Thursday 25 January: A period in opposition might force the Tories to come to their senses

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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517 thoughts on “Thursday 25 January: A period in opposition might force the Tories to come to their senses”

    2. All too true – with that idiot Shitts involved, what could possibly go wrong? Arguably the most dangerous moron on the international stage since Bliar, the Babbling Poltroon or Baroness Ashton?

  4. Did the Wordle in a very poor six today. Tonight’s evening meal will be Haggis, Neeps and Tatties in honour of Rabbie Burns, laced with a tot of whisky. Not so good for the diet but… I did today’s Wordle in a poor six. (I posted my result at the tail end of Wednesday’s page.) Enjoy your day. And now I’m off to bed for a few extra Zeds.

  5. We’ll do our bit! Britons vow to fight with PRIDE if conscription imposed to tackle Putin. 25 January 2024.

    Britons would be willing to fight with pride if conscription kicked in as worldwide tensions continue to ramp up, it has been suggested.

    GB News reporter Theo Chikomba took to the streets of Herne Bay, Kent to find out whether such a prospect would appeal.

    One Briton was enamoured by the idea and spoke about his previous attempt to join the army.
    “I would like to join the army”, he said.

    “I’ve tried joining before, but they were quite strict on criminal records. I did some things when I was younger.

    “Hopefully they can change the legacy and allow people to join without a criminal record affecting their application.”

    Lol! It is pretty obvious that GB News has been infantilised.

    https://www.gbnews.com/news/britons-conscription-latest-pride-army

  6. Good Moaning.
    Happy Haggis Hunting to All Nottlers.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2db070e284d2f2fa0f3a289039d858f14ccc4d94b926fe3b78970304fb5132b0.jpg

    “The haggis: Scotland’s most elusive wild animal, one that can jump six feet in the air and goes straight for the throat, according to the hunters that track the bat-faced, Peter Stringfellow-haired beasts ahead of Burns night. ‘Is that a haggis!?’ I screech at my guide. ‘No, that’s a dog,’ he says, adding that this is going to be a long walk.

    A year into my Scottish residency and having had an extremely unsuccessful Burns night in Glasgow during my first month here (a date with a Scot more interested in watching himself on YouTube than finding me any kind of haggis supper) I’ve decided to come straight to the source this year and catch my own. Or try to – because it’s no mean feat.

    An event that’s been taking place for ‘centuries’, the humble haggis hunt, has since taken a luxury turn, with many of Scotland’s swankiest hotels hosting hunts as part of their Burns night celebrations. These hunts, I’m told, are traditional in the north of Scotland but are now taking place all over the lowlands (to much scoffing from highlanders). Some, like the once extremely popular community hunt in Selkirk, where the haggis is toasted on Selkirk Hill and the Haggis Polka dance is performed outside Argos, have fallen victim to post-pandemic bureaucracy. So these elite versions of the group hunt are taking their place.

    My first stop is Cameron House, the five-star hotel on the banks of Loch Lomond where Davy, a tartan-trewsered haggis hunting expert, is giving me my first lesson in the wily creatures that make up an integral part of any Burns night supper. Rabbie Burns, as he’s fondly known, died on 21 July in 1796 and a year later, seven friends got together to celebrate his life with a sheep’s head and haggis slap-up. Yum.

    While sheep head may have fallen by the culinary wayside in the interim (shame), haggis is still key to what it means to be Scottish and the first thing I’m told about catching one is that no haggis hunt can take place without a dram. I’m at the Great Scots’ bar at Cameron House talking through my options with whisky connoisseur Tom Purdie. Starting at the mellow end, he pours me a glass of Auchentoshan – an ease-in kind of single-malt low in peat – and then raises the bar one by one with a Gelngoyne, followed by a Tamdhu, a Glen Scotia and lastly, a smoky Ardberg. ‘Whisky is the salve to all your problems,’ he says, as I fall off my chair and head out on my hunt.

    While some believe haggis is a manmade product consisting of sheep pluck (offal) and onions, rather than an animal that can only run in circles because it has two legs shorter than the others, the Scots baulk at the idea that the deadly haggis is a myth.

    ‘They’re found on the mountain, hiding in heather and gorse,’ Davy tells me, shaking his Rod-Stewart mop at the idea that I could capture one with a net. ‘Guns only,’ he says. ‘You’ll see movement and watch carefully because remember, they will go for your throat. Then shoot from a distance of about 20 yards because they’re pretty fit and fierce.’ ‘You’re making them sound like that killer rabbit in Monty Python,’ I say, and he confirms this is the Scottish version: killer haggis.

    The defining characteristics of the haggi are its thick black coat, which allow it to survive freezing Highlands temperatures, and the fact that two legs are shorter than the other two for better traction on the mountain. ‘It’s a known fact that some haggi have shorter left legs and some shorter right legs so that they can evade hunters with their anti-clockwise or clockwise running around the munroes,’ he explains.

    The steeper the peak the greater the difference in leg length, so in fact you can differentiate between a Highland Haggis, an Island Haggis and a Lowland Haggis, he says, just by looking at the difference. Some have even adapted particularly well to the boggy areas of Scotland and have evolved with extra-long snouts that give them an advantage when bog snorkelling, according to online reports.

    A lesser-known fact, says Davy, is that the haggis hunt is responsible for the invention of bagpipes. ‘The drone of the bagpipes were designed to emulate the mating cry of the haggis,’ Davy tells me. ‘They are played on hunts so that the haggis flock to you and then bam: there’s dinner.’

    We set off across Cameron House’s 430 acres of loch-side, red-squirrelled grounds looking for my first sighting. ‘Is that a haggis!?’ I shout, seeing a black animal in the distance. ‘No, that’s a dog,’ says Laurie, my haggis walking guide. ‘Is that a haggis!?’ I bellow again, before being told it’s a horse. After five failed sightings, it’s decreed by Laurie that it’s going to be a very long day, not only because of the distance. ‘Also, did Davy tell you they were black? Because they’re definitely ginger,’ he adds.

    After a failed haggis hunt in the Lowlands, it’s decided that my best bet is to go north, where the mountainous regions of the Highlands make up the haggi’s natural habitat and the lower population density allows them to roam free on many a munro. ‘Remember, if you catch a small one you have to throw it back like a fish!’ Davy says, waving me off.

    I arrive in Inverness and head to Links House at Royal Dornoch, where the five-star hotel is preparing for a Burns night supper hosted by Dalmore whisky. Yet it’s clear the politics of haggis hunting have already caught up with me. ‘I’m going to stop you there,’ says Phil Scott, the managing director of Links House, when I say I’ve come fresh from a haggis hunt at Loch Lomond. ‘I’d be reluctant to call it wild haggis if you’re that far south. It’s more of a safari for farmed haggis down that way and I can quite easily imagine them setting them loose and claiming they’re wild.’

    Since 2019, Links House has been offering a haggis hunt the morning after Burns night to help guests learn how to best catch them on solo expedition. ‘When there’s too many people around it can frighten off the haggis,’ he explains, ‘and so our shooting partners at the Highlands Shooting Centre have designed three simulations to help guests understand how best to catch the haggi in their various modes – they either fly, scurry or run away,’ he explains.

    ‘They can fly?!’ I squeal. ‘If they get up enough speed, yes,’ he says. ‘They’re more like flying fish floating in the air for a while,’ he adds. ‘Some haggi hop across the moors and hills so there’s a trap designed for catching that particular breed of scurrying haggi and then there’s the leaping haggi that come straight at you – they’re shot like clay pigeons. And don’t let anyone tell you they don’t have horns – of course the males have horns, the females don’t, and I’d describe their colouring as a shade darker than Highland cow above a face a bit like a pug dog.’

    With anticipation bubbled by a few drams before the events, many guests do find themselves struggling with the pump-action Italian shotguns (the morning after a whisky-drenched Burns supper), he admits. ‘The chefs are too busy in the kitchen to shoot the haggis themselves so it’s very helpful for us to go out for them,’ he says. ‘But they recommend the haggis be humanely dispatched and hung since Hogmanay, which is a very good time to go hunting. They’re much like grouse in the Highlands,’ he says.

    Links House is this year serving their humanly-dispatched haggis with clap-shot (a mix of neeps and tatties) and Dalmore whisky. The night is of course all about Robert Burns, yet it’s unknown whether the Scot ever caught a haggis himself. ‘He is responsible very much for the ode to haggis we have today but I wouldn’t like to question his haggi hunting ability,’ says Phil. ‘Given the fact he was pretty well-oiled most of the time and was always sitting at home writing poetry, I doubt he got his feet wet.’”

    1. Just had my supper of Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, Annie. I had no problem catching mine, they were on sale in Sainsbury’s a couple of week ago. I had one plateful on Wednesday of last week (Jan 17) and then one tonight. Going out on the moors with a blunderbuss is nothing but a great big faff. Lol.

  7. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story

    Sex And Good English!

    On his 74th birthday, a man got a gift certificate from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man living on a nearby reservation who was rumoured to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction (it means he couldn’t get a hard on).

    After being persuaded, he drove to the reservation, handed his ticket to the medicine man, and wondered what he was in for.

    The old man slowly, methodically produced a potion, handed it to him, and with a grip on his shoulder, warned, ‘This is a powerful medicine, and it must be respected. You take only a teaspoonful, and then say ‘1-2-3.’ When you do that, you will become manlier than you have ever been in your life, and you can perform as long as you want.”

    The man was encouraged. As he walked away, he turned and asked, “How do I stop the medicine from working?”

    “Your partner must say ‘1-2-3-4,'” he responded, “but when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon.”

    He was very eager to see if it worked so he went home, showered, shaved, took a spoonful of the medicine, and then invited his wife to join him in the bedroom. When she came in, he took off his clothes and said, “1-2-3!”

    Immediately, he was the manliest of men.

    His wife was excited and began throwing off her clothes, and then she asked, “What was the 1-2-3 for?”

    And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition, because we could end up with a dangling participle.

  8. Still unanswered questions amid Ukraine and Russia claims. 25 January 2024.

    There are shooting wars and there are information wars and countries that are fighting do battle on both fronts.

    For the rest of us, it can make establishing facts very difficult.

    But whilst that’s true in this war as in any, it’s important to remember that Russia specifically has a long history of brazen lies and disinformation.

    That was proven with the shooting down of MH17 and the Salisbury Novichok poisonings, to name just two major incidents in the past decade.

    Even the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched on a lie: the false claim that a “Nazi” regime was putting Russian speakers here at risk of “genocide”.

    That doesn’t mean every word from the Russian Defence Ministry and the Kremlin is untrue – or from MPs and the state media.

    But they often are, so they need checking carefully before repeating.

