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.
Good morrow, Gentlefolk. today’s story (next Tuesday, 16th, The Joke Book dies)
HE MUST PAY“No darling, he must pay for his mistake. I am coming to live with you.
Husband and wife had a tiff. Wife called up her Mum and said, “He fought with me again, I am coming to live with you.”
Mum said,
Another good one, Sir Jasper. (Good morning, btw.)
The Joke Book will die on Bill’s 83rd birthday.
Good Morning All. +5C light breeze, dry, no frost.
Good morning, Johnny.
and to you EB.
3°c clear here in The orders
Good morning, chums. Another day, another dollar.
Wordle 937 4/6
Did it in four today. Made a silly mistake at one point.
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Morning Elsie, 4 here too
Wordle 937 4/6
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3 today after a lucky 2nd guess
Wordle 937 3/6
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Good Morning Folks,
Not so cold today, no frost
The Post Office scandal points to a deeper malaise in British society
I suppose it has taken the focus off the covid enquiry
381738+up ticks,
Morning B 3,
Precisely.
The covid enquiry that is not going to consider the vaccine issues till some time in the future.
381738 up ticks,
Morning Each,
It is a very bad issue decidedly and is pointing to a far worse one in fact it is standing plumb centre, shielding, a far worse one, the covid inquiry.
The covid enquiry has life long / shortening consequences to be revealed, and justice SEEN to be served as in, if found guilty the time to suit the crime.
Friday 12 January: The Post Office scandal points to a deeper malaise in British society
Apart from the fifth para making no sense whatsoever (do they mean the EU withdrew the labels?), from the business section on more EU corrupt practices:
“ DYSON has lost an attempt to secure €176.1m (£151.5m) from the European Union as part of a decade-long dispute over energy labels on vacuum cleaners.
Europe’s highest court declared that the European Commission “did not commit a sufficiently serious breach of EU law” when it used faulty efficiency tests that penalised the British company’s vacuum cleaners.
Dyson, whose founder Sir James Dyson was a vocal Brexit backer, has fought the EU over its energy rules since they were introduced in 2014.
The tests were based on an empty vacuum and Dyson claimed they treated its bagless vacuums unfairly as the performance of other models deteriorated as the appliances filled up.
The company threw out the labelling rules in 2018. The following year it claimed damages for lost sales.
However, it has now been defeated in repeated legal efforts, with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision yesterday the final ruling. The ECJ said the Commission was faced with “difficulties” and “complexity” when applying the legislation, confirming a ruling from the lower General Court, which had said the breach of law was not serious enough to warrant compensation. Dyson said: “Dyson made history when it won its case in 2018 to overturn the European Commission’s unlawful energy label regime, a regulation that had misled hundreds of millions of European consumers and caused Dyson to suffer £150m in lost sales and investment, plus significant legal costs in pursuit of justice.
“The fact Dyson won its case makes today’s judgment on damages all the more perverse. As has been established, the Commission knowingly used a label that had the effect of misleading consumers over the true performance of vacuum cleaners for years.”
The company added: “This judgment sets an unfairly high bar for manufacturers harmed by the European Union’s illegal acts, allowing its institutions to escape proper accountability. By refusing to compensate those harmed, it is giving a green light to others who seek to undermine lawful competition.
“The ruling must be baffling for consumers across Europe who were so badly misled by this regulation. The Commission knew the label was a sham, yet forced it on consumers anyway.”
Sir James, who has a fortune of £23bn according to the Sunday Times Rich List, accused European rivals of gaming the EU system to mislead consumers.
Dyson’s global headquarters are now in Singapore although Sir James moved his residency back to the UK in 2021.”
AS I read it: the EU withdrew the misleading labels, but Dyson is getting no compensation for the damage they caused.
Yes. I think so.
Lighter news. From the Babylon Bee. US presidents – where are they now? Lists out numbers 1-36 and next to them -dead and then we get numbers 37 onwards:
“Richard Nixon: Dead.
Gerald Ford: Dead.
Jimmy Carter: Still alive! [As of publishing time. Subject to change.]
Ronald Reagan: Dead.
George H.W. Bush: Dead.
Bill Clinton: If we told you where he is right now and what he’s doing, we’d never be heard from again.
George W. Bush: Still searching for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
Barack Obama: Currently serving as President of the United States.
Donald Trump: Living rent-free in the minds of liberals worldwide.
Joe Biden: Dead.
Who would have ever expected to find all of these former leaders where they are now? It’s amazing to see where life has taken all of them!“
Lighter news. From the Babylon Bee. US presidents – where are they now? Lists out numbers 1-36 and next to them -dead and then we get numbers 37 onwards:
“Richard Nixon: Dead.
Gerald Ford: Dead.
Jimmy Carter: Still alive! [As of publishing time. Subject to change.]
Ronald Reagan: Dead.
George H.W. Bush: Dead.
Bill Clinton: If we told you where he is right now and what he’s doing, we’d never be heard from again.
George W. Bush: Still searching for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
Barack Obama: Currently serving as President of the United States.
Donald Trump: Living rent-free in the minds of liberals worldwide.
Joe Biden: Dead.
Who would have ever expected to find all of these former leaders where they are now? It’s amazing to see where life has taken all of them!“
Morning everyone.
Good Moaning.
Busy day oiling the wheels of the tumbril.
It gets better … or should that be worse?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/11/post-office-investigators-rejected-horizon-review-2010/
Why Post Office rejected Horizon review five years before witch-hunt ended
Internal emails reveal the reason for lawyers’ inaction as far back as 2010
11 January 2024 • 9:59pm
Rob Wilson, who joined the Post Office as head of criminal law in 2002, sent an email warning of the ‘consequences’ of looking into the software
The Post Office chose not to investigate issues with its Horizon software five years before the witch-hunt ended over fears it would undermine prosecutions, documents reveal.
More than 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted by the organisation for false accounting, theft and fraud between 1999 and 2015.
However, internal emails show Post Office lawyers talked about investigating issues with the Horizon software as far back as 2010, but did not take action over fears it would undermine prosecutions.
It was eventually found that the software which flagged shortfalls was faulty.
The organisation’s head of criminal law stressed to colleagues the “consequences” of such a move would include pausing current and future prosecutions – an action which would attract “adverse publicity”.
Months later, an internal review commissioned by the Post Office stated that it was important to be “crystal clear” that any investigation launched into Horizon would “need to be disclosed in court”.
However, the Post Office did not divulge this information and continued to prosecute sub-postmasters and sub-postmistress – including a sub-postmistress who was sentenced to 15 months in prison while pregnant.
Politicians branded the latest revelations as “dreadful” and accused the Post Office of “blocking justice”.
Meanwhile, Alan Bates, the campaigner whose fight for justice was depicted in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, said he had “no doubt” that the organisation knew what state Horizon was in “for many years”.
Emails disclosed to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry reveal how Rob Wilson, who joined the Post Office as head of criminal law in 2002, responded to “difficulties” regarding the Horizon system.
Mr Wilson wrote the email after not being invited to a conference call with colleagues about Horizon.
Responding to a memo from another colleague which suggested several actions which included “conducting full investigations into integrity issues”, Mr Wilson wrote on March 3, 2010: “If it is thought that there is a difficulty with Horizon then clearly the action set out in your memo is not only needed but is imperative.
“The consequence however will be that to commence or continue to proceed with any criminal proceedings will be inappropriate.”
Mr Wilson went on to say that “inevitably” defence solicitors for accused sub-postmasters would argue that any ongoing investigation would show the Post Office did “not have confidence” in Horizon and that to continue to prosecute would be “an abuse of the criminal process”.
He then suggested that proceedings for prosecutions could be paused pending an outcome, but added: “If this were to be adopted the resultant adverse publicity could lead to massive difficulties for POL as it would be seen by the press and media to vindicate the current challenges.”
It comes as covert recordings allegedly show the Post Office knew about problems with Horizon at least two years before chief executive Paula Vennells denied there were any issues.
The content of the tapes, shared with The Times, show that in 2013 the Post Office’s company secretary prepared a brief for Ms Vennells saying it was possible to access to Horizon accounts remotely without postmasters knowing, the paper reports.
This is at odds with the Post Office’s position that there had been no miscarriage of justice.
It is thought a jury would not have been able to conclude a guilty verdict if they knew accounts could be altered remotely.
In 2015 Ms Vennells wrote in an email that she needed to be able to say remote access wasn’t possible, before telling MPs at a business select committee there was “no evidence” of miscarriages of justice.
Mr Wilson’s email was sent five months before pregnant sub-postmistress Seema Misra was sentenced to 15 months in prison after a false shortfall of £74,000 was recorded at her branch in West Byfleet, Surrey.
She later said: “It’s hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself.”
Her conviction was cleared at the Court of Appeal in 2021.
Questioning Mr Wilson about his email at the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, the lead counsel to the inquiry said: “What you are saying by this email is, ‘The Post Office will be in serious trouble if we get on with an independent investigation into the integrity of Horizon’.”
Mr Wilson responded: “Well, not necessarily. It depends what the independent report was going to say.”
He then attempted to downplay the email by saying that he had “overreacted” after being excluded from a meeting.
Mr Wilson claimed it was not his “intention” to give a “whole bunch of reasons not even to look” – as suggested by Mr Beer.
He said: “I think that I overreacted to being excluded from what I saw as being critical to me as the head of the criminal law team.”
When contacted by The Telegraph about the emails, Mr Bates said: “In my mind there’s no doubt that they’ve always known what state [Horizon] has been in. They’ve known for many, many years. I have no doubt on that.”
He added: “I’m not surprised in the slightest. As I’ve always said, it was either arrogance or ignorance in there, and I think it was both sometimes.”
Post Office ignored Ismay Report
Concerns that an investigation into any potential software issues were also backed up by the Post Office’s failure to respond to an internal review, which was later dubbed the Ismay Report.
Commissioned by the Post Office, former Ernst & Young auditor Rod Ismay admitted to the inquiry that he had been tasked with finding “reasons for assurance” and that his remit was not investigating “allegations” against Horizon.
However, his report made clear the consequences of looking further into any issues with the system.
The document, published in August 2010, read: “It is also important to be crystal clear about any review if one were commissioned – any investigation would need to be disclosed in court.
“Although we would be doing the review to comfort others, any perception that POL doubts its own systems would mean that all criminal prosecutions would have to be stayed.”
Meanwhile, Dave Pardoe, then one of the Post Office’s senior security managers, told the inquiry that it was clear the impact on other prosecutions was a concern.
He testified last November: “There was a persistent sentiment that the system was fit for purpose.”
“I was never in a meeting when it was discussed with me the concept of putting the brakes on prosecution activity.”
He added: “It’s clear that there was a fear that to do that would immediately cast doubt on prosecutions that had been completed that had gone before. I was never privy to that type of conversation, no.”
Sir John Redwood, a senior Conservative MP and a former head of the No 10 policy unit, said: “These revelations are dreadful and I am appalled but not surprised that hundreds of people have been up against a Post Office blocking justice.
“That’s what it felt like at the time, and I knew from my own local experience that honest, decent people had been caught up in something that they couldn’t combat. I am shocked by it all.”
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, said: “This gets worse and worse. The fact that prosecutions took place on mistaken evidence was bad enough, but failing to investigate when they were concerned that things were wrong is even less forgivable
He added: “Anybody who has prosecutorial authority has a duty to justice – it’s not that you’re arguing a case, it’s that you’re risking somebody’s liberty.”
A Post Office spokesman said: “We fully share the aims of the current public inquiry, set up to get to the truth of what happened in the past and accountability. “It’s for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after consideration of all the evidence on the issues that it is examining.”
‘Challenges to Horizon’ email in full
From: Rob G Wilson
Sent: 03 March 2010 11:23
To: [redacted]
Cc: [redacted]
Subject: Re:Fw: Challenges to Horizon
Dave,
If it is thought that there is a difficulty with Horizon then clearly the action set out in your memo is not only needed but is imperative. The consequence however will be that to commence or continue to proceed with any criminal proceedings will be inappropriate. My understanding is that the integrity of Horizon data is sound and it is as a result of this that persistent challenges that have been made in court have always failed. These challenges are not new and have been with us since the inception of Horizon as it has always been the only way that Defendants are left to challenge our evidence when they have stolen money or where they need to show that our figures are not correct.
What is being suggested is that an internal investigation is conducted. Such an investigation will be disclosable as undermining evidence on the defence in the cases proceeding through the criminal courts. Inevitably the defence will argue that if we are carrying out an investigation we clearly do not have confidence in Horizon and therefore to continue to prosecute will be an abuse of the criminal process. Alternatively we could be asked to stay the proceedings pending the outcome of the investigation, if this were to be adopted the resultant adverse publicity could lead to massive difficulties for POL as it would be seen by the press and media to vindicate the current challenges. The potential impact however is much wider for POL in that every office in the country will be seen to be operating a compromised system with untold damage to the Business. Our only real alternative to avoid the adverse publicity will be to offer no evidence on each of our criminal cases. This should mitigate some adverse publicity but is not a total guarantee.
To continue prosecuting alleged offenders knowing that there is an ongoing investigation to determine the veracity of Horizon could also be detrimental to the reputation of my team. If we were to secure convictions In the knowledge that there was an investigation, where the investigation established a difficulty with the system we would be open to criticism and appeal to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal will inevitably be highly critical of any prosecutor’s decision to proceed against Defendant’s in the knowledge that there could be an issue with the evidence
What we really need to do is impress on Fujitsu the importance of fully cooperating in the provision of technical expertise and witness statements to support the criminal and civil litigation now and in the future.
Given the nature of the discussions that took palce on the 26/2 I am staggered that I was not invited to take part in the conference.
Rob Wilson
Head of Criminal Law
Rob Wilson is an utter Fool who placed ‘winning’ the cases above truth. Had they checked the software right at the start, this whole thing might never have happened!
Wilson does appear to be rather more upset about not being invited to the star chamber, than the fact that countless innocent lives have been ruined to save face at POL.
You do feel he is miffed at missing the jelly and ice cream.
According the the ‘papers the Post Office hired forensic accountants, and when
they produced their report stating that it was Horizon’s fault Paula Vennells fired them.
Sounds familiar, ‘think the unthinkable’ and be removed from office, as per Welfare Reform Minister Frank Field during Tony Blair’s first term
Quote from Rob Wilson’s letter:
“…..and witness statements to support the criminal and civil litigation now and in the future”
Yet the expert witness stated under oath at the inquiry that he knew that the evidence was wrong,
but it had been composed by the Post Office’s lawyers.
It would appear that Mr Rob Wilson is being very cavalier with the truth .
.
Just added>>>>
STOP PRESS: Sky News reports that the expert witness stated under oath that a number
of written statements with his signature had not been written or signed by him, but
had been produced by the lawyers working for the Post Office.
About time that Mr Rob Wilson was questioned under oath.
The drama seems to have stirred things up – more and more politicians, civil servants and employees of POL and Fujitsu being named – many of them in need of a prison sentence. As a bare minimum, I’d settle for Venal [sic] having her assets confiscated and used for compensation, Davey and Starmer being banned from any public office and a few Fujitsu “experts” being done for perjury, although I doubt it will ever happen.
Things the mainstream media will not talk about;
– a comparison between the Post Office that wouldn’t investigate a faulty system in case people would get suspicious that it was faulty, and pharma companies that didn’t test whether their vax worked in case people would get suspicious that it didn’t.
Yes BB2, we wonder why the MSM are so desperately reluctant to discuss these.
Must be a really serious reason.
Surely?
Around £1Bn in Covid advertising fees buys a lot of silence. Especially, when those providing the fees are themselves possibly acting under similar constraints from the harmecutical companies
“Look into his eyes ……..”
