Friday 1 December: The NHS reforms that eroded continuity of care in general practice

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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483 thoughts on “Friday 1 December: The NHS reforms that eroded continuity of care in general practice”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolk. today’s story

    Management Organisation
    An organisation is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs at different levels.

    Some monkeys are climbing up, some down.

    The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces.

    The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but arseholes.

  3. Good Morning Folks,

    Another freezing cold start here

    Off to early doors golf, I may be some time

  6. 08:30 and the sun isn’t yet up. Clear sky, chilly, and a sharp wee breeze.
    At least one doesn’t have to get up early to see the dawn…

  7. 379192+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    That bloody global warming, and it is only December.

    South-east England sees earliest winter snow in 15 years

    1. ogga1, please get on message asap. The weather we’re experiencing at the moment is a result of the ‘boiling summer’ that was experienced in southern Europe and elsewhere. Don’t argue the facts and science, JUST BELIEVE!😎

      Breaking: just started to snow here in N Essex.

      1. Frosty here but no snow as yet. I think they had some in the south west yesterday. It’s grey and foggy here.

        1. Very brief shower and the cloud is starting to break up. Light rain forecast for later this morning.

  8. Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen.
    I am about to go and scrape the global warming off the van windscreen

  9. 379192+ up ticks,

    Friday 1 December: The NHS reforms that eroded continuity of care in general practice

    We are, although many refuse to acknowledge it, witnessing RESET gathering pace.

    The culling of the herd is NOT a conspiracy theory but a glaring FACT backed by the excess deaths, FACT.

    ALL roads currently lead to RESET even the royal mile.

  10. Good morning all.
    A bright and sunny start to the day, or at least it will be when the sun clears the hill on the Cromford end of the house for a brief period before it hides again behind the mill’s water towers.
    And, being the 1st of December, it’s -4°C outside.

    1. I’ve done it. I’m expecting the usual “I have noted your comments” response, a phrase which has in unwritten parentheses “but I will do nothing about them”. That’s all I get from him when I email him about our REAL concerns.

      1. Voters are just a waste of time that could be better spend smooching with billionaires…

    2. My mp can’t even be bothered to attend the parliamentary debates. He just makes excuses for not being able to be there.
      But it will be very useful for the public to be kept informed on these issues. We will find out if our own suspensions and observations have now been substantiated.

  12. Good morning, all. Brief snow shower here a few minutes ago.

    Well, the truth as always is revealed: it may be a slow process but real facts and science cannot be hidden forever, especially when millions of victims are involved.

    The European Medicines Agency has revealed what many people suspected: the “vaccine” was not capable of stopping transmission. The EMA’s authorisation of the potion did not include the potion’s ability to stop the “virus” being passed from person to person. Therefore, all of those exhortations by politicians and their lackeys that people had to be “vaccinated” to stop the spread and save granny etc. were lies. It’s unclear whether or not all of the politicians knew the facts but surely it is beholden on them to ensure that when they advise their constituents that the information they are passing on is correct (sardonic chuckle at this point).

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d904813c59aef9d9941635ee6d0fff86c72d3bdc5de609caf4e34937bb9ac0db.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/60cbcb2c2279fd3d9eae4a0d4d3c481ffec43f9e1a7cc77d7d7fc386ad690a61.png

    1. It’s about time that Britain rejoined.

      The EU desperately needs our money (but they hate us)

      2. Europe is seen as a battleground between US and Chinese or Russian influence. So the Chinese may come to the “rescue” at some point.
        UK is seen as joined at the hip with the US.
        Unfortunately there is too much truth in that – the City of London and the US bankers are in it together.

  14. G’morning all,

    Frosty roofs and cars under grey skies at the McPhee’s. Wind remains in the North, -2℃ rising to +1℃.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d08d3360e8ec9ec9a181bdf90245a2a6d4b08aea938810d955dbc59ac118a8c9.png

    I don’t think this is right. I recall a snow fall in late October in 2009, I think it was.

    Since it’s now the Christmas season despite what the shops have been selling since September:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e3684916e813079a35691d98d5d0faa5aece06f30d47012e68da10c481f612a5.png

    The DT bottled it. It should have completed the line in the headline.

    “You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy faggot”.

    1. My nephew in the North Pennines had snow last week. But it didn’t make the news because climate change, aka global warming, takes up too much of the media information time slot.

    2. Normally at this time of year when an artiste dies they play their music endlessly. Can’t see it happening.

  15. M.V. Appalachee.

    Complement:
    39 (7 dead and 32 survivors).
    11,706 tons of aviation spirit

    At 22.12 hours on 1st December 1940, U-101 (Ernst Mengersen) attacked convoy HX-90 about 340 miles west of Bloody Foreland and claimed one ship of 8,000 grt sunk (Loch Ranza was only damaged), one ship of 6,000 grt damaged (not confirmed) and one tanker of 12,000 grt sunk (Appalachee).
    Seven crew members from the Appalachee (Master Warwick Armstrong) were lost. The master and 31 crew members were picked up by HMS Heliotrope (K 03) (LtCdr J. Jackson, RNR) and landed at Londonderry.

    Type VIIB U-Boat U-101 was decommissioned on 22nd October 1943 and used as instructional boat.
    Sunk on 3 May 1945 at Neustadt by rockets from four British Typhoon aircraft (175 Sqn RAF). Wreck broken up.

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/br/appalachee.jpg
    .

  16. Morning all 🙂😊
    A set of grey cars on all the drives today.
    We had to chip off the ice yesterday.
    Continuity in the NHS is usually disguised as a phone call. It’s getting on for four months since I had my ablation. But I haven’t had any contact at all from anyone regarding my current condition.
    I’m okay, I think, but obviously More effort required.

  17. That people vote for change because they don’t like the policies and ideas of the current lot in power, not because they want the other side to do the same thing marginally less badly.

    From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/30/new-zealand-leaving-woke-britain-ardern-in-wake/

    Why, then, does the current bunch of utter fools insist on doing exactly the wrong thing at every turn? Why? Are they mere puppets? If so, of whom, and when we specifically voted to remove that puppetry do they insist on reattaching the chains?

  18. Well that didn’t take long, did it?

    IDF pounds Gaza as ceasefire crumbles: Explosions rock Palestinian territory as hostilities resume against Hamas despite hostages remaining trapped after terror group fired rocket into Israel in final minutes of the seven-day truce
    The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas expired early Friday morning
    Negotiations broke down as dozens of hostages remain trapped in Gaza

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12812857/Hamas-rockets-Israel-ceasefire-deadline-EXPIRES.html

    I suspect that Hamas has used the truce to regroup and move munitions away from Israeli attacks, so that they can continue to attack.

    1. It seems the daily fail has the wrong end of the stick. “Hostilities resume against Hamas”?

    2. Ceasefire expired? Was murdered, they mean.
      “hostilities resume against Hamas after terror group fired rocket into Israel in final minutes of the seven-day truce”. A bit like when it all kicked off in October when Hamas attacked Israel. Not to be trusted, any of them.

      1. Here’s the BBC headline – no mention of a Hamas rocket!! “Israel resumes strikes in Gaza after ceasefire ends“

    3. Ah, The Press & Journal.

      Faint memories of 1985-1989, working for Caribonum in Turriff and living in Banff.

  20. From the USA; the regional Federal reserve Chairman in Minneapolis is not a fan of CBDCs…

    “While advocates for CBDCs may find themselves benefiting from advocacy or securing design contracts, the primary beneficiaries are simply the central banks. The potential benefits of CBDCs to the general public are difficult to find, even for central bankers themselves.

    Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, has even aggressivley blasted CBDCs:

    “I’ll tell you my personal bias is I’m pretty skeptical. I keep asking anybody… ANYBODY at the Fed or outside the Fed to explain to me what problem this is solving.

    I can send anybody in this room $5 with Venmo right now. Right? No, seriously. So what is it that a CBDC could do that Venmo can’t do? And all I get is a bunch of handwaving.”

    From a post by Ainslie Bullion on Wallstsilver. AB have a pretty cool Reset silver coin on offer too! Pity it would be too expensive to buy from the States!
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/187vjbu/cbdcs_even_the_fed_insults_them/

    1. We have a service called VIPPS (means Whoosh!) that can shift money to pay bills very effectively.

  21. 379192 + up ticks,

    May one say,
    In regards to MPs, one should NOT address the rhetorical approach as ” my”MP” as if they are a domesticated and much loved pet, but as “my area MP”

    Many, currently, with the peoples help are really awaiting the chance of becoming fully fledged political rodent kapos.

