Sunday 4 June: The Covid inquiry should plan for the next pandemic, not rake over past failures

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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437 thoughts on “Sunday 4 June: The Covid inquiry should plan for the next pandemic, not rake over past failures”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Picking the Right One – Italian Style.

    Giuseppe excitedly tells his mother he’s fallen in love and that he is going to get married.

    He says, “Just for fun, Mama, I’m going to bring over three women and you try and guess which one I’m going to marry.” The mother agrees.

    The next day, he brings three beautiful women into the house, sits them down on the couch and they chat for a while

    He then says, “Okay, Mama, guess which one am I going to marry?”

    Mama says immediately, “The one on the right.”

    “That’s amazing, Mama. You’re right. How did you know?”

    Mama replies: “I don’t like her.”

  4. 372926+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    That smacks very much of ” forgive & forget” much the same as the lab/lib/con coalition majority voter stance of those lost in world war two, carry on as odiously abnormal regarding the rodent race to the bottom.

    Currently nobody but nobody can, as we once could, hold our collective heads high in looking forward to the future.

    Covid inquiry should plan for the next pandemic, not rake over past failures

  5. Morning all! Bright and sunny here and it looks as though that perishing wind has dropped.

  6. We can’t defend people in their own homes, so why posture as a great power? 4 June 2023.

    Count yourself lucky if the place where you live is still free from this menace. But, from what I hear and from what people write to me, there are many parts of the country where home-owners think it wise never to challenge these street gangs, places where the price of any sort of objection is smashed windows or worse.

    Where old people cower inside as kids repeatedly kick balls against their doors and windows, where Halloween is a real nightmare for the old, weak and lonely, where police seldom come, where shopkeepers put metal grids on windows because they have to, and endure shop-lifting which is never tackled or punished, where there really is no real law at all.

    But our Government is too busy showing off its manly virtue in Ukraine to do anything to protect the people who live here.

    I certainly wouldn’t challenge any gangs even if I were not 76 and still able to walk in a straight line. It would be foolishness. Even if you could magically prevail you would almost certainly be the one up on charges.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12155795/PETER-HITCHENS-defend-people-homes-posture-great-power.html

    1. Morning Minty!
      Yes, I can just see the headline “Teenage gang forced to beat elderly racist bully to death.”

      1. Good morning BB2 and everyone.
        I like your ‘headline’, but I hope it is not aimed at anyone on this forum; bullying is unacceptable.

    2. Plod say they have better things to do. Maybe they do. I can imagine they are overstretched. However if we ignore the small things they grow into big things.

      We need a tougher criminal code. We need to end welfare. The scum have got to simply stop being fed. If you’re given everything, you don’t value it. The same applies to freedom.

    1. Many of her critics totally fail to recognise the difference between true asylum seekers and economic chancers.

      The UK is not short of housing, but rather it has a surplus of people and the continued high immigration numbers are not improving the situation.

      1. Lefties deliberately conflate the two. Nor do they ever answer ‘why didn’t they stop earlier?’

        As soon as logic is imposed, their arguments collapse. The gimmigrants must be returned and the border defended properly. If they sqawk for help, get out there and shoot the dinghy. They had a choice, they made the wrong one. Then the boats will stop.

        If they manage to land here, hunt them down, arrest, chain them and fling them back to France. If Frogland doesn’t like it, tough. They’ve broken international law already.

      1. It’s very difficult taking pictures one-handed when the other hand needs to keep a firm grip on the hard wood of the tiller!

  12. For the amusement of some here are some musical reflections from a performance last night at the Elgar Festival. A big read, and passed over by most people, especially those beyond these walls with the attention span of a goldfish. Tomorrow’s chip wrapping, so I don’t feel so bad about boring some people!

    “It was fitting that this morning’s ‘Something Understood’ was about transience – “all things must pass away” as George Harrison once sang to chronicle the passing of the Fabs. Today is my daughter’s birthday. She is 36 years old, and yet I remember her at 27, the last time I saw her, or at 13, the time before. She has already long gone from my life, when I had hoped that our love could outlive me, as I pass down my legacy a generation.

    Yesterday, I stood with aching, ageing feet that had walked better miles, in the Elgar Festival Chorus looking down the beauty of Worcester Cathedral, reflecting that all it needs is for one of Putin’s missiles to land here, and that beauty and all the music that has resonated in its columns since Elgar’s time will be a memory, and one fading when those who can remember pass away themselves. They opened the great door on the west wall at the far end of the nave, and for the first time in my memory, I could see a beautiful sunlit June day on a lawn leading to the river that was a special and fleeing treat of high summer. It will not be like this when it rains.

    They opened the concert with an orchestral work entitled ‘The Secret Garden’ by Michael Berkeley, who was in attendance. When I heard part of it in rehearsal, I thought rather of ‘The Angry Hornet’. Not the hornet of real life, a peaceful but somewhat intimidating wasp pawing patiently on my kitchen window waiting to be let out, but something in one’s fractured imagination far more terrifying. Like one of Putin’s missiles rather than a cathedral of a summer’s day that is rather the reality of the moment.

    I struggled making sense of it. All full of unconnected discords with no harmonic resonances with anything I had encountered or imagined. Alma Deutscher, in her satire of this sort of thing I attended the premiere of in March, said that only clever people could understand such music. I am not a clever person, clearly. I wondered about the state of mind of the man who composed such noise, as if this was a journey into a garden like the sunlit lawn beyond the west wall, but finding instead chaos, ruin and anger. Yet, when I met him, he seemed a thoroughly likeable fellow.

    The main work of the evening was Elgar’s ‘The Music Makers’. I love this piece and have sung it many times. It was the reason I joined the Elgar Chorale, when they put it on in the Cathedral on my birthday in 2009. It was at this event where Dame Janet Baker gave a speech to the choir after the performance. She once gave the definitive solo and I cannot imagine it better performed by anyone else. Tonight, they had a rich, soupy contralto, a hornet rather than a wasp, a cello rather than a viola. Even though Elgar had written it for a contralto, I was so used to hearing it done by a mezzo, it was initially rather a shock to hear a quite different sound, but she did it very well.

    It was not the best performance we gave of this work. After singing my heart out during the rehearsal, it was quite unforgivable for Stephen Shellard to lecture the tenors about blend just before we went on. I do not know what the director of the Cathedral Chamber Choir was thinking, but he ought to know that tenors especially when singing accented fortissimo crescendos in a cathedral over a full orchestra must know in rehearsal where to place the voice, and not leave it to the performance to pull back. Those soaring melodies on ffff that must be done with full voice ended up having to be falsettoed on the top notes, which is not what either Elgar intended, or the audience could hear over the din of the orchestra at full pelt.

    I was also struggling personally with where I was put in the choir, dead centre in the second row of tenors with a lot of insecure basses behind me that were consistently either jumping the beat in quiet passages or coming in late because they were not following the conductor and hesitant about committing themselves. I had hoped this was sorted out in rehearsal, but clearly the vastly different acoustic and distance of the cathedral had thrown them. Since they moved the performing space to the centre of the cathedral from the west end, any conductor must know about the lag caused beyond the transept that must be adjusted during the final run-through and the back rows trained to watch and anticipate the beat.

    More serious was that the conductor had not bothered to learn the piece adequately. Maybe he thought that Elgar, being tuneful and expressive, was not real music compared to ‘The Secret Garden’, and could be buzzed off with a bit of pomp and circumstance. He had not thought through the many changes in tempo that Elgar puts in, and often changed his mind, as is his right. It is the conductor, more than the composer, that has the final say as to how music is expressed. Nevertheless, it does not work when the orchestra has one interpretation, and the choir quite a different one. Several times, the choir and orchestra were out with one another over a largamente or a molto stringendo, and all the conductor could do was to wave his arms about, hoping that someone was watching as we all struggled with the notes to find our place. How I missed Donald Hunt at this point. Donald’s soul was infused with the music of Elgar, and he knew very well every single nuance of every single note in the whole full score, and made sure that if were to live up to the beauty of the music, we needed to as well. There is a good chance then that we can all find common purpose, even when we had rehearsed separately.

    I had a chuckle over one expression marking on Page 76, first bar of the score. Elgar had written over the accompaniment ‘colla parte’ during the contralto solo. Nothing unusual, except that in this bar there was a change of tempo, the soloist had a dotted crotchet and the orchestra quavers. How on earth could the soloist indicate to the orchestra to follow her change of tempo? What I believe Elgar meant was that the orchestra (and through the conductor) had to mindread the soloist, and know intuitively her rubato as she interprets Elgar’s largamente. Elgar demands a level of sensitivity to the feelings of the other musicians that was expressed through this ‘colla parte’, which I doubt any other composer would have attempted or even thought about.

    Elgar is the only composer I know who would write a crescendo on a rest. Of course it impossible for someone in silence to get louder, but I read it as a change of mindfulness, so that the following phrase is performed with due strength. He does a lot of this. The “Elgar Frown” he often does, when he has a change of mood mid-phrase which needs to be expressed.”

    At this point, I decided it’s time for breakfast!

    1. We can rebuild buildings. The woke, Lefty retardation and erasure of our society cannot be restored so easily.

      The Left cause all wars. The Right end them. Then we rebuild.

      1. We couldn’t rebuild the great cathedrals, though they seem to be having a go at it in Paris.

        1. Your being to pessimistic Ndovu. The restoration of Windsor castle is proof that we could. Mind you restoring sanity and stability in todays society is, I fear, something that is beyond us unless their is a political revolution in this country. I don’t see one on the horizon, do you?

