just museums. A friend’s child in a rural Sussex school dared to question the teacher’s apparent assertion that the British influence on India ( ie Imperialism) was all negative by pointing to the railway infrastructure that the British played a key part in establishing. He was given detention.

    David Farnsworth
    8 HRS AGO
    This Marxist rewriting of history virus is everywhere. Museums, universities, schools even research establishments.
    If you are young you are taught a simplistic polarised view of the world:
    Organic food good. Intensive farming bad.
    Wind farms good. Fossil fuels bad.
    Multiculturalism good. Global Britain bad.
    Non white history good. White history bad.
    Nobody does nuance anymore. This requires critical thinking. Why bother thinking when you can cut and paste from the internet and social media.

    1. The Way things are going it won’t be long before the only thing on display in any British museum will be a stuffed, pale and stale bloke. With a caption that will read ‘Uppity Homo-Pissedoffian’…..

  86. Well that seems to have been a good call I abandoned the Rugger after 10 minutes to enjoy watching the rainfall as it got dark. the latter being very absorbing….

      1. According to the noticeboard there is a local Bridge Club in the Village. I may just go and check it out on Monday….

  89. I actually feel very sorry for Borthwick, he’s reaping the final thorns of the Eddie Jones legacy.

    1. It certainly seems that it has to be back to the drawing board. The chances are Ireland will do the same to them.

      1. I’ve been saying for years now that any side that runs at England with skilful jinking players is in with a good chance; today epitomised that.

    2. I thought that England’s time was really up when 92 year Cole – grandfather several times over – plodded onto the pitch.

      What an original selection.

    3. Northwick is part of the problem. We have some of the best running backs in the world yet they are denied ball by the overweight fatties and their futile collisions with the grunts on the other side and the focus on ineffectual scrummaging.

      The kicking game does nothing but present the ball to the opposition if you cannot do it accurately and with purpose. Ben Youngs lost the last match he played in with that tactic. It is truly embarrassing to watch the pantomime.

  90. What a shameful few weeks for England:

    1. Stuffed by Fonda Lyin into total surrender to the EU in Northern Ireland;

    2. Stuffed by Macron into giving France £½ Billlion to not solve the Illegal Immigration problem;

    and now

    3 Stuffed by France by 53 points to 10 in the England Rugby team’s biggest ever defeat.

        1. You could be forgiven if you’d thought it was the ladies team – although they would have given a better performance

    3. Our Parliament is now filled with foreigners.One word out of place and the cry of
      Racist is heard all over the Palace of Westminster and beyond…..We have been
      silenced….

  91. I commented at half time that it was Men against Boys.

    I was wrong.

    It was Men against Toddlers.

    I never thought it would descend into complete farce.

    On the other hand – it was splendid to see fast, running, passing rugby played by a very good team indeed.

    1. It could have been a Hell of a lot worse.
      Ben Youngs might have been playing, 10-85 at best.

  92. That’s me gone. A gorgeous day. Garden work started. Then the shambles that was Twickenham. I shudder to think what’ll happen next week.

    But yer French were brilliant. Took me back 50 years.

  93. Apparently there’s meme of Begum offering to present MOTD.
    Can any of NOTTL’s mememeisters tell me how to track it down?
    (I assume she’s sold all the tomatoes.)

  94. LAST POST

    To cap a frightful match – just IMAGINE the glee with which the egregious Stephen Jones will be applying himsef to his Sunday Grimes column….

    TTFN

    1. Not a subscriber but I can imagine…for some light relief I’m so looking forward to the Budget on the 15th.

  95. As a distraction from the rugby, today Mikaela Shiffrin won her 87th alpine skiing World Cup race, passing the previous record of 86 wins held by Ingemar Stenmark. Quite astonishing as those wins are in a variety of disciplines and she’s quite modest about it too!