  22. ‘Morning All

    Well,it goes one of these two ways………I wonder which one……….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f86c0f31057d5024b35d975b375fbae214020e12730c7169e2749a0313b1912.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a408b53af6778910714f87b026622f6cf5bcee37e72b24315ce5862794631ec.jpg

    Rest of the medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7313c00114c1ebb5ef03f2a998a69a23cc2df6dfc72bfb2eebc7323fb3e5c2df.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b2d9cb56d55e13207737c9a62b10607223077f5f728b6e74bf8f698c62308b33.jpg

    https://twitter.com/stuzi_pants/status/1730272251713364314

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ba14a9efb09a604ab3a7871a318c85997a2a8f3238661a395bb9244f692a0b3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8010d8857a0ec30be734ef0d91fe5e5509c8ac774ce80f2e811d3398dd7cdb0.png

    2. Re the last one, I guess on some level they were not siding with the resistance…if these films made people side with the resistance, they wouldn’t make them or show them.

    3. 379192+ up ticks,

      Morning Rik,
      The answer to the top one is the latter, the polling stations dictate so.

    4. ‘Morning, Rik.

      If there are any posts on this NoTTLe forum that I would deem unmissable, then they are your daily compendium that clearly shows the current world in its unimaginable state of crass stupidity. I have accumulated a collection of the best of those for my own use. 👍🏻

      Many thanks.

      1. Too kind,have another batch on a lighter note

        https://scontent.flhr10-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/405898438_944558397039074_8504195813169141624_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_p843x403&_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=3635dc&_nc_ohc=lazzPY3Jp_sAX-jtU2W&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr10-2.fna&oh=00_AfDOmGiMr1_kTjafNvZrDCJeD4OE4-31Q03zuSBwmK59lA&oe=656B8599

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/66557489c115213304f0dd878379bc6207de663997821d010173fe6532283c73.png

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2e40720b63f149f6e80bebb7827a8bede0da626cdda999e1f44bd69e38f4721a.jpg

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/95b6f3f80e95fa6760f546bfff6b7ecc929b4557b50c8295f33c3df9c121d60e.jpg

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1c6bec05f39e1ae21c65e5bc160a2afae18d580c24a2ed7bb77564c935ebfd59.jpg

    5. The second image is correct. If you oppose the state it destroys you. Thee only solution is to force them to run out of bullets. The state must be opposed if there is to be a future at all. Then, when enough people have died and the guns have been removed from the thugs of state and it is they facing terror only then will they be stopped.

  23. My word, a meeting in Dubai about climate change. Hundreds or even thousands of people flying in and Bill Gates waving his arms around, in one of the most over developed countries per capita on the planet. With an individual Massive carbon footprint, probably larger than the whole of Africa.
    And once more the usual lectures will commence. And our daft political idiots will get back home to the martyrdom of our own country while they build more homes for people who have never felt cold before in their lives. Until they have arrived here of course. Some more (a lot more) homework needs to be carried out on this subject. And ground/air source heat pumps are not and will never be the answer.

          1. I repeat what I have been saying for some time. The Idiot King talks bollocks about global warming but does not say a word about the consequences Net Zero will have on the lives of poor people. He needs to have direct experience himself of what they will go through.

            Now that a cold snap has arrived, as soon as he get back from the Hypocrites’ Hyperbole-Fest he should go to Balmoral and spent the rest of the winter in an unheated bothy.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/167de795a77da5ffa141b25c88c6c7b469fe1c0702b57e51871ed314a5011480.png

  24. Chill December brings the sleet.
    Blazing fire and Christmas treat.

    The Months, Sara Coleridge.

    A bit out this year, here, since I have a foot of snow that froze solid overnight.

  25. Good Moaning.
    A good reason for using local businesses.
    The Noddy car was booked in for a winter service next week. At 08.00 the garage phoned to ask if I could bring my car in today. After a panic (“had I turned over 2 pages of the diary?”) NC was taken for a service and Spartie had a walk back from the garage.
    And they are dropping her off at the Dower House when she’s finished.

    2. I booked ours in at the local garage after the service costs went through the roof.
      I Take it in next Monday evening walk home 10 minutes.
      They lock it in over night, service carried out first thing. All for half the price of the main dealer.
      Phone call walk back pick it up.
      And pay of course.

      1. That is what I normally do. Run the car round to the garage in the evening. Put keys in an envelope and pop through the reception letter box.
        This time they were ahead of the game; possibly someone else cancelled.

        1. We often drop the keys in Philippe’s letterbox when we leave the car or Minibus with him overnight.

      2. When either the Panda or the Minibus needs repairing or servicing we both go to Philippe’s garage in the village – one in the Panda and the other in the Minibus – and return home in the one that is not being dealt with.

        Philippe is an excellent chap and is under 2 miles away from home.

        1. I had a small transit van with very low millage, in reasonable condition, every time it went for an MOT the guy, owner at the garage use to ask me how much I wanted for it. Last time it needed quite a few things sorting probably amounting to around 400.00 so I let him have it for 200.00. He has restored it and made certain changes and uses it at work and for his mobile disco equipment. Every body is happy.

      3. Similar here for the car. The motorhome is serviced farther away so that garage gives me a lift home and picks me up to collect it.

    3. We have an Audi/VW specialist, runs a mobile servicing service, he live 3 houses down from us. Very inexpensive and quick, about 2 hours for a service.
      We’ve been using him for about 10 years.

      1. I’ve been using local Audi / VAG specialist for the past 6 years. Happy with their work especially as its about 30% cheaper than the dealerships.

  26. From today’s Terriblegraph:
    “An old friend from overseas recently told me they don’t want to meet when I visit his country next month. Many Jews will have experienced this – a friend who stayed silent in the face of the worst terrorist atrocity in Israel’s history, only to excoriate Israel on social media in the following weeks.
    Losing friendships is distressing, but nothing compared to watching raw footage of the October 7 massacres at a London screening I facilitated. The crimes, many filmed by Hamas terrorists, show humanity at its lowest. Purveyors of sickening terror joyfully invoke God’s name while bringing death and defilement to His creatures.
    Any opinion that ignores or downplays Hamas’s evil is disconnected from reality and has nothing to offer the search for peace. Yet some deny or cast doubt on these barbaric acts. They justify or “explain” them. Others, like my friend, condemn the atrocity of October 7 when pushed before then condemning Israel’s response. They emphasise “context”, with the apparent implication that Israel had it coming. As if killing parents in front of children, using a severed head as a football, rape, and parading and defiling corpses is an inevitable, reflex reaction to Israeli actions.
    Context is indeed important. Here is some: Israel hasn’t occupied Gaza since 2005. Hamas brutally controls Gaza and has attacked Israeli civilians time and again. Israeli measures to contain this terror are painful for Gazan people and open to strong debate. But the terror precedes the response, not the other way round.
    My friend accuses Israel of “genocide”, but offers no idea of how better Israel should protect its citizens. Hamas knew that Israel’s response would be harsh and, embedded in hospitals and schools, knew civilians would suffer, though the numbers quoted seldom acknowledge the thousands of Hamas terrorists among the dead.
    But Palestinian suffering is part of Hamas’s plan to make peace impossible and destroy Israel. Hamas showed us what “from the river to the sea” means and how it would carry it out. To chant it on demonstrations is either credulous or genocidal.
    My friend is upset when marchers in London or elsewhere are accused of anti-semitism. But Jews see the banners, hear the chants and understand that we are targets.
    I agree that demonstrating for Palestinians is not anti-semitic. For decades I have championed the Palestinian right to self-determination and have been an outspoken critic of Israeli governments for obstructing that right. Ironically, I have lost friendships because of it. I maintain that attempting to “manage” the conflict rather than resolve it has been disastrous. A government that boasted that it alone could deliver security has been exposed. I am confident the Israeli public, out protesting in huge numbers before Hamas started this war, will deliver better leadership before long.
    Palestinians have legitimate grievances and aspirations but that is not Hamas’s agenda, which is to murder Jews and destroy Israel. Believe them when they say they would do it again. A ceasefire that leaves Hamas in charge would be preposterous.
    Its Israeli victims have included outspoken voices for peace and Palestinian rights, like Vivian Silver, a lifelong peace activist whose murdered body was identified weeks after the attack. Or Oded Lifshitz, 83, a peace activist and retired journalist, still held hostage, who spends his retirement driving Palestinian children from Gaza for treatment. Such people have done more for Palestinians than thousands shouting “intifada” on our streets, or those who simply march without any care under whose banner they do so.
    Yet Israel, the Palestinians and the international community must renew the vision of two states for the two peoples who live in the land. My late friend President FW de Klerk once told me that his epiphany was not just that apartheid was unconscionable, but that you cannot choose the leaders you negotiate with. You deal with the leaders their people choose. The Palestinian people must decide who that leadership will be, and I hope they make the right choices.
    But I am struck by an unpleasant realisation: my friend can choose not to talk to me when our world views and moral compass diverge. But Israel does not have that luxury.”

