Friday 7 April: The tarnished and hypocritical SNP is suffering a fitting downfall

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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546 thoughts on “Friday 7 April: The tarnished and hypocritical SNP is suffering a fitting downfall”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story – actually, a little list

    Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence.

    Not a shred of evidence exists in favour of the idea that life is serious.

    The government cannot give anything to anyone that it has not already taken from someone else!

    EIGHT THOUGHTS TO PONDER

    Number 8
    Life is sexually transmitted.

    Number 7
    Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

    Number 6
    Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see a gleam in his eyes, do some baking.

    Number 5
    Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years

    Number 4
    Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospitals, dying of nothing.

    Number 3
    All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

    Number 2
    In the 60’s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

    And Finally the Number 1 Thought
    Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers– what you do today, might burn your arse tomorrow.

    …and as someone recently said to me:
    “Don’t worry about old age–it doesn’t last that long. I bloody hope not    ”

    1. You have to change the engine in those more often than the tyres which themselves need changing every ten or so landings.

        1. I once crawled all over one in the good ol’ US of A. Rough and ready doesn’t really decscribe it. Same vintage as the BAC Lightning and the McDonell-Douglas F4 Phantom. No comparison on quality but the Soviets had thousands of them whereas we had hundreds of ours on the NATO front-line.

        2. I once crawled all over one in the good ol’ US of A. Rough and ready doesn’t really decscribe it. Same vintage as the BAC Lightning and the McDonell-Douglas F4 Phantom. No comparison on quality but the Soviets had thousands of them whereas we had hundreds of ours on the NATO front-line.

      2. Lightning – 6 landings and that’s with the better pilots without crosswinds

    2. You have to change the engine in those more often than the tyres which themselves need changing every ten or so landings.

  6. Morning, all Y’all.
    I see the shambles of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is all Trump’s fault, according to Biden.
    Remind me Sleepy Joe, who was POTUS at the time?

    1. I see the Democrats have their fall guy for when they lose the next election for president. That foolish DA in New York.

        1. Thanks for the link, Herr Oberst, as a result of which I have upvoted your post. But what on earth is my “Weegie’?

  7. Populism is back. Spiked. 7 April 2023.

    Since I started working in Brussels, I have been continually reminded of how most Eurocrats live entirely within this echo chamber, seeing everyone outside it as unenlightened and backward. This anti-sovereigntist technocracy, outwardly arrogant but inwardly psychologically insecure, is itself a threat to democracy and the spirit that sustains it. Eurocrats’ globalist outlook instinctively sneers at national culture and traditional values. They regard patriotism and loyalty to the nation with deep contempt. If they had their way, then the very values that constitute the foundation of European civilisation would be under threat. As things stand, the only obstacle that stands in the way of this globalist project is the rise of populism across various nations.

    The EU is an anti-democratic tyranny and the enemy of every indigenous person in Europe.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/07/populism-is-back/

    1. We went in on a lie, we came out because of the truth. It is an evil institution trying to create a Fourth Reich. by stealth (lies)

    2. I don’t really like the word populism for some reason.
      It makes wanting normality sound like a fad or something foolish.

      3. You mean supporting someone who believes in actioning popular policies? Seems ok to me. I would have imagined all political parties have to be populist otherwise they wouldn’t get anyone to vote for them.

      4. Populism
        1893, “political doctrines or principles of the Populist Party,” a left-wing agrarian faction in U.S. politics. After the movement faded the word was applied in other contexts and from the 1960s it was used for political movements that sought to rally ordinary people who see their concerns as being disregarded by established parties and elites, but it also is used pejoratively for irrational or simplistic demagoguery.

        Demagogue
        1640s, “an unprincipled popular orator or leader; one who seeks to obtain political power by pandering to the prejudices, wishes, ignorance, and passions of the people or a part of them,” ultimately from Greek dēmagōgos “popular leader,” also “leader of the mob.

        The word is used derogatorily – subconscious propaganda – perhaps that’s why you don’t like it.

      5. Populism
        1893, “political doctrines or principles of the Populist Party,” a left-wing agrarian faction in U.S. politics. After the movement faded the word was applied in other contexts and from the 1960s it was used for political movements that sought to rally ordinary people who see their concerns as being disregarded by established parties and elites, but it also is used pejoratively for irrational or simplistic demagoguery.

        Demagogue
        1640s, “an unprincipled popular orator or leader; one who seeks to obtain political power by pandering to the prejudices, wishes, ignorance, and passions of the people or a part of them,” ultimately from Greek dēmagōgos “popular leader,” also “leader of the mob.

        The word is used derogatorily – subconscious propaganda – perhaps that’s why you don’t like it.

    3. Emblazoned on the wall in the EU Parliament’s Visitors Centre are these words: “National sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our time and of the steady march of humanity back to tragic disaster and barbarism…The only final remedy for this supreme and catastrophic evil of our time is a federal union of the peoples…”

      They were written by Philip Kerr, later the Marquess of Lothian, who was a British diplomat and arch-appeaser in the build up to the Second World War. Like the modern Europhile zealots, he never dropped his doctrinaire outlook. Even on the eve of the Battle of Britain in 1940, he was urging Winston Churchill’s Government to reach a peace deal with Hitler’s regime.

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/07/the-eu-has-revealed-its-true-nature-a-federalist-monster-that-wi/

  8. Populism is back. Spiked. 7 April 2023.

    Since I started working in Brussels, I have been continually reminded of how most Eurocrats live entirely within this echo chamber, seeing everyone outside it as unenlightened and backward. This anti-sovereigntist technocracy, outwardly arrogant but inwardly psychologically insecure, is itself a threat to democracy and the spirit that sustains it. Eurocrats’ globalist outlook instinctively sneers at national culture and traditional values. They regard patriotism and loyalty to the nation with deep contempt. If they had their way, then the very values that constitute the foundation of European civilisation would be under threat. As things stand, the only obstacle that stands in the way of this globalist project is the rise of populism across various nations.

    The EU is an anti-democratic tyranny and the enemy of every indigenous person in Europe.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/07/populism-is-back/

  10. It is quite extraordinary how the MSM, led by BBC Scotland, have cowered in obeisance to Sturgeon’s SNP for the past several years. One exception is this article from February 2021

    ANDREW NEIL: Censorship, bullying, threats of jail… how Nicola Sturgeon’s storm troops turned Scotland into a banana republic without the bananas

    By ANDREW NEIL FOR THE DAILY MAIL
    PUBLISHED: 22:30, 24 February 2021 | UPDATED: 14:47, 25 February 2021

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9297015/ANDREW-NEIL-Nicola-Sturgeons-storm-troops-turned-Scotland-banana-republic.html#comments

  11. 373133+ up ticks.

    Morning Each,

    Friday 7 April: The tarnished and hypocritical SNP is suffering a fitting downfall

    You cannot see the sun through the clouds of deflecting chaff
    “tarnished and hypocritical ” does not rate very high against the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled / controlled immigration / paedophile UMBRELLA / treacherous / deceitful / maiming / killing coalition, not very high at all.

    We are currently operating as a disunited indigenous peoples
    consenting via the majority voter who are, in turn, supporting
    party names (ino) the honest contents of which has long been deceased.

  13. Good Morning Folks,

    Nice sunny start here, even beginning to look like spring has arrived.

  15. The tarnished and hypocritical SNP is suffering a fitting downfall

    National Socialism always goes the same way

      1. Yo B3

        May I fiddle

        He most probably will get a well paid job as head of the BBC

  18. Good Friday skipping: English Heritage aims to jump-start neglected Easter tradition

    ‘Long rope day’ endured for hundreds of years but is now largely forgotten, says charity

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c913ab130803eceea242f9aeedb3b183ca239231/55_140_2448_1469/master/2448.jpg?width=965&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none
    Easter skipping in Alciston, East Sussex, in 1952.

    Esther Addley
    Thu 6 Apr 2023 07.00 BST

    For centuries in some parts of England, people would get together on Good Friday – to skip. Men, women and children would mark the start of the Easter weekend by jumping over long lengths of fishing rope or washing lines, sometimes aiming to jump for the entirety of what became known as “long rope day” or “skipping day”.

    Almost – but not quite – everywhere, the custom has been all but forgotten. This Easter, however, English Heritage hopes to revive it, hosting skipping events at eight of its sites across the bank holiday weekend.

    At Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire, Audley End in Essex and six other sites, visitors will be invited to join in with skipping games whose origins are murky but which may be very ancient indeed.

    “It is traditions like these that add so much colour to our social history,” said the heritage charity. “We aim to bring history to life for our visitors and I think helping traditions like this live on is a really important part of doing that.”

    Amy Boyington, senior historian at English Heritage, said: “During the 20th century, whole families would try to skip all day on Good Friday, eating hot cross buns to keep them going. They believed skipping would bring good luck and guarantee good harvests or catches of fish in the coming year.”

    Though Easter skipping was a popular pastime in a number of towns and villages across England, by the pre-second world war years it had come to be particularly associated with fishing communities in Sussex. Sean Goddard, an amateur historian from Brighton, said his father had recalled communal skipping events in a local park.

    Before that, fishers and their families would skip beside the beach, said Goddard, “but they would also do the long rope skipping a few streets in from the beach, where the fishermen lived. They would have put a long rope across the street [where] it was all narrow cottages.”

    Like many folk traditions, the origins of festive skipping are uncertain. The custom is at least four centuries old, according to English Heritage, but may be considerably older.

    One leading folklorist speculated in the 1950s that the then lingering association of skipping with bronze-age barrows on the South Downs suggested the activity was “the far-off descendant of the sports and games played at burials and … possibly at barrow funerals”.

    If so, Good Friday would have been a much more recent association, with some later speculating that the long rope was associated with the legend that Judas hanged himself after betraying Christ. (In Scarborough, community skipping has taken place since the early 1900s, but on Shrove Tuesday.)

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/929a0fa93c5187ac0b5627bb552c217ee641357b/35_344_3617_2169/master/3617.jpg?width=620&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none
    ‘It’s great fun,’ said Gill Phillips, whose all-female Morris group revived the skipping tradition in 1981.

    “We would love to hear from anyone who remembers – or has a relative who remembers – skipping on Good Friday,” said Boyington.

    “The rhymes that would have undoubtedly accompanied these Easter games are largely forgotten too, which is such a shame as oral tradition is so important in our understanding of social history.”

    Almost forgotten as it may be, Good Friday skipping has not quite died out. Goddard is a member of the Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men, and on Friday they and two other morris groups will perform outside a pub in Ringmer in Sussex before hosting a community skip for all comers.

    “We have very long ropes, enough to get eight to 10 people skipping at a time,” he said. “The morris people do it; anybody can do it.”

    Also present will be Gill Phillips, whose all-female morris group the Knots of May revived the Good Friday tradition in 1981.

    “It’s not really associated with morris dancing at all,” she said, “but if we don’t do it, what’s going to happen? It’s going to die and it’s great fun. It’s nice to have something the general public can join in.”

    1. The only long rope I’m interested in is the one around the necks of the perpetrators of our current predicaments.

    3. Good Grief, are Knots of May still dancing?
      They were at a Day of Dance in Abingdon I went to in the late ’80s!!