  97. Watching Neil Oliver and he just had an interview with an RSPCA woman. A dog called Bentley had been rescued and his claws were in a dreadful state, as was the rest of him- he had to be put to sleep.
    I have never thought myself to be a violent person but people who abuse children and animals should be punished to the greatest extent of the law….or, to save time, take them out and shoot them.
    Having worked all my life with children of all ages and seen some stuff and, being an animal lover, especially dogs, I cannot begin to comprehend why there are some people who do these things.
    Humankind is made up of all sorts and many of them are beyond contempt.
    That clip has quite upset me.

  98. Evening, all. HS2 is only one of the things HMG needs to ditch to stop throwing good money after bad. Giving bungs to France, passing money to the EU, housing illegals and showering them with benefits are but a few more to end.

  99. Nana Akua of GBN gets my vote:

    GB News host Nana Akua said: “Who cares if a load of overpaid spoilt brat BBC presenters choose not to present their shows in support of Gary Lineker. Time to change the line up. It’s pathetic. He broke the rules. Deal with it!”

    Spot on!

  100. I wonder if the England rugby team would be better if it was selected from this year’s crop of gimmegrants?

    1. Got my suspicions that letting France win was part of Rishi’s deal to stop the dinghy economic migrants

    1. Because these young girls do not form part of their Marxist wet dreams, that’s why. They are, as far as they are concerned, collateral damage, of no significance except in the furtherance of the fracturing of British society, part of the next generation who will be unable to form meaningful family relationships because of their experiences.

  104. Gawd almighty, if he’s the best, what on earth must the worst be?

    BBC Director-General refuses to quit over Gary Lineker fiasco: Tim Davie says Match of the Day host is ‘the best’ and he wants him ‘back on air’ as he repeats apology to viewers for schedules being torn up and Match Of The Day slashed to just 20 minutes

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-11847561/Alex-Scotts-solidarity-Gary-Lineker-sees-pull-presenting-Football-Focus-today.html

    If all the sports shows only broadcast the highlights without any commentary whatsoever they would be equally watchable and probably more enjoyable.

  106. Well, that was a fun day. Around 0830, there was a loud click. It took a while to realise that the lights were out. And everything else, it seemed.

    I have a split load consumer unit, with two RCDs (apologies for the tech speak). The one which covers the ring main (i.e. sockets), lights and doorbell had tripped. The other serves the cooker, shower, heating and waste pump for the aforementioned shower (it’s a ground floor wet room).

    Went through the process of unplugging everything, power on, lights OK, ring main on, immediate trip. The housing society contracts maintenance out to a larger provider, but a call to them advised me to ring on Monday.

    Saturday is ‘Print the Sunday Supplement Day’, i.e. our weekly Parish newsletter. It’s one of my less obvious duties as Music Director, Organist and ‘Parish Clerk’, but if it doesn’t happen, the natives get restless. I doubt whether there’s another retirement bungalow in the kingdom which harbours a full-size commercial colour laser multi-function printer, but there we are. Ex-lease machines are as cheap as chips on eBay, as are the consumables. Unfortunately, they don’t run on unicorn farts.

    I worked out that the cooker circuit was unaffected, so I found a long extension lead and several trailing sockets, and got the router and the printer (and the fridge freezer) working. Did the printing, then turned to the electrical problem. I’m not a sparky, but I’ve done a fair bit of amateur electrics over the years. I pulled the ring main wires out of the consumer unit and tested them with a multimeter. No obvious problem. Next I opened up a socket roughly central in the circuit, and split the ring main at that point. Disconnected one half and re-applied the power. Nothing tripped. Repeated the process with the other half of the ring. Nothing tripped.

    There being no obvious fault, I put everything back together and switched back on. Absolutely nothing happened. Eventually I realised that everything that should be live, was live, but there was no trace of Neutral downstream of the main switch. In fact, putting a multimeter across the Neutral poles of the main switch gave a reading of 230 volts. This proved to me that the main switch had failed. A quick (actually excruciatingly slow) trip by train and bus to Aldershot Screwfix, and a replacement main switch was procured. In future, if I travel to Aldershot on a Saturday afternoon, I’ll check “The Shots” fixtures.

    Home after dark, I was able to break out my emergency lighting provisions, sourced in anticipation of blackouts (thanks, Minty, for your recommendation).

