Thursday 18 January: Deporting people to Rwanda won’t fix Britain’s immigration problem

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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685 thoughts on “Thursday 18 January: Deporting people to Rwanda won’t fix Britain’s immigration problem”

    2. A long while ago our lot declared a snow day. It literally was. We all fired up google hangouts and sat there with our cameras on. It was like being in the office. If you needed help, you waved, just as if you were in.

  2. Morning, all Y’all.
    I get to put the first footprint in the fresh snow of a new Nottl page!

        2. Paul, at the time of posting this the two disputed first posts gives them both as 5 hours, but when I first came on Citroen1’s post said “14 minutes ago” and yours at the time was given as “13 minutes ago”. Within a very short time Citroen1’s became “15 minutes ago” and yours changed to “14 minutes ago”. This difference continued until on the hour Citroen1’s became 1 hour and yours moved to 59 minutes. Of course, a minute later yours changed to 1 hour and it was no longer possible to see the difference. I am not trying to be clever, just to put the record straight.

    1. Yo, all

      For truth’s sake, the final bit of the cartoon should have been Fujitsu declared the winner

  4. Good morning.
    As Stormy already noted, it’s one of THOSE days in Wordle…..
    Wordle 943 5/6

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    2. I agree but more so.

      Wordle 943 5/6

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      1. Good afternoon Elsie … I have only just popped in from my sick- bed …. that’s two colds in one month.

    4. Pretentious dogwaffle. I suppose it represents the superstitious, pretentious obsession with appearing virtuous while not giving a stuff about the reality of life.

      I suppose they can afford to be stupid.

  9. Wordle 943 4/6

    Did it in four today:

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  10. West must resist ‘evil’ Putin and never back down, David Cameron 18 January 2024.

    “This is the challenge for our generation,” Cameron said. “This is like being a foreign minister or a leader in Europe in the 1930s, we have got to not appease Putin. We have got to stand up to the evil that his invasion represents.”

    The former U.K. prime minister’s remarks come as the West scrambles to keep Ukraine topped up with high-tech weaponry to fend off Russia’s full-scale invasion, while bracing for the potential return of NATO-skeptic Donald Trump to the White House.

    This is the same Cameron who totally destroyed Libya under the pretext of protecting its people from their leader? Who attempted to overthrow Assad by clandestine means that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents?

    I’ll take Vlad.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/david-cameron-evil-putin-must-be-resisted/

    2. The evil his invasion represents. You can see the foreign office all over that one. It’s just not that simple.

    1. Good morning, Sue Mac. Didn’t you have a sister called Ima? (You may be far too young to get that joke.)

      2. Ayup, How Do, and Na Then, Auntie Elsie.

        I remember listening to Uncle Mac, every Saturday morning on the Light Programme.

        2. No, nephew, Uncle Mac was Sue Mac’s brother; it was her sister who was Yma Sumac. (Good try though.)

    2. God morgon, Mrs Macfarlane. –7ºC here too, with two feet of snow covering my very crisp and sparkly lawn!🥶

  13. Mass migration is about to sweep away the West’s blinkered ruling class

    The political elite seems incapable of grasping the challenge posed by legal and illegal immigration

    ALLISTER HEATH
    17 January 2024 • 9:32pm

    Rishi Sunak may have defeated his rebels, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that cannot save his government. The Rwanda Bill won’t halt the boats, let alone convince exasperated voters to trust the Conservatives again.

    The Tory wets who prevented Sunak from toughening his Bill have shown themselves to be pathologically unable to grasp the enormity of the challenge posed by mass migration, legal and illegal, to the Western order in the 21st century. Most voters – in Britain, and across Europe – believe immigration to be unsustainably high, and yet the pressure will be on the numbers to rise much further, especially given the West’s crippling baby-bust.

    Over the coming decades, tens, if not hundreds of millions of people may seek to leave Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa to flee poverty, war and chaos. This would overwhelm almost all host societies, and will force a complete rethink of the West’s approach to economic immigration, integration, asylum and refugees. Walls will be built, whether we like it or loathe it, and international law torn up. Politicians who are unable or unwilling to adapt are likely to be swept away, starting with Sunak and Joe Biden in November and extending, in due course, to the leaders of almost every European country, including Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

    Mainstream politicians must tackle these issues in a civilised way, or truly nasty characters will be propelled to power. Governments need to become much more discerning as to who they grant citizenship, migrant numbers must be cut significantly and a greater emphasis placed on helping newcomers acquire a love of their new country.

    The Rwanda plan is laughably inadequate in this context. It cannot be scaled. It retains our membership of the European Convention of Human Rights. It doesn’t question the principle of non-refoulement or any of the post-Second World War refugee conventions, well-meaning yet outdated agreements that bar governments from choosing who can settle in their countries. It does nothing to fix our dysfunctional Home Office and its propensity to lose track of illegal migrants, or the fact that our courts and administrative machinery are so lax at interpreting the law.

    I have long been on the liberal wing of the conservative movement when it comes to immigration, an advocate of modern, hyphenated British identities and of a multi-religious, colour-blind society. I am in awe at the astonishing success of so many well-integrated, patriotic immigrants and their children, and it is clear that the British model, on average, has performed far better than the French or German approaches to absorbing newcomers. We should be proud of our multi-ethnic Britain, our Hindu Prime Minister and the great progress we have made in combating racism.

    But I now also believe that the volumes of immigration have become unsustainably large, that certain groups have become dangerously insulated from the rest of the nation. Extremism is on the rise and far greater scrutiny of who we let in is needed if we are to retain our social cohesion.

    The far-Left’s growing influence over our culture has had disastrous consequences: if Britain is now seen as an evil, “settler-colonial” state, then why would anybody want to integrate? Our immigration success stories have one factor in common: a belief in the British dream, in a meritocratic system where hard work, family values and a commitment to education can allow anybody to rise.

    This isn’t compatible with critical race theory. The woke ideologues’ obsession with identity politics, quotas, pitting one group against another, dividing the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed”, and discriminating against white people, is designed to undermine Britain’s successful model of integration. It denigrates Britishness, and exaggerates differences. It is soft on Islamist extremism. It has helped fuel a wave of anti-Semitism. Wokeism is incompatible with building a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith society and thus with high levels of immigration.

    The economic case for mass migration – as opposed to the selective admission of high performers – has also weakened. It has propped up GDP, but failed to shift the dial on GDP per capita. The central claim that migration would increase productivity growth has proved elusive. Many migrants aren’t boosting the labour force, but are instead moving here for family reunification or to study, categories that are being grossly abused.

    We should be focusing economic immigration on those – drawn from any country in the world – most likely to be net contributors to the exchequer. It should be very unusual for migrants to be offered social housing, and we must adopt a contributory welfare state where benefits are only paid to those who have contributed for years.

    It has proved easier for the Government to import workers than tackle the fact that millions of existing citizens are stuck on welfare and suffering from low skills and depleted social capital. Our politicians also prefer to keep pay down in social care by importing cheap workers, and to save money by refusing to train doctors.

    Given our sclerotic planning laws that prevent more housebuilding, current levels of immigration are driving the housing crisis. An extra 234,400 new homes were built in England in 2022-23; net UK migration in the year to June 2023 was 672,000, the vast majority settling in England. Our crippling shortage of homes is rapidly worsening with these levels of immigration and housebuilding, hammering the young.

    Germany’s IZA Institute finds that each 1 per cent annual rise in the number of migrants in Switzerland increased home prices by 4.3-5.9 per cent. Even Elon Musk, who supports generally liberal migration policies, now believes the housing stock – and by implication, America’s 333 million population – can’t in practice grow by more than 1-2 per cent a year. The thesis advocated in One Billion Americans by Matthew Yglesias – tripling the size of the US population to maximise global welfare – is rapidly losing support on the pro-capitalist Right.

    The housing crisis has created a new generation of communists, and until we double or even triple housebuilding means that mass migration is no longer compatible with conservatism. This is a Darwinian moment for the Tories and centre-Right parties everywhere: they must toughen up on immigration, legal and illegal, or face extinction.

    *******************************

    Thomas Malthus
    9 HRS AGO
    Half the adults in the UK do not pay income tax. Every person (including children) in the UK uses Public services at a cost of around £12500 a year on average.
    Importing more people who pay less tax than they cost in public services can only be paid for by borrowing or increasing the tax on the half that pay .
    Immigration makes us all much much poorer. It degrades public services . It reduces GDP per capita. It has no upside- unless you are a rich person who employs cheap labour.

    Philip McTell
    9 HRS AGO
    White people are entitled to a homeland. Either fight for one and get called a racist, or get conquered & replaced while you get called a racist.

    1. I’m less worried about the West’s baby bust than sub-Saharan Africa’s unstoppable baby boom.

      1. They churn out kids for the opposite reason we don’t. It’s for the same reason that they need to stay in their own country.

    2. A strange blinkered diatribe from someone who supports immigration in principle but fails to see that it is the end of us all!

    3. Heath is normally reliable – sort of – but he’s wobbled here.

      “We should be proud of our multi-ethnic Britain, our Hindu Prime Minister and the great progress we have made in combating racism.”

      Why, Allister? We didn’t want this. We were very happy as we were, thank you. And as for having a Hindu Prime Minister, that is the thin edge of a very unpleasant wedge. A muslim next?

      “The economic case for mass migration – as opposed to the selective admission of high performers – has also weakened. It has propped up GDP, but failed to shift the dial on GDP per capita. The central claim that migration would increase productivity growth has proved elusive. Many migrants aren’t boosting the labour force, but are instead moving here for family reunification or to study, categories that are being grossly abused”.

      There never was a convincing economic case for mass immigration. We have never before needed it. Why now? It was ALWAYS going to reduce the GDP per capita. Only the malevolent could not see that.

      ” We should be focusing economic immigration on those – drawn from any country in the world – most likely to be net contributors to the exchequer. It should be very unusual for migrants to be offered social housing, and we must adopt a contributory welfare state where benefits are only paid to those who have contributed for years.”

      Let’s get a couple of things straight: One, the population is not here to serve the Exchequer, the exchequer is there to serve the population. If the government will have less money for whatever reason then IT MUST PLAN TO DO LESS. Two, why have a welfare state at all? The idea of socialism has been tested to destruction. Redistribution of income with the tax levels required to support it leads to poverty of which the worst kind is the poverty of dependency. We need to wean people off the idea of welfare and gradually return to self-reliance, providence and frugality based on the traditional family structure which the left has almost succeeded in destroying.

      1. Why don’t those who wanted the whites out of Africa not want the blacks out of Britain?

    4. Heath is normally reliable – sort of – but he’s wobbled here.

      “We should be proud of our multi-ethnic Britain, our Hindu Prime Minister and the great progress we have made in combating racism.”

      Why, Allister? We didn’t want this. We were very happy as we were, thank you. And as for having a Hindu Prime Minister, that is the thn edge of a very unpleasant wedge. A muslim next?

      “The economic case for mass migration – as opposed to the selective admission of high performers – has also weakened. It has propped up GDP, but failed to shift the dial on GDP per capita. The central claim that migration would increase productivity growth has proved elusive. Many migrants aren’t boosting the labour force, but are instead moving here for family reunification or to study, categories that are being grossly abused”.

      There never was a convincing economic case for mass immigration. We have never before needed it. Why now? It was ALWAYS going to reduce the GDP per capita. Only the malevolent could not see that.

      ” We should be focusing economic immigration on those – drawn from any country in the world – most likely to be net contributors to the exchequer. It should be very unusual for migrants to be offered social housing, and we must adopt a contributory welfare state where benefits are only paid to those who have contributed for years.”

      Let’s get a couple of things straight: One, the population is not here to serve the Exchequer, the exchequer is there to serve the population. If the government will have less money for whatever reason then IT MUST PLAN TO DO LESS. Two, why have a welfare state at all? The idea of socialism has been tested to destruction. Redistribution of income with the tax levels required to support it leads to poverty of which the worst kind is the poverty of dependency. We need to wean people off the idea of welfare and gradually return to self-reliance, providence and frugality based on the traditional family structure which the left has almost succeeded in destroying.

    5. Heath is normally reliable – sort of – but he’s wobbled here.

      “We should be proud of our multi-ethnic Britain, our Hindu Prime Minister and the great progress we have made in combating racism.”

      Why, Allister? We didn’t want this. We were very happy as we were, thank you. And as for having a Hindu Prime Minister, that is the thn edge of a very unpleasant wedge. A muslim next?

      “The economic case for mass migration – as opposed to the selective admission of high performers – has also weakened. It has propped up GDP, but failed to shift the dial on GDP per capita. The central claim that migration would increase productivity growth has proved elusive. Many migrants aren’t boosting the labour force, but are instead moving here for family reunification or to study, categories that are being grossly abused”.

      There never was a convincing economic case for mass immigration. We have never before needed it. Why now? It was ALWAYS going to reduce the GDP per capita. Only the malevolent could not see that.

      ” We should be focusing economic immigration on those – drawn from any country in the world – most likely to be net contributors to the exchequer. It should be very unusual for migrants to be offered social housing, and we must adopt a contributory welfare state where benefits are only paid to those who have contributed for years.”

      Let’s get a couple of things straight: One, the population is not here to serve the Exchequer, the exchequer is there to serve the population. If the government will have less money for whatever reason then IT MUST PLAN TO DO LESS. Two, why have a welfare state at all? The idea of socialism has been tested to destruction. Redistribution of income with the tax levels required to support it leads to poverty of which the worst kind is the poverty of dependency. We need to wean people off the idea of welfare and gradually return to self-reliance, providence and frugality based on the traditional family structure which the left has almost succeeded in destroying.