    2. An uplifting tale, except that you used the expression ‘common purpose’.

      How immensely sad to be out of contact with your daughter.

      1. I posted some thoughts about a drawing she put on Facebook that made me think of a monk in contemplation. I found my comment and the picture deleted, and now she has suspended her Facebook account in case men start stalking her.

  14. Putin’s exploits as KGB spy likely to have been exaggerated, investigation finds. 3 June 2023.

    Vladimir Putin was not a Soviet super spy in East Germany in the 1980s but a plodding pen-pusher eager to please his superiors, an investigation has found.

    Germany’s Spiegel magazine investigated Mr Putin’s murky past on the suspicion that stories of his exploits as a KGB agent were exaggerated.

    Instead of conducting vital missions to hold back the forces of democracy, Spiegel said that Mr Putin was focused on “banal” administrative work during his KGB posting to Dresden, “endlessly sorting through travel applications for West German relatives or searching for potential informants among foreign students”.

    Vlad is subject at the moment to a lot of negative personal propaganda. This because, despite the mountains of lies and disinformation in the MSM about the War in Ukraine, he is still personally popular and not just in Russia. Thus we get stories about his non-existent Palace, his vast undetected wealth and here his unclaimed role as KGB Masterspy. So far as I’m aware he has never made any such claim to this status and significantly none appear in any of the biographies about him. It is thus a straw man erected for the sole purpose of being knocked down.

    It is worth comparing Vlad to his Western counterparts. To the senile pederast in the White House. To the cowards and liars that infest Westminster. To the French pervert in the Elysee Palace and last but not least the German Chancellor who has condoned the American attack on the Nordstream Pipeline that has severely damaged the German economy. Alongside these examples he appears personally modest and abstemious, almost ascetic. His Christianity and traditional beliefs contrasting sharply with those of his political rivals. No wonder they hate him!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/03/vladimir-putin-spy-exploits-likely-exaggerated-east-germany/

    1. There was an excellent documentary on radio four several years ago, describing Putin’s rise and and the life-experiences that may have made him what he is. It was well balanced and very interesting.
      I wish I could track it down, Sue Edison might know where to find it.

      1. Morning Sos. There have been a couple more since but they are somewhat biased.

      2. Morning Sos. There have been a couple more since but they are somewhat biased.

      3. There was once a very interesting programme on radio 4 on Enoch Powell, it was very balanced. I remember it because I happened to be driving past Park Dale in Wolverhampton at the time (which was mentioned in the programme), roads I had never gone up (I think they may be private) despite them being less than a mile from where I grew up and went to school. So I pulled into the road and listened to the programme. It must have been around 2006 or so as I must have been in Wolverhampton delivering my children to my mother to look after. Actually probably 2008 which would have been 40 years from 1968.

        I bet Al-Beeb has burnt the tape by now.

        1. They used to do some excellent programmes; sadly political correctness has demonised certain individuals so the approach has changed. In my view for the worse, somewhat Orwellian.

          1. If you look up ‘Propaganda in the Soviet Union’ on Wikipedia, you will soon see who they emulate. George Orwell was far to circumspect for the BBC.

        2. Apparently, the BBC has withdrawn its interview with Andrew Tate because of complaints. I’m not surprised. I watched the uncut version on You Tube that Tate had filmed at the same time. It was even worse for bias, lies and misrepresentations than the infamous Jordan Peterson/ Cathy Newman interview. They sent Tate a list of questions they were going to ask him prior to the interview, then asked non of them but proceeded to ambush him. It was an utter failure on the part of the BBC as he lambasted them for their deceit, dishonesty, propaganda, redundancy as the ‘legacy’ media and all round evil intentions. It is worth watching the unedited version because it is so instructive about how the BBC is in the business of character assassination, not the truth.

          I was not pro Andrew Tate, in fact he wasn’t even on my radar but now, listening to what he actually says, I’m 100% for him and what he stands for. He is another rebel in the same vain as Elon Musk. And, that is why the establishment fears him. It is not good when billionaires tell the truth. That makes them very dangerous.

          1. Apparently al-Beeb has been caught manipulating the video footage of the incident in Ely. Al-Beeb’s excuse for cutting parts of the video (to make it look like the chase was a chase) was that if they hadn’t edited it, it would take too much time to play. Anyway that was from my 18 year old son last night so I cannot say for sure what happened (but also, I don’t doubt my son either).

          4. This tells us nothing other than at that moment the police van was close to the bike. How close was it when the crash occurred?

          5. Well, it does tell us that it isn’t true that the police were no where near. That was their first assertion, I believe.

    2. “His Christianity and traditional beliefs contrasting sharply with those of his political rivals. No wonder they hate him!”

      Apparently one of his nicknames is ‘The Monk’. He enjoys going to monasteries and to churches. He has been to Mount Athos twice.

    3. “His Christianity and traditional beliefs contrasting sharply with those of his political rivals. No wonder they hate him!”

      Apparently one of his nicknames is ‘The Monk’. He enjoys going to monasteries and to churches. He has been to Mount Athos twice.

  15. Putin’s exploits as KGB spy likely to have been exaggerated, investigation finds. 3 June 2023.

    Vladimir Putin was not a Soviet super spy in East Germany in the 1980s but a plodding pen-pusher eager to please his superiors, an investigation has found.

    Germany’s Spiegel magazine investigated Mr Putin’s murky past on the suspicion that stories of his exploits as a KGB agent were exaggerated.

    Instead of conducting vital missions to hold back the forces of democracy, Spiegel said that Mr Putin was focused on “banal” administrative work during his KGB posting to Dresden, “endlessly sorting through travel applications for West German relatives or searching for potential informants among foreign students”.

    Vlad is subject at the moment to a lot of negative personal propaganda. This because, despite the mountains of lies and disinformation in the MSM about the War in Ukraine, he is still personally popular and not just in Russia. Thus we get stories about his non-existent Palace, his vast undetected wealth and here his unclaimed role as KGB Masterspy. So far as I’m aware he has never made any such claim to this status and significantly none appear in any of the biographies about him. It is thus a straw man erected for the sole purpose of being knocked down.

    It is worth comparing Vlad to his Western counterparts. To the senile pederast in the White House. To the cowards and liars that infest Westminster. To the French pervert in the Elysee Palace and last but not least the German Chancellor who has condoned the American attack on the Nordstream Pipeline that has severely damaged the German economy. Alongside these examples he appears personally modest and abstemious, almost ascetic. His Christianity and traditional beliefs contrasting sharply with those of his political rivals. No wonder they hate him!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/03/vladimir-putin-spy-exploits-likely-exaggerated-east-germany/

    3. A man cannot get pregnant. The perversion pretending this is a man is utterly insane.

      1. I feel sorry for the Psychiatrists who can no longer consider such types as patients. I suppose an analogy might be taking a live mouse away from a cat….

      2. In the USA people are fighting back with their wallets.
        Most British people will not be familiar with ‘Target’ but it is a major store in the USA. It has lost 12 billion as people retaliate against its pro transgender stance.
        Former Target exec reveals the ‘one item’ that sparked consumer firestorm
        Target’s market value has declined over $12 billion since mid-May
        https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-target-exec-reveals-one-item-that-sparked-consumer-firestorm

  18. Good morning all.
    Another bright start with 7°C on the yard thermometer.

    1. 13’c here and climbing rapidly. It’ll be 23’c which means 25 indoors. If the breeze drops that’s 28.

  19. The Covid inquiry should plan for the next pandemic, not rake over past failures

    No need for a plan, the WHO will take care of all that

    1. Letter in today’s Terriblegraph. I disagree with the writer’s comment “likewise masks”, as there is zero proof that masks “will reduce the impact of Covid but will not necessarily prevent transmission or infection” (they may – but I doubt it); nevertheless I tend to agree with the writer:

      “ At minimum cost in time and money the likely conclusions of the Covid inquiry could be summarised as follows:

      The Government acted in good faith but with a lack of clear vision. There is no point in wasting time on the performance of individual ministers and advisers.

      There should have been no lockdowns.

      There should have been no track and trace.

      The advice should have been to take great care if you were in poor health, diabetic or obese.

      Infection will aid immunity.

      Vaccines will reduce the impact of Covid but will not necessarily prevent transmission or infection. Likewise masking.

      Schools should have stayed open and business should have carried on as normally as possible.

      Travel should have remained open where possible.

      All Covid punishments should be reversed.”

      1. But most of us have already realised that the whole pandemic crises was just one chapter in the Great Reset and was never meant to have any factual basis behind it, just a psyop for the masses.

      2. I didn’t mind the first lock down. People didn’t understand it and need direction. However, on lifting it the outcome was going to be obvious. In addition, when you test more people, you find more problems. That’s basic science.

        But then… that’s the key bit, isn’t it? Logic, reason and science went out the door over panic, terror and FUD. The state wanted us scared. It wanted us compliant and then, when people got uppity it fought back, bitterly.

      3. I don’t think spending time analysing Ministers’ actions is wasted – vast sums of money were spent, and I’m sure we’d like to know where it all went! I’m sure it won’t happen but I’d like to see several of them in court and on the way to prison!

