Thursday 6 July: Patients should be praised if they free up NHS space by going private

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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413 thoughts on “Thursday 6 July: Patients should be praised if they free up NHS space by going private”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story – a bit rude

    Fairy Tale Twists

    Snow White

    Snow White saw Pinocchio walking through the woods so she ran up behind him, knocked him flat on his back, and then sat on his face crying, “Lie to me, Lie to me.”

    Little Red Riding Hood

    Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods when suddenly the Big Bad Wolf jumped out from behind a tree and, holding a machete to her throat, said, “Red, I’m going to screw your brains out.”
    To that, Little Red Riding Hood calmly reached into her picnic basket and pulled out a .44 magnum and pointed it at him and said, “No you’re not. You’re going to eat me, just like it says in the book.”

    Mickey and Minnie

    Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were in divorce court and the judge said to Mickey, “You say here that your wife is crazy.”
    Mickey replied, “No I didn’t. I said she is fuckin’ Goofy.”

    Pinocchio

    Pinocchio had a human girlfriend who would sometimes complain about splinters whenever they had sex. Pinocchio, therefore, went to visit Gepetto to see if he could help. Gepetto suggested he tries a little sandpaper wherever indicated and Pinocchio skipped away enlightened. A couple of weeks later, Gepetto saw Pinocchio bouncing happily through town and asked him, “How’s the girlfriend?”
    Pinocchio replied, “Who needs a girlfriend?”

  3. Good morning all.
    A bright & sunny 8½°C outside though forecast to turn cloudy again.

    Some BTL Comments on the unflushable turd’s prognostications on the NHS:-

    Lucia Enne
    15 MIN AGO
    I have to be careful here, for I was unaware of the EU diktat regarding de-banking.
    Suffice it to say in respect of Biden’s nomination for the one to succeed Stoltenberg … assault rifles that didn’t shoot straight in hot weather … and broomsticks.
    … and speaking of diktats … I wonder …
    Vote For Flash St John > Saviour Of The Universe > And The NHS ?
    Yesterday I mentioned his attempt in 2000 when Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a reform programme for the NHS in England that he believed would once again make it the healthcare system the world most envies and which resulted in a major male appendage-up and a conservatively estimated £12.8 billion (and upwards) being flushed down the lavatory.
    Still, how can one not trust one of such eminence, as in the lead photograph. I’m trying to think where I’ve seen a portrait which bears a close resemblance and I believe that it’s the anonymously painted one of Machiavelli that I saw somewhere in Italy.
    … and now I have two bank accounts to check !

    Chris Harris
    11 MIN AGO
    Is the Palace “advisor” who persuaded the late Queen to appoint Bliar to the Garter been sacked yet?

    Lucia Enne
    9 MIN AGO
    oops … “Flash St Lynton of Blair”.

    A Allan
    3 MIN AGO
    Are you referring to a major rooster up?

  6. Morning, all. Sunny start here with a dry day in prospect.

    Clearly the USA but we have the same problem with depravity; the number of coincidences keeps mounting.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec862b7e561c0ddae29c325aeeb741003cc8578889d77693cf8eed8c8b2752ca.png

    Not the brightest arc in the welding trade.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4dd0ced01ec139a522db2b624a1b25dc251e6437add4813e1685551900d80571.png

    One video, of many, that shows CV-19 was a scam and that our ‘leaders’ played their parts whilst forgetting they were on camera.

    https://twitter.com/Benzalito/status/1676526252268683265

  7. 374221+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Patients should be praised if they free up NHS space by going private,

    Reality,

    Patients should be incarcerated if they free up NHS space by going private, to genuine paid up indigenous members that would be on par with buying a car then hiring a daily taxi.

    House holders would be praised if they moved in with their neighbours and freed up their properties,

    All slanted to benefit the WEF / NWO agenda, these peoples the electoral majority keep voting in, have to be fed , watered & quartered, those that support / vote for mass uncontrolled immigration parties surely expect no less.

    The sad thing is that via the WEF / NWO supporter / voters
    ( the electoral majority ) Allah will be praised long before a genuine United Kingdom government is in power.

  8. BTL regarding Thames Water:-

    Angus Long
    5 HRS AGO
    Thames water is £billions in debt and recently fined a few £million more for sewage leaks.
    Given water is essential to life seems the government is likeky to bail them out with tax funds.
    I wager the scabby CEO, directors and shareholders knew that if things when belly up the government would bail them out.
    Why should the tax payer bail them out. The senior management and shareholders have milked the business.
    Frankly, they should front the fines and debt. If that means loss of pay, bonuses, pension, dividends and their houses then so be it.
    In my view essential utilities such as water should never have been provided. A Maggie Thatcher error.

    A Allan
    14 MIN AGO
    There should have been a clause banning foreign takeovers of the businesses.

    Can’t comment directly, but could someone remind that A Allan chap that Maggie did include such a clause, referred to as The Golden Share, held by the Government?
    It was sold off by the Unflushable Turd, Tony Blair.

    1. Apparently Thames Water have also invested a lot in new pipelines in London?

      1. Hmm. Now that is something that is, by & large, ignored by the MEEJAH.
        Is there somewhere that actually keeps a tally on the infrastructure investments of the utility companies?

        1. I don’t know – someone who reads the FT told me that, so I guess it gets covered there.

    2. Ta ever so, Bob.
      I didn’t know that. I thought it was strange that MT and her competent crew had missed the one.
      “Golden Share” were the two words floating around my brain.
      And, presumably at least one of Turdy’s houses was paid for by that particular betrayal.

      1. He deserves to win but put impartial people such as Harriet Harman, Bernard Jenkin and Chris Bryant on the case and he will not have a chance.

  10. Russia’s war on Ukraine has forced us in Germany to think differently about our role in the world. Annalena Baerbock . 6 July 2023.

    An ability to surprise is not, perhaps, the first thing people typically associate with Germans. But looking at the direction our country has taken since Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine, maybe we Germans have managed to surprise even ourselves.

    Only two years ago, billions of cubic metres of gas arrived from Russia to Germany through Nord Stream 1 and other pipelines. Russian fossil fuels made up a large share of our energy consumption. Today, we’ve cut this down to zero.

    She makes it sound as if the cut was voluntary! In fact the Americans in an act of unparalleled treachery shut it down for them. It has had an absolutely dire effect on the German economy and there is no sign of it lessening. Though it’s not acknowledged in the MSM its pretty difficult to avoid the conclusion that it has also had an effect on the German Government’s electoral prospects.

    • Annalena Baerbock is the German foreign minister

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/jul/06/russia-war-ukraine-germany-foreign-policy

    1. “Thinking” and “Annalena Baerbock” are not concepts that one tends to associate easily.

  11. By throwing their lot into Net Zero and with wind power the prominent intermittent renewable source of energy the morons in government have opened the UK to be pressured by the providers into paying more for energy.
    Putting nearly all your eggs into one basket and then closing and quickly destroying most of your options i.e. coal fired power stations, doesn’t look too clever now, does it?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/604d95b4174f907d0f163613979d20be4059ae7404b221edb691b6aff5c38567.png

    Daily Sceptic – Wind Industry Wants Huge Increase in Subsidies

      1. I set these things up for you.

        Quite honestly, I am fed up with the endless dry days combined with very strong winds from the west and south.

    1. Who are the “we” that “won’t do it again”? While that will be true of some, and non-compliance will be greater than last time, I’m confident that many millions will comply, will be happy to do so, will scold those who don’t and demand that the full force of the law is applied to them.

      1. 374221+ up ticks,

        Afternoon DW,
        I am in total agreement with Roger so that explains the “we”

        ” I’m confident that many millions will campaign comply, will be happy to do so”

        Your confidence in such a fear / terror campaign being successfully re-run
        will not meet with success, too many peoples lost love one under the applied fear element.

        In short it was a fear / terror & manipulation campaign orchestrated by the political governing overseers.

  14. ‘Morning, Peeps. A fine, fresh day in prospect…

    At the risk of upsetting some Nottl breakfasts, this from today’s DT…when it comes to snouts in the trough the whining little piggies in the Scottish Nasty Party really have excelled themselves. Read and weep:

    SNP ran up £148,000 taxpayer bill at Cop 27 climate conference

    Nicola Sturgeon and other officials spent thousands on luxury hotels, flights, and food

    By
    Oliver Gill,
    CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT
    5 July 2023 • 7:02pm

    SNP delegates who attended last year’s Cop 27 climate conference spent a night in Italy and two weeks at a luxury Sharm El Sheikh beach resort, running up a taxpayer bill of nearly £150,000.

    Nicola Sturgeon and other officials spent £44,665 on 25 rooms at the Parrotel hotel, which boasts seafront access, five restaurants and three swimming pools, according to data published under the Freedom of Information Act.

    Flying the delegation out to the Egyptian holiday resort cost more than £14,000, with many attendees staying overnight in Milan en route to their final destination.

    Ms Sturgeon is understood to have travelled by train to London to fly direct. Her return flights were the most expensive, costing £1,562.

    A spokesman said that the then-first minister flew economy, despite her fare being higher than others.