    6. No one asks the question of why white people – natives – are having fewer children. No one stops to think ‘hang on. if we reverse all these anti family policies, if we undo all the legislation that makes divorce easy and supports single parents, cut taxes and, well, leave people alone the population might increase? As it is, we are a high skill economy. We do not need a lot of people. In fact, we need very few people who are high vale and the fewer people we have the easier it is for the low skilled to find higher paid work.

      Thus proving the utter failure, ignorance and stupidity of massive uncontrolled immigration at a stroke.

    7. “Mainstream politicians must tackle these issues in a civilised way, or truly nasty characters will be propelled to power.”

      It cannot be settled in a civilised way. No one will have the courage. Anyone who dares to suggest it will be shouted down as the nasty character. The really nasty ones are already visible: the ancestral white British who hate their own existence and use the immigrant as a weapon against their own kind; the Islamists, shouting from the minbars and marching on the streets, calling for the death of Jews; and the black academics [sic] who rail against ‘whiteness’.

      It will be settled on the streets. Everyone will lose.

  14. We’ve got a live one here – vile nutter

    Davos Speaker Demands International Criminal Court Prosecute ‘Ecocide’, Punish Farmers Alongside War Criminals

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2024/01/jojo-mehta-wef-davos-ecocide-640×480.jpg

    The International Criminal Court should add “ecocide” to its brief alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes to criminalise the side effects of farming, fishing and energy production, a green activist argued during the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

    Greta Thunberg ally and CEO of Stop Ecocide International Jojo Mehta demanded during a WEF Davos panel dubbed “Where Nature Meets Conflict” on Tuesday that a new international criminal category of “ecocide” to prevent the “mass damage and destruction of nature”.

    Mehta, who co-founded Stop Ecocide in 2017 alongside the late green legal activist Polly Higgins, said at the globalist World Economic Forum meeting: “What our organisation and other collaborators aim to do is to have this recognised legally as a serious crime because one of the issues that pervades this discussion is that we have a culturally engrained habit of not taking damage to nature as seriously as we take damage to people and property.”

    While proponents of the legislation have often pointed to disasters such as oil spills and nuclear meltdowns, Mehta suggested that ecocide could be extended to include necessary functions of humanity such as agriculture and energy production.

    “If you are campaigning for human rights, at least you know mass murder, torture all of these things are serious crimes, but there is no equivalent in environmental space. Unlike an international crime like genocide that involves a specific intent, with ecocide what we see is what people are trying to do is business, is to farm, is fish, is produce energy, but what is missing is the awareness and the conscience of the side effects, around the collateral damage that happens with that,” the green activist said.

    Mehta argued that creating the criminal category of “ecocide” would “steer” individuals, businesses, and governments around the world in a “healthier direction”, presumably out of concern of facing prosecution at the International Criminal Court and potentially lengthy prison sentences.

    The green activist has previously explained: “One can envisage, for example, once the law is in place, that a decision that leads to a new coal mine or a decision that leads to the opening of new fossil fuel projects will potentially have to be really seriously rethought.”

    Last year the European Parliament voted in favour of backing draft legislation to recognise “ecocide” as a crime, but it has yet to be voted into EU law.

    However, currently 11 nations around the world have codified the concept into their criminal codes including: Vietnam, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, and France.

    A further 27 countries, including some EU member states, are actively considering following suit, according to Stop Ecocide International.

    A landmark case currently being built by Ukraine, which plans to launch legal proceedings against Russia at the International Criminal Court over environmental damage as a result of Moscow’s invasion of the country. Activists hope that such a case could bolster the legal grounding for ecocide to be recognised as an international crime.

    The concept has drawn pushback, however, with legal experts questioning the ability of prosecutors to be able to determine which individuals are actually to blame for man-made disasters, given that they are often the result of numerous people across international borders. Determining blame for disasters supposedly sparked by allegedly man-made climate change would therefore be even more difficult to prosecute.

    Mehta’s arguments at the WEF also drew criticism on social media, with Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts saying: “This is what control freaks do: they invent new words, control the language, and stop debate.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/01/17/wef-climate-crazies-call-for-new-international-crime-of-ecocide/

    1. God! Nightmares.
      So, where is she going to get her three generous meals a day from, then?

    4. Yet it’s fuckwits like these who demand a switch to e-cars, which have few emissions at the point of use, but horrific ecodamage in the rest of the value chain, including the use of child labour. Pleased with yourselves? If farmers didn’t use chemicals, there would be famine over the whole globe – does that count as mass murder, a “crime against humanity” as millions or even billions would starve to death?
      Maybe this shower could lead the way by removing their useless mouths from the face of the earth?

    5. Righto Mehta, go without anything man made for oh, a week. You’ll be dead in 3 days from dehydration so the world will benefit.

      You’re a fool, and need to be told you are. Your ignorance and ideology need to be exposed and your gormless ideological insanity permanently silenced.

    6. Righto Mehta, go without anything man made for oh, a week. You’ll be dead in 3 days from dehydration so the world will benefit.

      You’re a fool, and need to be told you are. Your ignorance and ideology need to be exposed and your gormless ideological insanity permanently silenced.

    7. “…mass damage and destruction of nature…”

      Like those great fields of wind turbines.

    8. But they are giving her a platform for this hateful, anti-human rubbish. And if you look at the audiences at these Davos talks, they’re always lapping it up, no matter how evil and deluded it is.

      No Farmers – No Food – people need to wake up before they starve.

      I was looking at some of the writings of Professor Chris Elliott today – he is an academic and therefore suspect – but he is highlighting possible food shortages this year.
      UKIP is the only political party sounding the alarm.

    9. She’s an eco-zealot and there appears to be a number of them that are employed by the WEF et al. Now if it was deforestation of rainforests, tropical or temperate, in the Americas and SE Asia, that she was trying to stop, I would have no objections to her. What she is targeting though is the majority of the Earth’s population, as if it’s them who are controlling these actions instead of big business, and the likes of the people she’s addressing at the WEF. We do need to cut pollution, overfishing, etc, but in its greed for power the elite distort the causes as if it’s Joe Bloggs’ fault for having a wood burner.

    10. The ‘landmark’ case that Ukraine are apparently building against Russia in the International Criminal Court is just noise and legal fees. Russia and the US do not recognise the ICC. I hope Zelensky keeps the legal receipts.

      As to the ‘arguments’ she puts up, the followers of the Schwabstika will recognise her as a useful idiot. It’s just a variation on the old political trick of saying taxes will rise by 10% and we’re supposed to be grateful that they only rise by 5%.

  15. Good morning, all. Dark. Frosty. Cold. Another night with virtually no sleep. I am puzzled.

    1. What you need, Bill, is a few hours shifting snow. In about half a hour, I’ll show you how, around the cars and the outdoor steps and terrace (access to cat flap)

  16. Good Moaning.
    From the DT: apologies for the long comment, but this matter exposes just how rotten the state has become in this country.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/17/planet-normal-fujitsu-bosses-horizon-flawed-conspiracy/

    Fujitsu bosses knew Horizon was flawed and chose to stay quiet, insider claims

    Ex-employee tells Planet Normal there was a ‘conspiracy to suppress the truth on both sides of the equation’

    Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter17 January 2024 • 10:12pm

    Fujitsu bosses were involved in a “conspiracy” of silence to cover up “shortcomings” with its defective Horizon IT system at the heart of the Post Office scandal, a whistleblower has claimed.

    The Fujitsu insider said it was “hubris” that saw the IT company finally exposed for its part in the wrongful convictions and prosecutions of hundreds of sub-postmasters, whose lives were wrecked.

    In an interview with Allison Pearson for her Planet Normal podcast, the whistleblower discussed their experience of the company and said the culture there made it difficult to flag up concerns.

    They suggested a failure in connecting Post Office terminals to the internet via modems had resulted in discrepancies in accounting that led to sub-postmasters being falsely accused of theft and fraud.

    When connections went offline, deposits may have vanished, subsequently ending up as Post Office profit.

    The insider – given the name Robin to protect their identity – worked at Fujitsu in the early to mid-2000s after the Horizon system had been rolled out, but at a time when they claimed the company was already considering a replacement.

    They described the Horizon system as “obsolete” even then and added: “The approaches they were using were well known in the industry at the time as being very flawed.”

    Robin also said that the demands of the government-owned Post Office were for a “champagne” system – that would conduct billions of financial transactions – but was trying to emulate the banking IT sector albeit spending only “beer” money.

    Robin’s testimony follows the reigniting of the scandal following the broadcast of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office which has led to a public outcry and forced the Government to finally introduce a fast-tracked scheme to quash convictions and pay compensation.

    Asked why they believed Fujitsu had not raised the flag publicly and admitted Horizon contained bugs much earlier, Robin said: “You touched upon the conspiracy question… And I do think that that is the case that they knew that the system had its shortcomings and they chose to stay quiet.”

    Robin added: “I’m sorry this is going on for 25 years. I do think there’s been a conspiracy to suppress the truth on both sides of the equation” in a reference to cover-ups at the Post Office.

    The first published reports of a problem, which appeared in 2009 in the IT sector’s “bible” Computer Weekly, should have sparked a more open response from Fujitsu.

    But instead, said Robin: “It was almost like a case of, well, they would say that… My view is, I do think that there is a group of people in Fujitsu on that account that have been there a long time that know about this stuff.”

    The whistleblower told Planet Normal that the “full weight of the law” now needed to be brought “to bear on these people” in support of an ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation into alleged fraud, as well as perjury and perverting the course of justice.

    They said: “You bring the full weight of the law to bear on these people. And there’s a very, very simple reason for that is that if you’re going to be accountable for… running something so important, there are consequences when you don’t do it right.

    “People have died and mission-critical systems are [just] that because there’s a risk to life… a risk to substantial financial loss.”

    The whistleblower likened the culture at the Japanese IT company to that among the senior managers at Chernobyl, the Soviet-era nuclear power plant that went into meltdown in 1986 – but was initially covered up by the Communist party leadership.

    “The feelings that I’ve carried with me for 20 years was, it was just absolute hubris… These guys were working to an arcane set of practices, working on arcane technology, and they were perfectly happy with that,” said Robin, claiming Fujitsu knew about software bugs and flaws in the Horizon IT system but tried to keep them under wraps.

    They went on: “It was very difficult to raise issues to leadership to say, ‘I’m not happy about this’. I found this in the existing system.”

    Lee Castleton who was driven to bankruptcy after Post Office bosses secured a court order against him, forcing him to pay them £321,000 in legal costs

    Lee Castleton who was driven to bankruptcy after Post Office bosses secured a court order against him, forcing him to pay them £321,000 in legal costs Credit: Gabriel Szabo/Guzelian

    A total of 736 sub-postmasters in charge of local branches were prosecuted by the Post Office itself, as well as by public prosecutors in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

    Those prosecutions relied on data generated by Horizon which the Post Office said showed accounting shortfalls of tens of thousands of pounds.

    Allegations that sub-postmasters were told they could disconnect from Horizon without losing vital records of transactions made at their Post Office branches shed fresh light on how the scandal became so widespread.

    Robin told Planet Normal of an internal conversation within Fujitsu showing how Post Office attitudes had spread back into its IT contractor.

    Fujitsu bosses were telling their staff that almost all fraud at the Post Office – in 96 per cent of cases, according to Robin – was carried out by sub-postmasters.

    “What struck me was, you know, 96 per cent? First of all, who’s the other 4 per cent? More worryingly, how can they be so sure?” they said.

    Robin decided to speak out after watching the ITV drama which included a sequence in which sub-postmaster Lee Castleton was shown phoning a Post Office helpline in desperation, querying thousands of pounds in accounting shortfalls generated by Horizon.

    “This is what fired my interest,” said Robin, adding that “there were no grounds” for either Fujitsu or the Post Office to claim that Horizon was “robust” enough to be used in court without challenge. Post Office bosses secured a court order against Mr Castleton forcing him to pay them £321,000 in legal costs, driving him to bankruptcy.

    Robin added: “They [Fujitsu management] had their head in the sand and it was very difficult to raise issues to leadership.”

    Describing how hard it was to get Fujitsu managers to take concerns about Horizon seriously, the IT industry veteran said: “There were a group of people there, and there was, I’d say, a good 12 or 16 of them… And they were very difficult to get around or go over.

    “They used to notice we were trying to go around them, and then they’d intervene and stop us.”

    They added: “I was absolutely struck by [how] it was an obsolete setup. It was arcane. It was almost Victorian in terms of its approaches. Everything was written down into 100-page documents. And, you know, people are busy. They don’t have time to read a 100-page document.”

    A spokesperson for Fujitsu said: “The current Post Office Horizon IT statutory inquiry is examining complex events stretching back over 20 years to understand who knew what, when, and what they did with that knowledge.

    “The inquiry has reinforced the devastating impact on postmasters’ lives and that of their families, and Fujitsu has apologised for its role in their suffering.

    “Fujitsu is fully committed to supporting the inquiry in order to understand what happened and to learn from it.

    “Out of respect for the inquiry process, it would be inappropriate for Fujitsu to comment further at this time.”

    My thoughts.

    Firstly, my view of anything to do with computers is like my attitude to plumbing or electricity; I use them and don’t fiddle with things I don’t understand. However, even an old Luddite like me raises her eyebrows at these sentences.

    “They suggested a failure in connecting Post Office terminals to the internet via modems had resulted in discrepancies in accounting that led to sub-postmasters being falsely accused of theft and fraud.

    When connections went offline, deposits may have vanished, subsequently ending up as Post Office profit.”

    ………………………..

    “Those prosecutions relied on data generated by Horizon which the Post Office said showed accounting shortfalls of tens of thousands of pounds.