      4. They ignored science. Science says it takes 10-15 years to develop a vaccine.
        Immunity should not have been given to pharmaceutical manufacturers.
        Uttar Pradesh refused to give Pfizer immunity and Pfizer would not supply them
        Our Government banned Ivermectin and Hydroxychloraquin but Uttar Pradesh used then and had fewer deaths.
        I think there should be an independent inquiry but we all know that will not be allowed to happen.
        It will be the usual: The greater the crime the lesser the punishment. Big Pharma will wall walk away with $billions of our money for no benefit to the public.

    2. Letter in today’s Terriblegraph. I disagree with the writer’s comment “likewise masks”, as there is zero proof that masks “will reduce the impact of Covid but will not necessarily prevent transmission or infection” (they may – but I doubt it); nevertheless I tend to agree with the writer:

      “ At minimum cost in time and money the likely conclusions of the Covid inquiry could be summarised as follows:

      The Government acted in good faith but with a lack of clear vision. There is no point in wasting time on the performance of individual ministers and advisers.

      There should have been no lockdowns.

      There should have been no track and trace.

      The advice should have been to take great care if you were in poor health, diabetic or obese.

      Infection will aid immunity.

      Vaccines will reduce the impact of Covid but will not necessarily prevent transmission or infection. Likewise masking.

      Schools should have stayed open and business should have carried on as normally as possible.

      Travel should have remained open where possible.

      All Covid punishments should be reversed.”

    3. Letter in today’s Terriblegraph. I disagree with the writer’s comment “likewise masks”, as there is zero proof that masks “will reduce the impact of Covid but will not necessarily prevent transmission or infection” (they may – but I doubt it); nevertheless I tend to agree with the writer:

      “ At minimum cost in time and money the likely conclusions of the Covid inquiry could be summarised as follows:

      The Government acted in good faith but with a lack of clear vision. There is no point in wasting time on the performance of individual ministers and advisers.

      There should have been no lockdowns.

      There should have been no track and trace.

      The advice should have been to take great care if you were in poor health, diabetic or obese.

      Infection will aid immunity.

      Vaccines will reduce the impact of Covid but will not necessarily prevent transmission or infection. Likewise masking.

      Schools should have stayed open and business should have carried on as normally as possible.

      Travel should have remained open where possible.

      All Covid punishments should be reversed.”

    4. SAme as the Foot and Mouth one did? DEFRA ignored that as well and the result was… the same as before. Government doesn’t like to change what it does. When it says ‘lessons will be learned’ it means in marketing and propaganda – to stop you annoying people finding out how useless, sclerotic and utterly incompetent it is.

      1. The was a plan for dealing with Foot and Mouth contained in the Northumberland Report that sat untouched on the shelves of the Westminster libraries.

        From Wiki:-

        The Minister for Agriculture, Frederick Peart, appointed a committee to investigate the outbreak. The Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Foot-and-Mouth Disease part 1 and part 2 were published on 7 March 1969 and 3 November 1969.[2] This report became more commonly known as the Northumberland Report, after its chairman the Duke of Northumberland, a member of the House of Lords.[5] It provided recommendations to keep the disease out of the country and plans for fighting the foot-and-mouth disease.

        That report was often praised as how such a document should be produced and styled, yet it was totally ignored by the Labour Government.

    1. I think it’s been pretty obvious for some time that the threads on public newspapers are infested with government trolls seeking to suppress anything contrary to their policies. The Spectator has a permanent squad to counter any criticism of articles about Ukraine.

      1. As does the Telegraph and Wail. What I’m not sure about is why. Aside from the busy troubled minds with foreign quarrels lark, the propaganda, the deliberate erasure of history (and no mention of the long conflict in the Crimea from the vaunted BBC minitrue) – why? We’re not selling them arms. We’re giving them weapons. Ukraine is corrupt as all heck. It’s so bent a paperclip would give it pause.

      2. We just thought they were trolls back in the day, FB is full of them, they end up getting you banned.

      1. More to the point is the state – the EU tried this and it failed – continually telling farmers what they could grow. Communist Russia tried this and it was a massive failure. So did Mao’s China, Pol pot.. you name it, communists always try to control everything, especially food.

        And folk think we should remain chained. Dear life. What’s comical is that you get a sort of ‘bzzzt! does not compute! when you point out the myriad ways the EU – and our useless government because it refuses to divert away – remains a command economy. People just can’t understand ho malignant it is.

    3. Why do you think there’s an entire government department that carefully quangos out the curriculum? The arms length deniability is rife with nepotism, incompetence and spite, specifically to control what children are and are not allowed to learn.

      The state would abandon any interest in teaching children to think and pour propaganda at them if it could. Schools are not there for the child. They exist for the state machine. This is why big fat state would never, ever consider school vouchers.

    4. He is also the author of: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” Which the left is using brilliantly now.
      But he also said: “There will come a day, when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and truth will again triumph.”
      The man was evil but no fool.

    1. The law has been satisfied but it’s another nail in the coffin of justice.

    2. Ah! Dear Richard is a revolutionary, albeit a peaceful one. That won’t stop the shower running down this Country from marking his card.

  24. Good morning all,

    Wall to wall sunshine at the McPhee residence in N W Hampshire today. Pesky wind still in the Nor’-East and a cool 11℃ but we should see 20℃ this afternoon.

    Now the Colditz story is to receive the anti-white black-wash including traducing Douglas Bader.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/03/tv-series-dismantle-colditz-mythology-racism-brit-officers/

    They just can’t leave it alone, can they. Anything to destroy Britain.

    Also this:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/03/anglo-saxons-arent-real-cambridge-student-fight-nationalism/

    So, according to some Cambridge ‘scholars’, Sutton Hoo isn’t real.

    1. There seems to be a constant chipping-away of our national identity and history. The object is to make us ashamed of what and who we are. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” – 1984.

    2. More to the Colditz story than meets the eye.

      The good Doctor was not at Colditz for long, because he went on hunger strike until he was sent to a PoW camp for Indian troops, somewhere in France, whence he and a companion escaped to Switzerland.

      1. And anyone who truly believes that the Government manages the NHS is deluding themselves.
        The NHS manages the NHS. The only role of the Government is to continue to provide an ever increasing amount of “resources”. NHS Speak for more money taken from the pockets of the Poor Bloody Taxpayer.

        1. The NHS has a huge army of non-jobs whose sole role is to follow the latestdictat from the NHS trusts, who get their marching orders from the department for health. Why else are there thousands upon thousands of DIE idiots? Why are there endless hordes of greeniacs?

          It is one pointless bureaucracy feeding another, which feeds another. The Left love this. It’s an entrenched unionised blob. The only person who suffers is the patient, the customer, the bugger paying for it all.

  26. Good morning All.
    Just back from Auvergne – glorious weather and fighting the good fight against what might become a lawn, if I can keep the grass below the waist with our infrequent visits.
    So far the only appropriate machinery seems to be the farmer’s hay mower.
    To the title: so the Telegraph wants to whitewash and terrify us some more.

    Tory rag.

  27. If trans people are getting their surgery on the NHS, is the NHS now simply a cosmetic surgery hospital?

    Or, are trans people required to undergo psychiatric evaluation before hand? If they are, surely thinking you’re something you’re not is a fantasy and the treatment is psychotherapy?

    Why is the NHS indulging the mentally ill, and worse, indulging them and aiding their psychoses?

    1. The NHS now sees social engineering as its primary purpose. Attempting to heal the sick is a just a sideline it indulges in from time to time.

  28. I’d point out that a government gurantee scheme to replace money lost due to government policy causing financial collapse with more of the same government controlled money makes that money, the guarantee and the government utterly worthless.

    1. It’s been happening for years Sos the spine/back specialist I saw at Stanmore orthopaedic around 2004 /5
      Told me he was leaving the NHS because they couldn’t stop interferring with the planning of procedures. As far as I know he’s still working at the Wellington in London.
      Labour only have bandwagoning as their targets they too thick to come up with any ideas of their own.

    2. My cataracts were done privately, one in the USA, and the other in the UK that was a good eight or so years ago. In the UK it was a private South African firm contacted by the NHS. Didn’t get cataracts from age, by the way, which is how I thought everyone got them. Hit a lamp post on my bike and that was what did it. Trauma can cause cataracts, learn something new everyday.

      1. I had a cataract operation last March after a 6 week wait and that includes a cancellation. I have an appointment on 14th June to see Eye Consultant for, hopefully, second operation in due course.

        1. Good luck Alf. It is really wonderful when you get rid of them and see clearly for the first time in ages.

        2. When my cataracts were diagnosed in 2017, I had the first operation the same day, it cost me £30. I was given an appointment for the second eye three months afterwards. Best £60 I ever spent.

      2. 50% of patients who have had eye surgery develop cataracts.
        I discovered I was in that blasted 50%.

        1. The reason I had one cataract removed in the USA is because of the phenomena of the eye unaffected by a cataract developing one in “sympathy” with the cataracted eye. But when this happens it will be often be years later. That was the case with me. First cataract in the USA, the second in the UK some five years later.

  30. Morning all 🙂😉
    Lovely day in Holt. It’s such a lovely town, I love all the brick and flint cottages. Just like the one we are staying in.
    Don’t have long, were off to the local market then out for the day.
    It’s extremely annoying that our so misnamed hierarchy never learn a single thing from their mistakes. And they do make so many and have had plenty of practice. But it only underlines just how crooked and completely useless they all are.