    Even by BBC standards this is an absolute travesty of the truth! All this is in the cause of minimising the Ukie blunder yesterday where they shot down a Russian plane containing their own POW’s. It is of course politically embarrassing for them and the Russians remembering Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 are making the most of it. Despite all the claims from both sides there is nothing sinister about it. It was one of those things that happen in war.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68089698

    1. I am not a member of the Our Vladimir Fan Club, but I don’t see why he should trust any undertaking, commitment or promise made by the West. This makes the prospect of a peace settlement look very distant.

      1. He has every reason not to trust the west, and no reason to invade Europe – though the west could try hard to manufacture one.

  10. British Museum to return gold artefacts to Ghana in historic loan deal. 25 January 2024.

    The British Museum will send golden treasures back to Ghana in a historic loan deal that could pave the way for the Elgin Marbles to be returned.

    A deal has been struck to return looted artefacts to a museum in the West African country in a long-term arrangement agreed following pressure from Osei Tutu II, a Ghanaian leader who attended the Coronation of King Charles.

    Museum bosses hope the groundbreaking deal, struck in partnership with the V&A Museum, could provide a template for handling repatriation disputes and offer a way to resolve the long-running row over the Elgin Marbles.

    Like the Benin Bronzes returned to Nigeria by Germany these will soon vanish into private ownership. The three year “loan” arrangement with Greece for the Elgin Marbles is simply to allow time for their absence to be normalised. They would never return to the UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/25/british-museum-return-gold-artefacts-ghana-elgin-marbles/

    1. They will be melted down and the ingots secreted under the Swiss mountains.
      Upkeep of Mrs. Ghanaian President doesn’t come cheap.

    2. If they really want these items returned, let them come and get them and pay the costs. We’ll see how much they really care.

    3. ‘Looted’ is a big word – what is the exact history of these things?
      Most people in Africa seem to believe that Europeans only took and gave nothing back.
      People also believe that the Elgin marbles were ‘looted’.
      How many Ghanaian treasures survive in Ghana, and have been preserved in museums there?

  11. Good morning, all. Overcast and calm this morning. Some light rain expected later.

    At a moment when the Army is talking of being short on numbers and the augury of conscription is being conjured up by the generals, Cameron opens his pie hole to spout more nonsense about reinforcing failure in Ukraine. Reinforcing failure is a military no-go area in war, it’s a path to disaster. History and all that!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/12a97df48cd6472a2fec66f587ffeb1ca910128f424f4284d611335d342de2d5.png

    2. Maybe Pa-in-Law could be persuaded to chip in from the £squillions he’s making from wind turbines.

  12. Good morning.
    A miserable 2°C start today with little wind, low cloud clinging to the trees on the top of the valley and a heavy drizzle.

  13. The Wail has introduced charging for reading their articles.
    Sorry, folks. No more posting Richard Littlejohn or Peter Hitchens.

    2. Are you sure? I’ve just accessed a few. There was a banner stating you could go ad-free if you paid, but I don’t use the blocker for the site.

    3. I thought they were gearing up to that when they started “click if you want to read more”
      I think my life quality will probably improve overall if I stop looking at the Mail….

      1. It is useful though to know what they are telling the masses, what the propaganda du jour is.

        1. Every time I open that website, I think to myself “Now, what does the Government want me to think today?”

      1. I have often been told to remove my shoes. I think the staff enjoy being as awkward as possible. And every time I try to put them back on the benches beyond are filled either with passengers and or their hand baggage.
        Another PITA around travel.

        1. That’s on the way out as well. But they do seem to target white-haired old women travelling alone like me.

          2. I used to invariably target white-haired old women. It was my way of shutting them up!

            🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

          3. It seems to me that a lot of the ‘requests’ forced on people travelling seem to be more associated with bullying.

    3. Presumably that is because at arrivals it is assumed they were scanned at departure.
      The Dover arrivals most certainly were not.

    4. They used to in Roumania in the early 1990s!! And a full baggage search. Especially on internal flights.

      1. Quite a few places scan on the way in at customs. The US, Saudi Arabia and Morocco spring to mind.

  15. Morning all 🙂😊
    7 degs and rain later, that’s of course after rain earlier.
    I think that the rot at Wastemonster set in years ago. It’s not just a period of opposition that’s needed. It never seems to have any effect on the Lowborios party. The whole of the parliamentary system needs changing. But who’s going to do this. Perhaps they should all have to justify their expenses……oh they tried that but got rid of Elizabeth Filkin. Now a dame but never seen in public. I wonder at 83 years of age, what she thinks of it all now.

  16. 382387+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    WW1 WW2 & Brexit, to be obviously erased from memory banks & history via this political WEF creature.

    Much of this anti British shite occours as if the
    52% had never existed or have been politically culled.

    Rishi Sunak offers to sacrifice Brexit freedoms to re-establish government in Northern Ireland
    Prime Minister hopes move to prevent extra trade barriers in the Irish Sea will persuade DUP to end its boycott of Stormont

    As for this tripe I have a strong feeling that
    Tommy Atkins & Томми Аткинс are pen pals besides being the best of mates.

    London / Europe
    ‘Prewar Generation’ Must Prepare to be Called up for ‘Citizen Army’ if West Fights Russia, Warns Top British General

  17. Good morning all

    Damp ,mild, drizzly and 11c.

    The lambs are bleating for their mummies in the fields a hop skip and a jump away from us .

    I liked this letter.

    SIR – The Conservatives’ election strategy is to suggest at all times that Labour has no plan and it will take us “back to square one”. I am already sick of hearing it.

    Do they think that if they repeat it enough times we will believe it? We are not fools, and the problem with this strategy is that I feel we are already at square one – with a record-high tax burden, crumbling public services and mass legal migration. I could go on.

    Bill Budd
    Flitwick, Bedfordshire

    1. Flitwick and Gatwick are both served by Thameslink trains. I note the the “w” is silent in the former, but not in the latter.

      1. Bellingham is a name shared between two towns.
        One is pronounced “Bellinjum” the other “Belling Ham”.

    2. Billy Budd, an interesting name. I wonder if he would tell us of his naming if he was pressed.

  19. Ditch your ‘discredited’ diversity schemes, Gove tells councils
    Local Government Secretary tells local authorities to stop ‘pursuing hobby horses’ as he bails them out with £600m in emergency funding

    Michael Gove has urged councils to ditch “discredited” diversity schemes as he bailed them out with £600 million in emergency funding.

    The Local Government Secretary threatened to withdraw future funding from councils that pursue their own “hobby horses” and “politically correct” schemes rather than putting money into frontline social care.

    It comes after the Local Government Association warned that one in six councils were at risk of declaring effective bankruptcy.

    On Wednesday the Telegraph revealed that the vast majority of town halls are set to raise council tax by the maximum allowed amount of 5 per cent.

    Announcing the extra cash in a written ministerial statement on Wednesday, Mr Gove said local authorities would have to respond by spending their money more wisely.

    “We are asking local authorities to produce productivity plans setting out how they will improve service performance and reduce wasteful expenditure to ensure every area is making best use of taxpayers’ money,” he said.

    Future funding would be linked to how good the productivity plans were deemed to be, he warned.

    “I encourage local authorities to consider whether expenditure on discredited equality, diversity and inclusion programmes meets this objective.”

    Councils pursuing ‘their own hobby horses’
    A study two years ago found that across 397 councils, there are 794 equality, diversity and inclusion members of staff.

    Conservative Way Forward found that the average cost per council was £67,000 – totalling £30 million a year across the country.

    Mr Gove criticised councils for “spending money on unconscious bias training and a variety of politically correct exercises instead of devoting money to the frontline”.

    “Similarly, South Cambridgeshire Council is essentially trying to have a four-day week – part time working for a five day pay settlement,” he said.

    “So what we need to do is to make sure that those local authorities which are pursuing their own hobby horses are forced to justify their decisions to local people.

    “People will expect money to be spent on frontline services. Instead of politically correct projects, instead of pursuing the obsessions of Liberal Democrat or Labour ideologues, we want services to be improved.

    “What should money be spent on? Diversity, equality and inclusion tsars, or disabled children who need support in school? It seems to me that the answer is obvious.”

    ‘Little choice but to propose maximum tax rises’
    Mr Gove said an extra £500 million would be made available for top-tier authorities who provide social care.

    He also said that all councils would benefit from changes to the “funding guarantee”, which sets out the minimum percentage annual increase in money available to all councils before any decisions are made on how high to increase council tax.

    The guarantee will be increased from 3 to 4 per cent – a key demand from lower-tier district councils.

    More than 40 Conservative backbenchers recently signed a letter to the Prime Minister, which was organised by the County Councils Network, warning that without emergency cash, many councils will be forced to cut crucial frontline services and hike council tax in an election year.

    Finance bosses at seven councils have issued at least one section 114 notice since 2020, with three doing so last year.

    It is a declaration that they cannot balance the books and is an admission of effective bankruptcy.

    Tim Oliver, County Councils Network chairman and Tory leader of Surrey Council, said the additional funding would “go some way” to easing pressures.

    “Service reductions will still be necessary for councils in some areas to balance their books, while the majority of councils will still have little choice but to propose maximum council tax rises,” he said. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/24/councils-told-drop-diversity-schemes-michael-gove-funding/

    Comments are interesting .. but mine would be .. NHS diversity.. sort out that money wasting nonsense .

    1. They should try a private company running a local authority and remove all politics from it.t

        1. They don’t even know they are woke. I had to work with councils over the years and I was never impressed. I was meeting one top employee about plans for a new shopping centre. We were concerned about the lack of car parking in the new centre . He said that the buliding firm would never build it without enough spaces. He had no idea what he was dealing with. He was earning a fortune.

        2. You should criticise everything you are told not to criticise.
          That’s where you will find the truth.

          1. One might almost define “wokeness” as an inability to undertake significant critical analysis.

    2. ‘“We are asking local authorities to produce productivity plans setting out how they will improve service performance and reduce wasteful expenditure to ensure every area is making best use of taxpayers’ money,” he said.‘

      Pots and bleeding kettles spring to mind.

  20. Bin with the new

    SIR
    – The green bin man came yesterday! He had been scheduled to visit on
    Monday but was delayed by the volume of garden waste and Christmas trees
    awaiting collection.

    His non-arrival caused some anxiety, with
    people looking at each other and wondering if they had got the day
    right. There is nothing more embarrassing than putting the wrong bin out
    on the wrong day. But then news spread via the WhatsApp group: “Leave
    the bins out – he will come tomorrow.”

    In Bath the first green
    bin collection marks the beginning of a new year and a return to the
    comforting cycle of bin collections on certain days. Can spring be far
    away now?

    Dave Holtum
    Bath, Somerset

    Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

    1. Good morning Phizzee,

      Hold on dear man , we thought the same when our bin collection cycle resumed ..