    Allegations that sub-postmasters were told they could disconnect from Horizon without losing vital records of transactions made at their Post Office branches shed fresh light on how the scandal became so widespread.”

    1. The very idea that the first call wouldn’t be the software is laughable. If Fujitisu say it’s ok, have a third party look at it. Yes, I understand the desperation for management to cover their backsides but this gets out eventually.

  17. Good morning folks,

    Bright and clear again at Castle McPhee, -4℃ rising to +1℃ today, wind in the North-West making it feel like -10℃. The end of the current cold snap should be here on Sunday.

    It’s good to know ‘our’ NHS cares about us. Here in N W Hampshire, subscribers to the ‘Nextdoor’ neighbourhood website were advised “not to forget to wrap up warm” in the current cold through an email dropping into all our inboxes. Being the sort of chap I am I couldn’t resist a quick reply along the lines of “gosh, I’d never have thought of that in the depths of winter if you hadn’t etc..” It attracted some ire from the ‘nanny knows best brigade’. Still, it could be worse. I could be living in the NHS Scotland area where they want people to walk like penguins.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1fd6b5393f5ce24243ac3437d6a70d8d6659273e067364e0b0f5858e8cc26fc7.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5edbf093ca9bf7b2a66f2a5e5e432b79addb6ff226d311c4f3f200ea0e2bd416.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/17/nhs-scotland-advice-snow-ice-warnings/

    SWMBO and I had a good laugh over the video last nght when I first came across it. The BTL comments are as you might imagine:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/50c93c279c4757dd2d52030a98adb3060537881ce05343471599c2fba7b249fb.png

    Something has gone seriously wrong, has it not? This is not a nation that is going to rescue itself.

    1. Having been born plantigrade, with a pair of duckfeet, waddling is second nature to me.🦆

        1. ‘Duckfeet’ was my secondary school nickname. I hated it then, but I can see the funny side now.

          1. One of my father’s favourite “Dad jokes” consisted of a man stranded in Antartica being rescued and asked how he managed to survive. “By eating penguins” came the reply. “But had that no side-effects?” he was asked. “None at all” came the reply, at which point my father turned and waddled away from us just like a penguin.

          2. One of my father’s favourite “Dad jokes” consisted of a man stranded in Antartica being rescued and asked how he managed to survive. “By eating penguins” came the reply. “But had that no side-effects?” he was asked. “None at all” came the reply, at which point my father turned and waddled away from us just like a penguin.

    2. 381042+ up ticks,

      Morning FM,

      This penguin walk can be practiced indoors by listening to the BBc and filling the Y fronts with s…

  18. Good morning folks,

    Bright and clear again at Castle McPhee, -4℃ rising to +1℃ today, wind in the North-West making it feel like -10℃. The end of the current cold snap should be here on Sunday.

    It’s good to know ‘our’ NHS cares about us. Here in N W Hampshire, subscribers to the ‘Nextdoor’ neighbourhood website were advised “not to forget to wrap up warm” in the current cold through an email dropping into all our inboxes. Being the sort of chap I am I couldn’t resist a quick reply along the lines of “gosh, I’d never have thought of that in the depths of winter if you hadn’t etc..” It attracted some ire from the ‘nanny knows best brigade’. Still, it could be worse. I could be living in the NHS Scotland area where they want people to walk like penguins.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1fd6b5393f5ce24243ac3437d6a70d8d6659273e067364e0b0f5858e8cc26fc7.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5edbf093ca9bf7b2a66f2a5e5e432b79addb6ff226d311c4f3f200ea0e2bd416.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/17/nhs-scotland-advice-snow-ice-warnings/

    SWMBO and I had a good laugh over the video last nght when I first came across it. The BTL comments are as you might imagine:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/50c93c279c4757dd2d52030a98adb3060537881ce05343471599c2fba7b249fb.png

    Something has gone seriously wrong, has it not? This is not a nation that is going to rescue itself.

  19. Russia ‘trying to recruit asylum seekers as spies to send into Finland’, 18 January 2024.

    Russia is attempting to recruit asylum seekers as spies and send them into Finland under the guise of being refugees, Helsinki’s intelligence services have warned.

    More than 1,000 people have arrived in Finland over its eastern border with Russia in recent months.

    The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) accused Moscow of targeting some of those asylum seekers in a bid to turn them towards espionage.

    A particularly ludicrous scare story. How are people who don’t speak the language, have no identification papers or place of residence and are only capable of accessing Social Services to penetrate the secrets of the state? I have lived in the UK most of my 77 years and have no idea how to set about it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/17/russia-recruiting-asylum-seekers-spies-finland-refugees/

  20. SIR – As an ordinary person, much like most of the sub-postmasters in question, I cannot rationalise the fact that, of £57.75 million awarded to them in a settlement in 2019, some £46 million was taken in legal costs. How is this enormous charge possible?

    Ian Smethurst
    Congleton, Cheshire

    This is directly attributable to the endemic corruption that is hard-wired into the legal ‘industry’.

    1. The group funding the case wanted paying. Without them there would have been nothing.

      There will be justice when every civil servant, MP, Post Office staff involved are made bankrupt and charged with [something] that sees them doing time, just as they forced on sub Post Masters. When they’re made bankrupt and their property and accounts taken and sold for recompense, then, and only then will there be justice.

      That will never happen. The state will simply pay out a risible amount from tax payer funds, decades late and anything more will be dragged on until there’s no one left to annoy it.

  21. Finally, dawn has broken out. A very snowy landscape is revealed, with pink and orange rim behind the hills. All it needs now is a flock of unicorns and a few kittens to be absolutely perfect.

      1. Yup.
        Blew a lot of the snow off the roof, as well. I was beginning to wonder about having to get up there and shift it manually.

    1. 381042+ up ticks,

      Morning FM,

      Talking of “defence of the realm” with two thirds of the country already occupied is really
      reminiscent of 1945 hitlerspeak.

    2. He certainly is…..but,
      I heard that He ‘did so well’ as housing secretary, managed to line up at least 1,500 new houses and move out of his boring Welwyn and Hatfield constituency, into a mansion at Brookmans Park.

    3. What is the point of having a military when over 1 million invaders swarm into the country every year?

    4. “I don’t know what he does to enemies but by God he terrifies me!”

      (With apols to the Late Duke of Wellington)

  23. About the same here, Grizz. And the car, and the steps up from the front door… gotta get me out with the snøskuffer & get it shifted before it adopts squatters rights.

  24. 382042+up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Thursday 18 January: Deporting people to Rwanda won’t fix Britain’s immigration problem

    A spokesman for the village idiots said “they, the political reptiles Will not deport guilty proven foreign paedophiles or any other law breaking elements” so deporting wanna be foreign paedophiles ( new arrivals) is totally out of the question,

    Dt,
    MPs finally find something they can agree on in Rwanda debate – they’re wasting our time

    That is the only true fact of the odious issue and has been so since 24/6/2016.

  25. Good morning Nottlers, crisp, clear and 20°F (-7°C) on the Costa Clyde. Just off to walking football, after I do my warmup by scraping the car. Apparently, the pitch is all weather. We shall see.

    1. Make sure to start slowly and warm up thoroughly. Cold like this will cause ligaments to tear and muscle cramps.

  26. Good morning all.
    I think I rather like to hibernate today! It’s -8°C outside though does promise to be a beautiful day otherwise!

    1. Caught the weather report on a friend’s TV last evening – can’t recall which channel. One thing that did stick was the reporter stating that Tuesday was the coldest January day for half, wait for it… a DECADE. Now, I don’t recall that he said where that event happened but I’m sure that it wasn’t in my locality. Fear porn at its best, or worst if you’re awake to the agenda.

      1. May well have been. It’s forecast to get to about 7-9 over the next week or so. It isn’t the cold that’s the problem. It’s heating homes sufficiently to stay warm. The government is dedicated to preventing that.

      1. Currently, they’ve got Katharine Birbalsingh in their sights.
        She dares to assert discipline, gets good results and her pupils make something of their lives.
        So they aren’t supplicants to Grannie Leftie. Can’t lose the client state as bang goes a whole raft of voters.

        1. Why is it equity (which I thought was something to do with property) rather than equality?

          1. I believe it’s to do with giving more to one group than another to make them equal. A form of compensation for any disadvantages, perceived or real.

          4. What Phizzee said, but also, IMHO, there is an element of weighting included in the concept of equity. Equality of opportunity isn’t enough if you believe that certain groups have been oppressed by history; the “equitable” “solution” is to privilege them over other groups.

        2. Thanks! I think last night’s hard frost got into my brain.
          Could also be called AWD (anti-white discrimination).

      2. I should be spelled DIE, as the legislation is so comically anti human it’s absurd. It’s a case of technology getting ahead of the human brain. Lefties think they’re an evolved species who can and should control how we think.

        2. They are so intellectually challenged that they haven’t thought about who will fund their benefits and welfare once they have got rid of us. When they took over in Zimbabweewee, they hadn’t a clue, that should be a lesson to them.

  28. Morning all. The Warqueen has moved out. She is living with her friend. Well, I suppose he’s our friend. We’ve not separated, but she is fed up with the cold.

      1. Nothing. Except it’s practically useless. Poured 24 KW into the radiators and we got to 15’c in the living room.

        Most of the heat is going out through the walls. Our chum – who she’s with – said he sets his central heating to 18 and overnight wakes up to 17. We got our bedroom to 18 at 10 and by 12 it was 14. I’m tired of it. She’s properly had enough.

          1. While it is cheaper at 8p per KW, we’re in bed. And it’ just going outside. I’ve a builder friend coming to see what we can do insulation wise,. If we do anything it’ll mean demolishing the interior wall and rebuilding it. That’s the fundamental problem – not warming the house up, keeping it in. With electricity costing what it does there’s just no point pouring money into the outside.

            Frankly, I just want to move. The time table is creeping up for that to 2025. We’ve both committed to this.

            It just makes me feel a fool for not thinking about it enough.

          2. Can’t you reline the inner walls with insulated plasterboard ?
            I did that to a small extension on the back of our house not long after we moved in.

          4. This is all being considered. I’lll see what my builder chum says, but rebuilding a wall is no easy feat.

          5. I hsd that done to my sitting room (which is at the end of the heating system and has three outside walls). It made quite a difference.

          7. Just a thought, as a very temporary measure.

            Get some old blankets, or better still duvets, from a charity shop and nail them to the walls of the living room. Cardboard might also work.

            Very ugly, but it might give you at least one habitable room.

          9. Is external cladding a possibility? That’s the standard way to insulate walls on the Continent, though it’s not without its own problems.

          10. Should have read further on.
            It is very easy to fall for an apparently lovely or do-uppable house.
            Reality strikes when you’re in the situation day to day.
            I do hope your builder comes up with good ideas rather than just sucking his teeth.

          11. Have you thought about K Rend? 50mm Polystyrene sheets are fixed to external walls, covered with mesh, then rendered. Pigment within the render is helpful to reduce frequency of re-painting. About a week’s work for two (fast) men doing a typical house.

          12. Ours is on low at night but ee’re a lot older than Wibbles and his Warqueen. The cats like it warm as well.

    3. Oh heck. What a rough time you are having.
      Is the heating knackered and no-one is available or are the problems deeper and involve expensive house improvements?

    4. Sad to hear that, Wibbles, and I empathise, have experienced similar some 16 months ago when it was I, who was moved out. I loved her then and still do.

    6. The house we are renting is an old farmhouse complete with high ceilings and costs a fortune to heat with the oil fired heating. We have it on up to 10 in the morning then from 5 until bed time. With the current weather we are wrapped up in old duvets from late morning till 5.

  29. Good morning, all. Clear and frosty here.

    Late yesterday William Stanier put up Allison Pearson’s article regarding the Tories and their upcoming demise. It was a long list of political failings, or rather as I and I hope many others will see it, betrayals on a grand scale.

    In a long article I had to seek out Ms Pearson’s reasoning of why the betrayal has happened:

    Because they don’t like or believe in Conservative things; they are liberal globalists who have no particular allegiance to this blessed plot so the dilution of its culture is irrelevant, the comfort and safety of our people unimportant. In fact, many Conservative MPs appear to despise Conservative values, and they loathe those of us who love them. The feeling is mutual, I can assure you.

    One short paragraph, a summation that Ms Pearson should use as the lead for another long article that exposes the true aims of many within the political class; to whom that class owes allegiance and the fact that many of that class, not just the Tories, appear to despise the British people. I’m certain that someone of Ms Pearson’s ability would be able to put together an article that would erode the somnambulism of so many and further disturb those who are currently awake.

    The horrors of unfettered globalism are being readied, Climate Emergency, C40 cities, UK 100, digital ids, CBDC, 15 minute neighbourhoods, never ending vaccination etc.

    I fear the the people will struggle to find friends and allies amongst those who present themselves as having all the answers to the Country’s problems.

    “…fear the politicians especially when offering solutions”

    (apologies to Virgil)

    1. It’s like Rachael Reeves’ article. Everything for her revolves around the state machine. There is no mention in her article of just buggering off and leaving us alone to spend our money how we want It’s all ‘what government will do, how we will spend, how much we will spend, that we’ll get private partnerships’. There’s no mention of just cutting taxes and getting out of the way.

    2. “Quidquid id est timeo civilibi et dona ferentes.”
      OK, I cheated and looked up the Latin for politician.

        1. We have a complete set of his works stored in a loft. I remember a a youngster trying to read one of them but I felt overwhelmed by the amount of words on each page.
          I prefer the old B&W films that were made of his work.
          I have a small book Named Sketches by Boz. They are short stories of the day from around London.

        3. I have a complete set of leather bound copies of Dickens’s novels which belonged to my maternal grandparents.

          I very much enjoyed most but not all of them.

