Tuesday 21 May: The infected blood scandal brings shame on the British establishment

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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688 thoughts on “Tuesday 21 May: The infected blood scandal brings shame on the British establishment”

  1. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) Story

    A LITTLE AUSSIE HUMOUR.

    An Italian, a Frenchman and an Aussie were talking about screams of passion.

    The Italian said, “Last night I massaged my wife all over her body with the finest extra virgin olive oil, then we made passionate love and I made her scream, non-stop for five minutes.”

    The Frenchman said, “Last night I massaged my wife all over her body with special aphrodisiac oil from Provence and then we made passionate love. I made her scream for fifteen minutes straight.”

    The Aussie said, β€œThat’s nothing! Last night I massaged my wife, y’know, all over her body with a special butter. I caressed her entire body with the butter, and then we made love and I made her scream for two long hours.”

    The Italian and Frenchman, astonished, asked, “Two full hours? Wow! That’s phenomenal. What did you do it to make her scream for two hours?”

    The Aussie replied, “I wiped my hands on the curtains.”

  5. Britain’s β€˜day of shame’ as full scale of infected blood scandal revealed. 20 May 2024

    Rishi Sunak said it was β€œa day of shame for the British state” on Monday as victims of the infected blood scandal were finally given an apology.

    The Prime Minister said the worst treatment scandal in NHS history had resulted from a β€œmoral failure at the heart of our national life” in which doctors, civil servants and ministers had put reputations above patient safety.

    Thousands of people were infected with HIV and hepatitis C by contaminated blood products used in the NHS between the 1970s and 1990s.

    Britains day of shame? Really? It looks more like the Political Classes Day of Shame. It is time we stopped indulging these people with their Mea Culpa’s and started hanging them as they so richly deserve. Their failures here with the Blood Scandal are quite minimal when contrasted with their betrayal of the British People as a whole.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/20/infected-blood-scandal-inquiry-live-latest/

  6. Will anyone be charged with the NHS cover up.? Will there be a further cover up.? Who will sort the NHS ? I would start by breaking it up into more managable pieces.

  7. Perhaps Sir Brian Langstaff should be asked to take charge of the Covid enquiry.
    We might then get some honest answers.

  8. Turns out the Globe is staging an all-woman production of Richard III. I must rush to buy tickets.

    Oh no I forgot. I stopped going to the Globe after the dreadful production of Macbeth about 10 years ago – when that dreadful woman was in charge.

    Note to the 77th: no, I am not a misogynist; neither am I a misandrist. What’s wrong with us all existing nicely together?

    2. I used to love going to the Globe.
      Like you, I haven’t bothered for years.
      Trips to London are not cheap, and I’m not wasting my money on woke productions.

  9. The politicians, civil servants and NHS officials involved in the scandal should all have their pensions confiscated and be prosecuted for maladministration and corporate manslaughter.
    Expenses fraud, paedophilia, grooming gangs,Covid, Horizon, now tainted blood… How many scandals are needed for the public to say enough?
    We need a combination of a Milei and Cromwell.

  10. Germany coup plot trial to begin amid high security. 21 may 2024.

    On trial are the group’s alleged ringleader, a self-styled aristocrat estate agent known as Prince Heinrich XIII, his Russian girlfriend, and seven other founding members including a former policeman and a former judge who is now an MP for the far-right AfD party.

    According to federal prosecutors, the group planned to storm the Reichstag in Berlin with armed support via its paramilitary wing, to arrest members of the Bundestag, and to parade a shackled Olaf Scholz on German television in the hope and expectation of winning ordinary Germans around to their coup.

    As you would of course. This story makes Tommy Robinson’s offences look quite moderate and they are mostly fictitious. It is difficult to know who is the more unhinged. The alleged plotters with a pantomime plot or the German government for giving it publicity.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/germany-coup-plot-trial-to-begin-amid-high-security

  12. Biden condemns β€˜outrageous’ attempt to seek arrest warrant for Netanyahu. 21 May 2024.

    Joe Biden has condemned the β€œoutrageous” call for Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest made by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

    The US president said that Karim Khan’s call for Mr Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, to be arrested for war crimes had drawn β€œequivalence” between Israel and Hamas and Mr Biden reiterated his pledge to support the country’s security.

    What goes around comes around. They set these people onto Vlad with the specious charges about the evacuation of children from Donbass and now find themselves hoist with their own petard.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/20/international-criminal-court-arrest-warrant-netanyahu/

  15. I imagine a few others on here use Patient Access to order their repeat prescriptions. Yesterday I needed to order some – I don’t need to do this very often since by a fluke they supply me in six month batches. It used to be very easy, just tick the boxes on the repeat prescription form, pop it in the box at the surgery, they appear at the chemist a few days later. Now of course all on line….

    I have never got round to installing the NHS app, I hate apps and have no desire to do that. But our surgery has been using Patient Access, which originally worked quite well. A couple of years ago they added an extra layer of security, you had to choose a memorable word and enter letters from that. You have to write your memorable word down as that is the only way you can work out the second, fourth and eighth characters…. OK, fiddly but worked.

    This morning, having eventually found the patient access link on the redesigned surgery website as everything pushes you towards the NHS app thing, I went through the above, then got a new screen – ‘we have added a new layer of security, two factor. No, not just send a code to your mobile phone, you have to install an app to do that – where, I am typing this on a desktop computer not a silly mobile phone?…. Next page displays a QR code that you are meant to scan… I gave up. Fortunately there was another option on the surgery website, a web form that I just had to type a few things on, done that (with a suitable comment about Patient Access), hopefully it will have done the trick.

    Why on earth do they assume everybody does everything on a mobile phone?

    Then I looked at Trustpilot, wow, Patient In-access is very appropriate!

    https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/patientaccess.com

    It looks like this new layer of security has backfired… I have a similar one time password thing for my HSBC account, a little dongle thing that gives me a code, that at least works. SMS to my mobile also works. Why they should do it with a third party app and give you just ten seconds to type the code in is beyond belief.

    I struggle with mobile phones. This morning I am off to the dentist for the six monthly (expensive) checkup and clean. Expecting a reminder text or something I looked and found nothing. Then I found there had been one, but since I had set my phone not to show alerts when in the locked state (ie all the time) it had not alerted me there was an unread sms. How on earth do people manage to run all their life on these things.

    Back later ‘two thirty’ as they say.

    1. I will not use my telephone for filling in forms. I re-order my meds from the pharmacy by (voice) telephone.

      1. I was standing behind a chap, yesterday, at the check-out in a large DIY, hardware and tool shop, when he simply held his mobile phone over the card-reader to make payment.

        I have an iPhone and that will probably perform the same task, but:

        1. I am clueless about this technology.
        2. I simply do not trust myself not to make a (possibly costly) mistake.

        1. Or that some clever bod behind you doesn’t somehow add the cost of his purchases to YOUR phone…

          1. Ah! There you are. I thought you’d left. I posted some butterfly photos, yesterday, especially for you.

        3. Very common here. They pay with a card or phone for single drinks, which can cost as little as €2 Euros, and a receipt is produced every time which is usually thrown in the bin.

        4. I attend music concerts and apart from the likes of Ticketmaster ripping a ‘handling fee’ for an e-ticket (paper tickets are available for an additional Β£3/4 for ‘legacy’ purposes only) it means I have to take my phone to the concert.

      2. Pharmacy2U is quite efficient. You sign up with the NHS app and arrange it. It takes a bit of faffing but once done works quite well with medication delivered to your home. Arranging appointments is hit and miss though. Not straightforward with messages disappearing after about 10 days. Also, records are not kept v well so you cannot rely on it giving you updates on future appointment. Patchs is odd. What is it? Why have something separate that isn’t? Don’t understand. I think they design stuff to make people give up. It’s disgusting as older, frail people are likely to.

      3. I am going to have this battle with my GP tomorrow. They insist I do everything via an app. I have enough apps to worry about without adding another.

    2. It was so much simpler when it was just “ten four” as Broderick Crawford used to say on TV in “Highway Patrol”. Lol.

      1. When police chief, Dan Mathews, uttered the words “10-4”, Auntie Elsie, he was using the recognised radio code for “received and understood”. This is similar to the “Roger” used by the military.

        The modern and infuriatingly crass “Copy” or “Copy that”, which has now become universal, emanated from the Citizen’s Band (CB) radio phenomenon that started up in the 1970s.

    3. I encountered the same thing last week and had to resort to ringing up the surgery for my repeat prescription. These upgraders seem hell-bent in putting technological progress back to the 1990s.

      Using broadband works at about the same rate as the old dial-up (except that video calls via Yahoo! Messenger were once a breeze using my W98 Evesham and dial-up but I never attempt it now), Windows 8 was like going back to 3.1, but with auto-updates and a cloud connection to those hacking the Microsoft servers I have no control over, and Mac has never improved on Snow Leopard, which came out in 2009. The signal at home to my mobile is hit-and-miss, and I only really use it as a modern substitute for the red phone box.

    4. I sympathise! My wife struggled with the same thing. I’m reasonably competent technically, but even with my help it took ages. I wonder if it will work next time! The Trustpilot comments are spot on.

      1. I think Trustpilot is sometimes hijacked. I wouldn’t rely on it entirely.

    5. They all have their phones on, fully charged and in their hands all the time.
      As I keep away from our surgery I have no idea how their new system works as they ditched Impatient Access some time ago.

    6. Have a nice day. Thank you for reaching out to us. Your call is important to us….

      1. ‘Due to unprecedented numbers of callers you may be some time, Mr, or Mrs, Shackleton’. In other words that organisation is so rubbish that it is overwhelmed with complaints with only two people handling the calls. And they are from Borneo and don’t speak English or maybe some incomprehensible version of it.

        And whilst you are waiting for them to answer you keep getting recorded messages suggesting you contact the online service which is no use.

        And those messages are interspersed between bouts of ‘music’ which sounds like a cat yowling with diarrhoea. Problem is any change is always regarded as a good thing in this society. It is all ‘progressive’ so it must be good. There is no sense of discernment as to what that actual ‘good’ is. So techies are paid a fortune to make things worse. The concept of making something efficient before it is implemented en masse is not even considered by these idiots. Hence we have bank fraud on unprecedented levels; an NHS where massive glitches occur all the time; even our trustworthy post office has been hijacked by fools. All so the progressives are indulged in their fake beliefs that they are actually taking a worthy part in some kind of progress. And don’t get me started on ideologies where the same thing applies. Anything new or different is thought to be progressive no matter how ruinous, dangerous or perverted. Progressive should never ever be equated to actual progress.

        1. As some wise soul pointed out; you can’t have an above average number of calls all the time, that’s not how averages work.

    7. A verification code did not get through to my phone so I have to contact email provider. Tried to but you have to swim through a word salad swamp to register my complaint. No idea if my complaint registered. It’s like trying to pin the tail on the donkey whilst blindfolded. Easy just give up really, isn’t it? These corporates/institutions make a huge thing of being ‘kind’ and willing to listen but the complaints process is made wittingly incomprehensible. These people should be fined if their systems are practically impossible to use.

    8. Back from dentist…… got to go back for a couple of fillings to sort out worn front teeth at Β£100 each, private dentist has to make a living you know. Usual drill from the hygienist about recessing gums, flossing etc.

      I likewise am uneasy about using the phone for paying for things, each of these apps you put on the thing means more and more of your personal data is sat there and it becomes a security nightmare. Having been scammed once (long story) I am very careful when I am out and about these days. A foreigner approached me last week in London, couldn’t understand what he was going on about but when he said ‘I am not a criminal’ and flashed his passport at me I knew it was time to dodge away.

    9. I had all the “install the NHS app” push from the surgery, but I said I didn’t have a smartphone (which is true). Reluctantly they gave me the log in details and after a lot of faff, I finally managed to log in and link my Emis details to the surgery. It took so long to get the prescription that I thought the request hadn’t worked. I usually order on line via POD and that’s what I’ll continue to do in future.

  16. NHS issue apology with AI generated PR platitudes.. about as convincing as Sir Keir and his Union Jacks.

      1. β€œdeepest and heartfelt apologies..
        “Safeguarding the health, safety and welfare of our patients..
        “We owe it to all those..
        “to take the necessary time now to fully understand..
        “Our thoughts and prayers are with..
        ..our DE&I targets, multiple layers of Leftie management and triple-locked pensions.. and a gentle reminder that Windrush actually invented penicillin & antibiotic medications.

        1. Updated version – what they really mean:
          “Deepest and heartfelt apologies to our senior management for the strain they have been put under as a result of the detrimental press they have been subjected to.”
          “Safeguarding the health, safety and welfare of our patients NHS management.”
          ” We owe it to all those ourselves.”
          “To take the necessary time to fully understand how we can cover this up and avoid any responsibility whatsoever.”
          “Our thought and prayers are with our senior management so they can find ways to avoid any culpability“

        2. Updated version – what they really mean:
          “Deepest and heartfelt apologies to our senior management for the strain they have been put under as a result of the detrimental press they have been subjected to.”
          “Safeguarding the health, safety and welfare of our patients NHS management.”
          ” We owe it to all those ourselves.”
          “To take the necessary time to fully understand how we can cover this up and avoid any responsibility whatsoever.”
          “Our thought and prayers are with our senior management so they can find ways to avoid any culpability“

      2. β€œdeepest and heartfelt apologies..
        “Safeguarding the health, safety and welfare of our patients..
        “We owe it to all those..
        “to take the necessary time now to fully understand..
        “Our thoughts and prayers are with..
        ..our DE&I targets, multiple layers of Leftie management and triple-locked pensions.. and a gentle reminder that Windrush actually invented penicillin & antibiotic medications.

      3. When of course they mean “Lessons have been identified”. The ‘learning’ will require a fully-funded course run by Crapita or Serco to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. No one will pass the course as that may mean taking on the responsibility for any future errors.