      Spring is quite close , blackbirds are paired up gathering little bits of dried grass and twigs for new nests , lambs are bleating.

          5. I cook the lamb with rosemary but i still like lots of mint sauce. I know you don’t like vinegar but mint jelly works.

            I like to make my own with white vinegar and sugar.
            You can also substitute lemon juice for the vinegar.

      2. Good morning. If wondering if you have put the bin out on the wrong day causes anxiety i can see why there is such an issue with mental health in the UK. Get a grip !

    2. I find this new phenomenon of neighbours communicating via WhatsApp deplorable. Why can’t they just talk face to face, they live next door to each other! Also, it shuts out people who don’t have WhatsApp, who can then be talked about in the group in the full knowledge that they can’t hear what’s being said.
      And that’s before you even get into selective whatsapp groups that don’t invite certain neighbours to join!

      1. I suppose it started with local groups on Facebook.

        I email my next door neighbour because i don’t wish to disturb her work.

        1. I email our immediate neighbours but they are more likely to see a WattsApp if it’s urgent.

          1. If it was urgent i would go round. I tend to email about dinner plans and parties. Just had a refectory table delivered from British Heart Foundation. It’s going to be used under the pergola for summer lunches.
            Got to get the plans made so the table can be laid.

      2. According to my son, who lives in one such area, most of the posts are moaning about dog poo.

        2. In south Lincolnshire, the ‘hot’ topic on the local farcebook groups is about the new paper & cardboard bins, which start being collected in the 2nd week of February, and who has had the (non-recyclable) Tag of Shame for still putting these ‘forbidden’ items in the other recycling bin. (We get tagged throughout January, even though all recycling can still be put in the existing grey bins until the start of February.)

      3. I like our neighbourly WhatsApp group! The other day the topic was of a tree that had come down and blocked the road – it was swiftly dealt with and cleared. We live on a steep and narrow hill and it’s good to know that someone is looking out for ice etc. And you can by pass the group if you have a message for just one person because all the phone numbers are there.

      4. I live in a block of flats – a 1930s “mansion block” – so there’s a communal notice board in the reception area and the building management put important notices up by the lifts on each floor plus, if it’s really really important, copies through our doors. No WhatsApp.

        1. Just as happens in our apartment building. Plus we do the unworldly thing of talking to each other.

    3. I find this new phenomenon of neighbours communicating via WhatsApp deplorable. Why can’t they just talk face to face, they live next door to each other! Also, it shuts out people who don’t have WhatsApp, who can then be talked about in the group in the full knowledge that they can’t hear what’s being said.
      And that’s before you even get into selective whatsapp groups that don’t invite certain neighbours to join!

  21. Good morning all,

    Grey and damp to start the day at the McPhee’s in the N W Hants/West Berks borderlands. Wind in the South-West, 9℃ rising to 11℃. A chance of the odd shower in the afternoon.

    Si pacem petere bellum parare.

    Why do our politicians never learn?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f4033b94bf65b6e1890f85f752b4472e07152bd57b6e0db54fd2269432ba540.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/25/war-with-russia-is-coming-britain-is-determined-to-lose/

    Coughlin, I find, is usually a bit of a joke. If you can ignore the the first crass sentence of the headline and opening paragraphs of this article, however, he makes good sense towards the end while pulling his punches somewhat. An army which won’t even fill Wembley stadium is not going to hold much territory and one which discriminates against young, white, normal men is going to find few recruits. An air force of just 8 squadrons of figher jets is not going to command the skies and a navy, well, let’s not go there but ruling the waves around Britain it ain’t. Never mind Russia which is no direct threat to us anyway; the real enemies are the ones which lie within.

  23. The bullshit continues to protect the false narrative of the erroneously named potions.

    Are the authors of these papers aware of other independent scientists and researchers who are as smart, if not smarter, than they are? Prof Norman Fenton and his co-researchers destroy published papers from the Lancet and other organisations.

    The narrative “Safe and Effective” was killed off long ago and all the subsequent evidence is heaping more scientific soil on its grave.

    https://twitter.com/profnfenton/status/1750199946173726834

  24. Social media has erupted with hilarious memes calling for young people to ‘get off TikTok’ and ‘put down the avocados’ to fight for their country.

    People took to X, formerly known as Twitter, after head of the Army General Sir Patrick Sanders called on Brits to ‘train and equip’ for a ‘citizen army’.

    It raised the question of how Gen Z would cope with military conscription, with one person writing: ‘Put down the avocados and pick up a rifle Gen Z, it’s your time to shine.’

    Another added: ‘They’ll have to stop fighting at 11 o’clock to pop to Pret for an avocado toast, soy latte and browse amazon.

    ‘War has to stop by 3pm so they can get some “me time” in and contemplate the risks of the climate emergency. Effective conscription would need to be over 40’s.’

    Pressed on whether the PM could rule out conscription in future circumstances, the spokesman replied: ‘There is no suggestion of that. The Government has no intention to follow through with that.

    ‘The British military has a proud tradition of being a voluntary force. There are no plans to change that.’

    The spokesman insisted ‘hypothetical scenarios’ about potential future conflicts were ‘not helpful’, adding: ‘We are investing significant sums into our Armed Forces – £50billion is being invested this year alone.’

    The introduction of conscription, were it to happen, would be the first time in over 60 years that Brits were being required to fight.

    1. Is that from the Telegraph? Social media has actually erupted with people saying they won’t fight for what their country has become, but I suppose they don’t want to admit that.
      The last sentence is preparing people for conscription…

      1. Morning BB. Even I am surprised by the reaction on the threads to this call to fight.

        1. Given the arrogance and deceit of the government, it’s utterly anti freedom, liberty and abusive of office I wouldn’t fight for it. Putin might be a dictator, but at least he’s honest. Sunak was installed by knifing the real PM in the back. How, really is that any different except in the pretence?

      2. Of course as we often see there is always the ‘mental health issues’ cop-out. As we are reminded of nearly every day now.

    2. This is typical of what I’m seeing on Twitter

      HAZ823R
      @Hazbeen66
      Not my King
      Not My Govt
      Both are Owned by the New World Order and have sold the Public out

    3. Threat of conscription, another straw dropped on to the camel’s back. To float the very idea of conscription is a bad move, any attempt to enforce the measure is likely to bring the government down.

      Steve Bannon’s opening to his War Room is as apt here as it is in the USA:

      “This is the primal scream of a dying regime”

    4. They want to arm citizens? Perhaps we should all volunteer and accept their guns. Then shoot them.

    1. As with the current protest regarding Rule Brittania, I’m surprised they haven’t changed the name, it doesn’t suit the proposed adgenda.
      There are other towns Birmingham Westham……

    2. Well, we did, but it was home grown loonies such as the Krays. Or the Irish. At least we had a clue what they wanted rather than the senseless random ideological violence of the muslim or black stabbers over drugs.

      As for fighting for this country – send the Left, woke, quangocrats, the Aviva racist Amanda Blanc, Alison Rose, Sharon White of John Lewis diversity hire fame the wokers, the wasters in first. I won’t fight for a country that pushes the HRA, the diversity drivel, that wastes money on Lefty hires when nurses and teachers want a pay increase. I won’t fight for the liars and cheats in the Lords or the Commons.

      I won’t vote for troughers like Dale Vince or Gummer, Goldsmith or any others.

  26. The buffers are surely in sight for the runaway train that is the Tory party.

    That Sunak should go is clear and should he be ousted then the the power behind the Tory’s throne will insert another WEF stooge to continue the charade. To the genuine powerbrokers the death of the Tories is collateral damage and to them worth every £Billion they extract from this sham government.

    Who in their right mind would vote for a party that is clearly out of control and under the current PM & Co – leadership isn’t appropriate for this shower – is taking the Country with it.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d31cf0ac9c0f9b5d27f14aadf70f3dedf9a2e337e388286c71354c9286fc9ddf.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc007e6e6738f378e155135b8743cd26fe7e6cc51f3ae0e25629bf9bb9d32fdf.png

    1. I honestly don’t think Sunak understands. I think much of the Tory party -the lib dem Left lot – just think we’re all racists and xenophobes, unwilling to embrace the grand EU globalist future. The lefty Tories just accept that they, personally will be out of office but the agenda will – rightly, in their eyes – continue ready for them to pick up again when they are voted back in.

      Sunak doesn’t understand why his Rwanda bill hasn’t caused an upswing in popularity. He doesn’t get why people are tired of immigration. He understands it, but doesn’t really ‘get’ it. He can’t see why people are not falling in line behind his protestations of ‘the plan is working’. He refuses to acknowledge that his policies are the cause because the statists have told him that high taxes and big government are good and, as an obedient little technocrat he’s carried on with that.

      He doesn’t consider thegreen nonsense bad because… well, it’s good, isn’t it? His advisors tell him this is what people in demographic Z most care about, and they’ll all vote for Starmer so he has to be greener than that and make people believe that getting rid of boilers, cheap fuel and mobility is a good thing. It’s just messaging that’s no getting through. Everyone lives like him, after all. It’s not the cost, or being cold. It’s hatred of the environment, so his advisors tell him.

      They’re all utterly lost, unable to conceive of a different attitude that isn’t statist because everyone around them tells them that state is best and bigger state is better.

      1. Sunak’s a globalist and that immediately disqualifies him from being a statesman, despite any protestations he may utter. His stance on immigration, both legal and illegal, condemns him as a failure in the eyes of true British people. Then there’s…

    2. The Conservative Party is over. It is dodo dead. There is not a single viable cell of it left from which to clone a new Conservative Party in the style of Dolly The Sheep.

      The great tragedy is that the Reform Party does not yet offer a functional alternative and has been unclear about many issues that have turned people away from the Conservative Party.

      Would Richard Tice’s party admit that Net Zero is a total scam and concentrate on using British resources for energy?
      Would Tice deport illegal immigrants and stop new ones arriving?
      Would he acknowledge the damage some people have suffered from Covid jabs?
      Would he do everything to implement a proper Brexit?
      Would he stop the Police from discriminating against white people?

      etc. etc.

      1. Tice hasn’t said *how* he would deport immigrants. So much needs changing in our legal system that he’d face an uphill battle for the year government’s actually get to implement policy.

    1. This is horrific.

      Jeremy Hunt and Matthew Hancock must be prime targets for assassination.

      1. I switched off when she started talking about ‘peepoo’ in ‘hospitoo’.

        Why are people (i.e. not ‘peepoo’) no longer taught to touch their top front teeth with the tip of their tongue in order to correctly pronounce the letter ‘L’?

    3. I need a number cruncher like Ed Dowd or Norman Fenton to present that. I didn’t get the link between “1646 euthanized per day” and teh government’s forecast of deaths.
      Aren’t they only forecasting more deaths because the number of older people is rising?