          His friend and contemporary Wilkie Collins was not so prolific and his books are well worth reading and seem far more ‘modern’.

    2. He’s right. The ‘progressive’ Left are destroying everything.

      Was on a forum yesterday talking about space flight and asteroid mining, the needs and problems involved. A Lefty pops up and says we must not pollute outer space with our rocketry. As it was a science forum the next question was, well, how do we get out there to start exploring?

      It ended with the Lefty having to acknowledge that her entire ideology would retard human progress, that we would never, ever get out there and that we were, as a species doomed to self destruction. The Lefty couldn’t seem to understand that this was entirely the fault of her and her ilk..They genuinely believe they are right. It’s like debating with a wall.

      2. JP Sears – an American comedian whom one of you NOTTLers put me on to – had a good Video in the last few days on this. He showed some clips of another American asking students at Penn University “can a man get pregnant” and the students who displayed “correct think”..The same question was then asked of “normal” people on the street, where the answer was “hell, no”.

        But. The students have all been captured by this “right-think” and/or are too petrified of the consequences of speaking the truth.

    3. My hairdresser will be in deep doodoo.
      One of the staff sprogged a few days ago and the shop was festooned with blue balloons and an “It’s a Boy” helium thingy.

    1. All too staged. There is no way they’d let anyone up there who hasn’t been strictly controlled and managed.

    1. Problem is, if you charge them when they’re cold you’ll damage the battery and they will never hold the same charge again. Worse, you could find that they charge, you drive away and suddenly find at 50% that they’re completely empty.

      1. Solution: Don’t buy or lease them in the first place. As Hertz and Sixt have found out.

    2. I saw some people on TV a couple of days ago who had been issued with parking fines whilst charging their cars.

    1. He’s right. Although, the muslim threat and mass gimmigration are upsetting the statist applecart. People are noticing.

      I see Tice did an interview on GB News up against some non-entity idiot. He didn’t do well, trying to be a firebrand bible thumper who was pro Britain. He needs to be calmer, measured and to grasp the details and take apart the waffling political classes.

    3. Happy Bithday, Stormy and of course 365 Happy Unbirthdays, until your next one.

      Remember, you are really only 11, as the first 50 are practice

    2. Richard SK, Please change your pseudonym, so that you don’t just appear as ‘Content unavailable’ and I miss the pearls of wisdom dropping from your keyboard.

  38. Morning all 🙂😊
    Lovely sunny morning but very cold and a heavy frost.
    And still the political classes either don’t understand, or take any notice of what the people they expect to vote them want.
    If they don’t know by now how to stop illegal invaders they obviously don’t care.
    I hope no one turns out on election day and the whole thing will be declared null and void.
    Because we all know that quite deliberately they never listen to public opinion.
    There just has to be some serious political upheaval in order to get them to take notice and start to get things right and back to normal.

  39. Her: Hi, I’m Anne
    Him: Hi! I’m Dave, but people call me Dick
    Her: How do you get Dick from Dave?
    Him: Ask nicely!
    :-O)

    2. Ooh, Spikey! Beautiful, but do take care! It’s just a bit chilly here at -6C but the snow is apparently on its way!😘

      1. I’ve got my diabetic clinic later this morning but I doubt if the nurse will be able to get to the surgery and I might not make it anyway 😘

          1. She has to take blood – now cancelled so I’ll ring her for an appointment next week

      3. Diabetic clinic cancelled (nurse can’t get there) and I can’t get up the drive to reach the road anyway ☹️

    3. Ooh, Spikey! Beautiful, but do take care! It’s just a bit chilly here at -6C but the snow is apparently on its way!😘

    5. Ah, that’s better, I can see its shadow under the rhododendrons. Small wonder that mountain goats have become scarce.

    1. They are private patients.
      Any of us with the money could access the same treatment.
      (Thank you, Granny and Grandpa for my hip replacement. It took 60 years for the money to filter through – in fact, you died before hip replacements were even invented.)

    2. The Mail is making a huge thing out of “the three senior Royals being out of business” because apparently William is also taking time off duties to support his wife. Camilla is Queen, not Queen Consort and had her family at the Coronation in true Tudor style, but apparently she isn’t even counted as a senior working royal.

      It’s very nice and all that the Waleses are so close, but one expects the Prince of Wales to stick to his duties! Yesterday we heard that he doesn’t want to be Defender of the Faith, today he’s having time off because his wife’s ill. Wouldn’t it be nice for all of us to get the luxuries and the status without the hard work! Most people have to carry on working to pay for a roof over their heads, however sick their spouse is.

      We are now seeing the shape of the post-Elizabeth Windsors, and it’s not appealing. Whatever Elizabeth’s shortcomings, she had backbone.

          1. Yes. A superb role model for all – hard-working, smart in thought, word and deed, and sought advice before acting.
            The UK was lucky to have her for so long – now, her replacements show just how good she actually was.

        1. She accepted bad advice from some of her prime ministers, which one couldn’t imagine Victoria doing in her prime – though in later life she too made bad mistakes, such as believing the crap spouted by her Mohammedan companion.

    3. Huh.
      Meagain needn’t mention plane crashes and proximity to the throne, a medical slip-up would be enough.

  42. Britain has been left practically defenceless. Con Coughlin. 18 January 2024.

    Grant Shapps’s Panglossian assessment of the Armed Forces’ war-fighting capabilities is laughable.

    Of all the criticisms that can be levelled at the Conservatives’ track record after 14 years in office, their abject treatment of our Armed Forces must take some beating. If, as is often said, the defence of the realm is the primary duty of any British government, then the Conservatives have failed miserably to fulfil this most vital of obligations.

    Oooer! What’s happened? Me and Coughlin agree! Perhaps they forgot to pay him!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/18/britain-has-been-left-practically-defenceless/

    1. I have just destroyed my RN Paybook, which I have had for 63 years, in case they try to conscript veterans

          1. That’s true as I fulfil all those criteria, as well as being proud to have served my Queen and Country.

    2. Recruitment has fallen off a cliff. I suggest contributing factors are:

      1. Being recruited by Crapita is not the same as going into a forces career office and talking to serving personnel
      2. Adverts for the Army are entirely made up of ethnic minorities and women meaning that the group who actually make up the bulk of the front line are given the impression they’re not wanted (white, male, working class)
      3. Dragging 85 year olds through the court from one side of a conflict whilst giving immunity to the terrorists on the other side
      4. The same non-target group at 2 who see their communities and national way of life being eroded by mass immigration wondering what exactly they’d be fighting for
      5. A succession of failed ‘adventures’ (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc) based on weak grounds and with no long term planning. Different to the Cold War where there was a clear line to defending the UK

      Executive summary: politicians

    3. The state of the armed forces is exactly why I said last night that there will not be a NATO WWIII there is nothing to fight with. When you consider that our ramshackle effort is, supposedly, the best that Europe has to offer it obviously means that we would all have to sit back and let the Americans and Russians slog it out while we all sit on the sidelines. I don’t think so!

      1. It’s all been sent to Ukraine; we have nothing left and the Russians are busy destroying what Ukraine has left.

        1. Indeed, Tom.
          The USA is pretty short stocked too.
          West is about to go down in the doo-doo.

  43. I have just destroyed my RN Paybook, which I have had for 63 years, in case they try to conscript veterans

  45. Clear blue morning here , very cold . 4c

    Our gas boiler was serviced this morning , it is five years old .. We should have had a combi boiler installed years ago.. and then got rid of the water tanks in the loft.. which attract mice ..

    2. The hot water boilers in my building are being serviced this morning too. I always worry that air will get into the system and the towel rail in my bathroom won’t heat up. It can’t be bled because the hole where the valve should be was already sealed up before I bought the flat. It’s been there since 1935 and must have leaked at some point. If the worst happens, it will need to be replaced but has to be like for like, which is expensive. I’m told that the modern version would just fall apart!

      1. Yo Sue.

        I misread your post, thought it said:

        The hot water Bottles in my building are being serviced this morning too.

  46. Bloody Hell that was cold!
    Just cadged a ride into Cromford with the DT for a bit of shopping and to pay the last bit of the garage bill before walking home.
    Despite gloves my fingers are freezing!

    1. If you’d lived over here your fingers would have dropped off by now.

      If you’d lived in Canada with richardl, every appendage would have dropped off.

    2. Britain is constitutionally a Christian country with the Head of the Church being the Head of state.

      If we allow Muslims to use our schools it is because we allow them to do so but this does not give them the right to practise their religion if this interferes with what the discipline imposed by the head master or the head mistress. If those in the Michaela School don’t like it they must find somewhere else to go.

  49. Did you see the pathetic climb down of Lee Anderson?

    He went into the No lobby for last night’s vote and was so upset by the sniggering of the Labour MPs who mocked him that he abstained from voting against the ineffective Rwanda Bill – the very very issue which had made him resign the day before from being deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.

    If a firm right wing ‘firebrand’ is put off by a few hurty looks and sniggers from Labour then he is of very little use to anyone. And if the right wing of the party can cave in so easily then absolutely nobody should dream of voting Conservative.

    Indeed, Lee Anderson has done a great service to the Reform Party which, as things stand, is the only available choice for anyone who is not a pinko leftie.

      1. “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it…”

        Is some kind of taxing expats’ income coming over the horizon, like the US does?

        1. No, but if a Reform govt were to expel anti-Brits en masse, eg to Pakistan,or the EU, they could still vote in future elections.

      2. “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it…”

        Is some kind of taxing expats’ income coming over the horizon, like the US does?

      1. I would assume that Prince George now flies separately to his father? If he doesn’t he damn well aught to. I assume that not all the children fly with their parents. That would insure against Ms Clutch & Grab getting anywhere near the throne. George would be first in line if the king and the Prince of Wales snuffed it in an aeroplane fiery. Mr I Whine Interminably, is 6th in line. It would have to be a doozy of a disaster.

          1. I think that counting the King plus the Prince of Moan it’s 6. King Charles, William, George, Charlotte, Louis, last but least, “It’s not fair” He wailed.

          3. I’ve given an uptick to both you and Aeneas, but in reality I take Aeneas’ view because Charles was only first in line until Queen Elizabeth passed away. When Charles dies, William will no longer be first in line.

    3. She may very likely have thought it when she saw the Cambridges travelling together with their children! I certainly did!

  52. Snow isn’t just white fluffy stuff, to slide about on and have fun.
    A seven-year-old boy is reported to have died in it today, somewhere close to Jönkjöping in Sweden.

  53. Bluss- it was chilly at t’market. A snow flurry started as we parked the car…. Now it is sunny – but still cold, of course.

  54. Anyone interested in ancient Egypt will find Melvyn Barge’s “In Our Time” today very informative. It is about Nefertiti.

  56. Ref the Princess of Woke’s operation. Lots of space in the red tops about her and Prince Woke having to “Juggle parenting with other responsibilities”. As if. Nannies, staff, chauffeurs…grand-mother…..

    2. They do have to juggle, but for them it’s a different scale. So many staff to manage…

      1. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Nannies, cooks, bottlewashers, drivers, dressers, valets and her Mum, too.

        1. They don’t have any live in staff. Aides to run their affairs commute from Windsor. I expect the gardens are looked after.

          1. No live in staff. Hmmm. Valet for Woke Willy; dresser for Princess Woke. Nanny to come in first thing to deal with sprogs. You are not going to tell me that either of them wash and iron their clothes, polish shoes, do their own hair…. Her late Majesty had a chap who called at Buck House every morning to do her hair. I know that because, for years, I knew the chap. He was Swiss.

            Edit: And the Wokes have at least one cook.

  58. Another greenie bit of stupidity.

    Apparently they are monitoring pizza and bagel bakeries in Montreal with a view to introducing restrictions on burning wood in the ovens.

    Every day tens of thousands of cars get caught in traffic jams in Montreal but I would guess that type of pollution is not so important,

  59. Here’s a sad little thought: Mother’s 95th birthday is in a few days. Just checked my Google calendar, and noticed the appointment isn’t set as “recurring”.
    Should I change it to recurring?

  60. Schwarzenegger held at airport over watch

    ACTOR and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger was detained at Munich Airport after failing to declare a luxury watch while on his way to a climate change fundraiser.

    German officials confirmed to The Telegraph that police had opened criminal proceedings yesterday against the Austrian-american film star.

    The 76-year-old, a former governor of California, reportedly spent close to three hours in detention after touching down on a flight from Los Angeles shortly after midday.

    The timepiece at the centre of the incident was made by Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet and is valued at around £20,000, German media reported.

    Schwarzenegger was said to have had the watch made and reportedly brought it to Europe to auction it off today at a charity event in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbuhel that will benefit the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative.

    All items brought into the EU with a value over €300 (£260) have to be declared at customs and are subject to a tax proportional to the value of the item.

    It was unclear whether Schwarzenegger was only required to pay taxes on the watch or if there was an additional fine for allegedly failing to declare it.

    Varying reports speculated that the actor was required to hand over between €9,000 and €35,000 before being allowed to leave the airport. He was said to have been prepared to pay the fee on his credit card but was ordered to pay some of the total in cash, which he was reportedly escorted to a bank to withdraw.

    The star appeared unimpressed by his run-in with local authorities. “That’s the problem Germany is suffering from. They can’t see the wood for the needles,” he told the Bild newspaper.

    What is this gormless clown going to do with all that money he is raising for “climate change”? Buy a thermostat for the sun? Invent a sprinkler system for all deserts? Initiate a postal service for excess ice-cubes in Americans’ drinks to send them back to the North Pole? As night follows day, he — and all those other halfwits like him — who believes in this scam, will probably also start to tell normal people — who eat meat — to start eating more vegetation! The stupidity quotient of the occupants of this planet soars daily.