    Here’s the confession. I’m really not keen on handling an 80 Amp live cable. It’s illegal to break the seal on the DNO main fuse. So the seal is actually intact. I just unfortunately broke the corresponding bit of the fuse carrier. Since I have a smart meter, against my better judgement, the chances are that no-one will look at the meter in my lifetime. But I’ll be leaving the old main switch in the meter cupboard, with an explanatory note.

    I think the failing neutral pole of the main switch caused the nuisance tripping. Whatever – I’m back in the 19th 20th 21st Century…

    2. Good heavens Lil Bro’. I only understood a few words of that but you seemed to sort it. Take care!

      1. True. But not on this occasion. Don’t have any metal plates – everything is plastic. I’m pretty certain that the tripping was caused by the failing Neutral pole in the main switch, which would have diverted Neutral to Earth, thus confusing any RCD under load. And replacing the main switch (with dubious legality, since I needed to pull the main fuse) has done the trick. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be typing this…

        1. It’s very peculiar when that happens.
          Possibly even a lose connection with
          just a single wire.
          We once had a problem with a tumble dryer. Try as we may couldn’t find out why the RCD tripped out when we used it.
          But the service engineer found a piece of foil from a chewing gum wrapper had become attached to a terminal block and the airforce from the turning drum flapped it against the neutral.

          1. I moved to Thetford in 1988. Bought a second hand washer dryer in response to a classified advert in the EDP. Worked perfectly, then I refurbished the Kitchen. New MFI units. I noticed the pile of builders rubbish which had been swept behind the plinths. I replaced the sockets with new, but noticed that the massive cooker control unit had been wired, er, arse about face.

            So I corrected it. Next time i did the washing, I tripped out the whole house. There was an earth to neutral short circuit in the machine, but the inverted socket wiring had masked the problem.

          2. What a terrible thing to happen. Old electrical bodged jobs. 🤔

            Some of my family lived in Thetford and One of my cousins was the mayor of Thetford. I can’t remember exactly when. It might have been in the 80s.
            Michael Edmond.
            He died about 15 years ago.

    5. Well done Geoff! As you know other than changing a fuse or lightbulb I steer clear of electrics:

      Boy with pliers,
      Electric wires
      Blue flashes
      Boy ashes!

    6. “I doubt whether there’s another retirement bungalow in the kingdom which
      harbours a full-size commercial colour laser multi-function printer”.

      You would be wrong about that. I have one. Ner ner nan ner ner !

      1. “I doubt whether more than two retirement bungalows in the kingdom harbour a full-size commercial colour laser multi-function printer”

        Better? :-))

    7. Oh my goodness. We’ll do e Geoff for solving the problem. I was lost from the beginning of the second paragraph!

  107. Bleedin’ ell… It’s 11:40 and I’m woken up by the anaesthatist sizing me up for the chopping block! How am I supposed to sleep now? He looked like a ten-year-old Thai kid, too.
    Whoosh.

    1. Will continue to keep you in my thoughts- good luck, my friend and I am sure all will be well.

      1. Looking good… There’s even some danger that correcting my heart will restore my energy levels, so bring it on.

        1. All well and good but stay off the ladders for a while!! Stick to cuddling the pusscats.

    2. All the best Obs. Just remember this…..
      In the NHS you’re more likely to tied in not’s. 🙃
      As in Nothing gets done at all.

    3. Not sure what’s going on with you, Ob as I must have missed something here, whatever, hope all goes well, all the best.

  108. Here’s a thought….

    I’ve discovered the way to stay friends forever-
    There’s really nothing to it.
    I simply tell you what to do
    And you do it!

    Tee hee. Shel Silverstein.

    1. Are you sure you’re name isn’t Dianne?

      She’s here for the weekend. For the matinee in the West End. she got on the wrong train at Guildford. It wasn’t a SWR train to Waterloo. It was a GWR train to Reading. A green train with three carriages, as opposed to a silver or blue one with 8 or more. But other people assumed the wrong platform, so that’s OK. If only stations were equipped with audible and visual displays at each platform, this sort of thing could be wiped out. Oh, wait… 🙄
      .

