Tuesday 22 August: Callous criminals should no longer have the option to skip sentencing

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

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

566 thoughts on “Tuesday 22 August: Callous criminals should no longer have the option to skip sentencing”

    2. Spin the wheel, which excuse do you want today?
      Covid, NHS waiting lists, climate boiling?

      1. Nice shiny new variant set to rampage through the population. Dual purpose i.e. camouflage for the die-off and/or new incentive for those who remain addicted to boosters and masks?

  4. What have we come to when all that will happen to Letbe is to kept in a soft prison for the rest of her life. That is not justice.

    1. It’s difficult to successfully treat people with FDIA because they often deny that there’s a problem. Success can be dependent on catching the person in the act or the person telling the truth. However, people with FDIA tend to be such accomplished liars that they start to have trouble telling fact from fiction.

      https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9834-factitious-disorder-imposed-on-another-fdia#:~:text=The%20change%20from%20Munchausen%20syndrome,description%20of%20a%20person%27s%20behavior.

      Is it possible that LL was not fit to plead due to a mental health condition. She might have been perceived as being very normal whilst she was in fact very sick and had a mental condtion called FDIA.

      People who are ill with a mental condtion may have a distorted sense of reality and often end up in prison.

      1. It’s no excuse though. Few people are so mentally ill that they would commit crimes someone was standing over them ready to administer immediate justice.

        1. Lustitia does not judge on appearances – that is why she may appear with a blindfold. Criminals may not be able to see her.

      2. ‘Morning, Angie. You can bet your life that her defence team ensured that she underwent a psychiatric assessment in the hope that she would be found sufficiently ill and therefore unfit to plead.

        1. Aftrnoon Hugh,

          She is too normal to want to admit that she has a mental deficiency and needs treatment for it. In the reality of her world she may perceive that everybody else has made a big mistake.

        1. Psychiatrists spend so much time investigating sick, deranged people they tend to forget how normal people behave. Psychologists, on the other hand, study how normal people behave so they see anyone behaving normally as not being sick.

    3. 375620+ up ticks,

      Morning JN,

      I do see it as the only civilised answer, life meaning life.

      Capital punishment due to the sentence meted out to Timothy Evans,

      Criminal status: Executed (9 March 1950; …
      Conviction(s): Murder (exonerated)‎
      Known for: Wrongfully executed for the m…..

      Cannot ever be considered again.

      1. There are certain crimes where the perpetrators are guilty beyond all doubt.

        For example, why should Lee Rigby’s killers not have been executed?

        1. 375620+ up ticks,

          Morning S,
          In their case you would be doing them a favour by elevating their status to
          martyr.

          They stay in for life, no ifs or buts.

          1. Life imprisonment has exactly the same effect for the type of individual who supports what they did.
            Kill them anyway.

          2. 375620+ up ticks,

            S,
            I do disagree, but then we should have adequate protection via security services, police, etc,etc,but then it is hard to define which side they have taken.
            Successive governments
            are pro illegal immigration
            the electorate majority are consenting to more of the same, until that ends decent peoples are stuffed.

      1. A life in solitary confinement for her protection from her fellow inmates awaits.

        1. Yes, they will have their own sense of ‘justice’. She may even come to the conclusion that life is no longer worth living even before they get to her.

  5. China is on the verge of economic and social implosion. 22 August 2023.

    The West is waking up, as usual late in the day, to the fact that the post-Covid economic rebound that Beijing has stridently heralded since the start of 2023 is simply not going to happen.

    Headwinds that have been worsening gradually for at least a decade are now turning into a perfect storm that even the most ardent People’s Republic of China apologist can no longer ignore.

    What should have been the mainstays of a vibrant market-linked Chinese economy have snapped; the eyes of the world, which stands to suffer as a result, are fixed on what could be a mighty shipwreck in the offing.

    “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Seems rather inadequate here! What level of myopia is needed to write something like this? China’s difficulties are as nothing to our own. Much as one may abhor the Chinese Government it has a better chance of surviving any upheaval than ourselves. The British State is disintegrating around us! Its institutions are collapsing. Its Social Contract is broken. Its finances consist largely of massive debt. Its armed forces are miniscule. It is poised on the edge of Total Destruction.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/08/22/china-on-verge-economic-social-implosion/

    1. I agree, this is rather wishful thinking. China does have huge problems, the worst of which is their lack of young people, but they’re still in a good position with most of the world’s manufacturing, large stocks of commodities and food and reaping the fruits of years of investment in up-to-date systems.
      Whereas we, er, don’t have all of the above.

    2. 375620+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,
      Total agreement,
      The contents of your post can be witnessed daily, as clear as day.

      1. Morning Oggy. Yes. There’s no mystery about it. Couldn’t be clearer if a giant asteriod was filling the sky!

      1. …and Dodgy Dave who stoked it up. I cannot help feeling that those responsible for our security will have warned about aspects of our dash for trade with China, tempting though it may have seemed at the time. Our universities were far too ready to take Chinese money. Didn’t anyone join the dots and realise that they would want something in return? If such warnings were issued they obviously fell on deaf ears. Johnson, for all his many faults, did seem to finally grasp the problem (Huawei) but probably rather late in the day and not before much damage was done.

    4. Morning Minty and all.

      I have seen it with mine own eyes. The Chinese are bloody good at keeping hundreds of plates spinning!

  7. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    A Drink On The House
    This guy goes into a bar and asks the bartender for five shots of whisky. As soon as the bartender pours the whisky the guy starts slamming all five shots down.

    The bar tender says “Wow! You really slammed those down!”

    To which the guy replies: “Well, if you had what I have, you’d drink fast too.”

    “What do you have?” asks the bar tender.

    :”About fifty pence!” :

  8. Good morning.
    Your handy pandemic prediction chart:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22db1c8705cbd66353b986f07673d0b6eb7604511314bcbfe288406e50bd57bc.jpg

    Note that every time they try to reduce the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet (amount of dollars), they have to rebound back and create even more. The waves of debt reduction and subsequent debt creation are getting bigger and bigger. The next one will probably break the system; enter CBDC food stamps to tide the peasants over, and throw dust in their eyes so they don’t blame the people who looted and broke the money.

          1. Slightly OT, but I’ve noticed that Cpl Jones – who was played by Clive Dunn (‘comic’ actor’) – was always far less funny than the characters played by the classic actors who did not pigeonhole themselves.

          2. I suppose that this was down to the scriptwriters. I was always impressed by Dunn’s masterful depiction of a character many years older than himself. He was, as I recall, in his late 40s and thus one of the youngest members of the cast.

  10. Good Moaning.
    I would like to say a very big “thank you” to NOTTLers.
    Yesterday I raised my doubts about the Lucy Letby verdict. I am gradually reading and listening to the links provided, but, so far, I think we may have witnessed a potential miscarriage of justice.
    What impressed me, was, that although I was raising an unpopular opinion, nobody frothed at the mouth (or keyboard?) and shot me down in flames.
    Is NOTTL one of the last bastions of civilised debate?

    1. Is NOTTL one of the last bastions of civilised debate?

      Yes! Morning Anne. I was quite interested to read your opinion. You are not alone strangely enough. Not myself I hasten to add. I don’t have the patience to work my way through the reams of evidence necessary to arrive at a considered opinion.

    2. Good moaning, Annie. I’m sure many of us have thought about the safety of the jury’s ‘guilty’ verdicts. However, we have not been party to the sheer volume of evidence that they have heard over many months. And I take some comfort from the fact that ‘not guilty’ verdicts were also returned for some of the charges, thus demonstrating – to me at least – that the guilty verdicts were probably well founded.

      I was busy yesterday and therefore sorry to have missed your post so far. I will try to catch up with the debate today.

    3. Well, I would like to think so, but perhaps we should test that by posting that the covid vaccine is wonderful, another booster is recommended, that diversity is strength and we should welcome all comers?

    4. Well said. Reluctantly, I accept that she was guilty but feel that the conviction may be unsafe. The woman spent approximately a total of two years and eight months (1012 days) remanded in custody, possibly a record. Her lack of remorse could indicate some form of mental illness; Albert Camus springs to mind, with L’Étranger.

      1. Indeed – I am surprised her Defence did not plead diminished responsibility on the grounds of mental illness. If her scrawled note to herself found in her quarters was genuine, then it does suggest some buried demon that needed addressing psychiatrically as soon as those infant deaths became statistically significant. It seems though that the managers were more interested in their remuneration packages than with the health of their patients and the welfare of their staff.

    5. Considering that the jury failed to reach a verdict over a number of the cases, there may be more to this can of worms than one sweet-faced psychopath. Do you remember the BBC3 drama ‘Bodies’ made about twenty years ago about a dysfunctional maternity unit that foresaw the very scenario unfolding in real time?

      If a dramatist has the perception to be able to portray the failings of the NHS in 2003 with utter plausibility, then what have successive Health Secretaries been doing about it? Is a cover-up their only option to win over public approval and, crucially, maintain the executive remuneration?

      1. I have not been following this case closely, but I can’t help wondering if other similarly warped individuals were colluding indirectly, and that they have escaped justice. There seem to be a lot loose ends and coincidences.

        1. In the first series of ‘Bodies’ a pretty young junior doctor (played by Tamzin Malleson, who also featured in ‘A Touch of Frost’ as the mermaid fetishist’s love interest) was scapegoated for the actual gross incompetence of the senior consultant (played by Patrick Baladi), who was covering his back.

          Now some of the jury might have seen that series and made direct comparisons in this case, rightly or wrongly. In the end, the verdicts were arrived at after much deliberation after hearing considerably more evidence than any of us ever will.

  11. British Museum missing more than 1,500 priceless objects. 22 August 2023.

    More than 1,500 objects from the British Museum are believed to have been stolen or destroyed by a single thief who went undetected for years, The Telegraph can disclose.

    The total value of artefacts now known to be missing runs into millions of pounds, it was understood.

    No arrest and yet the perpetrator is known! One wonders what the motivation is here. It cannot be greed since there seems to have been no attempt at self-enrichment. Is it cultural? It’s difficult to judge since we have no detailed list of the objects in question. There does seem to be an element of self-delusion in the responses of the alleged thief. Is that it? Some form of long term psychological derangement?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/21/british-museum-missing-more-than-1500-priceless-objects/

    1. Same mentality as university academics? They will go to any lengths to avoid open scandal. Some years ago, an Oxford don was advised to commit suicide to avoid something getting into the newspapers!

    2. How would they know?
      They may have a vague idea (“anyone seen that Scythian gold brooch, lately?”), but accurate numbers would seem to be ‘stick finger in air and come up with a figure’.

  12. ‘Morning, Peeps. Another dry day ahead at Janus Towers, with an uncomfortable 23°C.

    Headline in the DT:

    Matt Hancock shelved plans to ban sacked managers from NHS

    Plan to create similar scheme to doctors who can be struck off was ‘too complex to implement’

    I would have preferred this headline:

    ‘Hancock wasn’t up to the job of making NHS management accountable’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/21/matt-hancock-struck-off-nhs-managers-lucy-letby-case/

    We have here a merry-go-round of expensive non-jobs where incompetence is rewarded by promotion to ever more lucrative jobs, when the proper course of action would be to ban them from any further employment in the NHS. The utterly grotesque situation where a group of experienced paediatric consultants were told to send letters of apology after having whistle-blown on a nurse who was indeed killing babies must never be repeated, which is why we need a judicial enquiry with the power to subpoena witnesses under oath. This is surely vital if we are to expose the true role of ‘management’ on this occasion.
    What can possibly be more serious than an NHS employee murdering babies? No doubt the NHS will be lobbying hard to retain the non-judicial version, but this would be a betrayal of the victims, their families and those who tried to intervene in this appalling affair. The rot could not be more serious and must be exposed in all its ghastly detail.

    1. How ludicrous to have a system where doctors can be struck off, but managers (who arguably kill more patients…) can’t!

  14. SIR – Administrators at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where Lucy Letby worked, failed to address the mounting concerns of seven paediatricians. Indeed, these neonatologists were told to write a letter of apology to Letby.