    1. If government were interested in learning from mistakes it would stop making them. It doesn’t care. It is never affected by the error. With no consequences comes the perpetuation of failure.

      1. That church at Cley is huge. It’s only in a small village !
        A lot of bodies buried in the mid 1700s.

      1. Early dinner yesterday. Calamari, steak salad. Delicious.
        Erin had some sort of hummus followed by sea bream.
        Glass of red one of white.

  31. Sunak wants to knock 2p off tax. Doesn’t say which one. Of course, that’ll be after the election. He could, of course, do so now. He chooses not to.

    Meanwhile he, obeying his globalists masters – is preparing a massive slew of tax hikes on food, fertiliser, energy (why are unreliables companies not paying for grid upgrades? Why is that lumped on the tax payer?) and water.

    Just some of the swinging taxes he’s planning. 2p? Sod off, you verminous bag of effluential, toxic waste.

      1. No. When I shared locks with him in 2017 I think he said he was from Manchester…but apart from a few items in his car that was his entire worldly goods.

          1. I couldn’t see through the windows as the inside of the barge appears to be more of the same as on top of the barge…

      2. Hi Pip! Downloaded ‘Julie and Julia’, last night and will watch it this afternoon when I take my 2 hour respite from the day. Did you know that there is also a documentary about Julia child too? Aptly named “Julia”. You can download it from Gomovies if you want to watch it.

      2. If he is he doesn’t appear to be making a profit judging by the accumulation…

    4. PS the Mansion in the background behind the vertical bike wheel is ‘The American Museum’ at Claverton Down.

  33. Morning all! Nice day here is West Sussex, hope it lasts.
    Nothing interesting to report but I hope all is well with everyone.
    Doing my Sunday bit listening to a service but, as you can tell, not above typing about the mundane at the same time. Why not?

  34. Labour’s North Sea oil and gas ban ‘will lead to 60pc drop in production’
    ‘Premature’ plans to block all new developments will result in 45,000 job losses
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/04/labours-oil-gas-ban-60pc-drop-production/

    BTL : Percival Wrattstrangler

    There is not a single politician in any position of power in the UK with the guts to stand up and declare unequivocally that Net Zero is a complete scam which will destroy the lives of ordinary people.

    Just as paedophiles try to impose their odious lust upon children who are not physically or emotionally ready for sexual relations so our politicians are imposing green measures upon us when we are not ready physically or emotionally.

    The infrastructure of our economy – which is dependent on unreliable, inconsistent sources of energy such as windmills and solar panels – is not prepared.

    The destruction of our economy to please the zealots is futile and can only benefit our competitors. China and India can pump more pollution into the atmosphere in a day than the UK does in a year

    1. Imagine the soaring price of gas and oil due to that massive restriction in supply.

      The state makes these decisions because it wants to make energy unaffordable. Worse, it will then say that unreliables are cheaper – which, because of artifical forces, they would be – but cheaper is relative. In real terms, energy will be four or fives times more expensive than it should be – all because of state force.

      They will then proclaim how wonderous it is that we have met our net zero targets – while folk can’t afford energy. That’s the ultimate goal, after all. Forcing change through manipulation.

      Our society needs energy. To deny it will force us backward at every level. These political fools are not virtuous, not good – they are evil beyond measure.

      1. There isn’t a supplier near me who can provide bottled gas. Nearest is Southampton. Two local ones have given up their businesses.

  35. Good morning all.

    The phrase “The Covid enquiry should plan for the next pandemic, not rake over past failures”. Which naive idiot wrote that? Obviously o penny has dropped here yet. The sheeple still haven’t properly woken up to the scam/plandemic.

  36. The private armies Putin has unleashed on Ukraine may lead to his downfall. 4 June 2023

    Putin’s misadventures in Ukraine could lead to violent turmoil across Russia and the regime’s end. In recent weeks we have seen humiliating drone strikes against Moscow, in the Bryansk and Klimovsky regions, Krasnodar district and Belgorod city. There has been shelling of the Belgorod region, intensified this week and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    John Georgeson.

    These tedious lazy articles, predicting the demise of Putin, are now an almost daily feature provided by the Telegraph.

    They are highly speculative, light on facts but full of wishful thinking and conjecture. This article is a prime example.

    This latter is true about Kemp. He veers between ludicrous optimism and cautious gloom from week to week.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/04/vladimir-putin-private-armies-may-lead-to-his-downfall/

    1. “The hangnail that Putin suffers could be proving terminal.”
      “A disaffected cleaner could put poison in Putin’s samovar.”
      “Putin’s loo paper could be beaming his BP readings to the CIA.”

    2. Regretably the DT is not what it was, its just a propaganda arm like the rest.

    2. Hmmm. Fire at sea. Paradoxically far more dangerous than its land version.

    4. “The boy stood on the burning deck
      Whence all but he had fled
      Twit!

      S. Milligan

      1. The boy stood on the burning deck
        His lips were all a’quiver.
        He gave a cough, his leg fell off
        And floated down the river.

        1. The boy stood on the burning deck
          Picking his nose like mad;
          He rolled it up in little balls
          And hurled it at his Dad.

      2. The boy wasn’t on the burning deck,
        He wasn’t with Captain Howard.
        He wasn’t even on the sinking ship
        The dirty little coward!!

  38. Good Moaning.
    Lovely morning.
    A Quentin Letts effort from the Spekkie.
    Funny because it’s written by QL; but the actual content is depressing.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-civil-services-exercise-in-navelgazing/#comments-container

    The civil service’s exercise in navel-gazing

    Are you happy in your work? In 37 years of journalism I don’t remember once being asked that question by my bosses. Nor did I expect to be. But in the civil service there is a bureaucratic machine to make sure employees are asked once a year if everything is all right, dearie. At unpublicised cost, the People Survey invites penpushers to complain. Guess what – they do.

    Three mandarins explained this time-consuming exercise to the Commons public administration select committee. They were: Alex Chisholm, the civil service’s chief operating officer; Fiona Ryland, ‘government chief people officer’; Dr Claudia Roscini, head of the civil service People Survey team.

    The survey covered 100 departments, 17,000 business units and 350,000 souls. It was ‘an extremely useful tool’. Tools need oiling, so a review was held. This was ‘a very substantial piece of work’ and took three months. The committee’s chairman, William Wragg (Con, Hazel Grove), suggested a rolling survey of the survey. Chisholm was one move ahead of him. Each survey already contained three evaluation mechanisms and there were consultations with survey managers in all departments. ‘Feedback and input from other stakeholders’ was sought. Benchmark comparisons were held with other public–sector leviathans, best practice shared. More admin. More meetings.

    Our national debt is hideous yet hundreds of clerks are being paid to survey surveys and benchmark benchmarks. And not just in this country. Roscini’s survey team is part of an ‘engagement group’ at the OECD, the organisation for economic counterproductive doodling. Not all countries bother with an annual survey of bureaucrats. Denmark, Switzerland and others only do it once every few years. The maniacs.

    Chisholm (Downside, Oxford and Insead), a murmuring beanpole with basso voice, dwelt creamily on this and other aspects of the People Survey. I need to be careful when writing about Chisholm because last time I gave him a tickling in the Times, there arrived a steaming missive from his mater. Mother Chisholm told me the nation should be proud of her 55-year-old. When it comes to seamless waffle, he is certainly a champ. Chisholm purred about pulse surveys and a centralised basis and measuring assessment against local issues and consistent, year-by-year, cross-civil-service comparisons. Wragg: ‘Thank you, that is helpful.’ In committee room eight at the Palace of Westminster, a bluebottle rendered itself insensible by flying directly into the riverside window pane. Kamikaze job. Couldn’t take any more.

    Roscini mentioned a report called ‘Engaging for Success’ which stated that ‘the values we preach should be visible day by day’. Do you want our civil service to ‘preach values’? The People Survey measured ‘how much our staff are inspired by the work they do’ (they actually do some work?) and ‘how well led they have been’. It was a ‘core mine of data’ for thinktanks and parliamentary committees. Trade unions were ‘very interested in it’, too, and were shown the data well before it was made public, in good time for annual pay negotiations. A typical survey respondent would write: ‘I asked to be paid more money and I have not been. Therefore I am a bit disappointed.’ Staff filled in the surveys anonymously. This means it is ‘relatively free of biases’. Chisholm indicated that when staff complained about pay, it was ‘taken very seriously’ and rises often ensued.

    The survey was published twice a year in ‘a number of internal products’ with ‘data packs, interactive dashboards, action planning templates and knowledge hubs’. ‘Is this the standard dashboard, the intermediate dashboard, the advanced dashboard or the fourth dashboard?’ demanded Ronnie Cowan (SNP, Inverclyde), chewing his beard. Roscini, cryptically: ‘It depends.’ Staff could ‘play with the findings, apply filters, compare themselves against business units and give their own interpretation to the data’. All this in office time. Daily log-ins on the dashboard from civil servants’ computers last year reached 17,000.

    Some 12,000 teams were able to ‘cut the data by demographics’. ‘We also share the microdata with organisations that have analytical support,’ vouchsafed Roscini. ‘This takes time.’ ‘It requires a lot of extra work,’ confirmed Chisholm, wearing his serious face. Roscini: ‘We quality-assure our findings.’ A survey is taken. The survey is itself surveyed. Then it is quality-assured. Just to be on the safe side.

    What a wonderful belly-button fluff inspection.”

