Thursday 27 April: The arrogance of hiding great and provocative art from the public

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

524 thoughts on “Thursday 27 April: The arrogance of hiding great and provocative art from the public”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Emergency Call

    A blonde goes into a world-wide message centre to send a message to her mother in Poland.

    The man tells her it will cost £200. She exclaims, “I don’t have any money, but I would do ANYTHING to get a message to my mother in Poland!”

    To that the man asks, “Anything?”

    And the blonde says, “Yes, anything!”

    With that, the man says, “Follow me.”

    He walks into the next room and tells her, “Come in and close the door.” She does.

    He then says, “Get on your knees.” She does.

    He then says, “Take down my zipper.” She does.

    He then says, “Go ahead, take it out.”

    With that she takes it out and takes hold of it with both hands.

    The man then says, “Well, go ahead!”

    She brings her mouth closer to it, and while holding it close to her lips, she says, “Hello…Mum?”

    2. Oh no …. warmer weather …. in Spring.
      We’re all doomed. Fire up another windmill. Mug a few more taxpayers.

  5. Britain is being impoverished by a Remainer institutional mind virus. Allister Heath, 26 April 2023.

    None of the myriad, debilitating maladies gnawing away at Britain’s soul apparently have anything to do with them. Rampant inflation, feeble growth, our horrendous housing crisis, productivity performance and calamitous reaction to Covid, our disastrous NHS and welfare state, and the fact that we still haven’t recovered from an avoidable financial crisis 15 years ago: it is the voters, egged on by a handful of pro-Brexit demagogues, who are truly responsible, supposedly, not the ruling class.

    Pardon my sarcasm, but this self-serving, righteous cant has become too much to bear. It is the opposite of the truth, a delusional indictment of an intellectually bankrupt, wretched elite afflicted by a hopeless Remainer institutional mind virus. Overwhelmed by our national problems, they find it easier to see everything through the prism of our departure from the EU, and cannot imagine a solution to our woes that doesn’t involve rejoining. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy: decline begets decline, and nobody is proposing any genuine reforms to return our country to prosperity.

    Heath’s made the full transition to Nottlerism over the last two years. Lol! The really scary bit is the last sentence of course. These people have led us up a political cul-de-sac and there’s no way out.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/26/britain-impoverished-by-remainer-institutional-mind-virus/

    1. The answer is to promote production within our country and the only way to do that is to lower ALL taxes in order to encourage the producers to invest in our low tax economy.

      1. Morning Nan. The only way out of this is a collapse on the Scale of the USSR!

    2. Reading Heath’s words should make people think long and hard about complying with this fake and morally corrupt “conservative government’s” diktats. It’s as clear as day that Sunak et al. are not in any way representing the UK or the people. When the abhorrent WHO’s new power-grab is ratified no-one should be in any doubt that the political class, save a few hardy souls, is no longer an independent entity worth voting for.

      We may have been led up a political cul-de-sac but as for the cultural and societal areas of our lives we are teetering on the edge of an abyss.

  7. Prince Harry’s phone hacking claim has ‘inconsistencies’, says judge

    Prince Harry alleges secret agreement between News Group Newspapers and palace prevented him from bringing claim earlier

    By Victoria Ward, ROYAL EDITOR; Will Bolton and Gordon Rayner, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
    26 April 2023 • 7:30pm
    *
    *
    *
    ***********************

    Clare Mills
    10 HRS AGO
    Maybe he’s been listening to the legal advice of his wife who obtained her legal degree on Suits

  11. Rod Liddle
    I’ve missed you, Diane Abbott
    From magazine issue:
    29 April 2023

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Rod-Getty.jpg

    I thought I had forgotten about Diane Abbott, but in fact there has been a Diane-sized hole in my life and I only properly realised this when she came back, gloriously, to fill it again. Hitherto I had been going about my business, writing columns, cooking for my family and so on, and perhaps to other people I seemed to be getting along normally enough – but in truth I was hollow inside, devoid of a sense of purpose. How uplifting it was to see her back in the headlines.

    It is less her stupidity that I find attractive, more her perpetual sense of confusion. She makes a series of palpably absurd comments and then, in trying to excavate herself, makes things incalculably worse. She suggested that Jews do not suffer racism and that although white people ‘with points of difference’, such as red hair, encounter prejudice, they have not been subjected to the same racism as black people. Then, after a huge backlash to her letter to the Observer, she claimed that her first draft had been sent in error. Would the second one have said ‘Jews actually are victims of racism, now I come to think of it’?

    Diane is confused, though, because her ideo-logy is confused and almost always contradictory. It is the song, not the singer. Identitarian politics insists that all people who are not part of the oppressive straight white hegemony are similarly and equally oppressed: their not-whiteness is the defining factor. Everybody, then, who is not straight and white is an equal victim of oppression and this disenfranchised minority should band together to fight for equality – or as we call it today, equity. That’s why you often hear Peter Tatchell calling for solidarity between Muslims and homosexuals, a request which, you have to say, sometimes falls on profoundly deaf ears, especially in Peter’s favourite place, Palestine. Hamas has yet to organise a gay pride march.

    The problem, though, with this tenet of identitarian politics is that it comes into conflict with reality. There are many racial groups within the UK who do not actually seem very oppressed at all. On average, they perform well at school, tend not to get banged up, acquire university educations and earn comparatively decent wages later in life. These are Indians, East Asians and our community of Jews. Not only do they do terribly well for themselves, they are also largely reluctant to see themselves as victims. If you inhabit Diane’s (or Owen Jones’s, or the BBC’s) sealed compound of received idiocy, then your only way out of this paradox is to simultaneously deny that these people are eligible to be victims of racism (much as is whitey, of course) while still, in the back of your mind, assuming that they must be victims of racism because they are not politically white.

    It is much the same in the United States, where Asian-Americans are allowed to call themselves ‘people of colour’ (and thus possess privileged characteristics) but find themselves hideously discriminated against in the education system because they are high achievers and must surrender a portion of their hard-earned Ivy League university places to less able students.

    This feat of doublethink demands the construction of a multiplicity of patent falsehoods to keep it afloat. Black people are extra discriminated against because they were victims of slavery – a preposterous suggestion – and are discriminated against in every walk of life. They then have to cleave to the ludicrous notion that slavery was a singularity, an evil visited upon only black people in world history and along with colonialism is the single reason why they do not succeed like Indians and Koreans. Slavery was indeed wicked (though the victims of the Atlantic slave trade were almost entirely enslaved by other Africans), but it is scarcely a singularity.

    Today, in many spheres of life, black people are afforded affirmative action – in commerce, in education, in public appointments and so on. But the falsehoods have to be clung to, otherwise the entire ideology begins to fall apart at the seams. To suggest that the struggles of black people in the US and UK might not be the consequence of whitey’s overweening malfeasance can only be met with the furious allegation ‘racist!’ and the observation that minority groups who do very well for themselves (pretty much everywhere, incidentally) are not properly ‘of colour’ and therefore do not suffer racism to the same degree.

    I had always expected the demands of the transgender lobby to be the first battle to be won by the forces of bigotry and reaction (or common sense – take your pick), because those demands were so demonstrably false. This indeed seems to be happening, with various sporting bodies deciding there is no room for blokes in women’s sport and a general shifting of the official view on such matters. Good. But in truth, the falsehoods which lie at the heart of our newly acquired and quite bizarre genuflections to critical race theory are just as easily disprovable – maybe even more so. And yet for the moment nobody dares put their head above the parapet.

    My suspicion is this next tranche of identitarian politics will bite the dust when other minority groups tire of being treated as if they were children and also cavil at the more generous treatment afforded by society to people who have slightly darker skin than they do. This will require a dropping of that doublethink, mind. But I have the feeling that if I were an Asian-American who revelled in my protected characteristics, I might begin to see the light when I was denied a university place as the consequence of a quota system. In the meantime, Diane Abbott (grammar school, Cambridge, sent her child to a private school) will continue to insist she alone is the victim of racism.

    1. Ahem

      “That’s why you often hear Peter Tatchell calling for solidarity between
      Muslims and homosexuals, a request which, you have to say, sometimes
      falls on profoundly deaf ears, especially in Peter’s favourite place,
      Palestine. Hamas has yet to organise a gay pride march.”
      Sorry Rod that’s profoundly untrue Hamas has arranged many Gay Pride marches admittedly usually straight up the stairs to the rooftop……….
      Just saying……….

    3. Every time I use steps to reach a shelf, or stand on tiptoe to look in a mirror, I realise I’m the victim of shortism …. or maybe tallism …. anyway, I want compensayshun from all those smug b’stards who are over 5’3″ tall (see, even height is judged by tallism).

      1. Not from me, Anne, at 6’3″ and now 6’2″ because of age shrinkage, where do I go to get compensation?

  12. ‘Morning All

    Medley laffs

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22c939c67f102cfe6ae251b5bac6fb38bad3a6aca64f90a28cdcb3c3ca88bc40.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9d1176f183709451dc404f32a02c82c3ebf649158bf9a076f550170bdcc82b0.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6c1068bba3548926f6f49ba89a90a6ee4d622b72226c26b739155a7e53289871.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f35c10bddfc360258f5ccac09748950d7df8643537f41d35181eea684b61d86b.png

    Don’t Stop!!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c54a6235bd1efc5d07b2ef6eba25af4e4ae8a26553bc16f8daf7ee93a490959e.gif

  13. Good morning, all. Bright with a fair breeze, good drying day for the washing.

    Here we have the Canadian Health Minister, a Hancock in a frock figure, avoiding answering a direct question re vitamin D. A response in keeping with the lockstep organisation of so many health organisations.

    https://twitter.com/JaniceW78256134/status/1651135421898784768

    Hancock is coming under further pressure as the Information Commissioner’s Office has ruled that the DHSC must give openDemocracy Hancock’s diaries for the period 1 February to 1 July 2020.

    https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1651464649198452739

  14. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/96da41765fd7c911a50492daaaef415c7c6ba3e5aa017875bc66722c4e6549fe.png

    This story is of no importance in itself and hardly rates as news. Though there are only three outlets named in the montage there are more than twenty in total. All top of the line MSM mouthpieces. You don’t get coverage like that by accident. It is of course a potboiler designed to keep the war in the headlines while we are waiting for the forthcoming Ukie counter attack in Ukraine. This is also being bulled up as an inevitable victory. Hubris anyone? If I had to guess at the result myself I would go for a military stalemate and then get to the Chinese led negotiations.