  27. I see the idiot King has addressed the massed ranks of hypocrites in Dubai – “King Charles III addressed COP28 and told world leaders
    ‘we are carrying out a vast, frightening experiment of changing every ecological condition all at once’. He adds that “the Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth    .”

    They are also talking about a global approach to what we [presumably just us plebs?] should eat – 134 nations have apparently signed up without any attempt to mention it to their voters – naturally that includes UK.

    2. 134 out of 195. There’s a rumour circulating on soshul medya that the Russians are building a colony near Moscow to house conservative “refugees” from the USA. D’you think they’ll take Europeans as well?

      1. Thanks, Phizzee, I don’t seem to have as much spare time as I used to, now that I’m retired so I don’t drop in as much as I used to. The last few weeks have seen us on holiday in Northern Ireland, a flying visit to Switzerland to see #2 son and another flying visit to the Algarve to see old friends. We’ve also been busy trying to organise a last-minute trip next month to the Falklands, South Georgia, South Sandwich and South Shetland islands as well as the Antarctic peninsula. Add to that, the volunteering work my wife and I are involved in and we don’t have much free time.

    1. I wondered why they weren’t sequestrated first. I can’t imagine them doing a lot of business in the Winter months either. All those empty chalet/cabins just sitting there.

  30. Armez-vous, Rastus!

    France could be on the brink of civil war

    For decades, governments have avoided looking too closely at the worsening situation. We are now reaching a tipping point

    ANNE-ELISABETH MOUTET • 29 November 2023 • 12:00pm

    Two years ago, after yet another couple of nights of rioting in the banlieues, twenty retired French generals wrote an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, then about to run for a second term, warning that the divisions between communities and increasing “violence and nihilism” in France would eventually cause a social breakdown, with a risk of “chaos” leading to a “civil war” that would then “require” a military “intervention… in a dangerous mission to protect our civilisational values and safeguard our compatriots”.

    Strong stuff, co-signed by some 100 senior officers and about a thousand other members of the military, in a country where the Army is known as “the Great Mute”, i.e. never expressing a preference in national politics. In the one instance, during the Algerian independence war, when four generals attempted a putsch against President Charles de Gaulle on April 21, 1961 to protest the projected departure of France from her rebelling colony, they were followed by a pitiful number of the military, and the coup petered out within three days. Six decades later, the Lettre des généraux was received with contempt, with most commentators calling its authors “irrelevant”, reading its apocalyptic predictions as a “threat” against the Republic.

    Yet this week Olivier Véran, the cabinet spokesman, seemed to share those conclusions as, on a visit to the village of Crépol, south of Lyon, he warned that France might be at a “tipping point” after the fatal stabbing of a local 16 year-old boy. Condemning both the knife attacks during a Saturday evening dance and the subsequent march by right-wing activists intent on a fight into the neighbourhood where the suspects live, the minister vowed that the government would stand with the bereaved family and called for a harsh sentencing, “up to a life sentence [with] no mitigating circumstances”, for the culprits. He reportedly added that the government is “clearly” aware that violence from “packs” is ratcheting up “tensions… you can’t stand these gangs any more… neither can we”, promising the “full mobilisation” of the state to “guarantee the safety of all citizens”.

    Too little, too late: the minister’s well-meaning words were badly received. One of the villagers reportedly shouted to Véran: “You’ve done much more for them than you do for the hard-working people in the countryside, who get no benefits and raise their children with values.”

    “Them” means the problem groups in council housing, many of whom are children or grandchildren of Muslim immigrants, like the Crépol knife-wielding attackers who disrupted the Saturday evening dance, allegedly shouting “we’ve come to get whites”. The Valence judiciary refused, against general custom, to give first names for the suspects they arrested. The entire country suspects why the names were not given: in the well-meaning aim not to “stigmatise” an entire community whose immense majority is law-abiding.

    This time, several newspapers chose to question that decision (the centre-left Le Parisien, which belongs to Bernard Arnault, the luxury magnate, printed the Arabic first name of the suspected killer).

    To say the French public are getting fractious is understating the current perception, supported by many sociologists and statisticians, that the country has failed badly in assimilating all citizens. To use a word coined by novelist Michel Houellebecq, France is increasingly “atomised”. France’s top pollster and political analyst, Jérôme Fourquet, talks of the “French archipelago”, a country of discrete islands, each inward-looking.

    For almost three decades, government after government chose not to look too closely at a worsening situation. France was for centuries a land of successful assimilation. Italians, Spaniards, Russian Jews, Poles came and became French. But sheer numbers, as well as the change from a requirement to “assimilate” to the easier one of “integrate”, mean the French model is broken.

    Each separate failure concurs to the general breakdown of the national compact. The long-admired French education system is no longer fit for purpose: our schools have slid from the top to the bottom of the PISA rankings in just a few years, especially in those areas where non-French-speaking children account for the majority in most classes. School teachers are less and less respected by both the body politic – which allowed their salaries to fall by half in real terms – and by their pupils, disruptive and often violent. In some areas, the history of the 20th century, especially of the Holocaust, has been near-impossible to teach for years: inroads by Islamism in the classrooms, long denied, have contributed to the murder of two teachers in three years.

    The police, meanwhile, are badly paid, badly considered, often afraid for their lives in the areas where they must keep order, they resign in droves. (The profession has one of the highest suicide rates in France.) As a result, training time has been reduced from a year to eight months, so bad is the need for boots on the ground.

    As a result, trust between the ruling classes and the people has declined in lockstep with France’s economic and cultural decline. (If you live in the centre of Paris or Lyon, even Marseille, you can send your children to good private schools and Grandes Écoles, almost guaranteeing good jobs that will enable them to keep living where the crisis is not felt.)

    Like his predecessors, Emmanuel Macron first displayed indifference towards the chaotic immigration system: the new Immigration Bill, about to be debated by the National Assembly, tries to correct the laxist trends of recent years, but it will neither address the problem of French-born citizens who profess hate for their country, nor the rising arrivals from troubled areas. It may not take much for the next round of riots, or for an equally violent blowback from a hard-right deciding to take matters into their hands. That civil war the generals prophesied two years ago may be around the corner.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/29/france-is-on-the-brink-of-civil-war/

    1. The author of this piece is a good friend of Mark Steyn. Do French patriots have the bolleaux to bring Madame Guillotine out of retirement?

  31. It’s in Britain’s interest to put foreign courts and treaties back in their place
    The reaction against Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik has gone too far, as Rishi Sunak must urgently recognise
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/30/britain-interest-put-foreign-courts-treaties-in-their-place/

    I am no great fan of Richard Tice but virtually any right of centre party would be preferable to the highly toxic treacherous Conservative Party. I cannot understand how any Conservative MP with even an ounce of integrity can stay in it.

    Having given Northern Ireland to Ireland and being about to give Gibraltar back to Spain the traitors need to be kicked out as soon as possible

    BTL

    Advice to David Frost:

    i) Resign from the House of Lords and drop your title;
    ii) Resign from the Conservative Party;
    iii) Run in the general election as a candidate for the Reform Party;
    iv) Encourage the right of centre Conservative Party MPs to do the same.

    2. Give Norfolk & Suffolk back to the Angles
      Yorkshire & the Western Isles to the Norwegians
      …
      and so on.
      Oh, yes, and the USA back to the UK.

  33. 379192+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    Risk of Islamist Terror ‘Higher Than it Has Been For a Long Time’ Because of Hamas, Says German Intelligence

    Thanks to the political overseeing governing parties, and supporters, we have all the ingredients here in England for a major incident with more arriving on a daily basis.