    Ms Sturgeon announced that Scotland would pay £5m of reparations to developing countries at the United Nations climate conference, which was also attended by a British Government delegation that included the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak along with other world leaders.

    The expenses details also show SNP delegates spent nearly £3,000 on food, including orders of ice cream, pizza and sushi.

    A Boots meal deal, a Burger King Whopper and watermelon fingers from Marks & Spencer also feature on the eclectic list of expenses that runs to 24 pages, as well as almost £1,000 of spending on 17 phones and sim cards.

    The five-star Parrotel Beach Resort offers “rooms decorated with rich fabrics”, according to one travel agent. Spas, saunas, a hot tub and massages are available as well as a private beach, three swimming pools, three tennis courts and a volleyball court. In addition, the hotel has “five restaurants, daily entertainment and water sports”, online travel agents say.

    The largest single expense was £75,705 for office space and the pavilion at Cop 27 – an amount that is shared with other members of the ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, an organisation of local authorities that campaigns against climate change.

    Douglas Lumsden, Scottish Conservative Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, said: “This is an astonishing sum for the Scottish government to have shelled out so that Nicola Sturgeon and other SNP figures could grandstand at Cop 27.

    “People will be appalled that, at the height of a cost-of-living crisis and savage SNP cuts to public services, no expense was spared sending the former First Minister and her entourage to Sharm El-Sheikh.

    “It speaks volumes about the nationalists’ priorities that she chose to focus on promoting herself on the global stage, rather than deal with the real issues facing ordinary Scots.”

    Conor Holohan of the TaxPayers’ Alliance added: “Scottish taxpayers will be livid that they’re footing the bill for a foreign jolly. While there was a case to send representatives from Holyrood, having been given an inch officials have taken a mile.

    “Scottish ministers should place stricter limits on spending abroad.”

    A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “A Scottish presence at COP27 was vital in order to continue the legacy of COP26 in Glasgow – not least in pushing for greater action to support global south countries experiencing loss and damage as a result of climate change.

    “Ministers and officials undertook a significant programme of engagement with national and regional governments, climate experts and campaigners, including those from the global south.

    “COP is the single most important annual event for agreeing action on the climate crisis, and this level of engagement and cooperation would not have been possible without attending in person.”

    * * *

    Probably one of the finest BTL posts ever. Jacko Cross deserves his own DT column:

    Jacko Cross
    9 HRS AGO
    My theory is that the SNP don’t actually want independence, just the leverage and associated gravy train that goes with it. Now their bums are making buttons that independence may actually come, and from the last place they expected; the rest ot the UK voting them out. All of the perks would stop, the easy life over, the money gone, back to the jobs in fish & chip shops, call centers and poundshop solicitors that they had before “entering politics”. No more luxury camper vans or offices with “think pods” embedded in the windows. No more free first class travel or hotels, no allowances or expenses. No subsidised meals or gold plated pensions. No secretaries or letter headed paper. No parlimentary privilege. No more adulation from lunatic supporters or the BBC. No more flirting with the EU and pretending to be statesmen. Nope, my friends, these clowns are thick, uncouth and uncultured, but they are wily survivors. 16 years of promising it all and delivering nothing had but one purpose; to milk the chapped nipples of the independence cow for their own greed-driven gain. Even a cowpat with a pair of glasses could tell you that Scottish independence would be suicide and the SNP know it better than most. So, farewell to the bearded, hardbitten faces of Black, Yousaf and Sturgeon. Time to shut your clanging grids and pray that the rest of this kingdom doesn’t flush you like a curry and red-wine growler, straight down the u-bend of history to the sewers where your lives began.

    1. …. “as well as almost £1,000 of spending on 17 phones and sim cards.”
      Wee Burnie phones?

      1. I was about to post that…’almost £1,000 of spending on 17 phones and sim cards.’
        Obviously burner phones like other criminals use.

          2. Nope. Can’t do any painting now until about September, when nesting birds have finally flown and we can replace fence panels damaged by neglected shrubs.
            Note to sparrows: keep at it, boy and girls.

    2. I think JC has very eloquently hit the nail on the head.
      The SNP are perpetual indulged teenagers; constantly moaning, constantly on the take but also constantly dodging responsibility.

    3. Typically and habitually they make all sorts of excuses in the form absolute out and out lies.

    4. When the Duke of Sussex is expelled from his marital home he might form a liaison with the deputy leader of the Labour Party. What a team the Ginger Whinger and the Ginger Growler would make!

    5. I have long been of the opinion that what the ScotsNaz want is devo max; they get to do what they like and England foots the bill. They don’t really want to be totally independent because that would mean paying for everything.

  16. Good Moaning.
    This morning I will make a big, big decision – to throw away the multi-coloured rubber gloves that have seen me through gallons of paint. But then, possibly, they might have a bit more mileage in them ……

    1. And wee you throw them out you’ll discover that you really need them….

      1. Yup. I overdid the dumping spare crockery in charity shops.
        MB has just discovered an unopened packet of socks. What treasures lie in the hastily dumped boxes in the attic?

          1. Of a youthful MB?
            Actually, there are dozens of bloody pictures; all neatly stacked by grandchildren who could fly up and down the stairs for longer than I could.

          2. There are still boxes at the back of our garage that have never been touched since we moved out of a bigger house into our current cottage, more than ten years ago now!
            I think they are mostly ornaments and pictures, but the paper shredder is in there somewhere too!
            People say you should just throw any unopened boxes away after a certain time, because if you don’t miss it, you don’t need it – but I know that my china Shire horse is in there somewhere, plus a bronze horse of which I am very fond!

        1. I’ve trained mine to work without my participation, I can’t even recall where she keeps them when not in use!

    3. Problem is the older you and the gloves get, the more difficult they are to put on and take off. Wrinkles being a bit of a nuisance.
      Buy a pair of industrial gloves from Screwfix or Toolstation. Job done. 😉

  17. Those five heatwaves we were promised for July had better get a move on. My radiators came on this morning !

      3. Not here it wasn’t. Been wearing a (thin) jumper all week.
        Got awfully wet in the shower… 🙁

        1. I’ve been wearing my fleece and today I contemplated putting the heating on! I did manage to resist, but I think a hot water bottle beckons for tonight!

  18. Morning all 🙂😊
    Sun just about revealing it’s self.
    Not warm, but rain getting ready to ruin the planned village day/two day weekend.
    And patients paying for attention ? When most of them will have been paying in to the system for the majority of their working lives ?
    With insurance they would have paid twice.
    Isn’t about time we started charging the people who have never paid a penny
    towards the care they grab at random ?

    1. The bbc don’t seem to have any logic, they deliberately stirr up trouble anywhere they can. Who ever wrote this blaming Israel, should be made to stand alone and prove what they have stated.
      If Israel really is as bad as suggested they could and would wipe out all of their enemies in a few weeks. But……

      1. Staffed by idiot graduates from privileged families who have never done a useful day’s work in their lives.
        People should stop subsidising them, it only encourages them.

        1. I suppose some people might describe me as an idiot graduate from a privileged family but I find the BBC’s inability to be dispassionate and balanced is a disgrace.

          I would like to watch Test Match cricket on live TV and the England Rugby XV in the autumn series against the Southern Hemisphere.

          Might I suggest that the BBC offers us test cricket and all international rugby free of charge as they used to do and their news and political programmes on subscription so that nobody has to pay for it if they don’t want to watch it but those who pay for it can do so?

          3. I would gladly stop paying the telly tax but my husband is an avid follower of sports (especially as he can no longer play) and so we carry on paying it. Apart from some music programmes and the occasional Scandi drama on B4 there’s not much worth watching. My brain just tunes out when the ‘News’ is on.

          4. I only pay because a) I am English and thus generally law abiding and b) I watch the racing (on ITV).

    1. Yes, it’s very useful. The only slight drawback is that in a rising market the new, higher prices are sometimes slow to appear (purely accidental of course!) but other than that it’s fine. Users do have the facility now to post pump prices. I can’t imagine why some government clot or other (Mr Shatts?) wants to spend taxpayers’ cash on reinventing the wheel – unless of course they think that petrolprices.com is rigged or have simply never heard of it. Upon reflection it is probably the latter. Ministers out of touch? Shirley Knott, whoda thunkit??

  22. Expect there will be much sympathetic coverage of Cardiff teenagers’ funerals today. However, what seems to get little coverage is that they were lawbreakers with – seemingly – little parental control. I remain aghast that the two policeman involved in following them for a while are on gross misconduct charges.

  24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2qAKyoBQ7k&list=WL&index=71

    Re: The universal installation of “gender-neutral” lavatories in most schools.

    Back in the 1950s to the 1990s not a single schoolteacher in the UK would have even thought of sanctioning such preposterous idiocy. It just goes to show what a lamentable profession teaching has become in the past decade-or-so.

    Modern-day teachers, who think this abominable stupidity is a sensible idea, are the prime reason why children leave school as-thick-as-two-short-planks these days.

    2. Women don’t use gender-neutral lavatories. Expect an epidemic of kidney disease as girls try to go the whole day without peeing.