Kerchinggg. Another space filled in the paper.
Good morning, the usual media blurb; lots of repetitive words but little substance. When was the ‘suicidal’ pregnant postmistress sentenced? Did she serve the full 15 month sentence, giving birth in prison, or was she cleared before they attached the ball and chain?
While I take your point about the emotional content, there are times when perhaps an emotional reaction is the only answer
The British explain away everything by being rational. It doesn’t seem to have done us much good.
The point is that yet another ‘little person’ was crushed by corrupt and arrogant bastards.
Agreed, but why not report whether the sentence was served? It’s bad enough she (and others) were sentenced, but why report half a story, when the full tale is more horrific?
I think half sentences are served. I agree with the lack of detail.
381738+ up tick,
As for the thick as oxen shite persistent card users, I wager it can’t come soon enough, being turned into a partial robot that is.
https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1745440820050927856?s=20
666.
387738+ up ticks,
Afternoon A,
The b liar chaps phone number.
381735+ up ticks,
Afternoon A,
The b liar chaps phone number ?.
Morning, all
https://cf.eip.telegraph.co.uk/responsive-image/content/2024/01/11/1705010541867.jpg
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fd01547d5-e58f-49b7-b824-9f4473da8ea2.jpg?crop=2736%2C1825%2C580%2C188&resize=1027.5
I am guessing that cartoonist is not aware that Alan Bates looks nothing like Toby Jones.
Or perhaps not. I suggest few moments of intelligent reflection.
But actors are rewarded for the roles they play not for deeds they have done!
Remember in the USA In 1980, John Wayne was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour of the United States.
Very true, but that cartoonist was describing awards being bestowed on Alan Bates; however, he chose to depict the actor, Toby Jones, in his drawings.
And here is Mr. Wilson busily slathering a good inch of butter on his ill gotten bread:
“From: Rob G Wilson
Sent: 03 March 2010 11:23
To: [redacted]
Cc: [redacted]
Subject: Re:Fw: Challenges to Horizon
Dave,
If it is thought that there is a difficulty with Horizon then clearly the action set out in your memo is not only needed but is imperative. The consequence however will be that to commence or continue to proceed with any criminal proceedings will be inappropriate. My understanding is that the integrity of Horizon data is sound and it is as a result of this that persistent challenges that have been made in court have always failed. These challenges are not new and have been with us since the inception of Horizon as it has always been the only way that Defendants are left to challenge our evidence when they have stolen money or where they need to show that our figures are not correct.
What is being suggested is that an internal investigation is conducted. Such an investigation will be disclosable as undermining evidence on the defence in the cases proceeding through the criminal courts. Inevitably the defence will argue that if we are carrying out an investigation we clearly do not have confidence in Horizon and therefore to continue to prosecute will be an abuse of the criminal process. Alternatively we could be asked to stay the proceedings pending the outcome of the investigation, if this were to be adopted the resultant adverse publicity could lead to massive difficulties for POL as it would be seen by the press and media to vindicate the current challenges. The potential impact however is much wider for POL in that every office in the country will be seen to be operating a compromised system with untold damage to the Business. Our only real alternative to avoid the adverse publicity will be to offer no evidence on each of our criminal cases. This should mitigate some adverse publicity but is not a total guarantee.
To continue prosecuting alleged offenders knowing that there is an ongoing investigation to determine the veracity of Horizon could also be detrimental to the reputation of my team. If we were to secure convictions In the knowledge that there was an investigation, where the investigation established a difficulty with the system we would be open to criticism and appeal to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal will inevitably be highly critical of any prosecutor’s decision to proceed against Defendant’s in the knowledge that there could be an issue with the evidence
What we really need to do is impress on Fujitsu the importance of fully cooperating in the provision of technical expertise and witness statements to support the criminal and civil litigation now and in the future.
Given the nature of the discussions that took palce on the 26/2 I am staggered that I was not invited to take part in the conference.
Rob Wilson
Head of Criminal Law”.
Balancing the books is fine on paper but not possible on a computer without a printer.
The lawyers. It’s always the lawyers….
Yep – get me one if I’m arrested or sued.
They are worse than useless more often than not in my experience!
Interesting how this cretin doesn’t mention the now-proven fact that Fujitsu staff were able to (and certainly did) remotely — and criminally — manipulate countless sub-postmasters’ accounts, via their Horizon system.
I would imagine it is easy to name the ‘redacted’ Dave.
What a smug bastard.
Purely an exercise in maintaining his and his team’s reputation.
Good morning, all. Grey, bleak start to Friday.
Cold and dark here. But it looks as though the frost has gone. 4c according to my phone.
Dreich up here
Britain and US launch air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen. 12 January 2024.
The Royal Air Force has launched targeted strikes against military bases used by Houthi rebels in Yemen, with Rishi Sunak saying the UK will “always stand up for freedom of navigation and the free flow of trade”.
British aircraft and Royal Navy ships are involved in the operation, approved by Cabinet ministers in an emergency joint call.
The Prime Minister said British forces participated in joint attacks with the US that are “targeted strikes against military facilities” and he stressed that the action taken was “limited, necessary and proportionate… in self-defence”.
According to this infantile propaganda we are the major player when in reality we are simply providing political cover. Of course there is no explanation as to how we can meddle in the Middle East and are yet unable to defend our own coast!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/11/britain-us-strike-houthis-latest-yemen-red-sea-israel-live/
If only, we had an ‘aircraft carrier’ that could launch and recover “fast jets”, not just “jump ones”
If only we had fleets of aircraft for our two giant carriers.
Unfortunately, provision of aircraft had no part in Mr Brown’s make-work projects for the Clyde shipyards.
If only our two giant carriers were seaworthy….
And had the requisite support fleet.
Oh dear here we go again.
The Americans say jump and our Prime Minister asks how high?
In this case, the answer was “over your head, Rishi”
You can’t blame Rishi for authorising military action against Houthis – they are Shite.
Take a large stick, insert into a hornets’ nest full of mad Arabs and agitate wildly. What could possibly go wrong… I suspect we will now find tens of thousands of Houthis living here, and they will not be best pleased.
381738+ up ticks,
Can’t argue with that,
https://x.com/musicndcomedy/status/1745424702682923039?s=20
Bloody scary.
Are they going to be comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto?
381738+ up ticks,
Afternoon M,
SSHHHH, if worst comes worst we can still operate an underground movement via the sewers
Rishi Sunak to unveil £2.5bn of support for Ukraine on surprise trip to Kyiv. 12 January 2024.
Rishi Sunak will make a surprise visit to Ukraine today to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky after unveiling a £2.5bn military aid package for Ukraine.
The Prime Minister pledged to stand with Ukraine in its “darkest hour” after Mr Zelensky urged western nations to maintain support as the war drags towards its second anniversary.
What’s £2.5bn here or there?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/12/ukraine-russia-war-news-live-sunak-visit-kyiv-military-aid/
The money is in the Government’s Post Office account. 🤔
Stained with the blood of Postmasters forced to pay out their life savings!
Oh no, the Americans are playing their Send-the-British-PM card again!
There is going to be the most almighty reckoning for always being on the wrong side, and it’s coming soon. We are toast.
Obviously far more important to bung money to the most corrupt nation in Europe than sort out our myriad problems in the UK!
It’s only OUR money Rishi, you spend it how you want! You will anyway, just add it to OUR National Debt.
And this is being done as we are taking Royal Navy ships out of service due to lack of sailors.
Sunak and this lot are beneath contempt.
If Sunak is able to conjure up £2.5 billion for Ukraine why doesn’t he have the money to pay Doctors a decent wage…
HMRC DIRECTOR BELITTLES PUBLIC FOR OPPOSING MASSIVE TAX GRAB
It looks like the HMRC has let their humourous content go to their heads. The tax overlords’ press office tweeted smugly in reaction to darts star Luke Littler’s prize winnings last week: “Big congrats to Luke on his fantastic run to the final. We can confirm the existence of income tax“. From a prize of £200,000 Littler will owe £83,533 in tax – his net earnings a measly £116,467…
The Daily Star picked up on the public’s fuming reaction to the tweet’s sarcasm, with HMRC branded “parasites” by some. Sound reporting…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/36926c679a7d2ecbf5980583c50816e5d132848a16fba280bcbfdde13db07206.jpg
HMRC’s deputy director and head of press Ben Wilkinson took to the webwaves to belittle the public for their disapproval of smug tweeting about sky-high tax rates and claim Daily Star readers “were too distracted by [the Star’s page 3 model] Lauren’s bosom to care“. When clothing ads get banned for even featuring women, that’s a racy comment to make…
Guido got in touch with HMRC to ask about the post and was told: “the comments speak for themselves“. HMRC deputy directors are paid between £68,500 and £117,800 and the department has at least ten press officers. Handsome pay to be sat posting twaddle on social media, if only they could bother picking up the phone when Brits try to do their tax return…
January 11 2024 @ 13:09
They are only coming out and saying openly what has been the case since Brown and Blair – that civil servants see themselves as our masters and overlords.
Indeed. They are the end to which we are the means.
Effing idiots. It could have been so much better positive even – Congratulations and thank you for making a significant contribution to Britain’s tax account which helps fund the NHS etc etc…
This is just a deflection smokescreen for the Government.
Ignore it.
Well here’s a good idea, instead of importing a few million people who do and pay absolutely nothing for the ongoing privilege of living here.
Send them back to wherever they came from. And then Mr Wilkinson you would saved 45 million pounds every week. Times that by 52 and we’d never be short of cash again.
It’s really that easy…….
You absolute plonker.
Pride beauty pageant contestant performs ‘striptease’ in front of children
Footage from the event shows young children sitting around bandstand as adult removes items of clothing and simulates sex act
Alex Barton
11 January 2024 • 7:35pm
A “striptease” was performed in front of young children at a seaside town’s Pride beauty pageant, as a performer dropped their trousers and danced around a bandstand in their underwear.
A video posted on social media shows a contestant dancing while simulating a sexual act on a cane in front of a group of minors at the festival in Kent on Aug 12.
The crowd can be heard cheering as the performer dances in a bra and underwear to the song Pony, by Ginuwine, featuring the lyrics: “If you’re horny let’s do it. Ride it, my pony. My saddle’s waiting. Come and jump on it”.
The footage posted on X, formerly Twitter, shows around a dozen girls and boys watching the display.
It is believed the event was part of an all-day contest in which contestants vie for the title of Mx Margate. Applications from “all genders, ages, race, LGBTQIA+ people, long term Thanet residents and those with disabilities” are encouraged, according to the Margate Pride website.
‘It belongs in a nightclub’
The event was hosted by Jonny Woo, a British comedian, and judged by artist Tracey Emin, actor Russell Tovey and Robert Diament, the director of the Margate-based Carl Freedman Gallery.
The competition’s rule book states that “obscenity, indecent exposure or sexual acts” by participants in public are prohibited.
Campaigners said the “sexualised adult entertainment act” should not have been performed in front of children.
Kellie-Jay Keen, the founder of Standing for Women, said: “When it comes to the protection and safeguarding of children and the vulnerable, we should have learned by now that groups such as Pride, Stonewall, Mermaids, Educate and Celebrate, No Outsiders, any organisation set up around the sexuality and made-up identities of individuals, cannot be trusted.
“At this point we have to ask, where were the parents? And what sort of parents sit their children in front of a sexually explicit adult entertainer? This person performed a striptease and simulated performing fellatio on a wooden walking stick. If this sexualised adult entertainment act belongs anywhere at all, it belongs in a nightclub.
“You have to be completely stupid to ever let your children anywhere near any of these events.”
The row comes after a children’s book about Pride featuring men in bondage gear was shown to four-year-olds in a pre-school in August. Parents 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 member of staff defended the images, arguing children would not understand the erotic and sexualised depictions. The safeguarding lead at the school claimed the book showed people wearing costumes and rebuffed concerns that the pictures were inappropriate. Trustees of the nursery later confirmed to parents that the book had been removed from the nursery while it carried out a safety audit.
Margate Pride was contacted for comment.
******************************
Paul Cornish
12 HRS AGO
Hiding in plain sight. And brazen with it.
Why do these perverted men always want to strip, wear fetish gear and perform overtly sexual acts in front of children? It’s never pensioners is it?
I think that really we know the answer don’t we?
Arrests must be carried out.
They can’t be allowed to get away with that.
Yes, but we know they will get away with it.
If you want to get arrested you must protest against Islamic genocide of Jews.
I saw earlier today one of our lady TV presenters had been reprimanded for making an islamophbic comment.
But when I tried to find it ten minutes later, the article had gone.
It makes a person wonder what actually is considered to be a known phobia to Islam. The fear of your children or grandchildren being raped, you dog being stabbed. The recognition of Sheep being stolen, people wearing heavy disguises in public places. The fear of being blown to pieces on public transport, or at a family outing. Or even feeling offended by hundreds of rouge marchers and Palestinian flags hanging from English street housing.
SIR — I was taught to touch type at Poole Technical College in the 1960s. Our tutor invited us to bring in our own music (Letters, January 11), but it had to have a good typing rhythm. I thought Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin would fit the bill.
The tutor had not heard this, and complimented me on my choice – only to react in horror as the music progressed. She rushed out to report me to the head of the business department. He came into the class to deliver a severe reprimand, during which he couldn’t stop laughing. An hour’s detention was my punishment.
David Corben
Swanage, Dorset
You were given detention, as a punishment, at a technical college?
Bollocks! I don’t believe you.
Me neither, Grizz!
Nor I. I was taught to type to the sound of Tijuana Brass.
Good morning, all. Overcast and calm here.
I don’t think it would be a crock of gold at the end of this rainbow, more a crock of…
https://twitter.com/realMattToomer/status/1745514411702239641
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4uivPpzCGo
And this is the section of the path that was painted out.
I think the reason why it was painted out is obvious. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/093bbfd2cd838a6b0af6027d452c9fd44e3983736c35e4304e36ced156ed3721.png
I don’t recall any pink light being in the spectrum/rainbow.
Spectrum or rectum?
The Kafkaesque nightmare of the public sector
Costs the taxpayer a fortune and produces nothing worthwhile – strict overhaul required.
NewsThe Kafkaesque nightmare of the public sector
Wolfgang Lettl paintings.
SIR — May I remind those who object to dogs being welcomed into hotels (Letters, January 11) that they do not stay free of charge? Furthermore, in a dining room, they are seldom as unruly as children. Their table manners are impeccable (as they reside under it), and I am yet to see a dog photograph what they are served and upload it to Instagram.
Tom Moore
Newcastle upon Tyne
Any hotel or restaurant admitting dogs will find me never patronising such shitholes. Likewise I do not patronise pubs or restaurants admitting unruly juveniles. Children (preferably any under-30) should be prohibited from entering pubs.
In an ideal world securely locked pens — for children and pets, at least 100 yards remote from the pub — should be necessary for those parents who insist on taking their animals (two- and four-legged) everywhere with them.
Yo Mr Grizzle
There was a pub in Amble that had a sign outside basically saying
“Well behaved children and parents welcome.
The children of parents who do not enforce good behaviour will be given a puppy!”
😉
” Badly behaved children will be given a Kazoo and a can of Red Bull to take home”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bym6J_TCNTE
No relation of Alan Partridge!
This song was one on my favourites when I was a student and had a girl-friend so named:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5B5k-CNgDs
My reply to Tom ( which he will not read) as one who dislikes dogs in hotel rooms and restaurants: I dislike it because I have been pestered by unruly ones; I am allergic to dog hair; I once found a dog-turd in a hotel bathroom.
As my dogs are clean, well behaved and part of my family, I won’t be patronising any establishment that bans them.
Morning all 🙂😊
It’s horrible and so miserable outside this morning.