      Also, I didn’t get exactly where the financial reward for number of deaths comes from.

      Very sinister is the big order for drugs involved with the death pathway. Also that news about Matt Hancock’s ownership of companies was new to me. Haven’t checked it, but she’d be sued if it wasn’t true so I shall await news of Matt Hancock suing her.

      1. ‘The 1646 euthanised per day’ did puzzle me too. That is a number commensurate with the usual average daily death toll (ONS) from any circumstances, plus or minus a few. It may be that ‘they’ expect to be able to dispose of more elderly by using that as an in-house guide. There have been stories circulating regarding financial incentives during ‘covid’ to increase the death rate in order to create the illusion of a pandemic, no doubt from the govt via the taxpayers’ cash system if correct. If received from the Gates foundation or others it would be laundered and blended accordingly. Somehow none of this surprises me, although it does of course horrify me; the national moral compass has finally been smashed to smithereens by an utterly corrupt government.

        I posted in order that people be aware to what may be going on within the walls of the national sacred cow, and to be alert at all times for those we care for should they have cause to pass through its portals.

      2. In April 2021, it
        was reported that Hancock had been given 20% of shares in Topwood
        Limited, a firm based in Wrexham which is owned by his sister and other
        close family members. The company specialises in secure storage,
        scanning and shredding of documents.

        How appropriate.

  28. What would you be if you were called up to the Army?
    Telegraph writers muse on whether they’d have what it takes – and a former colonel lets them know how he would deploy them
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/01/24/british-army-called-up-war-jobs-russia/

    Many of the MSM’s writers would be Fifth Columnists! They have been in training for years.

    BTL

    The Britain that people volunteered to fight for and to die for and were conscripted to fight and die for was a very different country from what it has now become.

    We are not now volunteers when it comes to net zero – we are now conscripted to die of cold for a crippled economy and way of life the politicians and the Idiot King want impose upon us!

  29. An interesting article on Russia

    Do any of you remember when everything Russian was hunky-dory? When Yeltsin was in power and every crook in every corner of this earth was eager to do business with him? Well, what followed Boris was chaos, inflation, unemployment, crime, and, most likely, erectile dysfunction. It was only natural for Putin to emerge as a leader and hard man. We, the West, in our unlimited greed, had egged, enabled, and lionized the robber-baron crooks of the Yeltsin era. Putin put a stop to it and will never allow Russian lackeys to genuflect to Western robber barons and banks.
    Russia has always been held in a certain antipathy by Western elites for reasons unknown, although I suspect they have a lot to do with the Russian deep belief in Christianity. What America should do is force Ukraine to sit down and talk. Just as it should force Netanyahu to never show his face again in any public forum. But Uncle Sam is greedy and scared and can only pick on midgets like the Syrians and Iraqis.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/dostoyevskys-demons/

  30. Back from market. Not many stalls today. There is heavy drizzle which is not only dampening but very depressing. How I envy G & P who were in exactly the same places on our return as when we left.

    Morrisons are doing 5p off a litre of fuel if you spend more than £35. Of course they have put the pump price up in a week from £1.41 to £1.45….and Kath – the 81 year old checkout “girl” – told us that fuel at Fakenham Morrisons was the dearest of all the branches in Narfurk. Funny that. Over in the Fens between Wisbech and Peterborough there is a place selling petrol for £1.34…….

    1. I keep getting coupons for Morrisons cut price fuel but there is no Morrisons petrol station within miles.

  31. I gather the dwarf Fishi has announced that there definitely will NOT be any conscription.

    Which means, of course, that there will be.

    1. I went into a public ‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
      The publican ‘e up an’ sez, ” We serve no red-coats here.”
      The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
      I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
      O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ” Tommy, go away ” ;
      But it’s ” Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play
      The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
      O it’s ” Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.

      I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
      They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
      They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
      But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
      For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ” Tommy, wait outside “;
      But it’s ” Special train for Atkins ” when the trooper’s on the tide
      The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
      O it’s ” Special train for Atkins ” when the trooper’s on the tide.

      Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
      Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap.
      An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
      Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
      Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul? ”
      But it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes ” when the drums begin to roll
      The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
      O it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes, ” when the drums begin to roll.

      We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
      But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
      An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
      Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
      While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, fall be’ind,”
      But it’s ” Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind
      There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
      O it’s ” Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

      You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
      We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
      Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
      The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
      For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! ”
      But it’s ” Saviour of ‘is country ” when the guns begin to shoot;
      An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
      An ‘Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!

      3. The only thing – only one – that Brown ever did right was kicking the MoD from wasting yet more money on FRES (the pointless noisy tank that’s slow, overmanned, over gunned, too noisy, doesn’t really work – and buying the Foxhound, Mastiff and what not with emergency funds. Annoying the same oaf wasted tens of billions buying votes in Scotland.

        As there was no fanfare about this I assume he’d just lost patience at the deaths and maiming of soldiers himself, but he did it, and our military benefitted.

        Of course, what we need is such vehicles in quantity, en masse for as many troops as we have, coupled with close air support, drones and the very latest in body armour and weapons… but these don’t get to buy votes in constituencies.

    2. Meanwhile, they have sneakily signed the WHO dictatorship agreement while distracting us with conscription stories. I gather a legal challenge has gone in or is being prepared.

      1. 382387+ up ticks,

        Morning BB2,
        I do believe that it was Len Deighton that wrote originally the operating agenda of the governing
        WEF as in SS/GB.

        1. 382387+ up ticks,

          O2O.

          BB2,

          Then those opposing it had better get their —-rses in gear before the first victims are ORDERED to attend the surgery to play their part in the great cull.

        1. Apparently there was a meeting this week, and everyone is saying that Britain has agreed to it. But it may be default agreement if we didn’t protest by a certain date. The whole thing has been pushed through as sneakily as possible; I think the lack of clarity surrounding it is deliberate, so that people don’t have a target for protest.

    3. MCMXIV (1964)
      Those long uneven lines
      Standing as patiently
      As if they were stretched outside
      The Oval or Villa Park,
      The crowns of hats, the sun
      On moustached archaic faces
      Grinning as if it were all
      An August Bank Holiday lark;

      And the shut shops, the bleached
      Established names on the sunblinds,
      The farthings and sovereigns,
      And dark-clothed children at play
      Called after kings and queens,
      The tin advertisements
      For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
      Wide open all day;

      And the countryside not caring:
      The place-names all hazed over
      With flowering grasses, and fields
      Shadowing Domesday lines
      Under wheat’s restless silence;
      The differently-dressed servants
      With tiny rooms in huge houses,
      The dust behind limousines;

      Never such innocence,
      Never before or since,
      As changed itself to past
      Without a word – the men
      Leaving the gardens tidy,
      The thousands of marriages,
      Lasting a little while longer:
      Never such innocence again.

  32. War with Russia is coming. Britain is determined to lose. Con Coughlin. 25 January 2024.

    Numerous factors explain the recruitment crisis that is affecting all three Services, including the rank indifference that often characterises the attitude of our political leaders to military concerns. Why should our brave young men and women want to risk their lives when ministers have little interest in taking military issues with the seriousness they deserve?

    Another consideration is in the insidious growth of wokery within the recruitment system, with officers often encouraged to prioritise diversity targets over more traditional recruiting methods. The Royal Air Force, for example, last year had to issue a grovelling apology after an official inquiry found it had unlawfully discriminated against the recruitment of white men to boost diversity targets.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Barry Guevara.

    Russia is no threat to the UK. The biggest threat to the British people is from within.

    A fairly sophisticated war is being fought and we are sleepwalking to defeat. The enemy is Lib Lab Con.

    I’m surprised at how widespread this view is!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/25/war-with-russia-is-coming-britain-is-determined-to-lose/

    1. Araminta, having read the newspaper article I see no reference to our youngsters being conscripted into the BRITISH Army.

      The underlying assumption is that they would be conscripted into the European Army, so beloved of European politicians.


  33. Anti-European parties are set for EU victory: Populist politicians are predicted to win the most votes in nine countries in June’s European parliament elections in nightmare result for Brussels, polls show
    A report into the findings across all 27 EU member states said bloc will likely see a ‘sharp right turn’ in June in what would be nightmare result for Brussels
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13004647/Anti-European-parties-set-EU-victory-poll-shows.html

    So, in spite of Brexit (!), the UK is one f the most europhile countries n Europe!

    1. Fear not, Richard – they will be ordered by Brussels to have another election (or elections) until the correct result is available.

    2. Ah populism. That Lefty term for ‘democracy’. Do Lefties even realise how disgusting their hatred of normalcy is?

  34. R4 Matthew Parris and Simon Mayo discussing the ‘Great Life’ of Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman:

    “Simon Mayo was a DJ at Radio 1 at the same time as ‘Fluff’ and says his broadcasting hero coming came into his studio and said “Simon, darling” before kissing his hand that he’d placed over Simon’s mouth. Poor young Simons’ knees buckled.

    I never knew that Freeman was a homosexual – but then, I didn’t listen to him much.

    3. According to Graham Chapman, Freeman liked motorcycles, leather and men.
      He was accused alongside Jimmy Savile of male rape.

    4. I didn’t give a monkey’s about Fluff’s personal life. I just remember him as, head-and-shoulders, the best radio and Television DJ we ever had.

  36. A quick scroll down Nottl and it seems to me that a giggle from thi https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dbe74c66a3409e682f3ccbbd11c6de7998a6eeca99680b93c37bbff73ffc7406.jpg s end might be welcome.

    So… a Brazilian friend and I decided to treat ourselves to tea at the beautiful Confitería Ideal yesterday afternoon (as she put it, fancy British tea with a fancy British person… 🤣🤣).

    Herewith a picture of some of the nibbles. Very nice indeed. Attentive waiters, a luxurious ambiance and even a white-jacketed pianist playing on the mezzanine.

    As we waddled out, I was bearded by said pianist. It took a while to extricate myself fully to join my friend outside, at which point she asked me what, apart from the bleeding obvious, he’d wanted, as her Spanish wasn’t up to the details.

    Not surprised. What he wanted was Leonardo di.Caprio’s email address… 🤣🤣 I have absolutely no idea why he thought I might have it, and when I asked why he needed it, the explanation was a little unclear but involved an animated film that aimed to save the world from disaster, and as Di Caprio apparently has the same aim in life, logically they needed to be in touch.

    I am occasionally astonished by quite how much of my life falls into the category “You couldn’t make it up”…

          2. But you are really Kate Winslett, aren’t you? That’s what I always thought. Don’t let me down now!

    1. I remember a Latvian woman in A&E had to bring a friend along to translate for her. She couldn’t speak a word of English yet wanted treatment. She had a cold, by all accounts.