        2. I did wonder a while back whether the prospect of having to deal with periods over several decades was a push factor in the thinking of some young girls wanting to ‘become boys’….?

          1. They were horrible but I never for one moment thought I was anything but a female.

          2. And back in the day I guess the prospect of Transition did not exist even as a remote possibility.

          3. Unless those girls took puberty suppressant drugs for many years or actually had their wombs removed, they would probably still have periods.

            When I was a young girl I would have liked to be a boy – but I grew up. Being trans wasn’t an option in those days. Playing on young girls/boys normal fears or fantasies that normal people grow out of is just so wrong.

  25. Scientists “warn”, don’t you just love it?

    Scientists warn Africa is splitting in TWO: 2,000-mile crack that appeared along south-east of the continent is widening by one inch every year

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12267587/Could-Africa-split-HALF-2-000-mile-crack-widening-one-inch-year.html
    As you will have worked out for yourselves:

    While Africa is not expected to tear for at least another five million years, Somalia and half of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania will form a new continent when it does.
    Ken Macdonald, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told DailyMail.com: ‘What we do not know is if this rifting will continue on its present pace to eventually open up an ocean basin, like the Red Sea, and then later to something much larger, like a small version of the Atlantic Ocean.
    ‘Or might it speed up and get there more quickly? Or it might stall out, as the Atlantic did before it commenced to true seafloor spreading? At the present rate, a sea about the size of the current Red Sea, might form in about 20-30 million years.’

    2. Very worrying. I think that I won’t be affected but my children should start worrying.

      1. Shouldn’t really be worrying – could be quite a nice feature to have more coastline!

      2. They should consider becoming witch doctors, the scientists of the future.

      1. Indeed
        It appears it has recently started moving again, however I suspect that an equally likely explanation is that people have noticed rather than it being entirely new.

        1. I do not think it has ever stopped moving. The area is violcanic as well.

  26. Good day all,

    More of the grey stuff blotting out old Sol above McPhee Towers this am. Chance of a shower too but there should be sunny periods this pm. Wind Sou’-West, 14℃ with 19℃ forcast. It didn’t get above 20℃ here yesterday but a warmer day is in prospect tomorrow.

    Having had a quick look at long term temperature data for Oxford yesterday which showed that the average July maximum going back to 1990 is 22.49℃ and following a comment about there being high sunspot activity which denotes a more active sun, I looked up the solar cycles.

    We’re in solar cycle 25 which started in December 2019. Solar cycles are taken to start at a solar minimum when sunspot activity is low or non-existent. They generally last ‘about’ 11 years but since solar cycle 1 which started in February 1755 only cycle 24 is actually 11 years. They vary from 9 years and 0 months long to 13 years 7 months. Here’s the table:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de17cdbfaea8512d9275db0a820b9a4f9b13e1f0b436ba00173fdf1d7584300c.png

    So we had a solar minimum at the end of 2019/start of 2020 and we are now approaching the maximum of cycle 25. However, superimposed on the is a longer term cycle of about 350 years in which sunspot activity reduces progressively from cycle to cycle before beginning to increase again. You can see this here:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1f8eb6406584996ebc216c83bfbda25d0f76aa8a8c38fa862121646794b7759.png

    The lines shown sunspot numbers North and South of the Solar Equator and the combined number.

    From a peak at cycle 19, there is a downwards trend in sunspot activity to cycle 24. Cycle 20 is an outlier. Looking at Oxford June/July temperatures from 1965 to 1974 they seem at a glance to be significantly cooler (quite a few in the teens). I’ll have a look at this later.

    Professor Valentina Zharkova, mathematician and astro-physicist of the University of Northumbria has predicted a modern Grand Solar Minimum in solar cycles 25-27 with the trough in cycle 26. This could be similar to the Maunder minimum of 1645-1715 which gave us the Little Ice Age. Cycle 26 could start as early as 2028 or 2029 or as late as 2032 and finish as early as 2036 or as late as 2045 so the associated minimums of sunspot activity could be around 2030-32 and 2040-43. she expects global average temperatures to be at least 1℃ down during that period which will be significant for Northern hemisphere snow and ice accumulation. Here is a graph of 400 years of sunspot observation:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6020fa1b22d1e6ab3d50c90c61609aaff0b6d17fd43d4b74e8eb4686293ab9b4.png

    You can see what Prof. Zharkova is up to here:

    https://solargsm.com

    If she’s right, the climate loons are just about to have egg all over their faces. Those who trusted their common sense and said “It’s the Sun, stoopid” were right all along ( I’m one).

    1. It is a fairly plausible theory that all this reset nonsense and enslaving the population is preparing for the solar minimum.
      They won’t admit they were wrong though – they will hail the cooling weather as “evidence” that Net Zero “worked!”

  27. Good day all,

    More of the grey stuff blotting out old Sol above McPhee Towers this am. Chance of a shower too but there should be sunny periods this pm. Wind Sou’-West, 14℃ with 19℃ forcast. It didn’t get above 20℃ here yesterday but a warmer day is in prospect tomorrow.

    Having had a quick look at long term temperature data for Oxford yesterday which showed that the average July maximum going back to 1990 is 22.49℃ and following a comment about there being high sunspot activity which denotes a more active sun, I looked up the solar cycles.

    We’re in solar cycle 25 which started in December 2019. Solar cycles are taken to start at a solar minimum when sunspot activity is low or non-existent. They generally last ‘about’ 11 years but since solar cycle 1 which started in February 1755 only cycle 24 is actually 11 years. They vary from 9 years and 0 months long to 13 years 7 months. Here’s the table:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de17cdbfaea8512d9275db0a820b9a4f9b13e1f0b436ba00173fdf1d7584300c.png

    So we had a solar minimum at the end of 2019/start of 2020 and we are now approaching the maximum of cycle 25. However, superimposed on the is a longer term cycle of about 350 years in which sunspot activity reduces progressively from cycle to cycle before beginning to increase again. You can see this here:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1f8eb6406584996ebc216c83bfbda25d0f76aa8a8c38fa862121646794b7759.png

    The lines shown sunspot numbers North and South of the Solar Equator and the combined number.

    From a peak at cycle 19, there is a downwards trend in sunspot activity to cycle 24. Cycle 20 is an outlier. Looking at Oxford June/July temperatures from 1965 to 1974 they seem at a glance to be significantly cooler (quite a few in the teens). I’ll have a look at this later.

    Professor Valentina Zharkova, mathematician and astro-physicist of the University of Northumbria has predicted a modern Grand Solar Minimum in solar cycles 25-27 with the trough in cycle 26. This could be similar to the Maunder minimum of 1645-1715 which gave us the Little Ice Age. Cycle 26 could start as early as 2028 or 2029 or as late as 2032 and finish as early as 2036 or as late as 2045 so the associated minimums of sunspot activity could be around 2030-32 and 2040-43. she expects global average temperatures to be at least 1℃ down during that period which will be significant for Northern hemisphere snow and ice accumulation. Here is a graph of 400 years of sunspot observation:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6020fa1b22d1e6ab3d50c90c61609aaff0b6d17fd43d4b74e8eb4686293ab9b4.png

    You can see what Prof. Zharkova is up to here:

    https://solargsm.com

    If she’s right, the climate loons are just about to have egg all over their faces. Those who trusted their common sense and said “It’s the Sun, stoopid” were right all along ( I’m one).

        1. I’d love to be there to watch!
          Next stop, “just stop oil” protesters.

  29. Can someone with BTL comment access respond to Miss Maridor’s post and refer to Blair as “The unflushable log in the bog”?

    Pauline Maridor
    44 MIN AGO
    IMO it is an insult to give Tony Blair a public platform.
    Blair has risen recently from his crypt to keep the globalist show on the road, as if decrying ‘anti-vaxxers’ and promoting mandatory vaccine passports. He now has the solution to fix the NHS.
    Now that Labour is most likely to reach No.10 at the general election; with Tony Blair no longer ‘hiding in plain sight’, I expect he hopes he will be the one holding the power for Sir Kneeler.
    Some suggest he fancies another go at leading the Labour Party.
    That a YouGov survey showed that just 14 per cent approved of Blair’s knighthood should highlight how LOW the establishment has sunk.
    There is no doubt that he radically changed our country, the change was NOT for the good of the people.
    In all seriousness, I view the damage done by Blair, was not only enormous, but has set a template that all others now follow.
    Allowing him anywhere the levers of power again, can only be seen as an act of National destruction.

    2. He is quite useful though, in that if Tony Blair comes out and supports something, a large number of people are likely to catch on that it’s not a good idea!

    3. The chances of the ‘THEY’ having vaccines any stronger than strile water were pretty remote.
      If any one of them had been effected as thousands had, we would never have heard the end of it.
      Even Boris play acted his covid claim.
      As soon as he came out of hospital the Australian nurse said to have taken care of him. Soon vanished and apparently went to live in the USA. Just in case the journo’s started asking questions.