      1. Caroline used to play the accordion for the Bath University Morris side but that was before she met me!

  19. ‘Morning, Peeps. A gloriously sunny start with 13°C to follow. Just right to make a start on a pile of green oak that I need to convert to logs for the next season.

    Interesting article (admittedly a bit of a plug) by Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan on the Plant Normal podcast published yesterday:

    Jonathan Sumption: the BBC was pro-lockdown because of the threat to the licence fee

    Lord Sumption tells Planet Normal that the government’s threat to BBC’s funding may have swayed the broadcaster’s lockdown coverage

    By
    Liam Halligan
    Allison Pearson and
    Isabelle Bougeard
    6 April 2023 • 6:00am

    The BBC may have leaned towards pro-lockdown coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in a reaction to the threat to its funding, says Lord Sumption.

    “The BBC, which is probably the most influential single media organ, was consistently pro-lockdown. It was, of course, under threat to its financial model from the government and it therefore wanted to show that it was ‘good boys’.”

    On the latest Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above, the former Supreme Court Justice reflected on the media reaction to lockdown three years on.

    “Within the BBC, I know for certain that there were a variety of opinions, but the one which they chose to concentrate on was that the lockdown was a great idea, that people who were sceptical were being anti-social, and there was very little to show that there was an alternative view held by responsible people.”

    “As a matter of fact, that still seems to be the position of the BBC. They are still running articles about long-covid and the like, and no articles, or very few articles, about those things that suggest that a mistake was made.”

    On the delays to the upcoming Covid inquiry, Lord Sumption lays blame for the “judicialisation” of public inquiries.

    “The basic problem is that for about 50 years now, public inquiries have become increasingly legalised and judicialised, as they are regarded as occasions for everyone to have their say,, for victims to achieve what is sometimes called closure, rather than to ascertain the facts. You end up with endless cross-examination.”

    “A much more sensible system, which was, for example, adopted by the Swedes, would be to have a body of experts who will use such evidence as they think is necessary, rather than what anyone else might think necessary, to arrive at the facts and form a judgement. That is a model of what we should be doing, instead of having this kind of quasi-forensic process which lasts a very long time.”

    * * *

    …and which, might I add, costs an absolute fortune in legal fees!

    Interesting BTL comments:

    David Burdon
    23 HRS AGO
    Long Covid is largely a fallacy. The evidence is twofold.
    First, in the UK, the reported rate of long Covid is twice as high among the “work from home” civil service as in the general population.
    Secondly, research from the US indicates that 50% claiming to be suffering from long Covid, have never had normal Covid.
    We live in a world of complete farce.

    John Bickley
    23 HRS AGO
    Long Covid has become for many, mainly in the public sector a shirkers’ charter.

    Tim West
    1 DAY AGO
    Sumption on the right side of history on COVID and the lamentable, unlawful response from the Government.

    Paul Isherwood
    22 HRS AGO
    ALL the media pushed the governments agenda because they spent a fortune of our money with them trying to scare us.

    Chris Speke
    1 DAY AGO
    Lord Sumption may well have a point but it does not explain the very similar stance taken by Times Radio which I have listened to since its inception in June 2020 . I believe that the majority of our country completely swallowed the Hancock guff , for which they should be ashamed and it leaves me feeling that the country in which I was born has changed into a proto-totalitarian mindset .

    David Davis
    1 DAY AGO
    Totalitarian ? except that we all knew that whatever measures that the Government took in respect of Covid would not become permanent, despite what a lot of doom mongers were predicting (for their own ends).

    Guy Harris
    23 HRS AGO
    … except that a rubicon has been crossed. There are still repressive COVID measures in place, domestically and internationally. HMG has now taken to itself the right to intervene in our lives well beyond what everyone assumed was acceptable up to 2020.

    Chris Speke
    23 HRS AGO
    Perhaps it has passed you by , that you are being manipulated into Electric Cars , forced into completely useless heating systems for your house , and the latest is to reduce your use of water . The same mantra used for Lockdown that it is to benefit your fellow citizens . The example of water usage is to protect businesses which have yet to complete one extra reservoir since privatisation . You have quickly forgotten that we were under the cosh of the Covid Act , a totalitarian law only used during War .

    1. He may be correct, but I didn’t see a plethora of BBC journalists bursting to challenge lockdowns on their private Twit accounts. Instead, I only ever see them twittering that the government isn’t extreme enough.

  21. Good morning all. A very bright & sunny start today but, according to the yard thermometer, with slightly below 0°C.

  22. Good morning.

    https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1643995308660232193
    Of course, the toxicity tests, evidence of which was proved on by the statistical analysis on howbadismybatch.com, would not make any sense unless big pharma followed them up. I had wondered how they were going to do that, and here is the answer.
    Fortunately, vaxcontrolgroup.com is carrying out its own long term follow-up – they have been tracking the health of the unvaxxed since 2021, and they’re now opening a group for vaxxed people too. I am a member of the unvaxxed control group, and just give them health data every month.

    1. Me too. Mostly nothing to report but I’ve been honest when I’ve been ill. Family estrangement has been the biggest blow. Three siblings who’d had five jabs each when we last spoke.

  23. Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – It is worth casting one’s mind back to April 2021, during the pandemic, when Nicola Sturgeon, as first minister of Scotland, said: “I do think there is a need for real, proper investigation and real and proper scrutiny around the swirling of allegations around [Boris] Johnson and the Tory party … It is genuinely a real stench of sleaze and it is in the public interest that these things are properly addressed and properly answered.”

    Just two years later, these words are more applicable to the SNP (report, April 6).

    Richard Allison
    Edinburgh

    Spot on! I first heard the news of the arrest as I was driving back from a dear friend’s wedding in Carmarthen a couple of days ago. To say I was delighted would be a considerable understatement. And just before I heard the news item I had been listening to some music that included the main theme from Braveheart! Oh the irony…

    1. I wrote about Pandoras Box yesterday. Here’s an expansion on it.
      I wonder, to whom will reparations be made? Clearly not to the slaves, as they are all dead.
      To African countries where they came from? Haven’t we sent them enough money already?
      To African politicians? HA! HA! HA! Joking, right?
      To African families from whom slaves were taken in the past – prove it. And what about non-African slaves, including white ones?
      To everybody of Black skin? What about Mulattoes, and how much would each get? Less than a single entry ticket to Buckingham Palace, I’d bet.
      To individuals? Is there a discount or rebate for the benefits of being born and growing up in countries with all the western attributes, built on slavery – just like HM is accused of?
      Is there a discount for the costs (and reparations too) of the West African squadron, who closed it all down at great State and personal cost.
      To NGOs – to pi$$ up the wall, as they have with all other funding?
      Surely the money should come from those who sold the slaves in the first place – er… African tribal chiefs, mostly. Refer also to Ainsley Harriot’s trip into his past… it’s going to be an almighty clusterfuck, all because HM is a dimble-brain. Whatever he does will be wrong, and will never be enough. And now, the ball is rolling… where were the advisors to raise the points above, get some clarity, before opening mouth and inserting the whole Regiment of Foot!

      1. There are not many supporters of the new King on this site – but at least our dear Lady of the Lake approves of him and she is as entitled to her point of view as all of us here are. That is why we like this forum.

        1. I’m sure Charles will be fine with all the ceremonial stuff, opening bazaars and so on……. I just wish he’d keep his political views to himself.

    2. He should leave the past firmly in the past, where it belongs and not go digging around for trouble. Can he not see he may unleash something really awful in his midst? That is perhaps his plan.

      And what about the thousands upon thousands of British people who were shipped away to be slaves, those stolen from villages by the barbary (muslim) pirates on our western coastlines in the depths of the night, never to see their families again? Nobody, nobody ever mentions them, and I expect they had to endure the same appalling conditions of all slaves at that time.

  25. SIR – Many of us living south of Scotland’s border often thought that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP would turn the country into a banana republic if they ever managed to win independence from the rest of the United Kingdom.

    Recent events suggest, however, that Scotland has managed to become a banana republic while still in the Union.

    Michael Edwards
    Haslemere, Surrey

    Or, as Brillo says in the Daily Fail today: “A banana republic without the bananas.” That made me laugh out loud.

    2. I don’t support her tax rises but I’m sure this is an overreaction. Would one really sell house, take kids out of school, and move across the border to look for another job for the sake of £165pA?

      How Nicola Sturgeon drove the wealthy out of Scotland
      Wealthy Scots will be about 2.5pc poorer than their counterparts elsewhere, analysis by tax firm RSM shows.
      Even those on more modest salaries will lose out. A Scottish worker on £60,000 will be £163 worse off, compared with last year.
      Chris Etherington of RSM says the SNP risks creating a “brain drain” across the border.

      1. The words “A Scottish worker on £60,000” got me – ‘a modest salary’

      2. That is the concept known as boiling a frog.

        Like making the Jews and other minorities pay a little tiny bit more than the majority population.

  26. Good morning, all. Sunny, blue sky and a light breeze this morning.

    As usual on a Friday I started the morning watching this week’s episode from The Highwire. First interviewee is Dr Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s Surgeon General. Dr Ladapo has instituted some radical CV-19 reforms in Florida when compared to other states and is in a struggle with the USA’s CDC. The latter are in complete denial when responding to the Florida Surgeon General’s letter re CV-19 “vaccine” adverse events.

    The chart from the VAERS system is recognised as recording at best 10% of the total adverse events and at worst 1% and those recorded here are disastrous for any medical intervention let alone possibly being 10 times to a 100 times worse. The final graph is testimony to something going seriously wrong in 2021 and continuing into 2022. Everyone awake knows what started in early 2021 but hey, correlation isn’t causation. No sireee!

    This week the Jaxen report focuses on Australia. The uniqueness of Australia being an isolated island continent has some of its officials referring to Australia as an experiment re CV-19, and sadly for the people, an experiment that has gone badly wrong.

    Ladapo from the start followed by Jaxen up to the 53 minutes mark.

    The Highwire

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9db0f188dbf48b9fba948ec3a6bc4b978d61a1c7ea734b97bef6ab61811b097.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ddbecfa1c1d69a81e812dac8100d6ff1c7a96e8ac8056932652179b841d5724.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76dfec05228749bbeb0bd314241657245c9c828ac1e7c07c63e5a1d940bbca41.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c12d5be89f612023b4ef1f0f9fa2b2889b7377a1779c14000177f683123b138.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/79f04b8fa5239fa9c58781653ca44e082fab8c15f93b5905076382f2af192c26.png

  27. SIR – The state of our traffic signs is also a disgrace, with many obscured by vegetation, missing, damaged, faded, or simply dirty.

    According to the Highway Code, drivers and riders have to adhere to road signage, yet councils across the land are failing in their duty.

    Guy Voice
    Grange Park, Northamptonshire

    Well said, Mr Voice. I recently spent a couple of minutes cutting back and cleaning up a local sign not far from the house. Please don’t tell the local authority as I expect to be chastised when they find out…

    It is high time East Sussex County Council cleared the mountains of litter from the verges of the A22 and A27, all of which is a complete disgrace, particularly with foreign tourists (the legal sort) due to visit our country over the next few months. Clearance of litter is, after all, a statutory duty, and the scale of the problem is well beyond the capabilities of various local volunteer groups who turn out in all weathers to do their bit.