    It is to be hoped that the culpable managers will dispatch letters of apology to those same doctors whose appeals they chose to ignore.

    A Katharine Thomson MRCP
    Holt, Norfolk

    Indeed, Dr Thomson, and I agree with much of what you say; however, I would go further. Those ‘managers’ (who couldn’t manage a piss-up in a brewery) should also be held legally accountable as ‘accessories-after-the-fact’.

    If I were in charge, I would arrest them, charge them, frogmarch them to court, listen to their whimpers for mercy, then thrash the living daylights out of them with a cat o’ nine tails.

    It those overpaid and overrated chinless twats had been up to the job, then their early intervention would have stopped that cowardly bitch in her tracks.

    1. Grizz, as a youngster I was taught that if I were to witness some serious wrongdoing, I should tell the Police. Theoretically, police were able to collate fragments of information, even before the PNC, and IIRC there was a sergeant who operated some sort of card index.
      I cannot understand why the medical staff did not immediately share their concerns with the police rather than relying on Chester hospital NHS managers.

      1. I remember vividly, Tim, the Collator’s Office at my first station back in 1973 (i.e. before computerisation). It was staffed (on early and afternoon shifts) by a couple of switched-on, experienced constables who were coming up to retirement. The small room was full of filing cabinets containing a vast card-index system, upon which all snippets of information were recorded. All known criminals had their own cards with all records of sightings of them and convictions on them. Any suspicious sightings of (or incidents attributable to) such people were published on a daily record sheet that was circulated to all officers.

        1. Around 20 years ago I belonged a golf society, and played with I nice guy who told me he had been top man in a London police station. He was about 5 years from his retirement. Out of the blue a memo was sent around his nick. Regarding one of the desk sergeant’s. It told the rest of people who worked there that they were no longer allowed to call the sergeant Chalky. But his name was White. But he was black. That was enough to take earlier than expected retirement.
          But he later hit his golf ball into a group of trees.
          I quickly pointed out that I thought he wanted keep out of the copse.

          1. Just as an aside, the records clerk in ‘A Touch of Frost’ was played by Arthur White. His brother David had to change his name to get into show business.

          3. ‘Morning, Eddy. A fellow cadet was Rahul Parekh, know to all of us as Chalky. He was a lovely chap, always worked hard, reliable and fun to be with. He certainly enjoyed his nickname and once said to me that our admittedly odd sense of humour made him feel included, which was not always the case at his school. To call him Chalky these days would put us on an immediate charge, and probably dismissal, and he would have missed out on being considered ‘one of us’.

        2. A central depository of information that worked, as the constables collated and stored all the relevant snippets. Of course, I expect a bean counter saw the opportunity for a snip at the budget. After all, every member of the police force has access to central records via their desktop or office computers. Sadly, this precludes local knowledge and a panoramic view on the subject as computer searches become ever more focused on singular facts, rather than trends.

          1. Indeed. We carried little ‘pink cards’ with us in our uniform pockets (half the size of a postcard), especially on night shifts, that we would scribble details of known criminals we saw out and about during the ‘burglar’s shift’. These cards would be handed in and the information collated. The collator’s office was always available to research crime trends and the movements of suspects … and it worked.

      2. Plod lol. Too busy enforcing “thought crime” (sic) and people driving dangerously at 22 mph.

        1. Too true.
          And unfortunately from what I can make out, plod seems to be recruiting a lot of migrants now.

    2. Grizz, as a youngster I was taught that if I were to witness some serious wrongdoing, I should tell the Police. Theoretically, police were able to collate fragments of information, even before the PNC, and IIRC there was a sergeant who operated some sort of card index.
      I cannot understand why the medical staff did not immediately share their concerns with the police rather than relying on Chester hospital NHS managers.

    3. Spot on.
      It’s probably not the first time something like this has happened and it’s probably why she dedicated her self to such a horrid and vile direction. She knew she might get away with it.
      Harold Shipman comes to mind.

  15. Tucker Carlson on Monday published an interview with former Trump administration official Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.), who explained why the war in Ukraine has put the United States on the brink of a ‘catastrophic war that could easily destroy us.’
    Carlson begins with a bold statement: “pretty much everything that NBC and The NYTimes have told you about the war in Ukraine is a lie.”

    “‘The Russian army is incompetent’ – they claim. ‘Ukraine is a Democracy!’ ‘Vladimir Putin is Hitler and he’s trying to take over the world!’ ‘Thankfully, the Ukrainians are winning.’
    “Every claim is false, the last one especially,” said Carlson, adding “the Ukrainian army is not winning – in fact, it’s losing badly. Ukraine is being destroyed. Its population is being slaughtered.”

    “Most American know nothing about Ukraine,” Macgregor continued, adding that “if they knew anything about the history of Eastern Europe, they would all say ‘get out!’… because the wars and the blood and the hatred that’s been fought over for centuries is something we can’t sort out.”
    Macgregor’s comments grow more ominous in their tone as the discussion continues.

    He notes that President Biden has enabled ‘combat pay’ which implies there are American forces on the ground in Ukraine.

    “It would be a mistake to think that the Russian forces do not know where they are,” the retired colonel explains, pointing out that the Russians are sending a message with recent precision missile strikes near the borders of Poland and Moldova:
    “if you think you can hide from us, if you come in here, if you cross these borders, we will annihilate you.”

    We need to come to terms with these realities because we can’t defeat it,” he remarked reflecting on the fact that people have called him ‘unpatriotic’ for his comments.

    He summed the situation in Ukraine up rather succinctly:
    “if we press this war with Russia in Central East Europe, it will reach us here in the United States.

    According to Macgregor, “The smartest thing we can do is end this war now,” adding “The Russians will never tolerate NATO forces on Ukrainian soil.”

    “Ukrainian forces are in piecemeal fashion, surrendering to the Russians, not because they don’t want to fight; it’s because they can’t fight anymore, they have so many wounded they can’t evacuate them … we’re going to see this army that we have spent so heavily on, melt away.”

    When it comes to the equipment being used to fight, MacGregor said that “a lot of the equipment we sent over there is quite frankly, obsolete… its very old, it’s not new.”

    “Integrated air defenses will knock virtually everything that flies out of the sky,” he said, adding “We will then fall back on a nuclear deterrent – a tactical nuclear weapon that says ‘if you keep advancing, we’ll have to use a nuclear weapon.’ We don’t want to go there, because the notion that there are so-called tactical nukes ‘oh, it’s just a little nuke, so that won’t precipitate a nuclear war’ – the use of any nuclear weapon is going to precipitate an escalation very rapidly,” he said.

    Carlson ends by asking Macgregor about the “leftist American man dressed as a woman” that is now the mouthpiece of Ukraine who claimed “Vlad Putin is a vampire bathing in the blood of Ukrainian children.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b22cd59efbedcd832b0855d637dd5ffa813554f32d22949ad646f534c689d518.png

    Macgregor asks “is that a transgender man?” To which Carlson replies, “yes, that’s a guy with fake breasts.”
    Macgregor retorts: “well I think everything else is fake too… this war is a catastrophe… the people bathing blood are in Kiev and Washington.”

    https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1693761723230990509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1693761723230990509%7Ctwgr%5Ea5e0fa997ae9fa4fa4cfa0f41f6b89d5be82494e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-brink-catastrophic-war-could-easily-destroy-us-col-douglas-macgregor-tells-tucker

    2. Morning Stephen. It’s pretty obvious that something dire is happening to the Ukrainian army. In the last week two of the best combat battalions that were being reserved for the breakthrough have been committed to the line, this, plus the sudden announcement of the delivery of the Fi6’s, which was formerly declared to be impossible, speak of panic. Could this escalate? It almost certainly will in my view.

    3. I hate to say this, because the ideals behind the formation of the United States were, by C18 standards, groundbreaking and noble. But.
      Since 1945, the USA has failed in every foreign venture it has undertaken. It has become so blinded by its devotion to democracy that it has failed to accept that particular system of government can only grow from the ground up, not be imposed from the top; and certainly not by a country seen as a foreign invader.
      It is a great shame, because the thinking behind the United States is a good one – from my perspective as someone who grew up in a country that used to be a functioning democracy.

      1. There was a coup in the US in 1913 and the banksters took control. The old US of its founders has not existed since then.
        See “The Creature from Jekyll Island.”

    4. The whole point of supporting Ukrainian resistance was to stop in its tracks territorial expansion by a superpower. Had a precedent been set successfully, we could be sure that Taiwan was next for “reincorporation by special military operation”. Not far behind would be Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic states, all of which were once part of the Soviet Union, and have substantial Russian interests present. The U.S. has form itself in moving into troublesome parts of Latin America, such as Grenada, Cuba and Nicaragua. It was never intended as a judgement on the quality of the Ukrainian constitution or institutions, nor even a threat to Mother Russia itself, which is just as entitled to its sovereign integrity.

      It is valid to make comparisons with the run-up to WW2, which was borne over general public cynicism over the Liberal Order, and where a policy of ‘Might is Right’ might actually get something done. As we are today though, maybe we need to compare the French Maginot Line which thanks to the treachery of a former British king was breached, with the Dnipro River, into ancient times a natural fortress in both directions once bridges are blown up. Whatever Russian impatience to get the whole Ukraine thing sewn up quickly, as they once did in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, crossing that river under fire has not proved so simple. Nor, it must be said have the Ukrainians been able quite so readily to regain lost territory on the far side of that same river, however much they goad the West into supporting them. In the meantime, artillery bombardment, largely from Russia but also a certain amount of crossfire from Ukraine, is piling up atrocity on atrocity, which those with the conscience and decency to take in the refugees must pay for.

      It may prove impossible to sustain a counteroffensive against Russia sufficient to recover the borders agreed after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, but then it sticks in the craw to allow arch criminality that Russia is beyond doubt guilty of, go unpunished. They act like the NHS executives who can carry on snouting up the bonuses claimed after the manslaughter of innocents simply by evading justice, rendering the whole institution of justice ineffective and inviting in those that can run the trains on time.

  16. BRICS: Towards a Just World Order

    Excerpt from an article by Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, published in the Ubuntu magazine, intended for visitors to the BRICS summit, starting tomorrow:

    “On the eve of the BRICS Summit, I would like to share with our dear readers my thoughts on the prospects for cooperation among the group of five countries in the current geopolitical context.

    Tectonic shifts are taking place in the world today. The possibility of dominance by one country or even a small group of states is disappearing. The model of international development built on the exploitation of the resources of the world majority to maintain the well-being of the “golden billion” is hopelessly out of date. It does not reflect the aspirations of all humankind.

    We are witnessing the emergence of a more just multipolar world order. New centres of economic growth and global decision-making on important political issues in Eurasia, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are guided primarily by their own interests and assign paramount importance to national sovereignty. And against this background, they achieve impressive success in various areas.

    Attempts of the collective West to reverse this trend with a view to preserving its own hegemony have an exactly opposite effect. The international community is tired of the blackmail and pressure from the Western elites and their colonial and racist manners. That is why, for example, not only Russia, but also a number of other countries are consistently reducing their dependence on the US dollar, switching to alternative payment systems and national currency settlements. I recall the wise words of Nelson Mandela: “When the water starts
    boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.”
    And it truly is.”

    Lavrov may believe what he is saying (and it’s a noble goal), however, BRICS has the stamp of the UN all over it. They have working groups for all the usual themes – women’s rights, climate change etc.
    It looks to me more like a power grab of emerging nations by the bankster elites.

    1. The American Hegemony is certainly under threat as never before. Don’t write off WWIII yet!

      1. I would not be surprised to see the US states divide again.
        Hawaii and Alaska formally joined the USA in 1959.
        That is within our short lifetimes.

      2. “When all else fails, they take you to war”

        I think that BRICS have it in their power to pull the rug out from under the Americans, rendering them incapable of starting another war. They only have to reveal how much gold they’ve got, and make their currencies gold-backed (and the Americans know this – with the possible exception of Joe Biden).
        I think their preferred strategy is to let the US gently sink, but if the Americans do something stupid, they may revert to financial shock tactics.
        I very much hope that all out war will be avoided.