    2. It’s been so long ago that I heard that there was such a thing that I have forgotten. What are Premium Bonds?

          2. So you think it’s worth it to have some and how many is sensible?

          3. Your capital is slowly whittled away by inflation but then it does in a savings account too. At least with premium bonds you have a chance of winning a tax free amount.
            My bonds have consistently given a better return than interest rates.
            The maximum is £50,000 which is what i have. The more bonds the more chances of winning.
            If at any time you need the money for another purpose it is easily withdrawn to your bank account.
            I would recommend if you have the money.
            As with all finance/savings/investments it is best to have several pots separate from each other.
            The money is also safe. It’s not gambling.

          4. The nominal prize fund is going to be 4% soon (3.7 now). If you have the max of £50k, you should return around 4% which is tax free, you could hit the big one or get less of course. Having the minimum is good as it gives you a chance of the £1m, with £50k you should get a reliable return, but I’m not sure having a few thou is much good. Its a gamble…! but you dont loose your cash.

          5. It depends on your personal circumstances. If you were to invest £10,000 or £20,000 i would space it out in blocks of £5,000 over several days to create spaces. There is also another aspect. Many people who have had the bonds for years and years don’t seem to win often if at all (see Bill Thomas).
            I believe in the churn effect. Take some out then reinvest. You are getting different numbers each time you do it.
            Good luck.

          6. It’s not just Bill Thomas. MOH had a bond from the early fifties and never won a penny.

          7. So you think it’s worth it to have some and how many is sensible?

          8. I’ve only missed 4 payouts in the last 3 years and never less than £50

  31. Good Morning to all! Another cold day here in West Sussex and no sun. But a rather pleasant day non the less.

    Thought this interesting but until we hear this sort of thing being broadcast by the BBC it isn’t going to make much difference. Which only goes to the necessity of defunding the BBC.

    Communist takeover ‘happening very slowly’, warns Matt Le Tissier | ‘It’s incredibly concerning!’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkRYLdI8KaY

      1. I think Julie B only means sportsmen who talk bollocks. She doesn’t cite Matt Le Tissier as falling into that category? Or David Icke for that matter, though many now forget that he was a sportsman?

        1. I was just being a little mischievous. You know what the response would be from the allies of Lineker, Murray & Co.

        2. I think Sue, that the majority of sane, normal sportsman and women keep their mouths shut for the sake of peace, quite and their careers. All three would rapidly go AWOL if they dared to speak out.

      2. Thanks for that William. Good article, enjoyed it for being truthful about the detestable Gary Lineker, Lewis Hamilton and the rest of them. I really should read the Spectator, have a subscription but constantly forget to read the mag.

  33. That breastfeeding bloke is the last straw. Spiked. 6 July 2023.

    Surely the breastfeeding bloke will be the last straw? All last week, institutions of repute – ITV, the TUC, sections of the Labour Party – insisted that Mika Minio-Paluello is a mum. In truth, he’s a man. This former Labour special adviser and TUC staffer is a bloke who only says he’s a woman. Science, reason and every chromosome in his own body beg to differ. And yet ITV had him on the news saying the cost-of-living crisis is ‘tough if you’re a mum like me’. When actual women pushed back against this lunatic description of a man as a mother, they were scolded by the TUC and the rest. ‘Mika’s a mum!’, cried the elites in a frenzy of unreason.

    The Elites have of course lost their marbles. This isn’t an unusual phenomenon. Irrationality is a commonality to all cults. It adds a sense of belonging; of specialness, to being a member. It is this that separates them from the herd. The truth has been revealed to them. They are the Chosen Ones! There’s no real cure unfortunately as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons etc. illustrate. The rest of must simply try to stay anchored to reality!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/05/that-breastfeeding-bloke-is-the-last-straw/

    1. There appears to be a typo in the 20th word of your response Minty.

      (Good morning by the way to you and everyone..)

      1. You had me counting words there! Shirley that’s something the Mika creature doesn’t have?

        1. I thought the corrected spelling was neutral i.e. equally applicable to either sex if the shoe fits so to speak….

    2. They’ve successfully distracted people from the economic crisis to arguing about whether this man on hormones is a woman or not.

      3. Down to his /her Mikaconnedual organelle found in the cells of most eukarenyotes perhaps?

    4. A bloke breast feeding is going to lead to a starving baby. Play it how you like it is still nonsense.

  34. BBC Red Button news today about Shell’s CEO who wants to keep drilling for oil:

    Wael Sawan was appointed as Shell’s chief executive in September, replacing Ben van Beurden who had surprised some activists and investors

    Activists no doubt like Just Stop Oil because Sawan wants to keep drilling for oil but investors like pension funds who have shareholder interests in Shell.

    https://www.edie.net/new-shell-ceo-drops-targets-to-reduce-oil-production/

      1. Yes, it marks the turning point where Black Gold is more commercially valuable than the shiny stuff.
        The latter is easy to store in places like Fort Knox but it doesn’t power internal combustion engines or flow through pipes very easily.

    2. Apparently Shell are evil because they knew about climate change and did nothing about it. Yes, an ex Shell employee said that.

      I despair at how dumb people are.

  35. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34791bb12cda3edb244b4ff6a7a42e17dbed76757e3042400c16ddffd671fc5e.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/06/what-does-labours-private-schools-tax-raid-mean-for-me/

    BTL

    Just as Blair has recommended people to use private medicine to take the pressure off the NHS Starmer should recommend people to use private schools to take the pressure off state schools.

    In France if you use private medicine or private schools, for which you have already paid with your taxes, the bill for private medicine and private schooling is reduced by the amount you would have saved the state by not using their services.

    What a novel concept – for the state not to expect people to have to pay for things they have not used!

    1. Germany too – if the school is recognised by the state, they get money from the state for pupils, and you only pay the difference in fees – and it’s partly tax deductible.

      The Labour party is stuck in the 1930s era of keeping the red flag flying.

      1. Both countries also have a progressive personal tax system that rewards and encourages marriage and the family.

        In France income tax is levied on households not on individuals so most married couples file joint income tax returns. Total income is split according to how many people live in a home: one share for a single person; two shares for a married couple and half a share each for the first two dependent children with one full share for the third and each subsequent child. Thus the income of a married single-earner taxpayer with three children would be divided in four and each share subjected to the income tax schedule. The result would be that a married man and his wife with three children would pay not a centime in income tax until their income exceeded €40,900 and the rate would not exceed 11% until their income rose above €104,280. That said there are substantial social charges in employment deducted at source (over €20,000 at €100,000 gross income) but the main point is that the personal tax system adequately recognises marriage and the family.

        In Germany all resident individuals are taxed on their world-wide income. No one pays any tax until income exceeds €10,347. For a married couple that is doubled to €20,694 and the tax rates start at 14%. The rate increases progressively until €58,596 when it reaches 42%. Again that figure is doubled for married couples so they don’t reach 42% until they earn €117,192. The tax rate stays flat at 42% until €227,825 or €555,650 for married couples. Above those figures the rate is 45%. But note, you have to be earning over half-a-million Euro to be paying tax at 45% as a married couple. And there is no stripping away of the personal allowances as there is here in the UK. Again the tax system recognises marriage.

        1. I have never understood why there are higher brackets for higher earners. Is it because tax officials don’t understand percentages, or just plain state greed?

          The Left in the UK have spent 25 years destroying the family. Then they wonder why society is falling apart, tax revenue is dropping, we’re falling behind academically, socially and culturally.

          The Left are pig ignorant sewage.

          1. State greed is about right, backed by the sentiment from the bottom of society that they deserve something for nothing and that ‘the rich’ can pay for it. It ignores the obvious fact that anyone who has to trade their labour, whether physical or intellectual, in order to live is not rich.

          2. I always find from the lower paid that they want more. They assume I have been given everything and never see the struggles, the failures and the one lucky break and 36 hour days to get it off the line.

      2. I think the Left just hate the idea of others getting the benefits they did.

        1. The left hate the idea of the working class getting on in life. The facts of life are conservative and educated working class types tend to realise that.

          1. Without the permanently poor – and I don’t just mean financially – Labour would have no reason to exist.
            It needs a permanent underclass.

    2. Unfortunately for us all Blair is one of those nasty pieces of work who hates Brits/The English and by that he set about and started the rot of of our society and it’s culture.
      And although he’s had a an 8ft wall built around his property in Buckinghamshire we still have to supply 24/7/365 armed protection for him and his horrible wife. So they still get away with their monstrous and hate filled thinking.
      I had a quote for private medical treatment for the dilemma I found my self in after the Covid jabs and it was anything between 10 and 20 thousand pounds. I doubt in these circumstances that any insurance would have covered this. A mere bagatelle for him and probably reclaimable, but not for the ordinary person the street who finds them selves in a situation deliberately set up by political renegades.
      Who jointly they have not an ounce of respect for.