    1. All those people worrying about the state of the roads don’t seem to realise that it’s deliberate. Why would TPTB repair the roads when their plan is to have far fewer of us driving on them?

      1. The potholes keep the traffic speeds down. Perhaps the councils haven’t twigged that they’ll get more income from speeding fines if they repair the potholes.

        1. They have gone mad in our part of France where there are chicanes, a variety of bumps in the road and gendarmes couchés everywhere.

    3. Well done Hugh.
      We live in a private cul-de-sac and the road signs and notices at the entrance that even some of the residents can’t seem to read (the speed limit) need a clean every so often. But unless I make the effort with a bucket of hot soapy water and sponge. It never happens.
      The mid forties generation are totally none compliant. Its probably because their parents have always done every thing for them. And they haven’t ‘noticed’ it’s their turn now.
      Just like Bob’s comment above.

  28. I didn’t write these words – just copied them from facebook – however they reflect the feelings of so many people across the country.

    I’m getting old and I’ve worked hard all my life. I have made my reputation, the good and the bad, I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I have worked hard to get where I am in life. I have juggled my job, my family, and made many sacrifices up front to secure a life for my family.
    It wasn’t always easy and still isn’t, but I did it all while maintaining my integrity and my principles. I made mistakes and tried to learn from them. I have friends of every walk of life and if you’re in my circle, it should be understood that I don’t have to remind you of what I’d be willing to do for you.
    However…. I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth” to people who don’t have my work ethic. People who have sacrificed nothing and feel entitled to receive everything.
    I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it themselves.
    I’m really tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which, no one is allowed to debate.
    I’m really tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talk like their opinions matter to the common man. I’m tired of any of them even pretending they can relate to the life and bank account that I have.
    I’m tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.
    I’m upset that I’m labeled as a racist because I am proud of my heritage. I never stole any ones land, the government did that..
    I’m tired of being told I need to accept the latest fad or politically correct stupidity or befriending a group that’s intent on killing me because I won’t convert to their point of view.
    I’m really tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. Especially the ones that want me to fund it.
    I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.
    Yes, I’m really tired. But, I’m also glad to be in the twilight of my life. Because mostly, I’m not going to have to see the retched, depressing world these young useless idiots are creating.
    And lastly, because even though I shouted from the rooftops, no one listened or seemed to give a damn. You reap what you sow, and so do your children.
    No one is entitled to anything. You have a choice to work, a choice to stay off drugs, a choice to make something of yourself. I have nothing to do with your choice. That’s all on you. You are entitled to what you earn.
    There is no way these thoughts will be widely publicised, unless each of us sends it on! Surely, the politically correct police censors will try to quiet us.

    5. Absolutely agree and exactly my point of view.
      We are all tired. Of being told what we have to accept and what to do, by self appointed idiots. Called politicians and Dopey Wokies.

      Well said and will send it on, don’t worry about that.

    6. Wise words. It will be a lot worse if Starmer’s lot get in. Imagine Diane Abbott as chancellor, or David Lammy as foreign secretary.

      2. And add to that a king who wants to give all the royal family’s assets and money to the descendants of slaves who were liberated by the British navy.

        Has Charles III never heard of William Wilberforce?

  29. Morning all 🙂😉
    Someone up there is working on it, Good Friday and so far good weather.
    I wonder where the usually over vociferous Olga Krankie is hiding out. I wonder if she set all this up. That’s no way to treat me 😡

    1. 373133+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      May one ask why is he dabbling in politics when he should be dabbling with his new “queen” in regards to starting a family and giving us a heir to the throne, that should keep him busy.

        1. 373133+ up tick,

          Morning N,
          I know that,you know that but does he
          know ? as I said it will keep him busy.

          The real damage could be done via the coronation oath,that could give credence to the WEF brigade.

      1. 373133+ up ticks,

        Morning PM,

        Tis past time the tax payers sent a resounding Nooooo echoing through all
        the valleys in the kingdom, then demand that the coronation oath passes the peoples inspection before being uttered.

        Otherwise what tattered remains of our rear exits will be handed over to the WEF / NWO / all & sundry to do with as they will.

      2. The taxxpayers only recently finished paying compensation for buying the freedom of the slaves.

        1. Almost 200 years of debt. The slaves got their freedom, an infinitely better life than they would have had if they remained in the bush, as have their descendants – the choices they made to make their freedom work for them (or otherwise) were theirs alone to make.

    3. Perhaps white families that lost a relative when the RN was fighting against slave traders should get compensation too? You know, from the blacks whose ancestors weren’t enslaved inside Africa because the British enforced a ban?

  31. Is it just because it’s Easter, or do I see a start of pushback in the press?
    The article about go woke, go broke for Nike, modelling spots breas on a bloke – however femi, it’s still an insult to women.
    How about this one? Britain’s new elite doesn’t live in the real world
    They are observers, not doers – and think practical constraints on policy can be overcome by hectoring
    https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/06/david-frost-matt-goodwin-is-right-about-new-elites/

  33. Russia has ‘highly likely’ advanced into centre of Bakhmut – UK intelligence. 7 Apil 2023.

    Russia appears to have made important gains in Bakhmut, the British defence ministry says.

    The UK Ministry of Defence says in its daily update that Russian forces have “highly likely advanced into the [Bakhmut] town centre, and has seized the West Bank of the Bakhmutka River. Ukraine’s key supply route to the west of the town is likely severely threatened.”

    I usually resist the urge to comment on the daily progress of this war because all the reports are heavily tainted. Nevertheless this account of Russian gains is from a hostile source so that may lend it some credibility. What one really wonders here is which side has suffered the most losses over the last six months and how badly has this affected their morale and operating abilities? Alas we shall not know until someone makes a major move.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/apr/07/russia-ukraine-war-live-pentagon-investigating-leak-of-us-and-nato-files-report-macron-and-von-der-leyens-last-day-in-china

      2. You obviously misheard, it’s a hostel source. All gimmegrants are given a ‘free’ copy as they are allocated their four star accommodation.

    2. The only reliable sources are Col Douglas McGregor, Scott Ritter and UK Column.

    3. When Russians say something, they mean it. Deception in the Western sense is not one of their traits. If you look at what they have done and gained so far, you will realize they have advanced in exactly the way they said they would at the very beginning of this conflict. They do not do things in a spectacular fashion with guns blazing but in a methodical and, to Westerners, a plodding fashion. Thus, when they say they have taken Bakhmut town centre, you can believe they have.

      1. They have already won. What is going on is the refusal of Zelenskyy to concede. He would rather kill thousands of young Ukrainian men than surrender. In my opinion, he is a murderous psychopath willing to kill thousands upon thousands of Ukrainians to preserve himself. The man is contemptable because, he knew, from the very beginning, that he could not win this war. But he miscalculated, he thought, along with his American handlers, that he could drag the West in and win that way.

        1. From the outset we had a stupid situation where Ukraine was shelling the Crimea. Russia stepped in and booted them one and then the conflict escalated. That Russia was painted as the bad buy for moving armour in to a region that practically invited them.

          The whole region is stupid. The whole war is a pack of lies, told by two different media, neither telling the truth.

        2. I understand the Polish farmers are going to demonstrate when Zelensky visits, as the duty-free import of Ukrainian farm produce is destroying their markets. The same applies in Finland, but to apiarists.
          Strange that cheaper imports don’t seem to result in reduced prices in th shops, though.

  34. Lovely day out there today chaps! We’re off to the tip shortly…….. lots of work needed in the garden. Washing done and hung out. Should dry hopefully!

    Back later.

  35. Appropriate verse today:

    I danced on a Friday and the sky turned black
    It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back
    They buried my body and they thought I’d gone
    But I am the dance and I still go on.

    (Sydney Carter: The Lord of The Dance)

    1. Back in the 1980s did some sound recording with Sydney at his SE London home. Decent chap. At one point my colleague asked if he could borrow a pen. Sydney reached into his inside pocket and pulled out …. a banana! Cue for a photo I felt! He also had a lovely black cat which found its way into several pictures, one of which included below.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/021847258b1a1a5046152ce30c5389c339ad08c385dda8cf8dfcd981e8c6dd99.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/62367ee13295acf3f08a48955cc527a31c2b2bade78cf31a973f4583ee6a3f9c.jpg

      1. Jeremy Taylor appeared with my cousins, Paul and Andrew Tracey, in Wait A Minim in London’s Fortune Theatre in the 1960s. After leaving the show he went to teach at Eton where he made a recording with his great friend Sydney Carter.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22db9954d94e24b8e6bd1b6de3b95a497782d0fb898e2f55ba2a22c1d039708f.jpg

        I met Sydney in a couple of folk clubs when I used to go along with my guitar – he was a quirky and very interesting man and Jeremy did a lot of research into his life after he had died.

        Jeremy now lives in France but he suffers with Parkinson’s Disease and he no longer performs. I love his songs and indeed he was a great source of inspiration to me when I tried to write satirical and humorous songs myself.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO30p2NSMTk

  36. At least one member of the Sir Cursed Harmer opposition has pushed back.

    Labour frontbencher refuses to endorse party’s ‘gutter politics’ attack on Rishi Sunak over child sex abusers as she struggles to explain election tweet suggesting PM doesn’t want them jailed
    Labour was accused of ‘pandering to prejudice’ and engaging in ‘gutter politics’
    Advert put out claiming the PM does not believe sex abusers should be jailed

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11948773/Labour-frontbencher-refuses-gutter-politics-attack-Rishi-Sunak-child-sex-abusers.html

    1. I would estimate that plus 99% of the uk population think child sex abusers should be in prison.
      They’ve been getting away with for far too long.
      And I suggest the the majority of those in Britain’s politics have been in the gutter for so long now, they have taken root. And are over hanging the edges.
      It will not change in any Nottlers life Time.

    1. Didn’t The Green Man advertise about how to cross the roads, some decades ago?

          1. I looked at the green man on the invitation and wondered if he’s just trying to avoid portraying a white person and possibly offending the perpetually offended!

    2. He is only reaping what he has sowed, in this case getting involved in politics all his life, and openly supporting the very unpopular WEF issues like mass migration, net zero, depopulation etc.
      If he was an enigma, there would be nothing to criticise. HM and Philip knew what they were doing, it is a pity Charles didn’t learn from their example.

      1. Work behind the scenes, not stand in front, testiculating.
        I’m watching with interest over how he handles the slavery issue he raised.

        1. He did not raise the slavery issue, all he has done is open the archives so that historians can study the involvement of the Royal Family. It was historians who made the first approach that the archives be opened. Personally, I think he should have told them to bugger off.
          “The British royal family has now been accused of past ties to ‘slavery’ by Dr Priyamvada Gopal, a professor of Postcolonial Studies at Churchill College under the University of Cambridge. The academic, who had referred to the monarchy as a ‘white supremacist organization’ in the past, further emphasized her claims saying the royal family is ‘an institution invested in whiteness’.”
          https://meaww.com/british-royal-family-slave-trade-slavery-historical-connection-cambridge

          1. That’s not how the MSM are painting it – at least, not the ones I read.
            But yes, he should have told them to airff orff.