    2. The American Hegemony is certainly under threat as never before. Don’t write off WWIII yet!

  17. France is taking Britain for a ride over the Channel crossings. Hamish de Crettin-Gordon.

    Despite the UK paying the French £480 million to stop small boats crossing the Channel, we learnt last week that Paris has intercepted less than half of those attempting to make the journey. In fact, they are intercepting fewer than they did last year.

    This is a disgrace. Disgraceful too is the realisation that Afghan migrants who may have helped my colleagues and myself in fighting the Taliban have been pushed into these small boats by seemingly untouchable smuggling gangs; some have perished.

    The only way to stop these deaths is to stop the armadas of boats that cross the Channel each day. I may be speaking out of turn as a former soldier, but I find it simply unbelievable that the French cannot prevent the boats being launched; it seems more likely that they simply don’t want to.

    Here’s Hamish pontificating on the “small boats crisis”. It’s amazing how many supporters of the Ukraine counter-attack have suddenly turned their attention to other things.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/21/france-taking-britain-for-ride-over-channel-crossings/

    1. I wonder as to which NGO or government agency subsidises his wages at The Telegraph. Radio Free EUrope?

    2. We’re being taken for a ride by our own government.
      And shame on the Navy and the Lifeboats for actively helping.

    3. I think we’ve known this from the beginning. The French hierarchy have never been able to get over Agincourt Crèsy and Waterloo let alone Trafalgar and being rescued from nazi rule.
      Pathetic people.
      Lovely country and generally nice people. But there has always been some evil and revengeful state of mind in within their Government.

      1. As Satan, Milton’s protagonist in Paradise Lost, said:

        To be weak is miserable.

        The trouble is that the French can see just how weak Sunak has become so of course they will take advantage of our weakness just as the British, over the centuries, have tried to take advantage of the French’s weaknesses.

    4. But can we blame the French?

      They don’t want the illegals any more than we do and if the idiot Sunak is prepared to pay them hundreds of millions of pounds to do nothing then why should we expect them not to grab the money with open hands?

    5. I think the “£480m” is an under-estimate. If you go back over the years one of the first payments – of several million – was for the construction of a fence alongside the railway tracks. I seem to recall (and I stand to be corrected) that the total amount handed over to the French is nearer a billion – which just goes to show that if millions of taxpayers’ wonga didn’t work on the first few occasions then it wasn’t likely to work however much we paid them.

      A friend suggested recently that the French didn’t really understand the arrangement, and thought that we were buying immigrants…

    6. I think the “£480m” is an under-estimate. If you go back over the years one of the first payments – of several million – was for the construction of a fence alongside the railway tracks. I seem to recall (and I stand to be corrected) that the total amount handed over to the French is nearer a billion – which just goes to show that if millions of taxpayers’ wonga didn’t work on the first few occasions then it wasn’t likely to work however much we paid them.

      A friend suggested recently that the French didn’t really understand the arrangement, and thought that we were buying immigrants…

    1. Most people who died of the plague were vulnerable, by way of age or sickness. Did vaccination reduce mortality among them?

      1. I doubt it.

        I have just discovered that a young relative of mine has been formally diagnosed with covid “vaccine” damage for a serious condition.

      2. 375620+ up ticks

        Morning JBF,
        Maybe in the fullness of time
        the inquiry will let us know.

    2. And to come up with so much information, she must have known an awful lot of people. Or maybe it was just guess work. Which is the usual pathway of such ‘science’.

    3. Because they forced or coerced most people to have the jabs there are more jabbed than unjabbed.

      1. 375620+ up ticks,

        Morning N,
        Then in all reality the enquiry findings could very well show in the cold light of day that the nurses evil actions, driven via mental issues, cannot even begin to compare with what has taken place under the “welfare of the peoples” banner via
        politico’s / pharmaceuticals.

  19. Good morning all,

    Grey skies when I opened the curtains but it’s supposed to become a sunny day by 11am, wind in the Sou’-West veering West, 16℃ rising to 22℃.

    Pulled this from the letters this morning :

    SIR – Another bugbear for motorists is the proliferation of payment by app on toll bridges and in car parks. Those who choose not to use this method are forced to alter routes and destinations.

    How simple it would be to offer an alternative method – cash or credit card – at a higher rate (say, a £1 premium each time) to cover the admin costs. Other businesses, such as utilities, offer reductions for direct-debit payments; using toll and parking apps could be promoted in the same way. It would introduce a degree of persuasion rather than compulsion.

    John Lavender
    Port Erin, Isle of Man

    The car parks in a local town we visit frequently have had recently new machines installed at which one can pay by cash, card or ‘phone app. However this has given me the opportunity for a bit of a rant which may give rise to some discussion.

    First, I don’t accept there should be a higher rate determined by the method of payment. It’s bad enough when there is often an extra charge for paying by ‘phone app of 10 or 20 pence tacked on ‘for admin’ but a pound? No, John. Second, there are too many different apps. Third, at many major town car parks, no thought whatsoever has been given to some drivers who are physically unable to stretch a hand out of the window to take a ticket from a machine at entry barriers or at toll booths. None. I know one who has to get out of her car to take and walk to the machine to do so. Incidentally, she is deemed not disabled enough to qualify for a blue sticker which leads me on to the next one. Four, why should disabled drivers be granted free parking? They can afford to run a car so they can pay as everyone else does. Also everywhere I go I see many ‘disabled’ parking slots empty while the rest of the car park may be full. There seem to be many more disabled slots than are actually required. Are not the disabled over-catered for in this instance? On the odd occasion I have been forced to use one of them out of frustration (as do others) when I couldn’t find a parking space. Likewise the often empty ‘mother and baby’ spaces.

    1. Good morning Fiscal and everyone.
      ‘mother and baby’ car park spaces are available for ‘parent & children’; the extra width appears to be the key advantage.

      1. I’ve used parent and child spaces when out with my mother – she’s 91 and I’m 60.

        She has a blue badge now which helps.

        1. I used to do that with my mother. If anybody challenged (they never did) I was prepared to point to the sign and say, “this is my mother and I’m the child” 🙂

      1. I recently saw a Bentley SUV with a blue badge displayed in a car park disabled spot .

          2. Wealthy elderly disabled person who likes a large comfortable car in which to transport himself, carer and wheelchair?

          4. Why “free” NHS if you are wealthy? Why “free” bus pass for wealthy over 60?

          5. NHS is not free as we know. I doubt, seriously, that anybody wealthy over 60 has a bus pass. I don’t, not that I’m wealthy, just comfortable. I don’t have a rail card either. What I do have is a lot spent on parking. As I pay mostly by card or phone I can see how much every month. It’s a lot. So, no free parking for anyone who can afford to run a car. Either that or all parking should be free in towns. After all, it once was.

          6. I know many relatively wealthy people, certainly far richer than me, who have and use their free bus passes. They are too old to drive and the bus allows them to get to and from the shops.

          13. And with a tank you can make your parking space bigger! (Kenny Everett showed us how all those years ago.)

          17. Of course the Envy of the World is not “free”. But it IS free at the point of use. By your argument, a wealthy person can afford to go private – and ought to.

          18. Yes, I suppose so. I’ll bet most do. We do if we have to. However our PHI premiums go up every year and a point will inevitably come when we have to accept a higher excess to keep the costs down or cancel it.

          19. Just a thought, unlike people who arrive in rubber boats etc, people with private medical insurance are paying twice for treatment.
            And emergency service’s are not available in private hospitals.

          20. Actually, on seconds thoughts, it is free to those who don’t pay taxes, have never paid taxes and will never pay taxes, such as ‘slammer’ wives, to temporary residents who come here for free health care who may be billed or may not and who will abscond without paying regardless. ‘Free at the point of use’ is a ridiculous phrase trotted out to hide the truth – that there are those who pay for it and there are free-loaders.

          21. I have a bus pass and until all the problems with covid and strikes I bought a railcard. In many cases people have contributed over the years. With my bus pass I feel I’m getting a little bit of my own back (not that there are many buses to use it on). Senior railcards are just one section – you can have student railcards and service railcards, among others. I agree that parking should be free for everybody. That’s how it used to be.

          22. NHS is not free as we know. I doubt, seriously, that anybody wealthy over 60 has a bus pass. I don’t, not that I’m wealthy, just comfortable. I don’t have a rail card either. What I do have is a lot spent on parking. As I pay mostly by card or phone I can see how much every month. It’s a lot. So, no free parking for anyone who can afford to run a car. Either that or all parking should be free in towns. After all, it once was.

          23. NHS is not free as we know. I doubt, seriously, that anybody wealthy over 60 has a bus pass. I don’t, not that I’m wealthy, just comfortable. I don’t have a rail card either. What I do have is a lot spent on parking. As I pay mostly by card or phone I can see how much every month. It’s a lot. So, no free parking for anyone who can afford to run a car. Either that or all parking should be free in towns. After all, it once was.

        2. When we stayed in London last month we had been for an evening meal, walking back to the hotel I needed a rest and decided to sit on one of several benches outside St Barts hospital. There is a large disabled parking bay. And in front of us a large KIA SUV.
          A group of three men walked up opened the doors and got in. No body appeared to have any disability. Shortly after, three females dressed in burkas also got into the same car. No obvious problems with walking.
          But a large blue disabled card had been displayed on the dash.
          Evidence to show how easy it might be for certain people in London to fake disability for free parking.
          But it was electric.

          1. Years ago I helped to organise the parking of thousands of cars at the Shoreham Airshow. You might be surprised how many occupants displaying disability badges were perfectly capable of walking some distance over rough ground without any apparent difficulty. Some of the passes turned out to be borrowed, and a few were stolen.

          2. Right now and over the past two years i haven’t been able to walk 50 yards with out getting out of breath or suffering immense pain from my bone on bone left knee joint.

            I went on line tot try to get a disabled badge but before I had filled in about a quarter of the question air it told me i wasn’t qualified and shut down.
            I’m seeing a doctor this week i’m going to ask them to write a letter.

          3. Right now and over the past two years i haven’t been able to walk 50 yards with out getting out of breath or suffering immense pain from my bone on bone left knee joint.

            I went on line tot try to get a disabled badge but before I had filled in about a quarter of the question air it told me i wasn’t qualified and shut down.
            I’m seeing a doctor this week i’m going to ask them to write a letter.

          4. Challenge it, Eddy. They will send you for assessment and then the physio, if she’s anything like the one who did mine, will take one look and the blue badge will be granted in less than an hour!

          5. A woman in Shrewsbury has just been slapped with a £3000 fine for using her mother’s blue badge without her mother being present.

          7. Hopefully not in 2015, HJ…

            That year, Dianne-the-ex’s eldest was due to fly a Typhoon over Goodwood. We planned to walk to a vantage point, until her son wangled VIP tickes to the event. We turned up in my ancient Renault Scenic, and were treated like royalty, partking between innumerable Bentleys, Rollers, Porsches and the rest. Anyone watching would have assumed we were stupendously wealthy, but didn’t care for the trappings.

            Here in leafy Surrey, I know such people.

          8. Good morning Geoff. No, I hung up my uniform in 2011, but a former colleague of mine was there, and was required to speed-read the Emergency Plan…

            I and thousands of others watched in horror when the Hurricane went down in 2009. The mock dogfight was halted and the remaining participants returned to the airfield in ‘missing man’ formation. Very moving, and all the more poignant because we had been chatting to the pilot in the VIP marquee just before they all took off.

    3. As a blue badge owner, I can say that disabled parking is a necessity (not being able to park near the entrance to the racecourse yesterday ruined my evening because being forced to walk the extra distance left me in pain all night). The only place I know where disabled parking is free is in Wales. Here in England, I have to pay like anybody else, although I do get extra time for my money in Newmarket.

  20. The one thing the ULEZ farce has done is expose the green con for what it is – a tax scam. I sincerely hope people start to wake up and realise just how vicious and spiteful the state is.