  17. NHS issue apology with AI generated PR platitudes.. about as convincing as Sir Keir and his Union Jacks.

  18. I see that the ICC bloke who is trying to charge the Israeli PM with murder is – natch – a very heavy duty slammer.

  19. Good morning, chums. A bit late on parade today, since I overslept.

    Amazingly, I did the Wordle in two today, although on copying it here I somehow erased the final letter which, as you can see, was already in place.

    Wordle 1,067 2/6

    ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩

  20. 387465+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Is not this former shame construct a smoke / mirror cover up, a trial run, a prototype, for more recent evil actions
    meted out to the very trusting herd.

    This WEF / NWO highly visible coup has been in the making for a very long time.

    In its junior days the coup found support via a very trusting electorate but since the Mrs Thatcher era it has surely unfurled its true colours, and yet still it finds support via the same electorate majority closing their eyes to the glaringly obvious fact that the party name and its top ranker politico’s are phony, bogus,not genuine, a sham,false, fake,fraudulent.

    We are in point of fact, and via the polling stations aiding & abetting this coalition in its part it’s playing in global manipulation of world numbers, AKA in this instance as
    corporate killing culling.

  22. Good morning all.
    A bright but slightly cooler start after last night’s heavy rain with thin cirrus cloud forecast to thicken with occasional showers.

  23. Morning all, back from holiday hope all are well.
    Another day and yet another heart breaking scandal which again highlights the malicious incompetence of our government and establishment.
    So along with infected blood, the post office scandal, the inability to drop paratroopers in any number, the treatment of veterans v terrorists, the inability to stop the invasion of criminals arriving by rubber boats, the infiltration of sexual deviants into our schools, the blind devotion to net zero, the failure to ensure reliable.future energy, the scandal of dirty rivers and now supplying dirty drinking water and on and on and on.
    A real pleasure to be home.

  24. Good Moaning.
    This is a long article. I am posting it for NOTTLers who cannot read it online.
    First victim.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/20/blood-scandal-victims-schoolboy-dental-patient-widow-father/

    The schoolboy, the dental patient and the widow: Infected blood scandal victims share their stories

    An expectant mother and the son of a hounded family also relive how they suffered through the worst treatment disaster in NHS history

    Joe Pinkstone, Science Correspondent20 May 2024 β€’ 9:36pm

    Gary Webster was treated at school for his haemophilia with Factor VIII, hailed as a wonder drug at the time Credit: Christopher Pledger for The Telegraph

    A five-year inquiry into how 30,000 people were infected with HIV and hepatitis after being given contaminated blood products to treat illnesses – with more than 3,000 dying – has concluded.

    It revealed that the health service and Government led a β€œchilling” cover-up of the worst treatment disaster in NHS history with Rishi Sunak calling Monday a β€œday of shame” for the British state as he pledged comprehensive compensation.

    Each of the victims has a story behind their struggle and here are five of them.

    The Treloar schoolboy told he had just a few years to live: Gary Webster

    When Gary Webster started boarding at Lord Mayor Treloar College in Hampshire, a school for children with physical disabilities, in 1975, life changed overnight.

    After a childhood denied by haemophilia, he and his classmates were overjoyed with the newfound freedom a new miracle drug had given them.

    Rather than spend hours waiting for cryoprecipitate, the previous treatment, to defrost, transfuse and take effect, whenever they had a bleed, day or night, they could simply get a dose of Factor VIII.

    However, there were soon signs that something was wrong as Gary and his friends would end up bedridden with serious illnesses and become among the first patients in the UK to test positive for HIV.

    Gary had realised not all was well and questioned why he was being given the drug every other day, but was told it would prevent bleeding. However, a friend had rightly speculated: β€œI’m sure they’re bloody experimenting on us.”

    Gary Webster

    Mr Webster, seen here as a schoolboy, was among the first patients in the UK to test positive for HIV

    In their final few months at the school, in springtime 1983, Gary and the friend, then 17, were abruptly called out of class.

    β€œI’ve got something to tell you,” a doctor told them. Both the boys had signs of a newly emerging illness, Aids. β€œIt is incurable and we cannot guarantee you will be alive in two to three years,” he said.

    They were among the first people in Britain to be diagnosed with the life-threatening condition, a year before HIV was discovered and the link between Factor VIII and the illness was accepted by the government.

    β€œWe just couldn’t believe what he was saying,” Gary, 59, told The Telegraph. β€œWe were shocked but we were young. We looked at each other and half smiled. Then we went back to class.”

    Only 30 of 122 pupils treated for haemophilia at Treloar’s are still alive and Gary has grown accustomed to seeing school friends grow poorly, witnessing their decline at regular reunions, and paying his respects at the funerals that followed.

    β€œIt got too hard,” he says. β€œEvery time you went to the reunions there were less and less people. The funerals were every year from the late Eighties into the Nineties.

    β€œI had a big group of friends who were haemophiliacs – and [then] there weren’t that many of them any more.”

    Gary is only alive today thanks to breakthroughs in antiviral treatments which he was given in 1996 and brought him back from the brink.

    β€œIt was pot luck that treatment came in when it did,” he said β€œOthers got ill too early.”

  25. Good morning all and troops of the 77th,

    A cloudy day has dawned at McPhee Towers. Wind wafting around North, 10℃ and a bit cooler today with a ‘high’ of 15℃. Chance of a shower in the afternoon. It is the last week of may coming up, isn’t it? Ne’er shed a clout and all that.

    Here’s something to make you regurgitate your porridge.

    https://x.com/GordonBrown/status/1791820551008174569

    Gordon Brown – just another shiller for the globalists.

    The comments are priceless. They leave him in no doubt.

      1. Another certifiable traitor who would, in more enlightened times, have been hanged for treason.

        Along with his cohorts.

    2. “We won’t achieve any real progress towards globalisation and submission to the WEF and foreign organisations until we have destroyed private pensions and sold off all our gold reserves and bankrupted ourselves!”

      (Gordon Brown}

      Not an actual quotation – but it could have been!

      This man in his surly Scottish way is just as evil and treacherous as Blair, Cameron and May.

  26. “The dental patient who caught Hepatitis C: Mike Dorricott

    Mike Dorricott was only 15 when a routine dental procedure in 1982 left him infected with hepatitis C which would eventually kill him.

    A mild haemophiliac, he could have been treated with older medication and did not necessarily need the new β€œmiracle” drug Factor VIII.

    His dentist had suggested using cryoprecipitate for the procedure at Huddersfield Hospital to remove four teeth. But without his or his parents’ permission, the new disease-riddled drug was used instead.

    Mr Dorricott, a marketing manager, only found out about the infection years later after the birth of his daughter Eleanor in 1996, when he went for a check-up at the Haemophilia Centre. He was referred to Addenbrookes Hospital for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver.

    Until then his family thought his fatigue was from work, unaware of the real cause. He later had to receive a liver transplant in 2000 but five years later scans found cancer and he had to undergo another transplant.

    However, cancer cells returned and Mr Dorricott died aged 47 in 2015 from liver cancer linked to the hepatitis C he had contracted through infected blood.

    He had campaigned for justice over the scandal and a fair settlement for the victims and had met with Jeremy Hunt, while he was health secretary, who has promised to honour him with compensation.

    His family told the inquiry that Mr Dorricot and Mr Hunt were β€œreally good friends” and were on β€œfirst-name terms”. His wife, Ann, said a meeting had been held shortly after her husband’s terminal diagnosis to discuss a β€œfair and final settlement” for the victims.

    β€œWhen Mike told the room that it was terminal, Mike got very upset, very emotional,” she said. β€œTowards the end of the meeting, Jeremy Hunt came to me and Mike, shook our hands and said to us, β€˜don’t worry about this, we’ll sort it’. Those were his words.”

    During evidence, Mr Dorricott’s daughter Sarah read a statement written before he died in which he told how β€œnasty, nasty, disease has completely shattered my life”.

    He said: β€œThe financial impact of this scandal is only one part of how this has affected me and my family. The chances are that I will be dead in the next 12 months. Nothing will ever repay this.

    β€œI won’t be there for my wife and two daughters. I won’t get to walk them up the aisle. I won’t be there to see their grandchildren. My wife will be on her own.” “

    1. My father died in 1984 in Southampton General Hospital after a serious operation – he was nearly 86.

      Before he died he told me that when he had a blood transfusion they had filled him with blood from the New World. This blood was very probably contaminated but, to be honest, it is not likely to have made any difference in his case.

    2. Did Hunt honour that commitment to compensation?
      I have my doubts as I see him as a slimy little pussball who, by being an MP, is doing some village out of its idiot.

    1. “Make de-funding the RNLi a prime issue”

      That’s like executing all the villagers of a village known to contain a traitor. We just need to stop the few RNLI vessels that collaborate in this crime against the country.

      1. 387465+ up ticks,

        Morning MM,

        How big is the village ? we are virtually on a war footing with this country’s political mis-managers,
        so must IMHO weigh up lost via murder / serious injuries / rape & abuse /mental damage suffered by the indigenous peoples and take
        appropriate actions as in stopping the transporters, in total.

        When hostilities cease then return to normal practise.

        1. I am writing to the RNLI.

          “I have supported the RNLI for over 50 years and I am a Shoreline member who used to fly the pennant from the crosstrees of my boat.

          I do not wish to stop my support for the RNLI but I am going to stop my direct debit until it is clear that the RNLI has stopped running a ferry service for illegal immigrants. When the RNLI has repented and stopped this disgraceful activity I shall resume my contributions.”

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a52f7aec7ed60908a80ff2d8f3d497974401a82000820959789b82117452979a.png

          1. 387465+ up ticks,

            Morning R,

            Agreed,
            See my reply post to MM, when hostilities cease then funding will once again commence.

    2. If you’re so gung-ho about defunding the RNLI, campaign to make it a crime to donate money to it, then just cross your fingers should you ever feel the need to be rescued at sea.

      1. 387465 + up ticks,

        Afternoon DW,
        Aiding & abetting the potential enemy at a time of war is a treasonable act.

        Indigenous peoples are under attack within this countries borders, they, the very borders the RNLI choose to abuse on a daily basis.

        1. For there to be a time of war, there has to be a declaration of it.. How would you defund the RNLI?

          1. 387465+ up ticks,

            DW,

            That was yesteryear, today covert is the order of play via the order of the day, cover up R us.

            Stop funding the RNLI, phone your bank, NOW.

      1. 387465+ up ticks,

        Afternoon DW,
        That is the whole crux of the matter odious political overseers followed odious overseers from the minute “miranda” laid down the welcome mat to every foreign felon and their grannies.
        The indigenous innocents are feeling the blunt of it on the streets, by way of death & serious injuries.

  29. The woke, globalist British establishment is shameless. It doesn’t care so long as its power is preserved. All that has happened is that their crimes have been nationalised, with the punishment transferred to the taxpayer who now has to pay compensation.

    Why are the guilty not been hunted down and prosecuted? Over 3,000 people were killed, and many more had their lives ruined. And the guilty ones knew exactly what they were doing. Compare and contrast this with the relish with which the woke Establishment hunted down and prosecuted aging former paratroopers, all trained to be extremely aggressive and wrongly placed on ‘peace-keeping duties’ in the middle of a riot, and who killed a mere 26, who were assaulting them with rocks and behind whom cowardly IRA men were shooting at them.

  30. Any doubts this sort of thing still continues?

    “According to the report, there was a deliberate decision to destroy Department of Health files which contained material dealing with delays in the introduction of screening blood donations for hepatitis C.

    The files, which related to decision-making of the Advisory Committee on the Virological Safety of Blood (ACVSB), were marked for destruction in 1993.

    ‘The destruction was not an accident, nor the result of flood, fire or vermin,’ Sir Brian wrote.

    ‘The immediate reason for destruction was human choice. Someone, for some reason, had chosen to have those documents destroyed.’

    He said: ‘It is an uncomfortable conclusion that it is more likely than not that a civil servant chose to destroy the documents because they were those documents: but if that is what the evidence amounts to, it is the conclusion that must follow.’

    Sir Brian continued: ‘In short, it is on this basis more likely than not that the authorisation to destroy the (ACVSB) files was because the documents contained material dealing with delays in the UK to the introduction of screening of blood donations for hepatitis C, which was anticipated (or known) to be a live issue at the time.

    ‘If this is right, it was a deliberate attempt to make the truth more difficult to reveal.’

    He added that any conclusion ‘bound to be tentative’ and that it is ‘almost certain that it was not orchestrated ‘from the top”.”

  31. Good morning, all. Overcast at 06:00 with rain forecast around noon.

    I am aware of Redfield’s words but I haven’t picked up on the change from ‘saved millions of lives’ to merely ‘saved many lives’ before. Over the past two weeks the AstraZeneca apologists remained claiming ‘millions’ – including an acquaintance of mine: no real surprise, I suppose, as he’s had 6 jabs in total.

    Carl Sagan had a couple quotes that fit well into these extraordinary times:

    β€œExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” was a phrase made popular by Carl Sagan who reworded Laplace’s principle, which says that β€œthe weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness” (Gillispie et al., 1999).

    https://x.com/prwright55/status/1792454239681446273

    Of course there is not a shred of evidence that the jabs saved lives and the prospect of any of the charlatans proposing this nonsense actually coming up with the required ‘extraordinary evidence’ is, IMO, nil.

    1. That Carl (Cosmos) Sagan quote fits like a glove to many other terrible things our political classes swing on us. i.e. the contaminated blood scandal and the post office scandal which seems to have been shoved under the proverbial carpet now.
      Meaning that the guilty will get away with it.
      What a nasty, terrible and horrible sector of our society most of them are.