          2. Of course the MSM wont tell it the way it is. They hate the monarchy, it represents England more than any other institution. As I have said before they are determined to bring it down because then they can, like rabid squealing pigs, gloat over the death of our culture and civilization. That is why I go out of my way to defend the king.

      2. I find this sort of thing incredibly hypocritical. It is almost as if people have short term memories. He learnt this stuff from his father. But rarely did you or do you hear criticism of Prince Phillip about all this. Furthermore, people conveniently forget that, as King, he is not allowed to say what he pleases. He is a mouthpiece for government, the people who can and do implement these crap policies. Perhaps that is where peoples ire should go, not on the King.

        1. Philip did get away with saying a surprisingly large amount, the most controversial of which was his comment about coming back as a virus to depopulate the world. But I think they *can* get away with doing quite a lot, and Charles saw that and thought he could too. But without his father’s light touch, he has overdone it.

          One couldn’t help liking Philip, even though he was known to be mixed up with the oligarchs from at least the 1960s onwards. Perhaps it was simply because he had charm.

    3. When Christianity came to England the Green Man, the spirit of the hunt, of individuality, of masculinity was twisted to suit Lucifer, or the Devil. After all, the Church didn’t want a balanced didactic, did it!

  39. EU warns China not to send arms to Russia. 7 April 2023.

    China and the EU should establish correct mutual understanding and avoid misunderstanding and misjudgment, Xi said while meeting the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in Beijing, Reuters reports, citing CCTV.

    For her part, AFP reports Von der Leyen says she warned China that any arms shipments to Russia would “significantly harm” relations.

    Xi’s words have a double meaning dependent on your point of view; whether Fond a Lying has picked up on this one doubts. She has no democratic legitimacy whatsoever and despite having no military assets is here threatening Xi. You can see how this looks from China’s position in the World. The hypocrisy of it primarily; but also the empty posturing. The Americans at least still carry a big stick when they speak.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/apr/06/russia-ukraine-war-live-powerful-blasts-in-occupied-melitopol-von-der-leyen-and-macron-in-china

    2. The hypocrisy of the woman is breath-taking.
      The EU’s members are constantly being exhorted to send more and more arms to Ukraine

    3. Listen to the Chinese, and not only what they are not saying, but the way they aren’t saying it.
      The same went for Libya when I was visiting.

    4. The EU isn’t in a position to order anyone to do anything, least of all China. What do those communists think the Chinese will do? Think ‘Oh dear, the EU’s telling us not to do something, we should do that!’ or is it thinking ‘You made yourselves dependent on us for your every industrial need, we’re vastly outpacing the entire GDP of all 26 of you.

  40. Taking a coffee break in trying to remove cast concrete feeding trough from the room in Firstborn’s barn that we are converting to a honey processing room.
    My God, if the Russians had used the same mix for their tanks, they’d be invincible in Ukraine, not death traps.
    Slitting wheel, hammer ‘n chisel, much sweat (helping the effing concrete dust stick to skin) and aching muscles, and I’ve cleared a third in 2 days work!
    Lunch break soon, hope ost of it is done by then. A cold beer is calling…

    2. Could you not hire a jackhammer for a week?

      Tank armour is designed to ablate to remove the kinetic energy of the projectile. That’s why we have uranium rounds – to punch through. (Although I get what you mean). Russian tanks against the same generation weapons would be pretty tough, but they’re up against our two generations hence man portable launchers.

      1. Yes, but all shops are closed for Easter. In any case, we had a jackhammer I wrecked on this concrete before getting a slitting wheel to make it like a bar of chocolate and “easier” to break up. The concrete dust is truly epic – I have dust mask, goggles, ear defenders and an all-over disposable boiler suit. Yukk. Be glad to be finished.

      1. I answered the call of the cold pils. Polish, but who cares? It’s good rehydrating beer!
        I need to get a bit of physical fitness going – not Charles Atlas-style, but at least enough to lift a half-litre without spilling… in any case, the exercise lowers the stress levels, and seeing some progress lowers them some more – both of which I really need to do.
        Stress from:
        – Working for a pillock who doesn’t listen and is halfway incompetent
        – 15 months ago, trying to find Mother a suitable care home.
        – Selling her house.
        – Last summer clearing Mother’s house.
        – No vacations for some time
        – Last week, my best friend’s lovely wife dying slowly of breast cancer that spread to her brain
        Takes it out of you, so it does – and stroke “victims” suffer more than youse full-brain types, ‘cos we have fewer brain cells to do the worrying/thinking etc required.

        2. Also all the covid/vaxx/war/currency worry over a long period of time. It does get you down.

          Everyone is ill at the moment, it seems. Big, fat, deadly illnesses :-((
          It’s horrible.

          But yes, do get fit, to face whatever they throw at us next!

      2. But, don’t let me give the impression I don’t really, really appreciate your and other Nottler’s concern, Phil.
        If I could, I’d give all Y’all a hug! (wipes away a furtive tear… Una furtiva lagrima)

          3. Big heart, too. Incredibly generous man and colleague, according to frienda who worked with him.

          4. That’s nice to know. Always thought that I’d like to have been his friend.

    5. Have you ever considered using expansive demolition grout? Other names are available, but basically a chemical solution that expands when it hardens.

      1. Yup.
        The preparation would take as much time, and be equally unpleasant due to slitting.

  41. IRA terror attack feared ahead of Joe Biden’s Northern Ireland visit
    ‘Strong intelligence’ police could be targeted in run-up to Good Friday Agreement anniversary
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/06/ira-terror-attack-feared-joe-biden-northern-ireland-visit/

    BTL – Percival Wrattstrangler

    There must be a referendum in Northern Ireland on continuing to be in the United Kingdom.

    If they vote to stay in the UK then the EU and the ECJ must get out completely.

    If they vote to leave then the UK must immediately cease all further financial, legal or moral support and let them get on with it themselves.

          1. I certainly didn’t mean to imply anything like that, and would not dream of doing so!

  43. Right – I’m off. Good Friday. Potatoes to plant.

    When we lived in Laure, our Spanish neighbours were AGHAST that we did that on a Friday (any Friday). Why – they were never able to explain!

    Then lime trees to deal with in Churchyard.

    Back much later. Play nicely.

    1. A Spanish superstition is that it is wrong to plant on a Friday or a Sunday.
      Probably a Catholic diktat, because Christ was crucified on a Friday and Sunday is for planting one’s posterior in church.
      Plants pre-date the seven named days of the week by hundreds of millions of years, so the only likely extra-terrestrial influences are the sun and the moon.

    2. Apparently, so I am told, one should work even harder & longer on Good/Long Friday, in recognition of Jesus’ longest day on nthe Cross.

      1. It is also said that Easter Saturday is the longest day of the year- if one is a practicing Christian- because of the wait between the supposed death of Jesus and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

  45. ‘Morning All

    GF Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/54d25c75c3295748fe3e1b6911b1c58fbe04cf69a2f102a2444b6cc57745c8b3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4309561d3e29c99b28f0ac255961506f7e9a36205e407f3d88d7450d01d9a8bd.jpg

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtA7XqAXoAYeC9R.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c7ddc808c99c64b67912582ea967ec521db35283e73117f3b4e269213f6b172a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8aa3d2f981938f99b5f4fdec7d9c9d732f063c10d215b78c1918aa2d504ed458.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e571a380ad9c9e0b4635af46ab205f5e29f1f09b68fcca1b3eafc810e16fef78.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/804e8a373e211bf1fab41dde320a74ebb3775ba18168058653be8f307de77685.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5caa6fc00a971a064caf8c05346bdbece92fb0f56519146984bf3c5ea94daeb.jpg

    1. That Australian deaths one is pretty bad.
      They have 12% excess mortality, which is no different from 2022 until you remember that it’s being compared to a moving five year average that now includes 2022…

  46. This is Fonda Lyin and Napoleon visiting China. Do all newly powerful world leaders insist on these vast tables nowadays? Interesting flower bed in the centre.
    Note the subordinates wearing masks in the background.
    We are about to experience a world where the dominant culture is a non-Christian one.
    Nobody can realistically believe the masks have to do with a virus – they are all about untermenschen not being allowed to show their faces in front of important people.
    The same phenomenon has been observed all round the world since 2021 – and all the leaders, including our own have merrily gone along with it.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4b3dded3cc9e1dddb32feef461853ee914a3326f61554c556bfda175db9167e8.jpg

    1. Passing through on way to churchyard (take that how you wish!!)

      Nice that the three have name labels on the table – in case they wonder who the other two are, I suppose.

      1. I can’t see what it really is – I am sure it’s not giant sprouting mung beans!

      2. Looks like duck weed actually, doesn’t it? Dead reeds in the middle. And where’s the megaphones so they can communicate? Absurd set up all round, seems to me.

    1. I’ll repeat the four words to live by
      Diamond Princess
      Didier Raoult
      Never masked
      Never tested
      Never Jabbed
      It was all the biggest fraud in human history
      Edit
      The current plan to roll out this poison to “vulnerable” children with heart problems is a grotesque parody of public health

      1. 373133+ up ticks,

        Afternoon Rik,

        A strong aroma of Murder Inc. about the whole issue.

      2. Eugenics is about removing the weak? Abortion for the masses. Seven children for Ursula von der Leyen.

    1. The worst of this is that it has made giving to anyone impossible because you can no longer be sure that they are genuine

      1. Yo Minty

        My grandparents were avid Sally army troopers, complete with cap

        We have a monthly allotment to them and give again at Chrimbo and Easter

      2. Yo Minty

        My grandparents were avid Sally army troopers, complete with cap

        We have a monthly allotment to them and give again at Chrimbo and Easter

    2. My brother-in-law has a business in Marylebone, little more than a quarter of a mile from Oxford Street. He’s been stepping over the Romanian beggars on his way to work for more than 20 years.

    3. In Costa Del Skeg, the ‘homeless’ sit begging outside Gregg’s the Baker, whilst on the mobile phones and smoking…..

      1. Last time I was in London I came out of Regents Park Station and a guy stitting on a box shouted at me any change at all mate. I replied, no not really still in the same extended 5 bed detached 4 bathroom in Harpenden, my Porche and Wives BMW in the garage.
        How about you mate……
        any change ?

    1. On the other hand, the Chinese also snubbed Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister. Perhaps they regard women ministers as a symptom of the decadent west, and want to talk to the men?

    3. We might not like China much but they’re no fools. They clearly see through VdL.

  52. Once a bustling wealthy modern metropolis, now a crime ridden filthy, rubbish filled and litter strewn, filthy absolute wreck, in what twenty five years.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/everything-is-being-stripped-and-stolen-south-africa-s-run-down-city-of-gold/ar-AA19z9Sx?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3a9302112cbc42f0827592af65f20657&ei=35

    Riverlea’s troubles epitomise a growing sense of lawlessness and infrastructural collapse in South Africa’s biggest city, a reflection of a national malaise of severe rolling blackouts and decline under the ruling African National Congress of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

    They kicked the whites out and now look they……couldn’t run a bath.

    2. Toronto city council have just asked the feds to legalise ALL drugs for all age groups in the city. I imagine that if they get their wish Toronto will soon resemble Joburg.