      Truly, if you can’t speak the language, bugger off. You’re a danger to yourself and others.

      1. At least she brought her own translator. The NHS pays for translators (if you need someone to interpret for you, let us know).

    2. When one branch of my ancestors came to the east end of London from Amsterdam in the mid-19th century, they wouldn’t have had this nonsense. No translators, no freebies, just hard work to survive, but survive they did, and they learned to speak enough English to live. They and their offspring seemed to have improved their lives.

    3. When one branch of my ancestors came to the east end of London from Amsterdam in the mid-19th century, they wouldn’t have had this nonsense. No translators, no freebies, just hard work to survive, but survive they did, and they learned to speak enough English to live. They and their offspring seemed to have improved their lives.

    5. From Wiki:

      Southall station has bilingual station signage, owing to the large Punjabi community in the local area. Station signs on the platforms bear “Southall” and also “ਸਾਊਥਹਾਲ” in Gurmukhī, a script commonly used for the Punjabi language. In 2007, following issues raised by other ethnic groups in the area, First Great Western announced it would review the signage.[24] The bilingual signs were kept, and were still displayed at the station.[25] In 2021, the new station building and platform roundel maintained the use of bilingual signage. It is one of the relatively few stations in England to have bilingual signage, others being Whitechapel (Bengali), Wallsend (Latin), Hereford (Welsh), Moreton-in-Marsh (Japanese) and St Pancras International, Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International (all French).

      1. Our local reserve has some road signs in Mohawk script.

        Except for the ones trying to attract English speaking shoppers – Gas $1.23.9 , Cheap Smokes and Cannabis $10 ounces

      2. I can understand the Moreton-in-Marsh having Japanese signs (helps maximise spending in the tourist tat shops), and the Welsh ones (at least it is a ‘local’ home grown language, though what proportion of the population have Welsh as their main/only language?)
        Wallsend – presumably part of the tourist attraction relating to Hadrian’s Wall.
        But the others should never be permitted – if they can’t speak English, tough.
        By these freeloaders not speaking English guarantees they will never take paid employment – though that is considered a result by them.

  38. 4 separate connections, split routed – two independent points of external connectivity, 150 seats of connections, 1000 concurrent wireless clients specced to 2500.

    We quoted six figures due to time compression, connectivity, awkwardness, power supply upgrades, security (it’s school, so some of the connections are cameras), safeguarding, monitoring tools. We were told this was far too expensive and the deputy head’s son had already designed the plan so we should follow that. I put in the kit they wanted for my time cost and left them too it.

    After the third full cost support call I pleaded that they let us do the work properly, using sensible enterprise grade kit. They have refused. I asked our accounts person to advise them and despite her persuasiveness they still refused. They’re night half way to the full contract and performance is dire, the wifi overloaded, throughput miserable and deadzones everywhere, roaming doesn’t work and the little boxes bought for external connections which have little processors in them regularly freeze up.

    I get that money is tight. I don’t charge a huge premium on kit – it’s about 2-5% We do charge for our time and design because that’s the skill but nearly 30 hours of support is daft when they could have taken us up and got 100 hours included and far better results out of the set up.

    2. Just watch out for the one goose-stepping while marching. And the toothbrush moustache and jackboots are a dead giveaway, too.

    3. I wonder how much an out of touch ‘DIE consultant’ charged the MOD to come up with that twaddle?

    4. It didn’t mention people who constantly make fish puns?

      Putting on the sprouts for Christmas in April is another dead giveaway

    5. It didn’t mention people who constantly make fish puns?

      Putting on the sprouts for Christmas in April is another dead giveaway

    6. Seriously. what the hell are the armed forces doing with members who AREN’T patriots? What are they supposed to be risking their lives for if not their country?

    7. What a heap of poo. I belong to two closed Facebook groups. One is Gallery Prommers, who are mostly lefties, including one trannie. The other is Shevitz Family, set up by one of my Jewish cousins in the US who is interested in tracing her family history.

    9. Heaven forfend that soldiers who have signed up to serve Queen King and Country should be patriots! I don’t make blatantly untruthful or incorrect statements about immigrants or muslims. Everything I say is true (and in the case of islam can be backed up from the koran).

    1. Will it appeal? Surely, it would be waycist to deny it an appeal. These savages (whatever shade of skin) will never be safe to be released and should, for the safety of the prison officers/staff, be permanently under chemical cosh.
      Even its eyes look evil.
      Edit: Also for the safety of any ‘harmless’ inmates.

        1. Execution (and not a quick version) would be ideal for these creatures, as well as proven murderers and child abusers. None of those can ever be made normal.

        1. We have all been betrayed by the law. They unfortunately are at the sharp end of the betrayal.

  41. 382387+ up ticks,

    Dt,

    War with Russia is coming. Britain is determined to lose

    There are a multitude of options, the first three are
    surrender,surrender,surrender.

    1. If we were subsumed into a new Russian Empire we wouldn’t be any worse off than under the globalists. Probably better in fact.

        2. I love beetroot soup. Dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of chopped chives, what’s not to like?

        1. Yes, but Russian tea is amber in colour and the leaves are very small and very black. The glass has a metal holder with a handle (I brought one back with me from Moscow).

    2. War with Russia isn’t coming though. They’re not remotely interested in us – or Europe.

      1. 382387+ up ticks,

        Morning W,

        If it were so it would be the first truth told by the
        WEF / media, ever.

        1. Considering the intent of the globalists is permanent conflict to force their own way, they’d never admit the truth either way.

  42. War with Russia? Rest easy! We are in the hands of professionals who have dedicated their lives to the monarchy and the people of the Untied Kingdumb of Grate Briton and the EU: I present to you the current Colonel-in-Chief of the Grenadier Guards, the Queens Royal Lancers and several other major units of our Armed Farces:
    https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.99d93a0ddb00270353b43653faa84d94?rik=gTNHhgDv2OZVag&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
    Charlie is also involved, mainly within the Royal Navy and its proud tradition of Rum, Bum and the Lash.

  43. War with Russia? Rest easy! We are in the hands of professionals who have dedicated their lives to the monarchy and the people of the Untied Kingdumb of Grate Briton and the EU: I present to you the current Colonel-in-Chief of the Grenadier Guards, the Queens Royal Lancers and several other major units of our Armed Farces:
    https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.99d93a0ddb00270353b43653faa84d94?rik=gTNHhgDv2OZVag&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
    Charlie is also involved, mainly within the Royal Navy and its proud tradition of Rum, Bum and the Lash.

  44. We’ve often discussed the increasing tendency in television drama to project immigrants into Britain’s past. It’s not just the BBC. Here’s ITV’s latest contribution to the cause. Grantchester, as believable as Father Brown, is to have a new Rev next series.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/676e06624e393341f0eb271a89296773174b56cd414a680139150a962db4c047.jpg

    https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/grantchester-new-vicar-robson-green-newsupdate/

    What a peculiar series it is. So many scenes and stories reasonably well placed in the 50s yet so much dialogue and so many attitudes of the present. Like Call the Midwife and Endeavour, its producers lecture us on the horrors of Britain’s prejudiced past.
    [Murders in the UK 1955, 141 (pop. 51 million), year ending June 2022, 667 (68m)]

    1. Not according to Tesco. They place the population at over 85 million.

      What the enforced ‘diversity’ does is cement a lie, that different colours have always been here when, simply, they haven’t. It’s a complete fabrication. The simple evidence is if they had, then they wouldn’t look like that. They’d look like everyone else because difference would be bred out of them. It’s just a Left wing con.

    2. It makes my blood boil. I remember the fifties and sixties. There were no blacks living in my village.

    1. The free speech they value so highly… is a pack of lies!

      To cause chaos and prevent others defending themselves… yes, that’s your goal. How about you bugger off and leave us alone? Do you not understand? You’re the problem. You’re the enemy. You’re the group fomenting dissent, disgust and conflict. Go away.

      1. 382387+ upticks,

        Afternoon WS,
        I am anything but a pretty picture but she resembles a runner up in the 3.30 at Chepstow especially when she neighs… sorry, laughs.

  46. ‘Afternoon All

    AND AS IF BY MAGIC

    Someone

    somewhere pressed a button and the whole western worlds media was

    showered with articles about the need for conscription etc etc.

    Meanwhile those of us who point out that there is a central control

    system working on a global level that dictates this Bollocks are still

    derided as conspiracy freaks!!!!

    https://i.imgflip.com/8dfzq0.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e67785056aeba6927fd4d20826786d6fc7e59c6dae4680bac224214b8377d5b.png

    1. If war was such a possibility, the great and the good might propose a conference to find a way of avoiding said conflict without millions of Europeans being slaughtered first. You really have to despair with the ready acceptance of war in Europe once again. Where are CND when you need them, and I would thought the snowflakes would have something to say as well.

  47. Fox News guest PERFECTLY summarises the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’ agenda, in just one minute:
    “The WEF is a fanatical political organisation that uses fear and manipulation, like Covid hysteria, like the hoax of global warming, to really facilitate people thinking that somehow they’re the saviours, but really all you’re doing is helping them accomplish their goal, which really is a global public-private fascist movement, and fusion of big government, big tech [and] big money, to create a technocratic ruling elite, which conveniently is them.”
    “They want to create feudalism 2.0, in which we are serfs, and they are the lords ruling over us… That’s what they’re aiming for.”

    1. They won’t but the Canadian mob have. Fully signed up to any WEF, UN or WHO program but that is no surprise since our deputy PM/ finance minister is a WEF director and Trudeau lists after a UN sinecure.

      The liberals have public started a Trump management working group to manage his impact on the Canadian economy (also known as annoying Trump so thar our next government will have problems).

  50. Just had this email from The Cheese Soc.

    As
    many of you will know, Kirkham’s Lancashire cheeses were issued a
    precautionary recall on Christmas Eve 2023, due to the occurrence of
    multiple EColi cases.

    We
    appreciate your patience with regards to this issue as we have awaited
    test results. We can now confirm that tests have found no traces of EColi in Kirkham’s products. The EColi has been detected in Charcuterie meats which had been served alongside Kirkham’s cheeses.

    This
    has been an incredibly difficult time for Graham Kirkham and his
    family. Whilst we are awaiting guidance on retailing Kirkham’s cheeses,
    we cannot wait to get their products back in stock, and to continue
    supporting Kirkham’s as the last producer of raw milk farmhouse
    Lancashire cheese.

      1. Not of I understand the press release. No ecological in their products, but in the meat products served alongside the cheese. Yet the producers of the mear products have not had their business destroyed.

  51. British Government Confirms Commitment to W.H.O. Pandemic Treaty

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2024/01/GettyImages-1245605226-1-640×480.jpg

    expressed its “commitment” to the globalist project of crafting an international Pandemic Treaty by the World Health Organization.