  34. Here is another problem they seem to be blaming on everyone else except our useless inept politicians who have caused it.
    Caused it because they are too weak minded and terminally stupid to have foreseen the problem. Decades of inaction have led to an affordable housing crisis that is ripping the soul out of our rural communities. Correction decades of inaction on illegal immigration have led to a housing crisis. And too many once rural communities are being wrecked by over building on farm land and green spaces.

    An “acute and overlooked” shortage of affordable housing poses a threat to the survival of communities in rural England, a countryside charity has warned.
    Britons are being driven out of the countryside by record house prices, low wages and a surge in second homes and short-term lets, the CPRE reveals in a report published today.
    Roger Mortlock, CPRE chief executive, said: “Decades of inaction have led to an affordable housing crisis that is ripping the soul from our rural communities.

    “Solutions do exist and the next government must set and deliver ambitious targets for new, genuinely affordable and social rented rural housing, curbing the boom of second homes and short-term lets.

    “Record house prices and huge waiting lists for social housing are driving people out of rural communities, contributing to soaring levels of often hidden rural homelessness.
    “Urgent change is required to ensure we don’t end up with rural communities that are pricing out the very people needed to keep them vibrant.”

    The charity said the countryside, where levels of homelessness have leapt 40 per cent in five years, is being drained of skills, economic activity and vital public services.

    The average house price in rural England is now £419,000.

    Related video: Rising demand for sharing housing as cost-of-living bites (Dailymotion) Not sure what this has to do with the article

    1. 379192+ up ticks,

      Afternoon RE,
      Does come across as the next “government” carry on turning villages into towns but do it cheaper.

      The foreign invasion forces are in dire need
      of attention first & foremost.

      1. There are plans to surround our village with more than two hundred new houses.
        It will no longer be a village. And a village with references of very ancient beginnings.
        More ruination by politics.

        1. 370192+ up ticks,

          Afternoon RE.

          Tis being allowed to happen, even endorsed via the polling booth,the majority voter is mainlining on pure political treacherous shite.

          There is a slim chance to rectify things but……..

          2. 379192+ up ticks,

            RE,
            If the peoples are content with their
            children being tip dwellers so be it, they will continue to give their consent via the polling stations.

            Through people power unity we can reverse the current odious situation,
            we are at this moment in time STILL
            masters of our own destiny.

          4. 379245+ up ticks,

            Morning RE,
            I judge every independent to be an alternative , the best of the worst brigade got us to where we find ourselves to – day… in deep dangerous shite.

          5. I only wish there were more of them. I’ll certainly not vote for the major parties again in my lifetime. As we we all know, they wreck everything they come into contact with.

  35. 379192+ up ticks,

    May one ask,
    If a scheme was started to crowd fund jet aircraft for very ordinary, run of the mill peoples, would it be allowed ?

    1. On the BBC recently they were talking about COP28 arranging the rationing of flights.

      The plebs would only be allowed one return flight every three years.

      ………….of course, that’s only the BBC’s opinion on what will be agreed.

  36. Had an urology procedure 4 weeks ago and still have a problem. Phoned the hospital this morning explained my dilemma to the consultant’s Secretary who phone me back within the hour and I have a face to face appointment on Sunday morning with a doctor. Very impressed.
    Wonder if the new CEO, a cardiologist, is making the patients a priority.

      1. It’s my local one that I don’t normally have any confidence in. The news CEO is a cardiologist who in 2000 recommended vw had a hole in the heart closed by device rather than the open heart surgery recommended by his professor. Hopefully this is the start of the patient being put ahead of virtue signalling.

    4. He’s a rarity.
      As long as they can still do clinical work, it needs far more part time “managerial medics” and far fewer full time “managers of medics”.

      1. For the benefit of those poor souls who haven’t discovered Pratchett – “Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers, a minor goddess on the Discworld. When someone rattles a drawer and cries “How can it close on the damned thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?”, even though the person might be genuinely irritated or even exasperated, it is as praise unto Anoia. Faithful Anoians (worshippers of Anoia) purposefully rattle their drawers and complain every day. Anoia also finds objects that roll under other objects and things stuck in sofa cushions, and is considering handling stuck zippers. She eats corkscrews.”

        1. I think Pratchett was a genius. I know he wasn’t considered to be a serious author. Praise the lord ! He still makes me laugh now. Often his writing is multi-layered.

          1. Looking to complete my collection.

            I want the hard covers, with the original dust jacket illustrations. 25 so far plus The Last Hero the oversized book. I keep ;looking and they keep getting more expensive!

    3. Potato masher: Translation of the German slang for a stick grenade.
      I’ll get me steel helmet…

      1. I heard something similar in Oz. When brits start a fight with a bad ossie driver on the road. Pomm to tar.

    2. Good God, man! We have 2 ferries ‘under construction’ on the Clyde! 8 years late and gazillions over budget!

      1. 379192+ up ticks,

        Afternoon SM,
        Those are probably “government” contracts to assist the invasion force.

        My two MTBs would be constructed via love of Country & freedom.

  43. WS🚨

    Sunak regime announces $2 BILLION contribution to the ‘Green Climate Fund to tackle climate change’ as he flies in on a private UK jet to Dubai.

  44. The more i see and hear about the climate gathering of many thousands aka conference in dubai. The more I feel the people like us are the victims of their constant provocation and they are the real cause. Instead of making pointess speeches perhaps they should sit and think.

    2. It’s a fraud.
      The point of this COP conference was to establish the principle that the industrialised West must pay reparations to non-industrialised countries for imaginary “climate damage.”
      That is what this new fund is about, and the point of it is to bleed the West to death.

    3. Have just heard our thick-headed billionaire Hindu so-called PM donating another few billion to the scam! And our cretinous King is there! Our lately-departed Queen is sadly missed.

      1. Where and when did the taxpayers, who are providing all this money, give their approval for this?
        All that will happen is that most of. it will go straight into the pockets of some of the most corruptible and corrupted people in the world

        1. Good question, sos! Let me have think…..no! We didn’t! No discussion, no questions asked, they just did it! Apparently on our behalf. Just like the Convid!

          3. Her deceased husband wielded more influence than I ever thought.
            He was a tough man – wartime servive and service to the Realm thereafter.
            Would there were more of him around: Sense, duty, application.

          4. A few of us still exist, Paul, but due to age, unable to carry out active service but that doesn’t diminish the willingness to fight for Queen and Country.

  45. I was looking for a recipe for Swiss apple Charlotte. So i googled it. It came up with a blog where the woman said she really liked this recipe and she got it from a recipe book which she has had for the last 38 years. The Hamlyn all colour cook book. Which also happens to be on the shelf behind me. Doh !

    1. Blimey! I have one of those! I use it a lot!
      Edit: there were several of them! I have one with a paper cover and a red glossy hardback!

      1. It was a gift from a friend. I remember the friend but i don’t remember the year. I think i was still wearing short trousers !

        2. I’ve written my own if you or Sue are interested I’ll post a link.

          It’s no mean pamphlet.

          2. The one on the right is the one I frequently use, published in 1986, especially when we are in need of ‘proper’ food!!

      2. It’s a very good cake book – I have it too.
        The Indian one looks good as well, haven’t seen it before.

      4. We have one too, not the same as Phizzee’s as it has not got the apple charlotte recipe. Ours was first published 1970, our edition 1976.

  47. This meaningful

    Food for thought

    We, the Semi Elderly

    We grew up in the 40s-50s-60s. (…and the 30s….!)

    We studied in the 40s-50s-60s-70s.

    We dated in the 40s-50s-60s-70s.

    We got married and discovered the world in the 50s-60s-70s-80s.

    We ventured into the 70s-80s.

    We stabilized in the 90s.

    We got wiser in the 2000s. (…and retired!)

    And went firmly through the 2010s.

    Turns out we’ve lived through NINE different decades..

    TWO different centuries…

    TWO different millennia…

    We have gone from the telephone with an operator for long-distance calls to video calls to anywhere in the world, we have gone from slides to YouTube, from vinyl records to online music, from handwritten letters to email and WhatsApp..

    From live matches on the radio, to black and white TV, and then to HDTV…

    We went to Blockbuster and now we watch Netflix…We got to know the first computers, punch cards, diskettes and now we have gigabytes and megabytes in hand on our cell phones or iPads..

    We wore shorts throughout our childhood and then long pants, Oxford Bags, Bermuda shorts, etc. We dodged infantile paralysis, meningitis, H1N1 flu and now COVID-19..