  15. Yo and Good Moaning all, and Fanx Boss

    The DT at its’ 2023 Best

    “Gardening jobs to do in April”

    Published a week before the start of May.

    I remember when the DT was a NEWSpaper

  16. ‘Morning, Peeps. A modest 8°C here, rising (allegedly) to a spectacular 12° later. I shall make the most of it, bearing in mind the heavy rain due at teatime – allegedly.

    SIR – As a river ecologist for more than 60 years I have witnessed damage to rivers and their ecosystems from many sources, ranging from individual houses to farms to large industries.

    Clearly John Price, the farmer involved in the recent river dredging incident (Letters, April 26), was doing something necessary for the human community, and there is no doubt that he damaged the ecosystem of the river reach, albeit temporarily.

    In my early years with river boards, I saw long lengths of river dredged in a similar fashion to improve the drainage of low-lying farmlands, and the protection of whatever lived in the river was a secondary consideration to economic necessity. The common factor in all such work is the natural recovery process of the habitat and the flora and fauna within the reach.

    The silted spawning gravels will clear as river flows vary and the organisms that are drifting naturally downstream will re-colonise the habitat, probably within months or sooner. There will be no permanent damage to the river, though of course there will be no trees on the land area. Even so, these will probably reinstate themselves over several years.

    To jail the man is excessive in my professional view, and symptomatic of poor knowledge of river systems.

    Terry Langford
    Milford on Sea, Hampshire

    Good letter, Mr Langford. The farmer’s sentence is, in my view, completely off the scale of what is reasonable. I trust that an appeal is in progress, although I have yet to read about it if so.

    1. A couple of fine BTL posts:

      Anastasias Revenge
      7 HRS AGO
      Terry Langford – to jail the farmer for dredging the river had nothing to do with permanent damage to the eco-system as you say, and everything to do with the judiciary following the memorandum they all have received to virtue-signal at every opportunity.

      Walt Steven
      1 HR AGO
      It is difficult to be sent to prison these days.
      Drug dealers with large amounts and £££ in their pockets. A rapist in Scotland was given community service. Dangerous driving and life changing injuries somebody gets a suspended sentence,
      Reason – the prisons are nearly 100% full !
      Good job there was 1 left for somebody preventing his neighbours’ homes being flooded.

      1. I read not long ago that the Brussels mafia had given orders that people in the UK were not allowed to dredge at all. Even though it stopped flooding.
        Perhaps the wokey old bill and magistrates are just following ze orderz.
        When the horrendous British were organising their commonwealth, they use to dredge the areas of the rivers in northern India, now Pakistan. This stopped flooding. But the locals can’t be bothered anymore. But don’t seem to worry too much about the deaths and loss of habitats the flooding causes.

        2. The flooding is deliberate – it is exploited to support the narrative of climate change. The jailing of the farmer is political and an example to others not to mess with the political agenda.

        3. Correct. Shortly after the severe flooding on the Somerset Levels Owen Patterson, then Environment Secretary, ordered the dredging of the area. It was the EU greenies who originally stopped the sucessful maintenance of the Levels. Patterson was/is a sceptic…wonder if that influenced his decision? I care not, of course; for once common sense took over, and I don’t recall any sanction from the EUSSR.

    2. To jail the man is excessive in my professional view, and symptomatic of poor knowledge of river systems.

      He contradicted the Elite narrative! That’s why he was sent to the slammer!

  17. SIR – A Services-assisted evacuation is not an easy or risk-free venture. Recent photographs show C-130 Hercules aircraft from the RAF, Italy, Japan, Jordan, the US and other nations involved in the extraction of local nationals from Sudan (report, April 25).

    It seems ironic that our fleet of 14 C-130J aircraft is being disposed of this year. The aircraft are relatively modern, much sought-after by other nations and can currently fulfil certain roles that our much larger and capable A-400 Atlas cannot. There is also the important question of scale. More tactical air-transport airframes are better than fewer, larger airframes, especially when we have conflicting air-transport requirements worldwide and may lose a few aircraft on operations or due to accidents.

    The RAF air staff seem determined to continue with this disposal despite numerous long-standing objections from within and outside the Armed Services.

    Col Robert Wilsey RM (retd)
    Knighton, Radnorshire

    It has come to something when a Brown Job would like to see Crab Air maintain what little is left of its fleet!

  18. SIR – As a young teenager at boarding school, I could never aspire to smoking a Balkan Sobranie cigarette (Letters, April 26).

    However, we bicycle-shed smokers discovered that we could buy a packet of five Senior Service cigarettes, split them with a razor blade and mix the resulting small pile of tobacco with shredded dried cabbage leaves. We were then able to make 10 roll-ups using Rizla papers.

    The resulting cigarettes were absolutely foul, but they did have an exotic aroma.

    Kevin Dowling
    Welbourn, Lincolnshire

    Cabbage leaves? I suppose the excuse was that camel dung wasn’t easy to obtain…

  19. Good morning all,

    Much the same as yesterday at McPhee Towers, cloudy, wind SE, 7℃ with 10℃ as the ‘high’. Rain from 2pm. Proper spring postponed again. Oh, well.

  20. SIR – Sir Simon Rattle misses the vital point that classical music is mostly the product of dead white men so is, in the current woke climate, regarded as intrinsically bad.

    Until our artistic institutions remember that they were formed to promote, preserve and pass on such works, Western art is doomed.

    Jean-Marc Evans
    London N12

    Anastasias Revenge
    7 HRS AGO
    Jean-Marc Evans – “Sir Simon Rattle misses the vital point that classical music is mostly the product of dead white men so is, in the current woke climate, regarded as intrinsically bad.”
    That is only ONE aspect – EVERYTHING worth having in Britain was the product of “dead white men” – because this country was, for hundreds and hundreds of years, the preserve of “white men”. The cultural and infrastructural “contribution” to Britain of “non-white” men is minimal and over-hyped.
    White men, our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers not only “built” Britain, they helped “build” the Empire.
    Africans did not “invent” the railway – WE did.
    Indians did not “invent” steam powered industry – WE did.

    * * *

    Good letter and excellent BTL post!

  21. Illegal migrants fuelling crime and prostitution, warns Suella Braverman. 27 April 2023.

    Illegal migrants are fuelling crime and prostitution, Suella Braverman has warned, as her small boats Bill cleared the Commons on Wednesday with a majority of 59.

    Speaking ahead of the Third Reading debate, the Home Secretary said migrants crossing the English Channel on small boats were linked to “heightened levels of criminality”.

    “I think that the people coming here illegally do possess values which are at odds with our country,” she said. “We are seeing heightened levels of criminality when related to the people who’ve come on boats, related to drug dealing, exploitation, prostitution.

    All this is a pantomime in aid if the forthcoming General Election. You will note that Labour has almost nothing to say on the matter because it would impinge on their own support. They also know that regardless of the result none of this will come to pass. No one is going to be deported!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/26/illegal-migrants-crime-prostitution-suella-braverman/

    1. ‘Illegal migrants fuelling crime and prostitution, warns Suella Braverman. 27 April 2023.’

      Winner of today’s NSS Award.

  23. 373945+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Thursday 27 April: The arrogance of hiding great and provocative art from the public

    In regards to the political fraternity this (hiding) was so up until the political demise of Mrs Thatcher, but since then the art of political treachery / deceit, is supported by the indigenous peoples via the
    lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled / controlled immigration / paedophile umbrella coalition party and is operating currently in a very healthy manner.

    Plus in point of fact, great and provocative treachery / deceit seems to sit very well with the voting majority.

    There is no way on Gods green earth we the innocents could have got to where we are today as a nation without the continuing input from the “governing ” parties and their supporting cast of members, I do not believe any thanks are necessary.

  24. Did anyone else watch the debate between JR-M, Farage and Habib yesterday evening? I thought it was very good indeed. However, I have not been able to find it on YouTube but will go on looking…

  25. Morning all 🙂😉
    Quite bright but brief, rain again later.
    I wonder what great and provocative art has actually been hidden from public gaze ?
    I can’t access the Telegraph on line it’s hidden from the public view. Unless I pay for it.

    1. SIR – You report (April 26)
      that the University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum has removed Sir
      Stanley Spencer’s painting on the subject of multicultural free love
      from display, after previously saying it is “racist”.

      My parents
      were founder members of the Cookham and Cookham Dean Arts club, started
      in the 1940s. There were many proficient artists, both professional and
      amateur, but the club centred on Stanley Spencer and as a small girl I
      met him at exhibitions.

      Many found his work challenging, but
      Spencer always brought an almost saintly aspect to it. His compassion
      for humanity is obvious in his shipbuilding on the Clyde cycle, which I
      was fortunate to view at Chatham Dockyard. That each welder and riveter
      had the individual pattern of his clothing and the detail of the soles
      of his boots lovingly recorded showed how the artist celebrated ordinary
      people. I have no doubt he viewed all people in the same way.

      Perhaps
      no one has painted texture better since Holbein, and Spencer’s
      landscapes of the Berkshire countryside have never been bettered. I had
      not seen Love Among the Nations before, but to me it shows nothing but warmth and affection – what the title suggests.

      It
      is sad that works of art are now censored by those with agendas who
      have the arrogance to think that the viewing public are unable to make
      their own judgments. Great art, by definition, is meant to challenge,
      provoke discussion and change – not be safely hidden from view.

      Isobel Greenshields
      Billericay, Essex

      1. Cheers Phizz, I’ll check it out on the desktop later. I can’t access certain items on my phone.
        Personally I see art for what it is, you either like it or you don’t. Most art galleries are more than a bit snobby and rather boring anyway. Surely there is no need to be whispering. I’m sure the artists hadn’t intended their best efforts to have subjected to such diverse scrutiny.
        But I admire their talents on display.

  26. Eyes drawn to this in the letters:

    SIR – Last week I was in a queue for more than half an hour on the phone to book a Covid booster jab.

    On Tuesday, because the out-of-date NHS IT system failed, I was queuing for an hour and a half in the cold among 80- and 90-year-olds for the actual jab. Some gave up and went home.

    We are certainly not called patients for nothing.

    Fiona Wild
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    Well, Fiona, how many would that be now? You do seem to have a death-wish.