    2. Strike One: Give the Nation Contaminaated Blood

      Strike Two. Give the Nation Dodgy Vaccinations

      Strike Three Lock the Nation down

      Strike Four. Make the Nation obey World Health Organisation

    3. The Carl Sagan quote is an elaboration of an observation by Mark Twain: “It’s easier to fool a man than convince him he’s been fooled.”

  32. Good morning, all. Overcast at 06:00 with rain forecast around noon.

    I am aware of Redfield’s words but I haven’t picked up on the change from ‘saved millions of lives’ to merely ‘saved many lives’ before. Over the past two weeks the AstraZeneca apologists remained claiming ‘millions’ – including an acquaintance of mine: no real surprise, I suppose, as he’s had 6 jabs in total.

    Carl Sagan had a couple quotes that fit well into these extraordinary times:

    β€œExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” was a phrase made popular by Carl Sagan who reworded Laplace’s principle, which says that β€œthe weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness” (Gillispie et al., 1999).

    https://x.com/prwright55/status/1792454239681446273

    Of course there is not a shred of evidence that the jabs saved lives and the prospect of any of the charlatans proposing this nonsense actually coming up with the required ‘extraordinary evidence’ is, IMO, nil.

  33. Progressive Liberals of Europe welcomed The Hague ICC’s Karim Khan arrest warrant application for Benjamin Netanyahu to face war crimes and crimes against humanity.
    And you wonder why Trump has pledged to undo USA NATO protection of EU.

  34. Morning all πŸ™‚πŸ˜Š
    Cloudy again and rain later rain all day tomorrow.
    I’m having my right eye cataract removed later, so scuz the pun, I’ll see you later.
    This contaminated blood scandal happen when our middle son was born. He’s 43 this August.
    He was delivered by Caeserean section luckily not much blood was lost and none had to be replaced.
    But how have these terrible people been able to get away with this dreadful deadly and dangerous scandal for so long ?
    If your window cleaners make a bad job you get rid of them.

    1. I’m gutted the eye clinic has just phoned and my appointment has been cancelled, the surgeon has phoned in sick………

        1. Our neighbour who lives in France most of the time. Caught covid from her hubby when he’d been over for a week at the beginning of the month. He probably caught at Stanstead or on the flight.
          Having been cleared of it. She went back this morning.

          1. Or, of course, she just had a short bout of ‘flu. Or a bad cold. Everyone with a slight sniffle these days has “covid”. Loadabollox

          2. No she tested positive.
            She’s a very practical lady with strong opinions, from JHB.
            When I lived there at Judith’s Paarl. She lived about a mile away. She’s a bit younger than I am.

          3. She tested positive for a coronavirus. Of which there are quite a few, ‘covid’ being supposed to be one of them. The test cannot pick out an individual coronavirus, and it cannot tell you if it is a live coronavirus fragment of dna, nor a dead one long since past in your system which it has found. It is (and was) a fraud. The whole event was based on a fraud, a lie. The coronavirus is the virus which is the cause of winter fluey-type colds, along with the adenoviruses and rhinoviruses. The fact that the establishment used the term ‘coronavirus’ to enable their fraud was one of the red flags (for me) surrounding this event.

          6. It is especially prevalent in the hay fever season… The virus rolls along with the pollen balls. Edit: that stunning piece of information came from a member of the nhs. They’ll tell you anything.

    2. And you don’t get rid of them 40 years later. Why has this taken so long to investigate? There should be a mandatory timeframe. Methinks the perpetrators have worked hard to extend this investigation.

    3. Good luck Eddy. You are about to have a new world opened to you, once they remove the bandage.

      1. I was looking forward to competing with our four year old grand son whose been dressing up a a pirate recently.

  35. Gibraltar deal with EU will not β€˜diminish’ UK sovereignty, Cameron insists.20 May 2024 β€’

    Lord Cameron has insisted any post-Brexit deal between Britain and the European Union regarding Gibraltar would not β€œdiminish in any way” the UK’s sovereignty over the Rock.

    The Foreign Secretary was asked during an appearance in front of the European Scrutiny Committee on Monday afternoon if he understood β€œthe meaning of UK sovereignty in relation to Gibraltar” amid fears a border deal could erode sovereignty.

    He replied: β€œI think I understand the meaning of sovereignty which is Gibraltar is a sovereign UK territory and that shouldn’t and won’t change and in our negotiations there are three things that are absolutely paramount.

    He’s lying of course. This is nothing less than an attempt to return Gibraltar to Spain by underhand means. Why else would they be discussing it?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/20/politics-latest-news-sunak-election-cameron-starmer-labour/

    1. Just like all the treaties various PM’s have signed behind our backs. If we hadn’t signed the immigration one we could have deported a lot more criminal migrants.

      1. EU border guards could bar Brits from Gibraltar, Lord Cameron admits

        Lord Cameron has admitted European Union border guards would have the power to bar British citizens from Gibraltar
        under a new post-Brexit treaty, reports Chief Political Correspondent Nick Gutteridge.

        95% of Gibraltarians voted to stay in the EU.

        It now appears that the EU can decide which Brits can stay in Gibraltar. We assume that the 5% will be told to leave.

        2. He proved himself useless in negotiations with the EU when he was PM. Why he was brought back is a mystery.
          Cameron wanted to come back.
          Sunak either owes him favours or wants favours; other readers might speculate as to what these may be. The important thing is not that Cameron be Foreign Secretary but that he is now in the House of Lords and a permanent fixture in the UK.
          Governments may come and go but a peerage is forever.
          It’s a smokescreen as always.

          2. Really? You don’t think his precise and deliberate installation was specifically *because* he is ardently pro EU and determined to sabotage the spirit and intent of Brexit?

            You don’t think he is there specifically to ensure the chains of the EU are wrapped ever tighter around this country? The foreign office must be delighted. They’re getting everything they want.

          5. I don’t think he was useless. I think he had no intention to help the UK. The man is an internationalist traitor through and through who had and has no intention in promoting the needs or wishes of the people of the UK.

        3. β€˜EU border guards could bar Brits from Gibraltar, Lord Cameron admits’
          β€˜Could’?
          No conditional about it. β€˜Will’! If they are breaking Schengen regulations.
          Because that will be the law.

          5. Good afternoon, Grizzly

            Not that many – he is a very nouveau lord!

    3. Never know now if he is nice but dim or more likely, wittingly trying to hoodwink us as all as a badge of his superiority. I just don’t trust him.

    5. Lord Greenswill has form for lying – remember his promise “whatever your decision,. I will do my best to deliver it”? Note also the lies about Britain’s “special position” and the “reformed EU” that he claimed to have negotiated!! I wouldn’t accept his word if he swore on a stack of bibles!

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87GNWJHtFM

    6. It is all reminiscent of one Edward Heath ‘there will be no loss of sovereignty’ and earlier Wilson’s ‘the pound in your pocket will not be devalued’ – and of course there was, and it was. We have heard it all before.

        1. Thank you for posting, Jonathan. It gives me hope which I needed at 3.00 am this morning.

    7. And everyone believes Cameron about matters of sovereignty, don’t they? The man who boasted his EU renegotiation was a triumph when it was a threadbare statement of nothing, and the EU mandarins couldn’t resist laughing about it.

      1. When he was prime minister (spit) I named him here the “Babbling Poltroon”. Still seems apt.

      2. The man who wrote “this is your decision, the government will implement what you decide” and then ran away to let others fail to implement what we’d voted for.

    8. Morning, Minty. Don’t I remember Heath saying our membership of the Common Market would not affect our sovereignty?

    10. I remember Ted Heath assuring us that joining the “Common Market” would not involve any loss of sovereignty. I put Cameron of Greenswill in the same category.

  36. Of course there is not a shred of evidence that the jabs saved lives…

    Of course not. How can you prove a negative?

    1. How can you prove a negative?

      Create a model? The charlatans’ modus operandi.😎

  37. Only two possible words left – and I chose the wrong one:
    Wordle 1,067 X/6

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

    1. So did I. Hate it when there are lots of options and you end up picking the wrong ones.

    2. Yes, nasty again.

      Wordle 1,067 5/6

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

    1. Is it too extreme to suggest that the UN is the enemy of the people? Or is it still too early?

      1. The UN is much like the EU. Stuffed full of failed bureaucrats who have no relevance or purpose, no use or value. A waffle shop of idiots unaffected by their proclamations drawing disgusting, unwarranted salaries who do nothing but consume without providing a single iota of value.

      2. The Americans have thought that for years and want it moved out of New York and out of the USA altogether. Yes, it is the enemy of the people. Consider that UNRWA has been covering for Hamas for years and you need no further proof. If the UN was an honourable institution on the side of the people it would have shut down UNRWA. The UN did nothing but give that wicked institution room to breath, aid and abet it in its evil.

        1. I wonder if attendance would be so high if the HQ was in, say, Pyongyang?

          1. Sometimes I think that the UN is in New York so corrupt officials from very unfree nations can put their grubby little paws into the abundance that is America. The undeniable wealth, on display, in that great city. But that is fading as wealth flees New York, thanks to being in the grip of Socialists who are strangling the city. A visibly decaying city that represents the consequences of living up to the ideals of the UN.

          2. It was often said that the only democracy some UN delegates experience is at the UN and not their own countries.

      3. 387465+ up ticks,

        Morning JG,

        Old sayings are the best, ” he / she. or it who hesitates gathers no moss, in one basket”.

        1. Quite so. A metaphor mixed us worth two in the bush, don’t forget!

    2. The UN condemned Israel for defending itself against muslim terrorist slaughter. It is the epitome of pointlessness.

  40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xYPg5tIenQ Not only do I remember you, Frank Ifield (who died on Saturday), I remember the long hot summer of 1962 when it was impossible to avoid this song being played, repetitiously every where you went. By the end of that summer my friends and I were so happy to start listening to The Beatles and other newcomers.

    In today’s DT obituary of Mr Ifield, the sub-header screams: “Yodelling singer who thrilled the early 1960s teenage market with hits including I Remember You.“

    No he did not, Mr/Mrs Obituary-Writer. He might have “thrilled” our mums and grandmas, but his style of music was certainly not for my generation.

      1. My Dad (1907-1987) loved it. To be fair, Frank Ifield was a very good singer. RIP.

        1. “I Remember You -hoooo; you’re the one who made my dreams come true.”

          A very good singer, yes. It’s the only song I ever remember of his. The yodelling can go yodelling off into the distance though. I never liked that.

        2. So did my Dad! And my Dad could sing anything from rugby songs to The Lost Chord! Mind you, he also like Lulu! πŸ™„

        3. A good old Ozy.
          Twice he lived close to my elder sister and BiL. Off Totteridge Lane near Barnet. Mid 60s. And just around the corner in Harpenden. Mid 80s.
          He had a shop in Southdown i think it was for recycling toys and games, also near Harpenden.
          I remember him.

      2. I remember all his output. I was so happy when pirate radio stations started up (mine was Radio 270, moored off Scarborough), we youngsters could listen to proper 60s pop, rock, rhythm and blues, blues and jazz.

        The airwaves were not littered by past-its-used-by-date, 50s junk, crooning, Elvis wannabes, and greasy quiffs. The Light Programme was grandma stuff.

  41. OT – to make you smile (briefly) – headline in the “Luxury” section of The Grimes online:

    “Emma Freud on the joy of using power tools”

    Your thoughts, gentlemen….!!!

    1. Those who used to play rugby will remember the song about the deceased engineer who had had a special machine made for his wife.

      In those days, if you remember, the device was powered by steam.

    2. A fine substitution for the ‘Joy of Sex’ manual as you get older. Always have a jig-saw on the go….

    5. They mainly use sanders, rub their hands across the surfaces and think they are carpenters and joiners even cabinet makers. Rub wax or varnish all over and think they are Chippendale.

    6. They mainly use sanders, rub their hands across the surfaces and think they are carpenters and joiners even cabinet makers. Rub wax or varnish all over and think they are Chippendale.

  43. So, political class and various arms of the State caught out telling massive porkies and getting people killed. Again. You’d have to be a mug to believe anything they ever say frankly.

      1. Oh, yes undoubtedly. A lot of lessons to be learned, mind. What with the COVID lessons being the latest in the sorry trail of disasters. Do they go to COVID lessons after they’ve finished Contaminated Blood lessons?

    2. The revised “ideal” blood pressure readings are, to me, an example of medical over-reach.
      Doctors and nurses seem to expect the same perfect readings for a 25 year old as a 75 year old.
      Funnily enough, this involves more medication.

      1. I just remembered another of those “absolutes” that the modern “fact-based” system of healthcare is so very fond of: BMI.

        A friend of my other half needs knee surgery but was told she cannot have it since she was “obese”. We are all obese of course, in the eyes of the Chief Medical Officer, along with being alcoholics and a general burden on the taxpayer, etc. In her case this was actually true and she was told to lose 5-stones before she could be considered. So, after a mammoth regime lasting about 10-months she lost the weight and presented herself for reconsideration of surgery. Unfortunately since she’s around 63-years of age she’s subject to the usual shrinkage we all suffer as we get older, having diminished in size by about 1Β½ inches over that time. As BMI is calculated on weight combined with height she was told she was now still “obese” but that if she had not shrunk during the previous 10-months she’d have been eligible for surgery. She was sent packing.

        These are the barmpots running “Our NHS” go figure, as they say.

        1. Some athletes are “obese” according to BMI calculations because muscle weighs more.

      2. I’ve been diagnosed as having low blood pressure (hovering in the 80s/90s) and I shall be 80 on Friday, Anne.

      3. I saw a locum for a routine BP check. She was concerned. I asked why and she replied, “it’s the sort of reading I’d expect from a 17-year-old”. And the problem is…? Perhaps you’re just very fit, she admitted. I was at that time, but in between we’ve had lockdown and don’t care in the community.

    3. What folk are missing (Sherelle Jacob’s article being an example) is that this is the last death throes of a failed system. Big government is done and finished. It cannot continue and is spending more time desperately expanding and metastasizing solely for it’s own defence so when it does eventually implode and collapse it still retains some of it’s power in the new environment.