    Buried in a “national statement” delivered at the World Health Organization’s Executive Board in Geneva this week, the British government thew its support behind a push by W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for the world to agree to a Pandemic Treaty.

    “The UK underlines our commitment to agreement of a new Pandemic Accord and targeted amendments of the International Health Regulations, which together ensure our preparedness for future health threats with stronger prevention, and response, whilst respecting national sovereignty,” Downing Street said in a press release.

    This comes despite a petition signed by over 156,000 Britons calling for the government “to commit to not signing any international treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness established by the W.H.O., unless this is approved through a public referendum.”

    During a House of Commons debate in April on the petition, Conservative MP Danny Kruger stated: “The proposed new regulations would hardwire into international law and our domestic policy a top-down approach to pandemics and global public health. Yes, we need cooperation and strategic vision, but no, we do not need ever more centralised solutions.

    “In this country, the top-down approach to Covid-19, from the centralised test and trace system to food parcels for the isolated, did not work. What worked best was people taking responsibility for themselves and their neighbours, local government working with civil society, medical leaders exercising their judgment, and public servants at the local level working flexibly and with initiative. What worked was not central control but subsidiarity: decisions being taken as close as possible to the people that they affected.”
    *
    *

      1. Then he needs eliminating. I’m surprised nobody has taken out a contract on him – or any of these evil megalomaniacs.

  53. 382387+ up ticks,

    Tell me, how many hip replacements, done within the private sector, would you get for the price of one storm shadow missile ?

    Britain in secret plans to send more Storm Shadows to Ukraine
    UK reportedly offering to send Kyiv more weapons and take Taurus cruise missiles from Germany in exchange

    Made more common sense when we were receiving missiles from germany in 39/45.

    1. The German missiles provided a great open play areas for the Kids of Coventry in the late 1940’s & 1950’s.

      Then the council started building on them a

      What the council then did, buildingwise in Cov, had a far more damaging effect than what the Narstie did

      1. I remember playing on bomb sites in Exeter ( victim of the Baedeker raids – never hear of them in the context of Dresden, do we?).

  54. We have government which does not properly and humanely look after its vulnerable, frail elderly. They simply do not care. I’m surprised comments are allowed, though there don’t seem to be any down ticks.
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/ministers-rule-out-raising-the-level-of-english-required-by-foreign-care-workers-despite-death-of-dementia-sufferer-91-after-staff-were-unable-to-explain-her-condition-in-a-999-call/ar-BB1hdxCF?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=8bdb1596004448d39e1056c18948468a&ei=18

  56. https://dailysceptic.org/2024/01/24/revelation-that-u-k-climate-target-is-based-on-one-windy-years-data-threatens-to-unravel-net-zero-credibility/

    An interesting article but it misses the fundamental point. Net zero has nothing, zip, zippo, nl, zilch, zero, nothing, not a thing to do with the environment. It’s got nothing to do with energy. It’s there as a method of social control, to take from one group and give it to another – the state. It’s sheer socialism. Nothing else. No scientific basis is present, relevant or needed. Bringing science to a discussion about ‘climate change is akin to a kitchen knife to an artillery barrage.

    1. It would founder for the same reason as its predecessor. US, and this time South Korean and Japanese Airpower.

    2. North Korea has a massive army of poorly trained, ill equipped, antique materiel kit. We are 5:1 more combat effective, the US probably closer to 6:1.

      They parade all this stuff but they haven’t got the fuel, training or logistics to support an army in the field.

  64. My French is getting really good; I’ve just translated an Internet meme without even having to consult the dictionary:

    Est-ce que quelqu’un est vraiment alle loin meme comme decide a utiliser meme aller vouloir faire voir plus comme?
    Je vais attraper mon manteau.

    1. She is a stupid white Oirish woman who has fallen for slammerdom. Let us hope she offends a sharia court and is flogged.

        1. Ireland will be the first flashpoint. I’m looking forward to the news reports blaming far right extremists.

    2. Ireland couldn’t cope with just two religions let alone this lot arriving and making separate self inclusive demands.

  67. Just look at the execrable and abysmal state of the inhabitants of this planet. Mankind is no longer fit for purpose.

    North Korea has Kim Wrong-un.
    Russia has Putin
    The US of A has Biden.
    France has Macron.
    Ukraine has Zelenskyy.
    Canada has Trudeau.
    The UK has Sunak.
    New Zealand had Ardern (thank fuck she’s gone)
    The WEF has Soros, Schwab and Goats.
    The UN has Guterres …

    I could go on.

    A rapidly declining species is led [sic] by a rapidly declining ruling class.

    If ever there was an opportune time for a colossally massive asteroid to smash into the planet … then now would be quite good.

    1. Maybe later. There are bits of it i haven’t visited or eaten yet. Just take out the parliament buildings with small tactical nukes.

  68. A bloody Bogey Five!

    Wordle 950 5/6
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      3. 2 for me as well, just not as neat as yours.
        Wordle 950 2/6

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  69. Happy Haggis Day.

    A new doctor is being shown around a Scottish hospital

    As they enter one ward, the nearest patient turns to him and says “Fair
    fa’ your honest sonsie face, great chieftain o’ the pudden race!”

    Before the doctor can react, the patient in the next bed adds “Wee sleekit
    cowerin’ timorous beastie! O what a panic’s in thy breastie!”

    And not to be outdone, the third patient responds “Some ha’ meat and cannae eat, and some wad eat that want it!”

    The doctor murmurs to the orderly “So this is the mental health ward?”

    “Och no!” replies the orderly.

    “…it’s the Burns Unit!”

    3. Had haggis for lunch in the work canteen and sang “Comin Thro’ the Rye” to myself. It’s the only Burns that I know.

      1. I cooked the full works last year for 8 of us. We obeyed all the forms with speeches, music and whiskey. I had to do a gluten free haggis too !

        1. I hope you didn’t serve ‘whiskey’. That spelling is reserved for brands of the beverage distilled anywhere in the world except for Scotland. Scotch is whisky (no ‘e’).

          6. Distill it even. First paragraph from the extensive wiki entry.

            Canadian whisky is a type of whisky produced in Canada. Most Canadian whiskies are blended multi-grain liquors containing a large percentage of corn spirits, and are typically lighter and smoother than other whisky styles.[1] When Canadian distillers began adding small amounts of highly-flavourful rye grain to their mashes, people began demanding this new rye-flavoured whisky, referring to it simply as “rye”. Today, as for the past two centuries, the terms “rye whisky” and “Canadian whisky” are used interchangeably in Canada and (as defined in Canadian law) refer to exactly the same product, which generally is made with only a small amount of rye grain.[2]

          7. Well I never. It seems that you are quite correct. It must be a hedge against the Yanks’ insistence of adding an unnecessary ‘e’.

    4. Come rede me dame, come tell me dame,
      My dame come tell me truly,
      “Whit length o’ graith, when we’el ca’d hame
      Will sair a woman duly?”
      The carlin clew her wanton tail,
      Her wanton tail sae ready,
      “l larn’d a sang in Annandale:
      Nine inch will please a lady.”

      “But for a koontrie cunt like mine,
      In sooth we’re nae sae gentle;
      We’ll tak tway thumb-bread to the nine,
      And that’s a sonsy pintle.
      Oh, leeze me on, my Charlie lad,
      I’ll ne’er forget my Charlie,
      Tway roaring handfu’s and a daud
      He nidged it in fu’ rarely.”

      But weary fa’ the laithron doup
      And may it no’ be thriving,
      It’s no’ the length that mak’s me loup
      But it’s the double drivin’.
      Come nidge me Tam, come nudge me Tam,
      Come nudge me, o’er the nyvel
      Come lowp an’ lug your battering ram
      And thrash him at my gyvel!

    1. I don’t want to disappoint Mr Ferguson but yer French ALWAYS set things on fire while “protesting”. Nothing new. Just look what they did to the Bastille in 1789….

        1. They have certainly had enough practice. There are also big tractor demonstrations in Germany and Netherlands, not that the msm report on it.

  72. I see it has gone a quarter to wine – so that’s me gone. The disappointing morning improved. We walked two miles after lunch in watery sunshine. According to the Wet Office it will be chilly but sunny all day tomorrow. I wonder…

    Have a jolly evening sticking pins in any politician of your choice. No – NOT an effigy… Talking of which, I wonder whether that infamous photo of Cur Ikea and Gobshyte “kneeling” in solidarity with a lifelong drug-dealer, thief and “wife”beater – will come back to haunt them come the general election campaign.

    A demain.

  73. Yes, the death of this already unhealthy child is sad, but why, given that the mother knew how sick her child was, didn’t she move if she knew the area was badly affecting her child’s health? Oh, yes. She probably gets good benefits and it’s such an inconvenience having to actually get a job and pay for a home in a healthier district.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13006713/mother-girl-died-asthma-air-pollution-landmark-lawsuit-government-compensation.html#comments

    2. I am fed up with people on benefits moaning about air quality or mould in their flats. Do something about it yourself! The receipt of largesse from the state appears to have sapped any initiative that they might have possessed!

  74. Yes, the death of this already unhealthy child is sad, but why, given that the mother knew how sick her child was, didn’t she move if she knew the area was badly affecting her child’s health? Oh, yes. She probably gets good benefits and it’s such an inconvenience having to actually get a job and pay for a home in a healthier district.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13006713/mother-girl-died-asthma-air-pollution-landmark-lawsuit-government-compensation.html#comments

  76. Our oh-so-protective to invaders government is spreading the joy to bring risks, crime and violence to other areas.
    The one comment below: “Give them tents, a porta loo and a field to stay in.” Preferably on a flood plain or far as possible from any town, village or hamlet.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13006585/Protests-Walthamstow-hotel-400-asylum-seekers-staying-two-years-moved-tomorrow-spots-200-miles-away-government-bids-reduce-accommodation-spending.html#comments

  77. The Tory party’s total surrender is paving the way for a British Trump

    Millions of voters want radical change. Neither Sunak nor Starmer are offering anything like it

    ALLISTER HEATH • 24 January 2024 • 6:41pm

    There are two viable ways to respond to an existential threat in the state of nature: fight or flight. You either destroy your predator, or you run away. You don’t just stand still, wave a white flag and wait for the end. The same is true in the political jungle, and yet the Tories’ nervous systems are now so dysfunctional that they have produced neither of the rational physiological responses to the terrifying likelihood of a Labour landslide.

    Rather than launching the fight of its life, the Government’s reaction has been to freeze, to keep making the same mistakes, to double-down on the same flawed strategy, to do little and to say even less; as political death wishes go, this one takes some beating.