And oh yes there’s certainly a deep malaise in British society, in the familiar aspect of the well embedded “Me” syndrome. And of course the deep rutted “Do you know who I am” ?
Good morning all.
Late of parade and a dull start with a slightly less cold 1°C on the Yard Thermometer, but at least it’s still not raining and it’s fairly calm air.
Morning Bob – dreich and very cold up here – not looking forward to splitting logs later
Just finished cutting up the trunk of the ash I started on yesterday and am getting the bits down the hill.
Grad. Son eventually came out to lend a hand. I’ve left him shifting the smaller bits whilst I have a well earned mug of tea.
Is there ever a day when it isn’t dreich, Alec???????
Those days when he tells us the sun is cracking the slabs 🙂
Yes, plenty – 3 days of sun this week
Our friend in Nebraska has a high of -12C and a low of -18C today and a blizzard warning.
Yo All
Car insurance
I am sure that there is a whole section of the community, who believe Vehicle Insurance, Road Tax, MOT’s and Driving Licences do not apply to them.
One of then government ‘s “brightest” ideas was to do away with the legal requirement to show a tax disc. Instead, the should have demanded a disc to show insurance (as in France) and also MOT.
ANPR cameras seem to detect them quite easily
But the cameras cost us a lot of money Alec. Sticking a disc in the windscreen is and always was free.
Sound of penny dropping – the removal of tax discs was to provide an excuse to install the ANPR cameras which are a vital part of the digital prison being constructed around us.
We have a good friend who lives near MK.
He’s been receiving parking and speeding fines from Wales to Kent.
His vehicle is an estate, the people who have cloned his number are driving a van. He’s been asked to provide evidence to establish that he has not committed any of the offences.
Even the hi-tec cameras don’t always work.
My son (19) has a black box fitted as part of his insurance. He’s desperate to be rid of it! However when i drive his car i feel compelled to be on my best behaviour!!!
I’m not sure our younger generations actually know, what ‘best behaviour’ is on our roads.
It’s amazing how many people have so many different ideas on road safety.
True but although visible can be counterfeit
True – but it was much simpler to tell by looking at a line of cars whether they were taxed or not. Anyway, the detail held are only as accurate as they are up to date. I might get an MOT today and produce insurance cert – then cancel insurance tomorrow.
The 10% (or much higher %age) that don’t bother – are not bothered.
They know where the cameras are and avoid them. Not exactly rocket science.
Most police cars have them now so they are mobile
Cancelled insurance will noted by the Motor Insurers Bureau which puts a marker on the ANPR
Same old story Bill, our successive government’s eff up everything they come into contact with.
The French are often far more intelligent than the British. The French system is far more sensible and practical – evidence of valid insurance and roadworthiness has to be shown on the windscreen.
As as far as the MoT is concerned the inspectors have nothing to do with the garages that do the repairs so they do not have any motivation to fail a car. If the car fails the test you have two months in which to get it repaired at the garage of your choice and then represent it for a second test. They also give a list of jobs that need considering which are minor enough to not require the examiner to fail the car. Certificates of roadworthiness are valid for two years.
And if you want to use private medicine or private education you do not have the entitlement for which you have paid removed.
We sent our boys to private primary schools but we had no fees to pay because the state gives private schools the same amount of money for each child it educates as it pays for the education of each child in the state schools. And by similar processes when I had a hip replacement done in a private clinic my compulsory national insurance medical scheme paid as much to the clinic as it would have done to a state hospital.
Not having a disc is also a lack of reminder of when the new one is due.
Yo, Mr Effort.
Indeed there be such people (and in good numbers). I remember once making a career out of catching the buggers and taking them to court. I had the ‘seizing’ of expired/fraudulent VELs, in particular, down to a ‘T’.
Found in numbers among the Slammers?
Today’s failed-to-be-published missive to the DT:
SIR — The late and much missed Daily Telegraph columnist, Auberon Waugh, routinely informed us, “Computers don’t work!”
He despised the technology to such an extent that he wrote all his copy on his old and trustworthy Imperial typewriter.
I wonder how ‘Bron’ would have commented on the Post Office Horizon abomination.
A Grizzly B
Nowadays, Alexa and co would have been watching him
Won’t have it in the house. The bloody things lurks.
It’s beyond George Orwell’s worst nightmares.
(And yes, I do know that by commenting on here and the Tellygraff, plus reading papers online and placing orders via the interwebby, I am giving away an awful lot of personal information.)
Yo anne
As i said last week, I was looking on Amazon, for a ‘hand pump” (nothing rude) suitable for my B-i-L to use.
It came up with a pump and said it was OK for” Adblu”, which is what we had been talking about, but not used in the product hunt.
We unplugged the bitch!
Last night on the ITV news there was a section regarding the NHS and pharmacy’s.
It seems that the pharmacist’s are running out of funds and finding if difficult to manage. Quite a number are now having to close down due to recent reductions in their general income.
My bet is that very soon after the next election the incoming government will abolish free prescriptions for the over 65s in respect of allowed benefits and welfare allowances.
Over the past 3 decades hundreds of thousands of people have arrived in the UK and are all and have been entitled to free NHS treatment mainly through the benefits system.
And of course have never paid a penny towards the treatment received.
With no income someone else is going to have to fund the increasing prices. It will be the retired and those with some funds saved from decades of hard work.
‘Downsize to stay alive’.
Good morning all
What about this then ?
https://twitter.com/TraceyODonoghu9/status/1745379509640073511
My word our governments intelligence level has reached the bottom of even their own sludge pit.
“Intelligence” in all meanings of the word
The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
The collection of information of military or political value.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
Emotional Quotient (EQ)
Social Quotient (SQ)
Adversity Quotient (AQ)
verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed and reasoning.
Theory suggests human intelligence can be differentiated into the following modalities:
visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, musical-rhythmic, logical-mathematical,interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and
bodily-kinesthetic.
I’ve tried to be nice. But because of their absolute and total uselessness I just can’t manage.
https://twitter.com/SophiesFreedom/status/1745732202573246780
Not only that Sophie we are accommodating them, feeding clothing them and making sure they will be fighting fit. Everything is free for every single one of them.
Only in the UK. The daftest country on Earth.
I fear this is their plan. To create terror in the population so that we willingly flock to 15 minute cities for ‘our protection’ and hand over our properties and assets to the WEF in return for protection.
Good morning all.
A bit late on parade today. A dull morning at Ty McPhee, a North-East breeze and flat-lining at 4℃.
I’m late because the usual little missive from Sir John Redwood’s Diary dropped into my inbox. Here’s what he wrote:
My Conservative Home article on the budget
johnredwood
Jan 12
“To cut taxes, inflation, and the deficit, Hunt must break free of the OBR
Treasury briefing keeps telling us unfunded tax cuts will cause inflation. Yet we have just lived through two years of surging and high inflation with increased taxes – that should lead them to question their bizarre view.
If they believe that tax is the key to inflation, why don’t the Treasury think the tax rises also caused it? In one sense, some of them did: they heaped higher taxes on energy as energy prices soared.
The Office of Budget Responsibility acknowledges that it has overstated this year’s borrowing so far by £20bn. Yet carries on asserting there is no scope to cut taxes.
The reason borrowing is lower is once again they got their forecasts of tax revenue wrong. I read in the press they keep sending the Chancellor very different forecasts of how much borrowing there might be in five years time. The Government uses this to decide what tax cuts they can afford. The OBR forecasts, though fluctuating wildly, never seem to allow tax cuts according to the press briefings that filter out.
Why does the Government use the five-year forecast to decide anything? It is bound to be wrong. The last three years have seen many overstatements of future borrowing by the OBR for the immediate year, which should be a lot easier to get right than five years out.
The Treasury and Bank need to think again about the inflation they have just presided over. Let me give them some thoughts on what did cause it.
The Bank should grasp that printing £150bn in the recovery year 2021 and paying very high prices for bonds to keep interest rates close to zero was inflationary. The Treasury should understand that boosting spending by £350bn a year over three years, and borrowing the money to pay for much of the extra spending, was inflationary.
They ended up borrowing it at overdraft rates from the Bank of England; these rates then surged as the Bank decided to hike them. It means it was unwise to borrow like that. If they had funded it long it would have been a lot cheaper and arguably less inflationary.
The Government needs to grasp that recruiting 103,000 more civil servants over six years and allowing a 7.5 per cent collapse in productivity was inflationary.
They will reply that the surge in oil prices from the Ukraine war was inflationary. It certainly drove up energy prices. But this does not account for why British inflation was already three times target before that happened. Nor does it explain how big energy importers, such as China and Japan, did not have a big general inflationary surge as we did. (But then, they did not print lots of extra money and drive their interest rates lower.)
Jeremy Hunt’s budget needs to cut taxes, to help bring inflation down, and to push downwards on the deficit. Far from being impossible to do these three things at the same time, the right policies will indeed do all three together.
If only the Treasury had a model of revenues that picked up more accurately increases in growth delivering higher revenues, it would be easier to persuade them. If they were better at controlling public spending and at avoiding big falls in public sector productivity, that would help too. Let’s have a go at a budget that they could grudgingly agree, using their wayward models, that will achieve these ends.
Let’s start with getting inflation down more quickly. Suspend the five per cent VAT on domestic energy for heating for the year ahead. Take five per cent off petrol and diesel by a temporary cut in fuel duty. This will give a useful nudge down to energy costs just as world prices are increasing again.
Some of the revenue lost will be compensated by higher profit and windfall taxes on the energy companies as they benefit from higher world prices. Cover the rest with the proceeds of selling the whole remaining holding in NatWest shares. A lower rate of inflation, earlier, will also save some money on public spending, which is very geared to the inflation rate.
Hunt should also expand the supply side of the economy to offset some of slowdown the Bank is creating.
The VAT threshold for registering small businesses should be raised from £85,000 to £250,000. This would release a lot of new capacity quickly, which in turn would produce a bit of downward pressure on prices. More importantly, it would generate additional tax on incomes and profits as the small businesses did more.
Treasury models will score this as a revenue loss, so offset their fictional figure with rephasing some of the £20bn carbon capture and storage spend. It is unlikely anyway that large scale projects with good business cases will be available to subsidise any time soon.
We have lost 800,000 self employed from the workforce since February 2020. Some of this may be covid related, but it is also the result of tax changes in 2017 and 2021 which make it too difficult for some to grow their businesses in the way they used to, particularly where they need business customers. Change the rules back.
Again the Treasury will claim a loss, it should save government money (especially where people move back into self employment from benefits). This could be more than offset by imposing a stronger version of the Civil Service recruitment controls the Government is talking about. Natural wastage should slim the Civil Service, after the increase of 103,000 in just six years.
Next, switch farming grants for the future away from stopping people growing food toward supporting them for doing so. That will generate more business success to tax and will cut imports, which do not deliver any income tax, national insurance, and or corporation tax on the food production.
Then, save on all the anti driver schemes the Transport Department helps fund, in accordance with the welcome new approach outlined by Rishi Sunak.
There are many other places for reducing the costs of government. All this means we can have lower taxes, a lower deficit, and lower inflation. This is a cautious package: it would be possible to go further and faster to generate more growth. Look at the USA, which has managed to get inflation lower than us despite their Central Bank making the same mistakes as ours: it has also just recorded 4.9 per cent growth.
We are fed up with being controlled by incorrect forecasts by the OBR, and subject to wild policy swings by the Bank of England, which did much to give us inflation in the first place. Just do something to cheer us up.”
He’s not my MP but he very kindly lets anyone send him messages in the comments box which I do from time to time on the basis that they all should know what we think. Here’s my reply to him:
1. Tax cuts should be balanced by cutting government activity and largesse.
2. Inflation is always and everywhere caused by governments and central banks creating too much money for the volume of available goods and services.
3. Government should be SLASHING civil service numbers, not recruiting more. How many did our Edwardian forebears run Britain and the Empire with? Around 40,000 in the early 20th Century all told. We don’t need half a million.
4. The war in Ukraine did not drive up energy prices. Energy producers, specifically oil producers, did that by not increasing or restricting supply.
5. Take the 5% VAT on energy off permanently and abolish fuel duty. It is monstrous that fuel duty is added before VAT is applied. That is paying tax on a tax.
6. Windfall taxes are a bad, socialist idea. Like Corporation Tax, they feed through to higher prices for consumers.
7. I am one of the self-employed lost prematurely. Because of the over-zealous Convid response I had to close my business and retire fully 18 months before I had planned. It cost me a six-figure sum for which I received no compensation. No furlough payment for me. I’m not complaining, just highlighting the stupidity of what was done.
8. Pay farmers to produce food, not cover land in solar panels and turbines. This island nation should be self-sufficient in food or as near to it as we can get.
9. Abolish, not save on, the anti-driver schemes. No cars and vans, no economy.
and finally:
Scrap Net Zero and repeal the Climate Change Act. More and more people know that man-made climate change is the Great Lie of our times. Climate changes, it always has and always will. Mankind does not cause it to change and can do nothing about it except adapt. We are puny, insignificant, in the face of the power of nature.
UN Agenda 21 and its bastard child, Agenda 2030 with its sustainable development goals which are predicated on a need to stop ‘global warming’ and ‘save the planet’ are nothing short of a Marxist scheme to control the whole world and its human population. They will ruin us – as they are intended to do. Withdraw from them.
Economic forecasting makes astrology look respectable. We have a massive national debt, big budget and balance of payments deficits, and crumbling public services. Tax cuts? What do I know!
I assume that “Professor” Ferguson is in charge of the modelling…
You beat me to it Bill.
That is what I would have written, too!
They’re still living in the 80s, while in the real world, it’s the end game now.
10. Immediately abolish all publicly funded non-jobs and departments in diversity, inclusion and other such nonsense.
Good morningall.
A bit late on parade today. A dull morning at Ty McPhee, a North-East breeze and flat-lining at 4℃.
I’m late because the usual little missive from Sir John Redwood’s Diary dropped into my inbox. Here’s what he wrote:
My Conservative Home article on the budget
johnredwood
Jan 12
To cut taxes, inflation, and the deficit, Hunt must break free of the OBR
Treasury briefing keeps telling us unfunded tax cuts will cause inflation. Yet we have just lived through two years of surging and high inflation with increased taxes – that should lead them to question their bizarre view.
If they believe that tax is the key to inflation, why don’t the Treasury think the tax rises also caused it? In one sense, some of them did: they heaped higher taxes on energy as energy prices soared.
The Office of Budget Responsibility acknowledges that it has overstated this year’s borrowing so far by £20bn. Yet carries on asserting there is no scope to cut taxes.
The reason borrowing is lower is once again they got their forecasts of tax revenue wrong. I read in the press they keep sending the Chancellor very different forecasts of how much borrowing there might be in five years time. The Government uses this to decide what tax cuts they can afford. The OBR forecasts, though fluctuating wildly, never seem to allow tax cuts according to the press briefings that filter out.
Why does the Government use the five-year forecast to decide anything? It is bound to be wrong. The last three years have seen many overstatements of future borrowing by the OBR for the immediate year, which should be a lot easier to get right than five years out.
The Treasury and Bank need to think again about the inflation they have just presided over. Let me give them some thoughts on what did cause it.
The Bank should grasp that printing £150bn in the recovery year 2021 and paying very high prices for bonds to keep interest rates close to zero was inflationary. The Treasury should understand that boosting spending by £350bn a year over three years, and borrowing the money to pay for much of the extra spending, was inflationary.
They ended up borrowing it at overdraft rates from the Bank of England; these rates then surged as the Bank decided to hike them. It means it was unwise to borrow like that. If they had funded it long it would have been a lot cheaper and arguably less inflationary.