    1. Morning all. Back from sunny Cyprus. It’s like winter here still.

      This woman is a bl..dy idiot. After 10 days relaxing in the warm I’m absolutely amazed that people are gullible enough to have yet another experimental jab. What on earth is wrong with these people? Queueing for an hour and a half … utterly mad.

    1. I drive a Ford Eco boost engine that is very fuel efficient and gives a low VED. The wet cam belt was designed to last the life of the car but that advice has changed to 10 years/150k miles. Because of the design, its an engine out job and an expensive repair. As the car is now 11 years old, I must either swallow the cost now or run the thing until it fails. I’ll think about it again, next week!

  28. Good article in today’s DT about the eco- vandals:

    If the police won’t stop the eco-bullies, the public surely will

    It feels increasingly as though the police are pandering to middle-class militants because it’s the path of least resistance

    JUDITH WOODS
    26 April 2023 • 5:11pm

    Allo, ‘allo ‘allo, what’s going on here, then? Really, do please tell me, officer, because drivers like myself, going about our daily business at the requisite if prissy 20 miles per hour, are genuinely struggling to understand what exactly the police are for and – whisper it – whose side they’re on.

    When we saw an angry driver get out of his vehicle, rip away a banner from the Just Stop Oil protesters who were causing gridlock in central London and try to move them off the road, we were utterly bewildered to see that he was the one seemingly getting it in the neck from what are rapidly becoming the forces of Law and Disorder.

    “If you start pushing him, that is assault,” he was apparently told. “If you do that, it is a crime.” Were I trapped in the tailback, languishing and late for a hospital appointment, a day’s work or just meeting a friend, I wouldn’t condone his behaviour – but I might not condemn it vociferously, either. Life is tough enough without added disruption; I get his frustration. Why don’t the police?

    Truthfully, drivers haven’t felt this confused since officers were caught on camera dancing with Extinction Rebellion in 2019. I believe it’s called community policing, because nothing upholds faith in the thin blue line better than watching it wobble about on a teenage activist’s skateboard or join in the samba.

    The then Met commander wasn’t best pleased, either, although describing the frankly infuriating footage as disappointing is no match for an old-fashioned clip round the ear. And look, now some police officers appear to be cosying up to the Just Stop Oil brigade as they bring arterial roads to a standstill, “slow march” down streets and generally do their level best to ruin our day.

    We’ve grown accustomed to the “light policing” of protesters, who shout at us about oil production while wearing environmentally toxic trainers – one estimate pegs annual global emissions from manufacturing running shoes annually as equivalent to 66 million cars. Now that’s what I call a carbon footprint, folks.

    What’s genuinely frustrating is that many would agree with the premise that the planet needs saving. They would say, however, that the focus for the climate movement ought to be on oil producers raking in eyewatering profits, rather than on Margaret down the road dropping off her grandchildren in her modest runabout.

    Performative acts of civil disobedience will bring traffic to a standstill, but won’t bring people together in support of that cause. I’m surely not alone in wondering why Just Stop Oil’s right to make a nuisance of themselves should override everyone else’s right to use the highways they pay for with their taxes, or why police officers taking a well-earned break from investigating rude tweets, ignoring burglaries and covering for corrupt colleagues, look on.

    It feels as though the police are pandering to the eco-bullies because it’s the path of least resistance, and they don’t want to “escalate” the situation by upsetting a load of largely middle-class militants with Messiah complexes by doing their jobs and intervening. But here again they fail to grasp that there’s a real and present danger that, if they won’t, honest citizens with frayed tempers might. Once they are charged with assault, today’s victims-turned-vigilantes will become tomorrow’s motor car martyrs. And that really will signal the end of the road.

    * * *

    PJ Spiers
    14 HRS AGO
    This article is spot-on.
    The one-sided actions of the police are nothing short of supporting those whose true purpose is the destruction of our country and its tolerant culture.
    There will be a backlash – and pretty soon I suspect.

    * * *

    Count me in, PJ Spiers!

    1. Those plod were actually breaking the law by aiding and abetting the obstruction of the highway under the Highways Act, 1984.

      About time we faced them down with the prospect of a criminal charge.

    2. We got a letter yesterday advising us that my car had been witnessed doing 25 in a 20 (was a 30 until the mass reduction in speed limit that no one was consulted on or voted for). It’s a wide road bounded by fields on both sides and with speed humps. Good news – this s just a warning! Next time it’s points and a fine!!!

      Anyway I was at work at the time in question and turns out MOH was the culprit. He said: “Oh yes, i saw a lot of Plod but thought they were there sorting the dogging problem out”. His naïveté is touching.

      As a side note, on my way into work this morning i noticed Plod was everywhere. They must be expecting more “climate activists”.

    1. Good morning.

      Late last night i was reading in bed and started to get a bit hungry. I remembered a sausage roll was in the fridge. Formerly dozing dogs had been alerted by the opening of the fridge door. All hell broke loose. I managed to retain half of it.

        1. Not really. Dolly has found ways to try to trip me up. To her, a sausage roll is more important than my life.

      3. Why do your dogs doze ‘formally’. Are you that strict with them?

        When I doze, I invariably do it informally.

      4. Half? You did well there. Mongo’d have the roll out of my hands in a flash. With Mongo upstairs siting with Junior I once opened the box I keep our sausage rolls in (downstairs, in the kitchen) in and put the roll on the side, resealed the box and turned around to find it gone.

        Now, he’s a big, heavy dog. He’s not a stealth machine. Not fast. How did he get from upstairs, through 3 rooms, along the laminate hallway and into the tiled kitchen and back up again in less than 5 seconds?

    1. 373945+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Notice Og how the two very cautious officers waited for backup in dealing with this desperado.

      1. 373945+ up ticks,

        Morning M,

        Well suited when regarding the
        WEF / NWO.

        Shades of 85 Avenue Foch 39/45.

      1. It is Wales, Johnny. It’s when Welsh creeps over the border into England I object (like getting my electricity bills in Welsh).

    2. If sign painters could spell they wouldn’t be sign painters. Some of them are so below average intelligence it’s not funny.

      Most of the time they’re given a template marked out by someone else.

    4. I sent that pic to my son as it’s in his neck of the woods.

      His reply: …”Anyway, the council “workers” should just blame the crap state education they received!”

  33. Well that is the grocery shopping done and dusted for another week. Off soon to buy some seed potatoes and Mrs VVOF tells me she needs some buttons, what exciting lives we lead.

    It still feels more like winter than springtime out there, what happened to the global warming Greta and her zealots promised me?

    1. It was a tax scam. That some children believe it to be anything else is brainwashing.

  35. Steve Barclay denies ‘totally untrue’ claims he bullied civil servants. 27 April 2023.

    Steve Barclay has denied claims that he bullied civil servants, calling them “totally untrue”.

    The allegations emerged days after Dominic Raab said the inquiry that forced him to quit had set a threshold for bullying so low that it would “encourage spurious complaints against ministers”.

    The Guardian reported that officials from the Department of Health and Social Care had “raised concerns” about Mr Barclay’s alleged conduct towards civil servants.

    Surprise! Surprise!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/26/steve-barclay-denies-claims-he-bullied-civil-servants/

    2. This is the civil service’s new tactic, isn’t it? Find a minister they want rid of and cry wolf. This won’t stop until leadership are dealt with – ah, who am I kidding. It’s not leadership,, in the public sector it’s management. Frankly, ministers should be in charge of sacking civil servants when they join a department. Yes, that’s very hard in the UK but the simple truth is if they’re going to keep fighting a government they dislike then there is no point to the organisation. It is there to serve. That means sometimes the people in it are not going to like what they’re told to do. In that case, they should find another job.

      1. At school a policeman would come around to intimidate us all in to behaving well and obeying the law. He was a six foot giant to my junior school self. All bristling moustache, pointed helmet and pressed shirt and utility belt.

        As an adult I imagine he was sick and tired of bratty, snotty kids, of school visits and grumpy at his super for that job when he wanted to be catching chavs. Not that we had chavs back in the 80s. Mainly because we weren’t over run with foreigners then.

        1. No utility belts in my day. I managed to get by with a staff, a whistle, a personal radio and a pocket-book. I used the staff once (to finish off a mortally-injured cat); the whistle was a relic that had become purely ornamental; the radio was for two-way communication; and the pocket-book was to record all aspects of my day on duty. I didn’t need anything else, especially I did not need to be encumbered by rubbish that prevented me from chasing, catching, and detaining toe-rags.

    2. My question is: why is that halfwit not properly dressed? Not wearing proper uniform headgear (helmet or cap), when on duty in the street, was deemed a serious disciplinary offence in my day.

      1. One of the people laughing at him probably kmocked (sic) it off his head.

        Not changing the misspelling as it seems to cover the situation.

  38. Oh dear.

    I have been (temporarily) suspended — excluded — from a specific FaceBook thread about food called “Rate My Plate”. This is because I dared to defend my views from a plethora of hysterical attacks, by a cartel of vegans, for daring to state my preference for eating the flesh of farmed, killed and cooked animals.

    To my unfathomable bafflement I find that my temporary exclusion comes despite me being attacked, by all manner of hysterical verbal vitriol, by vegans … that continues to go unpunished. I dared to retaliate to their crazed barbs by suggesting that a vegan diet turns its eater into a retard. Big mistake. Huge! As a consequence, I was informed, summarily, that my use of the ‘R’-word is not acceptable.

    Vegans — in common with socialists, transvestites and all manner of other, similar, brain-dead Left-wing detritus — feel it is their divine right to verbally attack normal people for having views that are counter to their scripted lunacy. Every example, in that thread, of a normal human expressing his dietary views in a controlled, sane, and uncontroversial manner is immediately picked on by some lurking vegan imbecile who proceeds to lambast the author with a stream of inconsequential, unrelated, ad hominem, non-sequitur invective. This mirrors, precisely, the conditioned behaviour of Trannies and Lefties everywhere.

    If, or when, I am permitted to continue to contribute (it is galling to watch those rabid vegan halfwits continue to attack my posts in my absence, without censure) I shall simply ask one question. Why is the ‘R’-word deemed unacceptable, while at the same time a massive tranche of far more objectionable words and diabolical phrases uttered by vegans is permitted to continue without reprimand?