    2. There was quite a good opinion piece in the Terriblegraph (i think! I read it at 6 am but that was a long time ago now) about how terrible Khan is

      1. Here it is. Sherelle Jacobs.

        “The mind boggles when it comes to Sadiq Khan. In many ways, he is a faceless phantom – a fascinatingly bland Labour apparatchik incapable of an original thought or phrase. And yet somehow he has managed to build himself into the consummate dictator-bureaucrat, London’s own answer to Leonid Brezhnev or Raul Castro.
        For conservatives he is the ultimate source of irrit-ainment, a figure that is constantly triggering animated outrage over his provocative social media posts and controversial schemes. And yet he is a genuinely disturbing political player, spinning his own universe of deception out of London’s dystopian hellscape.
        The mayor’s triumph at forcing through his Ulez expansion project brings home all this chilling force. It is the most egregious kind of vanity project. As an exercise in green gesture politics that is set to hit low-income residents with steep charges, and penalise communities that are already beleaguered by poor public transport, it smacks of bourgeois dogmatism.
        Ulez also offers a masterclass in posttruth politicking. The Tories allege in vain that Khan made “false” and “dishonest” claims to the London Assembly over the scheme’s consultation. It ought to be a fullblown scandal that Khan’s office funded scientists who published studies on Ulez’s effectiveness and then sought to “discredit” those whose findings contradicted grandiose claims about its impact. Nonetheless, by loudly and relentlessly blaring about a “public health emergency”, Khan has reduced the complex truth to just another version of reality.
        His obsession with Ulez is truly baffling. It is hardly an election winner, with polls revealing that London is largely split over the policy. Given that most cars in the capital are already Ulez compliant, Khan has essentially launched a pious eco-war against some of London’s most deprived areas for little electoral gain.
        Yet in one sense, for a politician like him, it fits perfectly. Having spent a good part of tenure dabbling in BLM iconoclasm, calling for the removal of statues of slavers from public squares, he has moved into the more spiritually ambitious business of constructing a cult of the self.
        As his recent book Breathless attests, Khan wants nothing less than to position himself as Britain’s most environmentally enlightened leader
        – a born again green “activist” who has made the journey from Land Rover driver to electric car evangelist.
        Having decided to make the green revolution the centrepiece of his political brand, the mayor has had his work cut out to upstage his no less radical predecessors. After all, the red congestion charge paint splattered across London’s roads serves as a constant reminder of Comrade Livingstone’s reign of terror against motorists. And whatever name anyone else gives them, the capital’s rented wheels will always be known as Boris bikes.
        Naturally, then, Khan has set a target for London to be net-zero carbon by 2030. The extensive green Ulez signage will serve as a constant symbolic reminder of his guiding role in pointing everyone towards green utopia.
        We are talking about more than mere vainglory here. A canny Labour operator, Khan knows that the dark political arts of concealment and self-aggrandisement work best in symbiosis. His political strategy is grotesquely brilliant: hide the capital’s decay under a giant inflatable legacy puffed up by inane virtue-signalling.
        This is made all the more vital by the fact that London is teetering on the brink of something frightening. Rough sleeping, for instance, has soared 20 per cent in the past year.
        Since the pandemic, the capital has started to exude the same air of squalid menace as 1980s New York. As the streets become densely tattooed with graffiti, drug addicts lie slumped in broad daylight in the gutters. There are pockets of London that are starting to resemble San Francisco with its makeshift homeless mini-villages.
        Increasingly, this Left-wing-held city also has something of the Soviet Union about it, with its flagrant squandering of public funds on the luxuries of officialdom and stupendous metro stations designed to elevate even the most dispirited ordinary worker’s soul. The vaunting, futurist Elizabeth Line stations gives Moscow’s gold mosaic subterranean palaces a run for their money.
        Nowhere are London’s USSR vibes stronger than in Tower Hamlets, with its wide, filthy boulevards, rampant child poverty and resplendent town hall, freshly refurbished for
        £120 million.
        Khan is a clever cookie. He knows that the more debate foams over his green agenda, the less people will ask why London is disintegrating under his watch. He knows that the more he frames politics not as an exercise in problem solving, but a matter of “representing”, the less voters will interrogate whether one-party Labour rule in his city is actually harming the prospects of people of colour.
        He knows that the more he reduces political discussion into marketsegmented “appeals”, the less people are inclined to get a big picture view of the capital city’s pathologies. Take his “Say Maaate” campaign which challenges men to fight sexual harassment of women – by yes, you guessed it, disapprovingly saying: “Maaate”.
        Most alarming of all, though, Khan knows that reality is open to manipulation. When he ludicrously insists that London is “safe”, that tackling violent crime is his “top priority” and that he’s “smashing” housing targets, he is not simply indulging in the most brazen kind of denialism, but constructing a hypernormal world in the late Soviet tradition.
        The outspoken Russian anthropologist Alexei Yurchak famously coined “hypernormalisation” to describe a paradoxical dystopia – one in which leaders go to great lengths to pretend the society they preside over is as intrinsically benevolent as it is reassuringly stable – even though deep down everyone knows the system is so rotten and mutilated by falsehoods that it cannot sustainably go on.
        The question is whether London can face hard reality or simply continue to be sucked into Khan’s dangerous post-truth version of it.”

        1. Never forget that he is the man who told Iranian TV that slammers who “tell on” slammer terrorists are Uncle Toms.

        2. Whilst agreeing with Sherelle Jacobs, we would like to point out that Sadik Khan stated that in its

          first year of operation it was calculated that it would raise £260million in fines.

          That’s why he is so keen on the idea.

    3. Somebody needs to sit down the Idiot King and give him a damned good talking to about his apocalyptic climate garbage and if this has no effect the psmackbottomist may well be needed to sort him out!

    4. Worse then a tax scam, it’s part of the plan to change the way we live, WEF be praised.

  21. Morning all 🙂😊
    Grey again.
    No headline today ?
    But a did see a clip of a young London cabbie yesterday on Facebook having a very decided and directed aim at Khant because he is ruining Londons small business. Many cafés bars and restaurants are closed or closing because of the DHs ulez scheme. Something else people in politics are effing up. With no proven or particular purpose in mind.

    1. The first teams to arrive before the construction of any significant construction are the demolition experts.

      Khan’s armoury is well stocked with metaphorical bulldozers and diggers which, Alhamdulillah (Allah be praised), will clear away anything that is standing in his way.

      1. I believe as a ‘lawyer’ he was also involved in the defence of the 7/7 London bombers.
        If so this is so, it’s indicative of so many cockups made by our useless political classes and Whitehall.

        1. He was only elected via rigged postal ballots.

          Apparently these were not sufficient during lockdown so he got a second term gratis.

          1. Yes, last time many of the London Jewish residents did not get their ballot papers on time, due to what was described as an administration error.

        2. Private Eye was on to him long before his arrival as Mayor of Londonistan. ‘Slippery lawyer’ greatly underestimates his conduct.

    2. They are doing everything in their power to destroy small independent businesses. Huge rent, rates and energy bills. Ulez is just another weapon in their arsenal.
      The purpose of this is about dependence and control.

  22. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/10f1fccf844393f3e0cb66a847e0fd55b295179eaa455cf9f94cc60283192d11.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/08/22/michael-parkinson-celebrity-interview-risky-chat-shows/

    How much longer will we dare to say what we think about anything?

    BTL – Percival Wrattstrangler

    At the turn of the century many of us remarked that one Blair, called Eric, had written a terrifying prophetic novel called ‘Nineteen Eighty Four‘ which described a nightmare society; we added that another Blair called Tony was using it as an instruction manual.

    Three three quarters of a century after it being published as a novel warning of what could be to come and twenty years on from its use as a manual the book’s effectiveness is beyond dispute – we are indeed living in a nightmare world.

    1. Good morning, Rastus.

      You seem to have developed, lately, an obsession with one particular BTL commentator. Do you think this is healthy? 😉

          2. I commenced each day by eating a barrister for breakfast. They were not very nourishing though, very little substance between their ears I found.

      1. “Alexa, are you listening to me?”
        “I only listen for the command phrase, and then what you say.”
        “Are you lying?”
        “….”

        See?

        The operative word is choose. There are many things I choose to have around me that add value to my life. I can switch Alexa off and put it in the cupboard forever forgotten. I can’t stop the government’s relentless assault on energy bills. I can’t stop them destroying the currency and making us all poorer. I can’t force them to stop the horde of criminal welfare shoppers by repealing law.

        The danger is not Alexa. The danger is big, intrusive, arrogant, incompetent government – as Orwell warned.

        1. But how are we being governed?
          Big government is the elite that tells our Prime Minister what to do, and puts bright young men in charge of the next big thing, so that they steer the direction it’s going.
          Remember Zuckerberg in about 2008 telling us that privacy was over? That’s government by shadowy dictators. And Alexa and its ilk belong to their many weapons.
          A couple of years ago, Google bought a company that makes robot vacuum cleaners. Why? Because Google’s business is collecting and selling information about you, and those things upload a map of your rooms which is added to the information they sell about you. Analysis of the data tells them how much furniture you have, and whether you’re tidy or not. They probably even know who you clean up for when they visit. I regard it as a danger to my wellbeing when a database in Iceland knows more about me than any living person.

        2. 375620+ up ticks,

          Morning W,

          The real,real,danger is those that repeatedly support them
          with their campaign of treachery,terror & fear.

      2. “Alexa, are you listening to me?”
        “I only listen for the command phrase, and then what you say.”
        “Are you lying?”
        “….”

        See?

        The operative word is choose. There are many things I choose to have around me that add value to my life. I can switch Alexa off and put it in the cupboard forever forgotten. I can’t stop the government’s relentless assault on energy bills. I can’t stop them destroying the currency and making us all poorer. I can’t force them to stop the horde of criminal welfare shoppers by repealing law.

        The danger is not Alexa. The danger is big, intrusive, arrogant, incompetent government – as Orwell warned.

  23. Thought for the day:

    How many other Lucy Letbys are there out there, taking the lives of people at the other end of their days. How many took evil satisfaction in administering morphine and midazolam during the plandemic?

    I ask because I now know that the NHS killed my mother. In July 2006 she died in hospital. She had been taken there because she had a fall in her care home and her increasing dementia was inconvenient for the staff. She was put on the ‘Liverpool Care Pathway’, something I had not heard of nor understood. I do now. At the hour of her passing, the ward sister came into her room, casually looking at her watch, moments before she breathed her last. An innocent enough action, you would think. I did and thought of it no more. It was sometime later that my wife said to me she thought it odd that the sister should have come in almost at the exact moment of death.

    They killed her. No-one now can convince me otherwise. Of course I blame myself in part for not being immediately on hand during her final years, for having an occupation and resultant life that meant we lived so far apart that I could see her only six or eight times a year. I cannot undo that. And she could be difficult and maddening. But she was my mother.

    I stay away from doctors, take no drugs, eat healthily, take exercise and I’m learning about natural remedies and essential nutrients we may be missing in our diets. I will NOT go into a care home nor a hospital if it can possibly be avoided. Nor shall my wife if I can help it. We will move to be close to our daughter as I see now the evil intent behind those who encouraged others to travel and follow a life of domestic mobility in pursuit of ‘careers’ as a cog in a corporate machine, enticed by the lure of promotion and maybe a seat in a boardroom. It is destructive of family life. Extended family life. That is what ‘they’ want.

    1. In 1989 my mother went into hospital for ‘tests’. She came out dead a week later. She was just 80. Five years older than I am now.

      1. My MiL had cancer she was virtually unconscious in hospital.
        My wife and I were sitting at her bedside. After around 15 minutes.
        We were asked to wait outside while the nurses ‘made her more comfortable’. After went back to her bedside she died around 20 minutes later. No doubt in my mind at all The Liverpool pathway.

    2. I have a care insurance that pays out for care at home, including if it’s given by members of my family. I hope thereby to avoid either going into a care home or being an intolerable burden on my children.
      I know that not all care homes are bad, but too many of them are!

    3. I agree with your every word, and I do likewise. I try to keep myself as fit as is possible, my weight within normal limits, fruit and veg and most importantly no sugar. My only weakness is a home made (by me) cream tea once a year. I seldom visit the g.p. It has occurred to me that the govt desire to get as many young people away to university as they possibly could by offering non-academic courses was yet another way of separating families and breaking them down (as well as the govt requirement for the obvious left-wing indoctrination).. Mostly all young people who ‘disappear off’ (as my mother called it) do not return to the family environs.