    1. We can’t eat more vegetation, farmers are the worst people in the world and are about to be persecuted prosecuted for, well, farming to feed the rest of us.

  61. One for Bill Gates

    If we want to save the planet from the disastrous effects of climate change, should we be banning drugs and vaccines?

    Global greenhouse gas emissions directly generated by the pharma industry are estimated to be about 52 megatonne CO2 equivalent per year – and this is without considering indirect energy-related emissions through the entire supply chain, such as in medicines transportation, or in distribution facilities.

    How much CO2 does the pharmaceutical industry produce?
    around 52 megatons
    Indeed, if healthcare was a country, its carbon footprint would make it equal to the fifth-largest emitter globally. Meanwhile, the pharma industry has been estimated to generate around 52 megatons of CO2e annually, with analysis suggesting it is far more emissions-intensive than the automotive sector.17 Apr 2023

    1. With the added depopulating advantage of all those extra sick people dying off. What’s not to like?

    2. I don’t bother engaging with the Carbon Footprint Olympics as it’s all a colossal lie. CO2 is the gas of life and we should be putting more of it back into the atmosphere.

    2. I believe that the whole thing was ‘given’ to the US, who made a fortune out of its’ advancements.

      A one line entry for Tommy Flowers MBE: disgusting.

      What computer did Tommy Flowers invent?

      The Colossus was developed in 1943 by engineer Tommy Flowers, based on plans by the mathematician Max Newman. It was designed to decode the encrypted transmissions from the German teleprinter Lorenz cipher.

      1. He was a pleb, though; he didn’t go to university (but he was a very clever and inventive bloke).

  64. Phew!
    Cheques from ERNIE arrived this morning, so I jumped onto the 11:00 Matlock bus from outside the house and goth them paid in, as well as doing a bit more shopping before catching the Wirksworth bus as far as Cromford for the 2nd walk up the road.
    MUCH warmer than 1st thing, all of -2½°C outside now!

    3. Brilliant Neil.
      What a shame all those thousands of European farmers didn’t all move in to Davos and capture those horrible disgusting creatures.
      And wipe them all out.

    5. I agree entirely with Neil Oliver’s analysis of the Davos crowd. The people rule the world not the tiny cabal of cranks and misfits who plot our demise.

      Davos is an irrelevant increasingly comical sideshow. The principal characters resemble those of a James Bond movie crossed with The Great Dictator.

      One of the funniest displays was of Zelensky begging for yet more money and apparently securing a billion Swiss francs to defeat Putin. A glance at history would show him that neither Napoleon nor Hitler managed that feat. History also tells us that Russia has never sought war throughout its long existence as a country.

  66. We complain about the blackout of news about Russia in mainstream media. Now it being practiced against Trump. Unless you subscribe to Fox you cannot read their articles. It requires that you register your email address but also you need a VPN if you want FOX. The site will no longer open if it “thinks” you live outside of the U.S. But here is an article about the shoddy treatment of Trump by the MSM in the USA.

    “Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blasted liberal networks that chose not to air former President Trump’s full remarks following his historic victory from Monday’s Iowa caucuses, linking them to “state-run media” from authoritarian regimes.

    Rubio, who offered his endorsement to the former president ahead of the first GOP primary contest, appeared Wednesday on “Hannity” and sounded off on news organizations like MSNBC and CNN over their ideological snub.

    “It’s not about bias anymore. There’s always been liberal bias in the media. Human beings are biased. They’re partisan,” Rubio told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “They are now extending that to not just attack Trump as a candidate, as a former president, future president, but also to attack the people who follow [him].”
    “What’s really changed is not just a partisan tone of the coverage, but now this effort to say ‘We’re not gonna carry a speech, we’re not gonna let you hear what he has to say. We will interpret it, and we’ll put up the snippets we want you to hear, but we’ve made the decision to no longer carry it,” Rubio later continued. “This is exactly how state-run media is used by authoritarian governments to delegitimize, to discredit to basically make people believe that there is no alternative but to the regime and to their rule.”

    “It’s destroying the media in this country. It’s why at this point, you know, no one believes anything they see or hear anymore,” he added.

    Trump shattered records in the Hawkeye State with the widest margin of victory in a contested GOP primary, earning more than 50% of the vote.

    While Fox News Channel aired his victory speech in full, neither MSNBC nor CNN did the same.

    CNN’s Jake Tapper interrupted Trump’s speech as the GOP frontrunner began railing against illegal immigration, telling viewers, “You can hear him repeating his anti-immigrant rhetoric,” before carrying on with election coverage.

    Meanwhile, MSNBC avoided the former president’s speech altogether.

    “There is a reason that we and other news organizations have generally stopped giving an unfiltered, live platform to remarks by former President Trump,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow told viewers. “It is not out of spite, it is not a decision that we relish, it is a decision that we regularly revisit. And honestly, earnestly, it is not an easy decision… But there is a cost to us, as a news organization, of knowingly broadcasting untrue things. That is a fundamental truth of our business and who we are.”
    Throughout much of last year, liberal networks faced accusations of “platforming” Trump whenever they had him on air.

    CNN’s liberal audience fumed over the Trump town hall the network held in May, leading to a revolt among staffers inside the network. NBC News faced similar backlash in September after Trump sat down with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. Spanish-language network Univision was also the target of such uproar after airing Trump’s interview with Mexican-American journalist Enrique Acevedo in November.

    1. Why do we still accept authoritarians calling themselves liberals. There isn’t anything liberal about their attitudes.

      1. Agree Sue. I am trying to think of ways we can harm them. Expose them for what they are. Enemies of the people.

  68. EXCLUSIVEBurglar who carried out £26m raid on homes of celebrities including Tamara
    Ecclestone and Frank Lampard is freed from prison just two years into
    his eight-year sentence.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12973121/Italian-burglar-carried-26m-raid-homes-celebrities-including-Tamara-Ecclestone-Frank-Lampard-released-prison-just-two-years-eight-year-sentence-member-gang-set-freed.html

    What is the point of using resources to fund the police and the courts if this is the result?

    2. Thank you for that. Listened to the whole thing. Was encouraged by Matts belief that there will be another revolt like Brexit over immigration. I sincerely hope he is right.

    3. I can foresee a future of forced repatriation across European countries, and places like the US and maybe Australia, too. It’s being spoken of increasingly openly. Not amongst those in power, obviously, but politics is downstream of culture, and the culture is changing.

        1. Any winnings over £1,000 in any tax year are also tax free so winning say £2000 in any one year is equivalent to having won £2200….(someone else can work out that percentage!)

          1. All premium bond wins are tax free. Anything over £1000 interest say from a savings account is taxed

      2. I’ve not won only 3 times in the last 3 years, annual percentage probably better than a savings account (on which you pay tax) but the chance of winning big money makes it worth while
        Chances are 1 in 21,000

    1. Very un2024 ish. How did Lord Geoff allow it to get past the Moderators/Moderatoresses/Moderatotits

      Should be “You can get back to bed, dear I fired the

      Chambermaid
      Tutoress
      Donkey
      Gardeneress
      etc

      This morning!

        1. I know, but are you sure that she (is a she) and that he/she is off to see a him/her and not an it?

  72. The man who rescued Elizabeth II’s funeral from disaster

    In an exclusive extract from his new book, royal biographer Robert Hardman recounts chaos behind the scenes –

    and the duke who saved the day

    The man responsible was Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk. He had been preparing for this moment for 20 years, since becoming Earl Marshal

    Has the makings to be a Nottler

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/01/17/robert-hardman-charles-iii-extract-queen-funeral-norfolk/

  73. Reform UK hits record polling high while Tory support sinks. 18 January 2024.

    Reform UK has hit a new polling high while the Tories have sunk to a level of public support last seen when Liz Truss was prime minister.

    A new YouGov survey, conducted between Jan 16-17, put Reform on 12 per cent of the vote which was up by two points when compared to the company’s previous poll conducted between January 10-11.

    YouGov said this was the “highest vote share we have recorded for the party to date”.

    I keep hoping in the face of my own experience and Bill’s comments that there will be a breakthrough and total abandonment of the Tories. We shall have to wait and see!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/18/rishi-sunak-latest-news-rwanda-bill-philp/

    1. Cameron should do a Farage.

      Recommend to all TINO voters to for the Reform Party, not the conservethemselves candidate if they are both vying for the same seat

    3. While I am the first to agree that a complete change of party system is desperately required; as things stand, voting for Reform (and other ingenue political parties) will simply hand Labour a landslide victory. Labour will then continue along its avowed mission to destroy the fabric of the country and society.

      Those voting for Reform will be 90% (or thereabouts) core Conservative voters. Those votes will be taken from the total that would have gone to the Tories, consigning that party to electoral oblivion for the next five years at the very least. Reform will not acquire sufficient votes to even become an effective opposition to Labour and it is doubtful they will acquire many, if any, Members of Parliament.

      The only route towards proper reform is to abandon (i.e. dismantle) the party system in its entirety. Every future candidate would be an independent and their candidacy would be permitted by an initial vote by the electorate (i.e, proper democracy, not the elective oligarchy now in force). Those candidates thus selected would face off in the general election.

      The winners would then form alliances (not parties; these alliances would be dynamic and would be answerable, directly, to the electorate) in order to determine who would be best suited to become PM and form a government.

      Failure to act along these lines means the country will sink ever deeper into the political quagmire that it is currently just paddling in.

    4. While I am the first to agree that a complete change of party system is desperately required; as things stand, voting for Reform (and other ingenue political parties) will simply hand Labour a landslide victory. Labour will then continue along its avowed mission to destroy the fabric of the country and society.

      Those voting for Reform will be 90% (or thereabouts) core Conservative voters. Those votes will be taken from the total that would have gone to the Tories, consigning that party to electoral oblivion for the next five years at the very least. Reform will not acquire sufficient votes to even become an effective opposition to Labour and it is doubtful they will acquire many, if any, Members of Parliament.

      The only route towards proper reform is to abandon (i.e. dismantle) the party system in its entirety. Every future candidate would be an independent and their candidacy would be permitted by an initial vote by the electorate (i.e, proper democracy, not the elective oligarchy now in force). Those candidates thus selected would face off in the general election.

      The winners would then form alliances (not parties; these alliances would be dynamic and would be answerable, directly, to the electorate) in order to determine who would be best suited to become PM and form a government.

      Failure to act along these lines means the country will sink ever deeper into the political quagmire that it is currently just paddling in.

  74. 381042+ up ticks,

    On the vine show two peoples who suffered postmaster odious fallout and another who offered his sympathy and that of the whole nation.

    On the other hand you have an ex PM, one who had a guilty verdict against his name, voted into power on the
    1997 / 2001/2005 seemingly refusing to discuss his part in the
    horrendous postal issue.

    This begs the question how many postal scandals victims gave support through the years to MR anthony charlie lynton ?

    It also gives weight to the old saying, carry a long spoon into the polling stations.

  75. Hint for those who have solar panels.

    When it is dark, shine an electrically powered sunlamp onto the panels: They charge quite well

    1. They charge even better (and much more cheaply) if you plug that sunlamp into next door’s supply.

  76. In 1945 at the end of Second World War, the Royal Navy has 861,000 personnel, a number that fell to 128,000 in 1955 and 62,000
    in 1991 when the Berlin Wall came down.31 Jan 2018

    RN ships in 1950

    Carriers 12

    Destroyers and Frigates 280

    Now, the RN’s strength would be fiddled to include the Gosport and Torpoint ferries, as shorebased matelots use them to get to ‘work’

  78. Ref Neil Oliver’s earlier appearance

    https://standforhealthfreedom.com/reforming/
    All these alphabet agencies are beyond redemption as they have been corrupted by the Gates/Soros/schwab/Rockefeller cabal…they need destroying for good and only when we get rid of the deep state will that happen.
    Trouble is, far too may have been corrupted now.

    All WEF stooges should be removed forthwith … we did not elect them.

  79. Strange how our many ‘weather gurus’ seem to be so disappointed that the temperature have dropped below freezing in early January. They don’t seem to be able to take it in, or accept that it quite often happens during the northern hemisphere winter months.
    Perhaps they are feeling betrayed.

    1. They’ll find some way to proclaim it’s the “warmest January since records began” or some such nonsense.

      1. I noticed on the ITV London news earlier, Heathrow was a few degrees warmer than it’s surrounding areas. I wonder why that might be…..

  80. Cuppa tea and a biscuit time ………..
    And play a couple of tunes to keep my hand in as it were.

  81. I see the Wet Office is keeping Project Fear alive and well:

    “UK weather: Britain’s Arctic blast to turn into tepid gales with mercury set to hit 12C but face 70mph gusts and torrents of rain”

      1. I thought the origin of that saying came from the old armed sailing ships. The brass monkeys were the stands that held the cannon shot.

  82. Watching the World Indoor Bowls Championship Men’s Semifinal.
    Great stuff, join us on BBC2 and enjoy a skilful sport.

  83. Another nail in coffin of the UK’s industrial capability. Tata will press ahead with converting the Margam plant to electric arc furnaces. These devices merely recycle scrap iron. Where will we get the high quality steel for a hi tech economy, China or India, I suppose. Kinnock is the local MP, Im not sure his constituents are going to be best pleased when 3000 of them loose their jobs starting this Sept. But at least we can all feel virtuous knowing the the arc furnace produces less CO2 when the workforce are on benefits. Live updates as Tata’s Port Talbot steelworks expected to cut thousands of jobs this year

    https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/live-updates-port-talbot-steelworkers-28467371#ICID=Android_WalesOnlineNewsApp_AppShare

      1. The Unions now have no choice but to accept. They should have protested when this lunacy of stopping steel production at one of our very few steel plants was first mooted. Trouble is that even the unions believe that we can go green and keep jobs and still maintain our standard of living. Kinnock will be keeping a very low profile, but then he is not losing his job and will, no doubt, tell them the world will end if we keep the blast furnaces. Just hope China allows us to buy some quality steel to build our military if WW3 starts. I mean to say, they couldnt possibly say no if Taiwan kicks off…

        1. What’s happened to that opencast steel-coal mine in the north west.? It was going to open, then not, going to open again, then…

      2. The town hardly looks wealthy now, it will go the way of many of our old industrial cities when 3000 are thrown on the dole.