The Government needs to grasp that recruiting 103,000 more civil servants over six years and allowing a 7.5 per cent collapse in productivity was inflationary.
They will reply that the surge in oil prices from the Ukraine war was inflationary. It certainly drove up energy prices. But this does not account for why British inflation was already three times target before that happened. Nor does it explain how big energy importers, such as China and Japan, did not have a big general inflationary surge as we did. (But then, they did not print lots of extra money and drive their interest rates lower.)
Jeremy Hunt’s budget needs to cut taxes, to help bring inflation down, and to push downwards on the deficit. Far from being impossible to do these three things at the same time, the right policies will indeed do all three together.
If only the Treasury had a model of revenues that picked up more accurately increases in growth delivering higher revenues, it would be easier to persuade them. If they were better at controlling public spending and at avoiding big falls in public sector productivity, that would help too. Let’s have a go at a budget that they could grudgingly agree, using their wayward models, that will achieve these ends.
Let’s start with getting inflation down more quickly. Suspend the five per cent VAT on domestic energy for heating for the year ahead. Take five per cent off petrol and diesel by a temporary cut in fuel duty. This will give a useful nudge down to energy costs just as world prices are increasing again.
Some of the revenue lost will be compensated by higher profit and windfall taxes on the energy companies as they benefit from higher world prices. Cover the rest with the proceeds of selling the whole remaining holding in NatWest shares. A lower rate of inflation, earlier, will also save some money on public spending, which is very geared to the inflation rate.
Hunt should also expand the supply side of the economy to offset some of slowdown the Bank is creating.
The VAT threshold for registering small businesses should be raised from £85,000 to £250,000. This would release a lot of new capacity quickly, which in turn would produce a bit of downward pressure on prices. More importantly, it would generate additional tax on incomes and profits as the small businesses did more.
Treasury models will score this as a revenue loss, so offset their fictional figure with rephasing some of the £20bn carbon capture and storage spend. It is unlikely anyway that large scale projects with good business cases will be available to subsidise any time soon.
We have lost 800,000 self employed from the workforce since February 2020. Some of this may be covid related, but it is also the result of tax changes in 2017 and 2021 which make it too difficult for some to grow their businesses in the way they used to, particularly where they need business customers. Change the rules back.
Again the Treasury will claim a loss, it should save government money (especially where people move back into self employment from benefits). This could be more than offset by imposing a stronger version of the Civil Service recruitment controls the Government is talking about. Natural wastage should slim the Civil Service, after the increase of 103,000 in just six years.
Next, switch farming grants for the future away from stopping people growing food toward supporting them for doing so. That will generate more business success to tax and will cut imports, which do not deliver any income tax, national insurance, and or corporation tax on the food production.
Then, save on all the anti driver schemes the Transport Department helps fund, in accordance with the welcome new approach outlined by Rishi Sunak.
There are many other places for reducing the costs of government. All this means we can have lower taxes, a lower deficit, and lower inflation. This is a cautious package: it would be possible to go further and faster to generate more growth. Look at the USA, which has managed to get inflation lower than us despite their Central Bank making the same mistakes as ours: it has also just recorded 4.9 per cent growth.
We are fed up with being controlled by incorrect forecasts by the OBR, and subject to wild policy swings by the Bank of England, which did much to give us inflation in the first place. Just do something to cheer us up.
He’s not my MP but he very kindly lets anyone send him messages in the comments box which I do from time to time on the basis that they all should know what we think. Here’s my reply to him:
1. Tax cuts should be balanced by cutting government activity and largesse.
2. Inflation is always and everywhere caused by governments and central banks creating too much money for the volume of available goods and services.
3. Government should be SLASHING civil service numbers, not recruiting more. How many did our Edwardian forebears run Britain and the Empire with? Around 40,000 in the early 20th Century all told. We don’t need half a million.
4. The war in Ukraine did not drive up energy prices. Energy producers, specifically oil producers, did that by not increasing or restricting supply.
5. Take the 5% VAT on energy off permanently and abolish fuel duty. It is monstrous that fuel duty is added before VAT is applied. That is paying tax on a tax.
6. Windfall taxes are a bad, socialist idea. Like Corporation Tax, they feed through to higher prices for consumers.
7. I am one of the self-employed lost prematurely. Because of the over-zealous Convid response I had to close my business and retire fully 18 months before I had planned. It cost me a six-figure sum for which I received no compensation. No furlough payment for me. I’m not complaining, just highlighting the stupidity of what was done.
8. Pay farmers to produce food, not cover land in solar panels and turbines. This island nation should be self-sufficient in food or as near to it as we can get.
9. Abolish, not save on, the anti-driver schemes. No cars and vans, no economy.
and finally:
Scrap Net Zero and repeal the Climate Change Act. More and more people know that man-made climate change is the Great Lie of our times. Climate changes, it always has and always will. Mankind does not cause it to change and can do nothing about it except adapt. We are puny, insignificant, in the face of the power of nature.
UN Agenda 21 and its bastard child, Agenda 2030 with its sustainable development goals which are predicated on a need to stop ‘global warming’ and ‘save the planet’ are nothing short of a Marxist scheme to control the whole world and its human population. They will ruin us – as they are intended to do. Withdraw from them.
Headline from this morning’s Grimes
Starmer has defence ready over his legal past
Patrick Maguire
Tory dossier on Labour leader’s career leaves him unfazed — his strategists have been planning the rebuttals since 2019
Interesting that he thinks he needs them. Indicates guilt, I feel.
A hate crime against a family from the Midlands is being investigated by a Welsh police force after a poison pen letter attacking their “hideous, vomit-inducing” Brummie accents was left outside their home.
The vitriolic handwritten note was posted after the family moved 120 miles from the Midlands to a sought-after street in the seaside town of Aberystwyth, west Wales.
The letter, written in red ink, said that the family should take their “clapped out, crappy boats, Jeeps [and] cars” with them and be housed in “fenced in tinker sites”, a pejorative term for travellers.
Dyfed-Powys police is investigating the letter, which was left outside the house in suburban Iorwerth Avenue.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hate-crime-inquiry-over-note-attacking-hideous-birmingham-accent-cqxnlw5kw
I bet they are checking stationers about sales of red ink….
and for members of the Communist Party
“The note was left under the windscreen wipers of the rusty wheel-less car in their drive.”
Yow…
Can’t help laughing.
I suppose there are no burglaries, car thefts or murders in Dyfed-Powys then?
I posted the link to that yesterday. Dim drosseddu yn Cymru.
A quick analysis of E-buses: “A Perfectly Shit Concept” but this does not prevent lunatic green-washing politicians from going for this massively expensive con on the citizens. Anybody exposed to the hazardous toxic pollution from an EV blaze needs to look at suing the local authority that has introduced this unmeasured hazard into the cityscapes of the nation. Talking No Khan Do, here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z_ZDexjiPI
Hey Dean. Now you know why this Hombre won’t bum no ride on any sparky charabanc. I once singed my beard on the sparks flying from the chimney of a cow-catchin’ iron horse, Dude, but that was a close as this ‘Bo will ever come to barbecuing his ass on any public ride, Bro’.
Hey, Beatnik, you’re the old goose, asleep in the caboose, Dude. No need to dip your cup of soup back from a gurglin’ cracklin’ cauldron in some train yard when you can boil your bean stew in one of Sultan No Khan Do’s “fry as you ride” double-decker barbecue buses, Hombre. Get with the programme, Man and spread a little happiness and toxic pollution down those mean streets while virtue-signalling your butt off as you traverse that old wise-cracker bus line, in toxic Metro Land, Bro.
Hey, Dean. This old goose keeps far, far away from Khan’t-be-bovvered-ville, Compadre. The wheat fields and the clothes lines
and the junkyards and the highways come between us, Dude; and as long as this rail-ridin’ Bum can haul his scraggy ass up into that caboose, Man, he’ll forever avoid clubbin’ with the Grand Ayatollah.
Hey, Beatnik! You’re “The ‘Bo in the Know”, Dude. You keep rockin’ and a rollin’ on those steel rails and you’ll never have that White Line Fever, like the demented folk travellin’ down that Lost Highway in their rusty tin cans, Man.
Sad Dhik Khant is King of Londonistan and satellite boroughs
Grizz is right. We are becoming Eloi.
Bungling foreman clears alleged killers in £1million
trial by ‘mistake’ before judge brings the jury back and the trial is
abandoned.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12953829/foreman-clears-alleged-killers-1million-trial-mistake-judge-jury-trial-abandoned.html
Not fit for purpose.
Imagine innocently being on trial for your life and facing a jury made up of such imbecilic cretins.
The post-modernist left have convinced themselves that intelligence quota doesn’t exist and the ability to reason is culturally defined therefore racist. Well, if the stupid want to lead beyond authority, they would say that, wouldn’t they?
The Left? Stupid?
Shirley the two words are synonyms.
Bootiful British names! I wonder if their was anything we might be interested in about Madam Foreman.
381738+ up ticks,
We are still in the eu covertly are we not ?
Why are we bombing Yemen when we want to know the honest reason for excess deaths in regards to covid on the domestic front.
Are any of these political bastards going to be in the front line
of any foreign trouble spot? they will, I believe be in enough trouble when the smoke & mirrors clear from the odious Post Office debacle and the covid inquiry findings are dissected.
https://x.com/UnityNewsNet/status/1745739874991301102?s=20
We are still covertly in the eu are we not
A long laff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaI-XsKFlXg
Old Celente’s Almanack:2024. We all know that we’re on the cusp of major ructions. As someone who has made predictions for 40 plus years, he’s got insight and the back story to so many of the problems the world faces.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdMCb8fdIsU
Olaf Scholz relies on 19th-century device to thwart Russian spies. 12 January 2024.
Germany’s leader has dropped plans to phase out a 19th century-era pneumatic tube system used to ferry secret documents to his office, as it is proving to be a crucial tool in evading Russian spies.
For decades, the Chancellery in Berlin has relied on the complex apparatus, which uses compressed air to shuttle paper documents between 36 stations in various departments.
I’m not sure what prevents “Russian Spies” reading the contents of the tubes but I can remember the mechanism from my childhood. They were in all the big department stores and used to transmit cash from the desks to the office. I was fascinated by them. They gave a sort of high tech whoosh when they were activated.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/11/germany-air-pump-russia-spies-olaf-scholz-berlin/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuSDdJIcmHU
Ah – the Fujitsu Horizon mainframe computer interface. 😉
It’s not the Russians Olaf needs to worry about. It’s the Americans. All the Embassies are bugged. Remember Angela Merkel being pissed off because her phone was bugged…Nothing changes.
Can you install malware on a pneumatic tube? Do they catch viruses?
Sooooooo (© Cathy Newman) what they’re saying is that paper documents are safer than online documents which would mostly be on Microsoft systems?
The devices were initially manufactured by D D Lamson and known as Lamson Tubes. A version of the Lamson Tube is still in use to pass smaller documents between government ministries in Whitehall.
In addition to the pneumatic tube system there is a system for passing larger documents between ministries. This comprises a conveyor system from which small document suitcases are suspended.
I know this having worked on Richmond House and fitted the building out for the Department of Health between 1982-1987.
Work has started on the bathroom. This will go some way to resolving the frustrations we’ve had here.
We are still planning to move. The lender said it was fine to do so within the arrangement and we could port the interest rate up to the borrowed amount. Any new borrowing would be costed at the rates of the time and any under borrowing would incur early repayment charges.
Which is a delight.
Can you not do this
https://www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/external-wall-insulation
and this
https://www.schiedel.com/uk/stove-installation-with-external-chimney/
to get a toasty warm house?
The climate scaremongers: Gerrit and Henk, storms in a teacup
January 12, 2024 https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-gerrit-and-henk-storms-in-a-teacup/
BTL
What is extremely offpissing is that the MSM – and even TV channels such as GB News -are not prepared to discuss Covid
vaccinegene therapy damage and the Net Zero scam rationally and impartially.Why have so few refused to put their heads above the parapet? Have they all been bribed? Or have they all been threatened or blackmailed?
GB News is permanently under threat from Ofcom and its fellow travellers.
It has to tread a fine line.
All very wrong, but the demise of Radio Caroline 50+ years ago was a warning of what British governments are capable.
The truth is now defined as a hate crime by the state.
The climate scaremongers: Gerrit and Henk, storms in a teacup
January 12, 2024 https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-gerrit-and-henk-storms-in-a-teacup/
BTL
What is extremely offpissing is that the MSM – and even TV channels such as GB News -are not prepared to discuss Covid
vaccinegene therapy damage and the Net Zero scam rationally and impartially.Why have so few refused to put their heads above the parapet? Have they all been bribed? Or have they all been threatened or blackmailed?
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Why is the BBC fawning over migrants given free bed and board, wifi and a bus into town?
PUBLISHED: 17:28, 11 January 2024 | UPDATED: 21:35, 11 January 2024
This is the BBC News. There now follows a partly political broadcast on behalf of asylum seekers.
Delivered in the same, hand-wringing tone as those daytime TV adverts featuring bedraggled African children drinking dirty water out of polluted rivers, or appealing to you to give £2 a month to a donkey sanctuary, this alleged piece of ‘journalism’ was in my opinion pure Leftist propaganda.
Presented by correspondent Dan Johnson, with all the credulity of a gullible first-year media studies student intent on a career on the Guardian, it sought to make us all feel guilty over the plight of vulnerable young men banged up on the floating asylum hostel, Bibby Stockholm.
Beginning with a report on the funeral in Tirana of 27-year-old Leonard Farruku, who took his own life on board the barge moored off the Dorset coast, it segued seamlessly into an ‘exclusive’ interview with an asylum seeker from Sierra Leone who had been forced to share his cabin — sorry, ‘cell’.
Yusuf Deen Kargbo, 20, ‘speaking for the first time’, warned that others might also kill themselves if conditions on the Bibby Stockholm didn’t improve drastically.
‘They’re saying this is just the beginning. They are trying to give a warning, that this place is not good for them. Every day their stress is getting worse.’
Mr Kargbo won’t be one of them, happily. The tragic death of his room-mate brought up his number on the escape committee and he is now safely tucked up in a hotel on dry land. But he’s still in touch with many of his former inmates of the Good Ship Alcatraz.
Johnson listened sympathetically as Mr Kargbo, apparently reading from a Twitter feed as he scrolled through his mobile phone, complained that ‘the stress and anxiety and poor quality of the food, this barge feels like a prison’.
A prison, as Johnson didn’t point out, where the inmates are free to come and go as they please and provided with a complimentary shuttle bus service into nearby Weymouth.
Still, to add to the indignity, the wifi is frequently on the blink and the showers run cold. Potentially with further fatal consequences. As Johnson warned gravely: ‘There are warnings about where this could lead.’
Kargbo told him: ‘They said if every day their stress is increasing, it’s getting worse, it’s getting worse, so they will decide to even kill themselves because they don’t have any hope for their life.’
Not once did Johnson bother to question any of these lurid claims. Nor did he remind Kargbo — or the viewers who pay his wages — that Bibby Stockholm ‘residents’ get three free meals a day, a TV lounge, a fully-equipped gym and a dedicated medical clinic.
So no surprise there, then. That’s simply par for the course, when it comes to the BBC’s fawning coverage of asylum seekers.
For instance, on its website BBC News tells us merely that Kargbo ‘came to the UK from Sierra Leone’ — without mentioning that he did a runner after competing in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022.
In BBC Land, all migrants are ‘vulnerable’ and ‘fleeing persecution’ and anyone who argues otherwise is a heartless, knuckle-scraping racist.
Why else would it give headline news coverage to the funeral in Tirana of an Albanian asylum seeker? Tragically, people in Britain take their own lives every day without being afforded a send-off with full honours on the BBC’s flagship lunchtime bulletin.