  36. Here, IMHO, is a man who should be ashamed of himself.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c1e0104b2b77c43adc1ccdf0be3541cc2ab6c184a129a4d6ddd70d40f4a1125d.png

    As with Hancock, this man mentions ‘future pandemics’ as if they are a common occurrence and that one is waiting around the corner to strike us all down. Well, the much vaunted CV-19 didn’t directly kill many people but the knock-ons certainly did with the “vaccine” coming home in gold medal position.
    If a re-run is on the cards then it’s almost certain that it will again be a bio-weapon that infects those in contact with it but there will be no collateral damage from the infected people passing it on to others, as Dr David Martin has declared. In this way the ‘elites’ will never be infected. The plebs will be offered another miracle “vaccine” in short order.
    Scam me once, shame on you; scam me twice, shame on me: this proverb must be the watchword for everyone.
    Sadly, I am aware of numerous people who remain convinced that CV-19 really is an air-borne virus and the only defence is a “vaccine”: why else would they have taken 4, 5 or 6 doses in two years and still believe they’ve caught ‘it’ when they ‘test positive’ post inoculation? Why no doubts?

    Daily Sceptic – Nudge Unit Boss Speaks

      1. Me neither. I didn’t the first time. It was a revelation to discover that there was a one way system around the supermarkets months afterwards, I simply didn’t realise as we don’t watch tv or read the lying press. I will never comply.

        1. Would you trust the judiciary to return an honest, unbiased verdict that isn’t fervently pro state?

    5. “I am aware of numerous people who remain convinced that CV-19 really is an air-borne virus…”

      Isn’t it?

      1. It is entirely possible that the whole thing was a hoax., fraud not a hoax because there was nothing funny about it.

      2. Watch Dr David Martin at the EU Conference. From around the 7:30 mark he explains that SARS CV-02 is a bio-weapon that is:

        ‘Infectious replication defective’ = a weapon that targets an individual but does not have collateral damage to other individuals.

        That sounds to me that it cannot be spread from one person to another. If it was randomly spread as an airborne virus how could it be controlled, how would the elites be safe from infection?
        Another analyst of patents, the law and government legislation, Karen Kingston, has come to a similar conclusion.

        Dr David Martin – 3rd International Conference on Covid in Brussels

        1. An ‘infectious replication defective clone of coronavirus’ i.e. a modified SARS. He’s talking about its origins in research, not its nature. Several times he uses the term ‘respiratory pathogen’ i.e. a viral respiratory tract infection. How would it pass from one person to another except by the way of all other cold and flu viruses?

    6. I think he misunderstands the British people. We certainly practiced the drill once, but that might not have quite the effect he thinks it will.

    7. Why does that unit still exist? Why is it receiving funding? And no, don’t disband it and keep funding it in anything but name, sack those doing the work.

    1. If Roger Waters sees that, he’ll become even more morally conceited.

      1. True but it seems apt. Not being a Pink Floyd fan, I had to look up the quote but I do get that Waters is conceited!

      2. Pity that. Great musician, have all of Pink Floyds records, but what a plonker the man is.

  38. Afternoon All

    “Hottest day on earth evah” What abject bollox

    https://twitter.com/wideawake_media/status/1676156584169205760?s=20

    Rest of the Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/47eb48af76be30cf242dff3b8682b6ca7e2e8964c035988aa008e4119b26c29f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0fcd34a3248578799da3edc1b32e95bebd0c7c80a7bbfcb7c0875b1ae12610c0.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5fcfb96b366e6832a872e5604d112bebd55756b6634534ea0efdc2ddafb6f3d5.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/07156cb66536bb2950e67b712c33d5c4986e1af487b7fb23d90487a90c3c7fac.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fcf51b2f4dc9a2072d108b602627da921990dbaf3e5cb63d6b578004c2f587fc.jpg

    Finally,about NHS funding……..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f7dd6d67cea570a05f29801c9751b7073b00713e662139927cf277793a48e437.jpg

    1. I believe that 4 -5 years ago the government put 7 regional directors in place for the NHS each one being paid 250 thousand a year.
      My opinion was they have been employed to bring it slowly but surely to it’s knees.

  39. Good afternoon all,

    Usual palavar this morning , blood tests for me this morning , med check up, then washing on line and a flit around with the cleaning cloth.

    Re cricket , Moh is live streaming to TV from his laptop.. hd.cricfree.io

  40. Jan Choinski, George Loffhagen, Arthur Fery, Sonay Kartel all playing at Wimbledon.
    Makes you proud to be British.

  41. Industrial Revolution iron method ‘was taken from Jamaica by Briton’. 6 July 2023.

    The Cort process, which allowed wrought iron to be mass-produced from scrap iron for the first time, has long been attributed to the British financier turned ironmaster Henry Cort. It helped launch Britain as an economic superpower and transformed the face of the country with “iron palaces”, including Crystal Palace, Kew Gardens’ Temperate House and the arches at St Pancras train station.

    Now, an analysis of correspondence, shipping records and contemporary newspaper reports reveals the innovation was first developed by 76 black Jamaican metallurgists at an ironworks near Morant Bay, Jamaica. Many of these metalworkers were enslaved people trafficked from west and central Africa, which had thriving iron-working industries at the time.

    Of course they did. Didn’t they invent the wheel as well? What about penicillin? I’m sure Fleming was black really.

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/05/industrial-revolution-iron-method-taken-from-jamaica-briton

    1. So why didn’t the industrial revolution happen in west and central Africa if they had this technology? I’m baffled!

      2. Now come on, bb2! These poor engineers and metallurgists were ‘enslaved’, dontcha know? 😱

      3. It’s always the slaves who invneted something – yet…. they wouldn’t have the choice of how to do something. They’d be told.

        White folk built the world. We defined it. It is our language used globally. Heck, once we’d freed them and built cities for them they resorted to type and wrecked them in tribal war because no matter how much they’re given, they ruin it.

    2. Don’t forget the jet engine, the Joule-Kelvin effect, the electron microscope and the MRI machine.

    3. Henry Cort is honoured in my town with a load iron works making it look like a scrapyard.

      2. So the man was a rogue? So what – plenty more where he came from – if the slaves were so skilled they could have saved themselves from slavery.

    4. Modern metallurgy was invented in ancient Greece. This is such arrant tripe it’s boring now.

      1. The ancient Egyptians were very skilled in metalwork – some beautiful artifacts came from the tombs.

  42. Cab at 1.45 to take me to supermarket and husband to hospital. Pain dreadful.

    3. I do hope you referenced those links to pain clinics that I dug out for you about a week ago?

      So sorry for you and I wonder whether MacMillan nurses could help with the pain issue?

  43. Research England has announced a series of important initial decisions relating to the 2028 Research Excellence Framework (REF2028) and the likely equality, diversity and inclusion (DIE) impact. This will reshape the incentives and rethink what should be recognised and rewarded.

    The intention is to produce a more inclusive assessment exercise, capturing the valuable contributions of a wider range of researchers and research enabling staff. Significantly, it is intended to better reward those institutions that strive to create a positive research culture and nurture their research and research-enabling staff.

    If you is blick you’ll get a leg up. If you’re an effnick you too will get help. White folks having worked for it? Up yours.

    I’m sick of this tripe.

    1. And yet student loans have cripplingly high interest rates. That’s our money. The loan should be set at the base rate. As it is, the state is simply throwing our money away on criminal scum who should not be here in the first place.

  45. Have just spent a happy 10 minutes shouting at the radio in the kitchen! It makes the cleaning so much easier! Ian Collins is interviewing the extremely wealthy eco-lunatic and Labour Party donator, Dale Vince. I honestly don’t know how Collins managed to stop himself from laughing at the obfuscation and downright lies Vince was spouting, but I’d have preferred him to challenge more of the carp! If you get a chance listen to the interview and gasp when the nutter states that China are doing a better job than we are on nut zero, because we’ve given them all our carbon credits!! The man is deranged!

    1. Mr Vince, you got rich from the taxpayer being forced to pay a rigged price for energy. When will unreliables accept a market price for their energy and pay for the costs of integration?

      And keep coming back to that until he says ‘No, we never will. Unreliables are utterly unviable without massive tax payer subsidy and I don’t care, as you’ll always be forced to pay because we pay MPs to make sure you do.’

      1. He is disgustingly smug and self-satisfied, with an eminently punchable face! I don’t think I’d tire of punching it!

    2. Dale Vince – not Vance! He’s a neighbour of ours (about a mile away) and founder of Ecotrickery ((which made his millions) and owner of Forest Green Rovers (a little local football club at which he threw lots of money) which was a one hit wonder last year and is now back in League 2.

      Dale made everybody who wanted food at the football club eat vegan stuff.

      He’s a deranged nutter alright but a dangerous one – people actually believe his nonsense.

      Ask yourself how a penniless traveller became a billionaire selling electric power? By calling it ‘green’ and ‘eco’ when people are buying the same power as everybody else. It comes from the same sources – a mixture of generation including, gas, nuclear and ‘green’ eg wind and solar. But it’s all trickery!

      2. I see the latest EON advert tells you that it supplies 100% green energy – no it doesn’t, you get the same mix as everyone else and to be pedantic they don’t supply you with any energy green or not – the grid does that – you only pay them for it. Ok they might only buy green energy but they are conning their customers into thinking all the electricity which come to their house is renewably sourced

        1. Perhaps some people think that individual electrons are barcoded with the identity of their source.

          1. It wouldn’t surprise me – I remember a woman telling the electricity company to disconnect her because she was scared that electricity produced by nuclear power would irradiate her

      3. He actually speaks very well, despite the content being absolute drivel/lies. He sounds horribly plausible!
        Edited to correct surname! Thanks Ndovu!