      It’s finished and knows it is. The repeated scandals, the incompetence, the waste, the enforced, deliberate inefficiency is just a representation of staving off the inevitable by doing as much damage as possible. It has become arrogant, incompetent and relies upon scale and pushing the cost of that failure on to the tax payer because it refuses to take responsibility.

      Big state is irrelevant. That is why it is adsorbing as much as it can in a desperate attempt to survive it’s implosion.

      1. Quite probably true wibbly.

        Something’s bound to emerge from it though and not necessarily anything good. Still, I am increasingly taking ‘executive action’ in order to mitigate its effects, as I’m sure many others are. LTNs won’t be stopping me getting around wherever I want, if I want a petrol car I’ll always have one, I won’t be giving things up to save the planet or the NHS, I won’t be following identitarian cant, I’ll be in control of my own finances and many other things. Government can become as big or as small as it likes for all I care.

      1. I’m not convinced that many people get it yet. The claim that the convid injectables saved lives is gradually being withdrawn but it still needs to be explained to some people that you can’t prove a negative and modelling is not evidence. The process is so simple. You claim arbitrarily that 1000 people will die if they don’t take your potion then you administer the potion to 1000 people and when 400 of them die you claim that your potion saved 600 lives. It isn’t rocket science? Yet the scam had the desired effect.

    5. That’s why they’re desperate to remove the choice from you. That way the truth and facts are irrelevant. You’ll simply have no choice. Say no and they destroy your life.

      Of course, it’s *your* choice.

      1. Yes, limit choices then claim afterwards that people made a choice. Same with main parties. Would you like soft left government or hard left government with your voting choice, sir? Then afterwards claim a “mandate” was insisted upon by the people.

        Maybe politicians of all stripes have finally realised that people like generally to live pink, yet vote blue. Eliminate the blue from the vote and claim it’s still blue. Great scam.

  44. Brooding on the blood scandal, a thought came to me.
    In 1981, I had abdominal surgery.
    Instead of blood, I was given artificial plasma – which was based on (beef?) gelatine.
    I proved to be allergic to it, and it nearly killed me.
    Thinking back, did Essex County Hospital already harbour unease about blood supplies?
    If so, I had a narrow escape; 24 hours in ITU was a small price to pay for 40+ years of healthy life.

    1. There was definitely unease. I recall it clearly but no, apparently everything was safe. Pretty sure that to follow government advice or any instructions over health is probably a form of self harm. That is my position for the next pandemic. What with government in effect handing control of my everyday movements to someone from Mexico working half a world away who thinks the third world is the whole world, I think it probably unethical to do anything it says. The evidence of its mendacity and sheer incompetence is overwhelming regrettably.

    2. There was definitely unease. I recall it clearly but no, apparently everything was safe. Pretty sure that to follow government advice or any instructions over health is probably a form of self harm. That is my position for the next pandemic. What with government in effect handing control of my everyday movements to someone from Mexico working half a world away who thinks the third world is the whole world, I think it probably unethical to do anything it says. The evidence of its mendacity and sheer incompetence is overwhelming regrettably.

    3. You were very lucky Anne , and the ordeal must have been terrifying for you and your family .

      I also had abdominal surgery in 1975, the old fashioned way they used to remove a gall bladder , slash and remove , leaving a nearly vertical train track diagonally across my abdomen , when they used 30 metal clips .. and I also had a blood transfusion , 3 pints , because of difficulties , they removed my appendix at the same time , and I was ill for 3 weeks and didn’t recover for 6 months , sepsis , caused by drainage tube, and negligent care of the abdominal tube , and I swear that is why I have so much trouble with my stomach, adhesions they call it plus other things .

      1. Yes, scar tissue dogs you for life. I do wonder about people who have multiple plastic surgery sessions.
        Do you remember in “Reach for the Sky” when the young Bader was dying?
        While I was in ITU, I wasn’t aware of where I was, merely that I was jolly uncomfortable; my shoulders in particular. Given what MB told me what they had to do to flush the crap out of my system, I now know why. Also I was lying on a ripple bed and trying not to slide off it.
        Jokingly, I thought to myself: “I’ve had enough; I think I’ll just die.”
        Instantly, everything went quiet, pain disappeared and I felt as if I was encased in cotton wool.
        “You bloody fool,” I mentally yelled at myself.
        Immediately, the racket of the ITU returned and my body started aching again.
        Until a nurse checked me and brought me a coffee, I spent the time playing silly buggers with the monitors – changing breathing pattern, moving arms – anything to keep boredom and sleep at bay.

          1. I would imagine her face is all scar tissue.
            What DOES she see in the mirror?

        2. Anne
          Your ITU experience was ghastly , and yet strange things happen , almost ethereal. Could be the pain relief , or another spiritual intervention .

          Thank goodness you had the strength to hang on and keep your mind going .

          A feeling I had after pain relief was me being elevated high up in the air ending up stuck to a green ward ceiling , and I was told I was screaming , ” help , help me , I am stuck to the ceiling “.. so was I experiencing a near death experience or what ? ( The ceiling wasn’t green , that is the strange thing , green is my favourite colour )

          1. At 10 years old I had my appendix out. As I recovered consciousness, post op – I had the weird feeling that that’s what being dead must be like.

          2. Hello J,
            I believe lots of patients experience that out of body feeling .. But we are here and that is wonderful , however we all have to be brave.

      2. A good friend of mine spent her 70th birthday in hospital having been rushed in for emergency surgery on her abdominal adhesions, which had apparently been caused when she had her appendix out as a child. She survived and will be 80 next month. She had a length of her intestines removed.

        Makes you wonder – I had my appendix removed when I was 10 – having had acute appendicitis, and maybe I had had a transfusion (who knows?) when I had breast cancer surgery?

        1. I’m awaiting a date for surgery to fix an abdominal hernia. The surgeon has told me that the procedure is made more complex by the consequences of previous abdominal surgery – probably weakening my abdominal wall – which has left both adhesions and scar tissue close to my bowel. He’ll have to take extra care when making his incision as there’s a risk of cutting through it.

          The previous surgery had, unfortunately, to be carried out on an urgent basis. A blood clot had formed in my upper abdomen following cardiac surgery of 5 years ago leading to the death of a small section of bowel tissue. It had to be repaired immediately by removing the affected section and re-joining the healthy parts. Two further laparotomies had to be performed as complications followed the first. Although it’s not a pretty sight, normal bowel function was restored.

          The upcoming surgery will be elective, therefore less haste will be needed. Were it not for the risk that an untreated hernia poses, such as a twisted or blocked bowel, I’d happily leave things as they are as it gives me no trouble, but I’m persuaded that it’s not worth having to risk urgent surgery some time further down the line.

          1. Was that left over from your stay in hospital few years ago?

            My OH had been troubled by a pain in his groin for some years, but eventually it was found to be two inguinal hernias – he had them both dealt with at the same time. He opted to go privately for that one, rather than wait another couple of years.

          2. Yes, indeed.

            My prospective surgeon has also identified I have an inguinal hernia but says that can wait until another time.. I was unaware I had one.

          3. He didn’t realise what it was, causing the pain, nor that he had two. It was the oncologist at one of the prostate cancer appointments who spotted them on the scan.

    1. Working hard to deceive us. Shame that effort isn’t put into things the electorate actually wants.

  46. All medication as I understand it, though I’m no expert, has side effects, e.g. take statins, expect side effects. To government ministers, however, a medicine is always a “wonder drug” can only offer benefits and will save the beloved Our NHS untold millions of taxpayers’ money.

    In fact I understand Sir Kneelalot is going to save the NHS this time around. Again.

    1. Having seen the effects of polypharmacy on all too many people, I realise there I a balance to be made.
      Existing v. living.
      At the moment doctors and nurses are covering themselves by prescribing every test and drug possible. Care homes are having to do the same thing, hence many residents who are dragging out a living death.

      1. Ah yes, the living death problem, quality of life and all that. Difficult that one.

        1. Yes. I regularly visit one for whom the repeated antibiotics are a form of prolonged torture.
          As we used to say on the geriatric wards; if Mrs. X were a dog, you would be prosecuted.

  47. I got caught out with statins and have vowed never to participate in anything any government say I should take.
    The final doctor I saw was a neurologist who said I should never have been prescribed it and GPs have got to get back to prescribing for the patient and not by government diktat. I have followed that advice.

    1. Anita Roddick (Body Shop founder) died of Hep. C caught from a blood transfusion given to her years earlier.

    2. My statins were prescribed by the Consultant after diagnosing blood clots in my legs.

      1. I had a DVT and PE post operation in 2009 and have been on blood thinners ever since. I do have a blood condition, Factor V (5) Leiden. More likely to clot than most people.
        Never heard of Statins as a blood thinner. Although my cholesterol is low (3.6) my doctor continues to try to get me to take statins as she says β€œdue to your age and profile I have a 50% chance of having a heart attack β€œ. There is an uneasy silence when I point out that I, therefore, have a 50% chance of not having one.

    3. I used to work for Purolite, which maka/made statins.

      Every Friday, they sent 20 ton of the stuff, by air to the USA

    4. I’ve determined not to touch the things. I refuse to give up grapefruit!

  48. You’re right to make preparations James, but fundamentally the state is determined to destroy you and your way of life. Only by doing that does it secure it’s hegemony. Look at it’s plans: net zero is the ultimate enforcer. Diversity the second.

    When it pushes digital currency that’s it: your entire life will be controlled. You simply won’t be allowed to buy petrol. The vendor will have no other way of supplying it. You will be rationed. You WILL be controlled. You are under an illusion you’ll have a choice. The state *will* remove that. If you can live how you want to, doing what you want it has no power. Thus it removes that power from you and takes it for itself. The evidence of this plan is all around you.

    That’s why it has to be so big, so untouchable and it’s scale is what causes the incompetence and what permits the disguise of that repeated, persistent failure. It is also why the machine can never, ever take the burden of responsibility.

    Bluntly, it’s a race to the bottom of ‘just one more mint [power grab]’. It’s finished, and worse, rather than accept it is done, it is determined to do as much damage as possible to keep itself alive.

  49. Indeed, a bloody great one with accoutrements constructed of brass and steel.

  50. Yes, she certainly could give useful advice about disappearing pension funds

    3. A bit racist ? It’s appallingly racist, who will now trust the National Trust ? I wonder how many black or Asian people are actually
      members of the NT ?

      And they never mention the blacks in southern Africa who killed thousands of white people because they were white farmers.
      They mentioned the barbary (islamic) pirates but not that they sailed around the coasts of Britain and France and captured young children to take back to Alhambra and then kept them in caves for the use of their leaders. Who fed them to the caged lions when they had finished with them. And they are still doing the same thing now, but don’t have access to the lions.

        3. A whip should be taken to the fool that invited him into the building and then he should be expelled from that place never to return. And if he is a M.P he should be made to resign. But then, if it were up to me, I would be busy forming an English militia,

      2. It’s approximately a million and a half slaves abducted from England by the barbery pirates. Or so I heard this morning.
        As for South Africa. I’m, aware of what is going on because I have a Afrikaner friend who visits me every week, will be here tomorrow actually. Although she lives here her parents still live in South Africa, They still wont leave.

        1. That figure looks to be much nearer the total number of Europeans captured by the pirates and sold into slavery. The figures for England alone will be much less.

          According to Robert Davis, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, between 1 million and 1.2 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and The Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_on_the_Barbary_Coast#:~:text=According%20to%20Robert%20Davis%2C%20author,the%2016th%20and%2019th%20centuries.

          These two links give a patchwork account of pirate raids on and around the coasts of England’s west country but, although no total figures are given, I think it reasonable to put the overall numbers in the tens of thousands rather than millions.

          https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Barbary-Pirates-English-Slaves/#:~:text=In%20August%201625%20corsairs%20raided,empty%20ships%20left%20to%20drift.

          https://www.theblackmorevale.co.uk/2024/01/25/the-forgotten-slaves-of-the-west-country/

          Incidentally, no mention is made of children fed to lions. That must be apocryphal.

        2. I have a niece who lives in Somerset West. Lovely area of the Cape.
          I lived in JHB and Port Elizabeth over a two year period.
          Say goeie more hoe gaan dit, from me.

          3. Hi Eddy. My friend has left and wont be back until next week, probably Monday. I assume you are South African or, at least, speak Afrikaans? If you are and live in the UK I would really like to know because she will be possibly be coming up as a topic of discussion due to circumstances I wont go into at the mo until I get some things straight. But if you want leave here a message and I will forward it. I’m not giving her a name simply because I haven’t asked her if I can use her name and it would be presumptuous for me to name her without her consent. Her family has been in South Africa for 300 years, so she is from one of the old Afrikaner families.

          4. Very interesting JR.
            But I only remember a small amount of the language.
            I was born in Hampstead.
            During my 21st birthday celebrations in Spain late 60s. I was with six good friends. Laying on the beach in the sunshine one of my friends said “this is the life, Let’s go to Australia”.
            No I said its too far. He said what about Canada. No it’s too cold. So I said what about South Africa?
            We agreed and just over 12 months later we were sailing to Cape Town on the RMS Pendennis Castle.
            I stayed for two years He stayed for over 30. He came back with his third wife around 2018. But unfortunately died just over 4 years ago.
            I met his eldest son at his funeral. He had the same sense of humour. He told me that it was all my fault, no of us would be here if you hadn’t have said Let’s go to SA. A truer word had never been said.

      1. Given that the blacks given the farms don’t know how to farm, they subsequently starved.

        Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

        1. Same story in Rhodesia Zimbabwe.

          My cousin had a large farm. He employed hundreds of black workers and accommodated their families and provided schooling and health care. He even trained up the more intelligent black people by sending them to university so that they could take over when they knew how to run a farm.