We can never be certain why they commit suicide, but in the case of Mr Farruku, a coroner was told there were no suspicious circumstances.
Yusuf Kargbo told the BBC that his room-mate didn’t seem unhappy and he often heard him laughing, assuming he was watching a comedy video on his mobile.
The Guardian quoted Mr Farruku’s sister Jola as saying he was ‘full of humour’, although the Daily Telegraph reports that she said her brother ‘turned into a different person’ after their mother died three years ago — something the Guardian forgot to mention.
Jola, who lives in Lombardy, Italy, also said: ‘He had lots of friends in Albania and maintained strong relationships with them’. In which case, why move to Britain, where he ended up on a ‘prison ship’?
Albania is a safe country. Britain has signed a treaty allowing ‘asylum seekers’ to be returned there. If Mr Farruku was unhappy in his home country, why didn’t he move to Italy to be nearer his sister?
These are, of course, the kind of questions we’re not supposes to ask. And the BBC never will. They appear to prefer to peddle the false narrative that Britain is a racist hell-hole which hates foreigners and is happy to condemn asylum seekers to inhuman conditions where they have no alternative but to kill themselves.
The fact that tens of thousands of migrants, including Yusuf Hargbo, are now living in hotels at a cost to the British taxpayer of £8million a day clearly doesn’t count.
As the row over Rwanda rumbles on and the small boats keep on coming, the courts continue to indulge asylum claims on the most spurious grounds. An immigration judge has just refused to repatriate a Serbian national because, having lived here illegally for many years since he was 13, he claims he’s forgotten how to speak Serb.
You couldn’t make it up. I haven’t done French since I failed O-level half a century ago, but I can just about get by in France, after a fashion. Surely if he spoke Serb until he was a teenager, he must remember something.
And, anyway, what about the hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in closed communities in Britain who can’t, or won’t, speak English? Should they all now be sent home?
Curiously enough, I couldn’t find any mention of the Serbian story on the BBC. No, it seems they’re only interested in tales of vulnerable migrants being ill-treated by a heartless (far-Right Tory) Government, pandering to the basest instincts of racist local residents objecting to having hundreds of uninvited young foreign men dumped in their midst after arriving here illegally.
As far as the BBC is concerned, Soft-Touch Britain doesn’t count as ‘news’.
*****************************************************
This week’s Defence Secretary Grant Shapps – there have been seven at the MoD since 2010 – has come up with a novel idea to plug the recruitment gap in the Armed Forces.
After two naval ships were mothballed because of a shortage of sailors and the Royal Marines will in future have to rely on salvaged dinghies which have been abandoned by migrants on the Kent coast, last week’s XR poster boy Shapps has the answer:
Hire more women.
‘It can’t be right that our military still only has 11 or 12 per cent women, for example, when you make up half the population,’ he said. Whether more women want to join the forces isn’t clear.
But it makes sense in this increasingly dangerous world. After all, women in the Israeli army are among that nation’s most ferocious fighters.
And having seen some of our own hardy young ladies on parade in city centres such as Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle, I can only agree with Shapps. One look at a Liverpool hen night and, to paraphrase the Duke of Wellington after surveying his troops before the Battle of Waterloo:
I don’t know what effect these women will have upon the enemy but, by God, they frighten me!
*******************************************
The Old Bill are now so worried about misgendering trans people they are ignoring other ‘protected’ groups, such as the disabled, the elderly and those of particular, unspecified faiths. Same goes for the Fire Brigade, according to His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, Fire & Rescue Services.
Meanwhile, NHS patients are being asked to choose from 159 religions, 12 genders and ten sexual preferences before they can book an appointment.
Only ten?
It was reported yesterday that as many as half of over-50s suffered age discrimination last year, some from children as young as four.
And apparently the definition of ‘elderly’ now begins at 60. Strewth. I’ll get my coat. Hardly surprising, mind you, when you look at those road signs which have stereotypical old people doubled over walking sticks.
Still, if you walk into the waiting room at your NHS surgery and there’s an old git sucking a Biro and looking puzzled over a questionnaire, don’t worry.
That’s me in the corner, choosing my religion.
He wasn’t a prisoner. He could have fucked off back to Tirana any time he wanted.
One less parasite/fakugee/savage/dangerous criminal to fund. Oh dear, what a shame. The majority of them, once given the green light to spend the rest of their lives in comfort at our expense, see no problem with going ‘back home’ for holidays.
Galling isn’t it. Same with Paki’s and benefits. They have homes and families there so why are they HERE !
Don’t forget the gypos. AKA
non-travellers.“After two naval ships were mothballed because of a shortage of
sailors and the Royal Marines will in future have to rely on salvaged
dinghies which have been abandoned by migrants on the Kent coast, last
week’s XR poster boy Shapps has the answer:
Hire more women”.
Good idea. Those gobby black women like a good scrap.
Did you notice that the Tardis is now eqipped with a folding access ramp – how considerate of Dr Who who noticed how difficult it was for the Daleks to exterminate him at the top of a flight of stairs.
The room mate of the chap that hanged himself took the opportunity to complain about the food. He said the portions were tiny. The food was disgusting and there was a lot of wastage. He said the queues were very long and people at the back went hungry.
They all have smart phones. Where are the pictures !
The answer to the question on which of 159 religions is to write: “I haven’t tried them all yet how can I possibly know?”
Oh that poor refugee! He needs to go back home immediately.
A link forwarded by Sonny boy.
https://www.politico.eu/article/post-office-horizon-scandal-uk-mr-bates-itv-rishi-sunak-government/
I’m glad the postmasters/mistresses are being heard but it also shows government to be subject to the mob.
Sadly, it seems to be the only way to get anything through their thick skulls.
Remember, not all of them have their sinecures lined up before the 2024 holocaust, so a degree of panic is setting in.
Letters to the Editor
12 January 2024 • 12:01am
Ministers have set aside more than £1 billion of taxpayers’ money to pay for Post Office scandal compensation
Credit: ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
SIR – Allister Heath (“Post Office scandal has exposed the elite’s contempt for Middle England”, Comment, January 11) nails what the majority think about the overpaid, unaccountable “corporate-bureaucratic class”.
You
see its actions everywhere. The same is true of the current political
class. Look at Sir Keir Starmer. He was director of public prosecutions
while sub-postmasters were being taken to court. It seems incredible
that he did not know about these prosecutions when in charge (report, January 11)
– and if he did not, he was incompetent. Then there is Sir Ed Davey,
the Liberal Democrat leader, who was postal affairs minister while the
scandal was taking place.
You can understand why populist parties are garnering strength. People are fed up with the system.
Stephen Crisp-Jones
Wellesbourne, Warwickshire
SIR
– Allister Heath’s article is a powerful piece of journalism. When I
was a bank manager I worked with many sub-postmasters, and Mr Heath’s
description of their character and work ethic is entirely correct.
Rod Butler
Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire
SIR – When the Prime Minister made his statement on the Post Office in the Commons on Wednesday (“Sunak to clear postmasters this year”, report, January 11),
I found the cheering of MPs distasteful. They did nothing to support
the sub-postmasters before, yet want to celebrate the Government’s
actions now.
Keith Allum
Christchurch, Dorset
SIR –
The requirement announced by the Prime Minister for all wrongly
convicted sub-postmasters to sign a document declaring their innocence
is just another insult for them to bear. Whoever came up with this
further humiliation? Far from signing any such document before they are
vindicated, every one of them should simply receive a written apology
for the way they have been treated.
“Well”, say the faceless,
insensitive lawyers behind this latest ploy, “a few may be thieves, and
so they should all sign to deny it”. How ridiculous. Who imagines that
the guilty would decline to sign? The appalling travesty of justice
inflicted on the great majority of these people should lead the
Government to the most urgent and humble action to restore the
reputations of the victims.
John Twitchen
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
Taxpayers’ money? What about the bonuses paid to PO officials? What about personal liability?
Another whitewash where it’s nobody’s fault is not acceptable.
What’s the difference between populist and popular? Is it something to do with percentage share in opinion polls?
“Populist” = far-right, extremist, swivel-eyed,foam-flecked…..
“Popular” = Eco-freak, net-zero, leftie.
Similar with ‘islamist’ and ‘islamic’. One refers to people who observe the Holy Koran, and the other, um.
‘Morning All
Lighter (risky) Medley
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aa31935f5501b15a747dd1a5ee0a44564bd127d51e992dfd4e5c369f2043a358.jpg
https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=568,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/156/771/643/original/26d3f715c00874ae.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3cfd0a6b804aebaae169e3b10180da0bfdc5cde90a9029de4c031536a99076fd.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a20698be54422d688cbb1f9d0f7af05249179e8edd29259fdba9cb7e6b64d8f.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/701271e2e79a4d876afec3830026b8eb9eb890c1e52a31d179cb4d4a142315a0.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/28c47aaae67449794abc9a50b1f39837bf64cef2bd62c483e4fef2665ba26f33.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80c69e6bfe58766705ccf1ee00b17373558aa011d1dd5b5941b4118d937aa46f.jpg
Dalrymple on form again
https://www.takimag.com/article/all-the-presidents-mien/
Ahem
Why are there 80k Yemenis in this country? What possible basis could
they have for being granted right to remain? They will all be housed and
on bennies of course while just about all will be totally unproductive.
Will we be interring them as enemy aliens?
(oh how we laffed)
Edit just noticed the typo,think I’ll leave it……..
Aden: a consequence of the British Empire.
Yup, bury ’em.
Hmm
Another 2.5 Billion for Ukeland
Exactly which budget is that coming from………..
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4798adff902eaf2699017c05962ffd5e058d8668667c6774f168ad242d1b1d1e.jpg
“And then I told them I’m raising the pension age again”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/24ac5a1d2c369f138010e165a8bc25655eaafde9d674485cced4d182a4cc1096.jpg
I copied those to FB and I’ve just had a warning I might suffer some consequences.
A reminder:
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1745721624496656491?s=20
Q: “Who the hell is in charge of letting this stuff happen?”
A: The types who are in urgent need of being excised from this planet … post haste! As I’ve pointed out ad infinitum, as nauseam, the continued failure to act, with decision, will result in consequences — for everyone — you daren’t even think about.
And if you do think about it you will be called racist, guilty of hate crime and cancelled if not imprisoned.
Why did we not heed Enoch Powell’s clear warning instead of vilifying him?
Q: “Who the hell is in charge of letting this stuff happen?”
A: The types who are in urgent need of being excised from this planet … post haste! As I’ve pointed out ad infinitum, as nauseam, the continued failure to act, with decision, will result in consequences — for everyone — you daren’t even think about.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12955509/welsh-letter-neighbours-birmingham-vomit-accents-police-investigation.html
These sort of people. The state *hates* anyone who dissents from the approved line. The same bunch of fools who pay farmers to NOT grow food then ignores shortages.
Who demand trees be cut down in Canada, has them chipped and then burns them in a reactor by the multiple times a day boatload and then complains about ‘carbon’ in the atmosphere.
The same sort that sends jets to bomb muslim pirates threatening trade in foreign yet imports the same violent criminals here by the million.
Who enacts an ‘online harm’ bill to supposedly protect children from paedophiles but forces children to watch paedophile trans drag acts.
The hypocrisy of the state is boundless – but if you complain about it, they use force to suppress your views while using the courts to protect violent offenders.
The state is a vicious, spiteful, arrogant beast.
Tour abundant use of who in your comment reminds ne of this:
https://youtu.be/fI4bRqjobbw?si=M1pisIfOSs6mIYO3
Aye, it’s not especially well written but hopefully the gist is there?
Who am I to complain? ☺️
But just think what diversity brings to the nativity play.. genuine rag heads.
I’d prefer donkeys and sheep.
They’d be less threatening in the playground.
And more useful/productive. Donkeys can be used as beasts of burden and sheep produce wool, sheepskin and meat (as well as fertilising the pasture they graze on).
TPTB are not just letting this happen, they are the architects of it
Oh yes, I do agree.
#bekind….
Just a reminder for anyone skiing in Davos next week, its going to be busy.. https://www.reuters.com/world/davos-2024-global-elite-gather-against-wefs-most-complex-backdrop-so-far-2024-01-09/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Briefing&utm_term=011224&user_email=5295511c8d8ea201351de0ca1537e00b83fbe60b2f99b1eff9d9967ac0956199
The traitors gather!
Dear Lord,
Would an avalanche be too much to ask for? I understand the argument Abraham made when he tried to persuade you to spare Soddom and Gomorrah and you agreed to let them be for the sake of ten good men but there aren’t any good men in Davos. Even the catering staff are complicit. Just an avalanche. Bury them in snow and put out all the power lines. Pretty please.
Lots of love, Sue
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7093c6c823ce2dda1af04316a64e016f8aee1557d9dd429c7aaced90b5171996.jpg
As Schwab seems to be the anti Christ incarnate, its certainly going to take an apocalyptic event!
Just think of the carbon offset required by all those private jets – have these hypocrites never heard of Zoom, or is the truth that the whole thing is a scam and they really like their Jollies?
The Elite are buying more and more private jets:
https://www.flightaware.com/squawks/view/1/7_days/popular_new/93918/NetJets_agrees_to_purchase_up_to_1_500_jets_from_Textron_Aviation
“Hey Houthis, look over here!”
It makes one really pisted orfff.
:-))
381738+ up ticks,
Afternoon KP,
Also beware of any wayward missiles.
Oil breaks $80 a barrel after Yemen air strikes. 12 January 2024.
Oil surged above $80 a barrel after the airstrikes in Yemen provoked fears of an extended conflict in the Middle East that could disrupt global supplies.
Brent crude, which is refined into petrol and diesel, has risen 4pc today to tip above $80 a barrel, while US-produced West Texas Intermediate has climbed 4.2pc to more than $75.
The commodity, which was worth less than $77 at one point on Thursday, is on track for its largest daily gain in three months after targeted UK and US strikes on Yemen added to fears of further escalation in the Middle East conflict.
Nothing like a crisis to bring the truth out! Vlad must be laughing his socks off!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/12/ftse-100-market-news-live-economic-growth-boost-gdp-latest/
Today’s skirmish with the new world of deniability!
https://open.substack.com/pub/tarableu/p/the-health-professionals-or-the-nwo?r=10qzvs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true
So you can make an appointment online but you have to cancel on the phone or in person?
I have to report that they moved right back from that and have now looked after me very well!! It was a trifle vexing!
Britain and America must be ready to bomb Houthi bases to rubble. Hamish de Crettin-Gordon. 12 January 2024.
Missiles must pour into terrorist bases until they get the message: give up, and go home.
Well they are home Hamish! Many attempts have been made to prove airpower decisive in war. All have failed. In fact the opposite usually happens and the bombed gain credibility and increased resilience.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/12/houthi-air-strikes-britain-america/
Bombing the Houthi bases is a typlical US driven kinetic approach. Where is the deeper thinking to address the root causes of the situation? In the “all too difficult” basket? Typical US version of the OODA loop – Observe, Overreact, Destroy, and if you are lucky Apologise.
Does Cretin never give up – does he, in fact, have a brain cell?
We call him One Cell.
Hamish is a cretin. The Saudis have been bombing the Houthi’s to no effect for years. Had Hamish a sense of history he would recall that the former British colony of Aden was given up following our military defeat.
In those days late sixties, early seventies, Britain had a large military and was equipped to wage the odd war. Nowadays we are weak and our political class of fools are lacking in all education and diplomacy.
The same Hamish has been pressing his fanciful military strategies in the conflict in Ukraine. Britain should have nothing whatever to do with such an engagement. It is folly to pretend that Russia has any intention of invading Europe nor to think that Ukraine is a democracy worth fighting for. It is nothing but a failed state run by criminal oligarchs and assorted robbers.