    1. We were told the survey was anonymous, but each form had the recipient’s paynumber on.

    2. “ The civil service’s exercise in navel-gazing”.

      I’m not sure they ever work that hard!

    3. If it’s anything like the annual BBC Staff Survey it is absolutely not, even relatively, free of bias. The questions are loaded, the agenda is transparent and the answers are limited to degrees of yes, no, neutral. It’s voluntary therefore I mostly decline. One of my colleagues this year dutifully complied but groaned, “Ohhh…herrre we go…first question…do you feel you can be your authentic self”?

  39. Just in from doing a fiddly job in greenhouse. Bitter east wind. Lovely sunshine.

  40. Flight of fancy that….

    The kind family who lent me their crew assisted me down this flight in around two hours with very little input on my part!

    A strange incident occurred shortly after I got to the bottom. Two boats one a hired boat the other a consortium boat managed to get their bows stuck together in the lock so as the water drained out the paddles of the bottom gates the boats tipped with their sterns being submerged and water inundating their engines. The consortium boat ‘Iron Maiden’ has a cast iron hull that’s 129 years old. It now has a very sickly engine having had to be towed to Semington (when there is a dry dock) presumably for repair….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6143648ff931c7d30b179bb7f32a5f386b4f047a25f75ac9568c39a5bc160fa1.jpg

  41. There is an article in the DT today about the malevolent regime that rules Iran. There is a comment by Richard Knight. Among other things, he says “There is plenty to criticise Iran for. They – along with Saudi Arabia and China – execute people on an industrial scale.”

    In 2021, Iran executed 341, Saudi 69 and the US 11.

    I can only speak for Saudi Arabia. The diatribes from Human Rights Watch and other left-wing crusaders are unsurprisingly wrong.

    I must be one of the very few westerners who has ever met people in Saudi Arabia waiting to be beheaded, and discussed their cases with them (fortunately I speak Arabic). This is because I was incarcerated in the central jail of Jeddah, albeit rather a long time ago. It was an extraordinary adventure caused because a client of my firm who made a mistake and the Ministry of Finance wrongly claimed that my firm was at fault. As the senior partner in my firm, they put me in jail. But not only was I released with a clean slate, I was probably the only person in Saudi Arabia who had a letter from the King to say that I had done nothing wrong! And I was invited by the then US Secretary of State to visit him in Washington.

    However gruesome executions are, Saudi Arabia has robust procedures to make sure they have the right person. On the day of executions the criminals are heavily sedated. However, there are some extraordinary anomalies such as people being taken to be executed and retuned to the prison at the last moment. I know this because I have met some of them!

    For about half of my stay as a guest of the King, I was able to obtain a pencil and paper which enabled me to write a detailed diary of daily events, and descriptions of some of the amazing characters I met there. I have written a long essay about this experience.

      1. It includes a lot of names but I will see if I can massage a bit! I did not ‘sell my story to the Sun’!

      2. Here is about 10% of my original write-up.

        I was sitting in my office in the Sultan Center and there was a call from the chief of police of the local district who asked me to go to see him. He offered me a cup of tea and asked how he could go to the UK to learn English. I said that I could easily arrange that because my sister was teaching in a language school especially for foreign businessmen. He then asked me to accompany an officer who was standing in the room.

        We drove in a police car to the prison. I was received very politely, went from room to room in the administration section and was offered numerous cups of tea. Eventually we arrived at two sets of iron gates and I was asked to go in, having surrendered my belt and my shoes. I was greeted by shouts of “Sam! What are you doing here?” I knew three people already there. One was a Saudi, Mohamed, who had found a body on the beach. It was so decomposed that it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman but he reported it to the police who arrested him for murder! Another was the British general manager of a client who had a car accident in which a man died but he left the scene because he said that he went to find someone who could speak Arabic to help him. A third was the German manager of a company in our office building who was caught with two passports, each with Saudi visas. Others in the prison thought I was an ambassador come to rescue them because nobody had ever been seen there in a suit and tie! Many people asked why I was there. I said that I expected that I would be out in a couple of hours. This was my extraordinary incarceration – no arrest or handcuffs, everyone very polite. Lots of cups of tea and a great welcome ‘inside’!

        By the evening I was still in prison and I had to prepare to stay the night. I had nowhere to sleep and no change of clothes. There were 300 prisoners in this section 4 (the supposedly elite section where they put non-Muslims – along with many others waiting to have their heads chopped off! There were 6,500 in the prison as a whole). The most recent arrival had to sleep in the worst place, namely the entrance to the toilets, and progress from there as other prisoners leave. However Mohamed, who had already been there for several months, very kindly gave me his space and found another who agreed to share with him. Everyone has to sleep on the floor on foam mattresses, all so close together that turning over in the night wakes up as many as four people, left and right, head and feet. The space that I had was next to a large man who had a more comfortable mattress and a wider space because he had been there for 15 years (drug dealing). His name was Abu Setta (Father of Six) because he had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. However, he had a problem in that he couldn’t lie down and had to sleep sitting up, frequently interrupted by snores, loud snorts and severe convulsions. On my first night I eventually dozed off but woke up shouting when Abu Setta started snorting! Of course, everyone else woke up and tried to calm me down!

        I spent much of my time talking to the other prisoners all of whom had fascinating stories to tell. I had numerous visitors during public visits for which I was very grateful but slightly embarrassed because many prisoners never had any visitors at all. I was also allowed short private visits which always took place in the prison governor’s office, at which time people brought me my letters, food, messages, etc. However the public visits took place with us prisoners behind one set of bars and the visitors behind another set with everyone shouting across the gap at the top of their voices.

        When I arrived I met an Australian there. He had had a row with an Englishman whom he punched on the shoulder and who became paralysed down one side. The Australian thought he was in prison for murder because he assumed that the Englishman had died. However, he found out, eight months later, that he had just hit a nerve and the Englishmen had recovered within 24 hours. When I met him he had been languishing in prison for five years with no one helping him and no one on the outside knowing he was there, including his family. Fortunately I was able to report his predicament and he was released soon after I was.

        Some months before my incarceration, we were working in our offices in the Sultan Centre on the Medina Road. Next to us was a 14-storey building under construction. Suddenly there was a loud whoosh and the building collapsed into the street, killing 30 people. When I got to the jail, the building’s architect and the engineer were with me in my section. In the meantime, there was an employee of Lockheed there. He said that he was only working for Lockheed because he wanted to make money on the side by selling black market alcohol, which he did very successfully. He was duly caught and was given 5 years in prison. However, his time wasn’t wasted because the architect and engineer were helping him to design a sports complex in El Paso, Texas ready for when he was released, with his millions of ill-gotten gains waiting for him!

        On December 23rd I was listening with earphones to a tiny radio that I had, but I accidentally dropped off to sleep, which is not allowed in the daytime in certain areas. When I woke up I found that a guard had taken my radio so I missed the Christmas programmes. However, on the same day as my radio was taken, Mohamed said that he was very sorry but he needed his sleeping space back. I found another prisoner with a wide space but he said that I could share it with him for a payment but not for another week because he already had an arrangement with someone else. So I had nowhere to sleep over Christmas. I ended up on top of the water tank next to the toilets with two Nigerians in leg irons and a Greek with such bad B.O. that people used to fight not to be near him. To watch the Nigerians trying to climb on to the tank in their leg irons was a sight to behold! I wondered if we were the only people in the entire world who spent Christmas on top of a water tank!

        When westerners are released they are taken to the airport in handcuffs and deported, never to be allowed into Saudi Arabia again. When I was released I was taken to the office of the chief of police who continued our previous conversation about learning English. He never mentioned my being in prison! I was then free to go home.

        Previously, the American Ambassador (Richard Murphy) had been extremely helpful and supportive. The British Ambassador (Sir James Craig) told me that he was unable to do anything to help me and made me vow never to repeat the reason he gave me. (It was a diplomatic nicety)!

        Notes

        Extracts from a verbatim transcript of notes written in prison (5 weeks after arrival) having finally acquired a pencil and paper.

        The water came on at 1.00 am so there was a lot of shouting etc. It also came on for a short time before, during and after prayers at 0530 but had been switched off by 0800. Had a little peace after that because there was not so much noise below when the water tap is off. However at 0900 heard names being called over the loudspeaker and realized it was pay day. My name was not called for another hour but I was ready with my ‘bitaka’ (prison record) and acknowledged receipt twice with my left thumb-print (since quite a few are illiterate it is probably easier to get everyone to leave their thumb prints).

        By the way, rats were reported in the toilet area the other day. Hardly surprising because the rubbish is also tipped into an area in the toilets. There are two prisoners who clean it out and they have to get into it and ladle it out by hand into a wheelbarrow. The rubbish is particularly bad because it is waste food and all other waste including washing up water, etc. so it is a horrible sludge. Inevitably one of the wheelbarrows tipped over in the passage the other day and sprayed everyone sitting close by with God knows what.

        Two Germans went to court today. One had been caught buying and selling Whisky and had 2,000 cases in his home. When he was leaving for the police station in the police car he waved to one of his neighbours (American) and they arrested him too. Both have been here a year. The American was told that he was innocent but will be deported! The other was given three years + 300 lashes and a fine of SR1,700,000 (about $½ million). He will probably have to do another year instead of paying a fine.