          But Mugabe’s thugs took over the farm, slaughtered those who were being educated in farming for being traitors and sacked the other workers and kicked them and their families out of their homes, Within five years the farmland had returned to the unproductive shambles it had been before the Tracey family arrived and once again it produced nothing.

          You could argue that the white man does not belong in Africa and should be kicked out so that the indigenous people can do what they like. Indeed this seems to be a well-accepted point of view

          You could also argue that the non-whites do not belong in Europe – but that would be racist.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e8c363187984a1f7bbd2d1dc09aa8c0fd946dbe3fb2d87ac32605e6058b4d9d1.png

          1. But the White South Africans were in the Cape 150 to 200 years before the Bantu arrived. They are the natives of the land. There were the San but they are as relevant as native Americans are to the USA.

  52. ‘Morning All

    “If there was something seedily mafia-esque about the subterfuge that

    characterised the Post Office scandal, the cover-up surrounding the

    biggest treatment disaster in NHS history has whiffs of impudent

    zealotry.

    We must come to terms with the revelation that for years

    successive governments and the Civil Service disseminated fake news.

    With a bland militancy it maintained over several decades, it stuck to

    the mendacious narrative that the blood infections were a tragic and

    regrettable development, which occurred because of a lack of

    understanding of the risks.

    The inquiry’s report details how false

    orthodoxies (albeit described in the arid language of officialdom as

    β€œlines to take”) entrenched themselves. β€œDogma became a mantra. It was

    enshrined. It was never questioned.”

    It was never questioned you say a bit like the Al-Beeb never allows Climate sceptics airtime because as we all know “The science is settled” (sarc)

    As many others here have pointed out there have been many many areas

    where a similar blindness has been politically convenient!!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/20/infected-blood-scandal-exposes-toxic-mendacity-ruling-class/

    1. It is a collusion of massive government machinery desperate to keep its power and control. The BBC wans the licence fee to go into genera taxation to ensure it’s perpetuation. At that point it’ll just become another monolithic, failed department. Big gov wants this as well because it expands it’s power base.

      It is precisely because they’re both dying that they are so troublesome. With the awareness of the end they bloat to obese proportions to further distance themselves from their primary role and perpetuate failure without impunity. This stops when they are properly dismantled and forced to serve.

      1. They actually do send those round to the staff in case of awkward enquiries by the public.

  54. Labour plans β€˜relentless’ new Β£36bn tax raid by hiring 5,000 new HMRC snoops..

    Ha. Will Sir Keir close in on the 100,000 new cash-only barber & kebab shops, along with the fruity side activities upstairs?
    Or just stick to the easy pickings of chasing down SMEs, private schools and Church organisations?

    Could be worse, Biden hired 100,000 and armed them, then went after every single gun shop and political opponent.

    1. Will they be checking on the expenses claims of MPs and the lords ? NO !
      They had a very capable lady who did so a few years ago, Elizabeth Filkin. They got rid (moved her on) of her because she was too good at her job.
      Their habitual stealing runs in line with their habitual and pathological lying.

  55. Labour plans β€˜relentless’ new Β£36bn tax raid by hiring 5,000 new HMRC snoops..

    Ha. Will Sir Keir close in on the 100,000 new cash-only barber & kebab shops, along with the fruity side activities upstairs?
    Or just stick to the easy pickings of chasing down SMEs, private schools and Church organisations?

    Could be worse, Biden hired 100,000 and armed them, then went after every single gun shop and political opponent.

  56. Labour plans β€˜relentless’ new Β£36bn tax raid by hiring 5,000 new HMRC snoops..

    Ha. Will Sir Keir close in on the 100,000 new cash-only barber & kebab shops, along with the fruity side activities upstairs?
    Or just stick to the easy pickings of chasing down SMEs, private schools and Church organisations?

    Could be worse, Biden hired 100,000 and armed them, then went after every single gun shop and political opponent.

  58. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dfe83baf8d41579b6efc5713b5a85bd52058551f956a358e20929cf1f9b1f9d4.jpg

    @squireweston:disqus. Good afternoon whereever you are, I found this the Roman Steps near where you are. I do remember them on this cloudy and foggy day . The Romans thought the Welsh were short, dark with curly hair – looking rather like them really . Or maybe the Spanish celts were really the Welsh ancestors. Anyway I think it very kind of the Romans to build the steps πŸ™‚
    Edited – I don’t know who those two are in the photo.

    1. Oh, the Romans weren’t short, having a minimum height requirement of 5’8 (in modern measurement) for recruits to their army. Their chronicles are definite in noting that the continental Gaulish cousins of the Welsh were even taller than their Roman opponents, but whether that applied to the Welsh celts also, or whether they were instead stunted by incessant drizzle, laverbread, and close harmony singing is one of those historical mysteries still awaiting an answer.

    2. Oh, the Romans weren’t short, having a minimum height requirement of 5’8 (in modern measurement) for recruits to their army. Their chronicles are definite in noting that the continental Gaulish cousins of the Welsh were even taller than their Roman opponents, but whether that applied to the Welsh celts also, or whether they were instead stunted by incessant drizzle, laverbread, and close harmony singing is one of those historical mysteries still awaiting an answer.

  59. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dfe83baf8d41579b6efc5713b5a85bd52058551f956a358e20929cf1f9b1f9d4.jpg

    @squireweston:disqus. Good afternoon whereever you are, I found this the Roman Steps near where you are. I do remember them on this cloudy and foggy day . The Romans thought the Welsh were short, dark with curly hair – looking rather like them really . Or maybe the Spanish celts were really the Welsh ancestors. Anyway I think it very kind of the Romans to build the steps πŸ™‚
    Edited – I don’t know who those two are in the photo.

  62. I don’t understand anything about your family

    I repeat one last time

    My father is a mayor
    My aunt is a nun
    My cousin is a monk
    My brother is a masseur

    But it sounds like:
    My father is my mother
    My aunt is my sister
    My cousin is my brother
    My brother is my sister

    No wonder the English have trouble with the French language.

    https://scontent-cdg4-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/443838468_10225945619092004_8308669469410352418_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_p552x414&_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=GwhmtE4R3KoQ7kNvgE4-f8I&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-2.xx&oh=00_AYBraQGgliYaj7JU7wvrtbJcNeQUAJp6I8Yw_y1URy85pA&oe=665237C0

  63. ClearScore need to clear up the mystery of the discontinuity surrounding ownership of Moose the Boxer dog in its TV ads. He currently frets about Squeaky, his toy, stuck inside the broken washing machine, but his owner, who offers him reassuring comfort, is utterly different to the young couple who owned him in previous ClearScore ads. What became of them?

    1. An Islamic Imam gets ex-communicated?

      I thought all committers of ‘apostasy’ were ex-headed.

  67. I am off. An Arts Society lecture on fake Russian art – given by the chap who was on t’telly a few weeks back in a very interesting documentary about, er, fake Russian art. Englishman speaks absolutely fluent, accentless Russian.

    Back late afternoon. Play nicely.

  68. One passenger killed and dozens injured in severe turbulence on flight from London to Singapore. 21 May 2024.

    At least one person has died and dozens of others have been injured after a flight from London to Singapore encountered severe turbulence.

    A Singapore Airlines flight was forced to divert to Bangkok after a passenger was killed and 30 people were hurt, local media reported.

    Bumpy ride?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/21/passenger-killed-injured-turbulence-london-singapore/

    1. OMG it’s difficult to imagine, the aircraft suddenly upended and when it rapidly leveled up passengers were thrown out of their seats at the roof and over head baggage compartments.

        2. I don’t think so apparently it happened out of the blue sudden turbulence.

          2. Obviously if they were standing up waiting for the loo, that’s a risky think to do, or they could have been bowled over by one of the food service trolleys running wild……..

      3. Apparently the man who died came from Thornbury in South Gloucestershire, and the cause of his death was a heart attack. (From Gloucestershire Live).

        1. There are others in a critical condition. I assume at least some of these are physical injuries.

  69. It appears on any debate about Israel and Palestine there is always – always – a demented, irrational motivated group who will desperately support muslim slaughter of Jews. They don’t care if they’re wrong. They do not think. They just hate Jews.

    Now, someone, tell me. Why do Lefties so hate Jewish people?

    1. Because they have no moral compass.

      Because they are unable to think logically.

      Because they are unable to think for themselves.

      Because they only think about themselves and how they are perceived by the people they believe matter.

    2. Because they have no moral compass.

      Because they are unable to think logically.

      Because they are unable to think for themselves.

      Because they only think about themselves and how they are perceived by the people they believe matter.

  70. I have no problem with the smug toad Kenneth Clarke being named and shamed in the tainted blood scandal.
    But this problem ran from the 1970s to the late 90s and there are many more people involved.

    There seems to be a good case for a criminal investigation to be launched into the whole affair, but that would mean the British state investigating itself; and I doubt that many people would have much faith in that, given that this affair has shown very clearly that the state will lie, deflect, minimise and intimidate in order to keep it’s servants out of trouble.

    1. We are living in the end times of a Great Civilisation Sossidge. I doubt that anything can be done to save it!

    2. Yes, now we have had the report, perhaps an inquiry is in order. That way we can learn lessons and bury the facts properly…

    3. When is the last time that any political figure did the honest thing, apologized and resigned their position?

      The days of John Profumo are long gone, we won’t see another minister atone for his/ her indiscretions by turning to lifelong charitable work.

    2. Hopefully this time by the public about the politicians, for a change.

  74. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6a7c66e05fab3d00aa97138d1aea0fbef8e86a29d9c76c686b94857b0069a48.jpg Where’s Philip?

    As mentioned yesterday, who needs a top-quality Yorkshire fish-and-chip shop when I can cook it just as well as they do. Battered cod, deep-fried in beef tallow; chips air-fried in a light coating of said tallow; home-made-mushy peas; home-made pickled onions.

    Sitting on a copy of today’s local paper; not to eat them out of but to show that I cooked this dish, and ate it, today.

    Tomorrow it will be just water, tea and coffee again.

        1. I prefer golden. It’s why i don’t airfry potatoes. Shop bought fries work in an airfryer better.

        2. They look that way but they were perfectly soft in the centre. That’s what they look like when they come out of the air-fryer. I’m busy in the workshop so I didn’t have time to mess around deep-frying them in the tallow as I had done with the cod.

  75. An atheist was seated next to a dusty old cowboy on an airplane and he turned to him and said, β€œDo you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”
    The old cowboy, who had just started to read his book, replied to the total stranger, β€œWhat would you want to talk about?”
    β€œOh, I don’t know,” said the atheist. β€œHow about why there is no God, or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?” as he smiled smugly.
    β€œOkay,” he said. β€œThose could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff – grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?”
    The atheist, visibly surprised by the old cowboy’s intelligence, thinks about it and says, β€œHmmm, I have no idea.”
    To which the cowboy replies, β€œDo you really feel qualified to discuss God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don’t know shit?”..

  76. Will Ken Clarke now lose his peerage?
    Spectator comments

    βˆ’
    G
    Gerronwithit
    an hour ago
    Yes, Clark should lose his peerage as it seems to have been gained on false pretences but when it comes to compensation I do hope that it is not my pocket to be picked again but the pharmaceutical companies who created the drug.
    βˆ’
    G
    Gary Lineker’s Talking Botty
    an hour ago edited
    I want every last one of these revolting sΚ‡unΙ” to lose their peerages, titles, baubles and pensions. I don’t care what they got it for, they all stink and they’re all filth. Every last one. “Lord” Ζƒuα΄‰ΚžΙ”nɟ Cameron, my Ζƒuα΄‰ΚžΙ”nɟ hairy ǝsɹɐ. “Lord” Mandelson, mortgage fraudster. Pfffffft.

    The only people who get to keep them are sportspeople. They should be demonstrably trivial and awarded for doing something frivolous.
    βˆ’
    S
    Sossidge
    an hour ago
    I’ve no objection.
    But this scandal ran from the 1970s to the late 90s.
    There are very many more people involved than just Kenneth Clarke.

    There should be criminal cases brought against those responsible, and those involved who have so far gone under the radar should be named and shamed.
    βˆ’
    M
    Mrs Croc Sossidge
    31 minutes ago
    Tony Bliar and his lot for one
    βˆ’
    I
    Ian Cook
    an hour ago
    He’s long been a useless, irritating, pompous self-impressed Wet. Why he has a peerage is beyond me and if he considers himself a ‘celebrity’, good, all the more reason to use him as an example. Don’t bother with detail, he’ll appreciate that, just remove his title.
    βˆ’
    T
    Top Hat Ian Cook
    an hour ago
    Peerages are given to anyone these days. Boris Johnson gave one to a 30 year old blonde member of the Downing Street staff, Charlotte Owen.
    βˆ’
    B
    Blindsideflanker
    an hour ago
    It doesn’t come as a surprise to find the arrogant EUphile has contempt and distain for the little people.
    βˆ’
    R
    Rhys Burriss
    2 hours ago
    Didn’t Ken Clarke make a personal fortune over many years peddling cigarettes and cancer to the poorest of the poor in Africa ?

    He has always made clear his utter contempt for ordinary people, lets be fair. But then amongst the Great British Establishment that is hardly rare.
    βˆ’
    Y
    Youcannotbeserious
    2 hours ago
    Why lay into Ken Clarke? Will Thatcher lose her Conservative Party sainthood by saying in 1989 that the patients given the infected bood product “had been given the best treatment available on the then current medical advice” when it known at that time not to be the case?
    βˆ’
    J
    John Andrews
    2 hours ago edited
    I used to admire Clarke. His opposition to Brexit changed my mind. The Blood Scandal, and his contemptuous attitude to the Inquiry, let me see him as dirt. So yes, take away his peerage.
    βˆ’
    D
    David Cotton
    2 hours ago
    He’s got a point, hasn’t he?