    By the way, the thread I am currently excluded from contributing to is a general food thread and is not a vegan forum. My personal theory — that the paucity of proteins, vitamins, minerals, fats, and all manner of other necessary nutrients in a vegan diet causes physical and mental dysfunction — is held up [nay: vindicated] by this outpouring of banality.

    Vegans, socialists, transvestites and the stupid are, in my opinion, all devoid of proper nutrition … and the proper exposure to a decent education and common sense.

    2. I think it’s simpler. Thy doubt their own life choices and seek validation. Thus rather than engaging and saying ‘oh, they look lovely, but are not for me they have to attack, to do down the other because unless you are diminished, their values are not vindicated.

      Lefties do this a lot. It’s because they know they’re wrong. Veganists chose a specific choice of diet. Pointing out that humans have incisors AND molars and thus evolved to eat meat isn’t something a small clique of them like.

    3. I got a profanity strewn message on my twitter timeline the other day. Apparently, disagreeing with some (if not all) of my posts. My reply ‘Physician heal thyself’ only seemed to make matters worse. I took my own advice and scrolled on by. I’m sure these dimwits aim to antagonise until they glean a reply that causes ‘offence’ and therefore can be reported. Rational thought isn’t their strong point.

      1. I have done on some threads but this is not a vegan thread; it just gets attacked by the sad, vacuous twats.

    1. I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but I think the real meaning is that a healthy, educated and confident nation doesn’t need big government.

      As the entire sole purpose of the state is cancerous expansion if folk don’t need it then it cannot further it’s own agenda.

    2. What went wrong with his son, Hilary?

      Lord Stansgate was not a very good breeder!

      1. I worry about any bloke who names his son Hilary.

        Or Jocelyn, Leslie, Shirley or Vivian.🤣

          4. Bugger! I forgot Evelyn.

            His lad, Auberon, was my favourite curmudgeon when he had a DT column.

  40. 373945+ up ticks,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    16h
    Everywhere the same story: Anyone in a position of influence who speaks out against the Narrative will be removed.

    As a point of fact, if the Holocaust was the greatest ever crime against humanity then logically there must be a second biggest crime. If crimes are ranked with the holicaust in first place then all others must occupy a rank position behind it.

    It is debatable if the scamdemic was the second biggest crime ever but if so then it’s logical to say it was the greatest crime since the biggest one. Is that not logical?

    Citing the Holocaust is just an excuse to remove Bridgen’s platform.

    …more
    MP Andrew Bridgen expelled by Tories for comparing Covid vaccines to Holocaust — The Mirror
    MP Andrew Bridgen expelled by Tories for comparing Covid vaccines to Holocaust — The Mirror

    The controversial Conservative MP said the life-saving jabs were “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust” in an incendiary tweet that was widely condemned

    apple.news

    https://gettr.com/post/p2fh83b72fb

    1. Yet too often it isn’t what’s said – the media twist that as a given – it’s the way it reflects on the party and their hope to get back in to the cushy jobs with massive pensions and ability to pick up six figure 1 day a week trougher non-jobs after office.

    2. There was a real ding-dong on last night’s “Headliners” (GB News) on this last night

    1. Any chance of showing full article to help us inpecunious types please ? Can only view a few lines before the ‘blocker’ obliterates the rest.

      1. Allister Heath

        26 April 2023 • 9:00pm

        The fact that the Tories have failed to make use of Brexit’s

        freedoms proves that there is something wrong with this Government, not

        with Brexit

        Credit: Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament

        We have sinned, and deserve to be punished. We voted for the

        Tories, and then, horror of horrors, to leave the EU: we are the 52 per

        cent, the guilty men and women of Brexit. We were warned, and didn’t

        listen: it is us who brought poverty and pay cuts upon the nation, or so

        the “grown-ups”, the “sensibles”, that whole useless army of “experts”, civil servants, central bankers and assorted technocrats of all parties are desperate for us to believe.

        None of the myriad, debilitating maladies gnawing away at Britain’s soul

        apparently have anything to do with them. Rampant inflation, feeble

        growth, our horrendous housing crisis, productivity performance and

        calamitous reaction to Covid, our disastrous NHS and welfare state, and

        the fact that we still haven’t recovered from an avoidable financial crisis

        15 years ago: it is the voters, egged on by a handful of pro-Brexit

        demagogues, who are truly responsible, supposedly, not the ruling class.

        Pardon

        my sarcasm, but this self-serving, righteous cant has become too much

        to bear. It is the opposite of the truth, a delusional indictment of an

        intellectually bankrupt, wretched elite afflicted by a hopeless Remainer

        institutional mind virus. Overwhelmed by our national problems, they

        find it easier to see everything through the prism of our departure from

        the EU, and cannot imagine a solution to our woes that doesn’t involve

        rejoining. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy: decline begets

        decline, and nobody is proposing any genuine reforms to return our

        country to prosperity.

        Huw Pill, the chief economist of the Bank

        of England, is indicative of a buck-passing establishment that has given

        up. Don’t ask for high pay rises, he tells us: we are permanently worse

        off, and attempts at maintaining our spending power will merely

        entrench inflation. The Bank, which like the Office for Budget

        Responsibility is convinced that Brexit will leave us a lot poorer,

        refuses to accept that its ultra-loose monetary policy, including

        excessive QE after Covid, is to blame for much of our inflation. Putin’s

        invasion of Ukraine pushed up energy costs, of course, but overall

        price rises were dangerously above target long before the war.

        It

        is true that a drop in GDP per capita should lead to a commensurate

        decline in wages and profits. But that isn’t really what the Bank is

        arguing: it is trying to blame workers and firms for the scandalous

        persistence of double-digit price rises, relying on facile cost-push

        theories of inflation, rather than accepting that it should have

        increased interest rates sooner. It also seems to want workers to

        swallow far greater real-terms pay cuts (of 4-5 per cent) than warranted

        by the scale of the energy shock and trajectory of GDP. One possible

        explanation for this is that it believes that Brexit will condemn us to

        long-term stagnation, so wants to get the pay cuts in early, under the

        cover of inflation. Down that road lies madness and, in time, a

        Right-wing populist or crypto-communist counter-revolution. The central

        issue of our times is that our ruling class has no solutions to the

        quasi-stagnation that has gripped our economy since 2007-8, and which is

        the direct result not of Brexit but of a series of blunders that

        culminated in the destruction of the successful Thatcherite economic

        model.

        Yes, we would have grown a tiny bit more in the past few

        years in the absence of the protectionist measures imposed by Brussels

        after Brexit, but the overwhelming majority of our secular slowdown has

        nothing to do with leaving the EU. Crucially, our new-found

        self-governance gives future governments far greater options to reboot

        our competitiveness. Brexit is a meta-philosophy, a framework to

        decentralise decision-making. The fact that the Tories have failed to

        make use of enough of these rediscovered freedoms proves there is

        something wrong with this Government, not with Brexit.

        In any

        case, despite Tory pusillanimity, the gains from leaving the EU are

        becoming clearer, in the form of policies that would have been legally

        or psychologically impossible to execute while part of the EU. This

        growing list includes the early vaccine success, Aukus, joining the

        Trans-Pacific Partnership (a huge moment which will automatically lead

        to divergence from the EU Acquis), new agricultural and fisheries

        policies, and forthcoming regulatory improvements in finance, tech and

        elsewhere. In time I’m certain that the benefits of Brexit will still

        easily more than outweigh its costs.

        As the Special Competitive

        Studies Project argues, digital, physical and biotechnical technologies

        will shape economics and geopolitics. The think tank puts America ahead

        in internet platforms, synthetic biology, biopharmaceuticals, fusion

        energy and quantum computing; China leads the race in 5G, commercial

        drones and advanced batteries; and neither of the two superpowers is

        truly stronger than the other in Artificial Intelligence,

        next-generation networks, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing. The

        EU, needless to say, is nowhere to be seen. One hedge fund manager, Vuk

        Vukovic of Oraclum Capital, argues that Europe “leads” only in one

        “field”: regulation. The continent is finished, out of the race. How can

        it possibly be any sort of answer for Britain to rejoin a technocracy

        that keeps losing global GDP share?

        Our cultural and economic

        elites don’t understand any of this, just as they don’t understand that

        lower taxes, deregulation, a larger, more competitive private sector,

        and greater entrepreneurship boost growth. Their models imply that only

        public “investment”, even higher immigration or rejoining the single

        market and customs union can possibly grow GDP. Their main tools to

        boost productivity – including hiking the minimum wage – have had no

        noticeable impact, despite being tested to destruction. They are

        obsessed with mining every piece of data to “prove” that we are doing

        less well than other EU countries, and thus – illogically – that Brexit

        was a failure. Many of these claims are wrong, as the economist Julian

        Jessop keeps demonstrating.

        Roughly speaking, our economic

        performance is now the same as that of Germany, France and the wealthier

        EU economies: this is bad news, because 15 years ago we used to easily

        outperform the Eurozone, but it is no argument to rejoin. Brexit’s

        greatest benefit to date has been to show up our technocratic elite’s

        incompetence, poverty of ambition, and inability to break out of

        groupthink: they are just as useless as their European counterparts.

        just now

        Its anti democratic if all the major parties work
        together for 43 year to prevent the electorate from having a referendum
        on their future relationship with the EU, when they had only ever agreed
        to join a common trading market, not something that in 2016 had become
        responsible for making 70% of our laws, our trade policy, and
        controlling our borders, fishing waters, and judiciary.

        And especially anti democratic, when after being forced
        to give the electorate a Referendum, they use all the institutions of
        the state to try and influence the vote in their favour.

        And especially anti democratic, when after losing the
        vote, tried to do everything possible to overturn the result BEFORE the
        arrangements had been put in place to LEAVE.

        And especially anti democratic, when all the main
        political parties fought the 2017 election on the basis they would
        respect the referendum vote, and then did the exact opposite after
        getting elected.

        In 2005, the European Union had produced its own constitution.

        The first proper blueprint. The first genuine admission
        that what they were building wasn’t a free trade zone, it was a state –
        and they put it to referendums.

        The French rejected it, the Dutch rejected it and many
        other people, had they had the chance, would have rejected it. The UK
        was promised a referendum on the Treaty by New Labour – that didnt
        happen after they saw the French and Dutch results!

        What did the EU do? Did they learn the lesson? Did they
        say ‘Oh well obviously people don’t want a state with a flag, an anthem
        and an army’. Did they row back? No.