        All those here for murder have very uncomfortable nights on Thursday in case they are called for Friday. The prison guards come in around 1100 AM and the victim is told to pack his things which are left for his family to collect. He is then taken to the public square on Friday near the Riyadh Bank and is decapitated with a sword after prayers (1215 – 1245). A Chinese guy here who murdered his brother-in-law has been taken 3 times but at the last minute brought back. It is thought that he will not be executed but will be released after about 5 years. His treatment has turned him into a Zombie. He spends his time sitting in a corner mumbling and only gets up for food and the toilet.

        We are entertained in the evenings when a very effeminate Saudi (in for drug dealing) who works in the prison laundry, returns for the night. His name is Serour but they called him Sou Sou! He gets a towel, wraps it round his head like a turban and performs various dance routines accompanied by much laughter and clapping!

        3. Gosh, what an exciting life you have led. Thankfully, the times I visited Jeddah I left without incarceration. Although I did spend two weeks there in hospital after developing peritoitis on the flight over. Being the captain of the flight, it was not a good thing to suffer but I was looked after well and recovered after surgery.

        5. Thank you so much for posting this extract, amusing and informative. Quite an extraordinary experience. On the whole what did you make of it? Must have been quite frightening to say the least.

          1. Thank you, and the others who have been kind enough to comment.

            Having been in wars, revolutions, civil strife and many other adventures since I first visited the Middle East in 1968, I took the whole thing very philosophically. I wasn’t at all afraid. I knew that I wasn’t a ‘criminal (!) so I was not in any way ashamed or embarrassed. I also had a huge number of kind people supporting me from many different countries, especially the UK, the US and Saudi itself. I can hardly express my gratitude to these people.

            My late sister was a magistrate and she used to visit prisons in the UK. She told me about them and some of the awful characters she had to meet. Therefore, you might be surprised to hear that, if I had to live through the experience again but had the choice of spending my time in a prison in the UK, I would choose the Saudi prison any day! I was with 300 other interesting people rather than stuck in a cell with one other. Safety in numbers!

            However, I doubt if many westerners would agree with me and most of them had a miserable time. But after my many previous experiences, and my ability to speak the language, I was able to smile my way through the whole thing!

  42. Daily Sceptic continuing its assault on the Climate Change non-Science.

    Antarctica Sensation: Ice Shelves Surrounding the Continent Grew in Overall Size From 2009-2019

    …The growth was significant with overall shelf area increasing by 5,305 km2, adding 0.4% to the total shelf area in the 11 years under review. The paper has just been published by the influential European Geosciences Union, but it raises questions within the ‘settled’ climate science narrative, so it is highly unlikely to be covered by mainstream media…

    …The Leeds researchers looked at satellite data to measure the annual calving position and area of 34 ice sheets accounting for 80% of the Antarctica coastline. They found reductions in the area on the Antarctica Peninsula and West Antarctica of 6,693 km2 and 5,563 km2 respectively were outweighed by growth in East Antarctica of 3,532 km2 and 14,028 km2 in the large Ross and Ronne-Filchner ice shelves…

    Antarctic Ice Grows

  44. Petition the King to keep our national powers
    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/petition-the-king-to-keep-our-national-powers/

    “AS you will know, many proposals for global governance are favoured by both government and opposition MPs. These include multiple threats, notably:

    * The World Health Organisation and its planned international Pandemic Treaty;

    * The World Economic Forum and the United Nations and their plans for ‘climate taxes’ or other international ‘climate control’ measures;

    * The international banking community and its moves towards central bank digital currencies and associated digital identity schemes.

    Yet there is no mandate from the electorate for any of these. We are in effect disenfranchised, without a voice, as Parliament and the main political parties become increasingly remote from the people and, with no one to vote for, fewer and fewer people bother to vote at all.”

    BTL

    I am afraid that it is impossible to tell an exceptionally stupid man that he is wrong. Forget about the Seventh Earl of Elgin: the Idiot King has already lost his marbles.

  45. Solar panels – an eco-disaster waiting to happen?

    “The world has installed more than one terawatt of solar capacity. Ordinary solar panels have a capacity of about 400W, so if you count both rooftops and solar farms, there could be as many as 2.5 billion solar panels,” says Dr Rong Deng, an expert in solar panel recycling at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65602519

    Ignore the recycling problem and look at that one terawatt of solar capacity. World electricity consumption in 2021 was about 25,000 TWh…

    1. I personally think solar panels are a great idea. Backed with a battery they provide an option for households to have their own energy supply for the small things that stay on, like an oven’s clock, for example.

      The problem is expense, capacity and return. In truth, government is not remotely interested in ‘climate change’. It’s just a tax scam. What it cares very much about is extorting as much as possible from the earner.

      1. Put them on roofs, not productive land or wild nature, and I like them.

      2. Why keep the oven clock switched on. Mine is off, so it the microwave when not being used and anything else on stand-by, saves me around £30 a year.
        The batteries for use with solar panels are expensive and will never recoup their cost unlike solar panels which take 8-10 years to recoup the cost.

        1. The advantage is being able to run a phone charger or computer if there’s no mains electricity.
          I’m thinking of buying a camping set for that kind of purpose.

          I read a report recently from the US saying that if they need spare parts for the network (transformers) it takes months to get them nowadays.

          1. Fair point – I have a generator and a small battery back-up for my phone and MP3 player and I can also charge my phone from my car booster pack

      4. We had solar panels and a wind generator mounted on an instrument carrier on the stern of Mianda which enabled us to run all our electronics during the summer but without enough hours of sunlight in the autumn and winter we had to use a petrol powered generator. In marinas we could plug into shore power to charge up the batteries a run things.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c5c133849530f7db655d81aae91e36ce30c88c0fcb5a06775152c024edb0e451.jpg

    2. I also suspect that they are more efficient than wind turbines and tidal barrages.

      I think the Greens are deluded if they think we can go fully renewable without using nuclear power within any reasonable timeframe.

        1. We have thespace in Canada but I doubt that there is enough copper wire available to deliver that much power across the Atlantic.

          1. I also strongly suspect that you don’t get the requisite amount of sunshine either!

    1. I’ve never really doubted that Tommy, as in so much else, was fitted up for this!

      1. 372926+ up ticks,

        Afternoon AS,

        The supporter / voters knew that a coalition of
        Batten / robinson, with Batten making a true fist with his leadership of UKIP & Tommy’s
        following would prove a major threat to the lab/lib/con coalition party, ask farage.

        If UKIP in 2019 got a foot in parliament, very likely under Batten leadership where would we be by now, with a very credible party in opposition.

        lab/lib/con coalition party’s supporters / members/ farage
        could NEVER afford for it to happen.

        1. Afternoon Oggy. Both Robinson and UKIP received the attention of Mi5 in undermining them.

  47. And now for something completely different. It was our younger son’s 40th birthday party yesterday – the date of his birth is actually 5 June. For this occasion our elder son, who is two years older, constructed a cake ‘topper’ in the form of a hot air balloon using his 3D printer. If you click on the photograph it will make it screen large, and you will be able to see the detailing more clearly. The colouring of the balloon is the Newcastle United football stripes which he has supported since being at, and leaving, Newcastle University. After the balloon has completed its duty as a cake topper it can be converted into a lamp.

    There is a certain neatness to this in that we bought the 3D printing outfit for his 40th birthday.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/02024c32d8b10eaa167af6907138a23e62a9538017284cdfbd04522e7fbb3a54.jpg

    1. The cake looks glorious, the balloon print astonishing. I am very jealous. We printed Snake Mountain some time ago here and found it recently in the loft.

      I think 3d printers will take off properly when they’re faster and the materials to print are less toxic, when clean up is easier and so on.

      Almost every month it advances apace, but it’s got a long way to go.

    5. What a wonderful thing! Thanks for posting – makes me smile. 🙂

      1. I don’t really know, i think it is printed in pieces and then constructed. I think it took about ten days to paint, he used some sort of air brush spray on it. I overheard him say the pieces were yellow when they came out of the printer.

  48. Am off to see whether I can find, in full sun, a sheltered place in the garden out of the constant gale to sit and relax in.

    Play nicely.

      2. Good afternoon, Bill

        I know you deplore Bridgen over his mendacity in a family law case but I think he is doing his best to expose the duplicity of our politicians on the dangers of the Covid jabs.

        Luke 15:7-10 KJV

        I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

      3. I don’t know, I really don’t. Perhaps the rank and file didn’t know of the side effects if they weren’t part of the inner circle – didn’t he get adverse effects himself? Or was that a rumour to give him credibility? I agree one is right to keep an open mind on this.

      1. Whatever his motives he is drawing attention to this crime against humanity, and the way it is being manipulated by our parliament. He may be the first rat to jump from a ship that is going down and saving his own skin on the way, there is no way of knowing, but he did wade into the postal workers’ problems.

        1. Introverted, thinking, judging.
          Personality type according to Myers-Briggs.
          Another way to be wrong.

          1. Doesn’t really help, Old troop. I Still have no idea what INTJ might actually be.

  50. Just finished watching Matt Walsh’s “What is a Woman?”
    It’s really well put together. Thoroughly recommend it.

          3. At least Oberst can define what a woman is, unlike the clowns in Matt Walsh’s film! The last couple of minutes are pure gold though.

      2. Is it likely that a woman, especially an INTJ, is going to make the innuendo in the second part of your sentence?

        1. Is it likely that a woman, especially an INTJ, is going to make appreciate the innuendo in the second part of your sentence?