    We rode skates, tricycles, invented cars, bicycles, mopeds, gasoline or diesel cars and now we ride hybrids – or 100% electric…

    Yes, we’ve been through a lot – but what a great life we’ve had!

    They could describe us as “exennials” people who were born in that world of the 30s and 40s, who had an analog childhood and a digital adulthood. We’re kind of Ya-seen-it-all.

    Our generation has literally lived through and witnessed more than any other in every dimension of life.

    It is our generation that has literally adapted to “CHANGE”.

    A big round of applause to all the members of a very special generation, who are UNIQUE. Here’s a precious and very true message:

    TIME DOES NOT STOP!
    Life is a task that we do ourselves every day.

    When you look.. It’s already six in the afternoon; when you look…it’s already Friday; when you look.. the month is over; when you look… the year is over; when you look… 50, 60, 70 and 80 years have passed!

    When you look… we no longer know where our friends are. When you look… we lost the love of our life, and now it’s too late to go back.

    Do not stop doing something you like, due to lack of time.
    Do not stop having someone by your side, because your children will soon not be yours, and you will have to do something with that remaining time.

    The only thing that you are going to miss will be the space – that can only be enjoyed with the usual friends. This time that, unfortunately never returns… The day is today!

    WE ARE NO LONGER AT AN AGE TO POSTPONE ANYTHING

    Hopefully, you have time to read and then share this message… or else leave it for *Later* and you will see that you will never share it!

    Always together, Always united, Always brothers/sisters, Always friends

    Pass it on to your best friends. Don’t leave it for later.

    I heard of and old friend this morning, he had been ill for sometime and had put up a long brave fight, but passed away yesterday.
    A sad start to the day.

    2. A while since I counted my decades, gosh I am a nine decader as well (being a forty-niner)!
      I tend not to do this message sharing thing, it smells too much like the facebook thing which is alien to us oldies.

      1. Was sent if from an Internet friend who I have known for around 30 years but never met.
        She’s pretty much on the ball.
        There were 5 of us but one of the other chap’s died.

    4. Carpe Diem. The older I get the more it focuses my mind on my mortality. I want to make the most of my last few years.

  48. Further to the discussion of Christmas cards earlier have you also noticed that Christian funerals seem also to be almost extinct, at least for those held in crematoriums? The last few I have been to over the past year for old friends have been the sort where the Lord is not even mentioned, no prayers or hymn singing, not even ‘ashes to ashes’ at the send off. In the past we always managed The Lord is My Shepherd and said the Lord’s Prayer. Now nothing. Just watched an online recording of one for a colleague, nice ceremony, long eulogies, but nothing but played popular music – couldn’t hear the dismissal as she had no microphone when she was by the coffin but doubt heaven was mentioned.

    1. The last few funerals i have attended at Portsmouth Crem it was a production line. One in one out. You barely have time to look at the flowers.
      I don’t blame the staff but we should be more insistent on what is acceptable.

      Probably not known to most people not in the industry but Russell Norman, restaurateur died last week. Heart Attack. 1965/2023

      R.I.P Russ. I will miss you.

        1. Seems to be a lot of it about.
          I was born in 1964 and i’m 60 in February.

          There is something odd about the dates.

      2. It’s like a sausage factory at the crem. You are waiting in line and go in as the previous lot go out the back door. Horrible. I have stipulated I shall be buried with a BCP service in church.

    2. The last funerals I have been to have been burials. Ceremony in church; popular music but also hymns and prayers. We are possibly the last bastion of tradition here in the sticks. I am due to go to a service next week that will be a thanksgiving after a cremation. I shan’t go to the crem (soul-less place) but I’ll go to the church celebration of life afterwards. I’ll have another one to go to in January which will be at a Welsh crem. Last time I went there it was a humanist do. Very unsatisfactory from my point of view.

    1. More accurately, he is standing on the backs of poor bloody taxpayers, harvesting their energy.

        1. Harvested to benefit the parasite class. Squandered from our point of view, perhaps, but someone reaps the benefit of all the money sloshing around.

    4. Roll out off the barrel and he will be invisible with his head beneath the level of the microphone or the podium!

  51. Afternoon all.

    Only just joined today so I’m wondering if Rusty has posted any news about his grandson?

  52. I see, from the captions on their live coverage reports, that the BBC have at least 2 reporters and an editor “at COP28”! There also seems to be a “climate disinformation officer” although I thought the whole BBC were into climate disinformation!?

    1. Plus, camera , sound, lighting technicians, etc. and all the support side. I’ll bet there are numerous people there.

    1. Russia for starters.
      All we hear is Putin is cracking down on queers and criminalising certain behaviours….like what can and cannot be taught in schools where we on the other hand embrace these perversions polluting out childrens’ minds while filling the country with muslims who would very shortly run out of tall buildings to throw them off.

      1. I thought it was activism that the Russians don’t want rather than actual homosexuals. It’s not illegal, but promoting it is?

  55. Although reversed, Havering sent a clear message.
    “We won’t defend you, we’ll cut and run if challenged”

    https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/havering-council-cancel-hannukah-antisemitism-b1124220.html?lid=q81gw0n75z0b

    Earlier this week, the council cancelled plans to light Hanukkah candles outside its town hall, suggesting this would “risk further inflaming tensions within our communities”. Instead, it said it would erect a temporary installation to be quickly dismantled after. In the last few hours, the council reversed its position and announced the celebration could go ahead. This is welcome, but so much damage has already been done.

    In a city where attacks on Jews have reached unprecedented levels, cries of “death to Jews” have been heard in train stations and some in the community are feeling moved to remove public displays of their Jewish identity, the initial ban was perhaps the most chilling development. Because it came with the tacit seal of official approval.

    1. The authorities are frightened. They are just beginning to wake up to what they have done. Appeasement has never worked. Same as giving in to the playground bully.
      They have no authority. We all know what comes next.

    2. I’ll bet the council wouldn’t have tried to cancel Eid celebrations. But they wouldn’t have any fears cancelling or scaling back Christmas festivities.

    3. Time for us to put a menorah in the window.

      Maybe the woke mob will only try to lynch me for cultural appropriation rather than lynching me for daring to favour the Jewish people.

    1. “And I’m telling you that my private jet used more fuel per occupant than yours did!”

      “Oh yeah? Well I’ve just given away 2 billion to corrupt counties and politicians with better Kings than you!”

    1. If only!

      Interesting that they’re choosing nostalgia just when cars are going in a direction that most people don’t want.

    4. I visited someone this morning who is renovating one of those old Chevrolet wagons. Cars really were big in those days.

  59. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bfb1ebeee35a15dc39353221a1b075f3824e30c0a371bf89428bc05a1955839d.png

    BTL

    I am not a great fan of our Idiot King but I do not think he can be described as a racist for wondering what his grandchild would look like.

    My wife is Dutch; I am English – before our first son was born we discussed whether he would look English like me or Dutch like my wife. Nobody thought that was racist so why should the King and his older son’s wife be considered racist?

    I think it is a great mistake of the MSM to be falling into the trap of calling them the royal racists when they are not!

    1. The MSM is dominated by upper middle-class, left-wing Marxists. They hate Royalty. They’ll happily take anything they think is negative about the Royals and spin it for all it’s worth. And people will read and listen to this stuff, which is why the MSM is so glad to reproduce it.

      1. Not everyone who loved Queen Elizabeth II was a monarchist just as everyone who despises Charles III is not a republican who wishes the monarchy to be abolished.

        1. Sadly, I now do. I was formerly a practical monarchist. Now a practical republican. I absolutely loathe the self-regarding, gobby types who keep popping up as the voices of republicanism, though. I have nothing at all in common with those left-wing clowns.

          4. I don’t care too much who’d be president, as it’d only be ceremonial. We could keep the exact same system as now, in terms of balance of powers (i.e. no U.S.-style Office of President). I’d say impose age limit of between 50 and 70 years of age. Cannot be a current member of any political party. Cannot be an ex-MP. Someone like John Timpson would be ideal. He seems like a common-sense bloke, and his business is well-run. Tim Martin of Wetherspoon? James Dyson? Why would they do it? If it’s only ceremonial and requires just a handful of days per year, I don’t see why not.