      1. TCW have been rerunning their articles from a few years ago about childcare and nurseries. It strikes me that they do all they can to take childcare away from the mother (by making it impssible for families to live on one income) so that the children can be indoctrinated by others. Nowadays of course that indoctrination has gone a step further with the ‘drag storytellers’ and other perversions being thrown at the children.

        I’m very glad I stayed at home with my children (as was still the norm in the early 70s) and din’t start work till they went to school.

        1. I did too, until our elder son was 7 and our younger child was 5, the elder being born in 1981. The summer of 1988 I got a part-time job at the Institute of Education, and I was able to take our children to school and collect them, and I didn’t work during the school holidays. It was just 20 hrs a week. The 1980s were difficult years; years of 25% inflation at times and high interest rates. I didn’t work full time until they were 16 and 14 (1997).

          1. My boys were born in 1970 and 73 & I was at home full time until 1980, when I got a part time catering job – menial but good fun and some of those girls are still good friends. In 1989 I started full time work and kept the waitressing job on as well as my marriage was down the tubes….. three jobs kept body and soul together that winter and I left the job at the bakery for the JobCentre in January 1990. That took me up to retirement in 2011.
            Money was short in the 1980s but we were better off with my part time work as we could afford holidays as well as food. First trip to France in 1981 – made a change from camping trips.

          2. Our holidays have been mostly camping-caravanning holidays – we had the smallest touring caravan with five berths! We didn’t go to France until 1999 where we tented for 10 years – and managed to fit in a few HF walking holidays in that time.

          3. Camping in Devon, Cornwall or Wales with the boys when they were young was the only way to have a holiday that cost little more than staying at home. The first time we took the younger one was at Easter 1974 – he was only about 4 months old – it wasn’t at all warm and I spent a sleepless night thinking he’d died of hypothermia. He didn’t. He now spends his holidays cycling round Europe.

    4. Hear, hear FM!!!!

      My philosophy exactly, un-jabbed, unmasked and totally defiant!

  25. Oh for goodness sake, the ‘Covid Carousel’ has come around again. It’s the same old story: new variant but existing ‘jab’ will suffice. How many variants to date have been reported? If medical people believe in the corona virus theory then they should know that said virus mutates too quickly for a “vaccine” to be effective. See Dr David Martin – @8:40 in

    Irish CMO extolling the value of the ‘jab’. Hasn’t she kept abreast of the tsunami of reports from across the World that have discredited these potions? Doesn’t she have the slightest doubt about jabbing the populace?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa3dcdfb873e9a9bed271fed1c3f30e8bdf7139de19bd0e14af672ffbadc2352.png

      1. Which they stockpiled of course, then demand fell away. I wonder if they become less toxic when past their use by date, in the way that other medicines such as pain killers are said to become less effective. Not that I’m going to volunteer to find out, you understand.

    2. If the vaxxes could keep up with mutating viruses, we’d have had a jab for the common cold years ago. Everyone knows it’s not possible.

      And that’s before you even get into the various toxins in these injections!

    3. It’s the same old story: new variant but existing ‘jab’ will suffice.

      Morning Korky. I haven’t had any Covid Jabs and I’m not going to be having any. Even worse I’ve been put off any injections at all!

      1. Last week I had my asthma assessment with a nurse practitioner. Towards the end of our chat she asked me if I would like to book a flu jab as they are rolling it out early (my notes must have on them my refusal of the covid poison).
        Not sure if it was the look of amazement on my face at her offer or my firm reply of, “No, I will not be taking any injections now or in the future,” that brought forward her quiet reply of, “Oh, I understand.” Thanks and goodbyes followed.

        2. Recently an acquaintance told me that your chinavirus vaccine status is visible to anyone with access to NHS systems (GP or Hospital).

      2. Last Thursday I came down with something that caused my body termperature to go up to 38.7c. I sucked on one throat lozenge right at the outset but took no other medication. Temperature now down to 36.4c and doing fine.

      1. I do not doubt that you are correct. ‘They’ – they being the instigators of this dangerous nonsense – are throwing variants about like confetti. Pfizer stock price/sales down and their reputation following suit, something had to be done. Release the variants and hype the hype!
        I can’t keep up.

  26. ‘Morning All

    Apropos many comments below we’ll start with a “Hate-Fact”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e4c097e2401522a3f0816324f297b0e6ac6a2051fc6b6769b9ac694aebaefd03.jpg

    Rest of the medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6e077b06d27ed9a828a1cdeca0268c0b422bd1d39dd13845b888d3469d28d22d.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/39f072d83530c09978c088a8e212bf25bf00479f4e3afb12751133821bc169e2.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e615d5937af93dd0f948754dc3781558b4c3c447eeb0344dc7146590cb195433.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ea7403c1178877c6d9e96320ec6d38cd15240107cc775e2dff9b4e6353eb2b21.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/684682fd4928d4200ed242c020a28d716db50dc33bcdfe6b328b368008300cfc.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bd37ea3ec0bdb4844f0fac7291e1047d062c7355ba22d2ae01cbc8a0179a045a.jpg

    1. The open box comes about because someone id – deliberately – to force a law suit. What’s astonishing is that the judge in yankeeland didn’t say ‘sod off, you half witted oaf, here’s a fine.

      1. My first thought was that the pizza box image must have been doctored for a joke. Are you honestly telling us that someone attempted to bring a law suit by munching through a pizza carton because it had no warning not to? Do people, wilfully and knowingly, do stupid things in the hope of winning compensation? If, for example, I were to heat a can of unopened baked beans in the microwave, despite the obvious adverse consequences, would manufacturers of canned goods feel obliged to print warnings not to do so?

        1. It reminded me of the, “Don’t drink the liquid in your car battery” warnings.

    2. With regards to the pizza box, back in the 1980s I worked in the childrens/nursery department in Selfridges and remember two incidents which perfectly illustrate the level to which human stupidity had already descended.

      A woman returned a pair of shoes because she said they caused her child to keep tripping and falling. The shoes had been tied together for display purposes. She hadn’t untied the string.

      Another woman returned a cot pillow because she said it crackled and kept her child awake. The pillow was sold sealed in thick polythene for hygiene purposes. She hadn’t removed the plastic before placing it in the cot.

      You think people can’t be that stupid. They can.

  27. Arguing that borrowing is lower is NOT a positive. High taxes and more debt are a bad thing. Saying that tax receipts are at an all time high and they’re borrowing screams the damned problem: government waste.

    Cut taxes, shred the state.

  28. Survivors tell of Russian planes massacring civilians in Syrian market. 22 August 2023.

    Abu Salim, a farmer in Jisr al-Shughur, was filled with joy at the prospect of selling his crops at the town’s market. Then the Russian warplanes came and murdered his eldest son, along with eight other farmers.

    Russia and Syria claimed the market was struck on June 25 in a targeted operation aimed at terrorist targets in the war-torn Idlib region of northwest Syria.

    Now, The Telegraph has tracked down survivors of the attack, which appears to have been the deadliest of its kind in Syria this year and yet another war crime committed by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

    This is almost certainly a piece of propaganda concocted as a filler for the failure of the Ukraine counter-attack. For one thing it is retrospective (June 25) and it has been doctored to present an anti-Russian view. I‘ve appended a link to an original report in France 24 so you can compare them yourselves. In essence there is no mention of this being a Jihadist stronghold or that the strikes were launched in retaliation for attacks on Syrian targets. It is unlikely that the market itself was a target (one of the witnesses is not even sure that they were bombed) since it would serve no military end. That the responsibility is attributed to Putin personally just confirms that it is the same old lies. One heartening aspect is that the Below the Line comments are similarly sceptical.

    https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230625-russian-strikes-kill-13-in-rebel-held-syria

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/22/russia-massacres-civilians-in-syria-idlib-region/

    1. “These Russian strikes are the deadliest in Syria this year and amount to a massacre, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”. That’s the guy who reports from his bedroom in Leicester, right?

  29. Well, well! The Administration Française has actually done what it said it would do – and in time. On 11 August we applied online for a “pollution category” sticker for the car. Acknowledged online with a code thing (which one could store on a mobile phone). The acknowledgement added that we would receive the actual sticker within ten working days. This morning’s post has just arrived – and with it, the sticker.

    Dix sur dix for yer French.

      2. The only tricky thing was making the UK Registration document (both sides) small enough to meet the size criterion.

        1. They are a funny bunch, aren’t they?
          On the one hand
          – we put the MiL’s ashes in our garden in Auvergne at the end of July the Puy de Dome préfecture could not have been kinder or more helpful.

          On the other hand,
          the Consulat de Londres website for renewing and delivering pass-ports…. putain de merde! as my lady wife might say. (though my grandson has asked me: “Why does Mamoune keep shouting: ‘Put down the milk!’ ?”)

          That consulate website
          – gives you one date in a blue moon to book your appointment – if you miss it, you’ve missed it and you have to go back daily for weeks to find another;
          – has a page with a link for further information that brings you back to the same page! (put down the milk!);
          and
          – does not tell you that if you are not on the right browser (Firefox or Chrome or Explorer or whichever it is) then you can’t book the appointment! – put down the PUTAIN de milk!

          On the other , other hand,
          Yesterday I got a call from a Brigadier Chef at the Police aux Frontiere (PaF = knob, but I digress) yesterday. He told me we had dropped our pet pass-port at the Port de Calais ten days ago.
          On discovering that I was a colleague d’outre manche, he has posted it to me at his own expense!

          L’administration francaise is a strange beast.

          1. When my mother died in 1973, while we were on holiday in Les Landes – everyone was as cooperative and helpful as can be – ending up with us having a TAC cabin to ourselves and being placed next to the door of the Dieppe ferry. Someone had also spoken to the UK Customs because they saw the car and waved it through.

            But, then, yer French love a death….!

        1. Is that the fresh-as-a-daisy category?

          On a more serious note, Bill, what is the purpose of these categories? Are there fees to be paid when driving on French roads, varying according to which pollution category the vehicle belongs to?

          1. It is like ULEZ – without – at present – any fee.

            Certain large towns and cities now require the display of the sticker – and may use the categories to restrict driving.
            eg: “On Tuesdays – only categories 0 (electric cars), 1 and 2 allowed”.

            I am pretty sure that they will soon introduce a daily charge.

      1. I’ll “fall” for displaying the sticker when there is a fine of up to €350 … !

      1. Then that’s fine if Greeniacs want that. Each to their onw. Eat only home grown, no chemical produce. Fine. You have that option in our economy.

        Of course, when a crop fails, you’ll go hungry but that’s their choice. Why do these sewage insist on inflicting their attitudes on me?

        1. Our problem is that they are inflicting it on us.
          India put 40% duty on the export of onions recently, and also restrictions on rice exports. They’re just the latest country to take such measures to protect their own food security.

    2. Costs up, production down, farmers go out of business.

      Truly, this government is staffed by morons. We would do far better if we planted them head first and combined the lot.

    3. They haven’t learnt from what happened in Sri Lanka when they were not allowed to use fertiliser.

  32. Earlier today I posted a link to a Carlson video with Col. MacGregor. It’s 52 minutes long but is virtually an entire monologue by the Colonel who covers the current state of the US and not just Ukraine. I think it is outstanding and well worth watching.

    https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1693761723230990509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1693761723230990509%7Ctwgr%5Ea5e0fa997ae9fa4fa4cfa0f41f6b89d5be82494e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-brink-catastrophic-war-could-easily-destroy-us-col-douglas-macgregor-tells-tucker

    1. Frankly, I do not understand how anyone could set aside 52 minutes during the day to watch anything.

      Sorry to barge in….

      1. I listen to them while doing laundry or washing up. I’ve got a Jim Rickards podcast on now, he’s an excellent analyst.

      2. I prefer to read the text rather than listen to a monologue or even a conversation. I can cope with 10 minutes of Dr Campbell but that’s about my limit.