          1. No. Especially one who has had a headache since Thursday and is trying a find a function in a cryptography library.

          2. All joking aside, if you’ve had a head ache for that length of time you should consult a doctor.
            It can’t do much harm and might do some good.

          3. I get them fairly often due to the weather, but this one is stress related.

          4. 4 days is a long time for a headache, even if you had the stress of living with Phizzee.

          5. Hmmm, I’ve just posted this on Arsebook…

            ,,,Good evening, Gentlefolk. If necessary, just treat this as a final plea for help for, hopefully, a warm and caring female, who maybe, finds herself in a similar life-time position – floundering in a similar part of the world.

            Floundering for the warmth of a person of the opposite sex and companionship and warmth in a mutual bed, relationship and want of a warm body to share in the autumn/winter of their life. I, not only can cook but know enough to fix most things that may go wrong. I have been brought up to understand that ‘Common-Sense’ actually means ‘Good sense‘ because it ain’t that common.

            Are you willing to take on this 79- year-old and share with him the final years, days, and months of our lives, hopefully together and leaning on each other for help and support?

        2. I’m INTJ. And broken. Not a woman. I have no idea, I was just trying to be a bit funny. Sorry.

          1. When you did your M-B what were the circumstances?
            I ask because there may be a serious thread behind this.
            Have you ever done it again?

          2. A few times.
            Once the consultant lady said she’d never seen a score like that. I didn’t fit the department at all (gosh. Don’t fit any place). Several tests, both full and informal later, confirm the INTJ rating.

          3. The reason I asked was because of an unpleasant experience I had with the testing.

            My wife’s employers asked all their employees to do the tests/questionnaires as an experiment, and spouses were invited to do so too.
            I thought it might be interesting, so tagged along.
            (I’ll bet that they regretted that invitation!)

            We all enjoyed the background and the methodology and the “scientific” principles behind it. The professionals gave excellent explanations. It was a very interesting afternoon.
            Everyone answered the questions and there was friendly debate about what the “answers” showed regarding the individuals involved. Much laughter. Some appeared to be the opposite of what they thought of themselves and many were declared to be spot on.
            Now for the bit I didn’t like:

            Before it began, the staff were informed that it was being done out of “interest”. At the end of the afternoon the employers suddenly said they would like to record the results on the personnel files of all those who had taken the tests.
            Much murmuring…
            The workplace was one where the employees generally never challenged anything that was presented and the silence, apart from the murmuring, suggested nobody would challenge it, even though it was clear to me that they were VERY unhappy.
            I stood up and challenged the management, asked why they wanted to do so, and why, after having stated it was out of interest, they wanted to put the results on file.

            The reaction from the room was such that it was very clear that everyone there was against it, but because most of them feared for their jobs they didn’t want to get involved.

            Afterwards, HG was regarded as the heroine, because she had brought her pet cantankerous bastard and as far as the staff were concerned they thanked goodness she did.

            I spoke with the external professionals afterwards and they were very circumspect, but the impression I got was that management often tried to pull the trick and that a challenge from the floor was almost unheard of.

  51. Life isn’t all bad – I took a comfortable garden chair, found a spot out of the wind and out of direct sunlight and read a P.G. Wodehouse novel.

    1. Jeeves and Wooster?

      I find it glorious that Wodehouse can have Jeeves say so little yet be so beautiful characterised by Bertie.

      1. I am reading If I Were You which was written in 1931 and was first published in the USA.

        This book is about an earl whose nanny muddled him with her own son and did not disclose that she had switched the babies. All delightfully silly. I have read all the Jeeves and Blandings novels and short stories so many times that I am concentrating now on the lesser known books.

    2. I finished mowing and sat with a cup of tea and Patrick O’Brian’s ‘The Surgeon’s Mate’ (am rereading the 20 book series again). In the shade except for my white and blue legs and feet, hoping the sun will be good for the arthritis.

      1. Gentle warming is good for most things, Mola. Even sunburn has the advantage of taking focus away from other pains.

      2. I’ve been thinking of doing that. I first read Master and Commander 30 years ago. Are they as good second time round?

  52. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12157603/Man-wore-vile-shirt-mocking-Hillsborough-disaster-FA-Cup-final-charged.html

    I don’t understand this. Is it a reference to ‘not enough’ was done to protect the crowd?

    The Hilsborough disaster came about because the fans wouldn’t behave themselves. Because they didn’t behave, the fences went up. They still refused to behave and people died.

    It wasn’t the police’s fault, the stadium’s, the club’s. It was the behaviour of the fans.

    4. They died because of the incompetence and indifference of Sheffield Wednesday FC, Sheffield City Council, the FA and South Yorkshire Police. The authorities had a warning in 1981 when there was overcrowding at that end of the ground at the Wolves v. Spurs semi-final and spectators had to climb over the fences.

      1. I’d say a strong element of both fan behaviour over the preceding years and official incompetence.

        1. If you were to say that, ultimately, they were killed by hooliganism you’d be correct in the sense that that was why the fences went up. Sadly, those who died at Hillsborough were the first in, ticket-holders who got there early and safely. They were utterly blameless.

          There are still some who think the enquiry didn’t deal properly with what happened outside the ground. It was the crush at the entrance that prompted Dukinfield to order the gates to be opened. We know what happened next…

          97 people died or were fatally wounded because nobody could find a set of keys to open the emergency gates on the terrace fences. That was quite appalling, as was the police cover-up.

      2. OK – but stupid question – was it standing room only, not seating? Thus people went where they were told by the stewards?

        Why then did the stewards not move people around to reduce the ‘puddles’ of people?

        1. It was a terrace, divided into four pens but with a single entrance in the middle at the back. All of the dead were in the central two pens. They became overcrowded when the gates outside the ground were opened to allow more in.

  53. The Red Arrows just flew over the valley in an easterly direction. A flight of 5 and then 3 following.

        1. Normally. There are 9 jets in the team and they’re often followed by the team manager/CO in a spare 10th airecraft.

    2. I’ve wondered if the planes at the back have got lost and are catching up.

  54. Tales From The Riverbank, pt 5

    Work to repair unsafe Nuneham Viaduct ‘on target’

    Work to repair an unsafe railway viaduct which was forced to close nearly two months ago will be completed by 10 June, Network Rail says.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-65758660

    Hats off to them if they get it opened by Saturday, which was their original target:
    https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/network-rail-engineers-work-around-the-clock-to-repair-nuneham-viaduct-with-the-line-expected-to-be-closed-until-early-june

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a1d534698620cd9f1495847f820693f5eaf0546d80ea29c440f66bf7a6116012.jpg

    Mind you, they’ll need a big hacksaw to cut down those piles…

      2. Do you mean an oxytorch or the circular saw version?

        A chum has a miniature plasma cutter as part of his CNC machine. It’s lovely watching it work. Although, when we went to see a 5 dimension CNC operating on some aluminium channelling I was absolutely gosmacked and wanted one.

  56. An Exemplary Eagle today!

    Wordle 715 2/6
    🟨⬜⬜🟩🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Congratulations, i managed another boring Par.

      Wordle 715 4/6

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

      1. 44me2
        Wordle 715 4/6

        ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
        ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
        🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Almost had one meself, but just a birdie.
      Wordle 715 3/6

      🟨⬜⬜🟩🟨
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Oh well done! I got my usual.

      Wordle 715 4/6

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

    1. This idea that frozen virai are going to defrost due to climate change is so nonsensical only Lefties believe it.

      First, the ice isn’t defrosting. Second, where the ice is, people don’t tend to be.

      The whole farce is moronic. Mauritus complains about being under water 5 years ago yet this year opens a new airport. It’s a pack of lies.

      1. Oddly enough, I think it’s possible.
        Whether or not it’s dangerous is debatable.
        There is little doubt that there is some melting happening in permafrost areas.

        What I can be sure of is that if the scientists can find a way to harm people, they will.

          2. Needs shouted from the rooftops.
            I’ll feature this comment. So clear & important.

          3. Needs shouted from the rooftops.
            I’ll feature this comment. So clear & important.

          5. I think the problem is the schools and teaching in universities, in particular those formed by Blair from former polytechnics and teaching colleges.

            As with the established universities pre-Blair these new universities have sought research funding. Just about any junk science would be put forward for funding as was the case with the social sciences.

            The result has been the diminution of scholarly resort and the substitution of fake research serving no useful purpose except in winning funding. The plethora of climate change courses illustrates the direction taken alongside the growth of departments specialising in critical race theory, the distorted study of slavery and the dogma associated with that departure from the norms of a civilised society.

  58. That’s me for today. I’ll tune in tomorrow in the hope that the cold wind will have dropped and the sun feels warm.

    Have a jolly evening

    A demain

    1. It’s been rather warm here!
      Mind you, the “garden” is a bit of a sun trap.

  59. Atkinson is often very sensible.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-12157205/Rowan-Atkinson-says-feels-little-duped-electric-cars-urges-friends-not-them.html?ico=mol_desktop_home

    ‘I feel a little duped’: Rowan Atkinson says electric cars are not ‘the environmental panacea they are claimed to be’ and tells friends not to get them
    The 68-year-old actor has claimed that he feels ‘that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end’

        1. I would have to own the f*g Duchy of Cornwall before I would feel rich enough to buy a souped up milk float.

          1. As the content owner of a very old diesel car with nearly 200k miles on the clock I’ll take a lot of persuading, to change however rich I become.
            My worry is that at some point I won’t get the choice.