            And let’s not be having any of that ‘Oh, but we could end up with Tony Blair as President!’ As if he doesn’t already have all his dirty fingers all over government behind the scenes. He doesn’t need office. And I highly doubt that he’d get anywhere near enough votes, anyway. Thank goodness. Even a bad president wouldn’t matter. The real power lays with Parliament. And when I say Parliament, I mean the globalist organisations that really run everything, for which Parliament is the front!

          5. On balance I woluld keep what we have. Blair rid The Lords of most Lords and it is afar worse place for doing that..

          6. I don’t think we need the Lords at all, to be honest. It’s a hangover from the first dawnings of democracy and we’ve thankfully moved on from having people with titles telling us what we can and cannot do. But there’s a risk with changing anything, I agree.

          7. I am just as sick of politicians telling us what to do. Men of the world have far more idea than politicians.

    2. Cynical me says that they are running the Scobie distraction to try and whip up sympathy for Charles while he betrays us at COP.

    3. With nothing better to occupy their minds.
      The usual morons will make anything up that fits in with their acidic adgenda. They make fools of themselves.
      We have a friend whose grandfather was Jamaican, but she is as white as anyone possibly can be. It doesn’t bother her in the slightest.
      And her son and daughter are white so are the grandchildren.
      Those ex royalty escapees really need to count their blessings and zip it. A classic example of ‘do you know who we are’..
      Nobody really cares who you are.

    5. ‘Racism’: the very concept of it irritates me and grates my teeth spontaneously. The idiotic non-word is nothing more than a vacuous throwaway insult made by people whose neurons are not wired properly.

      Humans, in common with all animal species, are hard-wired to look after their own and be suspicious of others, no matter their tribe, race, species, genus, family, order, class, phylum or kingdom. This is a fact of nature and cannot be disputed. Try telling a chimpanzee that it must get along with a bonobo and see how far you get.

  60. Matt Le Tissier and أبو عمّار follow
    UNN
    @UnityNewsNet
    This might be a slightly highbrow theological point (on Twitt maybe!) but at COP/CON 28 Charles said the following:

    “The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.”

    Now he is the Head of the Church of England and the CofE clearly states: “The Church does not have the authority to decree anything contrary to Scripture.”

    The bible clearly states that earth belongs to mankind in the Genesis story and throughout and in the Psalms:

    “The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s; But the earth He has given to the children of men.”

    In making this statement Charles is clearly against CofE and biblical teaching.

    1. I’ll bet he didn’t know.
      But I’ll also bet he wouldn’t give a damn even, if he did..

    3. Interesting. Today’s “Irreverend” featured a discussion right at the end about humans having “dominion” over the land and whether or not this correlates to a duty of “stewardship” (which is currently being pushed as the Next Big Thing – in alliance with ESG and DEI.)

      This is the Apple podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/irreverend-faith-and-current-affairs/id1528967755?i=1000637146202

      This is the Rumble link: https://rumble.com/user/Irreverend

      I think they said try to avoid You Tube because of ? demonetisation.

      The episode is called “AI and the Antichrist”

      1. I always think that when someone powerful says that they intend to do something, one should believe that they mean what they say.

  61. The unwanted, unreturnable, gift that never stops taking.

    Crooked cop who used police database to pass on information to friends being investigated is spared jail – because prisons are too ‘overcrowded’
    Met officer PC Mohammed Rahman, 39, search for friends on police database

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12814627/Crooked-cop-used-police-database-pass-information-friends-investigated-spared-jail-prisons-overcrowded.html

    If prisons are so overcrowded bring back public floggings

    2. Nothing new.
      A guardian report from 2005:-

      Secret report brands Muslim police corrupt
      Fury over internal Met study which says Asians need special training
      Sandra Laville and Hugh Muir
      The Guardian, Saturday 10 June 2006
      A secret high-level Metropolitan police report has concluded that Muslim officers are more likely to become corrupt than white officers because of their cultural and family backgrounds.
      The document, which has been seen by the Guardian, has caused outrage among ethnic minorities within the force, who have labelled it racist and proof that there is a gulf in understanding between the police force and the wider Muslim community. The document was written as an attempt to investigate why complaints of misconduct and corruption against Asian officers are 10 times higher than against their white colleagues.

      Read more at
      https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/10/race.topstories3

      Also note that if this is true for the Police, it is probably also true in Public Service.

      2. Also note that if this is true for the Police, it is probably also certainly true in Public Service.

  62. It’s in Britain’s interest to put foreign courts and treaties back in their place

    The reaction against Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik has gone too far, as Rishi Sunak must urgently recognise

    DAVID FROST • 30 November 2023 • 6:53pm

    I was lucky enough to be in some private meetings with Henry Kissinger in his last few years. As I recall them, he was always seated in the shadows, his audience peering into the gloom to try to read the expression behind the slow, heavily accented, thoughtful delivery, mainly compelling, only occasionally soporific. In truth, I suspect that this is my own mental construct, symbolic of the image he made for himself as Richard Nixon’s calculating, strategic foreign policy guru, the supreme proponent of realpolitik or even Machtpolitik – power politics – and of his long afterlife as a commentator, analyst, and paid consultant to the Chinese government. The controversy around him has never faded and we are still living through its consequences.

    Kissinger’s reputation rests on three achievements: detente with the Soviet Union, the opening of US relations with communist China, and the end – at first negotiated, finally brutal – of the war in Vietnam. The last remains the most controversial. The widening of the war to Cambodia and the 1972 bombing of Hanoi, with the goal of enhancing US “credibility” so as to give the maximum negotiating capital for a peace agreement, were both bitterly opposed and ultimately futile: the 1973 peace agreements were fragile and South Vietnam collapsed in 1975.

    The other achievements stand up better. The opening to China was both a simple recognition of reality – the US could not indefinitely have no diplomatic relations with a quarter of the world’s population – and a secret diplomatic masterstroke, giving the US another Cold War card to play. Detente with the USSR followed, with the first arms limitation treaty and the 1975 Helsinki Accords, initially a sop to domestic US critics, eventually a major element in the erosion of the Soviet Union’s moral legitimacy.

    Why does this history matter? In many ways it took us to the foreign policy world we have today. Kissinger’s brand of realism – of seeing foreign affairs as primarily about power relationships between states, with security achieved through predictability and balancing, while downplaying the moral, idealistic component of international relations – was always controversial. It never really meshed either with European sensitivities about the need to overcome dangerous national sentiment or with the underlying American sense that engagement with the rest of the world had to be justified by some kind of moral project.

    We haven’t seen full-blown realism from the US since then. The closest we have come, perhaps, was under Barack Obama, whose moral project was domestic not international, who in fact distanced himself publicly from Kissinger, and yet who mocked Mitt Romney for calling Russia America’s “number one geopolitical foe”. As his final interviews show, Obama refused to buy into the advice of a US foreign policy establishment that by then had very different instincts.

    For the reaction against Kissinger’s approach was strong. It took two forms. The first was foreign policy as crusade – initially in Reagan’s stepped-up Cold War on the Soviet “evil empire”, later in the neocon war on the “axis of evil”, the war on terror. In both cases the US regarded itself as embodying a moral cause – democracy, liberty, freedom – which was clearly (and rightly) seen as superior to the ideology of its shifting cast of enemies. There could be no compromise about the values, only tactical judgments about how easy they were to impose on others. The Cold War ended in success, the neocon wars of the 2000s much less so, and their fag-end, the Cameron-Sarkozy war on Libya, led only to ongoing disaster.

    The other reaction has proved more durable. It is the world we are living in today, the world of the “rules-based international system”: an attempt to create predictability and civility through a web of treaties and international institutions, constraining nation states, setting norms for their behaviour, and increasingly sitting in judgment over them. It has the same moral aspirations as the neocons, but tries to impose them through law not military force. Europeans find this congenial because it mirrors their own European Union. Certainly the British foreign policy establishment has taken to it more than most – in part, one can’t help but feel, as some kind of sublimation of post-imperial guilt.

    In many ways this is admirable – but it has gone too far. It generates naivety about the ability of treaties to constrain a rogue state like Iran. It makes it harder to find pragmatic solutions to foreign policy problems, because it makes international law the universal solution to every situation, supreme over state interests, even when basing its authority on lawyers’ judgments drawn from very dated texts or principles.

    So, Britain must hand over Diego Garcia because a (non-binding) international court judgment says so. The inhabitants of North Cyprus must forever remain in limbo because international law was breached in 1974. The doctrine of UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 must continue to bedevil a very different Middle East. And, most obviously for Britain today, we must continue to accept that Northern Ireland remains part of the EU’s single market because of an unequal, compelled, EU withdrawal agreement – and we can do nothing to solve the problem of illegal arrivals in our country because of the European Convention on Human Rights (1948) or the Refugee Convention (1951).