    Not that it’s likely to be heard in the era of mass hysteria and compo for all that we live in now.
    βˆ’
    W
    What’s Up
    2 hours ago
    This idea that Ministers are responsible for every bit of maladministration in their departments is childish. Clarke would simply have acted on advice from civil servants. It is ridiculous to suppose that he, personally, would have had any knowledge about the topic. It would be more relevant to publicise the names of the officials who took the decisions.
    βˆ’
    E
    Edgar What’s Up
    38 minutes ago
    Yes, I’m all for pursuing the officials, but … Ministers are there to question and interrogate their civil servants, not just to rubber stamp what they are told and parrot the “lines to take” which officials give them. Otherwise there is no point in having an elected government overseeing policy and administration.
    βˆ’
    T
    The caveman Edgar
    23 minutes ago
    Absolutely!
    If you’re prepared to take the pay for leading a team or department, you must be prepared to take the fall when they mess up.
    Responsibility is a double edged sword.
    βˆ’
    A
    An0nymousBosch
    2 hours ago
    I don’t like Ken Clarke, at all, but he has a point about a celebrity witch-hunt.

    His boss in 1983 was Norman Fowler, now Baron Fowler. So it should really be Fowler in the firing line, but he sensibly retired from the limelight many years ago and thus “won’t do” for a witch hunt.

    Why aren’t we going after the Americans who sold us the poisoned blood?
    βˆ’
    S
    Sossidge An0nymousBosch
    an hour ago
    Why aren’t we going after the people who bought it? There were doubts about the quality of that blood for years.
    βˆ’
    P
    Paul Sutton
    2 hours ago edited
    No, unfortunately. It would require an act of parliament, unless he gave it up himself. None of our revolting parliamentarians will want that – since, fairly, lots of others should also be in the cross-hairs. Labour’s Burnham is fooling no one.

    And Clarke is a complete sod, so he won’t give up his peerage.

    Maybe the EU could take him and his hush puppies?
    βˆ’
    S
    SW42 Paul Sutton
    an hour ago
    He can’t give it up himself. He can cease to use the title, but he would remain a peer.
    βˆ’
    R
    Robert Bidochon
    2 hours ago
    I would assume Clark has made it very clear that if his peerage is threatened he will take a lot of people down with him.
    βˆ’
    S
    Sossidge Robert Bidochon
    an hour ago
    It would be on a par with how the establishment has already acted in this affair.
    βˆ’
    M
    Moira Girvan
    2 hours ago
    And what about all the rest of them behind this appalling scandal? The NHS? Americans? Big Pharma?

    Is old Ken Clarke the best they can do?
    βˆ’
    T
    Top Hat Moira Girvan
    an hour ago
    Perhaps the NHS should be stripped of the George Cross it was awarded in 2021.
    βˆ’
    D
    Damon Top Hat
    an hour ago
    Careful. Blasphemy laws.
    βˆ’
    M
    Margaret Robinson
    2 hours ago
    Yes, he should lose his title, but I’m not holding my breath. Speaking of breath, Mel Stride’s comment was breathtakingly obtuse!
    βˆ’
    J
    JamesR
    2 hours ago
    Suede shoes, cigarillos, jazz ? He’s certainly guilty of something..

    1. On a point of detail, Gerronwithit is incorrect to say that the contaminated blood products were a drug created by pharmaceutical companies.

      1. Perhaps Big Pharma wanted to see how fast Hep C and HIV would spread. There was always suspicion in the 80’a that the AIDS epidemic was on purpose.

    2. “Boris Johnson gave one to a 30 year old blonde member of the Downing Street staff, Charlotte Owen”
      I’d say he gave her many. Hence the peerage.

  77. From Coffee House the Spectator

    Salman Rushdie has exposed the great lie of a β€˜Free Palestine’
    Comments Share 20 May 2024, 1:29pm
    This is what people must mean by the phrase β€˜adults in the room’. After seven months of left-wing hotheads damning Israel as the source of every ill in the Middle East – if not the world – finally we have a cool, still voice venturing an alternative take. Perhaps, the voice says, Hamas is the problem. And perhaps those who call themselves progressive should think twice before making excuses for such a β€˜fascist’ movement that would have them up against a wall quicker than you could say β€˜Free Palestine’. Finally, wisdom cuts through the noise.

    When it comes to radical Islam, this man knows whereof he speaks
    It’s Salman Rushdie. Of course it is. It’s always Salman Rushdie. He’s become a beacon of moral clarity in these ethically dazed times. Now, delightedly, he’s applying his lucidity of thought to the Gaza calamity. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild he took aim, in typically avuncular style, at β€˜young progressives’ whose hatred for Israel sometimes crosses the line into something like sympathy for Hamas. β€˜There’s not a lot of deep thought happening’, he says. You can say that again, Salman.

    There’s a pained frustration to his voice. Yes, it is β€˜absolutely right’, he says, that people are β€˜distressed by what is happening in Gaza’, given β€˜the quantity of innocent death’. And yet, β€˜I would just like some of the protesters to mention Hamas’, he continues, β€˜because that’s where this started’.

    It’s a simple yet essential observation. That those furious with the war in Gaza so rarely criticise the army of anti-Semities that started it – and which now refuses to end it by returning the Israeli hostages – is indeed astonishing. It’s like talking about the Second World War without ever mentioning Germany’s invasion of Poland. The whitewashing of Hamas from the hellish situation they themselves brought about with their murderous pogrom of 7 October speaks to the moral infantilism of too many of those taking to the streets to rage against Israel.

    In his stride now, Rushdie chides the radicals who have failed to distance themselves from Hamas. This is a β€˜terrorist organisation’, he reminds them, and it is β€˜very strange for young progressive student [activists] to kind of support a fascist terrorist group’. Indeed. It’s been mindblowing to watch the self-styled anti-fascists of the bourgeois left either stay schtum or even try to rationalise Hamas’s fascistic attack on the Jews of Southern Israel. These are the kind of people who think everything is β€˜like the 1930s’ – Brexit, Trump, gender-critical feminism – and yet when there was a pogrom that was genuinely reminiscent of the 1930s they essentially said: β€˜Well, what do you expect…?’

    Rushdie then commits a secular blasphemy – he questions the chant of our times: β€˜Free Palestine.’ He himself supports the creation of a Palestinian state, but what would a β€˜Free Palestine’ look like in 2024, he wonders? β€˜Right now, if there was a Palestinian state, it would be run by Hamas and that would make it a Taliban-like state…It would be a client state of Iran. And is that what the progressive movements of the Western left wish to create?’

    Most popular
    Gareth Roberts
    The sad truth about β€˜saint’ Nicola Sturgeon

    I find myself wondering this all the time. What did it mean when so-called progressives waved the Palestinian flag in the immediate aftermath of 7 October? Was that solidarity with the people of Gaza or Israelophobic triumphalism following Hamas’s vile, bloody invasion of kibbutzim? And when activists holler β€˜Globalise the intifada’, what are they saying? The only β€˜intifada’ we’ve seen in recent years was the racist pogrom of 7 October. Globalise that? Rushdie is right to call for deeper thought, to muddy with pesky nuance the juvenile rage against Israel that has swept the Western world.

    There is something undeniably haunting about Rushdie making his plea for reason from his battered, injured face. In the interview the right lens in his spectacles is blacked out, hiding the eye he lost to the savage knife attack he suffered in August 2022. There’s scar tissue on his face. His lower lip droops to one side. When it comes to radical Islam, this man knows whereof he speaks. The inhumanity of this ideology is literally etched on his face. These are the punishments for β€˜blasphemy’ in the 21st century: a severed eye, a deformed mouth. And yet still he sees, still he speaks.

    There’s a searing moral power in this spectacle of a man scarred by extremism pleading with the young and privileged not to cosy up to extremism. If they won’t listen to him – and I fear they won’t – who will they listen to? If a liberal, free-thinking author who was knifed for the β€˜crime’ of writing a novel that offended religious fundamentalists cannot get through to those raging youths who seem dangerously blase about religious fundamentalism, no one will. That should concern us – the possibility that some of the new generation are so far down the road of anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-civilisational thought that nothing, not even Sir Salman, can pull them back.

    The rest of us should be grateful for Rushdie’s shining moral clarity. We’ve seen it before. As some Western liberals were erming and ahhing in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre of 2015, Rushdie was raging against the β€˜religious totalitarianism’ of the killers and insisting we β€˜defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity’. As the political establishment lines up behind β€˜political correctness’, Rushdie laments that β€˜freedom is everywhere under attack’ thanks to the highly illiberal notion that β€˜protecting the rights and sensibilities of groups perceived as vulnerable [should] take precedence over freedom of speech’.

    And now he says that Hamas is a scourge, and that a Hamas-ruled Palestine would be a disaster, and that Israel should not have to live next door to such a monstrosity. We should listen.

    1. The young Hamas supporters have been a fed a fantasy that there was a land called Palestine that was inhabited by Arabs for thousands of years until in 1948 a bunch of Europeans who call themselves Jews but are not really Jews came along and kicked out the poor defenceless Arabs who they continue to beat and starve and kill for fun. That there isn’t even a grain of truth in any of it doesn’t even occur to them and they don’t want to consider the truth because the success of the Jewish state and Jews in general must of itself make them the bad guys. To stand or fall by your own merits or lack thereof is a concept they can’t grasp. Profound ignorance meets rampant narcissism.

        1. Line ’em up and keep pulling the triggers until the world is safe again.

        1. I can’t help about the shape I’m in
          I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin
          But don’t ask me what I think of you
          I might not give the answer that you want me to.

          1. Peter Green was a musically honest genius. God how I miss him and his like

          2. Me too. I have all of his genuine Fleetwood Mac’s output.

            The bittersweet Man Of The World is my favourite.

      3. Oh, dear, what a shame. Too bad. Never mind.
        (c) Battery Sergeant- Major Williams, “It ain’t half hot, Mum”
        Edited. Get it right, FFS man! πŸ™

      5. Or else a “friend” knew what he was proposing to film and loaded the weapon…

    3. It continues to dismay me that the rap and hip-hop culture of late-70s/early-80s Black America’s slum underclass still thrives and is emulated by wave after wave of young people who seem to admire its violence, misogyny,, drug use and foul language. There were milder and more humorous elements which I enjoyed during its formative years but, if anything, the genre is worse than ever.

      1. It must be so miserable and soul destroying to have your whole life filled with hate and negativity.

        1. It is why rappers will happily kill each other. They don’t value life. They treat their women like shit. They are nihilists.

    4. Never play with guns. Pointing it at your own head is stupid. Darwin in action.

    5. I am devastated.

      I had put all my hope in him for the future of the planet. All hope is now lost.😒

    8. In this part of the world, where many shoot either for sport or from necessity (vermin control), there is a trite little homily to be found in the downstairs lavatory;

      “Never, ever let your gun
      pointed be at anyone
      That it may unloaded be
      Matters not a jot to me”.

      It is drummed into every rural child from the earliest age.

  81. Well this is awkward…………..

    “Why has nobody either in Parliament or with a public profile not yet
    pointed out that the French sent their head of Blood Transfusion service
    to Prison in 1996 and that the Irish had compensated all their victims
    by 1995!!!!”
    Nicked and not checked but sounds about right

    1. Because the state spends more time protecting itself than accepting blame.

    2. Where did you find these two gems Rik? I’ve heard nothing about it. Mind you I don’t have newspapers or listen/watch the news on tv.

      1. I am afraid I agree Minty, but who are these people ?
        The same thing is happening in and around many other English villages and small towns. Services are al ready stretched to the limits of their capabilities. There are no job prospects in these rural areas. It’s absolute stupidity.

        2. The belief is that population growth creates the demand, stimulating the economic activity needed to generate the jobs.

          1. If pizza deliveries and suchlike is growth in economic activity then I suppose it does.

    3. Between Cirencester and Kemble!!! That’s a bit too close to home. There’s already a huge amount of ribbon development around Cirencester. The houses look ok and the inhabitants are likely to be “white flight” from other areas. But there are too many and not much infrastructure to support that kind of growth.

      1. Come, come, Jules – the illegal incomers have to live somewhere. Somewhere without schools, doctors, hospitals or work. Your part of the world sounds ideal….

        1. The new homes round here are fairly pricey – more for “white flight” than illegal incomers.

      2. Kemble used to be the satellite for CFS at Little Rissington. The Red Arrows were based there at the time (’70s).

  83. Not so nice out there today…..so I’ve come back in for gloom and doom.

    Did you all see Dr John Campbell’s take on the infected blood scandal?

  84. A snippet to cheer you up on a soggy, grey day.
    Mind your blood pressure.

    “Work-from-home HMRC staff lose Β£1m of equipment

    Hundreds of mobiles and laptops are lost or stolen each year by remote workers

    Tax office staff who are allowed to work from home have lost thousands of mobile phones and laptops worth an estimated Β£1m over the past three years.

    The figures for last year show that staff at HM Revenue & Customs lost around 10 mobile phones and two laptops every week of the year. Over the past three years there were 1,670 mobile phones recorded as having been lost and 334 laptops that had disappeared, along with 10 USB computer memory devices.

    In addition, over the same time period there were 95 phones logged as having been stolen along with 562 laptops and one memory device logged as having been taken by thieves.

    If the average cost of replacement is estimated at around Β£500 then the cost of the lost phones and laptops is Β£1m, while the bill to replace the stolen electronic equipment is another Β£330,000. However, the bill could be even higher as many phones cost more than Β£800 and laptops often cost more than Β£1,000 to buy new…..”

    1. On top of that is the probable leak of personal data to those more than willing to exploit it. Who knows what kind of information was stored on those devices?

        1. Remember the cd of personal info left on a train…….
          And there was a scandal some years ago of a lot of NI numbers stolen from members of civil service staff – the crooks used them to make benefit claims.