        1. Grimsby never recovered after the betrayal of our fishing industry. Where once you had streets full of shops and Pubs you now have prostitutes and drug dealers.

          2. The fishermen would piss it up in the Pubs all weekend but it was once thriving. Lots of secondary and tertiary businesses did well because money was being made and spent. Nothing now.

          3. We used to port call there during one winter in the early 90s. The nightlife was …interesting.

          4. Phizzee have you ever thought about writing a Lonely planet Guide book on the best places to find prostitutes and drug dealers in Britain? (Asking for a friend)….

          6. Off the top of my head i could probably give you a couple of dozen places. I do charge a finders fee though. :@)

    4. Ah, man. That’s really bad news.
      But at least the coke used to make iron & steel will deposit it’s CO2 on another country’s account, so we’ll all be better off… .
      Where will all the ‘leccy come from?

      1. The unemployed will be given free gym membership and drive generating treadmills! Its sickening to see Stephen Kinnock bleating about loss of jobs, its his type that has supported the move to the arc furnace and its always been known that it would cause a loss of jobs.

    2. Poor chap – if he represents the conservative, right of centre part of the Conservative Party which gives in at a mere giggle from the Labour Party then the Conservative Party is truly finished as it no longer even pretends to be conservative.

      Lee Anderson has given an incredible boost to the Reform Party.

          1. Our three children were born in the same hospital, yet we lived elsewhere between each birth.

            The joy of jobs that cause one to have to move frequently…

      2. I think that the last time I was in Irkowit in the Red Sea Hills in the North of the Sudan was in July 1946 – the month when I was born!

        1. 381042+ up ticks,

          Afternoon S,

          In regards to the polling stations self respect is surely a front runner.

          2. 381042+ up ticks,

            S,
            In my book loss of self respect has got the peoples the MPs they deserve.

            Its value, ( self respect)can be regained via MASS supporting a chosen candidate with a clean past pedigree.

            The chosen one can be a party forming magnet, Batten proved that in no uncertain manner.

            I do believe one with self respect knows its value & worth.

          3. In the modern world self-respect has become inward facing instead of outward.
            And that’ a major part of today’s problems. Solipsistic determination.

          4. 381042+ up ticks,
            Evening S,
            If I take a Solipsistic stance in regarding ALL current
            lab/lib/con / current ukip coalition voters devil worshipers,does that make me a solipsistic type person , if so you have me bang to rights.

        2. The chap who gave us such an excellent talk on Tuesday about Basingstoke would agree with you.

          The 16th C building in which Katherine of Aragon slept on her way to marry Prince Arthur is – determinedly – NOT listed; while a modern horror, that most residents would like blown up, is.

          1. Henry V111 claimed that the marriage of his brother to Katherine of Aragon was not consummated and therefore he was entitled to marry her.

            Of course the ruling used to be that a man cannot marry his brother’s widow. This was a question to discuss when studying Hamlet – was Claudius an adulterate beast (i.e. he started his sexual relationship with Gertrude while Hamlet’s father was still alive) as well as an incestuous beast as Gertrude was his sister-in-law.

            This of course is different now. We have a friend in the village who now cohabits with her dead husband’s brother.

          2. I am not sure your first sentence is true. He got a dispensation from the Pope to marry her, which must mean there was some doubt. When it suited him he claimed that there was an impediment so he needed an annulment. Catherine, of course, wanted to be Queen of England (it was what she had been brought up to believe was her destiny) so who knows if she told the truth about what happened on their wedding night.

          3. I am no expert but I did study the Tudors and Stuarts for History “A” level and this is what I seem to remember my History master told me!

        4. A cynic is somebody who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

          Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic is a bit unfair to some of us cynical Nottlers.

          1. “A socialist is somebody who knows nothing but will take everything whatever the price to society”

            sosraboc

  87. A brass triangle that the cannonballs were stacked in. When they shrank due to cold, the iron balls would suddenly pop off.
    /pedant/

  88. A Bottomless Bunker and the end of an 83-day streak!

    Wordle 943 X/6
    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
    ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
    🟩⬜🟩🟨🟩
    🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩

    1. I understand your pain. It started well for me but then like several others, it was down to pick one of many
      Wordle 943 5/6

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

    2. Oh bad luck. Good streak.

      Wordle 943 5/6

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

  89. Aw, I didn’t do too badly today.

    Wordle 943 4/6

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

  90. I don’t take The Guardian (If I did it would be with a sackful of salt) so how on earth would you know?

    1. Years ago when I was abandoned by an earlier wife – I checked out “dating” in various organs, the Grauniad included (just the once). I was very surprised. May have all changed these days, of course

  91. I am signing off for today. I’ll have my usual glass of red medicine – and then, at bedtime, a small brandy and see how THAT works.

    We are away at the weekend. My elder son is putting on a family supper on Saturday (venison that he shot). On Sunday he is very kindly driving us to South Devon to see my oldest living relative – she is 90 on 9 February. Still living on her own despite a heart attack last back end. She does have one of her sons and several grandchildren within half a mile. We are taking a picnic lunch as she finds doing meals for people a bit much. Cold venison will be on the menu – along with the loaf I shall make tomorrow. Then home to sweltering Narfurk on Monday lunchtime.

    So have a spiffing evening – there is a very good two-parter on BBC4 (I think) by Ken Burns (I know, I know) about the destruction of tens of millions of North American buffalo – and many thousand of Red Indians (or whatever they name is nowadays).

    A demain – with floury hands.

    1. Glad to learn you are still flourishing!
      (I watched part 1 of the Buffalo programme must look out for part 2)

    2. Hope you have a wonderful few days away, Uncle Bill and MR! Keep well and enjoy it all! 😘

    3. I do love the South Hams, very attractive countryside, pleasant villages. I have to confess that it’s prettier than east Cornwall.

  92. ‘Night All

    Not been around much today,busy busy

    That’ll work..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a7f76e78a0cfc34cddb7ad9804a68ab4156a82cfb9e077dfaea0995cefef445d.jpg

    Oh wait………….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef01f2b4bd8d301eded7008d7ab5eccf041d4f5a2fd13cacb2a65782bc59bc5e.gif

    Rest

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1619acad488e58246dd495b3202a52b19093313efa8b7a922d6bc8a7d0c82a8b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bf64a247b2a80eddf21565809b0702622dab617df64b02b842e48bedf6a2eda3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5bb5c0953b464d75a19426c56d675ece8f9842bd3f4b24bf06baaf0bb9f447ef.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e69fe2670a70fd530cf08c9a5a4a9c3c56e0a3c20d9b586fb00cb5275c04f9d9.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/14309a105e98b6505dee68055c7e8fee3b119c09fbfa999fd7772b0a055ce519.jpg

    1. That should annoy the Davos crowd.

      It has been a bad week for them with Trumps caucus victory then Milei giving them a bit of a tongue lashing and now this.

      1. It won’t stop them. The Swedish state machine will ensure their every policy fails. They’ll end up beaten and defeated by statism and then the Left will get back in and force ever more damaging policies, accelerated to ensure they cannot be revoked.

  94. A problem reported on regularly in the media and one that is getting worse. Part of it can be blamed on the EU’s ‘recycling’ directives, which had little to do with genuine recycling/reprocessing but were merely impositions on householders and businesses to do a bit of ‘pre-sorting’ [that’ll get Grizz going!] and gave council officers a chance to rummage through bins and issue fines rather than use a bit of initiative to recover some value from rubbish.

    Fly-tipping forces landowners to turn farms into ‘forts’
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68007087

    Hayes: Network Rail site used for ‘industrial scale’ fly-tipping
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67188761

    And the Environmental Protection Act 1990 is a scandalous piece of legislation…

    2. I know you were working but what celebrations have you got organised?

      I’m catching you up ! 60 next month ! I think someone wound the clock forward.

      1. I’m being taken out for lunch in Cirencester on Sat by my nieces. Looking forward to it, they’re lovely girls.

          2. Always a good meal there. Enjoy it! I haven’t been to the Cirencester one lately, but we’re regulars at the Gloucester one, and they are quite standardised.

      2. In London you’d also get a 60+ Oyster Card, which is much the same as a Freedom Pass. It amazes me that Khan hasn’t kyboshed that.

    3. Happy Birthday, Stormi! I’m sorry I missed the earlier postings – I hope you have had an enjoyable 🎉🥳 sunshiney 🌞 day!

      1. Bl**dy freezing here. January birthdays are rubbish.
        Work was OK today though, a couple of cards and a box of choices from some of the team.

        1. 🎶Happy Birthday to you 🎶 I hope you have had a lovely day today 🥂🍾🍹cheers. 🤗

        2. “January birthdays are rubbish.” That would be a typical Northern Hemisphere assumption.

          Feliz cumpleaños and many healthy returns!

        3. I agree – January birthdays are the pits. But someone said this week we should regard January as a gift, a gift to cosy-on down in your most comfortable clothes under throws, hot chocolate, a good book, red wine….. a variation on the theme of when presented with lemons make lemonade. It has helped me to regard the month differently rather than just to endure it. But hot on the heels of January comes February. It is a long haul.

    4. Hooray, here you are.

      I always prefer to extend my good wishes against a post from the birthdayer themself.

      A fine prime number, may you enjoy at least 8 more.

      1. Murky buckets, sos. As long as I live long enough to spend some of the pension I’ve paid for over the years…

        1. At current rate of progress, as they move it ever older, you’ll have passed one and probably two.
          };-((

    5. 61! Wow for some of us that is ancient history.

      Time to start searching out seniors discounts.

      1. From next month i get free medicines. Which will save a couple hundred a year. I expect the government to move the goal posts at the end of January.

        1. Haven’t you been buying the pre-paid prescription? Costs a bit more than a £100, but saves you money if you’re on more than 1 prescription per month.

    6. My wife was born a week or two before you were conceived!

      (Caroline is 61 – she will be 62 on March 26th.)

      2. March 26th seems a very popular birthday! I have two friends born on that date (but several years apart).

    8. Creeps up on you, and suddenly BAM!
      I made 62 this summer just gone, and SWMBO in the spring.
      Don’t feel much different to in my 30s, TBH, except for grumpier…
      Hope you had a magical day! Sending hugs!

      1. I ďont feel any different except occasionally it’ll dawn o me tat I’m the oldest person in he room

    10. Belated Birthday Greetings Stormy! I think I missed it this morning! Hope it’s been a good one!

  97. The very Latest version of bolero from the bbc.
    Flog It, a programme that’s been on for a long, long time. Not everyone’s cup of tea in a Clarice Cliff.
    But not containing enough diversity I would guess.
    The only reason for the Dopey Wokies to discontinue such a popular programme.
    Also quite often using cathedrals for the initial gatherings.

  98. If you haven’t already sealed up the house for the night, take a look at the half-moon and a very adjacent Jupiter.

    5. Can you see Sirius yet? The brightest star in the (night) sky. Should be a couple hours later rising to the east of Orion’s feet.

    4. They don’t need to. Google simply don’t permit dissenting opinions to be promulgated. Search for ‘China’s coal output’ and you won’t see notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com in the results.

      Search for wind subsidy costs or northern ireland lackouts – you won’t get a single result that isn’t hard Left, pro wind spreading utter lies about ‘how cheap wind is’ – when it isn’t.

  101. “Our party will give Britain the change it desperately needs” is a refrain from all the segments of the Uni-party prior to an election.
    Well, I have seen the result of the change you arseholes have rammed down our throats over the last 60 years, and I want none of it, you hear?

    Two images of British High Streets 70 years apart:

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f777f515de70ab66311283ccd8ac8bd1db20e2bc/267_62_1880_1129/master/1880.jpg?width=620&dpr=2&s=none https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94422590eec90e470c07775bf8b0204c0ce720e162b60116d465a452496cf2dd.jpg

    1. Is that all the time it took to destroy nearly a thousand years of history. Dear life I hate the political class.

      1. Fear of one six letter word to which the appropriate response should have been “so what?” Instead we tucked our tails between our legs and scarpered.

          1. It isn’t much, far less than the arseholes deserve, but with an election coming up, vote for anyone but the Uni-party, or deface your vote.

    5. For my 50th birthday, my family bought me a book of old sepia photos of Small Heath, Birmingham, where we are from. The images were taken at about the turn of the century.
      I decided I would take newer images of the old views, for contrast. I didn’t even complete the first one. More like the Khyber Pass than home.

  102. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12975439/PETER-HITCHENS-starter-10-University-Challenge-festival-political-correctness-questions-no-one-possibly-answer.html

    PETER HITCHENS: Your starter for 10 – why has University Challenge become a festival of political correctness? (With questions almost no one can possibly answer)

    I do not know who decides these things, but I am sure a decision has been taken, and I do not have much doubt about why it was taken.

    And then there are the questions that 99.9 per cent of the population could not answer, and are barely written in English.

    I take an example from Monday. Here goes: ‘In order for a vibrational mode to be IR active, and therefore give a peak in infra-red spectroscopy, which moment within the molecule must fluctuate during this mode?’ What does it even mean? Amazingly, the answering team knew it was the ‘dipole moment’.