    Rishi Sunak is going to have to shake himself free of this world in the next few weeks if he wants to get a grip on migration and have any chance of avoiding disaster in next year’s election. For there is another problem with the world of treaties. It’s that they are undemocratic. Once signed, they bind countries forever – unless they leave. Elections can’t change them. They make lawyers and international courts the supreme authority, not nations and peoples. Yet ultimately a country’s international commitments have to be supported by its people. When they aren’t, the international lawyers can’t dissolve the people and elect another. It’s the treaty that has to give way.

    So the Prime Minister must urgently discover his inner realist, perhaps in the words of President de Gaulle’s famous aphorism: “Treaties are like roses: they last only as long as they last.” If he doesn’t, he’ll find treaties can last longer than prime ministers, too.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/30/britain-interest-put-foreign-courts-treaties-in-their-place/

    When I first saw this photo years ago, smudgily reproduced in black and white in the newspapers, I thought it was a clever fake showing Kissinger musing on the use of nukes…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/347cc870a20912998b56f71aee218c9c0dac7e7f56952758345085270911b3c1.jpg

    1. I have always believed that if “The West” had treated Russia well, after the fall of the Warsaw pact and the Soviet Union, “The West” would have had an ally on the world stage against two far greater foes: China and Islam.

      1. Indeed, and an observation made by many, though rarely on the BBC. Russia might not ever have been a friend but it shouldn’t have been an enemy. That was the Communist Party, emerging from the revolution funded by Germany.

    3. I note that David Frost did not admire Ronald Reagan. I wonder if his Lordship is as ‘conservative’ as he appears.

  63. One of the few planes that the canadian air force posesses has just been scrapped. Apparently when the plane was parked overnight, they left the handbrake off and it rolled back into some French plane. Not just a minor scratch, the tail was almost ripped off in the non collision.

    Grounds for promotion of the pilot and maybe a job as transport minister there.

  64. Ian Cockerill
    @IanCockerill2
    I say,could all you peasants please stop eating & breathing! Global warming is a serious issue. One has had to fly out to Dubai on one’s private jet to lecture people to encourage them to take it seriously. If we can’t encourage we are going to get a little firmer!

    1. So reduce the supply of certain foods – demand stays the same – result prices of those foods rise. Remind me again who isvthe biggests farmland owner in the US – yes of course Mr Gates!

      1. At this point, I think it is power they are after.
        If the goal is depopulation, the demand will fall, of course. Plus, the plan is already in place, declared at predator class level, to make the majority of land in the US in to national parks, where either no humans are allowed to go, or human activity is to be severely restricted.
        Same in Europe.

  65. 379192+up ticks,

    Lotta truth there Toby,

    ., M.P.P.
    @uTobian
    Revolutionary.
    Brownstone Institute Fellow.
    Substacker.
    “Stopping the iatrogenocide is the defining issue of our era.”
    11.3K Following
    49K Followers
    Followed by leilani dowding 🌸🚜 ☮️
    Post
    See new posts
    Conversation
    Stef Anthony Coburn 🗣 reposted
    Toby Rogers, Ph.D., M.P.P.
    @uTobian
    Hey so you know all those people who got teary reading The Diary of Anne Frank and came out of Schindler’s List shaking their fists and saying, “Never again!”?

    Most of those people went fascist in 2020 at the drop of a hat. They wanted to put the unvaccinated in camps, demanded forced medical procedures in violation of the Nuremberg Code, and wished death upon anyone who failed to conform to the absurd diktats of the Fascist Pharma State.

    It turns out that “Never again” was not about fascism nor was it a pledge to do the right thing regardless of the circumstances.

    “Never again” was about narcissism — bougie people were trying to wash the stain of complicity off of themselves by declaring, “I am a good person!”

    “Never again” means “Don’t accuse me of that!” because deep down inside they know that they are weak and willing to do whatever it takes to belong in mainstream society.

    “Never again” was a confession that they absolutely would do it again because that’s the type of people they are.

    Actions matter, not words. And a huge percentage of the people who wrap themselves in nice words are cowards when the time comes to defend humanity

    https://x.com/uTobian/status/1730474229991342149?s=20

  66. Evening, all. Been very cold today and I fear for tomorrow’s meeting at Bangor (inspection at 07.30 hours). I spent most of the afternoon in the physio department; they started late, then couldn’t find my notes and spent probably a quarter of an hour looking for them. When they still couldn’t find them, they resorted to pen and paper, but of course I had to answer lots of questions for the answers to be written down (and in some cases, explained). Only then was I examined. I was given exercises to do which I’d had before for my hip (they didn’t work), but now they were supposed to help my knees. Given that there was an awful grinding and crunching sound from my right knee when I did the standing squat exercise, I suspect they are going to do more harm than good. I could barely walk after just doing one of each exercise and I have to do three sets two or three times a day!

    I had another appointment for a fortnight, but as I didn’t have my diary with me I found, when I got home, that I am double booked. I left a message to say I couldn’t make it and would they please reschedule. I think I may well have to ring again on Monday when they are back from the weekend, to speak to someone and make sure they have got the message.

      1. It seems to be par for the course for the NHS in this neck of the woods. I was kept waiting for at least three hours before I could have the colonoscopy last weekend. Altogether (because they wouldn’t let me go until my BP was up and it wouldn’t go back to normal because I was starved and dehydrated) I was away from home for six and a half hours.

    2. Me to!

      I just spent an hour with the physio. No notes, to lose it was my first visit.

      I had been worried that my knee was shot and with Canada’s health system that would pretty much impose a life as an invalid. However, the good news is that curling had just overdone the stresses on my knee so a few exercises to build muscles up and it’s back to normal.

      We will see about notes next time round but it is private practice and they have everything on computers – as if that helps!

      1. These notes were supposed to be on computer (they all use laptops) but weren’t. It was my first visit for my knees, but I’d been several times before for my hips/sacroiliac joint.

  67. Any Wordlers?

    A par 4 today.

    Wordle 895 4/6

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

    1. Yes, four for me too.

      Wordle 895 4/6

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

          1. For that vowel combination, I was very happy with four! It could have dragged on until I ran out of options!

          3. A bit of an early call for the letter combination, bb2. I’m always interested in tactics mind.

          8. No, vaya con Deos is the literal translation of Go with God. Adios means, like Adieu, to God.

          12. It was a weird word I found on WordHippo. No idea what it means but it enabled me to confirm the position of the vowels.

    3. #metoo.

      Wordle 895 4/6

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

    2. “ Ravichandran defended her remarks, saying she has become ‘way slower’ since beginning estrogen”

      Except as Ravichandran is a man, it should be written:” Ravichandran defended HIS remarks, saying HE has become ‘way slower’ since beginning estrogen.”

      1. He may have become “way slower” but he would have started off way faster in the first place.

  69. Did 5 0’clock club at the local and it was very busy, which is great for the pub. In fact the conversations going on were all over the place and you had to drift around. I think I’m getting too political up there though. The average age of the locals must be about 65, so I’m uphill of that. I went round and spoke to 5 or 6 tables. We all know each other pretty well, dogs all over the shop, and dog treats on the bar. I was asking questions though, and what came through generally, was, so who can we vote for? I mentioned the Reform party, but 50% hadn’t even heard of them. Hopefully I convinced some to vote for some sort of independent candidate at least. People, even of a certain age, and should know better, are caving in to the political bullshit the MSM are doling out.

          1. Only us, mola2. Those “educated” in the Blair era have never had their critical faculties awoken and developed. Many others haven’t yet realised how untrustworthy the government is, largely because when they were growing up (in the 40s, 50s and 60s) the government was mostly on our side and old habits die hard.

          3. 379192+ up ticks,

            Evening C,

            Really, a great many using comparison can hardly miss noting the odious change over the decades.

      3. And some are starting (?) to think I’m a bit of an extremist nutter possibly.
        Edited to make me seem less drunk.

        4. 🤣🤣

          That last sentence had me laughing out loud on the tube across Buenos Aires. Thanks! 😎

        5. 🤣🤣

          That last sentence had me laughing out loud on the tube across Buenos Aires. Thanks! 😎

    2. I am sure you gave someone pause to think about where to put their X, which is all anyone can do really.

  70. New Zealand is back, and it’s leaving woke Britain in its wake

    Kiwis have ditched their failed Labour government for a conservative coalition. So why are the Tories following in St Jacinda’s footsteps?