    Wouldn’t it at least make sense to try not to lose the election, and to declare total war against the Labour Party, the Left-wing lawyers, the socialist civil servants and the woke Blob? Would it not be a good idea to seek to regain the initiative or to mould the news agenda? Such an obvious approach is apparently too arduous, too politically incorrect: it’s less controversial to roll over and accept defeat.

    The Tories cannot even organise a proper putsch: Sir Simon Clarke’s half-hearted attempt at ousting Rishi Sunak was never going to succeed. Clarke is right that the Tories’ current strategy guarantees an electoral massacre – almost all Conservative MPs privately agree – but his colleagues won’t remove the Prime Minister. Apart from anything else, a successful coup requires a leader in waiting who could gain the support of enough MPs while promising significant improvement in the polls.

    The Tories are so divided between their three warring factions – the woke Lefties who wouldn’t be out of place in the Liberal Democrats, the centrist careerists, and the squabbling Right-wingers – that they would find it impossible to agree on a successor, let alone to back the sorts of policies that the public might actually want.

    Sunak’s greatest mistake is an analytical one. He doesn’t understand that Britain’s centre-Right electorate – in common with its counterparts in other Western democracies – has changed dramatically. Potential Tory voters used to be broadly supportive of authority and opposed to Left-wing attempts at disrupting the status quo; today, they are largely insurgents who feel under pressure from a hostile Leftist elite and who believe the economy and society to be broken.

    Republican primary voters are now certain to reselect Donald Trump; on the Continent, eurosceptic parties are on the rise everywhere, fuelled further by an eruption of farmers’ protests across Europe. Old centre-Right parties are dying or have entirely reinvented themselves, and populist politics continues to gain ground.

    The British electorate thought that it was voting for change in 2016 and 2019, but was severely disappointed. Its appetite for radicalism hasn’t waned. It is preparing to punish the Tories for their betrayal, but it hasn’t fallen in love with Keir Starmer, a central figure in the Left-wing, business-as-usual establishment it has come to despise.

    British centre-Right voters want competent leadership, but above all radical change. They are desperate for politicians who break the mould, who defy the establishment. They are extremely angry at the state of Britain, and at the record of all the political parties. They are, in other words, and whether we like it or not, on the hunt for a British Trump.

    To be clear, I don’t mean somebody who cannot tell the truth, or who cannot accept defeat at elections. I mean somebody who, like the former US president, is an outsider, isn’t the product of Westminster, who “tells it as it is”, who is pro-growth, who isn’t hamstrung by net zero or human rights laws, and who would be willing to do what it takes to crack down on crime and regain control of immigration.

    Sunak briefly dabbled with a more popular approach to politics, but didn’t communicate it well and quickly reverted to type. He represents a technocratic version of the centre-Right that is actually not very good at solving complex technical problems and which has no future. It can’t truly address immigration, increase growth, build more homes, tackle extremism, reform the NHS properly, reduce welfarism or even fix potholes.

    The PM’s situation is thus disastrous. The recent YouGov MMR poll in The Telegraph put the Tories on 26 per cent of the vote, even with relatively benign assumptions; the most recent regular YouGov poll has them on 20 per cent, Redfield & Wilton on 22 per cent and WeThink on 23 per cent.

    These are apocalyptic numbers, and they have been trending downwards. The best that the Tories can now hope for is a 1997-style disaster, when they collected 30.7 per cent of the vote; this truly would represent a miraculous recovery, given how badly they are performing in the polls.

    The worst-case scenario would be a replay of the 1993 Canadian general election, when the ruling Progressive Conservatives were wiped out, holding just two seats on 16 per cent, thanks to the emergence of a new Right-wing party appropriately called Reform, which grabbed 18 per cent and 52 seats. The parallels with the present situation are uncanny: the Progressive Tories had triumphed in the previous election with 43 per cent of the vote, exactly Boris Johnson’s share.

    A crucial question is whether Nigel Farage properly re-enters the fray at the head of his very own Reform party. He isn’t quite a British Trump – his appeal is more narrowly on the Right – but he may very well be elected in Clacton and would undoubtedly give his party a huge boost. The Tories fell to 165 seats in 1997 (out of 659) and 156 (out 670) in 1906; their floor this time around could be substantially lower.

    In the short-term, the Government needs some high-profile Rwanda deportations, a game-changing abolition of inheritance tax, and extended scrutiny of Labour’s more unpopular policies if it is to avoid obliteration. But unless it embraces a very different approach, the most successful political party in history may finally have had its day.

    New political vehicles can emerge even under first past the post, as the rise of the Labour Party in the 1920s demonstrates, and the gap in the marketplace is just as wide 100 years on. Will the next conservative Prime Minister really be a member of the Conservative party?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/24/tory-party-surrender-paving-way-british-trump/

    An almost muted Heath after some of his recent columns. Some might quibble over his view of Trump. A BTL comment says inheritance tax is ‘not a hill to die on’. Reform of the constitution and the repeal of Labour’s damaging legislation is important but has to be sold carefully.

    Immigration is the big issue. The country will eventually burn if it’s not solved soon.

    1. Immigration, invasion, net zero and constant pushing of the nonsensical and dangerous DIE agenda.

    2. Oh, for a British Trump. At least our friends across the water have November’s elections to look forward to, in the hope that something better is soon to come. What have we? No hope at all just now. It’s flippin’ depressing.

      1. If Trump is disqualified from the US, perhaps he would consider coming over here? That would give the left something real to cry about….

        1. If Trump is disqualified (he won’t be, I’m sure of that) then the fireworks of 4 July will be nothing compared to the civil war that ensues. Look at the Texas situation over the last few days. The divide is already forming.

      2. What is lacking is a proper leader, not someone who constantly looks ate the polls and newspapers.

    1. They could improve it further by putting the junk mail straight in the bin, cutting out the middle man altogether. How’s that for efficiency?

        1. True, but there’s a difference between solicited and unsolicited. The vast majority have no desire for the latter.

    4. It’s not St. David’s Day (1st March) but St. Dwynwen’s Day – the Welsh patron saint of lovers (25th January).

      1. Never heard of that one before, and I doubt many outside of Wales have either. So why has that suddenly reared up?

        2. No, I had never heard of her before either – I think she was mentioned on some TV programme yesterday, so I googled it.

    5. Looking forward to St George’s Day…which is never celebrated…

      Hint…it’s the day after my birthday and this year it’s the day before my dad’s 85th.

      1. I shall celebrate April 23 with a minced-meat pie, mash, peas and gravy; followed by spotted dick and custard.

        1. Spotted dick? – you can get a cream for that
          BTW just been watching part 1 of 3 on the 1984 miners strike – can you get it over in Sweden?

          1. Yes, Spikey. I access all UK TV, and all Sky channels, on my computer (streamed to my telly) using a couple of VPNs. I shall watch that Channel 4 production tonight.

            I’ve trie using cream on my spotted dick but it doesn’t work; custard works a treat.🤣

      2. I fly the flag for St George’s Day. St Georges in Telford usually has street parties and events, so it gets celebrated there.

      3. Nah, can’t celebrate St George’s Day, that would be offensive to efniks and terribly way cist. You can celebrate any other country’s saints day, or fly any flag other than the English flag of St. George or the Union Flag.

        2. And some will point out, predictably, that he was not English yet fail to say the same on St Patrick’s and St Andrew’s days.

    6. That’ll be the end of my shopping in Lidl that week then (unless Aldi succumbs to the same stupidity). It’s bad enough I have to put up with road signs and my electricity bills in Welsh without having my shops so affected.

      1. it really makes no sense to advertise it in Welsh in England where, after all, the majority of their shops are.

      2. I don’t have a local Lidl but it wouldn’t affect my shopping patterns if there were.

    2. Marriage is like a pack of cards; when you start off all you need is a heart and a diamond. In the end you resort to clubs and a spade 🙂

  81. A poor four today

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    1. I squeaked in with a par as well.

      Wordle 950 4/6

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  82. Pictures sent from Mother’s care home on Facebook show she had a good birthday – presents, flowers, a cake with candle… I called her at about 10:00 UK time, and she seemed to be in good spirits.
    Happy, Birthday, Mum!

      1. Thanks, on behalf of Mother.
        I’d have to explain that, in common with most Nottlers and unlike most of humanity, you are a decent, thoughtful and kind human being.

  83. Meanwhile lessons from over the pond….

    “ABC News reports Denver hospital system may collapse due to migrant crisis: ‘We are turning down patients’
    Denver Health CEO Donna Lynne warned the center is in a crucial moment due to unexpected costs associated with immigrant visits.

    What I think is not being said is that Denver Health is at a critical, critical point and that we need to take this up in 2024,” Lynne told the Denver City Council, according to the Denver Post.

    Eight-thousand migrants from Central America accounted for approximately 20,000 visits in 2023. Denver Health asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide funds for immigrants’ medical costs. The state and federal governments aren’t reimbursing the hospital, which spent $136 million for patients who didn’t pay.

    The health system is overwhelmed with care costs for uninsured patients, particularly migrants — 36,000 of whom have arrived in Denver since December 2022, according to The Denver Post.

    “Where do you think the migrants are getting care? They are getting care at Denver Health,” Dr. Lynne said at a Jan. 9 finance and governance committee meeting. Her remarks were reported by CBS Colorado on Jan. 12.

    Denver Health has treated more than 8,000 migrants who lack legal documentation in the past year, totaling about 20,000 visits, according to Steven Federico, MD, a pediatrician at the health system.

    The majority of these patients are coming from Venezuela and arrive needing treatment for chronic and communicable diseases after making the difficult journey.

    Eric Lavonas, MD, an emergency physician at Denver Health, expects the situation to worsen as subzero temperatures sweep across Colorado, exposing unhoused, uninsured populations to frostbite and hypothermia.

    In 2020, the health system had about $60 million in uncompensated care costs. Last year, costs sprung to $136 million, a quarter of which came from caring for non-Denver residents.

    Due to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, Denver Health cannot turn patients away from the emergency room and has resorted to other cost-cutting measures. The system closed 15 of its 78 inpatient beds for substance misuse and mental health treatment and did away with planned salary increases.

    Denver Health lost $35 million in 2022, and 2023 could have been worse had the system not received some outside help, according to the Post.

      1. Did you ever hear any more from Ann’s Aunt? It would be nice to think Ann’s son made it back to the UK before she died.

      2. Sounds like a piece by Tielman Susato that was recorded by David Munrow on an album I have.

  86. Gob smacking stats from the US:

    Approximately 3 million people work directly for the federal government.

    The federal government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2023. That figure is larger than the GDP of every nation on the entire planet except for the U.S. and China.

    More than 70 million Americans are on Social Security.

    More than 65 million Americans are on Medicare.