    READ MORE: PETER HITCHENS: This free Englishman will never strap a dismal, soggy piece of cloth over his mouth ever again… we must keep calm and resist the new ‘muzzle mania’ over face masks
    An equivalent question on the arts side would be to list the reasons given for the annulment of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage, the names of her two daughters and the name of the Pope who granted it.

    It is not general knowledge. General knowledge is about things we are a bit embarrassed that we don’t know. However, it is particular knowledge that viewers are subjected to on today’s University Challenge.

    There are people who know it, but there are not very many of them — though anyone picking a team for the programme will make sure they have at least one member who might cope.

    I suspect this sort of question is designed to make nice, generous people say: ‘Oh, gosh, these questions are really difficult — so much for all that talk about “dumbing down”.’

    Indeed, it is noticeable how often the celebrity, brought on to present the series winners with their trophy, is prevailed upon to say that the programme demonstrates that claims of educational decline are all wrong.

    But I don’t think so. These questions are not difficult. They are just too specialised for most people even to guess at.

    Questions which used to be genuinely difficult have been dropped because the current university generation have, with few exceptions, been educated badly and simply do not know the old landmarks of literature, poetry, history, geography and music.

    Many also have scant knowledge of recent events. Much of the era since World War II is shrouded in a fog of unknowing for them. Who is this Harold Macmillan? What was Vietnam? It is not their fault, but it would be subversive, and dangerous to the liberal consensus, to expose it each Monday night on TV.

    1. “Mr Rajan is, in many ways, a refreshing change.”

      No, Mr H, he’s not! His ghastly manner – trite and slovenly – makes University Challenge sound like a certain early Saturday evening quiz show on BBC1 c.1984.

  104. You’ve probably read enough about this already but I’ve highlighted a few lines that are really important. In other articles on the subject there were references to objections by Christians, notably Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Hindus, as though these were as significant as the Islamic agitations (the old idea of the ‘qualifier’). They were not, although Hindus and eggs is a new one on me. This isn’t about all cultures but one – and it’s not ours.

    The ‘trial’ of Katharine Birbalsingh is a battle for the future of Britain

    There’s a vital principle at stake in the case: whether ‘rights’ culture is allowed to trump social cohesion

    FRASER NELSON • 18 January 2024 • 7:56pm

    The Michaela Community School in northwest London is not just a curiosity: it’s a phenomenon. Its head teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, has such a big public profile that you might wonder if her school lives up to its hype.

    It does. Results are astonishing. Its pupils leave, on average, with better grades than most private schools – but a quarter of Michaela pupils are on free school meals. When it comes to raising attainment, Michaela was recently ranked first out of 6,959 secondaries. You’d hope that her model would be copied and rolled out nationally. Instead, she’s being sued.

    The trial of Katharine Birbalsingh – or, at least, her school – is a story of our times. Anyone who innovates in state education needs to be ready for battle because they are taking on an establishment. They can expect lawsuits on bizarre pretexts and technicalities. Their antagonists specialise in rustling up legal aid – so the taxpayer sues the taxpayer.

    It has become a form of routine harassment, punishing those who deviate from the norm. But to end up in the High Court is unusual, even for the free school movement.

    She’s being sued over her strict policy of secularism, which she regards as the glue that binds her multi-faith school together. About half of the 700 pupils are Muslim – so it would be quite an impact if the school (a converted office block) was to somehow empty rooms for lunchtime prayers.

    It would also threaten an important principle: to have no form of separation or segregation, on grounds of religion or ethnicity. That everyone is together and equal: and swallow differences, so they all get on.

    A founding principle of the school is that teachers control the culture, not just the lessons. Pupils stay silent in corridors, unless greeting passing staff. At lunchtime, they eat in assigned groups of six. One pupil sets the table, another fetches and serves food, another wipes up.

    It’s seen as a vital ritual, to emphasise that all are part of the same school family. Other inner-city schools have problems with gangs, bullying and tensions between Caribbean and African, Hindu and Muslim, Sunni and Shia. Michaela’s mixed lunchtimes are intended to avoid that. At first, meat was served. But Hindus avoided the beef and Muslims the pork: pupils started to segregate. To avoid this, lunch at Michaela is now all vegetarian. Cohesion is crucial, as is equality before the rules. So when one pupil started to pray at lunchtime, then was joined by others, and then other Muslims were pressured into joining in, it was a serious challenge to school culture. A social media campaign started and teachers started being threatened by outsiders. School governors tried to end the debate by voting, 11-to-1, to ban prayer. A pupil sued – and here we are.

    But this is about more than just one school. In her statement, Birbalsingh has said that this is about the basis on which a multi-faith Britain can be made to work: asking everyone to give up something, not to insist on everything, so we can all get on. She has been giving a polite “no” for years. Christian parents complain about the Sunday revision sessions; Jehovah’s Witnesses about Macbeth (they dislike the study of witches), Hindus about plates that touch eggs. She has said, to each of them: please accept the school’s ethos. We all need to compromise.

    So you can see the principle at stake here. One one hand is what the French call laïcité: an agreement to leave religion out of certain areas (like the classroom) so that people of all religions and none can rub along together.

    Against this we have the grievance industry, preaching minority rights. Claiming that “freedom of religion” somehow compels schools to open prayer rooms, or drop whatever may offend a minority – like Macbeth or Sunday study or plates that touch eggs – even if they are within majority national culture.

    With Michaela, the proposition is clear: everyone compromises. Few pupils really want vegetarian food, everyone is asked to eat it – but that’s so they can all get along together and come up with the kind of academic results that you’d be lucky to find in a £20,000-a-year private school. Everyone agrees that their “right” – to meat, prayer rooms or an uninterrupted lunchtime – is there to be sacrificed so they can take part in this educational miracle.

    But Birbalsingh has run ahead of the Government. What Michaela does works: but it is not protected by law.

    The real scandal, of course, is that this nonsense has gone to the High Court in the first place. But the Tories have been confused on this for years, not sure whether to pose as champions of diversity or enemies of identity politics. One piece of official advice says schools must ensure they are “enabling Muslim pupils to pray at prescribed times”. Another says schools are not “required to provide any pupil with a physical space, such as a prayer room”. Which is it?

    As Rishi Sunak has found out with Rwanda, his party has left a legal mess so deep that rule by lawyers has supplanted rule of law. This is why Britain’s most successful state school is now on trial.

    It’s quite possible that Birbalsingh loses, staff are obliged to open prayer rooms so the Muslim pupils disappear upstairs while non-Muslims go to have lunch, thereby destroying the cohesion that all of its staff fought so hard to create. And the Muslim parents who liked their children not being intimidated by more conservative-religious peers will lose this protection.

    It’s sometimes said that Britain created the world’s most successful multi-faith democracy, without really thinking about it. But perhaps we should start thinking about it. One in 10 school pupils now live in Muslim families: what to do when a small number start to ask for prayer rooms? How many head teachers would, as Birbalsingh has done, hold out even if this means going to the High Court?

    The Tories often say they are the party taking on the forces of identity politics – but it’s the Birbalsinghs of this world who fight the battles. With a few more months still left in power, the Conservatives can do a lot more to make sure the law is on her side.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/18/trial-katharine-birbalsingh-battle-for-future-britain

    There are simply too many tensions here. The lid cannot be screwed down, either by decency or by legislative force. Soon it will blow.

    We were here first. FIOFO.

    1. Those rules sound like the school I was educated in; we were quiet in the corridors, greeted staff (and stood up when a master or mistress entered the room), ate on tables of 8 with a set menu (no vegetarianism, thankfully), with one pupil in charge of fetching the food, another serving and another clearing away. It used to be standard, now it’s akin to a miracle.

      1. We weren’t particularly quiet in the corridors and on the stairs, but that was more or less how it was in my school.

      2. We had a large dining hall at Blundell’s in which the whole school had their meals.

        There was one enormously long table made up of 8 refectory tables placed end to end for each house. The Housemaster sat at one end and the house matron at the other. A house prefect or the house tutor was seated on each the eight tables which were organised by seniority with the oldest boys at the top with the housemaster and the younger boys, (the fags) seated at the bottom end with Matron..

        Food collection and clearing the tables was done on a rota system.

  105. Evening, all. Deporting people to Rwanda (even if it ever happens) won’t fix the problem, just as replacing Sunak with Starmer won’t fix it either. You have to get rid of the pull factor.

    1. We were shocked. On today’s BBC TV there was an “asylum seeker” who said that he wanted a job.

  106. Perhaps the Midget Mayor of Olde London Town has sent some of the Met’s finest over the water to teach the Gardai how to rough up the indigenes…

    Rural Ireland revolts as town’s only hotel is closed to accommodate asylum seekers

    Riot police stand guard in Co Tipperary as immigration influx, largest since 2007, comes amid shortfall of 250,000 homes and soaring rents

    Michael Murphy in Roscrea, Ireland • 18 January 2024 • 3:40pm

    Riot police standing guard outside the Racket Hall hotel in rural Tipperary are tetchy. The 40-room guest house in one of Ireland’s oldest market towns remains intact but recent history suggests that it could soon be reduced to a smouldering wreck.

    Local lorry driver Justin Phelan has no intention of setting the building alight but his message to the 160 asylum seekers destined for his hometown is clear: “Roscrea is full”.

    “The services are on the ground here in this town,” Mr Phelan, 34, told The Telegraph. “Not just in this town – all across the country they’re on the ground. There’s God knows how many people on trolleys today in Limerick Hospital. “We have around five GPs in this town. You call any of them this minute and he’ll say, ‘I don’t have space, I’m full up.’ There are 33 children in my daughter’s class. Just imagine adding two more, with language difficulties. What effect is that going to have on the rest of the children already in the class?”

    Mr Phelan is one of many holding a vigil outside the hotel in what has become a snapshot of unrest across rural Ireland at the government’s perceived clumsy handling of a surge in migration. Protests have been rising across the country at resettlement programmes as Ireland’s housing system creaks, leading in some extreme cases to public buildings being torched.

    Huddled around one of the open fires at the Roscrea hotel entrance, Mr Phelan said he has “been here every day” since last Thursday when the Irish government gave local politicians 24 hours notice that the hotel was being closed down to the public to house asylum seekers. Weddings and parties scheduled to take place in the town’s only hotel have been cancelled after the owners reached an agreement with the government.

    After some demonstrators tried on Monday to block a bus carrying the first 17 arrivals, mainly women and children, from entering the car park, violent scuffles with the gardaí, members of the Irish police force, broke out.

    Immigration to Ireland rose by 32 per cent to more than 140,000 in the year ending April 2023. Of these arrivals, more than 13,000 were asylum seekers. And since the Russian invasion, nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Ireland. The immigration influx – the largest since 2007 – comes amid a shortfall of 250,000 homes in Ireland and astronomical rent prices. The Irish government recently admitted that there is not enough room to house new arrivals, slashing the monetary allowance for Ukrainians by four-fifths and offering new asylum seekers tents to sleep in.

    In Roscrea, many locals have been camping outside the Racket Hall Hotel through the night. “This is the only hotel in our town and if you take it away, as bad as our town is now, it’s going to be worse,” said Mr Phelan.

    But the local reaction in Roscrea has not all been negative, with some leaving toys outside the hotel’s doors for its young guests. Several families who have attended the demonstrations are at pains to point out that their gripe is with government policy, not with the individuals arriving in their town.

    While Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, acknowledged people living in communities where asylum seekers are being housed have legitimate “fears”, he said “nobody in a democracy has the right to veto…who moves into their area”. [Oh, I don’t know. Try buying a house in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire and see how long the ‘peace’ is with you.]

    A poll by the Business Post/Red C in May 2023 found that 75 per cent of Irish voters believed Ireland had taken in “too many” refugees. Migration protests have also been staged in the disadvantaged suburb of Ballymun and rural towns in counties Carlow and Mayo.

    The disaffection has escalated to full-blown revolt by some in local government, with Mayo County Council voting unanimously on Tuesday to cease co-operation with the central government over the housing of asylum seekers – the first council in Ireland to do so.

    Mattie McGrath, an independent Teachta Dála for Tipperary, said on Monday he was “shocked to my bloody core” at the government’s response to the protest in Roscrea, adding that he “didn’t expect to see the riot squad called in”. He accused the government of treating the people of Tipperary – “who aren’t willing to do their bidding and lie down before them” – with “contempt”.

    Responding to the backlash on Tuesday, Mr Varadkar on Tuesday said the 10 areas most “under pressure” because of refugee arrivals would receive additional resources in policing, education and health. He went on to condemn the move by Roscrea locals to obstruct the arrival of the asylum seekers as “anti-democratic” and “against the spirit and the values of our nation”.

    Last year, thugs rioted in Dublin setting trams and police cars alight and looting shops in response to an incident outside a school in Dublin after an Algerian, who was an Irish citizen not born in Ireland, allegedly went on a stabbing spree. The violence was organised online in WhatsApp messaging groups with one chat encouraging members to descend on the city centre to “kill all foreigners”.

    There has been a spate of 13 arson attacks on migrant facilities, and venues wrongly thought to be housing migrants, in Ireland over the past year, with no arrests made. A threat of arson against the Racket Hall Hotel in Roscrea was also reported to the gardaí on Monday.

    There are particular concerns in Roscrea and elsewhere about the influx of “unvetted” single males into the country. In 2023, almost 70 per cent of “international protection applicants” arriving at Dublin Airport where most asylum seekers are processed did so without valid identity documents, according to the Irish Department of Justice.

    That year, the number of male asylum seekers was more than double that of women. In 2022, 4,200 people arrived without documentation – and most asylum applicants that year were also single men.