    3. Dale Vince – not Vance! He’s a neighbour of ours (about a mile away) and founder of Ecotrickery ((which made his millions) and owner of Forest Green Rovers (a little local football club at which he threw lots of money) which was a one hit wonder last year and is now back in League 2.

      Dale made everybody who wanted food at the football club eat vegan stuff.

      He’s a deranged nutter alright but a dangerous one – people actually believe his nonsense.

      Ask yourself how a penniless traveller became a billionaire selling electric power? By calling it ‘green’ and ‘eco’ when people are buying the same power as everybody else. It comes from the same sources – a mixture of generation including, gas, nuclear and ‘green’ eg wind and solar. But it’s all trickery!

  46. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12270317/BREAKING-Trans-charity-Mermaids-LOSES-bid-strip-gay-LGB-Alliance-charitable-status.html

    Not sure why they’re asking this. It’s obvious. Once you erase identity you can erase people entirely to force whatever you want on them. It is simple fascism. By forcing iconoclasm no one can identify with a traditional hero because they’ve been destroyed.

    It is frantic, crazed obliteration of the rational and normal. The Left hate, unrelentingly.

  48. Afternooon all! I’ve been busy reading 84 comments in our local paper mostly supporting someone who says “The Light” newspaper (which is distributed by volunteers in Stroud) should be banned, or if not banned, then binned. He recommends people take as many copies as they can and put it in the nearest bin. There were a few comments in favour of free speech but very much in the minority. Wiki calls it “conspiracy theorist”, antisemitic etc. Anyway, here’s the latest issue so make your own mind up.

    https://thelightpaper.co.uk/assets/pdf/Light-34-June-23-Web.pdf

    1. It should be reprinted by the thousands and distributed to every town and city in the country. No such luck, of course, but it is going to come to that sort of tactic if we want the truth to be heard in the near future.

    2. If people don’t like it, they shouldn’t read it. It’s called choice. Removing the choice of others is pure Left wing spite.

  49. William posted a link to an article in the Spectator which reminded me that I have a subscription but never read it. So, went over and thought it worth posting this article here.

    Jonathan MillerJonathan Miller
    Why Europe riots

    A spectre is haunting Europe. In France, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and even Switzerland, the rule of law is being challenged by the rule of gangs. Disaffected young people cut off from society feel nothing but nihilistic contempt for it. Higher temperatures and social media are creating a heated summer. Judging from recent events in Paris and Stockholm, this year could be the worst so far.

    The rise of gang violence is associated with immigration. Europe has shown itself incapable or unwilling to control the influx of migrants, some of them genuine asylum seekers, others simply opportunists. Nor have European politicians succeeded in dealing with the problems created by immigration, despite spending billions on social projects. A European summit on immigration in Brussels last week ended without even a joint declaration. Emmanuel Macron was unable to attend. He was preoccupied with riots across France, following the fatal police shooting of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy, in suburban Paris.

    The European Commission, deaf to the concerns of voters, has responded to the de facto collapse of the EU’s frontiers by demanding that countries such as Poland, which has largely closed its borders to refugees and is not troubled by the problem of migrant gangs, be fined €20,000 for each person refused.

    France gets plenty of attention, but its street violence is hardly singular. Sweden, once a quintessential example of an open-minded society that welcomed immigrants, has become one of the most violent countries in Europe, as measured by gangland shootings. It’s a rare night in Stockholm that passes without some violent event. Police estimate that there are now more than 50 gangs, many in heavily immigrant communities. The Swedish newspapers read more like film scripts, with feuding gangs loyal to ‘the Kurdish Fox’ and ‘the Greek’ and violence connected to vendettas.

    Police have identified 31,000 people in Sweden who have some connection to gangs. ‘We have never faced such ruthless criminality,’ said Anders Thornberg, national police chief, in a recent interview. Sweden’s laws go easy on the under-21s: a model, he says, that is an open invitation to gangland violence. ‘The model of organisation for the entire Swedish justice system is not rigged to face such extensive criminality.’

    Take one court case this year: a teenage asylum seeker found work as a hitman, killed the wrong person, then went on the run. This being Sweden, his citizenship application was approved as he dodged the authorities. He was caught but sentenced to just four years in a prison – or something that passes for prison. As a teenager, he qualified for internet access, a single room, and security so lax that inmates can arrange external dental appointments. He used one to break free within a few weeks of his sentencing.

    In the most recent waves of immigration, Sweden has let in more refugees and people claiming to be refugees, as a share of population, than any other European country. It is coping with the consequences. Last year Norway had four fatal shootings, compared with 63 in Sweden. In Botkyrka, south-west of Stockholm, a generation has been lost to gangs, says Paulina Neuding, a journalist who is writing a book on Sweden’s descent. Many of Botkyrka’s children, who are disproportionately from immigrant backgrounds, are easy pickings for gangs.

    But Sweden is not alone. In Brussels last week, police and angry immigrants clashed. Belgian police said they arrested 64 people. Perhaps more surprising is the experience of Switzerland, not a country associated with rioting. In Lausanne, there were clashes last week between police and youths. Young people threw paving stones and at least one Molotov cocktail at officers. Swiss police detained Portuguese, Somali, Bosnian, Swiss, Georgian and Serbian citizens.

    In Germany, where Angela Merkel opened the doors to refugees from the Middle East, the number of criminal offences across that country’s 16 federal states has skyrocketed, up by 12 per cent last year, with authorities recording some 5.6 million crimes. Incidents of rapes, sexual offences and fatal assaults all rose by more than 20 per cent last year. Robberies jumped 27 per cent.

    In France, things are so bad that a night with no riots now makes the news. When the violence dies down, the aftermath looks ugly: this time we saw the looting of Jewish-owned businesses and the defacement of a Holocaust memorial. Plus ça change. Cars are burned, police assaulted and shops pillaged every day in France. In January, an Algerian man stabbed six people at the Gare du Nord, and last month a Syrian asylum seeker ran amok with a knife in an Annecy playground, wounding four babies and two adults. Macron has promised ‘no taboo’ when it comes to restoring order and has told social networks to censor content. Censorship is a weapon normally employed by totalitarian regimes, but Macron has a point.

    So far, no politician in Sweden or France has offered a plausible solution to this problem, certainly not Marine Le Pen, the right-wing nationalist who is favourite to win the 2027 presidential election. Anger with the situation in Sweden saw the populist Sweden Democrats made part of a governing coalition, but they seem just as bereft of ideas.

    ittle wonder that anti-migration parties are doing well across Europe. The nationalist Freedom party in Austria, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, which last month won a district election for the first time, are all advancing. The Spanish Partido Popular is currently eight points ahead of the ruling socialists in the run-up to next month’s general election.

    Common to all European countries where gangs are seizing control is the near collapse of the education system in immigrant areas. A British friend who teaches English in an inner-city high school in the southern city of Béziers tells me that one of her students, a gang member, was recently arrested for a serious assault. Her principal has advised her not to discipline her students lest she be assaulted herself. Some Swedish teachers report being told by pupils ‘Jag kan brösta en fyra’ or ‘I can take four’. The reference is to the number of years in prison that a Swedish teenager can expect for killing a teacher.

    It’s the European way to see crime as an expression of social injustice. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist politician, has refused to condemn the rioters and instead attacked the police, describing recent events as an insurrection against inequality and racism. Nonsense, says a French journalist friend who has been covering the riots. ‘They couldn’t care less about the death of Nahel. This is nihilism. Nahel is just their excuse.’

    It would be easy to put all the blame on Europe’s current leaders. But it’s not entirely their fault that so many unemployable young people, many born to immigrant parents, have lost loyalty to their countries. Sweden’s gang warfare may have worsened since the 2016 wave of migration, but many of those now arrested are Swedish born and bred (the ‘Kurdish Fox’, for example, is from Uppsala, born to Kurdish parents).

    Integration failures are coming to a head. The crisis across Europe is the result of decades of wishful thinking about how migration-related problems will resolve themselves. But Britain would be unwise to revel in the misery of Sweden and France: social disorder is contagious. The recent French riots seamlessly crossed the border to Brussels, with its own population of angry young men. It might only take only a spark to plunge Britain into an inferno of its own.

    1. A commentator on Steve Bannon’s War Room likens the cultural mixes to an aquarium. Some fish are incompatible with others and will attack and disrupt others if introduced into the fish tank.

      As in Afghanistan there are hundreds of antagonistic tribes with different cultural values and destined to warring between themselves. Another comment was that it takes just six Chechens to provide a critical mass and they then attack the host.

      France could solve its problems with mass deportations and strict application of the rule of law.

      The US is also in a precarious position with Biden actively enabling people and drug trafficking on an epic scale for globalist political purposes. Trump promises mass deportations and cancelling of the ‘Birthright’ route to citizenship whereby women are impregnated at the southern border and granted citizenship when the child is born in the US.