        1. Me too. I wrote an explanation on an issue and the chap called me up to ‘talk about it’ so I read him my missive. He wasted my time because he didn’t want to read it. I sent him double the time bill.

      3. There’s a big hoo hah in the tech world over a fellow called Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips. The daftly haired ‘Steve’ from Gamers Nexus went on for 45 minutes about all their errors. That sort of waffle should be presented as an essay, not a video. As it is, half the time he’s flicking his hair about like a shampoo commercial.

    2. I saw a link to this in my Facebook notifications this morning too. Looking forward to watching this evening.

    3. The line will not be drawn under this unnecessary war until all the criminals are either dead or behind bars — in Kiev and in Washington DC.

  34. Good morning. The media, whores of the modern age, are happy to report the shocking story of one evil isolated mental case who commits infanticide, but are less keen to see a Tory minister who arranged the death of thousands using Midozalam, with no excuse discernible before or since, face a court.,

    So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that grubby warmongers like Mr Duncan-Smith are outraged at beung told that they should not call Russia and China hostile states! They know better than to declare war against them; – the cowards way of proxy war. With 290,000 Ukrainians dead so far….

    1. You have crystalised some of my misgivings about the media reporting of this case.

      It’s the central bankers’ meeting at Jackson Hole this week where they decide policy for the year, as well as the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, and the Mail is whipping up as much hatred as they can against a young woman.
      She may very well deserve it, however there is an element of witch-burning and distraction that makes me uncomfortable.

  35. Pride book featuring men in bondage wear shown to four-year-olds in pre-school

    Members of staff defended the decision after parents raised concerns, arguing that the children would not understand the images

    By Alex Barton • 21st August 2023 • 9:53pm

    A children’s book about Pride featuring men in bondage gear was shown to four-year-olds in a pre-school, it has emerged.

    Parents had raised concerns with staff at Genesis Pre School in Hull after it was brought to their attention that children were being exposed to the images.

    A staff member had checked with parents of the nursery pupils if they were happy with the contents of the book Grandad’s Pride to be shown to their children, but one flagged images of “partially naked” men in “leather bondage gear” as concerning.

    A member of staff then defended the images, arguing the children would not understand the erotic and sexualised depictions.

    The safeguarding lead at the school claimed the book showed people wearing costumes and rebuffed worries that the pictures were inappropriate, according to Hull Live.

    Will and Maria Taylor decided to remove their child from the school over the issue.

    Mr Taylor told Hull Live: “We identified two images of men who are partially naked in leather bondage gear. One has a leather cod-piece moulded tightly around his crotch and a studded dog collar around his neck and knee high boots. The main and most immediate concern is that children have been exposed to at least two age-inappropriate sexual or erotic images of a man in what can only be reasonably described as ‘bondage/fetish/BDSM’ gear.”

    Mr Taylor had expected staff to apologise for the contents of the book that the children were exposed to, but the teachers disputed their assessment. The couple claimed that a child’s lack of understanding is not grounds to expose them to explicit images.

    Trustees of the nursery later confirmed to parents that the book had been removed from the nursery while it carried out a safety audit, but said it was widely available at bookstores and libraries, according to Hull Live.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/21/pride-book-men-bondage-wear-shown-children-pre-school-hull

    Predictably, there’s a bit of a storm BTL. Most are fairly predictable, but one observer hopes that such examples are in the ‘give them enough rope’ category, another that Enid Blyton books might be a bit safer…

    1. A member of staff then defended the images, arguing the children would not understand the erotic and sexualised depictions.

      If they don’t understand them why are they being shown?

      1. It’s to normalise porn – children do not know any better but if they are exposed to this rubbish early on they accept it as the norm. It’s subversive and wicked to indoctrinate young children in this way.

          1. It’s a bit wider than that I think – normalising perversion in all its forms – men who pretend to be women, excluding women who really are female; men who pretend to be lesbians, men who call females Terfs; the whole pride circus and debaushery of rainbow flags; drag story times to normalise perversions to children…….. and so on.

    2. I would expect such books if they are in libraries and bookshops to be out of reach nursery age children.

      1. Or children of any age – children are impressionable beings and it’s part of growing up.

    3. It would not have ended well for any ‘teacher’ that showed images of that nature to my children.

    4. Ah, I wondered when the safeguarding would come in. They’re there to enforce state opinion and protect the school from the parent. Not the children. An utterly moronic post that should really be called ‘stasi officer’.

  37. Hitler’s birth house in Austria to be turned into police station. 22 August 2023.

    Germany annexed Austria in 1938, and although many Nazis from Hitler downwards were Austrians, historians say the country was slow to acknowledge its shared responsibility for the Holocaust and the other crimes of the Nazis before and during the second world war.

    There is an historical oddity about the Fuhrer and the Holocaust that no official account likes to mention. That is, that despite eye witness testimonies, volumes of memoirs and documents, there is not one shred of evidence that he knew anything about it!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/hitlers-birth-house-in-austria-to-be-turned-into-police-station

  38. Paul Theroux published the novel O-Zone in 1986. It tells of a dystopian future in 50 years. We are already seeing some of his descriptions already at 39 years in. ‘a terrible place” filled with aliens – Skells, Starkies, Steamers, Trolls, Diggers, Roaches.

    We are already seeing Roaches…massed illegal aliens.

    We already have mass homelessness and drug taking…Skells.

    We already have mass looting…Steamers.

    We are now beginning to see Starkies…

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12431359/Calls-Kanye-Wests-wife-Bianca-Censori-punished-Italian-police-public-indecency-steps-outrageous-catsuit-forced-cover-nipples-bag.html

  39. I’ve been invited by my GP surgery to join a research trial which aims to test whether screening at home for AF would prevent people having strokes and heart attacks. The enclosed booklet was printed in 2021 so it’s been going on for a while.

    Fortunately it’s voluntary and I don’t have to take part. If I sign the consent form they (the researchers in Cambridge) will have access to my medical records.

    My natural response is to have nothing to do with it……. also as I have not consulted a GP for myself since 2019, when I had shingles, I don’t think they’d glean much information about my cardiovascular functions and other organs.

    Has anybody else been invited to take part in this research? Apparently the only criteria is being over 70.

    1. After they way the mEdical profession behaved during Covid I would have nothing to do with them.

    2. I haven’t been approached.
      My notes recorded that I had AF.
      I had an egc just before I was admitted for a procedure to treat it.
      I had enough knowledge of ecg interpretation to know that there was insufficent evidence to support an AF diagnosis.
      I challenged the need for the procedure and it was confirmed that the ecg confirmed that I was in fact in sinus rhythym.
      The procedure was aborted and I was promptly discharged.

      It is currently unknown how to analyse clinical data to establish how critical heart rhythym irregularities are and hence the need for some sort of clinical trial.

      I can take my own ecgs which can furthermore be interpreted for various forms of rhythym abnormalities which can be displayed graphically.

      1. My OH has had several over the last couple of years – he was tested before hernia surgery in 2021 and no problems were reported, but a year later he had aortic stenosis, then a replacement valve and triple bypass, and the AF and rapid heart rate has not yet been reduced since the surgery.

        1. There are various form of heart rhythym irregularity one of which is particularly difficult to define and that is AF. It supposed to be identifiable by being irregularly irregular but it could be confused with other anomalies as explained in this video:

          https://youtu.be/vq3ba4BhddM

          This covers all the stuff a cardiologist should be able to understand when looking at a standard ecg trace. I don’t believe AF can be diagnosed wuthout a significantly longer ecg observation period. I use 10 minutes whem self testing.

          1. When we spent a half-day in SDEC a couple of months ago, he was wired up for some time so they could see the patterns and the cardiologist diagnosed Atrial Flutter from that.

    3. If it were me I would stay well away and ‘off their books’. I feel anonymity is key in these difficult times. And no, I haven’t been invited.

      1. I won’t be taking the invitation up – the surgery might be wondering why I never go there apart from to support my OH, but I’m going to trust my gut feeling and ignore it.

    5. How terribly strange to be 70 sang Simon and Garfunkel.

      When the Beatles’ When I’m 64 came out in 1967 my father was amused because he was well past that age by then.

      https://www.google.com/search?q=Old+Friends&oq=Old+Friends+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABDIHCAkQABiABNIBCTE3NTkxajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:ac817584,vid:HqeAjhEpYOU

  40. I won’t bother posting the link…
    The joke voted the best at the Edinburgh Fringe…

    I used to date a zookeeper but it turned out he was a cheetah.

    Unbelievable

      2. The best Christmas cracker riddle:

        Q. What’s the biggest drawback in the jungle.
        A.. An elephant’s foreskin.

        I read this out at table after Christmas lunch and my sons, aged 8 and 6 at the time, howled with delight but our guests thought it disgraceful that a company making festive Christmas crackers should stoop so low.

    2. Seriously?
      That’s crossword clue; one of the ‘sounds like’ genre.
      We used to go up to Edinburgh every August and include a visit to Uncle Willie in North Berwick.
      Now we have the excuse that youngest granddaughter starts at university there in September.
      Given the term time schedules, we certainly won’t be going in August for the MacWoke Fest.

    2. There is footage of ordinary Hawaiians giving the presidential motorcade the middle finger doing the rounds on the internet. Clearly they’re not too impressed.

      1. He was late in turning up. They have to apply to Fema online. They are offered $700 where Ukies get $1700.
        You can see the priorities.

  42. Which arm gets the Covid-19 booster may make a difference, study shows

    https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/18/health/covid-vaccine-arm-wellness/index.html

    When you go to get your newly updated Covid-19 booster this fall,

    you might want to choose the arm the vaccine goes in carefully.

    The immune response may be stronger if your booster goes in the same arm as your last Covid-19 shot, according to a study published August 11 in the journal eBioMedicine.

    “The question seems so banal, so trivial that nobody before has

    thought to ask it,” study coauthor Martina Sester, a biologist and head

    of the department of the Institute of Infection Medicine at Saarland

    University Hospital in Germany, said in a news release.

    The researchers used the data of 303 people who received the
    mRNA vaccine as well as a booster shot as part of Germany’s vaccine
    campaign.

    Two weeks after the booster, the number of “killer T cells” was
    significantly higher in those who had both shots in the same arm,
    according to the study.

        1. I watched an episode of ‘Life beyond the Lobby’ with Rob Rinder and Monica Galetti. The hotel they visited was a fishing village in the Lofoten Islands in the community of Nusfjord.

          It reminded me the the TV series ‘The Prisoner’.

  44. Nato-equipped 47th brigade enters Robotyne. 22 August 2023.

    A Nato-equipped Ukrainian brigade is attempting to punch holes in Russian defences in Robotyne, Zaporizhzhia.

    Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement: “Soldiers of the 47th separate mechanised brigade entered the village of Robotyne, which is in the Melitopol direction.

    This is yet another Elite Reserve Unit that was destined for the breakthrough being fed into the meat grinder. They can’t go on like this for much longer.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/22/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news-putin-drone-attack-belgorod/

    1. Meanwhile, Wagner has popped up in Algeria – which supports the coup in Niger.
      The Algerians have military agreements with Russia going back to Algerian independence in the early 60s.

    1. Big Ben is the name of the bell, situated in the Elizabeth Tower; not the tower nor any of the four clock faces on it.

          6. It’s a quiz with Ken Bruce. He used to do it on Radio 2, but the jolly old beeb got rid of him, so he took it with him to Greatest Hits Radio!

  48. Bogey Five today.

    Wordle 794 5/6
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Yep, me too. Too many options with the same last three letters.

      Wordle 794 5/6

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

    2. A nasty brute.

      Wordle 794 5/6

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

    3. Birdie for me

      Wordle 794 3/6

      🟩🟨⬜⬜🟩
      🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      All of the letters popped up in my first two tries and that made it easy.

  49. Mass immigration is ruining America. 22 August 2023.

    Americans have been waiting for “comprehensive immigration reform” since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to most illegal immigrants in the country – roughly 3 million at the time – in exchange for lawmakers’ promises to secure the border and penalise employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers.