      If that’s not enough, the socialists have just introduced a new bill in parliament – Keeping 2SLGBTQI+ Communities Safe Act, 2023 which would basically prohibit any anti wierdo speech.

      1. They are looking to provoke a reaction from the people which will allow the authorities to come down hard on those that oppose them. It’s not exactly an original strategy.

  53. Cogitating over a bowl of home-made soup, it came to me that the unelected “Council of Ministers” of the EUSSR is very similar to the unelected Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

    Lots of sitting around listening intently to diatribes. Much applause. Unanimous vote. Job done.

    1. Gee, Bill, get with the beat. The only thing missing is chestfuls of medals, N Nkorea-style.
      And the CCCP is all-male, IIRC.

      1. ” The only thing missing is chestfuls of medals, N Nkorea-style.”

        Thighful, surely.

    2. Satire 🙁
      Lauren Southern has put out a video saying “Go Woke, Go Broke is a Lie” in which she suggests that no boycott is going to hurt the multi-national because they own most of the other beer brands too. She then pinches the ideas of the Stand in the Park movement without crediting them! and says that we can only make changes in our own neighbourhoods.

  55. 373133+ up ticks,

    He will stand or fall on the oath alone,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    1h
    The only important part of the Coronation will be the Coronation Oath – which is essential to a meaningful Constitutional Monarchy.

    It has changed throughout the centuries & I hear that Charles III’s is being written by the Cabinet Office. What might it say?

    ‘I do solemnly swear to uphold the laws & customs of the World Economic Forum & the doctrines of political correctness as determined by the World’s Globalist Elites & propogated by their MSM. So help me Klaus Scwab’.

    He could at least be relied upon to keep such an oath, whereas Elizabeth II did not keep her’s ‘to rule according to our laws & customs’.

    In 1992 the Queen allowed herself to be made a citizen of the EU – thereby invalidating the basis on which she held the Crown under the Bill of Rights 1689.

    https://gettr.com/post/p2dqg9e6e6a

  56. This article tries to throw some light on the relative fuel costs of EVs against ICE cars (petrol/diesel):

    https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/how-much-does-charging-electric-car-cost-it-cheaper-petrol

    Having just got my electricy rates from 1st April 2023 I thought I’d see how much my EV was costing to run.

    At the following rates

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dda3cacb849e9ab1ae7b575a4ea3a70637d9f41988cf28132f2ac034f47cfde6.jpg

    This morning I charged the EV for two hours at the off-peak rate of 16p per kWh (between 6:30 am and 8:30 am) at a charge rate of 2 kW. I make this cost to be 4 kWh x 16p/kWh = 64p total.

    This means at the average fuel rate consumption of 4 miles/kWh I could go 16 miles on this mornings EV charge.

    1. 16 miles for 64p = 4p per mile.
      In my ICE car, 10 miles per litre = 14p per mile.
      On the other hand I can fill the tank in 5 minutes and go 600 miles. Then take 5 minutes to refuel. I prefer that.

      And I won’t have to shell out X,000s for a new battery.
      or risk a battery fire.
      or risk not being able to coast to a safe spot if there’s trouble.
      or take 4-6 recharges to get from Hampshire to Scotland.

      No, I’ll stick to an ICE car.

      1. If I drove continuously for 600 miles I’d go to sleep.
        I prefer to stay in bed whilst my EV decides if it needs to fuel up in my garage at the cheaper night rate.

        It’s only a four mile trip to the pharmacy but I prefer to use the EV rather than a mobility scooter. I can then enjoy a preheated cabin and accelerate off at 0 to 60 in under seven seconds whilst driving on derestricted roads. ☺️

  60. GARY LINEKER – You’re not having any of my millions.
    “I didn’t kick a bag of wind up and down hundreds of fields for sixtimeeny years for nothing”, he said – sobbing into his bag of crisps. Leave us poor wendyballers alone!
    https://scontent-cdg4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/92601514_10158372504014954_4463733676504514560_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=6McDBmlAxGEAX-atM0Q&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-1.xx&oh=00_AfCfLKOVQ8GbG8K_BkvGnPG3NtcgIm8M-lmJRqdsK2iYTQ&oe=64576AA9

  61. SNP accountants QUIT days after arrest of Peter Murrell. 7 April 2023.

    The accountancy firm, Johnston Carmichael, has decided to quit following a review of its client portfolio.

    The news comes after former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell was arrested on Wednesday morning following a police investigation into the party’s finances.

    If the acountants are bailing out you have real problems!

    https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/23442419.snp-accountants-quit-days-arrest-peter-murrell/

  63. A further installment in the “men are weird” category. My husband, who was downstairs while I had an extra hour, made his breakfast. Get this ladies, a hot cross bun, toasted, with a fried egg in it! Now, I like both but not as a double act. Urk.

    2. He could have added a layer of melted cheese for the Egg Royale Bun. Yum.

        1. Correctamundo. I consumed a lot of fried-egg-cheese-and-pickle toasties when a stude.

        2. Correctamundo. I consumed a lot of fried-egg-cheese-and-pickle toasties when a stude.

      1. SWMBO made ours.
        She says the Paul Hollywood recipe is best.
        Me, as long as there is buns…

        1. I always used to make them but lack the stamina these days.
          Sat outside for a short while this pm- sun is nice but breeze cool. Still, umbrella up and 2 chair cushions in place as the weekend forecast is nice.

          1. We went to the tip this morning to dispose of the well-rotted bagfuls of stuff which had been festering away in the shed all winter. It was very busy. Then the shopping, then home. I did half an hour or so outside but then came in and sat down here.

      2. Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.
        If you have no daughters, give them to your sons,
        One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!

        1. The words closest to the rhyme that has survived were printed as a round in the London Chronicle for 2–4 June 1767.

          One a penny, two a penny, hot cross-buns;

          If you’ve no daughters, give them to your sons;

          And if you’ve no kind of pretty little elves,

          Why then good faith, e’en eat them all yourselves.

      3. I hate to mention it, but I’ve just eaten our last one. They were very tasty and fruity but quite small.

          1. Easy…. it might have saved its life.
            Nothing worse the a stale bun. 😃😉😂

      1. So am I. But there are some foods that just don’t go together- well for me anyway.

    5. Sounds ok to me. But I’d have added slices of a decent cheddar and a good dollop of brown sauce. Perhaps with the top half of the bun fried rather than toasted.

        1. You ought to try my Egg Banjo Supreme.
          Take two slices of bread, one egg, some slices of cheese and some brown sauce.
          Place one slice of bread on a place and apply a layer of brown sauce.
          Fry egg and place on top of brown sauce.
          Place 2nd slice of bread in frying pan and fry one one side only.
          Whilst bread is frying, place cheese on top of the hot, fried egg.

          Note:- having a large enough frying pan to do egg and bread simultaneously is useful.

          When bread is a golden brown on the fried side, place on top of cheese.

          Enjoy!!

    6. Hot cross bun with a wedge of strong cheddar in it, microwaved for 20 seconds is the food of the gods.

  64. Labour should hang their heads in shame over the grooming scandals

    ‘Cultural sensitivity’ always means sensitivity to one culture alone – and it sure as hell isn’t the culture of white working-class girls

    ALLISON PEARSON • 5th April 2023

    How does Yvette Cooper sleep at night? Reacting to the Government’s new crackdown on abominable grooming gangs, the shadow home secretary said, as if butter wouldn’t melt, “You can never allow any kind of sensitivities around race and ethnicity to prevent action on child sexual exploitation and abuse.” The Government, she huffed, should have done something eight years ago.

    Well, I think Yvette and I can agree that you certainly shouldn’t allow ethnic sensitivities to get in the way, because the priority must always be protecting vulnerable youngsters, obviously. Where we disagree is in that it seems to have slipped Yvette’s mind that thousands of attempts by victims, social workers and other concerned adults to report predatory behaviour by British Pakistani grooming gangs have repeatedly been stymied by – oh, look! – Labour politicians, Labour councillors and police forces in Labour-controlled towns.

    Nazir Afzal, when he was chief crown prosecutor for North West England, told the BBC that, in 2008, the Home Office under Gordon Brown’s administration sent a circular email to all police forces calling on them not to investigate the sexual exploitation of young girls. In 2011, the then home secretary Jack Straw let the cat out of the bag when he said that white girls were “seen as easy meat” by Pakistani rapists. Straw was swiftly shut down.

    And look what happened to Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham. In 2017, Champion was forced to resign from her position as shadow women and equalities minister over what she called her “extremely poor choice of words” in an article she wrote for The Sun. The piece came after 17 men and one woman were found guilty of committing nearly 100 offences, including rape, against vulnerable women and girls in Newcastle. Champion’s article began: “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls. There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?”

    Dear, oh, dear, can’t have her going around spreading truths, can we?

    The Labour Party is mired in shame over “cultural sensitivity”, which always means sensitivity to one culture and one culture alone, and it sure as hell isn’t the culture of white working-class girls. One thing we can say with total confidence is that there has never been a white girl so distraught, so despicably abused, so trafficked or so tortured that Labour has not been prepared to sacrifice her on the altar of preserving their Muslim block vote.

    That is the depth of collusion and depravity we are talking about here. It is a monstrous stain on our nation. No wonder Suella Braverman came under attack from the Left this week. Promoting the Tories’ new policy of mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse (a sensible idea), the Home Secretary was brutally honest about the cancer of grooming gangs and their composition. “There is a predominance of certain ethnic groups – and I say British Pakistani males – who hold cultural values totally at odds with British values,” she said, “Some of these councillors in Labour-run areas over a period of years have absolutely failed to take action because of cultural sensitivities.”

    Normally, such heresy would provoke shrieks of, “Racist!” Slightly tricky to do that with a home secretary who has Indian-African heritage. The next best term for shutting down debate is “dog-whistle”. Former Labour MP and Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin did the honours. Speaking on the Laura Kuenssberg show, Mayor Brabin said, “It does feel like it’s very headline, it’s very dog whistle – if I may say – and it doesn’t actually deal with what’s on the ground.”

    Sorry, that’s exactly what it does. Tracy, love, why don’t you pop down to your nearest kebab shop or minicab office and ask the girls hanging around there if they’re having consensual sex or if they’re in fear of their lives?

    Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham from 1994 to 2012, gave the game away when he admitted to the BBC’s World At One that “there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat, if I may put it like that. Perhaps, yes, as a true Guardian reader and liberal Leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.” Much better to hang on to your impeccable liberal credentials than save a few girls from being raped or having petrol poured over them, eh?

    In an effort to hide their true agenda, Labour always claims research proves the majority of child abusers are white. Our favourite mathematician, Diane Abbott, tweeted this week: “Disgraceful Tories are going on about ‘Pakistani grooming gangs’. Home Office research shows majority of child abusers are white. Nothing else to say, Tories are playing the race card.”

    Keir Starmer echoed the same disingenuous sentiment, telling LBC that the “vast majority of sexual abuse cases do not involve those of ethnic minorities”. Well, it very much depends on the type of “child abuse”.

    In 2013, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command published a study looking at “contact sexual offending against children by non-related adults”. They found that there are two types of group-based abuse. Type 1 is group abuse which involves targeting a teenage victim, or victims, based on their vulnerability, rather than as a result of a specific preferential sexual interest in children. Type 1 offenders are unlikely to be paedophiles. They molest young girls because they are easy prey.