    More than 81 million Americans are on Medicaid.

    More than 41 million Americans are on food stamps.

    Since 1980, the size of the U.S. national debt has gone from 1 trillion dollars to 34 trillion dollars.

    The combined wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio and George Soros would not be enough to even pay the interest on our national debt for a single year…

    Ouch!

      2. The 34 trillion national debt has had a lot of publicity.

        I don’t think Britain is far behind with dependence on the state – 1 million NHS employees?

    2. In America, what they call Social Security, we call the Old Agee Pension. (See also in this respect “trolleys” and “trams”.)

    3. As an aside, I have been instructing Americans on the correct use of ‘gobsmacked’ to balance the influx of Merkin language in the UK, courtesy of msm ;-))

      1. Off topic, if I may….saw a picture the other day of a house you are thinking of building at some point. would it be all logs on the outside? We looked at several log cabins when we decided to build in 2006, but a word of caution, it will end up bigger and more expensive than planned for….We ended up with a timber frame and cedar cladding, but fell into the trap of if we don’t build it now, when will we???? (It’s the details that mount up)

        1. Just logs. Next door to Firstborn’s House, which is a two storey two-rooms upstairs and downstairs house from 1750 or so. I love the style and warmth of the material… I appreciate the warnings! I hope we can avoid the pitfalls…

          1. But well worth it, heading for 15 years, the longest we have been in a house and there is nothing I would change!

          2. I’ve just passed 16 years in this house which is also the longest I’ve stayed anywhere since I was born

          3. I’ve been in this house 40 years (or will have been come September). I’m not planning on moving again!

    5. The MSM, and therefore the majority of the public, don’t seem to like using numerical figures . $34,000,000,000,000 gives it more oomph.

    6. I saw an article recently that claimed most Americans have less than $5,000 in their savings accounts with maybe 25% not able to muster $500.

      They cannot save but they sure can spend, personal debt is at an all time high.

    7. The NHS employs 1.45 million people and that’s in a country with 20% of the population of the US.

  87. Worse here!
    Wordle 950 5/6

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

    2. She may have been alone apart from her husband who pre-deceased her by a few months, but she was well supported by her local taxi firm and we tried to give her every encouragement here.

  91. I have to admit that at the age of 11, I thought this was a rejected Eurovision Song Contest entry but a lot of people seemed to like it then and still do now.

    Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk, February 3, 1947–January 23, 2024

    https://youtu.be/9alAuYr2g_8

    1. I still have it on a scratched old vinyl single. These days I prefer the Rolling Stones original recording of Ruby Tuesday but RIP Melanie.

    2. I loved her version, as well as the Stones. Didn’t know she’d died, I had a teenage crush on her. RIP, Melanie.

      1. What I find irritating about aboriginal people is, they have only recently come together in their joint moaning efforts. Basically because people like that old bat Mriam Gargoyles (Margolis)
        have been stirring things up.
        Many hundreds even thousands of years ago. Because of the huge size of the country. Separate tribes only recently knew of their own existence. Nobody could have travelled from northern QLD to the south of West Coast. Thousands of miles.
        And now because of protests they are all buddies.
        You would have thought that they might be pleased to have joined the 21st century.

    2. And one of Queen Victoria damaged. So where are the monumental artworks by the aborigines?

      1. I have two aboriginal paintings I bought when in Alice Springs in the 80’s, does that count?

        3. I have, or rather had – lost in a house move, 2 aboriginal paintings on the bark of a tree which gave them a fantastic depth

      2. Could be Sue they never seem to know when they are well off. Always moaning about something.
        Or more recent at arrivals.
        Could be the kneeling mob.
        Any opportunity for trouble making in recent years.
        Google Cronulla riots 2003.
        Lebs as they are known as.

  94. Even the Lib Dems are embarrassed by Ed Davey

    His no-shows at Prime Minister’s Questions might actually be an improvement

    ROSS CLARK • 24 January 2024 • 5:11pm

    Why is it the Conservatives who are yet again muttering about defenestrating their leader? After all, it’s plain for all to see that the party most in need of a leadership election is the Liberal Democrats.

    Yes, I know that is quite a claim to make while Humza Yousaf is still leading the SNP down a haggis hole, but really, Sir Ed Davey looks like a real electoral liability just at the moment.

    Take his no-shows at Prime Minister’s Questions. It’s hard not to suspect that this truancy might just be linked to his track record as post office minister, and the glee with which Tory MPs have pointed this out: see Lee Anderson, who suggested that Davey might like to “clear his desk, clear his diary and clear off”.

    Davey isn’t prepared for this sort of rough and tumble at all. His idea of leadership is to stand at the sidelines and demand others’ resignations, hoping that no-one finds the LibDems exciting enough to ever make the same demand of him.

    Had the boot been on the other foot, Davey would surely have been one of the first people to demand the resignation of a Tory MP who initially refused to meet with wrongfully convicted sub postmasters, saying that such a meeting would serve “little purpose”. Indeed, he has yet to apologise properly for this, despite multiple invitations to do so.

    That’s far from the only thing Ed Davey should feel ashamed of, of course. Look at his role in Britain’s self-inflicted energy crisis. True, there are plenty of villains on this subject, but only Davey has boasted of using his position as energy secretary to scupper the development of a UK shale gas industry.

    This is particularly egregious when the official policy of his own government at the time was to give the industry the green light, and indeed Davey was publicly supporting it.

    He achieved his coup, he admitted in 2022, by setting the industry a limit for earth tremors of an impossibly low 0.5 magnitude – which is off the bottom end of the Richter scale. A tremor would have to be many times that strength even to be felt by humans, and orders of magnitude stronger before it shook, let alone damaged, a building. Despite this, Davey, perhaps single-handedly, ended an industry which might have tapered the blow of the gas crisis which followed the invasion of Ukraine.

    It was Davey, too, who signed the deal with EDF and its then Chinese backers to build the new reactors at Hinkley Point. Back then, the plant was expected to be built by 2023, and cost £16 billion to build. The due date is now 2031, and the bill has risen to £35 billion.

    Sorry, Lib Dems, but you picked a wrong ‘un. There’s just about enough time to dump him before the general election – and you should take the chance.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/24/ed-davey-pmqs-embarrassed-lib-dems-post-office-scandal/

    I thought Davey also presided over the closure and demolition of some coal-fired power stations. Or was that Huhne? Whoever was guilty, energy is a bloody mess now. Another of Call-me-Dave’s triumphs (even though it was Milipede who gave us the Act of Parliament). When I listed HS2, the Holocaust memorial and same-sex marriage amongst his great ideas, I forgot to mention his embrace, along with his sidekick Gideot, of the Chinese.

    1. Ross Clark over-estimates what you might call Ed Davey’s “recognition factor”. I suspect that substantially more than 50% of the voting population would know who the hell he is. Even some Lib Dem voters, casting their vote in his party’s favour, would be unable to name the party leader. Therefore his liability factor will not be of much electoral significance.

    2. I was a member of Yeadon Male Voice Choir (and Skipton MVC) and sang with a number of local choirs and orchestras, including the above. I also sang with several French choirs for 20 years until the Covid crisis. A wonderful experience I miss greatly. I recommend it to all.

          1. We now have a 3rd government minister in trouble over their Masters theses containing significant plagiarisms. Two have resigned, the third hanging on by his fingernails. All Liebour.
            The joke goes: “The bus and railway companies are jealous of the regular departures from the Government!”

  96. Listening to Paul’s Youtube post, then I’m off to bed.
    Just learned one of the lads I served with in Germany has died so feeling a bit melancholy.

    3. The lads I joined up with in 1958 are slowly diminishing in numbers and our reunions are getting smaller. Condolences

    1. “And in the fields the corn sways with metallic clicks
      Whilst man hammers nails in man
      High on his crucifix.”

      Stephen Spender.

    2. Takes me back to the 80s. Sad. Poignant.

      Edit. I haven’t got to the part where he talks about “there are worse things than dying” – oh here it is – a watch-word throughout my life.

      Edit edit. Happy Australia day everyone. Never forgetting the contribution all the Empire in the Great Wars.

      Edit edit edit. Crying now

      Edit edit edit edit. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Flowers of the Forest (Green Fields of France). Preferred this to the Pogues, same writer ( which at the time i did not know : one Eric Bogle)

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr6OzLJrS2k

  100. It’s been a long day, chums, so I’ll now wish you all a very Good Night. Sleep well, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

  101. Evening, all. Some progress with my knees; I have been considered to be put on the list for replacements! Not going to happen overnight, but at least there is the prospect that I might be able to get around (and particularly upstairs) more easily eventually.

    As for the headline, I don’t see why being in the wilderness should make them come to their senses. They were out in the cold when Blair was wrecking the country and all they seem to have learned was to try giving us more of the same.

    1. Is that a waiting list for those merely being ‘considered’ for adding to the list? Joking aside, that’s a step nearer getting sorted, well done.

      1. I understand that the physio will put in a report with a recommendation, which will go to the GP, who will then pass it on to a consultant and then, all being well, I shall be put on the waiting list. What was a bit worrying was that she seemed to think it was my left knee that was the problem, but it’s the right. Both are arthritic, but I get more pain in my right knee (although it’s my left sacroiliac joint that’s the problem – nothing can be done about that).

        1. Wishing you well. I have a review on 19th February as it’s 4 years since I had an arthroscopy on my right knee. It’s OKish but at 77 I’m not sure I would want to go through the op. Like you I have arthritis in both knees.
          On the point of your referral doesn’t it show exactly what is wrong with the NHS. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare. Why can’t the physiotherapist refer you directly to the consultant with a copy to the GP? It’s not as if the GP is going to examine you it’s just adding another layer of administrative work that is unnecessary.

          1. You and I both know what’s wrong with the “envy of the world”, but we can’t do anything about it. Worse, if the physio hadn’t been creative, because they referred me for the wrong knee, the whole rigmarole would have had to start again from the beginning. It’s like when I was referred for my hip; they had to go back to the GP for a referral to treat my knees. The hipbone is not connected to the knee bone in the NHS!

  102. Goodnight everyone. Apologies in advance if I don’t reply to any comments or replies for a while. My tablet has decided it will no longer allow me access to my email accounts. Oh joy. Like many of us, it is showing signs of old age, and needs replacing.

  104. Just waiting for Geoff’s new page so, I’d better go and collect my parcel from the lobby. Later guys and gals, God’s strewth,, I feel my age..

  105. Oh dear oh dear

    “SIR – A period in opposition is not what the Conservatives need (Letters, January 25). There is a leadership candidate who can unite both party and voters against Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour. Her name is Penny Mordaunt. Dale Fletcher“

    2. I would have agreed before I realised how heavily she is involved with the WEF and she reveled her support for men pretending to be women.

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