        They rebranded it as the Lisbon Treaty. Then forced it
        through without giving the French, Dutch or any other Nation’s peoples
        another option.

        If that is not anti democratic I would like to see what is!
        edited

        just now

        Mr Heaths only positive column in years as below….

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/23/kwasi-kwartengs-budget-moment-history-will-radically-transform/

        Wrong as usual.

        1 min ago

        I always chuckle at these articles defending brexit, or lauding hypothetical benefits yet to come.

        Surely if brexit was so wonderful, it wouldn’t need
        defending because the benefits would all be self-evident? All those who
        voted “remain” would realise how daft they were and a re-run would
        produce an even more entrenched majority.

        Current polls put the remain camp about 68% if the vote was redone this week.

        just now

        Telegraph Reader Guardian mindset.

        4 min ago

        I agree, the Government is squarely to blame.

        Truss and her neighbour had a go.

        Oh, but they just went a bit too far too fast, otherwise it was a spankingly good idea.

        Really?

        In a way, and heartfelt apologies to all that suffered
        as a result, Brexit reminds me of the US piling into Iraq. It was based
        largely on a gut feeling backed up and promoted by dubious – at best –
        claims. The real disaster can be summarised as “OK, so what shall we do
        now?”

        So far it’s not looking good.

        Who to blame? The civil service, the Remoaners, European mendacity?

        No, the only people who were, and still are, able to make the most of Brexit are the Government.

        Please save all your understandable ire for them.
        edited

        4 min ago

        I suppose that we are washing far less of the stolen
        Russian money now that Putin has started WW3. Osborne and Mandelson did
        their best to ensure that it kept coming but there is only so much
        organised crime that one can turn a blind eye to.

        5 min ago

        “Brexit has been vindicated” – Really? Let’s look at the ‘vindication’ Heath offers.

        “early vaccine success”, – nothing to do with Brexit

        “Aukus,” – nothing to do with Brexit

        “joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership” a good thing, but material benefits in 15 to 20 years if we are lucky

        “new agricultural and fisheries policies, and
        forthcoming regulatory improvements in finance, tech and elsewhere.” –
        hypothetical benefits based on the assumption that the as yet unenacted
        policies will be an improvement.

        Offset against his ‘a tiny bit more’ growth (perhaps 4%) if we had stayed.

        So, not really ‘vindicated’ at all. Even Heath admits
        as such: “In time I’m certain that the benefits of Brexit will still
        easily more than outweigh its costs.”. I repeat – “in time” – It
        certainly won’t be my ‘time’, and my children are not going to hang
        around in the UK wasting their ‘time’ and ‘just accepting they will be
        poorer’ until their mid forties. So it might benefit my grandchildren,
        except they will probably grow up not being British.

  44. And in cat news…..

    G & P need quarterly treatment against ticks and worms. Previously they have had drops on the back of their necks. These made them off colour. So vet changed the treatment to “palatable” tablets. Given to them yesterday. Pickles would have eaten the whole year’s worth. Gus refused point blank. Had to disguise with Marmite and cheese. Only just worked – after two attempts by Gus to spit it out. Then watched said cat washing himself for ten minutes to remove the Marmite that had attached itself to him. Profusely!

    Cats, eh?

    1. I use Nexgard tablets. They protect against ticks, worms, lungworm and other parasites. £40 for three tablets. No generic types available.

  45. Can Justin Trudeau’s Canada get any more authoritarian? Spiked 27 April 2023.

    The Liberal Party’s new online-streaming bill is yet another egregious assault on our liberties.

    Prime minister Justin Trudeau has presented this bill, which was originally introduced in 2020 by then-heritage minister Steven Guilbeault as Bill C-10, as simply about promoting Canadian content and making it more ‘discoverable’ online. But its actual objective goes far beyond that. It appears to be about controlling what Canadians see on the internet. Considering Trudeau’s recent attempts to crack down on free speech, it is hardly implausible that he would use this legislation for similar ends – both to punish those who are critical of the reigning elite’s values, and to manipulate public opinion and access to information.

    This is of course the Canadian version of the UK’s On Line Harms Bill. The Western Elites hate the Free Internet since it almost universally opposes their agenda.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/27/can-justin-trudeaus-canada-get-any-more-authoritarian/

    1. Trudeau only has a minority in parliament but with support from a small very left wing party, he still gets away with this.

      Dear leader has promised that they will not use the law to suppress user created content. This promise brought to you by the same Trudeau that said cvaccinatons were not mandatory.

      To add to that the plan is now to confiscate legally owned guns. How this will help reduce stabbings and shootings with illegally held guns is anyone’s gipuess.

  46. Could be a repeat:

    Police in Peckham found a bomb outside a mosque…
    They’ve told the public not to panic as they’ve managed to push it back inside.
    =============================
    During last night’s high winds, an African family were seriously injured by a falling tree. A spokesman for the Birmingham City council said “We didn’t even know they were living up there”.
    =============================
    Jamaican minorities in the UK have complained that there are not enough television shows with minorities in mind, so Crime watch is being shown 5 times a week now.
    =============================
    I was reading in the Liverpool Echo about this dwarf that got pick-pocketed.
    How could anyone stoop so low?
    =============================
    I was walking down the road when I saw an Afghan standing on a fifth-floor balcony shaking a carpet. I shouted up to him, “What’s up Abdul? He said, “It won’t start?”

  47. Another Potential Whitehall Con……..
    When a driver reaches 70 years of age, they are required by law to renew their driving licence every three years. When they do renew, it is free of charge and all people approaching the advanced age will be sent a letter reminding them to renew before their 70th birthday.
    Free at the moment
    The GOV.UK website states that drivers looking to renew will need an email address, the addresses of where they’ve lived for the last three years, National Insurance number and a valid UK passport number.
    That is going to make it difficult for all the new arrivals, but they’ll get free legal aid to put this right.

    The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency frequently uses its social media channels to inform motorists of any licence changes they may need to make.

    Last week they tweeted: “After you turn 70, you need to renew your licence every three years. It’s easy, quick and secure to do it online.”

    According to the DVLA, there are over 5.7 million drivers over the age of 70 still on the road across the UK.
    Potentially a nice little earner.

    Research also shows that older drivers above 70 are significantly less likely to have a road traffic accident than younger drivers between 17 and 24.

    1. While I do not complain – I have often thought it odd that there is no charge to renew a driving licence. Virtually every other type of “permit” has to be paid for on renewal.

      I am surprised that HMG hasn’t latched on to this potential source of revenue.

      1. Reading that prompted me to check mine and it expires 2025. The same photograph from about ten years ago. But I still have lots of hair. I might not get pulled over as often as an old baldy, but having said that there seem to be more young baldies around than I can ever remember before.
        But don’t give HMG or Whitehall any ideas Bill.

    2. I have just paid a nominal sum, here in Sweden, to renew my Körkort (Driving Licence). The new one is valid for ten years! No driving test nor eyesight examination required.

      1. I don’t know when you were last over here Grizz, but the standard of driving is now quite appalling. I think we have so many people on the roads who have never taken a driving test in the UK or have read the Highway Code. speeding is the worse problem. And if you stick to the limit you are tailgated. I often wonder what happens if the traffic cops stops a person with a foreign licence with an address in Europe. Many delivery drivers have foreign accents now. I’ve even seen them park on Pedestrian crossings.

        1. I think I must have got soft living in Sweden, Eddy. I was in London in November 2019 but I didn’t drive. The last time I drove was in October 2018 when I flew in to Manchester and picked up a rental car. I had to drive to North Yorkshire via the M60, M62, M1 and A1. That drive was beyond terrifying.

          It was a combination of the massive volume of vehicles on the road (especially HGVs), plus the insane speeds they were being driven. Here in Sweden there is little traffic. The only problem I have is the odd dozy clueless Swede meandering all over the road and in my lane. You need your wits about you here too.

    3. I’d be interested in how many of the invading horde have driving licences, let alone insurance or an MOT.

      1. No – they are given them by the PTB on arrival, along with passports, money and free everything.

    4. This is not a problem at all, have you forgotten that most of our new arrivals as well as being cross channel journeymen are well under the age of 70.

      It could almost be said they are at prime fighting age not likely to worry about trivialities such as driving licences.

      The rest of us of course will continue to accept whatever shyte the PTB dish out, a consequence of who we vote for time and time again.

    5. It may be quick to do online, but you lose your C1 D1 entitlement. If you want to keep that (if, for example, you volunteer to drive a minibus) you will need a medical (£70 thank you very much) and can expect a long wait to get your licence back.

  48. Watched 21 (I counted) Just Stop Oil protesters preventing traffic under the loving eye of the Metropolitan Constabulary on Blackfriars Road.
    Some piszhead heckled them : “Go and get a job!”
    When even the street drinkers take the mickey you must know you lack respect.

    2. Our vacuum is an industrial type and we call it Fang. It weighs a ton and is a vicious sod. It gets a rare outing as the carpet sweeper doesn’t fight back.

      2. Is it a Kirby, Lotl.

        I had 2nd hand Kirby’s for decades , one for upstairs and one for downstairs .. they were so heavy and cumbersome .

        When I damaged shoulder and had a rotator cuff injury, I couldn’t do my bra up , pull my knicks up, could not use the solid metal Kirby either .. so I bought a G Tech K 9..

          1. We had a Sebo upright – MOH insisted on it, then left me to use it! I find upright vacuum cleaners very hard to manipulate. As soon as I was able, I donated it to a charity shop (and employed a cleaner).

          2. Vicious swine aren’t they? It works really well but weighs a ton and one has to be really in the mood to take it walkies.

        2. We’ve got a Vax – but it’s not a patch on the old vacuum cleaner (not a Hoover) that died last year.

  50. My lady friend said she would leave me if I didn’t stop quoting Buddy Holly song titles.
    I said “That’ll be the day” – I have not seen her since. What did I do wrong?

  51. One I posted earlier.

    Did I read that the ‘Brits’ being rescued from Sudan have addresses in the UK because they were flown in to Brize Norton by stupid pratts like Cameron. Supplied with houses and given all sorts of other free handouts and benefits.
    They’ve subsequently rented out the free housing. Had their endless benefits paid into their bank accounts along with the money from renting out the free council property. Returned to Sudan because its much warmer and cheaper to live there. Drawing down the money paid by their tenants and have just all been flown back to England again for free.
    Somehow our MSM seem to be missing a very important point.
    Especially the bbc news channel.
    Who have been salivating over the re-arrival of all these thieving cheats.