Apols if this has already been posted. Psyching myself up to take Spartie for a walk-in the blazing sunshine.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6391f1869d2a55b2e4227993cf3d3bb7e6bb307f9f2f6f8f23e705a2e487bf50.png
If there is a revolution it will not be a peaceable one wrought from decisive political action but violent, driven by the big issue of the last 25 years.
He’s talking Brexit and the PO but fails to mention the Covid vaccine mandates and Lockdown debacles. There is a difference in people’s attitudes to the political elites and you can see it at the pub. Green shit, CO₂, energy security/prices/, net immigration 15 minute cities etc.
Keep off politics at the pub used to be pubs’ tradition. Not anymore.
I met a friend in town and virtually all we talked about was Church politics and how it affects us. Years ago, people used to think that politics didn’t affect them so they didn’t need to worry about it. I think that finally, that attitude is changing. Certainly Blair convinced me that Labour’s crap politics were going to ruin my life so I stopped being apathetic and for the first time in my life joined a political party.
If there is a revolution it will not be a peaceable one wrought from decisive political action but violent, driven by the big issue of the last 25 years.
The “far right” and the “Right” are simply right-minded and sensible.
https://twitter.com/CeeBee_CeeBee/status/1745742861717352711
https://twitter.com/JohnTozer81/status/1745793805373063346
A glimpse of the
futuremodern UK politics.Sturgeon’s successor, Humza Yousaf, is ignorant, incompetent and dangerous.
And that’s when he is performing at the absolute top of his game.
PIONEERING Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale has tragically passed away aged 83.
The trailblazing presenter became the first female DJ on the station in 1970.
Her family paid tribute, saying Annie passed away at her home in London yesterday after a “short illness”.
They added: “Annie was a pioneer, trailblazer and an inspiration to many.
“Her impulse to share that enthusiasm with audiences remained undimmed after six decades of broadcasting on BBC TV and radio globally.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/25340838/annie-nightingale-dead-radio-1-tribute/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=web_push_notification&utm_campaign=web_push_2024-01-12
I’m sad about that. She was a proper knowledgable DJ who loved her music, and wasn’t just there because she was a woman!
Yes and she had a very soothing comfortable voice … Poor Annie.
Dying at the age of 83 is not a tragedy.
Sad news.
https://twitter.com/Jensiphone/status/1745563941114180049
Wonderful Belle! What a tool!
https://twitter.com/Shunty_76/status/1745772229336440850
PHEW! Yet again I’m knackered and VERY sweaty.
The main trunk of the fallen ash I began dismantling yesterday had been cut into sections that can be upended down the hill and a start made on shifting them together with the lighter stuff.
Once it’s all cleared and stacked ready for further cutting, splitting and stacking, there is a 2nd ash that uprooted its self a couple, possibly 4, years ago than I plan starting on.
I’m exhausted just reading about it Bob!
Good afternoon all. A couple of weeks ago I spilt some white wine on my elderly laptop. It, being teetotal, died. I took it to the computer hospital but it would not come to life. Luckily the hard drive contents were retrieved. I have invested in an expensive MacBook Air with 15″ screen and am delighted with all the improvements over my old machine. Who knew there was USB4 now?
In the interim I have been able to read the blog on my phone but not to post – you would have thought a cat had walked all over a keyboard. The only snag has been the three hours it has taken me to sign in to Disqus on my new machine. Anyway, I am delighted to be back and wish you all a very belated Happy New Year
Happy New Year, Delboy! Hic! Good to see you!
Happy New Year delboy!
Good to see you are ok and back on here DB. Happy New Rear.
I was presented with a new Samsung laptop by my son , I am still struggling with lost passwords etc , so I am back on my old cracked one.
There’s nothing like an old computer to crack on.
Welome back to the fold(ing MacBook Air) DB – I believe it does fold.
Does Delboy have a prosthetic bottom?
Hi Belle. If you go to a computer repair shop they will transfer the data on your old laptop to the new one. Cost me £25.
You too Del, good to see you back
Happy New Year in return, Delboy.
And a Happy New Year to yourself too!
Happy New Year, Delboy. Glad it wasn’t anything more serious.
381738+ up ticks,
The question is,
Seeing as the peoples opposition, the
political / pharmaceutical brigade have struck the first blow against the peoples of these Isles, from which the peoples are still reeling will it change the voting pattern in any way ?
https://x.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1745747149348847710?s=20
Ineffectual I think is a result of their being rushed. If people were really going to killed in their billions a vaccine is the wrong method. Far better to make energy and food so expensive people can’t afford it by destroying the markets for both while simultaneously devaluing the currency to make even the wealthiest people poorer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pkElPEKGHs
And suddenly I’m less enthusiastic and less trusting of what he’s saying.
381738+ up ticks,
Afternoon S,
Could come under double jeopardy.
There is some credibility in the natto product as being able to alleviate the clot forming ability of the COVID virus infection insofar as it is a natural Japanese anticoagulant. Dandelion on the other hand is useful for alleviating pre-menstrual cramps.
I have no idea what the effact of taking both together would be in relation to moderating the effect of the spike protein other than a dandelion looking like the virus’s spike:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e36919d435b57429b5bc8394a12da4f62119273d249125fc7dd90ef745298f13.gif
Dandelion is a diuretic. It isn’t known as piss-en-lit for nothing!
OMG 😱
Alexandra “Sasha” Latypova is not and never has been a “Big Pharma Executive”.
https://www.techarp.com/facts/sasha-latypova-claims-epoch-tv/?amp=1
British airstrikes send message to Iran, says Cameron. 12 January 2024.
British airstrikes in Yemen send a “very clear message” to Iran, Lord Cameron has said.
The Foreign Secretary vowed that Britain would “will do what is necessary” to end Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, as he drew a distinction between the overnight strikes and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Anyone remember Libya/Brexit? We’re doomed!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/11/britain-us-strike-houthis-latest-yemen-red-sea-israel-live/
British airstrikes send message to Iran.
“KILL THE INFIDELS!!!”
The West must get a grip, for too long, it’s been allowing these medieval minded, widely spreading and increasingly very dangerous set of people on our planet, to do what they want and when they feel like doing it.
BALPA refusing to fly tourists to the Red Sea will competely destroy the Yemen tourist industry. 🤔
“British airstrikes in Yemen send a “very clear message”…to the 80,000 Yemeni living in the UK.
I would suggest to his lordship that dissing yer mad mullahs does not usually lead to a good outcome. Now, if he felt the need to actually go over there himself, I would fully support his journey but would suggest not buying a return ticket. It seems that you can never have enough wars to poke our noses into and It seems that absolutely no lessons have been learned…
Might have known we’d be bombing a foreign country about five minutes after Cameron was let back into government.
http://i7.cmail19.com/ei/j/AC/44A/E52/csimport/Screenshot2024-01-12at13.18.22.133215.png
‘I’ve got my 18-month-old playing darts.’
…he’s a little thin on top but at least he’s got a beard. Perhaps his beer drinking will help improve his hair growth and improve his mental arithmetic!
Although the English language has a very rich vocabulary I appear to have run out of all its fundamental and most explicit expletives to describe the actions, and in some cases the absence of any action (choose your own examples) of the present shower in government.
Yours totally exasperated,
Stephenroi.
Hear, hear!
Could I amend that a la Daily Mail to ‘here here’?
Well stephenroi, here is yet another revelation from the Post Office:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65730464
At least they did something right…{:¬))
Rantallion.
You get that one for free.
It doesn’t scan in the song : “You’ll never be a Sailor if your (you’re) rantallion…
They are all scrobnofulent.
Unguinous, colubrine egesta.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e8c07b21d19152d8b00193a3da5edbed1b22ef83/103_432_1476_886/master/1476.jpg?width=980&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=87efc92c47935dd65f6a62c11c76aed7
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/97022d75d8de1ea1aa41baa67ab950e446eb5988/0_0_2048_1365/master/2048.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=ae9ae6a675b127ac5523b93285a68109
An oncilla – a reclusive wild cat roughly the size of a domestic cat, but with bigger eyes and teeth – has been released after six months of rehabilitation in a wildlife refuge in Colombia.
A few photos from Exbury Gardens taken over the last couple of years, to brighten a dull, cold day. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f5c6d70b7c7b3ba7b3d9135bcd3a70a223527bda5faa783c289c84bb41c8dc8a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb3cac4665bb78b65fb70db34e3f81750f70f7c5ccddecff1992b34f2f6bbe73.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b87e9c440d922fdb2367b6b011356f647b50923d258324a437c5b0ee580836ce.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e792c86183a2b75521877523158957a780d0a1ed422a4ccc49539a072053e9e8.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1145d2494983e60f5dd051b2a6210158e2e8f276f59b0427070cf5d4c3892671.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a753ceb3704153f6970aea966d0afefc6773a03a9a20c5cfdace8f27e02ab2de.jpg
Stunning flowers, such strong ‘personalities’.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d0fe29f9571c063ea9e5fa543a659bd11b21e02c/0_0_3077_2037/master/3077.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=82fc9283cb5ba024761e3a93bf512eab
A blond European hedgehog rests at Prickly Pigs Hedgehog Rescue in Otley, West Yorkshire
A star making a point.
Please do not show anymore ‘cats’ SWMBO wants to adopt them all
I find it more than a little incongruous that the British government is constantly slashing the resources of the British armed forces whilst simultaneously increasing those of foreign armed forces, and bombing the hell out of the seriously deranged nutters of the Middle East.
If I was a Far Right Conspiracy Theorist I could imagine myself thinking that they want to stir up the stone age throwbacks and to leave the British people open to their barbarous aggression and hate.
At least the UK could contribute to the fighting, Canada managed to send three officers to help coordinate the fighting. No planes, no ships, no troops just three coordinators who are probably making coffee for the workers.
The terrible twosome…. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58767f4ac2da540b2dfb27aeb7b49cfe2ee2a743f782b791a497c85a611841fc.jpg
Are their eyes dazzled by the quilt…?
Normally covered up with a faux fur blanket. Nice and toasty.
Lasers. All dogs have laser vision. If they get really excited they’re like Superman.
Bought that in Habitat in 1985. It was much brighter then !
You can buy dogs in Habitat?
It’s their natural habitat.
Very good. Ten out of ten.
You’re in a good mood. What’s wrong?
Just my inherent bonhomie.
Makes a nice change from moaning.
Sorry – you must be confusing me with another NoTTLer.
Ah! Habitat! My fave store in Edinburgh circa 1980!
They are gud bois.
Harry on the right. He opens doors for Dolly. A true gent.
So cute, sweeties . https://media3.giphy.com/media/oH9DJbJJr42lO/giphy-downsized-small.mp4
Harry’s twin !
Long haired blue Chihuahua. Not cheap ! The breeder let me have him for £500. Normally double that. He’s still intact so i have the option to breed him.
When Harry met Dolly 🙂
Named after Harry and Dolly Rawlins from the TV show ‘Widows’. Both feisty characters.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2024/01/12/south-africa-stand-down-jewish-captain-u19-world-cup-israel/
Unbelievable!
What a ghastly state SA has become!
It’s not just South Africa. It’s everywhere. The oppression of free speech is only going to stop when the authoritarian Left are once again confronted and defeated in war. The difference is next time we can’t let them ever get back up to do this to normal people again.
Time off for good behaviour?
The LibDem-SNP axis of inaction would hand the world to dictators
We must not pander to those who will oppose any military action against any enemy of Israel
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/12/the-lib-dem-snp-would-hand-the-world-to-dictators/
A couple of BTL comments under the article:
When Ed Davey has to resign as leader of the Lib Dems then perhaps the best replacement would be Layla Moran – it is high time the Lib Dems ceased to exist and Ms Moran would guarantee that outcome.
She got into trouble when she beat up her male lover. She now claims to be a pansexual – whatever that may be. (I hope it has nothing to do with goats!)
I’m not sure that this was what was in Eric Clapton’s mind when he sang the song!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/148e8f0dca6e0ee0472fde27b0af16d1301bd5e6b836411aa080023041aaa2ed.png
Doesn’t ‘pansexual’ mean a fetish for cooking vessels?
So what you are saying is that she is into Steamy sex?
No – instead of wearing a paper bag over her head, she wears a saucepan.
She’s certainly got Fanny Cradock’s eyes.
Shame she is unable to close her mouth.
A 4 pinter at the Brompton Stomp “Grab-A-Grannie Night”.
She beat up her male lover? Not an Alpha then.
The MP for Oxford East and Abingdon I think the constituency is. A fruit-loop for a constituency of academic fruit-loops. I think she claims to be half Palestinian which plays well at the moment. If she had a couple of play-mates we’d have our very own ‘squad’ on this side of the Piond.
Which half?
Right, that’s me for the day.
Other than a bit of scavenging and gleaning, that’s all the logs brought down to a lower level.
Not totally finished moving them, but a fair start on what I’ll be needing to refill the Hollybush stack.
What? Working a half day today? Shocking, Robert…!!
Dock his pay for half a day…wot, he’s a volunteer? No tea, then ;-))
Yo Bob,the trees around Bonsall must quake in their roots, when you walk near them, with a chainsaw over your shoulder
Autumn comes early in Bonsall.
Why do people get the idea that I drop the trees myself?
Other than diseased ash and elm, of which we have a large number, the wood I collect for the fire has either dropped off a tree, usually in high winds or due to snow, or have fallen over, often after dying off and the roots decaying.
OT – how one needs to be careful about trains. The MR’s Loopy Friend is staying. As she has discovered (thank God) that she can no longer drive, she arrived in Narfurk by train. She needs to return on Monday to Portsmouth.
I looked on the National Rail Journey Planner.
It comes up with one route. Kings Lynn-Kings-Cross-Waterloo-Pompey. Four hours. £75.60.
I tried a different approach. Kings Lynn-Cambridge-Three Bridges-Pompey. Four and a hour hours. £43.60
Though the second one is longer – it avoids the Tube – lugging stuff up and down stairs and walking miles. The changes at Cambridge and 3 Bridges are simple – over a footbridge.
I am available for journey planning….!!
Clever you Bill..
Better than a ticket office whotsit!
You are the Man in Seat 61 and I claim my £5!:
https://www.seat61.com
Handy website.
It is very good as are: https://www.tailormaderail.com/?gclid=CjwKCAiA44OtBhAOEiwAj4gpOQ4QpkEWLQQr9fvNgtyZrCJxVkiyxLNDQzWut_sayllhyEW19XVFSRoCkGYQAvD_BwE
Have used them several times often at short notice – they produce Train tickets and notes re distance from station to chosen hotels etc etc. Very good service.
You will be pleased to learn that i won’t be descending on Norfolk this year (unless Geoff chooses Norfolk for the Nottle lunch) Harry Kobeans and his lovely wife will be meeting me at Rules for lunch.
One Rule for the rich….
It’s nice to treat oneself occasionally.
I will be specifically asking for the booth that ‘M’ from James Bond occupied in the film S.P.E.C.T.R.E. I will let you know if he has left me a message.
S. P. E. C. so…
Are you a Trainspotter in your free time?
No never – different sort of nerd/anorak. London buses – before they stopped looking like biscuit tins.
Just the ticket…..
How do you get from Cambridge, on the railway system, directly to a location south of Gatwick (“Three Bridges”) without crossing London?
Train goes direct from Cambridge to Brighton. “Thameslink” it is called.
One of the bonuses of Maggie forcing BR to introduce Flexible Rostering and following it up with Sectorisation which took passenger services away from the Regions and created the Business Sectors.
Network SouthEast, headed by Chris Green, took over all rail services in the South East, putting North and South of the Thames under a single management for the first time, allowing him to drive through the reopening of a VERY short length of tunnel between Farringdon and Holborn Viaduct allowing services to run between Bedford and Brighton.