    There is also widespread concern about dwindling public services. Last year, the Irish College of General Practitioners warned the country’s GP shortage posed a significant public health risk, and that the crisis was particularly stark in rural Ireland. However, rural towns have also taken a disproportionate number of refugees in the past year, according to a recent analysis of Ukrainian asylum seekers by the Irish Independent.

    This has led to a sense of unfairness with how migrant accommodation has been allocated. The population of some towns, such as Lisdoonvarna, in Co Clare, have more than doubled as a result of incoming refugees, many of whom are from Ukraine.

    Sandra, 47, a local support worker, said her town’s predicament also applies to the rest of rural Ireland: “Any town which is a pushover gets bombarded. We stayed quiet for so long but it’s time to speak up.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/18/ireland-revolt-asylum-seekers-leo-varadkar-riot-police

  107. Perhaps the Midget Mayor of Olde London Town has sent some of the Met’s finest over the water to teach the Gardai how to rough up the indigenes…

    Rural Ireland revolts as town’s only hotel is closed to accommodate asylum seekers

    Riot police stand guard in Co Tipperary as immigration influx, largest since 2007, comes amid shortfall of 250,000 homes and soaring rents

    Michael Murphy in Roscrea, Ireland • 18 January 2024 • 3:40pm

    Riot police standing guard outside the Racket Hall hotel in rural Tipperary are tetchy. The 40-room guest house in one of Ireland’s oldest market towns remains intact but recent history suggests that it could soon be reduced to a smouldering wreck.

    Local lorry driver Justin Phelan has no intention of setting the building alight but his message to the 160 asylum seekers destined for his hometown is clear: “Roscrea is full”.

    “The services are on the ground here in this town,” Mr Phelan, 34, told The Telegraph. “Not just in this town – all across the country they’re on the ground. There’s God knows how many people on trolleys today in Limerick Hospital. “We have around five GPs in this town. You call any of them this minute and he’ll say, ‘I don’t have space, I’m full up.’ There are 33 children in my daughter’s class. Just imagine adding two more, with language difficulties. What effect is that going to have on the rest of the children already in the class?”

    Mr Phelan is one of many holding a vigil outside the hotel in what has become a snapshot of unrest across rural Ireland at the government’s perceived clumsy handling of a surge in migration. Protests have been rising across the country at resettlement programmes as Ireland’s housing system creaks, leading in some extreme cases to public buildings being torched.

    Huddled around one of the open fires at the Roscrea hotel entrance, Mr Phelan said he has “been here every day” since last Thursday when the Irish government gave local politicians 24 hours notice that the hotel was being closed down to the public to house asylum seekers. Weddings and parties scheduled to take place in the town’s only hotel have been cancelled after the owners reached an agreement with the government.

    After some demonstrators tried on Monday to block a bus carrying the first 17 arrivals, mainly women and children, from entering the car park, violent scuffles with the gardaí, members of the Irish police force, broke out.

    Immigration to Ireland rose by 32 per cent to more than 140,000 in the year ending April 2023. Of these arrivals, more than 13,000 were asylum seekers. And since the Russian invasion, nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Ireland. The immigration influx – the largest since 2007 – comes amid a shortfall of 250,000 homes in Ireland and astronomical rent prices. The Irish government recently admitted that there is not enough room to house new arrivals, slashing the monetary allowance for Ukrainians by four-fifths and offering new asylum seekers tents to sleep in.

    In Roscrea, many locals have been camping outside the Racket Hall Hotel through the night. “This is the only hotel in our town and if you take it away, as bad as our town is now, it’s going to be worse,” said Mr Phelan.

    But the local reaction in Roscrea has not all been negative, with some leaving toys outside the hotel’s doors for its young guests. Several families who have attended the demonstrations are at pains to point out that their gripe is with government policy, not with the individuals arriving in their town.

    While Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, acknowledged people living in communities where asylum seekers are being housed have legitimate “fears”, he said “nobody in a democracy has the right to veto…who moves into their area”. [Oh, I don’t know. Try buying a house in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire and see how long the ‘peace’ is with you.]

    A poll by the Business Post/Red C in May 2023 found that 75 per cent of Irish voters believed Ireland had taken in “too many” refugees. Migration protests have also been staged in the disadvantaged suburb of Ballymun and rural towns in counties Carlow and Mayo.

    The disaffection has escalated to full-blown revolt by some in local government, with Mayo County Council voting unanimously on Tuesday to cease co-operation with the central government over the housing of asylum seekers – the first council in Ireland to do so.

    Mattie McGrath, an independent Teachta Dála for Tipperary, said on Monday he was “shocked to my bloody core” at the government’s response to the protest in Roscrea, adding that he “didn’t expect to see the riot squad called in”. He accused the government of treating the people of Tipperary – “who aren’t willing to do their bidding and lie down before them” – with “contempt”.

    Responding to the backlash on Tuesday, Mr Varadkar on Tuesday said the 10 areas most “under pressure” because of refugee arrivals would receive additional resources in policing, education and health. He went on to condemn the move by Roscrea locals to obstruct the arrival of the asylum seekers as “anti-democratic” and “against the spirit and the values of our nation”.

    Last year, thugs rioted in Dublin setting trams and police cars alight and looting shops in response to an incident outside a school in Dublin after an Algerian, who was an Irish citizen not born in Ireland, allegedly went on a stabbing spree. The violence was organised online in WhatsApp messaging groups with one chat encouraging members to descend on the city centre to “kill all foreigners”.

    There has been a spate of 13 arson attacks on migrant facilities, and venues wrongly thought to be housing migrants, in Ireland over the past year, with no arrests made. A threat of arson against the Racket Hall Hotel in Roscrea was also reported to the gardaí on Monday.

    There are particular concerns in Roscrea and elsewhere about the influx of “unvetted” single males into the country. In 2023, almost 70 per cent of “international protection applicants” arriving at Dublin Airport where most asylum seekers are processed did so without valid identity documents, according to the Irish Department of Justice.

    That year, the number of male asylum seekers was more than double that of women. In 2022, 4,200 people arrived without documentation – and most asylum applicants that year were also single men.

    There is also widespread concern about dwindling public services. Last year, the Irish College of General Practitioners warned the country’s GP shortage posed a significant public health risk, and that the crisis was particularly stark in rural Ireland. However, rural towns have also taken a disproportionate number of refugees in the past year, according to a recent analysis of Ukrainian asylum seekers by the Irish Independent.

    This has led to a sense of unfairness with how migrant accommodation has been allocated. The population of some towns, such as Lisdoonvarna, in Co Clare, have more than doubled as a result of incoming refugees, many of whom are from Ukraine.

    Sandra, 47, a local support worker, said her town’s predicament also applies to the rest of rural Ireland: “Any town which is a pushover gets bombarded. We stayed quiet for so long but it’s time to speak up.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/18/ireland-revolt-asylum-seekers-leo-varadkar-riot-police

  108. Perhaps the Midget Mayor of Olde London Town has sent some of the Met’s finest over the water to teach the Gardai how to rough up the indigenes…

    Rural Ireland revolts as town’s only hotel is closed to accommodate asylum seekers

    Riot police stand guard in Co Tipperary as immigration influx, largest since 2007, comes amid shortfall of 250,000 homes and soaring rents

    Michael Murphy in Roscrea, Ireland • 18 January 2024 • 3:40pm

    Riot police standing guard outside the Racket Hall hotel in rural Tipperary are tetchy. The 40-room guest house in one of Ireland’s oldest market towns remains intact but recent history suggests that it could soon be reduced to a smouldering wreck.

    Local lorry driver Justin Phelan has no intention of setting the building alight but his message to the 160 asylum seekers destined for his hometown is clear: “Roscrea is full”.

    “The services are on the ground here in this town,” Mr Phelan, 34, told The Telegraph. “Not just in this town – all across the country they’re on the ground. There’s God knows how many people on trolleys today in Limerick Hospital. “We have around five GPs in this town. You call any of them this minute and he’ll say, ‘I don’t have space, I’m full up.’ There are 33 children in my daughter’s class. Just imagine adding two more, with language difficulties. What effect is that going to have on the rest of the children already in the class?”

    Mr Phelan is one of many holding a vigil outside the hotel in what has become a snapshot of unrest across rural Ireland at the government’s perceived clumsy handling of a surge in migration. Protests have been rising across the country at resettlement programmes as Ireland’s housing system creaks, leading in some extreme cases to public buildings being torched.

    Huddled around one of the open fires at the Roscrea hotel entrance, Mr Phelan said he has “been here every day” since last Thursday when the Irish government gave local politicians 24 hours notice that the hotel was being closed down to the public to house asylum seekers. Weddings and parties scheduled to take place in the town’s only hotel have been cancelled after the owners reached an agreement with the government.

    After some demonstrators tried on Monday to block a bus carrying the first 17 arrivals, mainly women and children, from entering the car park, violent scuffles with the gardaí, members of the Irish police force, broke out.

    Immigration to Ireland rose by 32 per cent to more than 140,000 in the year ending April 2023. Of these arrivals, more than 13,000 were asylum seekers. And since the Russian invasion, nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Ireland. The immigration influx – the largest since 2007 – comes amid a shortfall of 250,000 homes in Ireland and astronomical rent prices. The Irish government recently admitted that there is not enough room to house new arrivals, slashing the monetary allowance for Ukrainians by four-fifths and offering new asylum seekers tents to sleep in.

    In Roscrea, many locals have been camping outside the Racket Hall Hotel through the night. “This is the only hotel in our town and if you take it away, as bad as our town is now, it’s going to be worse,” said Mr Phelan.

    But the local reaction in Roscrea has not all been negative, with some leaving toys outside the hotel’s doors for its young guests. Several families who have attended the demonstrations are at pains to point out that their gripe is with government policy, not with the individuals arriving in their town.

    While Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, acknowledged people living in communities where asylum seekers are being housed have legitimate “fears”, he said “nobody in a democracy has the right to veto…who moves into their area”. [Oh, I don’t know. Try buying a house in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire and see how long the ‘peace’ is with you.]

    A poll by the Business Post/Red C in May 2023 found that 75 per cent of Irish voters believed Ireland had taken in “too many” refugees. Migration protests have also been staged in the disadvantaged suburb of Ballymun and rural towns in counties Carlow and Mayo.

    The disaffection has escalated to full-blown revolt by some in local government, with Mayo County Council voting unanimously on Tuesday to cease co-operation with the central government over the housing of asylum seekers – the first council in Ireland to do so.

    Mattie McGrath, an independent Teachta Dála for Tipperary, said on Monday he was “shocked to my bloody core” at the government’s response to the protest in Roscrea, adding that he “didn’t expect to see the riot squad called in”. He accused the government of treating the people of Tipperary – “who aren’t willing to do their bidding and lie down before them” – with “contempt”.

    Responding to the backlash on Tuesday, Mr Varadkar on Tuesday said the 10 areas most “under pressure” because of refugee arrivals would receive additional resources in policing, education and health. He went on to condemn the move by Roscrea locals to obstruct the arrival of the asylum seekers as “anti-democratic” and “against the spirit and the values of our nation”.

    Last year, thugs rioted in Dublin setting trams and police cars alight and looting shops in response to an incident outside a school in Dublin after an Algerian, who was an Irish citizen not born in Ireland, allegedly went on a stabbing spree. The violence was organised online in WhatsApp messaging groups with one chat encouraging members to descend on the city centre to “kill all foreigners”.

    There has been a spate of 13 arson attacks on migrant facilities, and venues wrongly thought to be housing migrants, in Ireland over the past year, with no arrests made. A threat of arson against the Racket Hall Hotel in Roscrea was also reported to the gardaí on Monday.

    There are particular concerns in Roscrea and elsewhere about the influx of “unvetted” single males into the country. In 2023, almost 70 per cent of “international protection applicants” arriving at Dublin Airport where most asylum seekers are processed did so without valid identity documents, according to the Irish Department of Justice.

    That year, the number of male asylum seekers was more than double that of women. In 2022, 4,200 people arrived without documentation – and most asylum applicants that year were also single men.

    There is also widespread concern about dwindling public services. Last year, the Irish College of General Practitioners warned the country’s GP shortage posed a significant public health risk, and that the crisis was particularly stark in rural Ireland. However, rural towns have also taken a disproportionate number of refugees in the past year, according to a recent analysis of Ukrainian asylum seekers by the Irish Independent.

    This has led to a sense of unfairness with how migrant accommodation has been allocated. The population of some towns, such as Lisdoonvarna, in Co Clare, have more than doubled as a result of incoming refugees, many of whom are from Ukraine.

    Sandra, 47, a local support worker, said her town’s predicament also applies to the rest of rural Ireland: “Any town which is a pushover gets bombarded. We stayed quiet for so long but it’s time to speak up.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/18/ireland-revolt-asylum-seekers-leo-varadkar-riot-police

    1. Good night, BOB. I’m off now myself, so I’ll bid a Good Night to all my NoTTLer friends. Sleep well and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

    3. That Nazi is certifiable along with many of his Young Global Leaders starting with Tony Blair.

      The problem with his Young Global Leaders is that most were plucked from lives of privilege when young and inexperienced. None of them have developed their own ideas and philosophy but remain immature and lend blind adherence to this madman Schwab.

      Davos is Clown World. A sort of Disney Theme Park but where the participants are some of the most ignorant and evil dolts on Planet Earth.

    4. I love Mark Steyn’s description of the monster:

      “….the sinister Teutonic megalomaniac hiding in plain sight as a sinister Teutonic megalomaniac .”

      Of course the Idiot King is one of his greatest admirers and sycophants.

      1. When Schwab is happy with the implant perhaps the King’s children and grandchildren could be the first to be upgraded. I’m sure he would be happy with that…Wouldn’t he?

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    Wordle 943 3/6

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