    1. Hello RE

      I posted some of those comments on here yesterday that I grabbed from the Times .

      I expect there is some truth in the comments .

      Grenfell Towers fire was rather suspicious, wasn’t it.

      I expect the Sudanese NHS doctors were over there making a quick buck or two .. 71 doctors needs investigating by the BMA.

    2. There was indeed a case a year or so back where a Sudanese or Ethiopian gent was found renting his accommodation and drawing benefits whilst having returned to Africa. He said he didn’t like the weather here. Quite, and if all the benefit givers and leftie luvvies can’t be bothered to check on these people, the scamming will continue.

      1. I remember reading about an of English couple who had gone to the US where the husband had been offered a job for two years. They rented out their house, no problems with the money arriving in their bank account, I think the property was in Sussex. But a family member unfortunately died. When the came back for the funeral they went to see how their home was doing and the found it had been sectioned off into separate units with partitions and sperate internal doors with padlocks. Not just suggesting that more than a single family was renting it. Instead of one family, there up to ten to fifteen or more individuals living in their home.
        This are the sort of terrible occurrences that have been happening for many years.

        1. The people next door to me at my previous house, rented it out and moved on. Trouble was, they rented it to a group of students, who were never a static group. Members came and went, and the original ones were replaced by noisy music-playing oafs who delighted in making as much noise as possible. My ex was a working man who needed to sleep so he could get up and start work at 4am.

          Eventually, one of the lads was replaced by a middle-aged woman who got the whole lot moved out and the house sold to a family.

          1. Early 70s I was working on a large 3 story refurbishment in Hampstead.
            We had a group of squatters break in one Friday evening, it looked like it could be a problem.
            The owner was a QC and informed us it might take weeks to get a court order to get them out.
            So we asked the scaffolders to help out over the weekend for a reasonable fee. The squatters were gone by the time we turned up for work on Monday. Never to be seen again.

  53. Addicted to rationing, can’t-do Britain makes the Soviet Union look dynamic. 27 April 2023.

    Britain is gradually turning into a failed state – and people don’t even seem to mind.

    If it is government-funded infrastructure that is needed, then the £786.6 billion in 2022-23 tax receipts can surely cover the bill.

    But our economy isn’t functioning. It is managed by individuals and institutions who increasingly pick the low hanging fruit – bans and rationing – over building.

    Yes it’s called the Government and as one perceptive poster observes Below the Line.

    Absolutely agree – but who can we vote for that will make the changes?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/04/27/cant-do-britain-makes-the-soviet-union-look-dynamic/

  54. Pakistani baby is born with TWO working penises and no anus in extraordinarily rare phenomenon D Fail

    One of the risks of drinking tap water in Bradford and Dewsbury.

    2. The real break-through there is that the D Fail called the poor little sod PAKISTANI.

      Oh, he actually is. Not one of our colonists.

  56. Well, it’s common knowledge that the World is suffering from a ‘Climate Crisis’ caused by a trace gas that the PTB have demonised but in fact is vital to the health of the Planet. Now, it appears that there is a another gaseous crisis created by the most abundant, and by a very big margin, gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, nitrogen. So serious is this crisis that both the EU and the government of the Netherlands want to reduce farm production levels either by the farmers closing down and selling their land, or failing that, expropriation.

    Daily Sceptic – There’s a Nitrogen Crisis so Hand Over your Land

    1. ‘They’ just want to reduce the world’s population and they don’t care how it’s done – whether by a fake virus, toxic jabs, or making people eat bugs and fake meat – but in the end more and more people will come to see this whole agenda as the nonsense it is.

      1. O/T Was there any dramatic news announced at your Swift Night the other day? As I mentioned before, the roof on the three farmworkers cottages here was replaced last autumn and we have our fingers crossed that it will be to our returning swifts’ liking.

        1. No – it was just a meeting to discuss arrangements for the “Welcome the Swifts” event on Saturday morning 6th May (Coronation Day) in Stroud. Bunting, Morris Dancers, a puppet………

          https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/23478863.boss-morris-welcome-back-swifts/

          If they’ve blocked up the holes in the new roof so the swifts can’t access their nest sites, it won’t be to their liking. Swifts are very site faithful, so there needs to have been some mitigating measure such as swift boxes, swift bricks, etc. They will readily adapt to using those but they will be distressed if they can’t get in to their original nests.

          1. New holes carefully drilled in the new woodwork close to where the old holes were. We are a bit concerned that, because the loft insulation has been replaced, it might not have the right texture/smell.

          2. Hopefully they won’t mind that – last year we had a new pair nest and raise two chicks in one of the new holes drilled in our gable end which we had scaffolding up for roof repairs. The tunnel from the hole goes into a box on the inside of the loft space. All the boxes have cameras in and we were able to watch those two chicks leave at the end of August, which was very late. Most of them go at the end of July, followed by the parents when they’ve had a rest.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e598dceddc958fc197a78e51a4e87ff00847c23daae5b22352cca13bac72c56b.jpg

    2. This has been going on for some while and the good thing is the farmers, with some popular support, are not taking it lying down.

  57. Speaking of Hackney this is the way they seem to treat people.
    But I wonder where the father of the child is ?
    Another person who should have arrived on the beach at Dover. Or lived in Sudan.

    A mum from Hackney says she has been forced into debt after moving into a house with her daughter that she couldn’t afford. On top of that now, she has now been offered a choice between a studio flat in temporary accommodation or else ending up on the street.

    Ms Bennett was a full-time student with a young daughter when she went to Hackney Council looking for a place to live. The 22-year-old says she tried to find a new property through the privately rented scheme offered by the council unsuccessfully.

    Her income needs were assessed by a housing officer and the DWP and the accommodation she found was judged to have been affordable. She received confirmation that her Universal Credit entitlement was sufficient to pay her rent and cover her living costs comfortably
    However, she says it turned out that Universal Credit instead treated her student loan as taxable income, resulting in her falling into severe debt while trying to keep up with her rent payments. She left her studies to try and find work to help support herself and her child but it still wasn’t enough.
    Ms Bennett told MyLondon: “I was made homeless in 2020 after leaving my mother’s house with my young child. I went to Hackney Council and was placed in temporary accommodation in Tower Hamlets but there were a lot of issues with it. I asked if I could move and they [Hackney Council] said I would need to seek privately rented properties.

    “I met a housing agent who helped find a private property in Barnet that was a bit pricey but the affordability check that was carried said my universal credit would be able to cover it. What happened, in the end, was that they had actually judged the student loan I was receiving as my income and it ended up being deducted from my universal credit payments meaning I didn’t have enough to pay the rent.

    “It got to a point where my student finance was delayed and from around July to December, no rent was being paid. I approached Hackney and pressed them to help and they paid the shortfall of my rent up until December 2022. Since then, there’s been nothing. Now I’m being evicted, I have to choose between being in an overcrowded studio flat for me and my daughter or being on the street. This whole situation has been so depressing.”

    Since January 2022, Ms Bennett has been working numerous jobs to try and pay her rent while also facing the threat of eviction over her head. She has been trying to find a permanent position to help support her but if she is not working, the bulk of her universal credit is taken out to cover her £1,500 rent. If she is not working, £300 of her benefits are taken out and she is left with £250 per month for her and her child. She was forced to leave her studies to focus on raising her child full-time and paying childcare costs and utility bills.

    She said: “I’ve been trying to tell Hackney for over a year that I can’t afford this place but every conversation has gone nowhere. I have to chase and chase to hear anything back. I was served with a section 8 proceeding to begin in March 2023. Hackney claimed that as I was a Barnet resident it was Barnet Council’s responsibility to help but you have to be in a borough for at least two years for them to help you – I was still Hackney’s responsibility.”
    Hackney Council told MyLondon when we reached out that an appointment has been made with Ms Bennett in April and that they will need to reach out to the DWP to see “whether their assessments were correct”.

    Ms Bennett added: “What I’ve found out is that when you are asked to find a property yourself, they [the council] will do an affordability calculation and see if the property is affordable. I’ve now understood after speaking to people within the Hackney Department that student loan income shouldn’t have been counted as rent as I have to pay it back. I’m being put into so much debt and they are ignoring my requests for help. My landlord has even tried to be very understanding with my situation but there’s only so much they can help me with.”

    She continued: “People will say go back to my mums but she is already raising my four other younger siblings in a house that is already full. I would just like to be moved into affordable accommodation that is suitable for our needs. This new temporary accommodation is in New Barnet which is two hours away from my support system in Hackney. It’s so wrong. I can’t refuse it.

    Ms Bennett’s landlord told MyLondon: “As a Landlord, I look at a prospective tenant’s affordability assessment, which we receive directly from their Housing Officers. In this case, Ms Bennett received confirmation that her Universal Credit entitlement was sufficient to pay her rent and cover her living costs comfortably. The reality was very different; Universal Credit treated her student loan as taxable income, so she did not have the affordability.”

    She said: “I feel like I’m being forced to choose between being evicted or being overcrowded. They are the ones who caused this problem yet I’m now left with this choice or else I end up on the street. I have nowhere to go and now I have to accept this property even though it’s further away from Hackney, we will be overcrowded and that will eventually lead to more stress.

    “I can’t refuse the property because I don’t want to be homeless with my daughter. I’m being forced out of homelessness and now into overcrowding.”

    Councillor Sade Etti, Mayoral Advisor for Homelessness, Housing Needs and Rough Sleeping: “We are committed to supporting residents who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and fully understand the stress and anxiety these residents experience. This is compounded by the lack of affordable rented homes which places huge pressure on the market, meaning that the residents we support often have very little time to consider offers available.

    “The acute shortage of accommodation available across London means there is a growing number of people who are waiting to be placed in housing. We are working extremely hard to help them find long-term sustainable homes, but the sad reality is the number of people living in temporary accommodation is continuing to increase.

    “The shortage of housing in London also affects the availability of temporary accommodation. There are clear legal standards set by the government for temporary accommodation, including size standards, condition and location. We comply with all of these and work diligently towards providing a high standard of temporary housing. However, temporary accommodation can often appear to be basic, consisting of one bedroom and a bathroom or kitchen, sometimes with facilities shared with other residents.