    Congress quickly reneged on those promises. Four decades and eight amnesties later, the border has never been less secure, with employers continuing to hire illegal workers with near impunity. In such circumstances, it’s no surprise that the illegal immigrant population has ballooned to roughly 12 million.

    Better immigration policy is possible and very much needed. Yet both political parties have failed to deliver reforms that promote economic fairness for American workers, especially the most vulnerable in our society, while safeguarding our natural resources for future generations. Voters across all demographic and ideological lines recognise the system is not working – satisfaction with the current levels of immigration in America has slumped to the lowest levels in a decade – and broadly support such an approach.

    This guy is trying to be reasonable and compassionate and even that is useless because it founders on the inescapable truth that the numbers are limitless! This is not a struggle for a decent outcome but for survival itself!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/22/mass-immigration-border-control-ice-amnesty/

    1. 375620+ up ticks,

      AS,
      What many are NOT considering is that the survival of the indigenous is meeting a daily mounting challenge, on every incoming tide and from every compass point.

    2. It’s the question I ask people who would welcome all refugees.
      How many would you make us take?
      5 million, 50 million, 500 million, 5 billion? because there at least 5 billion who would love to swap places with you…

      1. I won’t post the clip again from the film ‘Dances with Wolves” when the native American Chief is told that innumerable white people are coming.
        Of course in the US innumerable Latinos are coming today…..

        1. My emphasis

          “Brussels tax-funded plan to invite more than 50 million African workers into Britain and other members of the 27-nation EU bloc.”

          The problem is that 50 million non workers have come instead.

          1. Pah. Trivial detail. Nobody could possibly have predicted that inviting people who break the law into Europe would result in getting workshy criminals.

    3. Does the article mention the one President who tried to implement a compassionate, sensible border control?

      1. If Geoff is willing to accept funds and hold the ‘kitty’ I’m happy to supply the raffle tickets (as I will be selling them on the day!)….

        1. Don’t like to rope Geoff in but anyone on here with a paypal or worldpay account could do it. Volunteers please !!!

          1. Just post Stephen a cheque. Simple. He’ll ensure that YOUR ticket is omitted from the draw. But the fête will have your tenner.

          5. Oddly enough, I DO. I use BACS all the time.

            Of course banking practice in Fareham may be different. GPO Giro, I expect.

          6. I remember sending money to you by transfer that you insisted on. Did you retain my bank details?

          7. Hem – I sent YOU money (to pay for a bottle of Scotch.) I sold your bank details to pals in Nigeria. Of course I didn’t – immediately deleted from bank and PC.

          8. Just testing…

            £12.50 a leg if i remember but Geoff and you benefited from a Tesco offer. Buy one get one free.

          11. Hem – I sent YOU money (to pay for a bottle of Scotch.) I sold your bank details to pals in Nigeria. Of course I didn’t – immediately deleted from bank and PC.

    3. Congratulations to your wife, what patience she must have!! My attempts look quite amateurish by comparison, I do miss hunting for fabrics and patterns now arthritis prevents me doing any sewing.

    6. What a lovely prize. Anybody would be proud to put that on their bed. Well done to your OH.

    7. Wow. Just …. wow!
      (Turns green with jealousy.)
      Does your Beloved have a proper quilting machine?

  51. I’ve spent over four hours at the funeral and afterwards. Met up with lots of people I haven’t seen for a long time.
    Nice long chat with jokes and fond memories, strangely enough with a guy who recently lost his wife who was a well known quilter.

    1. At family funerals, my late brother always used to say to me, “Who’s next?”

      Since he died – we’ve stopped that tradition…..

      1. It wasn’t family, just a lovely old chap who lived in our road. He had Parkinsons.
        But I have to bite my tongue when kind people i haven’t seem for a long time ask, “How are you” ?

        1. “How are you?”
          “I’m still here, what more do you want?”
          “That’s exactly what we didn’t want…”

    2. I’m off to Suffolk in the morning. When I was organist & choirmaster at Brandon, Santon Downham & Elveden, I also used to sing with the so-called Mildenhall Team Choir (based on a team ministry of eleven churches). Their choirmaster’s wife has sadly died from a recurrence of cancer, and the funeral is tomorrow. It will be good to see old friends, some for the first time in the best part of thirty-odd years, albeit in sad circumstances. One can’t help wondering whether the exit from remission was related to the you-know-what, but my lips will be sealed. Unless I’m asked to sing, of course…

  52. That’s me for this day of two halves. Sunny morning cloudy afternoon. I have tried to follow the Pakistan story about the broken cable car. Trouble is all newspapers (here and in Pakistan) give different versions of the number of people rescued. Tomorrow may tell. Some very skilled flying by the PAF, though.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

    1. Been a good, sunny day all day here – I did some jobs outside but I spent too long indoors earlier.

    3. This is why I make no effort to find news reports. I know nothing about this case and I expect I’d be happier not to have known. I shall not attempt to investigate further.

  53. Everything you could possibly think of, but still no news on how and why the 10 year old girl died near Woking.

      1. My guess is they are hiding something rather hideous….
        But it’s virtually what we have come to expect.
        More ‘wild fires’ in Greece.

        1. The pictures her mother provided showed her made up like a teenage beauty queen.
          The mother lost custody to the Pakistani father via a sharia court.
          The mother said her daughter had changed. The child was already known to the authorities safeguarding…How many times have we heard that before !

          The daughter was offered to an uncle and the child resisted.

          They did what they do and the child died.

          The father and his girlfriend and the other relative fled.

          An International Manhunt began when they found the body of the child in the empty family home.

          An international manhunt was not required because the rapist killers fled to Pakistan the day before the discovery.

          Most if not all the facts of the case will be covered up or watered down as they have done from the beginning.

          It is also unlikely we will be told what was done to an innocent groomed child to protect the guilty in the interests of social cohesion.

          Lock up your daughters is the message. Then we can be like them.

          4. There are other children – presumably via the Paki wife. At least one – a boy – is 13.
            I suspect Sara’s ‘home life’ with her father and his family doesn’t bear too much thinking about.

        2. My fellow dog walker (who’s a socialist) is having solar panels put on his bungalow because he “has to think of his grandchildren’s future”. His youngest is a girl. I nearly said to him that islam is a greater threat to their (and particularly her) future than global warming. I suspect he gets his info from the Bbc because he was going on about how many more floods and “wildfires” there are recently. I told him there always were (I can remember flash floods in Italy and Germany years ago) but now they are hyped up. Even he admits that we’ll need gas backup because when it’s dull and still we’re stuffed as far as renewables go.

  55. Halloween outfits were available in Home Bargains today. Christmas begins next month, after the school holidays have ended.

      1. I always enjoy a Hot Cross Bun with a coffee for my elevenses every day. But I don’t put my Brussels Sprouts on to boil in April. Lol.

        1. Normally on sale year round but hot cross buns are an in store special at one of our supermarkets this week.

    4. Christmas came to Home Bargains in Stirling this week! Couldn’t believe my eyes – the children only went back to school on Wednesday!

    5. Christmas cards have been in some of the charity shops for a week! Home Bargains has aisles full of Christmas decorations.

    6. The weather appears to be trying to keep up, the woodlands here are starting to look autumnal.

  56. Chatted to my near neighbour earlier. sadly his 15yo champion Springer has had to be put down.
    His mother celebrated her 106th Birthday on Monday!

    1. Condolences on the loss of the Springer. I take it, it was the neighbour’s mother rather than the Springer’s that celebrated the milestone birthday 🙂

  57. Oh dear – what a day! We decided to cross the M1 heading east to go geocaching – sadly there was a tanker fire between Jns 28 and 29 so there was a certain amount of chaos getting to our destination. We had hoped it might have got better by the time we set out on the return journey – au contraire, as Melchett said to Blackadder!
    The way home was an epic – my little wife navigated us perfectly along a series of back roads until we got to Pentrich – almost home, and we relaxed! Sadly someone in an HGV had decided to try an alternative route as the M1 was still closed and got stuck in a lane far too small for his vehicle. With that, and a series of roads closed by roadworks to add to the fun, and still more chaos as people blindly followed Satnavs it took another 45 minutes to cover the few miles to home! Next time we are going West!! Some people also need to practice reversing!!!!

      1. Given that 15 minute cities/towns/villages relate to walking pace, I could be in serious trouble. Normandy (the Surrey village) currently has no shops, pubs or the like. There’s a weekly trader’s market, soon to be augmented/replaced by a community shop (if they can find sufficient volunteers to run it), but it’s a 30 minute walk from here. It’s quicker to take the train to Guildford, do my shopping, and come back, the station being less than five minutes’ walk from home.

        The question is – when we’re all in our 15 minute whatevers, will we be allowed to travel outside them, even by public transport?

        1. And when it gets boiled down, that is the question that people really should be asking.

      1. It’s a highly addictive “treasure hunt” for hidden objects using GPS and an app to log your finds! It has taken me to some lovely places I wouldn’t have visited otherwise and some real dumps!!

  59. Off topic.

    HELP,

    I’m an almost total non-techie.

    I live in France rurale and on a good day my router speed is in the 3-4 Mbps range, it never ever gets even close to 6.

    If a cottage guest arrives with two mobile phones and two computers which they then connect my wireless systems will that slow everything down to the extent that things won’t work more than a few feet from the main router if the guests are trying to use them all simultaneously?

    My instinct is that that is the problem, but before I throw a wobbly at the next complaint I would like to know where I stand.

    1. My laptop normally shows our speed as 54 mbs. But the bird box cameras really interfere with it – it drops right down to 1 mbs – which is fine if I’m looking at the birds but not when I’m trying to use the laptop. Nothing works when it drops out.

          2. The MR has a package on her English mobile phone that gives her a lot – at least two weeks – access to t’tinernet in yer France.

            If your clients are English they ought to do that. If French, have a similar French system OR a Dongle (or equivalent. All the phone companies offer something similar)

          3. Thank you.
            It always surprises me how much the guests seem to expect when the reality is that they could solve 99% of their problems themselves.

          4. C’est la vie, sos. People these days always seem to need someone else to do their thinking for them.

          5. Guests like these make us wonder why we do it, but the truth is that we need the money.
            It makes the difference between a good life-style and counting every penny before travelling, even back to the UK.

    3. I don’t see how distance from the router makes any difference unless you have a really crummy router that was made back in dialup days.

      Everyone else is on the right track – get them off your network onto something else.

      You can get inexpensive mobile wifi hotspots that run off the phone signal, we used something similar in the UK a few years ago.

      I found this rental option for france: https://hippocketwifi.com/en/

      1. I still think it’s overload.
        Yes our system is old, but given that almost every other user has no problems and many guests have “worked from home” while staying, I think the problem is at his end.

        What you need to remember is that we are offering a service, i.e. the cottage, and we have some obligation to make their stay as pleasant and hassle free as possible.

        Saying: “tough tit, sort your own problems out”
        isn’t the route to decent reviews.

          1. Agreed.

            As it stands, we have the highest possible Trip Advisor review status.
            Better, even, than the standard 5 star average.
            That TA rating comes not just from actual reviews by guests but also what happens in the background, speed of response to enquiries, cancellations from our side (none), full refunds when guests cancel late, even though we could take all their money.
            When Covid happened under the booking rules we could have taken thousands, we refunded every penny.

            We look at the whole thing from when we had a young family. What you see is what you get, bicycles, no hire charge, barbecue, all the lighter and charcoal included, etc etc.

            We work very hard to ensure every guest has a holiday that they will look back on with pleasure, and most of our bookings are now repeats, as is the one in question.

        2. An option then is to split the wifi from the router.

          You could get a box that handles the internet connection and branch (via ethernet) dedicated access points off that.

          Then you could – if you wanted – provide guests with a completely separate wifi set up to your own – one that is “physically” separate?

          Remember just because the ISPs sell router modem wifi combos, doesn’t mean you have to use it that way.

          1. Oddly enough I think that may be what we do, indirectly.
            There are two alternative connections, each with different code access.

    4. Why are they linking their phones to your system? They should have personal data enabled.

      1. I have no idea why.
        Probably because doing things off the back of my system means they aren’t paying their suppliers.