    Type 2 group abusers are defined as having “a longstanding sexual interest in children”. They operate in a way that’s often characterised as a paedophile “ring”. In other words, these offenders are not simply targeting children because they are vulnerable, but because they are children.

    The CEOP study reported 57 cases of Type 1 group abuse in 2012, and police provided ethnicity data on 52 of those. Half of those Type 1 cases involved all-Asian groups. 21 per cent were all-white groups, and 17 per cent were groups containing multiple ethnicities. Some 75 per cent of recorded Type 1 group abusers, who target victims based on their vulnerability, were Asian. You can set that against figures from the Office for National Statistics which estimates that 7.5 per cent of the UK’s population are Asian. Just 17 per cent of Type 1 offenders were white, compared with 86 per cent of the UK population.

    There were six recorded cases of Type 2 group abuse: 100 per cent of recorded Type 2 group offenders, who abuse children because of long-standing paedophilic interest, are white. In other words, the figures are hopelessly skewed.

    Although the study found 100 per cent of paedophiles are white males, the majority of men in grooming gangs, who abuse young girls because they are easy prey, not because they are children, are Asian, although I object to that definition. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, they are not, and it’s offensive to lump them all together.

    Apologies for citing a rather dry study, but I think it makes the point rather well. Labour continues to claim that the “vast majority of sexual abuse cases do not involve ethnic minorities”. That is true of paedophilia. It’s certainly not true of grooming gangs.

    It seems brutally clear, to anyone who has eyes to see, that certain men from a sexually repressed “honour” culture are happy to slake their lust on young white girls whom they regard as subhuman. When their community fails to integrate, or to at least expose its boys to values that are acceptable in an equal, 21st-century society, then you have a recipe for disaster. Congratulations to Suella Braverman for having the courage to point this out, and say we will no longer tolerate it.

    No one has a right to shut down this debate. No one. “You can never allow any kind of sensitivities around race and ethnicity to prevent action on child sexual exploitation and abuse,” says Yvette Cooper. But that’s exactly what her party has done for years, and, shamefully, it’s what Labour continues to do.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/04/05/grooming-gangs-scandal-labour-yvette-cooper-keir-starmer/

    1. Home Office research that found the answers it wanted, against all possible factual reality. Hell, if you asked the Home office to count how many soldiers had died in WW2 it would say none, because it only interviewed survivors.

  65. Repeat from last evening in light of the King’s probable Coronation Oath.

    Let’s all start boning up on Common (Constitutional) Law and here’s a good place to start:

    richardvobes.com

    Go to ‘Resources’

  66. It’s a bit bloody warm out there! The sun is full on the sun-trap where I’m working, splitting ash logs ready for stacking, so I’m in for another mug of tea.
    As soon as the DT went off to work, I backed the van up to get the wood I picked up unloaded, then had a look at my chainsaw to find out why it was not running very well.
    Cleaning the air filter did the trick, so went down to the fallen ash I’ve been taking bits off and took a few more bits off it. Brought them back in the van, got them sawn into stove lengths and have been splitting the logs ready to finish the stack I’m refilling.

    There is one stack we’re still burning that will need topping up, but I’ve a load of wood ready for it that is already seasoned and should dry out in time for when we start burning again this coming winter!

    If I can stay awake, I might go out to finish the stack this evening.

  68. Awkward

    “London, 6 April – Renewable energy operators have just been awarded

    huge prices rises, putting further pressure on hard-pressed consumers.

    Generators

    in the Contracts for Difference subsidy scheme get an annual increase

    in the guaranteed ‘strike prices’ they receive for their output.

    This year, many have received price rises of more than 10%. For example, the

    huge Hornsea 1 offshore windfarm saw an 11% price increase, which will

    boost its revenue by nearly £100 million per year.(1) Hornsea 2, due to

    come on stream in 2024, had a price rise of 14%.

    With market

    prices for electricity now below £100 per megawatt hour, several

    windfarms have strike prices worth £209. There are several tidal power

    stations in planning which have been promised higher prices still. The

    Drax biomass power station has seen a 12% increase to £142.

    Commenting on the news, Net Zero Watch’s deputy director Andrew Montford said:

    “For years, ministers and civil servants have been telling the public that

    renewables are cheap. Make no mistake, they have been engaged in a

    cynical deception of the British public.”

    Not the least of the

    clangers made when the CfD terms were drawn up in the first place by Ed

    Davey was the fact that the whole of the strike price was index linked.

    This really was an utterly irresponsible use of energy bill payers’ money.

    Most of the cost of wind power is capital cost, which does not need to

    be index linked for inflation. Only the variable running costs, such as

    maintenance, should be index linked.

    The fact that those terms

    offered by Ed Davey still apply to new contracts indicates that the

    government is happy to extort money from the public, and to hand it over

    to the renewable industry it appears to be in hock to.

    Any pretence that they want to reduce energy prices for consumers is an outright lie.”

    https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/04/06/the-great-renewables-rip-off-continues/#comments

    1. MPs always say that unrelaibles are the cheapest form of energy. To do this, they ignore the subsidy they receive, the rigged market by contracts for difference, ignore the installation cost, the amortisation cost, the grid upgrades necessary to manage unreliable, inefficient wind and then, to top it off, they guarantee the price wind can be sold at… in fact, every cost involved. In reality, unrealibles are the most expensive, least efficient, unreliable and idiotic method of energy generation going.

      MPs personally heavily invest in unrelaibles because they can guarantee massive returns, extorted from the tax payer and rigged by them. It’s utter, absolute corruption, just one example of the green con being nothing but a tax scam.

  69. Dalrymple on Electric cars and bank collapses

    I have not the time, nor the patience, nor the technical engineering capacity, to answer the questions properly, and so I stick firmly to my belief, which I am prepared to argue for in any bar or over any dinner table, that electric cars are a giant fraud perpetrated on the public by the corporatist state, in the process punishing the poor who will have to pay dearly if they want to go anywhere—which, of course, the Duke of Wellington, reacting to trains as a cheap means of transport for the multitudes back in the early part of the 19th century, thought they shouldn’t anyway.

    The argument for bailing out not so much the bank as the depositors in the bank is that it will avoid the economic ripple effects of them losing all their money. Of course, the money will have to come from somewhere unless it is conjured out of thin air, with all the ill effects of conjuring money from thin air that led, ultimately, to the problem in the first place. And if the money is not so conjured, it will have to come, ultimately, from the pockets of non-depositors, a tax upon them as it were.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/fuel-for-thought/

  70. Just watched this video from Dr John Campbell from a day or so ago, about the Astra Zeneka vaccine. This is the one I was foolish enough to have two doses of. My God – I seem to have dodged a bullet there. I’ve had no noticable reactions, adverse or otherwise – but I won’t be having any more jabs for anything, ever again.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hm7mXkNmAk

    1. That’s what we had, the 2 doses and we both have had issues. No more ever again, as you say.

      1. My OH had the Pfizer – two primary doses and one booster. We’ll never know, of course if that caused his heart trouble – but until that manifested last autumn, he was fit and active, still playing tennis and table tennis in his 80th year.

        1. My stauesque Polish friend was diagnosed with myocarditis shortly after vaccination. She’s never ill with anything normally.

        1. There are still a few small ones but, as soon as I think they’re gone, they reappear. Husband’s stent still blocked and nothing will happen re that. His next appointment is July 4 and it’s a phone one. The NHS do bugger all these days.
          Honestly, I am 69 going on 70 and I will be amazed if I make it to that birthday.

          1. How can a telephone appointment do anything about his blocked stent? I have to say our GP surgery has been very good to my husband – he had an appointment (face-to face) yesterday and his prescription revised, in the hope that it will stabilise his A-fib. Never the same doctor twice but he has now seen the whole team at least once so they have got to know him.

          2. Because they don’t want to do anything. There is so much arse covering going on in the NHS these days it defies belief.

    2. Take back the Damehoods and Knighthoods and prosecute and convict the recipients for Crimes Against Humanity.

      Confiscate the many millions these bastard scientists have creamed off the top. Life sentences all round.

  71. Just watched this video from Dr John Campbell from a day or so ago, about the Astra Zeneka vaccine. This is the one I was foolish enough to have two doses of. My God – I seem to have dodged a bullet there. I’ve had no noticable reactions, adverse or otherwise – but I won’t be having any more jabs for anything, ever again.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hm7mXkNmAk

    1. “It really is time that the CCC was shut down. It fulfils no useful purpose, and exists only to promote its own radical climate agenda. Unfortunately the Climate Change Act would need to be amended to do that.”

      The CCA must be repealed, not amended.

  73. Good afternoon all

    Will this suprise you ?

    The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that taking antidepressants helps him to feel like an “average sort of human being”, restoring him “to Eeyore status from something much worse”.

    The Most Rev Justin Welby has spoken in the past about taking antidepressants and told worshippers this week that his medication plays an important role in helping to manage his mood.

    In the third of three lectures at Canterbury Cathedral to mark Holy Week, on the three themes of optimism, despair and hope, he referred to Eeyore, the morose but lovable donkey character in AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, explaining: “I am on antidepressants. They work very well. They restore me to Eeyore status from something much worse.

    “As the psychiatrist I see tells me, the aim is not to make me so laid back that I’m horizontal, but just to settle things enough that I react like an average sort of human being. I’m sad when things are sad and happy when they’re happy, and so on and so forth.”

    In the first of his lectures, he said that Milne’s characters provide a helpful guide for understanding personality types — from Tigger, the bouncy, effervescent tiger, to Eeyore, the gloomy donkey.

    “Some of us are Tiggers, some of us are Eeyores,” Welby, 67, said. “Probably some of us are many of the other characters in Winnie the Pooh.

    “Rowan Williams [the former Archbishop of Canterbury] once said to me: ‘There is almost no human situation that cannot be explained with the hermeneutical tools of Winnie the Pooh.’ Only Rowan could say that and be both humorous and profound at the same time.”

    In the second lecture, Welby said that “despair is a deeply human emotion” and warned that “a society without God is a society for which despair may become the only way forward”.

    He suggested that atheism is a “courageous form of philosophy”, but one that will ultimately prove a letdown as sometimes people need to find strength via “something from outside” themselves.

    The archbishop said: “A worldview without God may still enable a person to act well in love, mercy and justice. They may still surrender their lives in love for one another.

    “But such a philosophical view, for to be an atheist, is a courageous form of philosophy. Such a philosophical view makes autonomy an idol, and all idols let us down. None of us are really autonomous … We are all interdependent.”

    Welby added: “It is just at the moments when we’re without options that we throw ourselves unconditionally … on the mercy and grace of God. And we find that there are options.”

    In a letter to the heads of other Christian churches this week, Welby wrote: “In our own time, it can be … very easy to feel depleted by events, and to keep our eyes on the ground. This has been a year of great suffering, sadness, uncertainty and fear for so many people around the world. In this country many have continued to endure the hardships of the cost of living crisis. Around the world, millions are caught up in war.”