    “While we look to keep people as close to their families and support networks as possible, it’s sadly often the case that the only suitable option we are able to offer is outside of the borough and sometimes outside of London.”

    A Hackney Council spokesperson said: “The council has statutory responsibilities under the Homelessness Reduction Act and our officers work hard to prevent residents from becoming homeless and support those who are.

    “We take these issues extremely seriously and are doing everything we can to tackle the huge challenges that our residents are experiencing because of the housing crisis and cost of living crisis. The council is aware of Ms Bennett’s concerns and this is being followed up by our officers.”

    1. Absent fathers eh?

      Women with multitudes of children by different men , and no wonder there is a housing shortage .

      My spaniels have better pedigrees than families like that

        1. The population of the UK has tripled since I was born. The reproduction ratio of the indigenous people has fallen. I wonder where all the other newcomers have come from.

          1. Its’s all part of the Great Reset, ordered, supported and funded by the WEF.

            Anarchy and revolution by the indigenous population is the only way out of it. Unfortunately, their brains and balls have been bred (and ‘educated’) out of them. The WEF and their paymasters, the global corporations, know that and they are complacent in their smugness.

      2. Back in the late 90s I believe the last labour government were trying to bring in an action whereby absent fathers were going to be made responsible for the financial care of their off-spring. Not able to find most of the men, of course it back fired and was shoved under the carpet. But for people who had separated from their spouses as the guy I was working with had. With three young children, he was being bled dry by his ex, she had moved in with another man who earnings were in a much higher bracket than the chap I was working with. Sadly for his children, in the end he shoved off the Spain to live, because he couldn’t afford to stay in the UK.

        1. Written by Ayokunle Oluwalana – one of the Eton educated Oluwalanas I expect. Came over with William the Conquerer

          1. No, no, no…much earlier…they were here to build Hadrian’s Wall. Nice family, so I’m told.

    3. Having informed us that we loved this swimming chap, they keep reporting stuff about him as though we are all interested in it!

  59. A blast from the past!
    https://youtu.be/QFUi5lAL9Sg

    Why on Earth did she only have the one UK hit?
    Am I the only one to believe that our pop music industry’s obsession with all things American cut us off from a huge amount of superb music from the Continent?

    2. They are a lovely colour and they remind me of my mother – she used to repot the the offsets and most of them flowered on the window sill.

  61. Normally by April 27th we have switched the central heating off for the summer. Not this year. I’ve been trying to find out what the actual daily maximum temperatures have been this April for the nearest weather station to our domicile. The information is not available, it seems, but the Met Office must know it because their weather stations record it daily. Why can’t we have it?

    This cool spring seems to fit neatly with the idea that a Grand Solar Minimum has indeed started. For the record, in this week in 1980, we were basking in the mid-20s in South-West Wales.

    1. The reduction of a terrestrial temperature during the next 30 years can have important implications for different parts of the planet on growing vegetation, agriculture, food supplies, and heating needs in both Northern and Southern hemispheres. This global cooling during the upcoming grand solar minimum 1 (2020–2053) can offset for three decades any signs of global warming and would require inter-government efforts to tackle problems with heat and food supplies for the whole population of the Earth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7575229/#:~:text=This%20period%20has%20started%20in,in%20the%20decade%202031%E2%80%932043.

      1. You’re as up with it as I am. After the GSM ( it won’t bother me, I won’t be here) temperatures should warm again quite rapidly because of the Halstatt Cycle of the Sun-planets baricentre reducing the distance between Earth and Sun for a few hundred years. This orbital iregularity sits on top of the Milankovitch cycles.

        CO2 has NOTHING to do with climate.

        1. Nor me, I shan’t be here either, If I was I’d be 106.

          Too much smoking and whisky will have seen me off.

    2. I do not know what has been the max temperatures here in Norf Zummerzet but I see the local forecast for the next 2 weeks put us at about 13 or 14 deg C.

      I suppose it will warm up sooner or later, sooner please.

    3. Will the PTB come clean about the fact that man-made climate change and the vilification of carbon has been an enormous con?

      Or will they first admit that Covid Vaccines had everything to do with making money for Big Pharma and nothing to do with people’s health?

      Or will the world end before these two great frauds have been exposed?

      1. They’re now switching to nitrogen as the devil – it’s 78% of the atmosphere as opposed to CO2 which is merely 0.04% of the atmosphere.

    4. Our heat is still on and I’m now thinking about going upstairs and putting a tee shirt on under my sweater. I cannot get warm.
      Mind you, it’s pissing it down but the next two days look nice- we shall see.
      Global warming- don’t make me laugh.

      1. It is global warming (omg) when it is warmish-hot; it is ‘weather’ when it is coolish-cold-freezingly cold. They seem to ignore the fact that humanity has always thrived when the earth has entered one of its warming periods. We are, allegedly, just entering a maunder minimum period. Expect to wear bed socks during the summer months.

    5. I’ve still got the Rayburn lit. I’ve tried letting it out several times, but it’s always become too cold and I’ve had to relight it.

    6. Tomorrow if i remember I’ll post the results of the day it hit 20 degrees C in London in the past 8 years. We do a silly bet at work on it, to give us something to look forward to. I do know in 2015 it was 5th May; and in 2020 it was 26th Feb. Obviously this year we haven’t hit it yet and so we are re-betting (all our original bets have expired). I am going mid-May earliest though one poor soul is going for tomorrow. We’ll see. It’s been raining since 4 here but it’s possible tomorrow will be glorious.

      1. I’d just make the point that the temperature in London will be higher than in the surrounding counties due to the urban heat-island effect.

        1. Yes. It’s just a bit of fun at work but it basically proves nothing…it’s all random!

  62. My little joke about Bradford water led me to this article about Anthony Gadie – a Skiptonian I had never heard of before. One of eleven children, seven of whom were born in Skipton, he led an interesting and useful life. A long-ish read but informative. Note the comment by the reservoir builders about the taste of the water. Gadie should be better known. Enjoy!
    https://www.undercliffecemetery.co.uk/about/history/anthony-gadie/

    1. A long-held ambition of mine was to go through Skipton on a barge, a feat achieved four years ago with my old dad playing a blinder on the barge.

  65. Biden’s debt ceiling crisis threatens stark consequences for the dollar. 27 April 2023.

    In any case, the imposition of sanctions, first on Iran then last year on Russia, has seriously worried many developing countries, alerting them to the dangers of falling out with the US and galvanising attempts to find dollar alternatives.

    The second caveat concerns doubts about the dollar’s long term viability as a sound currency. Years of quantitative easing and debt accumulation have taken their toll, with the growing impasse over the US debt ceiling being just the latest example of a country whose mountainous public borrowing shows every sign of getting completely out of control.

    Once again, the US government is in danger of running out of money. Without Congress’s go-ahead for borrowing more, this is likely to happen by July at the latest. One way or another, US debt ceiling crises have in the past always been resolved, with outright default avoided. But just how many near scrapes can you survive before your luck runs out?

    Indeed! The Arabs have already bailed out and the Africans are following them. The decline of the dollar will probably follow Hemingway’s dictum about bankruptcy; first very slowly and then very quickly!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/04/27/dollar-currency-us-debt-ceiling-biden/

    1. Bruce Bairnsfather: “Well, if you knows of a better ‘ole, go to it.”

      ( if the US dollar were to collapse, where would you invest?)

          2. The local name for Victoria Falls?
            It’s an ounce of pure gold, so a lovely motif for it. Would love to have one of those!

      2. Better invest before it collapses!

        More stable currencies, some people have mentioned the UAE currency.
        Metals – gold, silver, uranium
        New issue Bitcoin.

          2. I would always wonder if it actually existed, and then of course, it’s constantly decaying.

          3. I think there are different types of contract. One is paper “metals” and it doesn’t exist. Another is that you own an unspecified certain amount of metal in a reputable vault that is audited. The best kind of contract is that you own a specific piece of metal in a reputable vault that is audited.

          4. This is my worry about it all. If I were to buy a precious or semi precious metal, I would need to have it in my possession. Moh has some gold and I can live with that. Trusting some company to ‘hold’ my assets without me having any (immediate or otherwise) access to them appears to me to be the same as keeping your money in a bank.

          5. Private vaults, in a safe jurisdiction. For example Switzerland – all the crooks of the world keep their gold there – it’ll be safe! They aren’t going to raid their own gold.
            Companies like GoldMoney work hard at building a trustworthy reputation.
            I think the rule of thumb is, do what the rich people do, because they will always look after their own interests.

    2. It would make me a pauper as my largest pension, by a long way, is in US$. On verra.

      2. That’s because they’re not serious about doing anything to bring about Brexit. Scrap EU legislation and the return to the EU’s clutches will not be as seamless as they want.

      1. I’m going to be controversial here, but I liked him. His show was a hoot, and a bit of a guilty pleasure!

      2. I’m going to be controversial here, but I liked him. His show was a hoot, and a bit of a guilty pleasure!

  69. 373945+ up ticks,

    The time has long past when what now passes for the tory party should have been put down (scrapped) .

    Why we have needed three mass uncontrolled immigration, pro eu, paedophile umbrella parties ( the coalition) to
    govern these Isles beats me I don’t believe any member of the electoral majority could answer either.

    Tories to scrap just one in five redundant EU laws in latest Brexit betrayal
    Kemi Badenoch said to have told Eurosceptics it was impossible to remove the rulings despite Rishi Sunak’s pledge to abolish more than 4,000

    Just scrap one in three of the odious trio would be a start to regaining self respect at least.

  70. Birdy Three today; that’s four-in-a-row!

    Wordle 677 3/6
    ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
    ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Par today, better than the last 2 days and going in the right direction hopefully.

      Wordle 677 4/6

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

    2. Well done! Par 4 for me.

      Wordle 677 4/6

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

    1. Why do children need all these multiple jabs and boosters? There are far more now than my children had, and many many more than when I was a child. How did I manage to survive all these years?

      1. When I was a child, I was vaccinated against all kinds of tropical diseases, which I never caught. Somehow, the Covid vax doesn’t stop you catching it, in fact entirely the opposide – those vaxed seem to catch Covid at the drop of a hat.