    3. “…remote workers...”? I’ll say. So remote that they never answer letters.

  85. β€˜Civilised world’ must refuse to arrest Netanyahu, says Israel. 21 May 2024.

    Israel has called on the β€œcivilised world” to refuse to honour any arrest warrants against its leaders from the International Criminal Court.

    β€œWe call on the nations of the civilised, free world – nations who despise terrorists and anyone who supports them – to stand by Israel. You should outright condemn this step,” said Tal Heinrich, a government spokesperson.

    ”Make sure the ICC understands where you stand. Oppose the prosecutor’s decision and declare that, even if warrants are issued, you do not intend to enforce them. Because this is not about our leaders. It’s about our survival.”

    If they do this then what of the warrant issued against Vlad? How could they prosecute the one and not the other? It would be blatant hypocrisy. It would in fact make the ICC look ridiculous. This is what you get when you try gaming the system instead of supporting it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/21/israel-hamas-war-gaza-latest-news1/

  86. When I was young we couldn’t afford toilet paper, we used last week’s Radio Times. I didn’t realise then that the management and staff of the BBC did exactly the same. The only difference was that, instead of flushing it down the toilet, they collected all the scraps and broadcast it worldwide on the radio and TV. I knew there had to be a reason for all the sh**e they have pumped out over the past fifty years. It makes sense now!

        1. All I know her for is her cosmetic plastic surgery. I’m guessing she had a public reputation beforehand but I’ve never bothered to investigate. I just see her as foolishly vain in endeavouring to remain youthful but ending up freakish.

        2. From Wiki

          “Jocelyn Alice Wildenstein is a Swiss socialite known for her extensive cosmetic
          surgery, resulting in her catlike appearance; her 1999 high-profile
          divorce from billionaire art dealer and businessman Alec Wildenstein;
          and her extravagant lifestyle and subsequent bankruptcy filing. Wikipedia

          Born: 5 August 1940 (age 83 years), Lausanne, Switzerland

          Spouse: Alec N. Wildenstein (m. 1978–1999)

          Children: Diane Wildenstein, Alec Wildenstein, Jr.

          Known for: Extensive facial surgeries”

      2. She really didn’t need to have all that done – must have been mental issues.

  90. A start made on topping up the 2/3 empty woodstack that we only just finished using as the end of last month.
    Luckily I’ve a fair amount of well seasoned “dutched” elm and diedback ash to cut & chop so it should be ok for burning as the 2nd stack next winter.
    I’ve also a couple of dead elms and several ash that have failed to come into leaf for two years now.

  92. An Aussie Birdie Three?

    Wordle 1,067 3/6
    ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
    ⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done. Par here.

      Wordle 1,067 4/6

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

    2. I’m going through a dodgy spell.

      Wordle 1,067 5/6

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

  93. Rishi Sunak reveals UK has returned 10,005 migrants to other countries this year.
    He said the figures, “shows the progress we are making” in his mission to stop the boats..

    By coincidence the Irish PM Simon Harris also revealed they had returned 10,005 migrants to another undisclosed country this year.. which clearly shows the progress he/them is making.

  95. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b38ea6367e9484146d497f7071f9a985cbb6e16104df62b89ed3eff3830f1ed.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a81c7817a5d7810d0c5289309499935ac99e63d3a974888b630c0c720ea8f05e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3a0f8b72cc684d44d16517e45a483be151e9dc9638639c99f954f8508381cfef.jpg On Sunday I took a walk down to my local flooded filed to check on the birlife. The female ruff from the previous day day departed but it had been replaced by a hungry white stork Ciconia ciconia, which gave me excellent entertainment. This entertainment was enhanced by a family of mallard ducklings Anas platyrhynchos that were intent on showing off their fly-catching skills. The only other bird of interest present was this solitary northern lapwing Vanellus vanellus.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9406a7ff7c51f89ad7ebfb8c35f0b80e24b5940ec9c3521dd0a1c6d414e3caf1.jpg Yesterday I took a trip to a local nature reserve of great beauty. Strantemâlla-Forsemâlla has large expanses of wildflower meadow, extensive deciduous woodland, and a small rocky river that falls down a number of spectacular cascades and cataracts. It was there that I saw the selection of butterflies that I wrote about yesterday. The best encounter, though, was with this fledgling white-throated dipper Cinclus cinclus, which gave me excellent views as it bobbed in the rapids for cicada larvæ.

      1. I used to walk along Miller’s Dale, in Derbyshire (home for a while of James Brindley, canal engineer) and they were all along the River Wye.

    2. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/236ca86fb2988419061acb7fc54aa3353da8628c420ad103672eb826e49709c1.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94b522a67ee8e171de32a581f1a17fe8aaf1d12d900a511ae6c314696b534f6e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94b522a67ee8e171de32a581f1a17fe8aaf1d12d900a511ae6c314696b534f6e.jpg This is the set of rapids where that dipper resides. I had also hope to see a family of grey wagtails Motacilla cineria, but they were absent.

      2. The Brook

        I come from haunts of coot and hern,
        I make a sudden sally,
        And sparkle out among the fern,
        To bicker down a valley.

        By thirty hills I hurry down,
        Or slip between the ridges,
        By twenty thorps, a little town,
        And half a hundred bridges.

        Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
        To join the brimming river,
        For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

        I chatter over stony ways,
        In little sharps and trebles,
        I bubble into eddying bays,
        I babble on the pebbles.

        With many a curve my banks I fret
        by many a field and fallow,
        And many a fairy foreland set
        With willow-weed and mallow.

        I chatter, chatter, as I flow
        To join the brimming river,
        For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

        I wind about, and in and out,
        with here a blossom sailing,
        And here and there a lusty trout,
        And here and there a grayling,

        And here and there a foamy flake
        Upon me, as I travel
        With many a silver water-break
        Above the golden gravel,

        And draw them all along, and flow
        To join the brimming river,
        For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

        I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
        I slide by hazel covers;
        I move the sweet forget-me-nots
        That grow for happy lovers.

        I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
        Among my skimming swallows;
        I make the netted sunbeam dance
        Against my sandy shallows.

        I murmur under moon and stars
        In brambly wildernesses;
        I linger by my shingly bars;
        I loiter round my cresses;

        And out again I curve and flow
        To join the brimming river,
        For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

        Alfred, Lord Tennyson

      1. Thanks, Paul. We get them breeding locally, as well as a good number of common cranes Grus grus.

        1. Excellent! Lucky man!
          Firstborn has eagles, seen as a fuzzy fat cross high up, very occasionally a stump in a tree, but never on the ground like your Stork.

          1. On one of our last outings in France before we sold up, we drove up to a hilly bit – 2,00 metres ASL – and looked DOWN on a pair of golden eagles flying round and round. I can see them yet… One could almost touch them.

          3. While staying on the Isle of Mull a few years ago we had the experience of being above a Golden Eagle flying up the valley as we were higher up.

          5. Kraa! Beautiful birds!
            Firstborn has Goldens, but they stay high up in the trees – occasionally you get an idea of their size when they perch near the treetop.

          9. We often see bald headed eagles flying over the river, beautiful sight. The turkey vultures….you can keep em, ugly citters but when they are soaring over the thermals, quite magnificent in their own way!

          11. You have to get a Golden, then shave it…..
            (You know what I was talking about. Who knows why they are called Bald Headed Eagles!!) ;-))

          12. Apparently when European settlers first saw them it was from afar and they thought their white heads were denuded of feathers, hence the ‘bald’.

      1. Oh yes. They are common is fast-flowing steams. they actually ‘fly’ underwater, hence their name ‘dipper’. They actually resemble a big fat wren, and they stand on a stone genuflecting up and down, another reason they are called ‘dipper’

  96. Back from lecture. Very interesting. Chap described the enormous racket involving hundreds of fake “paintings” – run up for a few hundred quid – being sold as “genuine” avant-garde Russian work. Worth millions and millions.

    1. Paintings are real, but the signatures are fake*.

      * not the word i am looking for.

      1. Funnily enough, one of the artists whose work is faked NEVER signed her original work. You can tell the fakes because the faker DID sign them!!

    2. Not “worth”, Bill. Selling for. I loathe the “Art World”. It bears, in the (slightly repurposed) words of another, the same relationship to Art as Onanism does to Sexual Intercourse.

  97. Wet Office forecast rain overnight. “WARNING – rain may cause flooding”. Stay indoors: better still, in bed.

      1. It’s still cracking the flags up here – I’ve just cleaned out one of the gutters before the rain comes tomorrow

  99. After the blood scandal, the postmasters’ one runs and runs. The Vile “Reverend” Vennells gives evidence tomorrow. Very good BTL in The Grimes:

    …I’m sure that she’ll have been coached to provide answers like:
    I don’t know
    I can’t recall
    It was a long time ago
    I suppose I must have seen them, but in a busy office…
    I wish I’d known
    Really, people should have notified me, sooner
    I didn’t realise what it meant

    etc, etc.

    2. It troubles me that solicitors such as yourself can be cynical and correct. I know a solicitor who used to appear slightly ‘slow’ but he was able to provide advice which was often contained within a sentence.

      2. Not sure whether that is a compliment!

        I did explain the other day that, in my prime, I insisted on legal documents being in what was called then “Plain English” and got a lot of flak from other solicitors….

        1. I recall from many years ago that solicitors don’t like punctuation other than full stops in legal documents because it leaves even more room for “interpretation”. Is that apocryphal?

  100. Heavy rain here. I’m putting my Tuesday shopping expedition on hold.

    1. Been sweltering all day up here – global warming confined to north of Scotland

    2. Rain due 9 pm. All night and most of tomorrow… Global boiling is a live and well. Thank God for the stove.

          2. My computer can’t make up its mind. On the bottom bar it keeps alternating between “Light rain” and a yellow symbol with heavy rain!

    3. On the positive side, the Noddy car hasn’t looked so clean for months.
      The driving rain has washed her clean.
      If only it would hoover the inside.

  101. Labour’s real plan for private schools is far more destructive than a tax raid
    Starmer’s proposed VAT raid lays the grounds for the sector’s destruction
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/labour-abolish-private-schools-tax-rise/

    A couple of BTLs

    1)One of the most shocking things about this is that the Conservative Party has not attacked Old Labour’s tradition of having policies based on hate, spite and envy. Is this because the Conservative Party has forgotten that it is meant to be the party for business and what better example of successful private enterprise can there be than British private independent schools which have earned the reputation of being the best in the world?

    2) When Mitterrand tried to close down private schools in France the teachers in these schools all declared that they would leave the profession and never teach in the state system.

    The state system would have been overwhelmed by a massive influx of pupils demanding to be taught in state schools and a massive shortage of teachers.

    Mitterrand was not stupid – he quickly saw that these two things would have led to the collapse of the education system and so he had to climb down.

    But although Starmer may attempt to be as nasty and vindictive as Mitterrand he is very much less clever and less pragmatic than the former French president was.

  102. Just wondering about Charles Moore’s latest article, which ends thus:

    “Revenge of the Enlightenment
    Ken Macdonald, now Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, was director of public
    prosecutions in the years BS (before Starmer). He and I are both members
    of a WhatsApp group about the Middle East. I have his permission to
    quote his WhatsApp reaction to the news that a helicopter carrying the
    Iranian president Raisi had vanished in a mountain district: β€œIt’s a
    nice irony that the EU has offered Copernicus satellite technology to
    assist people who hate the Enlightenment … I admire them for doing so.”
    If the EU is singular, then I infer that Lord Macdonald admires ‘people who hate the Enlightenment’.

    1. One can’t infer anything from people who are inconsistent in their use of pronouns.

      1. The ellipsis might indicate that a passage has been excised, rather than a pause, with the ‘them’ which follows referring to a plural entity in the excised text. If not, the ‘them’ must be the EU, which I consider to be an ‘it’, assuming that the ‘doing so’ is the offering of satellite technology rather than the hating of the Enlightenment. Otherwise the ‘them’ would be the people, which would make the ‘them’ correct.

        1. There is probably something missing, but as we are not party to it, we can’t infer anything.

        2. The ‘EU’ is merely a group of member states; really Lord MacD should have typed ‘European Commission’.

    1. The most edgy and least relaxed person I know is a friend who has been popping tranqs and antidepressants for at least 15 years.
      She makes me seem positively laid back,

  104. Labour is plotting the greatest assault on property rights in living memory

    Landlords are already treated as punchbags – it’s about to get worse

    ANNABEL DENHAM β€’ 29 April 2024 β€’ 4:48

    Labour has come a long way since Jeremy Corbyn called for the requisition of empty luxury homes to rehouse the victims of the Grenfell fire, and suggested extending “right to buy” to tenants of private landlords – a policy that would, in essence, have forced property owners to sell at a discount.

    But the party’s attitude towards property rights still poses a clear and present danger to homeowners, the housing market and the wider UK economy.

    The Opposition last week tabled an amendment to the Renters Reform Bill that would have banned landlords from selling their properties in the first two years of a new tenancy.

    It isn’t clear what problem this would solve: should a house be sold before the rental contract has expired, tenants’ rights are protected by law and cannot be curtailed by the landlord who purchases the property.

    If the contract has ended, landlords can issue a Section 21 offering two months’ notice, as they would if they wanted to walk away from the agreement under other circumstances. No wonder property owners are plunging to new depths of despair.

    In a country that refuses to build any new homes despite soaring demand, the war on landlords is only going to get worse. Successive Conservative governments have already treated them like a punchbag, presumably because adopting the Left’s language and subjecting them to ever-increasing regulation of punitive taxation is easier than tackling the root causes of our housing shortage.

    There are now over 170 pieces of legislation to which landlords must comply, including strict local authority licensing requirements, a responsibility to check if tenants have the right to rent a property and rules on protecting tenants deposits in a government-approved scheme.