        1. If you haven’t advertised ‘free WiFi” switch off you router for an hour or two and see what happens….

          1. We do advertise free WiFi. But, we also tell them it’s slow.

            Shut down?
            Where we are, a thunderstorm does that for us with unfortunate regularity.

            When the problems were initially reported I did exactly that, shut down, waited, and rebooted absolutely everything.

            It’s unfortunate that the last storm, just before they arrived, physically took out all the lines. I have a sneaking suspicion that that hasn’t helped.

            WOT! you cry? the lines aren’t underground?

            Yep, France rurale.

          3. Do yours get taken out by weather events frequently?
            We lose power/internet/phone at least once a week during the storm seasons, late autumn and late Spring/early summer

          4. My internet connection is often dodgy in wet, windy weather; the phone line goes through trees (not on my property).

          6. Quite frequently, but the repair crews are good, probably because they have so much practise.

          7. To be fair:
            Here they are usually repaired on the day and even if it happens on a weekend or bank holiday it’s rare that it lasts for more than a few days.
            I’m very happy with the overall service if not the connection speeds.

          9. I suspect that the costs exceed the benefits.
            The gite/cottage really is a small enterprise and under normal circumstances we get very few similar issues.

        1. Yes, to access the internet, but when I’ve been away with no access to wifi, I’ve put my phone to mobile data and can get the internet through my phone network.

          1. I use my phone only for calls and texts, the rest is a mystery to me. My iPad requires access to wifi.

    5. You could get a wifi repeater for the cottage, that would give them coverage further away from the router?
      And issue them with a couple of LAN cables for the computers – LAN cables are always faster than Wifi, and plug into the router.

      I don’t *think* four extra devices should slow the wifi down noticeably, based on rural English experience.

      1. There is already a “repeater”. The guests get two alternative connections. Neither appear to work.

        I don’t want to be using cable, the cottage is over 100 feet from the router, direct distance, and we would have to drill through walls and go via the cellar to do so., which would increase the distance.
        These are the only guests who appear to have a problem, unless nobody else has complained because they had the same, which is a possibility.

          1. Thanks, but no thanks.

            They cope, it isn’t perfect, but it works. It doesn’t seem to affect anyone else.

            If people want high speed, watch the latest films, etc. etc. they’ve come to the wrong place.

            Our “product” is tranquillity, of the “tell the cicadas to shut up” level!

            What you get here is a peaceful environment, where you really can hear a butterfly’s wing during the day or feel the drag as a bat flies past, in absolute silence, in the evening.

          2. I don’t know what the ground it like but you could always run fibre around a wall, along trestles and what not? I’ve this image of a glorious courtyard with trees and what not.

            Armoured fibre cables aren’t massively expensive and can run for kilometres. A convertor at the other end and presto. It depends how much effort you want to put in, I suppose.

          4. Pah !
            I know from experience that if the connection is low and slow then reading a blog like this is okay but if you or more likely the children want to play big video games or watch movies then the trouble begins.

        2. You could get a dongle or router that works via the mobile phone network instead of the telephone line if you’ve got a good 4G or 5G signal.
          It would cost a certain amount per month though.
          Some dongles plug into a computer, but they can also act as a WiFi hotspot for other computers or phones. Others just give one connection for the computer into which they are plugged.

          There’s also the TP-Link solution that re-broadcasts the WiFi signal over the electricity lines. For that, you have to buy a set of plugs, at least two. One is plugged into the electricity socket and also connected to the router, and the other one is plugged in and connected via USB with a computer. They’re pretty good, although they do need re-setting from time to time.

    6. Boring technobabble – no, multiple clients *shouldn’t* affect your speed. Computers these days are incredibly chatty, in updates, phone home, analytics, telemetry and all sorts of waffle they shouldn’t send out because it all uses up bandwidth.

      HOWEVER! These are in the kilobyte size (small files) there’s just an awful lot of them.

      Now, the wifi itself is a shared fabric radio signal. If you imagine you’re in aswimming pool along with everyone else. Each person is using up a bit of space. Some more, some less. That’s your wifi. You don’t reduce the size of the pool, but the more in it, the less ‘pool’ (bandwidth) is available.

      Apologies as this analogy is getting bad – let’s say you want to start swimming lengths and so does someone else – but in the other direction. You’re going to get in each others way because there’s a finite amount of ‘pool’ to swim fast in. The pool hasn’t changed, but the more devices in it, the more work needed to manage all the traffic. This can present as ‘slowdowns’.

      In our house we have an access point upstairs and one downstairs – on the ceiling. The ‘study’ is wired – that’s like having it’s own lane, all to itself.

      That’s the wifi itself. The internet connection is a pipe. Pouring more into it won’t make it carry any more water. Instead it’ll ‘slosh out’ the sides. These are re-transmit messages, where the comp says ‘Oi! Geoff! Did you get my message?’ And Geoff says ‘nahh mate, i had ot deal with Cyril! – Send it again, would you?’ ‘ OK’ says Dave, and Dave duly does – because Dave is a decent sort who is waiting for Geoff to acknowledge he’s got the message before sending more.

      The more traffic, the more data passed, the more re-transmits you may get. Web pages not loading and so on. Chances are they will, but the message to return the page hasn’t yet been received and the request needs to be re-sent – the good old F5 (refresh) key.

      Fundamentally, the protocols that run the web were designed to be resilient and reliable – because back then the infrastructure wasn’t. All the heavy lifting is built in. Be patient, be aware of the limitations and think pool feeding the pipe and around again as the data traffic.

      I hope that’s not patronising or too simplistic. It’s difficult to know where to pitch things.

      1. Many thanks for that wibbling.
        It’s a perfect description for how I perceived it.

        The swimming pool bit certainly brought a smile to my lips!
        As you probably know, my pool is my pride and joy and the people going the wrong way analogy particularly appealed to my sense of humour.
        This evening I “stepped ashore” from my fourth channel crossing and started on my fifth.

        1. Heh! Apols, I had no idea where to pitch it.

          If it were me, I’d get a router device, such as a Vigor and then get a separate access point for the cottage and another for your home. That way the guests get a really strong wifi signal – less congestion, it’s ‘their devices’ not yours and so on.

    7. Don’t know about French internet, but – for what it’s worth – my broadband from Vodafone is FTTC [Fibre to the Cabinet], but the connection between the cabinet and chez moi may as well be a twisted pair of strings. They are crediting me with £3 a month because it doesn’t meet their minimum specification, yet I can still manage 16 Mbps.

      It’s not totally clear whether the slowness is due to your overall bandwidth, or the connection to the cottage. What’s the mobile signal like in your location? Before I moved from Seale, I tried a 4G router on Vodafone, and it beat the broadband hands down on cost and speed. Then I moved, and it wouldn’t work at all. My mobile is on the Three network, which is the strongest here, but it often switches to WiFi Calling (i.e. via the broadband router). 4G works here, with an external antenna, and I’d ditch my broadband entirely, were it not for the fact that Three blocks TCW and Disqus.

      Here in Blighty, you can go to Ofcom’s site to compare coverage between the networks, by postcode. If yer frogs have someting similar, and it looks like mobile data is ‘good’ at the cottage, you might consider putting in a 4G router, entirely independent of your domestic broadband.

      1. A Mobile signal?

        Where are you?

        Ha ha!
        Ha ha ha!
        Ha bluddy ha ha!

        4 G here?
        4 gee-gees more like!

        Cars stop at the top of our hill just to do their phone calls, we’re under the appropriate height.

        Very annoying when one has to use the mobile rather than the landline, bank codes and the like.
        It’s generally one bar, two on average, three at best and that’s rare.

        Ho hum…

        Fibre is a distant promise, but on the plus side we are sufficiently rurale that they are proposing to put us before those who have the faster speeds in town, as it stands.
        However, being France, when the eventually do sort it out it will be superb.

        1. OK. I’ve been there, when the only mobile signal involved going outside and ascending the nearest hill.

          Here, just 4 miles from the centre of Guildord as the crow flies, none of the four major providers have a reliable connection. It was infinirtely better at the last place, which, typically, now has FTTP. It’s as though TPTB knew I was leaving…

        2. Ah, just read this. I know that problem too, in England!

          Bite the bullet and get a second internet connection just for the cottage?

          1. Possible, but the cottage is only open in the summer and very, very few people complain.
            We’re due to get fibre, which should solve the problem, but no time frame yet.

          2. can you move the router down there if people complain, and suffer the poor internet speed yourselves for the few days until the complaining ones leave?

            My father’s house suffers from a similar situation, also with no mobile signal, and it was only solved by fibre. TP-Link helped though, especially to push the signal through solid stone walls.
            I know there’s satellite internet too, never tried it, probably costs €€€

          5. Not really. The vast majority of our guests also have phones and even the one in question had been using his for days before discovering his “problem”.

            I would not be surprised if the underlying problem was in the way he was trying to connect.

      2. I’ve only got FTTC because I won’t let them dig up my drive to get fibre to the house, I’m lucky if I get 2 Mb/s but at least I only pay £11 a month (plus the rip off standing charge)

          1. Not at all! I was thinking about you having to park so far from the course, and you writing that it was about a furlong away, thanks to the uniformed little Hitler! It made me smile! Not the fact you had to walk, you understand…..

  61. Thanks, “No Plan B”, the Reacher book

    Capture all the illegal gimmegrants and harvest their organs, sell them on the black market and use the money to pay for the real asylum seekers.

    Win win Winson

    1. I just want every last one of the freeloading wasters gone. The state, however, wants to force them on us. Ever more illegal criminal welfare shoppers. They must be returned. If they won’t leave of their own accord, we must use force.

      Then the home office must be charged with malfeasance in office. They are deliberately, spitefully importing an invading army.

      1. I stopped reading the Reacher novels a while ago. I think the last one I read (all the way through) was about amphetamine painkiller addiction.

        2. My Dad used to love them. I think the unstoppable hero type appeals to middle aged men.

          Little did Dad know that he was a bigger hero than Reacher.

        3. They’ve gone politically correct. He was a good story-teller who could turn out amusing escapist tales when he started out, but then I read one that sounded as though it had been written by a committee of female English literature graduates.
          I think Lee Child has written all he has to say, but the cash cow is too big to abandon, so the publisher has taken it over now.

      2. As there are nowhere near enough voters to bring about a government willing to do that, I’m afraid terrorism and the slaughter of innocents is the only way to make it happen. Governments will not cave in to voters but they will if they resort to murdering many people.

  62. God, things are dire…

    “A joke about an unfaithful zookeeper has been named the funniest gag at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
    Comedian Lorna Rose Treen was voted the winner with her pun: “I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.”

      1. Good news is no news, wibbles. The MSM can’t terrify and cow us with good news stories.

  64. See you all tomorrow- if I don’t smash up the lap top first.

    Morphine, then bed.

    1. Can’t see that you’ve posted much today, but that’s ok. I often come on, have a look but have nothing to say. It’s just good to know there are people here concerned enough for each other. Sleep tight.

      1. I have nothing to say about many topical subjects. I make no effort to inform myself about them. I sometimes make an effort to evade them. If I happen to be within eye and earshot of news broadcasts, I will turn them off if there’s no one present to object. I might even deliberately remove myself from places where others want to know about them. I believe my wellbeing is all the better for it.

  65. Hi Plum, hope all is well with you. Thought I’d just mention Alf and I listening to “Vincent” on Mellow Magic, I know it is really special for you. xxx

  68. Good night, chums. I’ve just watched Part One of EXODUS on YouTube. Alas, there is no Part Two Available. And SHIP OF FOOLS is not available at all. So I may have to buy the full EXODUS on Amazon.co.uk. Sleep well and see you all tomorrow.

    1. I wish I could find something amusing on another Chanel, I just don’t know where to look.

      1. There are some comedy channels out there somewhere but funnily they are difficult to find.
        Have yout tried Carry on Searching? 🤔

  71. Good morning, all. Up at this unGodly hour after a sleepless night.

    Good news about the Pakistan army rescuing the people in the amusingly named “cable car”.

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