Subsequently the service has expanded beyond all recognition.
I bet he got no thanks for it…
No honours, unfortunately, but still very much held in high regard within the Railway Industry.
If only there were a train line linking north and south London!
Living in snow covered Sweden, Grizz doesn’t get out much…!
Snow Hill covered way? I see what you did there!
National Express can offer her: Norwich Bus Station 0930 via London Victoria (50 mins wait) to The Hard at Portsmouth. Journey time 6 hours, price from £14.10 plus a booking fee of £1.50.
True – and I expect that is the way she’ll choose.
A good price but i’m not prepared to travel like that over that length of time. I get pains.
My much loved Peugeot 307 SW diesel ( 06 plate) , which has 172,000 on the clock , has failed the MOT , on emissions .
I have been advised to say goodbye …
As if we have money to burn .
Surely the garage where it’s serviced can fix that.
It can’t be that bad.
Take it to another garage, Belle! That is ridiculous!
Others such as Alec would know more, but perhaps I could suggest a top up with brandname premium fuel (eg Shell or BP), a bottle of Redex Emissions Reducer (possibly on offer at Lidl) and your best hope, a long drive before the MoT appointment?
Wot I was gonna say! tim
That’s a pisser, Belle. Sorry about thta.
Well you can sleep easy, knowing you are “saving the planet” (sic)
A slippery Eagle today!
Wordle 937 2/6
🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
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That’s smart.
I managed my usual par.
Wordle 937 4/6
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Wow, well done. I thought I’d had it easy today. Bet it’s a stinker tomorrow.
Wordle 937 3/6
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Can’t be, stinker is 7 letters
Barely made a 4 here.
Wordle 937 4/6
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Metoo.
Wordle 937 4/6
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Talk about a lose lose situation.
The West “wins”: millions of migrants, the West “loses”: millions of Migrants and either way billions in humanitarian aid.
From today’s ES newsletter.
‘Burt’ Young, the Rocky actor, has died aged 83. [His real name was Gerald Tommaso DeLouise]
Burt Young. Burt Reynolds. Burt Lancaster. Why do Yanks have so much trouble properly spelling the name Bert?
They don’t know Bow?
Wow!
I know many people whose names are shortened to “Bert”. I don’t know, and never have known, a single person called “Bert” as their full name, so I really fail to see why “Burt” is less acceptable.
Hey, Beatnik, it because they’re called Burton, Dude!
Don’t diss (ha ha) Burt Lancaster, one of my favourite actors. Bear in mind your use of the word Yanks was originally just a derogatory term that southern North Americans used for northern North Americans.
Oh, another film I’ve not watched all of, Rocky, that is.
Loved Burt Lancaster, did you see him in ‘Local Hero’ possibly his last role, I think.
Of course. Been a while since I watched it though. I always loved his polite hat holding across his stomach with the menace in those shiny eyes.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/PortalPictures/january-2024/1301-MATT-PORTAL-WEB-P1.png?imwidth=320
Boeing’s subcontractor for fuselage parts knows where its priorities lie! Not in engineering excellence it seems!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO0Di1ET8Zg
If it’s about the inclusion of diversity among other safety criteria we had a couple of posts recently.
I don’t know if this is real, but if it is, it’s total insanity. Where would we all be if it wasn’t for the inventions and developments made over time by whitey? Though they did forget to include ‘intelligent people’ in their list.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eb43f84d4e1c0d7419be870ae8b05c18941f89975117a6ca5d75ecba9797cf4e.jpg
Whitey is always outstanding (photograph from the Dakar Rally)
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2f8347d20f8a5c5a57cb45eaa2ed265b2079ffcf/0_0_7233_4822/master/7233.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=6c0a023aa89584b09a8c8d06de643628
I am all of those things. Much better than living in a mud hut drinking raw sewage.
If we had the intelligence and drive of the ‘mud hut dwellers’, we’d still be living in caves.
Average IQ of 80. 20 points below the European average.
That smart?!
I did say ‘average’. There will be quite a few below that line. :@)
I tick 6 out of 7. Does that make me more of a target?
And to think I always had you down as a bloke…
How dare you assume my gender!
They always does.
I tick all but the man box too. We’re still undesirable in their eyes. It must be all that lack of ‘privilege’ that makes certain groups experts rioting, knife crime and other violent crimes.
It’s not that she’s utterly wrong but the language and sentiment are divisive and alienating. They do nothing to bring harmony or ease tensions, instead, sowing resentment. For example, it’s self evident that the able-bodied have an in-built advantage over those who are not. The latter find life more difficult, not least in terms of mobility and employment/career opportunities. To speak of privilege, however, suggests that those who are able-bodied have been favoured and don’t fully deserve whatever comes their way from having this in-built advantage.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12950961/Johns-Hopkins-Medicine-DEI-chief-brands-whites-males-Christians-ENGLISH-speakers-privileged-letter.html
‘Chief Diversity Officer’. Job description – to seek out non-existent racism, sexism, ‘phobias’ etc. and to cause division where none existed previously.
That’s the ticket !
Have just said similar.
Great minds eh!
‘Dr. Sherita Golden, Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Chief Diversity Officer,
has sincerely acknowledged this mistake and retracted the language used
in the message.’
Only because there was pushback. That is exactly what she thinks and her apology sounds false.
It’s only when the ‘privileged’ get caught out in their lies that they ‘apologise’.
The most privileged of all must surely be Chief Diversity Officers…..
We have Chief Diversity Officers. Muslims have Morality Police. Finger wagging interfering busybodies.
She exactly is utterly wrong. White working class people have never been privileged, neither have men, English speaking people, Christians or middle aged people.
Do you deny that able-bodied people have no advantages over the disabled? Does not speaking English in an English-speaking country not impede in any way your ability to compete with those conversant in the language? If I’m 18 years old, can I secure well-paid jobs just as easily as any 48 year old?
‘Advantage’ is a better term than ‘privilege’, which implies an entitlement.
I quite agree. As I said, the language she uses is divisive. Her job is to find grievances and legitimise them.
It appears to me that she sets out to create grievances that don’t exist and drive wedges between people.
It’s like all those Race Relations Laws that created divisions where there were none.
I’m not good enough to play Premier league football – what exactly is your point David?
It means you lack a privilege, in the language of Sherita Golden.
An there was me thinking it was talent that counted!
That might have been so at one time (and may still apply when it comes to Premier League football teams) but now what matters is the colour of your skin (so long as it isn’t white/pink).
Let’s put the boot on the other foot.
I’m male, white, Christian, able bodied, middle aged, relatively wealthy and English speaking.
Where would that put me in terms of “privileged” in most of Africa, most of the middle East, most of Asia?
In the cross hairs of numerous rifles, I would suggest.
As I said to BB2, the list of privileges was only applicable in the USA. It wasn’t drawn up for the whole world.
As far as the promulgators of this theory are concerned, if it applies in the USA it applies everywhere there are white people.
Don’t kid yourself otherwise.
Couldn’t we put it the other way round and say that disabled people have a a disadvantage from the able bodied? I had to learn French when I worked in Geneva and was offered quite a large promotion at the brewery where I worked. What on Earth are mid-aged people? I think that all here are beyond that, Stig. And surely youngsters have to gain experience before they can earn better salaries. I remember my first full time job in 1969 paid £10 10s a week and that 50% of the factory floor staff were Indian or Pakistanis. There were more problems between the sub-continentals than with us poor white folk.
Sorry to rant. just got back from arguing at me local.
I was on the factory floor, BTW.
But that’s what the use of the word “privilege” was meant to mean though, was it? Despite what she said when she got caught out. She used the word “privilege” in the context of critical race theory, where it does not mean, and is not intended to mean, “advantage”. Otherwise, the perfectly useful and adequate word “advantage” would have been used.
Of course not, I said men, English speaking people, Christians or middle aged people.
The majority of people in the world do NOT have English as their first language – being an English speaker doesn’t give you much advantage in their countries!
Try getting a tech job aged 48 – the 18 year old will be ahead of you in the queue!
Beware of this insidious accusation that being an English speaker makes you privileged – they are gunning for reparations from us for non English speaking countries because of this supposed privilege.
Her list of privileges is only applicable in the USA. English-speaking Is clearly no advantage in, say, Japan.
English isn’t defined as the official language in most US states either, though it’s commonly spoken. This push against English is a vile attempt to try and stick imaginary privilege on people.
By the way, I did not say she was absolutely correct in every detail. I said she was not utterly wrong, and gave an example.
She deeply regrets being called out on it, that’s for sure. As for everything else…we’ll I don’t know.
I am now disabled (through no fault of my own). I was not more privileged when I was able bodied. I am the same person – just in more pain!
Golden will be signing on tomorrow morning, yes?
That’s me gone for today. Chilly night ahead. Apparently. Though that is prolly Project Fear…again (yawns).
Have a splendid evening.
A demain.
Have a warm and pleasant evening.
Good night, Bill. Sleep well.
I promise to go away now. Really. It is just my wish to keep away from MR’s LF.
LF = Left Foot?
Wotsya done Bill?
Loopy Friend. See NoTTL (many years passim)
https://twitter.com/True_Belle/status/1745879897384341797
Allah help us 😨
But how will we be protected ?
A CRISIS of confidence among firearms cops has led to an alarming shortfall in numbers, The Sun can reveal.
Met Police Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist says morale is at its lowest ever, with gun officers fearful of the scrutiny they face if they fire shots. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25333688/crisis-confidence-firearms-cops-shortfall-numbers/
What a surprise.
Sooner is later than even sooner.
Sadly, I suspect it will.
But without the sunshine.
A conspiracy theorist dons tinfoil hat:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12957065/Lucy-Charles-Tragedy-body-missing-woman-39-police-weeks-swept-away-flooded-river.html
It strikes me that are too many similar cases for it to be purely coincidence.
Might there be a serial killer stalking river banks?
Evening, all. I am so proud of Oscar; he and Kadi went for their annual boosters today and Oscar took his like a good dog without having to be sedated. He even let the vet pet him and took the treats (once his muzzle had been removed – I still don’t want to take unnecessary risks) gently. The vet said I’d done a good job with him. Because he wasn’t sedated, he was able to walk up to the vets, which gave him some much needed (and unaccustomed) exercise. He’s now flat out, exhausted!
You’ve done a brilliant job with that poor dog!
Thank you. He’s still a work in progress, but he’s come a long way. I can even brush him for a short while. When I first got him, he would attack the brush the moment he spotted it!
Poor?? Luckiest dog alive!
Good point!
I used to tell him when he was grumpy, “you could have done worse, you know; you could still be in the Dogs’ Home!”
Well done Oscar and Kadi, plus full marks to you, for all your patience, care and affection!
Kadi has always been the sort of dog that would freeze if anyone wanted to do anything with him. He has a loose tooth, unfortunately, which will probably mean a BIG bill.
A hard, meaty bone to chew?
He’s not a bone-chewer, unlike my previous dog (who had magnificent teeth even into old age – he was 17.5 yrs old when he died with an excellent set of gnashers). I am going to source some doggy toothpaste and try that.
To take a nervous snappy dog and have it become a calmer, happier one is about the greatest thing going. Congrats Conway!
I think he’d had such a bad experience that he was more distrustful than nervous. He thought he’d get his retaliation in first! Now he knows, hopefully, that he doesn’t have to.
Ain’t that the truth. Like small children really
Your patience and kindness has been rewarded, well done and bless you.
Thank you, Maggie. The first people who looked at taking him on turned him down because he was “snappy”. I took him on hoping that after he’d been with me for a while, he wouldn’t be snappy!
Because he’d soon learn that you snapped back?
Quite the contrary. He soon learned that he wouldn’t be beaten if he did something wrong. He got told he was bad and ignored. No treats, no cuddles (and he’s come to look forward to his cuddle sessions). Then he would come and say “sorry” and be forgiven. He’s a bright dog really.
Snapping comes in non-violent flavours too…
I was firm but fair (and consistent).
Good man yourself, Conners.
Love and patience clealy worked wonders.
Evening Conners,you are living proof there are no bad dogs only bad(previous) owners
Well done all of you!!
I’ve always maintained that there are no bad dogs, only bad owners, but unfortunately, I have had one failure. I’m convinced that this particular dog was a psychopath and nothing would have turned him round. I felt that he had a brain tumour, but when we had to have him put down, we didn’t have a post mortem so I don’t know for sure.
The vet wears a muzzle?
You will notice that the subject of the sentence (He) is the same throughout, even though it was not repeated. Oscar let the vet pet him and Oscar took the treats (once Oscar’s muzzle had been removed …) gently. The vet, incidentally, was a young woman.
I had a phone call this morning from the widow of the gentleman whose funeral we attended on Monday.
The dear lady is 87 years old and as bright as a button , she thanked us for being there for her , and we talked about the large family her late 90 year old husband had, and we marvelled at the number of sons , daughters , grand children and great grandchildren that were the products of a much loved deceased wife who died over 20 years ago .
Our conversation was interesting , amongst his many hobbies , as well as his work , her husband was a champion archer , taught archery and was well known everywhere, collected and repaired antique motorbikes , and was a standard bearer for his old regiment .
I asked her how she met her husband … she told me she had been married 11 years to him . She said she was 76 when she met him , she had never had a boyfriend , always single , a career woman , no family, originally from London , cannot drive , because buses and tubes were 2 a penny, and she never ever imagined getting married and looking after a man and a home , and had to learn how to cook ….!!
She is an amazing amusing lady, and told me that love arrived very late in her life .. and how she had never EVER kissed or slept in a bed with a partner until she got married .. and afterwards they were inseparable cuddle monsters , tall , good looking decent couple with so much charisma , you could all feel the warmth bouncing off them .
The sad fact of life is , she is stuck fast in a village that doesn’t even have a rural bus service or even a doctors surgery, there are so many trapped people these days without transport and basic facilities .. modern life , eh?
Every village should have a True_Belle.
Absolutely.
Its not a good thing to go into later life with a huge house or live in the back of beyond. Unfortunately, these things have to be considered when much younger and the spirit is still capable of a change. Unless you have children that you plan to move in with. I have notified my step daughter that I would like a nice annex and supplies of craft ale, and just to make sure she is accepting of her duty, I have said that we think an adjoining room when on her honeymoon would prepare the couple for life ahead..
To which she relied:
“That sounds wonderful. We’ve decided to ‘do a Rastus’ and sail the world. You can sleep in the tender”
…Accompanied by a look of distain.
I don’t have daughters, only unmarried sons ,
I was a good daughter in law to Moh’s , mother and father , only me . Other daughter in law lives in Australia .. the emigrated in the 70’s.
I suppose we’re in the back of beyond, but have an amazingly good local 10 minutes walk (getting a bit longer each year) away. It counts for an awful lot.
I don’t drive.
That is so sad, but at least your friend did find happiness even if it was later in life. Her location certainly sounds challenging.
I sometimes wonder if we should move/downsize to our nearby town. But we have an excellent half hourly bus service (though not much use for those who rely on mobility scooters), and the tens of thousands it would cost us in stamp duty, estate agent and legal fees, would fund some years of paying a cleaner and gardener, as well as taxis when we can no longer drive.
When I first moved here I was unhappy because it wasn’t rural enough, but as I’ve aged, I’ve come to appreciate that I can at a pinch walk to the shops and there is a bus service into town should I have to give up driving, although I will have to give up lots of activities that take place in other towns because they are not served with buses from this location.
I think the time will come when we will have to draw up a list of pros and cons of staying put. I suspect the cons will win.