    SAM COLLINS • 30 November 2023 • 9:00am

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9be12489fd55e5d57a2c878ef98010391d3c2f0a16c672b01eeb1605ce920397.jpg
    New Zealand has a new prime minister, former Air New Zealand CEO Christopher Luxon
    CREDIT: New Zealand Herald via AP/Mark Mitchell
    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    What a difference a generation makes. After the first proportional representation election in New Zealand in 1996, the country spent 60 days in limbo amid wrangling over who should form a government. The result was years of drift and disunity. Weary Brits no doubt now understand the feeling.

    The good news is that a complete paucity of good ideas and ideological decline can be reversed. Just look at the new programme of government set out by those same players who took part in that first failed PR government, National, NZ First and ACT, who formed a coalition last week to replace the failed Ardern/Hipkins Labour government. If the government can hold together, it will be committed to a series of reforms to the planning, education and regulatory systems that British voters should be crying out for.

    Many of their policies would make the committed Trussite swoon. Massive reforms to planning laws to put private property rights at the heart of any planning decision. A huge push for new partnership schools (similar to the charter schools programme introduced, then effectively abandoned, over the past decade). A reintroduction of the “three strikes” law that will see violent criminals locked up for longer and judicial discretion reduced, alongside an effective ban on natal males from participating in women’s sport.

    It’s all the stuff the Tories keep promising and failing to deliver. Real tax cuts, reductions in the civil service headcount, a commitment to cutting the public sector as a proportion of the overall economy. A legal requirement that regulators base their decisions first and foremost on economic efficiency.

    And that’s before we even look at their plans to repeal Labour policies – scrapping a rail project in the largest city where the costs had increased almost five-fold since inception; allowing landlords to issue a 90-day notice to a tenant to quit a property without needing to offer a reason or go through the courts; abolishing the bonkers Labour policy to ban people born after a certain date from ever buying tobacco.

    Observant readers may have noticed an unexpected theme running through the awful policies which were brought in under Saint Jacinda, and which the new government has committed to reversing. Whether it’s the commitment to white elephant rail projects, restricting landlord rights or a bizarre crusade on tobacco, they are all policies which Britain’s so-called Conservative Party is adopting.

    It is remarkable that the Ardern/Hipkins Government, considered to be a poster child for wokery and virtue signalling, seems to also be the example that the current Tory administration seems keen to follow.

    A yawning divide is now emerging between “conservatism” in Britain and conservatism in much of the Commonwealth – and it really ought to trigger some soul-searching within the current Tory Party. A fixation with, or perhaps a fear of upending, the status quo leaves British Conservatives hamstrung. They’re unwilling to face the backlash that would accompany any efforts to deregulate, or cut taxes “for the rich”. And so they find themselves endorsing quasi-socialist policies of redistribution or nanny statism, rather than reversing them.

    Across Canada, New Zealand and Australia there is a more nuanced understanding driven, perhaps, by our comparative youth – if it works then embrace it, if it doesn’t then find a model that does. That people vote for change because they don’t like the policies and ideas of the current lot in power, not because they want the other side to do the same thing marginally less badly. We trust in breaking down any barrier that gets in the way of giving people choice and opportunity. But from that moment the individual is left to choose what to do with it and, within reason, deal with the consequences.

    Jacinda’s legacy, seemingly bulletproof as she guided Labour to more than 50 per cent of the vote in 2020 and was extolled as possibly the “most effective leader on the planet”, was already in tatters by election day. Her own Labour Party had neglected to even mention her name on the campaign trail, and her successor as Labour leader had immediately jettisoned a range of her policies. But even that was insufficient to save Labour from the chopping block as Kiwis voted overwhelmingly for effective government over virtue signalling platitudes.

    Rishi seems at risk of heading the same way. Frankly, most of last 14 years have been marked with drift, disunity and interventionist policies.

    No government, despite the original pledge of David Cameron that we all had an invitation to “join the Government of Britain”, has treated British people as grown-ups who can make basic decisions of their own without state interference. While there is probably little that Rishi could have done to reverse the feeling of malaise, his government’s tendency to over-promise and under-deliver on a range of policy areas has made the situation worse.

    Worse is the political position it puts Britain in. New Zealanders have at least had an opposition that has argued against the big-state overreach of the Ardern years.

    In Britain the main opposition has come from the left, arguing that the state should intervene sooner, tax higher and spend more. The lack of a serious vehicle on the optimistic right opens the door to conspiracists, populists or worse to fill the gap. At some point over the next 15 months the Conservatives are likely to go into Opposition. It is vital that once there they rediscover some self-belief and optimism in their underlying philosophy of individual choice and opportunity. Otherwise no one will enjoy what replaces them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/30/new-zealand-leaving-woke-britain-ardern-in-wake/

    1. Why is it that countries the other side of the planet would be adopting similar policies and laws as us at the same time.

      Answers on WEF headed notepaper.

      How is it that a Labour party in one country can have the same policies as a Conservative party in another country.

      Answers on WEF headed notepaper.

      What is the point in voting for anyone when all the decisions have already been made.

    1. Probably Welsh Methodists who stopped for a picnic on the way home from their hols

      Or not!

  72. Will leave the heating on overnight with a low thermostat setting. After tomorrow the temp. starts to rise again.

    1. My heating will probably remain on until March – once the Rayburn is lit, it stays lit unless I accidentally let it go out.

    4. I think mine stayed on last night. It’s communal so out of my control but I normally hear it going off and on at midnight and six am respectively, as the old metal pipes are noisy but there was silence last night.

      1. Presumably you have individual thermostats on your radiators – I grew up in a flat, and there were individual knobs on the radiators, although they were only turned on from October!

        1. No, the valves are either open or closed and frequently opening and closing causes them to leak. Yes, the heating comes on in October and goes off in May. It’s a legal requirement as per the terms of the lease so practical considerations such as the weather just don’t enter in to it. If it’s too warm, the windows have to be open!

  74. BUILT IN BRITAIN: The number of cars built in the UK increased by more than 30% last month, driven by soaring exports.

    A total of 91,521 vehicles left British factories, almost 22,000 more than in October last year and the best October figure for four years.

    The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) attributed the jump to a rise in exports, with shipments to the EU rising by 58.5% to 49,123 cars. #UKmfg

    1. Surely not, Johnny! I mean, after Brexit we couldn’t possibly trade with our foes across the Channel, could we? 🙂

  75. The DT has just come back from a work dinner at the Boat in Cromford
    It’s -5°C outside and I’m off to bed.
    G’night all.

  76. Again, just like yesterday, I shall bid you all a Good Night since I am now leaving this site to watch the Woody Allen comedy MIDNIGHT IN PARIS.

    PS – Meant to press “post” before I even started to watch the film, which I thoroughly enjoyed. So now I am off to bed. Night, all.

  77. I notice Labour is trying to woo countryside votes. It’s promising a veterinary agreement with the EU. Why? We left, didn’t we? (ha ha!) We don’t need to consider the EU and its rules as a sovereign country. Says it all; Labour is wedded to the EU and doesn’t understand the countryside at all.

    1. All political parties in the House of Commons are wedded to the EU. Only a few maverick MPs think otherwise. Many people who voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, have continued to vote for pro EU candidates in subsequent elections. Either they are utterly illogical in their voting habits or, when presented with a bundle of policies in General Elections, EU membership doesn’t rank sufficiently high in their priorities to outrank other matters that concern them. Most voters do not consider one single policy to the exclusion of all others when deciding which candidate and party to vote for in General Elections.

      2. It’s time to remove the political party names from ballot papers. That’d be fun, people having to find out who wants to do what.

      3. Or maybe rejoining the EU doesn’t figure in Party manifestos. Where it has (there have been pro-EU/Rejoin the EU parties standing in elections here) they have had a drubbing. We voted majority leave.

  78. Goodnight, all. Time for me to fill my hot water bottles and get ready for bed. The dogs are already fast asleep.

  79. 379192+ up ticks,

    Pillow ponder,

    Is the repeat of the 30 January 1649 order of the day, coming into being ?

    King Charles Flies to COP28 Climate Conference and Joins Global Elites to Declare: ‘We Must Change our Ways’

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