      We are following the same disastrous policies of the EU despite Brexit. We can expect riots and societal upheaval as the numbers of incompatible aliens mounts.

    2. “…it’s not entirely their fault that so many unemployable young people, many born to immigrant parents, have lost loyalty to their countries…”

      I doubt they had any to start with (the Arthur Wellesley principle).

      “…Swedish newspapers read more like film scripts, with feuding gangs loyal to ‘the Kurdish Fox’ and ‘the Greek’ and violence connected to vendettas…”

      This is how European society was 1,500 years ago (although here, the Border reivers were at it still in the early 17th century). It’s a simple reflection of all human society since Man climbed down from the trees: tribal, hierarchical, territorial, acquisitive – and violent. In Great Britain, it took centuries to build the institutions that contained the worst of these inherent traits. It hasn’t taken very long to knock them down.

        1. He’s somewhere in the lovely free country of Canada. Where truckers get their bank accounts closed.

          1. Ghastly country. The only country I would refuse to go back to even if I didn’t have to pay for it. Dump!!!

          2. Never felt the inclination to go there. Too cold in winter, and I gather it’s warm and smoky in summer.

        2. Canada where Trudeau is also a lover of throwing out the white immigrants in favour of natives and half a million incomers every year.

      2. Ben and Jerry could set the example and throw themselves off a cliff. We could even name an ice cream after the event. The fat bastard’s strawberry splat.

    4. Thank you for posting this.

      Re the comment: “ They couldn’t care less about the death of Nahel. This is nihilism. Nahel is just their excuse.’”. Exactly the same could be said for the St George of Floyd episode, the consequences of which we are still living with today and into the long foreseeable future.

      1. I firmly believe that sending in the army; to strafe all gang members with machine-gun fire; regardless of the age, sex or race of said gang members; wherever they are, in their homes, or in the streets; with no questions asked; is the only way that a civilised society, concerned about the safety of its people, can reasonably act.

    6. And Britain has been busy importing 10’s, if not 100’s of thousands of men in the rioting age ranges.

    7. “… many of those now arrested are Swedish born and bred (the ‘Kurdish Fox’, for example, is from Uppsala, born to Kurdish parents).” Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.

  50. Home again, large glass of Pinot and good old Tony playing; waiting for my husband to return after his consultant visit.
    You now have a crook on this page!
    I shop lifted today. Only allowed to buy 2 packets of paracetamol- oh really. So I put 2 in the cart and put 2 more in my big shopping bag. Needs must 😉

      1. I nicked the ones that come out the package easiest;-)
        Going to try the codeine tonight for the first time.
        God, I am boring myself with all this shit. Sorry folks.

        1. I hope you are aware that it is possible to overdose on paracetamol even if you only take the recommended daily amount. If you are taking them over a long period they can still cause organ damage.

          1. Phil, do you think I give a damn? If I am still alive at the end of this year it will be a miracle. My husband is who I am worried about as he has health problems of his own.

          2. I hear you. We are all concerned for your and your husbands well being. We are here for you if you wish to vent/rant.

    2. Turn yourself in. You might get better drugs (and medical treatment) as a lifer.

    4. Ann, buy them from eBay. There is a limit for each purchase from each merchant. But all I do is buy from several merchants so I end up with a dozen packs. Just the same as going to Tesco then somewhere else, but far less effort.

  51. No sign of husband- his appt was at Chinese dentist. No doubt kept waiting because their time is more precious than ours.
    Is there anything better than Tony with those wonderful violins?

    1. I have been listening to a collection of the old classics. Nothing that needs attention, just comfort music.

  52. Just surfaced from watching the Christie’s auction this afternoon.

    The pair of Rembrandts were sold (hammer price – oodles of fees to be added) for £9,500,000. The last time they were seen in public was in June 1824 when they were sold BY Christie’s in King Street for 13 guineas to the family whose descendants sold them today.

    The Artemesia Gentileschi fetched £1,500,000

    None of my bids was enough.

  54. Inside Putin’s armour-plated train that boasts a high-tech beauty suite. 6 July 2023.

    Photographs from inside the luxurious train, uncovered by investigators from Russia’s Dossier Center news site, have revealed how seriously the Russian president takes his self-care regime.

    Within one of its 22 interchangeable carriages – protected by armour plating capable of stopping sniper rifle bullets – is a private gym, cosmetologist’s studio, medical suite, bar and a cinema, the photographs and plans reveal.

    The train, which reportedly cost at least 6.8 billion rubles (£57.7million) to produce, also features a Turkish spa known as a hammam.

    I guess the war is not going too well for the Ukies. We are back to Vlad the Bad and his private affairs. At least unlike “Putin’s Palace” he does actually appear to use this train. The information is supplied by the Dossier Center which is an anti-Putin propaganda outlet run by Mikhail Khordokovsky. This is its third appearance in the MSM and will no doubt appear in others over the next few days and as required.

    There’s nothing at all unusual about a Head of State having a private train. The Royal Family has one and the President of the United States has AirForce One which reputedly cost $1B dollars.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/06/vladimir-putin-train-beauty-high-tech-russia-armour/

  55. Husband is home- his appointment was 2.30. After an hour an a half he told an aide he was off. Tell her ladyship to phone me if she has anything to say.
    The NHS is treating us like shit. I am not going to apologise for my language….I have seriously had enough.

  56. Almost time for me to go to bed. Had an exhausting day So this is my last post. A video that came into my feed this afternoon of the Temple of Saint Sarva in Bulgaria. Didn’t know anything about this Church but it I have learnt that they started building it 70 years ago and it was finished in 2014, although they are still doing finishing touches. It’s interior is stunning.

    Always wanted to paint Orthodox icons which are egg tempera, but I have always had the mañana mañana mentality. But now mañana has arrived and it is to late. Still, did have the unique privilege of learning Tibetan iconographical painting, water colors sort of, which was thanks to my brother who knew a prominent Tibetan artist and introduced me to him, otherwise I would not have bothered. Had the privilege of learning a style called Ta-zig, which means Persian, he was the last Tibetan alive who could do it, but, due to health, I can’t do that anymore either. I have learnt, far to late, that ‘seize the moment’ is not a slogan but an essential truth. I have had so many opportunities in life and never bothered to do anything with them. Thus it goes, I suppose.

    so here is the video. Hope you all enjoy.

    Is Belgrade’s Temple of St. Sava the most beautiful church on earth?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARa9KgR30sY

    3. Magnificent!! I should imagine it would be overwhelming to see that in person!

    4. “Is Belgrade’s Temple of St. Sava the most beautiful church on earth?”
      That depends on your idea of beauty.
      I’ve never seen any church so ornate and decorated as St Sava in the video (I’d love to see it in the flesh, and listen to them making music there), but there’s also huge beauty in a small, dark, thousand-year-old stave church about the size of a camper van… the beauty is driven by the feeling of spirituality, not just the decoration.
      Thanks for sharing, Johnathan.That lifted the day quite noticeably!

    5. “Is Belgrade’s Temple of St. Sava the most beautiful church on earth?”
      That depends on your idea of beauty.
      I’ve never seen any church so ornate and decorated as St Sava in the video (I’d love to see it in the flesh, and listen to them making music there), but there’s also huge beauty in a small, dark, thousand-year-old stave church about the size of a camper van… the beauty is driven by the feeling of spirituality, not just the decoration.
      Thanks for sharing, Johnathan.That lifted the day quite noticeably!

  57. Par Four today.

    Wordle 747 4/6
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
    🟨🟩⬜⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Me too.

      Wordle 747 4/6

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

      1. Bogey

        Wordle 747 5/6

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

    2. Bogie 5 today.

      Wordle 747 5/6

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

  59. Can an erudite NoTTLer explain to me what “Bazball” is supposed to mean? I had assumed that it was just the name for yet another of these “tip and run” versions that plague us. But apparently it isn’t.

    1. Expansive, attacking test cricket. Risking defeat by going for a win rather than settling for a draw. Some say it’s foolish and reckless, such as the premature declaration on the first day of the first test at Edgbaston, or an unwillingness to adjust the style of play to match changing circumstances. As to why it’s called Bazball, I’m uncertain, but it’s something to do with the New Zealand coach currently in charge of England.

      2. I should have added that it’s an attempt to make test cricket more entertaining, which it is, to counter competition from shorter forms of the game, but also frustrating when England seem to throw away any advantage they have in a game. It works against weaker opposition but Australia has the talent to exploit it.

        On a tangential point, I do wish that commentary teams would cease describing every wicket taken as a “breakthrough”, and cricket not played in a defensive or cautious way is not always “aggressive”. There are other words in the dictionary.

        1. Having been thoroughly put off cricket by being dragged by my mother to watch every (at least it seemed like it) Worcestershire game, I find it hard to imagine ANYTHING could make it more entertaining!

      1. Probably because Leeds is white enough that they feel relatively safe with rainbows.

  60. Just been outside to load up the car with bags of garden rubbish for the tip. I’d been thinking I should have been outside doing stuff – but I found it’s not such a nice day afterr all – although it’s sunny it’s blowing a gale and most unpleasant.