          2. They’ll certainly try at some point. The fewer people obediently fall into line, the harder it will be. Maybe we will win before they succeed.

    4. Atkinson focuses on the dirty cost of producing EVs.

      I, as a chemist & physicist, would draw your attention to EV creation of carbon particulates from extra-heavy tyres ‘road-scrubbing’.

      As EVs carry extremely heavy batteries, requiring extra-heavy tyres, they will spew extra high levels of carbon/ rubber particulates . . .

      No one has told us about this. IMHO, the health hazard from extra carbon particles may well exceed the benefits of reduced carbon in exhaust emissions.*

      Breath in . . . 🙂 !

      *clarification, hopefully.

      1. I knew about that, and when I first read about it I couldn’t but help recall the push for diesel, and years later they decided the emissions were worse on balance.

        1. As I recall, srb; that was after Gordon Brown introduced tax incentives in favour of diesel . . .

          1. Me too.
            Blair/Brown and the wrecking crew, have the dis stink tion of being able to claim that absolutely everything they enacted harmed Britain.

          2. Well they both did extremely well financially out of it – especially Blair and his fragrant wife.

        2. At the time there were some articles that compared the emissions from petrol and diesel cars. From those, I decided the push for diesel was wrong and have continued with petrol ever since.

        1. Its probably a very simple answer, but why are EV batteries not recycled. As they are large, I would have thought the metals are recoverable.

          1. And why are wind turbines and solar panels not recycled, Kaypea?

            Perhaps, its an inconvenient truth.

          2. Recycling solar panels is technically complex; apparently, a French business in Grenoble has grasped the opportunity …

        2. EV batteries require Lithium and Cadmium – mostly mined in West Africa by children – in circumstances that UK parents would find intolerable.

          China has a near-monopoly control of Lithium and Cadmium mining.

        3. Google is my friend of course, it seems that because of the rapid development of ev batteries and their composition, an economic process for their recycling has not yet been developed. Also, it is only now that there are significant numbers of spent batteries available to recyclers.

  60. 372926+ up ticks,

    Close the place down they’ll try convincing next that kim philby & co were out & out patriots..

    Better still when the peoples awaking really takes off then turn it into a tradesman training centre
    plumbers , brickies,sparkies,etc,etc five year apprents. none of them dodgy,dead-end diplomas.

    Erasing the English: Anglo-Saxons Never Existed, Claims Cambridge University

    1. Well the brainwashed school kids will believe that. What were our ancestors then? Martians?

          2. LOL! He did, however, progress to become an Area Traffic Manager in the London Transport Bus service.

          4. No – she worked in an office part-time to help keep a roof over our heads.

          6. SWMBO drives me. I keep getting unexpected periods of unconsciousness, so won’t drive. Too hazardous.

      2. Living in Woking I think most of the councillors come from a different planet.

      3. You called? I actually have a US green card that states that I am a resident alien.

  61. Phew!
    That’s the log stacking finally done for the coming winter! Used a bit more wood than I expected, had to drop a couple of small ash and elm for the last bit.
    Quite a hot day for doing it, so I’ve just cooled off with my 1st cold bath of the year.
    I now need to gather enough logs the following winter!

    1. Just about to do the watering and start cooking a chicken for dinner. No time to sit yet!

      1. Watering done. Farm bees sorted – little spiky buggers were in a Bad Mood, and came over all buzzy and aggressive. Cats petted, drove home, Second Son delivered to his place… I’ve done bugger-all, and am knackered!

      2. It’s all in the timing.

        I thought about doing the watering but decided to swim first.
        It clouded over while we were in the pool and it’s now raining, as I prepare our supper.

  63. A propos of the spoof “What is a man” posted below earlier today, the actual “What is a womam” by Matt Walsh, which is usually behind the Daily Wire paywall, is apparently free to view today:
    https://twitter.com/realdailywire/status/1664424891372941312?s=48&t=jbfeQb9H2kZB4d2bufNYFw

    (I think you need twitter access – I cam view it, my mum had problems).

    (I’m z5 minutes in and his first interview is with a therapist and is, to say the least, interesting).

      1. What a piece of worke is a man! how Noble in
        Reason? how infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing
        how expresse and admirable? in Action, how like an Angel?
        in apprehension, how like a God?

        1. What a piece of Wokery is a man? How ignoble in reason
          How infinite in stupidity? in informing and mouthing
          how Espresso and abominable?In action how like a fairy?
          no comprehension, Oh good God!

    2. On a sensible planet, which is what earth used to be (between 4,500,000,000 BC and ©1900 AD) then such discussions would have been superfluous, idiotic, and puerile.

      On an exponentially and increasingly cretinous planet, which is what earth now is (from 1900 AD until today) such discussions are commonplace.

      This is, mainly, because the planet used to be populated by up to 2,000,000,000 reasonably intelligent beings. Now it is infested by over 8,000,000,000 imbeciles.

          1. I got confused about the age of the earth compared with the age of the universe, Mola. I’ve just looked them up and the universe is around 13,800,000,000 years old while the earth is just a youngster at a mere 4,500,000,000.

            Above post edited.

    3. “I don’t give a shit about their feelings, I’m old”

      Blimey, a man after my own heart.

    4. The more I watch this, the more I like the guy questioning these “experts”.

      Boy, oops sorry, girl, the more I see the more I like the way he ties them in knots

    5. The longer I watch this the angrier I get.
      The people promoting this abomination should be exposed for what they are:
      cheats.

    6. I’ve now watched it through and many thanks for posting it.

      It should be essential viewing, whether one agrees, disagrees or is sitting on the fence.

      I now need to go away and cool down!

  64. Just bottled last years blackberry wine.
    Dry as fcuk, and well over 15%. Wow. Be lovely when it’s cold!

        1. Is Barnacle Bill the sailor your uncle, or is Bill Thomas your wheel tapper and shunter?

      1. In that they stab you in the head, or that they sell drugs? 72% muslim unemployment proves that false.

  68. The great lie re EVs:

    IMHO:

    The health hazard from extra carbon particles – from heavy tyre scrubbing – will almost certainly exceed the benefits of reduced carbon from EV exhaust emissions.

    Breath in . . . 🙂 !

  69. Right, after a moderately productive day, I’m off to bed!
    G’night all.

  70. Slightly off topic
    I wrote about the weather here, earlier this evening.
    I am watching clouds scuttling down the valley below me and it’s like watching a horse race as they move on, gathering, “melting”, and drifting along quite quickly. It doesn’t take much imagination to see anthropomorphic shapes riding them.

    We’re at about 450 feet above sea level so I guess those clouds are around the 3/350 mark.
    It makes me appreciate how quickly cloud gathers and disperses although normally I’m looking upwards.
    There is so much beauty in nature.

    1. About 25 years ago, off the coast of West Africa, an ‘observer’ and I, a ‘navigator’, were having a ciggie at dawn looking to windward. A huge head of of cloud arose from the horizon and was the head of what anyone (of a Christian nature) would call ‘God’. It looked at us and smiled.

      A month later a lightning strike 30 yards from the ship blew me off my feet.

      1. I take my hat off to sailors who do such trips.
        My sister-in-law earned a living, taking boats from the UK to the Caribbean single-handed.
        Not my idea of a good job!

        1. Nor mine. The job paid well though, and the things I saw during those 25 years, (15 of them at sea) made up for a lot.

        2. When it’s good, it’s brilliant. When it’s bad it’s a bit scary. I just wish there had been more good moments, but I had plenty when I remember.
          Blade Runner man who says; “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe..” it’s true.

  73. It’s very stressful watching our swifts. Just as we were about to sit down to our dinner, a terrible fight broke out in box 14. An intruder was in – feathers, beaks and claws everywhere, but hard to see what was happening. An egg was displaced from the nest cup, and the other egg out of sight. A couple of hours later and there are three birds in the nest box – one on the nest may be the intruder, having won the battle, and the other two are cowering in the corner. The other four birds are all in – box 5 have settled down for the night and the parents and chicks in box 3 are ok.

      1. No. We’ll have to see what happens tomorrow. At the moment it looks as though the two in the corner are comforting each other while the other bird is on the nest and there’s an uneasy truce.

          1. So do we! There’s still time for the pair to replace their eggs this season, if they manage to evict the intruder.

  74. Every article on The Guardian’s website has an appeal for cash. It’s changed since I last saw it:

    Support the Guardian
    Fund independent journalism with £5 per month

    The free press is under attack from multiple forces. Media outlets are closing their doors, victims to a broken business model. In much of the world, journalism is morphing into propaganda, as governments dictate what can and can’t be printed. In the last year alone, hundreds of reporters have been killed or imprisoned for doing their jobs. The UN reports that 85% of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in their country in recent years.

    “…journalism is morphing into propaganda…a decline in press freedom….”

    In GB, you’re absolutely free to publish propaganda, especially when it’s a piece by Moonbat.

    This the organ that gives the likes of Paul Mason free reign to express his rabid left-wing views, a man who claimed to know better than Karol Sikora and Sunetra Gupta and who called anti-lockdown protestors neo-fascists.

    1. There is nothing ‘independent’ published in the Grauniad. It is a mouthpiece for the lobotomised left, spouting Marxist nonsense and demanding acceptance of its warped views.

      Many years ago its paper of origin, the Manchester Guardian, was a worthy read. There is absolutely no comparison between the Guardian of even the seventies and eighties compared with the drivel now published under the title.

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