        1. We spent last weekend in Sheffield – at the family lunch we heard that brother in law (formerly married to OH’s estranged sister) and his second wife couldn’t go to his brother’s funeral as they got covid. I said it was clear the vaccines didn’t work then – but he trotted out the usual guff about mitigation of symptoms. This is an educated and sensible man……. I said although I had the two AZ jabs for travel reasons, I wasn’t having any boosters. Subject was changed………

          1. Just had a letter from the NHAITCHS telling me that I badly need my 17th booster because I may “have a reduced immune system”. Well, if I do, it will be because of the three jabs I was coerced (duped) into having.

          2. Once they’ve got you in their clutches it’s hard to break free. I just ignore the texts I get from the surgery telling me to have this or that jab or go for blood pressure tests etc.

            I’ll maybe go if I fall ill.

          3. A couple in the village (she a retired midwife) have had dozens of vaccinations – well, at least 5 each – but KEEP catching covid – at least once a month…

          4. Once they’ve got you in their clutches it’s hard to break free. I just ignore the texts I get from the surgery telling me to have this or that jab or go for blood pressure tests etc.

            I’ll maybe go if I fall ill.

          6. The jab seems to make the symptoms worse and makes you vulnerable to other upper respiratory tract infections.

          8. A friend of MOH is a jab enthusiast.

            He’s had five, yet went down with really severe Covid only a few weeks after his fifth jab.

        2. I’ve had many jabs over the last 30 years for travel – I haven’t caught any of those tropical diseases. I don’t think I’ll have any more though.

        3. Not only do they catch it, it seems to enhance the symptoms. Our younger son needed antibiotics for a chest infection after the covid injection, he has never before required antibiotics in his life for anything. The covid jab has also left him with a dairy intolerance.

      2. I have a suspicion that these multiple jabs are over-loading infants’ immune systems.
        Hence all the allergies and intolerances.
        Children nowadays are treated as pin cushions.

  72. Tories to leave thousands of EU laws intact in latest Brexit betrayal. Kemi Badenoch said to have told Eurosceptics it was impossible to remove the rulings despite Rishi Sunak’s pledge to abolish more than 4,000

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/27/tories-scrap-one-in-five-redundant-eu-laws-brexit-betrayal/

    BTL Percival Wrattstrangler

    Is Richard Tice going to be more successful than Nigel Farage in winning parliamentary seats in Westminster?

    True, Farage triumphed in the European elections with both UKIP and the Brexit Party. But he had virtually no success in national elections for Westminster MPs. Only Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless won seats for UKIP and they have both deserted the cause acrimoniously and in the last general election not one single Brexit Party candidate won a seat in the 2019.

    I think that with the majority of MPs being pro EU and with both the House of Lords and the civil service being against Brexit then Brexit hasn’t a chance of succeeding. What the people wanted is not remotely relevant – as Peter Mandelson said: we have to accept that we are living in the post-democratic age.

    Is this the end of Brexit! Last week I posed the question: Will the UK be able to get back into the EU before France, Holland, Spain, Italy and Austria manage to escape from it?

    1. OT Rastus, I replied to you in the DT about editing your posts. If you hover over the’flag’ 3 dots appear and if you tap them you get an edit or delete option! You have to be quick though, I think it’s about 5 minutes!

  73. That’s me for this grey – and cold – day. The thermometer said it was 11ºC but it felt like zero most of the day. Rain just starting – and will be about tomorrow. May be a little warmer. Virtually all potting on done in the greenhouse – next stage will be planting out – but not till mid May.

    Have a jolly evening trying to forget the ghastly state of affairs surrounding us.

    A demain.

    1. The wind was very cold here, Bill. Then it rained. Typical English spring, I would have thought 🙂

  75. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/27/sudan-evacuation-british-man-forced-leave-wife-son-flight/

    British man forced to leave wife and son to catch Sudan evacuation flight

    Imperfect ceasefire has split up numerous families desperate to escape the violence still claiming lives across the country

    Mr Ahmed, 60, was a bus driver in Bedfordshire who returned to Sudan in 2014 to take up farming.

    His
    wife Mageel and son Ahmed are trapped in the north of Khartoum, but
    trying to track them down was a potential death sentence.

    1. Forced to leave his wife and child behind, just like the refugees crossing the Channel.

      2. Didn’t take to ‘farming’! Probably too much hard work – not used to it, poor chap!

      4. The ‘child’ is probably an adult, if the father is 60. He’s keeping his options open, so the wife and son can look after the farm.

          2. Butane at one bar has a different density to butane at 50 bar, so a gallon of each would have different weights.

  77. What a depressing time we live in

    We have the so called Brexiteers that are slowly being purged by the lefty establishment blob

    Although the so called brexiteers sold their souls to the climate change net zero great reset globalist pandemic agenda and they weren’t that serious about brexit anyway.

    Then we have the remainers that sold their souls to the climate change net zero great reset globalist pandemic agenda.

    To vote for.

    And that’s it

    1. I don’t believe there was more than a handful of true Brexiteers out of all the Tory party. Lying bastards were just scared by UKIP votes in 2015.

  79. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2e4027ee4c71d462c6d80be77f3839a20b296554f6047808485668eaf4d504ba.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7666a8b6ad56236a7741379924b4fead5197999948224d079f83bae758ff6691.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/415f0a791640ece38087379ae39bd2a4ae00869ae86ebe461aeb3f04559e61f6.png A pair of red-necked grebes Podiceps grisegena have returned for the third spring in a row. Not much else but a lot of ducks, swans and geese have presented themselves in their pairs. Common shelduck Tadorna tadorna were present as were pairs of coots, mute swans, Canada geese, greylag geese, and a second-year herring gull.

          1. I’ve got my Observers Book of British Birds out! Actually that’s a lie – I’m sure it’s a buzzard! 😘

  80. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2e4027ee4c71d462c6d80be77f3839a20b296554f6047808485668eaf4d504ba.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7666a8b6ad56236a7741379924b4fead5197999948224d079f83bae758ff6691.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/415f0a791640ece38087379ae39bd2a4ae00869ae86ebe461aeb3f04559e61f6.png A pair of red-necked grebes Podiceps grisegena have returned for the third spring in a row. Not much else but a lot of ducks, swans and geese have presented themselves in their pairs. Common shelduck Tadorna tadorna were present as were pairs of coots, mute swans, Canada geese, greylag geese, and a second-year herring gull.

  81. Evening, all. Very pleasant day, despite the weather; I went to watch one of my horses work on the gallops (went nicely) and see the others in their stables (one ran – disappointingly – yesterday, the others are due to go off on their summer hols soon). Then a trip to the nearby gardens where the bluebells are coming out. Did some shopping and managed to find a tomato and cucumber plant (I’d had no luck on Sunday getting anything in the tomato line). I’ve put the plants in the growbag in the greenhouse, but it was too wet to do anything else in the garden.

      1. It was very pleasant. When I went round the garden (in a stately home) I had the place to myself! The only downside was that I filled up with petrol as I was going past the cheapest station around and it had gone up 1ppl since I passed it on Sunday (when my tank was full).

  82. Nothing changes, our public service strike goes on because they haven’t got changes they demanded such as overtime pay for working after 4PM or the right to work from home. .

    Apparently the lazy mob are still being paid because the payroll system is operated by civil servants who are on strike.

    2. Does the dolt not realise that the money was payed to slave owners on the release of their slaves?

    3. I was wondering what bus company the purple bus is from. Brings to mind of the joke “Can you tell me the way to Turnham Green?”

    2. I remember the totters coming round collecting scrap metal etc. in South London in the 1950s using a horse and cart much like that. “Rag bone!”.

      1. I remember that in Worcestershire – and the coalman delivering by horse and cart. The kids used to be sent out with bucket and spade to collect the horse manure for the roses.

        1. Yes!! The neighbourhood kids would be pushing each other out the way to get the deposits for their dads’ roses etc.

          1. Dad used to get a load of horse shite from the pit stables every now and again!

        2. Gloucestershire too. The milkman and the greengrocer came round with horse and cart. The fishman had a van and so did the baker. The grocer used to deliver my mum’s weekly order. The coal man had a lorry but he also kept horses in the field behind us.

          1. Our coalman also had a lorry (later, after he had given up the horse and cart), but he kept some showjumpers which I used to ride. I could say I learned to ride on the coalman’s horse 🙂

  89. Can you believe this.
    I had a phone call from the male secretary of the cardiologist this afternoon. He wasn’t happy that I had requested a change of hospital for my treatment and insisted that no only my GP sends a letter requesting the change, that also I send an email confirming this.
    I told him the reason why I have asked for this is because nothing had happened in almost two years except one face to face and several phone calls and letters. I also complained that in that space of time they should have added me to a waiting list for the treatment required, a catheter ablation. I asked him if I was on the waiting list because there had been no mention of it in this time. He told me I was but wouldn’t tell me when !
    I found the number of the department in London and after 15 minutes my call was answered. Again after giving my personal information to them the person I spoke to, confirmed that I was on the list but he wasn’t sure of the exact date. Some time in June !!!
    Something I had no idea of. But the lady who deals with the list was not available to speak to, could I ring back tomorrow. I was given her direct phone number. It was the first I had heard of any of this.
    Can you imagine how I felt after this very strange conversation. Hopefully I will find out exactly what has been happening around 10 am tomorrow. Wish me luck.
    And it’s good night from me folk’s.😴

    2. God Eddy, I bet you are fed up to the back teeth with all this. We certainly are.
      By the time I see the so-called consultant I will probably need to have most of my right facial cheek sliced off…. not something I look forward to.
      I wish you the very best of luck because that seems to be all we can hope for.

          4. Back in his Breitbart days, before they banned him, a few of the regulars were of the view that Ogga1 was a Tory plant. Given that his efforts have helped kill off BNP, UKIP and For Britain they may have been right.

            Laurence Fox and Reclaim may as well pack it in now and save the cost of those lost deposits.

            “Ann-Marie Waters rejoins UKIP.” Nuff said.

          2. Answers depend on who they ask.
            Most of us are too busy getting on with life to bother with memes.

      3. 373993+ up ticks,

        Morning js,

        pleasure to be of service master jack, how is your brain cell progressing ?

  93. Going to bed soon. Made marinated chicken breasts with Hasselback spuds and asparagus tonight- very nice too. Husband cleared his plate.
    Another outing planned for tomorrow so need some sleep, hopefully.
    Try and be good Y’all.

  95. Every day, the Left complain about our right-wing media, such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.
    At the same time the Right complain about our Left-wing media, such as the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.

    C’est la vie.

    The rest of us ignore them both and get on with life.

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