  109. Back late from our ‘babysitting’.
    Mum and dad have been through the mill recently with their poor little fella. They deserved an evening out. And bumped into some old friends.
    What ever happened at Twickers this arvo ?
    I think it’s time to change the anthem.
    To, And did those feet….it might change the mindset.
    Instead of Charlie is me darlin’. Or God save someone……It just doesn’t work anymore.
    Night all.

  110. Have been watching the Shannon Joy Show organisation and coverage of the Summit for Truth and Wellness Event in America.

    It seems Americans are catching up and asking serious questions about Covid, Fauci, the forces promoting the worldwide vaccination programmes, all enacted in lockstep by governments infested with WEF paid stooges, such as our own (That is you Boris you fat fart and your ferret faced, rat bodied successor Sunak of Moderna).

    The consensus is that Covid was a lab-engineered or formulated bio-weapon developed by US Military in bio-labs situated in locations within the US, Ukraine and Wuhan in China.

    It is a fact that Moderna, a company formed with investors including Rich Sunak, had no marketable pharmaceutical products but some patent in a Covid vaccine, this several years before the supposed actual release of the pathogen, likely from China but arguably develops in Ukraine by the US Military. It has now been established that Moderna as intimately involved with China and in
    Particular the Wuhan laboratory and its remits.

    I believe there is sufficient evidence arising from multiple harms and millions of deaths resulting from Covid vaccines to arrest the resident British Prime Minister, his predecessor Bunter Johnson, the supposed experts in our medical institutions who promoted this toxic jab and any others associated with this gargantuan fraud and Crime against Humanity.

    We are dealing with the greatest fraud and evil intervention ever perpetrated in our shared history bar possibly the Holocaust. Given that those injected with poison are likely to suffer severe illness and others so poisoned likely infect their offspring and die from this evil , the time has surely come to call a halt to the vaccinations and actively and earnestly prosecute those responsible.

    We should start at the top. That is politicians and their helpers in the universities, medical authorities and institutes tied up with the WHO such as University of London Imperial College (Neil Ferguson), Wellcome under devil incarnate Jeremy Farrar, the ‘scientists’ awarded gongs for the killer vaccine developed in Oxford for Astra Zeneca (a vaccine so potent in causing blood clotting that it was hastily withdrawn after banning by the EU, excusably because the Pfizer and Moderna injectates were more effective viz. more efficient in causing death).

    We must never submit to the tyranny we have experienced in the past three years. We must stand together and fight the bastards.

    1. Your right of course but how the hell do we wake the “normies” up to the vast crimes that have been commited??
      Even among my own family the soma of the Al-Beeb and the MSM rules and I’m a tin-foiled hatted nutter whenever I try and describe the hate facts
      It gets very depressing sometimes
      Edit
      Thank god for NoTTL and GP or I would doubt my own sanity…..

      1. I met a lot of local people via a stand in the park during covid. We still have outdoor walks and chats. It’s vital to have local contacts if you can make them.

        1. Strange to tell, it’s at work that I’ve found people who are awake. A fellow refusenik and one whose husband developed myocarditis straight after the jab, having been perfectly fit before.

    2. Seeing the data on rising deaths and disabilities commencing within weeks of inoculation roll-out it is clear that the ‘correlation is not causation’ argument is dead in the water. Governments around the World with almost identical records on the inoculation’s impact remain silent and immovable in their stance to admit to nothing and to try and ride out the storm. Perhaps they are waiting for the toll of death and disability to ease off and then hope the people will forget.
      If the doctors and scientists, among them Dr Sherri Tenpenny, are correct, the deaths etc are not going away but are likely to continue climbing. Ed Dowd, an ex-Wall St fund manager, and his colleagues are collating the statistics from the USA and the figures are not encouraging.
      Those in the know are so far down the metaphorical rabbit hole that they dare not admit to what they know: they must fear the public’s backlash if the truth was to emerge. For how long they can maintain their stance of remaining silent/ignoring the facts/attacking the truth tellers, remains to be seen.

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