We have the train, and the rare bus, and taxis etc, the village here has grown , we have privacy, and hardly see our neighbours who are also quite private … Moh isn’t terribly sociable , but he has his golf , we don’t drink, so pubs are no no, sad really that life revolves around drinking , I love the warmth and sociability of a pub … I will drink a J2O or alternative or a sip of something stronger .
There are lots of good, non-alcoholic, drinks available now that I’m sure you could enjoy very pleasant evenings in your local, if you wished.
Our son’s partner drank non-alcoholic lager when we went out for a meal while she was expecting our little grandson. While shopping to restock MoH’s drinks cupboard, I bought a bottle of Gordon’s gin, only to find out it was non-alcoholic when I got home. I had no idea a non-alc version was available.
No Sin Gin it’s promoted as.
That’s a catchy one.
It’s very good – it smells like gin. I experimented in the summer with basil martinis i.e. lots of basil, lime, – touch of sugar, the “gin” and soda water – delicious.
From a non drinker’s perspective that should be good. I must admit it surprises me how many choices there are, but presumably there must be a good market.
Judging by the huge range of flavours, gin seems to be the ‘in’ drink these days. It’s a good development that there is now a decent range of non-alcoholic versions of drinks – benefits drivers, expectant mums … or should that be expectant people 🙂 …. those who cannot tolerate alcohol or its effects. I have a vague memory from the 1980s that it was mainly just alcohol-free wine then – and it wasn’t that good either.
Yes, Gins seem to come in a huge variety of flavours; still stick with the basic ones.
The difference between my in-laws who live in what is now an (isolated) holiday village in Cornwall and who watch TV all day, and my parents, who live in the suburbs of Wolverhampton where they play bridge, meet friends for coffee, go to local garden centres for a look round and lunch, my mum has her hair done every week, the shops are nearby…my in-laws are a few years younger than my parents but you wouldn’t know it.
When we have the Nottler shindig where we all meet up with each other, we shall all have a good time.
No worries, Belle, I can drink yours, and YOHs share too!
Do your research, and maths, very carefully to decide whether it’s good for you to downsize.
Not only large amounts of stamp duty and legal fees, but everything you do (such as removal company) is vatable at 20%
The person that profits most from a downsize is the taxman, which is why politicians are so keen to encourage it.
We always recommend our friends to do their research and, surprise, surprise, there are very few that consider it
financially worth while.
I think the only reasons we might downsize would be if it became impractical to stay in our small village or we moved to be nearer our son in Leeds. Either way, we’d couldn’t downsize too much as we need the space when the other son visits from Canada with his children – or we buy a suitably small property with space for a caravan for them.
As you say, it’s the financial implications that prevent many from downsizing. Downsizers should be exempt from VAT on all moving related costs, and stamp duty should be minimised for them as well.
She sounds lovely, Belle.
A lovely story Belle. How wonderful that she finally found love at the age of 76.
Heartwarming.
As soon as this vile, uncivilised creature was charged, his application for the right to remain should have been permanently cancelled, with no right ever of appeal. These sort are incapable of reform and their beliefs are totally incompatible with any civilised country.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12956775/Sudanese-refugee-given-final-leave-remain-UK-facing-rape-charge-attacking-drunk-university-student-slept-bed-jailed-eight-years.html#comments
POTUS is sitting in his office and asks the staff what to do about the Yemeni rag-‘eads.
Blitz those gawdam Houthies back to their caves Sir. We have a nucleeer carrier on standby.
Hang on, those Hooters girls looked very friendly last time I looked in, their drop tanks were certainly ready for action.
Its a bunch of Arabs Sir, I suggest we bomb all their arms dumps and they will return to goat herding.
What about the wimmin and children who will be cooking supper.
They wont worry about those as they will still have their goats and kids to fall back on
Well, lets get going and by the end of the day we can give out tea and medals.
Sir, just to remind you that the IDF have occupied a small area, locked it down, bombed the crap out of it, and Hamas are still as fat as ever and firing rockets.
Perhaps we should ask those Brits to join in as they are always up for a punch up.
Ah yes, like when we invaded Afghanistan and took over the country after bombing it back to the stone age.
A minor detail Sir, but the country was and remains in the stone age without our intervention.
Well, there is an election next year and Hunter is in the dock, proceed with plan A…
Too true to be funny.
In the world of racing AP (McCoy) was known by his initials. Once upon a time Wales had JPR and Gareth Edwards. Now it’s got the likes of Drakeford. How are the mighty fallen!
I fully agree with the piece on JPR.
So many magical Welsh players back then, to stand out like he did was really something.
One of the best lines I’ve ever read by a journalist:
“Still, the modern fetish for parachuting unqualified drones into a senior role seemingly on the basis of their skin colour or uterus too often ends in failure”
Did some one mention Haggis?
https://twitter.com/youmustbegrumpy/status/1745908804175176190
Buy good Haggis online/
https://www.scottbrothersbutchers.co.uk/shop-category/haggis-puddings/haggis/
Where might one buy a naughty Haggis?
In a tin can.
That is a nice link, I like Haggis ..
The instant meal might be a treat?
I like Haggis too, Maggie, and bought one in Sainsbury’s a few days ago for just £3. It will do me for a Zoom meeting next Thursday with some Scottish friends, and seven days later on the real Burns Night.
Moh won’t touch it sadly.
Very sensible of him. Have you thought of passing him a knife and fork? Lol.
https://twitter.com/True_Belle/status/1745931656207192121
Night night Elsie
George Cockburn butchers of Dingwall make prize winning Haggi and do mail order
Wouldn’t touch one with a Scotsman.
YUK!
If you think that haggis is foul try andouillette:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1775b6bfa3e895a7ee6baefdef42140ddc58f41034a9ce9a8e918d39a18ffb8.png
I shall give that a miss too.
I get a bit bored seeing those stomach turning adverts for donations to release sheepish looking Haggies from getting well and truly stuffed.
All roads lead to Tone?
Sir Tony Blair was warned the Horizon IT system at the centre of the Post Office scandal could be flawed before it was rolled out, a document shows.
A handwritten note from the then-Labour PM, published by the public inquiry on Friday, suggests he raised concerns after being warned the system was “possibly unreliable”.
But he said he gave it the go-ahead after being reassured by others.
Among them was Peter Mandelson, who was then his trade and industry secretary.
In a letter dated 10 December 1998, Lord Mandelson said he believed the “only sensible choice” was to proceed with Horizon.
He warned that cancelling the contract would cause “political fallout” from post office closures and damage relations with Fujitsu, which he described as a major investor in the UK.
The letter, and the submission to Sir Tony, were both previously shown in hearings at the inquiry, which was launched in 2021, but have now been published in full.
“sir” Bliar
Should the Knight disappear now as things can only get better whilst we enter the dawn of a new era.
I know that TB was involved in the Horizon debacle because he signed it off for the Government but I didn’t know that PM (who was.not the PM) was complicit in sanctioning Fujitsu’s IT system to avoid a political fallout despite concerns about its flaws. Together with TB and PM, ED (the then Liberal Postal Affairs Minister) should take full resposibility for the disastrous shortcomings, coverups and false charges levelled against postmasters and postmistresses
Stephen Bradshaw’s excuses epitomise how Post Office scandal unfolded
Former investigator’s responses at Horizon inquiry reveal how wickedness came about through the petty enforcement of the unimportant
MADELINE GRANT, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER • 11 January 2024 • 8:25pm
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c660db2807106bc5682c13fe19c4a4ac7e62c641cc3d360b4e3eb645d41bf906.jpg
Stephen Bradshaw mumbled and spluttered while being grilled at the Horizon inquiry
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
It’s always fashionable – and easy – to assume evil will come to your door, jackbooted and uniformed. In truth, evil more often comes about through the petty enforcement of the unimportant. It comes through a letter, or an investigation, or in this case, an email from a computer system. Details of the horror of the Post Office scandal are now well known. The inevitable question raised in many minds was: “how?” Thursday gave a grim insight into the answer.
Former Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw – an irascible Scouser who’d inexplicably come dressed as an extra from Bugsy Malone – was being grilled by the Horizon inquiry. For one described as having a “heavy footprint” in the scandal, he seemed to know very little about it. Bradshaw’s excuses mostly fell under the umbrella of “not my problem, guv’nor”. He described himself as a “small cog” and a “liaison man”. “All I do is interview, gather the information and send it off.” Bradshaw claimed to have simply signed off letters put in front of him by lawyers, without reading them first. Ah, the old “perjury” defence! Victims were jailed based on statements that coached witnesses didn’t actually write, all is forgiven!
The man shining a light beneath this particular paving slab of wickedness was inquiry Counsel Julian Blake. It might seem like this was a case of “fish in a barrel” but – as the Covid Inquiry shows – the wrong framing can lead to a tribunal becoming little more than a circus. By contrast, Blake’s cold, incisive and righteous anger was a much-needed reminder that, when freed from the inputs of the Twitterati experts, we can still do these things properly.
Blake wondered how Bradshaw had failed to heed numerous warnings about the software. Bradshaw replied: “I’m not technically minded.” Being a fraud inspector, you might think, is a job requiring some tech expertise, or even a morsel of suspicion about the computer system in question. You’d be wrong. (“I’m not pastry-minded, says bakery owner.”)
The investigators, like all pound-shop Pol Pots, had evidently enjoyed their work, bringing dramatic flair to their interrogations of innocent postmasters. Bradshaw had accused one of producing “a pack of lies”, language the Counsel contemptuously described as being worthy of “a 1970s detective show”. The transcripts gave a uniquely chilling insight into what it must have felt like to be interviewed by these people, who ask questions knowing that absolutely nothing you say can affect the outcome. Imagine The Crucible with clipboards.
“We’ve got a choice of two things, haven’t we Lisa?” one of Bradshaw’s colleagues had said. “Either you’re totally incompetent and you’re costing the Post Office three or four hundred pounds a week and therefore we can’t afford to keep you.”
“Don’t sack me.”
“Or you’re fiddling the pensions deliberately and pocketing the money.”
“No, I haven’t got it, I haven’t.”
Somehow, the investigators managed to sound simultaneously malicious and incompetent – as if Bodger & Badger were running the Spanish Inquisition.
Of course, every bastard has to start somewhere: usually in another job which provides training in the dark arts of petty persecution. Himmler was a chicken farmer, Stalin was a monk. We learnt that prior to becoming a PO loan-shark this man had been a TV licence investigation operative. Of course he had!
On and on, Bradshaw mumbled and spluttered through case study after case study of human misery – with the same sense of an empathy bypass. Doubtless he is merely the tip of a colossal iceberg, but there could be no better reminder that sometimes evil is most wicked in the hands of the administrators.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/11/stephen-bradshaw-post-office-investigator-horizon-inquiry/
And another ….from the DT:
Robin Garbutt is either a cold-blooded murderer, rightly languishing in jail for battering his wife to death and then inventing a robbery at their Post Office to cover it up.
Or else he is the victim of the greatest miscarriage of justice yet perpetrated by the Post Office’s defective Horizon IT system.
Garbutt, 57, has spent the last 12 years in jail after being convicted in 2011 of the murder of his wife Diana, 40, at their home above the Post Office they ran together in the pretty village of Melsonby in North Yorkshire.
He protests his innocence and claims that the Post Office produced evidence against him – drawing on the Horizon IT system – to show that he was stealing money to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
Without the Post Office’s analysis of the Horizon evidence, claim Garbutt’s supporters, then a huge chunk of the motive for the murder – and the manner in which it was staged – disappears too.
Garbutt has taken his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) three times in an attempt to force a retrial.
Three times they have kicked it into touch, most recently in November last year when the CCRC concluded that “figures from the Horizon system were not essential to his conviction for murder”.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d97862ef3e95dde8d6381cfe3f952bfc77307f394df9f7a9fb99128313a0755.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d4e075912c551769ffb11db7125bb630dca6733f167c523de594463a050edd8.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a0ab0403ed28bf8fb33bfabe3e366b61fc32ba2b35242d2633cf5a680eb5cec.jpg
If you like your choirs white, this is for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jml39FZ4yns
Luvvvvvvverly xx
Wonderful!
The war in Ukraine makes me recall “In The Steppes of Central Asia”. (Borodin re orchestrated by Rimsky Korsakov).
That and my love of the performances of the great Ukrainian/Russian pianist Emil Gilels.
Wonderful, really moving. And does the colour matter!
Query?
Councillors have renewed a pledge to cut the urban speed limit in a seaside conurbation to 20mph (32km/h).
Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council wants to lower speed limits to cut pollution and improve road safety.
Deputy leader Millie Earl said the parties that make up the ruling Three Towns Alliance had campaigned on the 20mph issue ahead of the last election.
The Conservative group described the plans as “anti-car measures”.
Responding to a question from cycling campaigner Adam Osman at Tuesday’s council meeting, Ms Earl said a default 20mph limit in urban areas “would be beneficial to walking, wheeling and cycling” as well as benefiting public health and air quality.
She said her ward of Newtown and Heatherlands in Poole had already seen the benefits of 20mph zones.
“I would like to see other communities able to benefit from the safer and healthier environment as we have,” she said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-67935171
Soon , many areas of Dorset will resort to 20mph.
Why is this if my car has failed on emissions and is off the road, why are they talking about 20mph to cut pollution ….. Traffic stuck in slow moving traffic …. hmmmmm
I would have thought the lower the gear the greater the pollution.
Exactly and the more time you spend on the street sending out exhaust fumes.
At Vauxhall Bridge earlier in the week, one lorry only made it across at the lights at the speed limit. Absolutely bonkers.
Exactly ..
Yep, lower gear = more revs = more pollution = brain dead councillors
and, youspend more time checking your speedometer than you do being aware of what is happening around you.
The other thing of course, is that many cyclists do not abide by the Laws relating to the road.
Overtaking on the inside
Not stopping at zebra crossings
Not abeting speed limits
No Lights
Wear dark clothing
On ibly dibbly machines (phones, I pads etc)
and, youspend more time checking your speedometer than you do being aware of what is happening around you.
The other thing of course, is that many cyclists do not abide by the Laws relating to the road.
Overtaking on the inside
Not stopping at zebra crossings
Not abeting speed limits
No Lights
Wear dark clothing
On ibly dibbly machines (phones, I pads etc)
= or a mission that suits their agenda.
It’s not about the environment; it’s not about road safety; it’s about control – it’s simply that people enter local politics because they enjoy bossing other people about.
In my experience people enter local government because they are otherwise unemployable in the commercial world.
Some having secured jobs in the Executives of District Councils exploit their positions to gain financial advancements. Brown envelopes are very real, believe me. Look only at the volume of developments on greenfield sites whilst brownfield sites remain undeveloped.
Once upon a time persons standing for election would do so after a career in business, public service or the Trade Unions and would usually have more than a bit of experience and good sense.
Now?
We have immature children still wedded to their 6th form politics.
It’s a plot to control us and show us we have no power. They haven’t the decency to allow us to vote on it. It’s a dangerously slow speed btw.
Well that’s me for today, chums. Good night and sleep well.
Gonzalo, an American citizen, has died in a Ukrainian prison. The Biden administration, in particular Victoria Nuland have blood on their hands.
The secret ballot, upon which all democracy is based was clearly abandoned via multiples by the Democrats in 2020. The cheating gave rise to insecurity and inevitably has frightened the illegitimate Biden administration and explains the many repulsive actions of the US government.
I feel so sorry that a couple of hundred evil compromised fools in Washington is both destroying the US and the other illegitimate fools in the UK government who are blindly following with similar malignant hostility and total lack of common sense and diplomacy.
I read that yesterday. He chose his path in life, but it’s another pointer to the criminal nature of the regime in Ukraine, that is currently attacking the Ukrainian church too.
Goodnight, everyone.
Good morning, all – Saturday’s new page is here.
‘Morning, Geoff, and thank you.
Thank you!