    So I’m in again.

    2. 31C and sunny. It is too hot to continue sitting on the balcony. I am glad that I am not golfing until tomorrow when it is supposed to be a much cooler 28C.

    1. Thankfully, I’m not in quarantine 🙂 I went into town with Kadi this afternoon (Oscar was in full possession of his fleecy bed growling “I shall not be moved!”) to do some shopping and enjoy a coffee and cake at our usual dog-friendly cafe.

        1. That’s why I’m lenient with him. I knew I was taking on an old dog so I want to make his declining years as pleasant as possible. Thankfully I have Kadi who wants to go for a walk (he wants to be wherever I am, in fact). Oscar is just adjusting his position on the rug beside me at the moment. He seems quite contented.

          1. I miss Poppie so much I can’t even begin, I’m sure you know. We will be scattering her ashes this Sunday and then maybe we can look ahead, or maybe not. What will be, will be, and will happen of its own volition in our progress towards acceptance. It is so nice to hear of other people’s dogs, I am glad Oscar is having a contented evening.

          2. Some contented evening … 🙂 It’s very hard to lose a pet. I still miss Charlie even two and a half years on. Having Oscar did help because the house didn’t seem as empty. Plus, of course, he brought with him his own challenges to keep me on my toes (not to mention my toes away from his teeth!). He does seem more chilled most of the time, thankfully.

          3. It is so strange, the quality of the emptiness. The whole house feels it; her presence in the house seems that it filled every room, it expanded to fit the space even when she was in the kitchen. One only realises this when they are no longer there.

          4. Oscar has expanded to fill the space in the kitchen; he’s had to have his nails trimmed (they got so long they have to be done in stages to shorten them) and thus had to be drugged up with Gabapentin and Trazadone – on vet’s advice. It didn’t stop him being vile while it was done, but he is now spreadeagled on the kitchen floor sleeping it off 🙂

    2. Has someone come out to bat for the other side. It is pride month after all…

  63. Watch: BBC News anchor says ‘Israeli forces happy to kill children’
    Corporation apologises after Anjana Gadgil remarks about Jenin operation to the country’s ex-prime minister live on air

    By
    Catherine Lough
    5 July 2023 • 11:41pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/05/bbc-news-anjana-gadgil-israel-forces-kill-children-comment/

    IL

    Ian Liddle
    3 HRS AGO
    The IDF has admitted to killing “12 Palestinians in Jenin, all of them terrorists, of which at least two were under 18”. It is organizations like Islamic Jihad that issue 16 and 17 year olds with weapons and train these ‘children’ to hate and kill Jews. Yes, it is sad when anyone dies, especially ‘children’, but where does the blame really lie? In the interview Anjana Gadgil failed to accept that 17 year olds can be trained killers, just as the BBC fails to accept who the “occupiers” of the West Bank really are.

    Agnes Clarke
    2 HRS AGO
    On the World Service two nights ago, Israel was deplored at considerable length.Then the presenter went on to deplore the rights of women in Afghanistan and failed to understand that Hamas etc would turn Israel into another Afghanistan if they were not stopped in the only way they understand.

    Mathew Gubbins
    3 HRS AGO
    “Over 140 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank”
    & contemporaneously 112 Arabs have been killed in Israel – all involved in family feuds, honour killings and gang violence.
    It would be interesting to see corresponding figures for Malmo, Sweden and areas of Brussels.

  64. That’s me for this day of two halves. Useful trip to Nurse (next one on Monday). Antibiotics – yay!! Good market. Gardening. Fantastic auction.

    Thanks for the “bazball” info. Not sure that I understand it!!

    Tomorrow – G & P to vet for half yearly check up. That’ll be fun… Gus hates it – Pickles likes the attention!

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. Judging by the feedback, “bazball” is a misspell of ‘boring’, Bill!

    2. Well, I wouldn’t bother washing my face and hands before I went to see him.

  66. Evening, all. In my view, for what it’s worth, the NHS should be castigated for forcing people (who have paid contributions all their working lives) to go private because they can’t get timely NHS treatment.

      1. Talking of bells I’ve had the windows open listening to the bell ringers practicing in Bathford Church 3/4 of a mile across the valley. Quintessentially English.

    2. The NHS is a government department. It’s consideration of your paying for your own healthcare is saving it money – not an utter and abject failure of it to do it’s job that you should be compensated for.

      I’ve posted it before but i think it apt:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5zEb1oS9A

  67. Ukies already blaming Putin for the destruction of the atom plant.
    False flags, anybody?
    I’ll go & find our iodine tablets.

    1. After the Chernobyl meltdown Welsh lamb became a lot cheaper.
      MOH bought some joints (of lamb that is), cooked them and served them up to the family.
      The kids eyes lit up!

    2. After the Chernobyl meltdown Welsh lamb became a lot cheaper.
      MOH bought some joints (of lamb that is), cooked them and served them up to the family.
      The kids eyes lit up!

    3. What! They’ve been and gone and done it, have they? (The Ukies’ that is…). I thought Russia had a round the clock watch on it.

  69. Just back down after a nap- codeine. Taken some more and going back up.
    I am disgusted by the way we are being treated by the NHS who only give a shit about themselves. Poor Eddy who has been battling this for ages, as have others. Tomorrow another, probably useless appt with an oncologist to discuss the 2 alternatives as surgery is not an option.
    I can’t eat and have no desire to…
    Wish all of you the best- I really do.

    2. I don’t know what to say LotL. The NHS is highly variable in how it behaves toward patients. Is the codeine helping? I was on pretty high strength jobbies for a while – they do bung you up, as it were so I recommend a lot of fibre and fruit juice.

      Ah, sorry – as useless as talking about the ruddy weather. I don’t have a clue what to say.

      2. Thanks Wibbs. Am up again now at half eleven and slurping some Pinot, at least is makes me relax a bit. I thank you for your kind wishes.

          1. Good man! Debating another glass or a return to bed. Not supposed to take any more codeine until gone midnight so it may be another glass.

          2. Have another glass, Ann and join me in my final snifter – cheers.

            Try the pain-killers and, as Wibbles advised last night, go to bed and at least get some REST.

            If you sleep, that’s a bonus but don’t try and force it.

            Rest and relax and let the pain-killers take you through.

            Love and hugs from us all.

          1. I’ll defer to your much greater expertise on the ins and outs of their activities.

    2. The latest desperate attempt to scare people with an even bigger lie as the original is exposed as the tax scam it is.

      1. But also to cover the fact that many people are losing their sight from blood clots in their eyes because of the you-know-what… “0h, it’s just a spot of climate change, dear….”

  71. https://order-order.com/2023/07/06/breaking-cabinet-office-loses-fight-to-withhold-boriss-whatsapps-from-covid-inquiry/#comments

    I’d just mention that the online harm bill wants, desperately to do away with encryption. If that came in, Whatsapp mesages wouldn’t be encrypted and everyone would have read them. No secrets. No hiding their incompetence, deceit. No doubt they’d want it forthemselves, but… these people are fools and don’t understand how these things work.

  72. Just back from one of the many night markets on offer during July an August.
    The one thing they all seem to have in common is that they are pretty much vegan proof.

      1. “Do you have anything suitable for vegans?”

        “Yes, cross the road and go and eat the grass in that field.
        You’re welcome”

  74. Deep breaths
    Ha ha ha, ha bloody, ha ha

    Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever loses $2.6bn in market capital as ice cream boycott kicks in over ‘anti-American’ July 4th tweet: GOP’s Kristi Noem slams owners as ‘liberal Vermont businessmen who think they know everything’
    In a new interview with Fox News, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem slammed woke ice cream makers Ben & Jerry’s
    Noem’s anger stems from a tweet sent out by the company in which they called for Mount Rushmore to be returned to Native Americans
    Since sending out the tweet, Ben & Jerry’s parent, Unilever, has lost $2.6 billion in market capital

    Get woke go broke…
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12272011/South-Dakota-Gov-Kristi-Noem-slams-Ben-Jerrys-July-4th-tweet.html

  75. Yeah, of course it was worth it…

    Harvard and Yale scientists investigate new condition dubbed ‘Long Vax’: Debilitating suite of symptoms linked to Covid shot that last months and resemble Long Covid – but scientists stress it’s extremely rare and benefits of vaccination outweigh risk
    Symptoms include headaches, fatigue, abnormal heart rate and blood pressure
    Researchers say it could be due to an immune overreaction to the Covid protein
    READ MORE: Pandemic cost the US economy $14TRILLION (and counting)

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12267293/Harvard-Yale-scientists-probing-new-condition-linked-Covid-vaccines.html

      1. I think they do, they just won’t admit it and are looking everywhere except under their noses.

    2. Woman we know was explaining just those symptoms to vw this evening. It started after her second jab and she’s got a 24 hour heart monitor today. Headache, aching arm immediately after jab, said it felt as though the needle had hit the bone. Two fainting attacks, used to have high BP now has low BP. Doctors can’t find any reason for it.
      We know the reason don’t we.

  77. Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolk. Off to bed, as I don’t want to do another night shift.

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