    To mark Easter, he added: “One of the tasks of Christians is surely to keep reminding people steadfastly of that horizon of hope, the risen Jesus.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/justin-welby-archbishop-canterbury-antidepressants-2023-jsjz5ts2d

    1. He has probably single-handedly made many wavering Christians turn away from the Church of England.

      1. I’ve been agnostic for years but still make my prayers to ‘The Big Man’ up there, ‘cos there has to be something bigger than us.

        1. I haven’t been to a church service for years (apart from funerals and music) but I’m still nominally Christian.

      2. I am Not happy with the unfamiliar warblings of a church service that has been dumbed down to suit new parishoners .

        I hate Happy clappy stuff , new tuneless hymns and swaying backwards and forwards .. it is all too unsettling , and the Lords prayer and Nicene crede and everything else is horribly mucked around with .

        Justin Welby is the symbol of Wokeness .. and for those of us who waver sometimes , we need strong words and leadership.

        I am suprised Boris chose to be a politician , because he would have been a very good church leader ..

        ( Stop tittering in the back row )

        1. Last time I was at a Happy Clappy service, one hymn stuck in the mind.
          First verse: “God is Lord” repeated a number of times in a whiny voice
          Second verse: “Jesus is Lord”, ditto
          Third verse: “God is Lord”
          So depressing, no music, no poetry, nothing uplifting, just 100% banality.
          Nothing like, for instance:
          https://youtu.be/dYZCOvRr-xo

        2. “Our Father who which art in Heaven…

          We may have been made in His image but ‘who’ infers that He is human, which He cannot be.

          1. My mother believed in the resurrection of the spirit but said she didn’t want to be lumbered with a body after she had died.

            Her voice was an audible one so when she put a very definite vocal full-stop after saying resurrection in the creed everyone knew that she was deliberately excluding the body.

          5. There is a difference between resurrection and re-incarnation.

            I hope for the latter if I still have lessons to learn but, with the path we’re currently on, I’m somewhat loth to think of returning.

        3. “Our Father who which art in Heaven…

          We may have been made in His image but ‘who’ infers that He is human, which He cannot be.

        4. “Our Father who which art in Heaven…

          We may have been made in His image but ‘who’ infers that He is human, which He cannot be.

        1. The way he ordered all the churches to be shut and the clergy to avoid their parishioners really made me see him for what he was.

  74. Telegraph, James Crisp article:

    “Mr Hendrikx fled the Netherlands in 1941 and in 1942 joined the RAF as a second-class airman (!!!!)

    One of the last surviving Dutch Spitfire pilots to join the Royal Air Force to fight in the Second World War has died, aged 99.
    Leo Hendrikx was one the final living Engelandvaarders – the roughly 1,700
    Dutch citizens who fought with allied troops after Nazi Germany
    occupied their homeland.
    The Dutch air force also said he was the oldest surviving Second World War pilot from the Netherlands, as it announced the death of the flying ace.
    Mr Hendrikx witnessed German troops marching into his village at the age
    of 16 on May 10, 1940, and made plans to leave shortly afterwards.

    He fled the Netherlands in 1941 and travelled through Vichy France, Spain,
    Portugal, the US and Canada, where he was given basic military
    training.
    After a four-day journey by ship, he arrived in the UK
    in 1942 and joined the RAF as a second-class airman. He finished his
    Spitfire training in 1944 and flew his first mission in …”

    Another brave veteran has left the stage. Call me pedantic, but could someone tell me if Mr Hendrikx was ever, even for one second, a “second class airman”? Wouldn’t the word order have been reversed, eg Aircraftman (second class?)

    3. First-class patriot, in any case. On the side of the Angels.
      Respect.
      Dank U vel, Herr Hendrikx. Rust in vrede.

    4. James Crisp is a fervent remainer who is very pro-EU and very anti Brexit.

  75. A wretched Bogey Five today.

    Wordle 657 5/6
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
    🟨🟩🟨⬜🟩
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. All I could manage too.
      Wordle 657 5/6

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

    3. Another 4. I figure my 3rd choice is a much better word :-))

      Wordle 657 4/6

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

    1. Meanwhile, out on the streets, living golliwogs were hustling drugs and knifing each other.

      1. Late M/L knitted a lovely gollywog decades ago for one of my boys , it is now hidden away in a drawer. I don’t want to part with it , the poor thing survived many falls from the pram , and it is still a work of art , poor old baa lamb disintergrated , but golly survived .

        1. My brother, in the USA, used to collect gollies, wherever he went. He found NZ was a rich seam to mine.

        2. I used to save up the Robertson’s jam stickers for an enamel badge – I had several.

    4. How come six police officers are required to confiscate toys but you can’t even get one PC to investigate a burglary?

      1. Ask Grizzly – he’s the one on this forum who best understands how the police operate.

    6. 373133+ up ticks,

      Evening Rik,

      The lab/lib/con coalition NON supporter /voters
      are the wallygogs having to put up with this shite.

      2. The secondary school I taught in years ago in Manchester was round the corner from Roberson’s Jam factory. It was known as the Golly Factory.

  77. Good Evening.
    Well, it will be bread and scrape at the Dower House for Easter 2023.
    Spartie had several bouts of D&V yesterday; like children, animals always get ill at weekends – preferably Bank Holiday weekends.
    At least the emergency veterinary service didn’t keep us waiting for 17 hours.
    On the plus side, the garden is coming on a treat and once again I have a microwave and a food processor. Oh, and we can see a bit more of the sitting room carpet as we empty boxes of Stuff.

    1. Poor Spartie , not nice . Rice and scrambled egg for the next few days?

      Aren’t you going to share a pic or two of your palatial spread?

      1. Job for Easter!
        Spartie is on a regime of an egg cup full of his special dried food 4x per day.
        I am unsure whether he has picked up something or he is allergic to salmon.
        I bought a tin of posh salmon based dog food and possibly it was too rich or, given that he has a sensitive tum, it was just more than he could manage.

        1. You probably bought the cheap and nasty farmed salmon stuff whereas Spartie is used to proper wild salmon. {:^))

          1. Spartie probably prefers his salmon in sandwiches with thinly sliced cucumber.

  78. Gosh – that’s the second lime tree sorted – almost. I shall return tomorrow to trim what we cut. 3½ hours for the two of us and two car loads of stuff to bring home and take to bonfire place.

    It is epicormic growth – which, if not dealt with, makes the tree into a VERY large bush.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1629efae75e9d7cab53741c3851845b0260f8689c600dfa0c9ba7fd585244dd6.jpg

    This is what it looks like – except that on our trees it is about 7 ft high…..

      1. It is a hard job – but at least limewood is very soft and easy to lop/cut/saw.

    3. The sap that drops from lime trees is horrible , we had a tree in our previous driveway, and the sticky stuff nearly ruined the cars .

  79. I see the SNP’s auditors have resigned. Bet they wish they had done so much sooner!

  80. Chou En Xi appears to have ignored Fond of Lying. Perhaps he thought that Toy Boy had brought his mother/wife with him…

    1. She was pushing vaccines on the public purse while married to the director of a vaccine manufacturing company. She is such a light-weight, you only have to look at her. And look at the mess she made as defence secretary in Germany!
      Not surprising that they didn’t take her seriously.

  83. Gawd do I ache. Hot bath, wine, prawn and butternut squash curry and Voltarol beckon.

    I’ve been bob bob bobbing of Bonsalling, shifting the oak tree that was felled the other day into various areas for cutting up and splitting into proper fire wood and kindling.
    Next up: chainsaw, bow saw, lopper and secateurs.
    Then felling axe, sledge hammer and wedges.
    Hand axe and Bill hook, (my nod to that Thomas chap) followed by stacking.

    My rough estimate is that I’ve moved (some lumps not very far) ten tons of wood.
    I’ve got to do all that again once it’s cut into the appropriate bits.

    On the plus side it’s at least a years worth of wood for the stove.

      1. A very “quick and dirty” calculation based on a 70+ foot oak, over four foot diameter, with large branches, plus the numerous branches that were broken off other trees as it came down.

      2. Those men really shifted heavy weights a proper distance. None of my one hundredweight moved three feet today.
        It reminds me of my summer job as a meat porter in an abattoir. Usually 10 hour days, sometimes 16 hour days, just carrying/moving dead (literally) weight a few feet. Again the foot/tonnage soon mounted up!
        Most of my efforts today were a few feet for the heavy stuff. It’s about moving the bits into their location to deal with them.

      1. Actually between us all, we could keep Mr. Bob busy for ages…. logs, wall building, cooking etc. The man’s a human dynamo.

      3. His level of skill is outside my price range, I fear!
        And to be fair, I really enjoy the work.
        I totally understand BoB’s approach, the satisfaction from completing the tasks is far greater than the effort put in.
        A job well done as they say.

        1. 90 minutes before I needed to set off for the 18:00 Maundy Thursday service at Puttenham, I went to the Trainline app, only to see that all trains were cancelled until 21:00 hrs. The only available train was the 17:30 GWR train from Reading, which was expected at 20:30. So I made a few unsuccessful phone calls, and without success, set off walking.

          I’m eternally grateful to the Prius driver who stopped on Wanborough Hill, causing a significant traffic jam, and asked me whether I would like a lift;. This was gratefully accepted.

          How is this relevant? BoB joined me in a choir practice at Puttenham a few years ago, when we still had more than two members. But I’d like Bob’s insight into the cancellation of trains due to a “safety inspection”. The North Downs line became seriously uneven , following the “extreme heatwave” last year. It seems better now…

          1. Let me guess.
            A BoB solo filled the church.
            The roof collapsed because of the power of his voice.
            He repaired it, moved on, and didn’t even wait to be thanked?

            BoB’s train observations are always illuminating.

            Nottle, a home for experts, and all down to you.
            Take a bow Mr Graham!

  85. I just tried to reply to Herr Oberst’s question about a Merkin expression.
    It looks as if Disqus has thrown a wobbler and vaporised it.
    Here goes:
    Heavens to Betsy. I have no idea, but it sounds like the southern states.

  86. Crucifixes rise across France in message that ‘this is a Christian country

    Balanced on a tractor fork, the crucified Christ rises. Those gathered to watch sing hymns, gazing up at a five-metre cross towering above them as it is lowered into a stone plinth on the roadside.

    The scene is not common in a nation where the separation of church and state was enshrined under a 1905 law that made it illegal to erect new religious symbols in public spaces.

    The act of restoring them is allowed, however, and on a grey afternoon in the village of Argy, in the Loire Valley, residents stepped out of their houses to welcome their newly renovated crucifix being erected by a group called Sos Calvaires.

    Last year they repaired about 200 calvaries, most of which were scattered across France by 19th-century missionaries in a bid to restore the prominence of the Catholic faith following its suppression during the revolution. Many of them have since fallen into disrepair

    “Our mission is to catalogue, restore and enhance this Christian patrimony, to reconnect people to their cultural heritage,” said Alexandre Caillé, 26, Sos Calvaires’ director.

    Sos Calvaires has portrayed itself as secular and apolitical, interested not in stoking culture wars but simply in historical conservation. Yet the group has come under fire for its links to France’s hard-right.

    The charity receives support from members of Éric Zemmour’s party, which has promoted the conspiracy theory that white Catholics in France are being “replaced” by Muslim immigrants.

    Julien Le Page, Sos Calvaires’ president, said their work serves to show “that we have not given up the fight and that we are not just building mosques in France’’. He has previously said that a calvary acts as a reminder that “this is a Christian land”.

    The backing of Baptiste Marchais, a popular “masculinist” YouTuber who rails against immigrants, has also been key to Sos Calvaires’ growing name recognition. His videos of outings with the charity have garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/crucifix-france-islam-invasion-easter-2023-nmslpj0th

  87. Well….what a lovely two hours I have just spent.
    I grabbed one of my many bottles of home made cider from the garage. Took it out side to open. It can be very active. Poured into a bulbous glass. It’s around 6%. A small bowl of decent crisps, walked to the bottom end of the garden. Sat at the table and I really enjoyed watching the sun and the clouds make images of dragons, strange beasts, old men and even recognisable countries. Also listening to the blackbirds singing, watching the pair of red kites flying around looking for food.
    Called in for dinner and fish pie with asparagus superb.
    It seems to help with all the disappointment the human race has decided to inflict upon us.
    The bastards.

    1. Blimey, I didn’t notice you in the grounds of chateau sosraboc, many apologies, I’d have brought you a glass of Pecharmont had I seen you.

    2. Drinking homemade cider just now, listening to the fermenter working on mead… I really identify with your post, Eddy. Some things are just unbeatable! Lucky man!

      1. I used neighbours apples, all cookers. It’s very difficult to gauge and get the added brown sugar content balanced. Sometimes I just add a couple spoons to the glass. But it’s not a bad free drink. Obs.
        It’s crossed my mind to buy a small distillery kit.
        We are surrounded with black thorn bushes. Sloes.
        I use to buy beer kits also well worth the time and effort.

      2. Mead, what a brew.
        My grandfather produced lots of mead from his beekeeping.
        I can well understand why it could be the nectar of the Gods

        1. I made some mead mid 70s.
          Came home from a holiday opened the front door of the house to a strange aroma.
          All the bottle’s of mead I had made had popped their corks.

          1. We made some rice wine once. It was awful so we stuck it into the back of a wardrobe and left it to sit there as we forgot about it.

            A year or so later we tried sake in a Japanese restaurant, it tasted just like the home brew.

          2. My father made some parsnip wine.
            You only need the stock they were boiled in. It was very nice.
            He use to make elder flower and elderberry wine. I don’t have a recollection of how it turned out.
            I think I will buy a small electric still.
            They are only about 100 pounds.

      3. It’s the simple natural things in life that count Obs.
        How about this one.
        Driving with two good mates from Cape Town to Durban. We stopped over night near a beach on the Indian ocean. The car, vauxhall velux
        was stuck in the sand. We were there for the night nothing to eat, but some beers in the boot. Three of us, one in the middle other two linking arms, waded into the ocean near the rocks. Middle taken In turns, stooped to pluck mussles from the rocks. Shoving them into the hitched up front of the tee shirt. After lighting a fire we cooked the piles of large shell fish in the car hub caps.
        Such wonderful experience and great memories. Had help in the morning from local farm workers to push the car back onto solid ground.

        1. Reminds me of a meal on the beach in Malaysia. We were staying with old friends who had moved there for work. A friend of theirs was married to a girl from Sarawak. We all went out for the day and prior to setting off, she went to the market and bought two chickens. I think they ware already dead but they did sell live ones. When we reached the destination we all picked up some driftwood while she got busy with jointing the chickens. They cooked on the beach on the driftwood fire. Very tasty. A simple meal can be one of the best ever.

          1. Just told my husband this..best meal I recall eating was with pals in VA. Steaks, grilled, and corn cobs just taken off the plant and cooked.
            Wonderful! Doesn’t have to be fancy to be good.

          3. We ha some wonderful meals in NZ that were cooked in, not on the beach. Dig a hole, add a layer of rocks, pile some firewood on top and set fire. When the flames die down, place a well wrapped piece of mutton with some veggies (well it was NZ) on the stones and cover. After a couple of hours, try and find the hole to dig up the wonderful repast.

        2. My friend who sadly passed away last week (lung cancer).

          We had overstayed our Interrail tickets and were bumming around the south of France, living off moules we collected and boiled up in cheap plonk.

    3. That reminds me – I’ve got 20 litres of home-brew Oatmeal Porter to bottle. Busy weekend coming up, so it will have to early next week.

  88. Boo hoo hoo.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11949835/Junior-doctors-offered-counselling-unkind-comments-weeks-four-day-strike.html
    I’m sorry, I’m a heartless bastard. as you all know.
    If these people can’t understand what is happening to them, what hope is there for the rest of us?

    ‘Whilst they’re striking, 250,000 operations are getting canned. They should be helping the folks that’ll miss their appointments instead of ‘offering counselling’ to their members because people have had enough of these stunts.
    ‘The BMA junior doctors’ leadership should focus on the patients they’re letting down, get round the negotiating table, and get this strike over with.’

      2. As the political aims of the strike do not match those of the government then surely the state wins by making them?

        As it is, government departments, those tombstones of failure work for the unions. They know that what happens at the front line swiftly happens to the back office.

    2. It seems painfully simple: change the law so unions are liable for the salaries and pension of those who vote to strike.

      Junior doctors strike for 2 weeks, the union is sent the bill for their salaries. By forcing it to pay the literal price of it’s demands it cannot use strikes as punishment to get it’s own way.

    1. It’s been the wettest March in the UK since 1981. However, the date of the report is 16th March, so it is out-of-date.

      2. Perhaps the BBC would answer why the state has repeatedly refused the building of new reservors. Would it acknowledge the utter failure of EU policy or would it simply lie?

  90. Smart move? There must be plenty of dirty dealings to uncover.

    SNP hires lawyer specialising in ‘white collar crime’

    Decision to hire expert seems to run counter to Humza Yousaf’s claim that Peter Murrell was sole police focus

    By Daniel Sanderson, SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENT
    7 April 2023 • 4:21pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/04/07/TELEMMGLPICT000331435648_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqZTGkdds8SWJRzcZ4ZecXrRG0scxgL1hXleFb8wkeIuM.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Stuart Munro (pictured) previously acted for Andy Coulson, the disgraced News of the World editor, in his 2015 perjury trial

  92. Does anyone have a John Lewis credit card? Has anyone had it declined and not because you have maxxed out? Simply because, it seems. This has happened to me a) at the dentist this week and b) Waitrose yesterday. (We pay it off at the end of every month and every so often we get £50-£70 in John Lewis vouchers).

    3. Usually the provider just fronts for either Visa or Mastercard. I’ve only ever had it refused when I haven’t been able to ‘authenticate’ myself as the spender. This isn’t for our benefit, it’s for theirs so they don’t have to pay out for fraud.

    4. Martin Lewis was talking about the changes due in all sorts of store credit cards.
      Warning of another blatent rip-off on the way.

  93. Well, chums, I am now off to watch A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, then straight to bed. See you all tomorrow.

      1. Lottie, two days ago you mentioned that you are a coffee drinker.
        Studies claim that coffee can be beneficial, but IIRC caffeine reduces the body’s ability to absorb or transport vitamins, including vitamin D. Your skin needs plenty of vitamin D.

        1. Thanks Tim, I haven’t had coffee for at least 2 days. I can’t stand the smell right now. Vit D is going to be of no use to me now.

          1. I’ve taken 4000 iu Vit D3 capsules for the last three winters. I’ve had no bugs of any sort during that time, apart from a sore throat last summer (when I wasn’t taking any). I’ve also had a reduction in aches and pains as well. I do drink a couple of cups of coffee a day, but never later than lunchtime.

          2. Yes, but you don’t have a growth on your face the size of a bird’s egg. Vit D won’t me any good right now. I am in constant pain and I do not understand how people with large growths in their bodies stand it… obviously drugs.
            Tuesday am calling GP to see if I can get an urgent referral. I suspect this thing is now into my lymph nodes and my ear.

          4. You cetainly need it seen and checked urgently.
            However, having had breast cancer twice, and lost both my parents to cancers, I know it will get me in the end. Vit D is good for the immune system though and I think it has made me feel better.

          5. I took so much Vit D3 over the past year that the consultant at Addenbrookes told me to stop taking it altogether. Apparently there was so much calcium in my blood that the MRI scanner checking my blood circulation was confused.

            Hitherto before the test it was thought that one of my aeortic valves had narrowed and that whilst my blood was pumping around, thanks to blood thinners, I might need a stent if proven to be a restriction in the aeortic artery.

            I am due a further assessment at Addenbrookes in the near future.

          6. Do you take it together with Vitamin K? Important to prevent problems, I read.

          7. My husband had “severe aortic stenosis” and he was due to have a valve replacement via the femoral artery. In the end he had full open heart surgery and a triple by-pass as well as the valve replacement due to the condition of his coronary arteries.
            I do stop taking the Vit D once we have enough sunlight. I didn’t manage to find any K2 which is supposed to aid the absorbtion of the calcium. Will have to look harder for next winter.

    2. The white folks not in the picture are doing the work. More seriously, you get photos where they’re deliberately staged on a ‘diversity day’ or some other nonsense and the ethnics are rounded up and pose for the cameras.

      As one bloke said to me ‘I don’t want to be a poster boy. I’ve got a job to do.’

  97. Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolks.

    A last snifter of port to help me sleep, I hope.

  98. Just climbed into bed myself. Erin’s watching the Pilgrimage on bbc, wadda loada bolero that is. At 25 plus stone, One of them can barely walk. He can kneel but that’s about it.
    It makes one wonder why he’s actually taking part. Oh well part of the adgenda I suppose.
    So it’s good night from me. 😴
    I’ve got a book but I can’t be bothered.

    1. Funny that all the other produce that Tesco stocks is fine with Muslim activists when Tesco was founded by Jack COHEN.

  100. Good evening, all. I trust you have spent a meditative Good Friday. My refurbished clock was supposed to have been delivered today, but half an hour after it was due, they rang me to say it would be delivered tomorrow morning now, which was a bit annoying as I’d stayed in so as not to miss them.

    I thought i’d take a leaf out of Tom’s book and post a joke:

    A young Chinese couple got married. Both were virgins. On the wedding night she lay under the sheets as he got undressed in the dark and joined her in bed.

    “I love you,” he said, “and I’ll do anything you want. Anything at all. Just tell me.”

    There followed a long silence before she whispered tentatively, “my girlfriend tells me 69 is nice.”

    An even longer silence before he answered, ”you want garlic chicken with cauliflower?”

    2. “My refurbished clock was supposed to have been delivered today, but half an hour after it was due, they rang”

      Was it second hand?

      1. It’s a family heirloom (a long case clock). It had been knocked about a bit over the years since it was made in about 1780.

          1. Not me personally, but it’s been in my in-laws’ family for a while. I’ve only had it since about 1979.

  102. That last snifter of port seemed to work, slept an unbroken 6 hours – yay, wowser.

    1. Excellent news, Tom.
      Time for Round 2?
      BTW, I find hoppy beer makes me sleep very easily, so maybe a good strong IPA is what would help?

      1. I have a beer machine that holds a 5 Litre keg, currently charged with Belgian Affligem (my favourite).

        2 more kegs in the ‘fridge.

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