    And last year, the introduction of Section 24 restricted the ability of unincorporated landlords to deduct mortgage interest and other finance costs (such as mortgage arrangement fees) against their rental income for tax purposes.

    But what little control these property owners have retained will be eroded further by an incoming Labour government. The Opposition has made no secret of its intention to ban so-called “no fault evictions”, though the idea that landlords should have the right to reclaim their property after an agreed period of time is hardly controversial. And who will resist, considering so many politicians seem to believe the line peddled by campaigners that landlords are evicting good tenants on a whim before their contract has expired?

    But the assault on property rights under Labour won’t stop there. In Wales, which offers a glimpse into our future, a Labour administration has handed councils powers to charge up to 300pc council tax or force second homeowners to rent their properties for half the year.

    The Labour Mayor of London has consistently demanded rent controls across the capital. And Keir Starmer’s party is committed to scrapping the leasehold system which allows more people to get onto the property ladder, while the Right to Buy discount will be slashed.

    A wealth tax, for all the protestations, should not be ruled out: not even Labour politicians can believe their many spending pledges will be met just by closing non-dom loopholes and slapping VAT on private school fees.

    None of these policies will work, of course. Rent controls north of the border substantially worsened Edinburgh’s housing crisis. The Tory assault on landlords has pushed thousands into selling up as fewer enter the market, lowering the stock available to renters.

    But it is the broader shift – away from the position that private property rights ought to be protected at all costs, towards one where the state can do as it chooses with what we own – that is most terrifying.

    Property rights, along with the rule of law, are the foundation of our prosperity, yet Britain is now doggedly chipping away at them.

    The situation is bad under the Tories; under Labour it will be calamitous, even without

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/labour-plotting-greatest-assault-property-rights/

    Here’s the text of the article referenced earlier by Rastus.

    Labour’s real plan for private schools is far more destructive than a tax raid

    Starmer’s proposed VAT raid lays the grounds for the sector’s destruction

    ANNABEL DENHAM β€’ 20 May 2024 β€’ 5:30pm

    The more we are told about Keir Starmer’s plans for government, the less we seem to know.

    His pledges to abolish the House of Lords and scrap tuition fees have been dropped. The “Green Prosperity” scheme was thrown in the shredder and the “New Deal for Workers” looks destined for a similar fate. Will he nationalise utilities? Defend migrant rights? It’s anyone’s guess.

    But one policy to survive more than a few months without attempts to quietly shelve it is the proposed VAT raid on independent schools. This, we are informed, will help fund Labour’s many spending pledges, though such claims look increasingly shaky.

    Treasury analysis last week has found that if the policy forced 100,000 pupils out of private schools (of roughly 650,000), it would require the Government to spend an extra Β£650m a year. The Adam Smith Institute think tank has suggested that were migration to reach 25pc, it would cost the Treasury Β£1.5bn.

    The policy may be economically counterproductive, but at least it gives Starmer some red meat to throw at the social justice warriors on his Left. Given they like to pretend that it will only affect millionaires and royalty, and perpetuate lazy stereotypes about Eton and Winchester, this must be richly satisfying.

    Yet the data tell a different story. Figures from the Independent Schools Council (ISC) have recently revealed 3,000 fewer pupils joining private schools this academic year, costing the Treasury Β£22m. David Woodgate, head of the Independent Schools’ Bursars Association, has previously warned that “in a lot of families, all of the second income goes on school fees”. Many parents will cut spending on other goods and services to meet the costs, acting as a drag on economic growth.

    Consider also how over 80pc of private schools have partnerships with their state counterparts, providing support with careers advice and, importantly, providing teaching in shortage subjects to nearby state schools. Their independence from the national curriculum allows them to innovate, trialling new teaching methods and qualifications that they will then share with the state sector.

    And there is little reason to believe abolishing private schools will lead to a more equal society: the average price of a house within the catchment area of a state school rated “outstanding” by Ofsted is 13.2pc higher than those as “good” by the inspectorate. Parents are masters of gaming the system, willing to move house, spend years attending church and hiring private tutors to get their children into top state schools.

    Why wreak havoc in our education system by applying 20pc VAT on fees? Some schools may have to close. Teachers, admin staff, janitors and cooks would lose their jobs. Happy children will have their learning needlessly disrupted and pupils could be left without a school place, given the majority do not have access to additional state funding.

    So again, why? Partly, it allows the Left to distract from Tory successes in education. Under Michael Gove’s reforms, academies and free schools have flourished, and England now ranks as the top Western nation for primary school reading levels.

    Partly, it’s the delusion that it will boost social mobility and make the system “fairer”. It’s likely, too, that many on the Left are itching to seize control of an area of education that stands free from government interference. Here are young minds which cannot be moulded by bureaucrats at the Department for Education. Where union chiefs, like Daniel Kebede – who said last year that “reorganising society” was a motivation behind teacher walkouts – have no influence.

    But here’s a real concern. While Labour’s tax raid may not cause the closure of the sector, it could do more to embolden the Left towards abolition than most people realise.

    First, there has been little opposition: polls have shown just 18pc of Brits are against the move. And second, it could make private schools the preserve of only the very wealthy. Close to four-fifths of schools say they will have to reduce scholarships and bursaries, restricting access to those from less privileged backgrounds. Parents already straining to afford private school simply won’t be able to make ends meet.

    Prestigious boarding schools may find it easier to absorb the cost, while those catering to special educational needs, faith schools and smaller day schools may struggle to stay afloat. The assumption that independent schools have cash reserves is based on a stereotype of the Etons and Harrows of the sector, rather than of the 90pc of other schools where no reserves exist.

    Labour have been trying to crush the independent sector for decades. Perhaps, by feeding the idea they are insufferably elitist, Keir Starmer will finish the job.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/labour-abolish-private-schools-tax-rise/

    Under normal circumstances these proposals would provide so much ammunition for the Tories and others to really hurt Labour but one suspects that a population that is increasingly inclined to see the world in terms of have and have-not will cheer these proposals for hardline socialism. Only yesterday Tom Harris wrote about the big rise in rents across the country, outstripping wage rises and an obvious indication of the effect of immigration. Nothing from Max and the Stockport Slapper about that.

    1. Labour are a failed political party , their Knighted leader is a hollow man , and the rest are ventriloquists dummies .

      They care not a jot for the traditions and welfare of the indigenous white population , nor do they embrace the Protestant ethic ..the view that a person’s duty and responsibility is to achieve success through hard work and thrift.

    2. There is only “soaring demand” for housing because Labour (in the first instance) opened the floodgates to massively increasing the population, an unwanted policy which the so-called Cons have singularly failed to stop.

      1. The leadership of both main parties are fully committed to mass immigration.

    3. Typically our political idiots have effed up again and are going to make the indigenous British working property owning public pay for it.
      But that won’t include those idiots in Wastemonster or Shiitehall.

    4. Well it worked with fox hunting (class warfare/throwing a bone to the left) so there’s no reason to believe it won’t happen again.

      And with respect to “And last year, the introduction of Section 24 restricted the ability of unincorporated landlords to deduct mortgage interest and other finance costs (such as mortgage arrangement fees) against their rental income for tax purposes” the change came in about four years ago now.

      1. It didn’t work for the foxes who are being shot and wounded, gassed and trapped, though. Whatever Labour touches turns to dross.

          1. Well, that’s true, but in this particular case it was Labour. I was telling my young and naive neighbour this morning that I’ve lived through several Labour governments (Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown) and every single one of them has left the country in a poor financial state. Mind you, successive so-called “conservative” governments recently have tried not only to emulate, but to surpass them.

          2. As you are (probably) well aware, the antis are angered by posh types on horses, not by the suffering of any fox; without human intervention all wild animals die slowly and/or painfully.
            The rumoured force behind the hunting ban was a woman whose first name is Cherry, or similar. As a youngster I once saw the corpse of a gangrenous fox; if renard has to be killed, by all means use a rifle but never a shotgun.

          3. The antis are eaten up with hatred, frankly. I keep pointing out that there is no Welfare State in the wild.

          4. You get the politicians you deserve.

            This will remain for as long as the party system remains.

  105. That’s me gone for today. Grey, chilly and dismal all day – and sea fret at Cley (where the lecture was).

    Have a spiffing evening – imagining Vile Venal Vennells bolstering herself for tomorrow’s onslaught….

    A demain (in the rain – I shall be baking a loaf).

        1. Cley has got quite an interesting history. I’ve always liked Dutch gables.

  106. Evening, all. The day started off well – sunny and bright, but not too hot. I managed to cut both the lawns and was even able to sit out for a short while to soak up the sun (once I’d disentangled myself from the wooden embrace of the transat, which decided it would fold up! I’d moved it and then hadn’t made sure the pegs were in place to stop it folding). Then it rained. Situation normal! I was too tired to do the edges and the borders, so I hope that tomorrow will be dry long enough for me to finish off.

    The infected blood debacle is just one of many things that the British “establishment” should be ashamed of; the PO scandal, the failure to secure our borders, two tier policing, the running down of our armed forces, the betrayal over Brexit, the lack of democracy, the increasingly oppressive control over our lives … I could go on, but it’s too depressing.

  107. If anyone should be paying slavery reparations, it’s West Africa

    The logic behind British reparations is deeply flawed. Responsibility for slavery cannot be reduced to a single country

    LAWRENCE GOLDMAN β€’ 20 May 2024 β€’ 6:12pm

    The Dean of Chapel in Trinity College, Cambridge, the Rev Michael Banner, has computed that Britain owes more than Β£200 billion to Caribbean nations as reparations for slavery. Banner is not a historian nor an accountant but a clergyman and his calculations, both mathematical and moral, are wrong.

    In 1833, when Parliament emancipated slaves in the British empire, the cabinet initially offered the slaveholders about Β£15 million in compensation. The two sides eventually settled at Β£20 million. To have paid the slaveholders to free their slaves was highly controversial at the time, but it was the only way to secure their freedom finally after years of campaigning.

    Banner’s calculations start with the valuation initially advanced in the negotiations by the slaveholding interest, which, at Β£40 million, was twice the amount they actually received. Why he has taken this as his baseline isn’t clear from the reports, but in so doing Banner has ensured that his final figure for what you and I apparently owe is both astronomical and nonsensical.

    It is moral nonsense because the whole British nation in 1833 can hardly be held responsible for the actions of the 45,000 Britons who owned slaves. At least 10 times as many Britons signed the dozens of anti-slavery petitions presented to Parliament from the 1780s onwards.

    It is even more nonsensical to ask Britons today, millions of whose ancestors did not live in the country until recently, to pay for something that occurred three centuries ago.

    Some descendants of slaveholding families, such as Laura Trevelyan and Charlie Gladstone, have felt it right to offer personal reparations. That is their choice. But the rest of us are not responsible for something we rightly lament, though over which we had no say or control.

    Nor is it clear why Britain alone should pay these fictitious sums. British slave traders are estimated to have enslaved and transported about a quarter of the Africans shipped across the Atlantic over a period of four centuries. This hated trade was begun by the Portuguese and Spanish and involved French, Dutch, Danish and even Norwegian traders as well.

    Then there is the problem of African responsibility for the enslavement of Africans. The slave trade across the Atlantic and also into Arab lands in North Africa and the Middle East would not have been possible without the collaboration and complicity of African kingdoms and their rulers. They sold on captives, often taken in tribal wars. If we are to pay for the sins of our fathers, surely the descendants of the Oba of Benin, the King of the Asante and many others beside should be paying as well?

    The strangest aspect of Banner’s case is that it should be made by a Christian clergyman. Some British subjects were sinners, yes. The vast majority had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery. After 50 years of struggle, the British anti-slavery campaign succeeded in ending the British slave trade and slavery itself. Thereafter, we became what has been called an “anti-slavery nation”, leading the world in multiple efforts to end slavery around the globe.

    Slavery was – and still is in its modern forms – a lamentable stain on civilisation. It was also ubiquitous. Its intrinsic sadness and tragedy should make it obvious to everyone that its history must be told accurately and respectfully, and not sensationalised in this and other ways.

    Professor Lawrence Goldman is emeritus fellow in history at St Peter’s College, Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/05/20/reparations-britain-west-africa-slave-trade-decolonisation/

    2. Archbishop Ussher calcuated the age of the earth as well, for all the good that did

    3. If we’re going to use past times for justice, let’s just send a dozen chests of cowry shells and red beads to clear this non-existent debt.

    4. Rev Banner would do better to worry about looking after the diminishing congregation in the CoE! Another virtue signalling idiot!

    5. I take issue with one passage of that.
      “British slave traders are estimated to have enslaved and transported about a quarter of the Africans shipped across the Atlantic over a period of four centuries.”

      British traders may have transported about a quarter of the Africans shipped across the Atlantic, but they did not enslave their cargos, they bought them, already enslaved from local tribes who profited greatly from the trade.

    6. It’s no bloody good. Give them a few billion for reparations and they will be back for more. Just look at how much Canadian first nations tribes have conned out of the country for all kinds of slights and upsets.

      Still no exhumed graves, that would kill the grievance industry if nothing was found. They are now talking about making it a criminal offence to question if the graves are real.

    7. Reparations are just an excuse for Black under-achievement. Failure to take the opportunities we all have.

  108. From Punch Nigeria https://punchng.com/)
    “Labour rejects FG’s N54,000 new minimum wage offer, talks adjourned till Wednesday”
    At current exchange of USD 1 = 2 481 Naira, that’s $ 21.76
    Hmm, won’t get fat on that.

  109. Oh dear I’m so very fed up today.
    Having my appointment for cataract removal cancelled only a few hours before it was due.
    Some feeble excuse about the surgeon phoning in sick this morning. After they changed the app yesterday by one hour. I don’t believe it. I feel cheated. I’m having another glass of red and going to bed early.
    Tomorrow is another day.

    1. What an absolute butter ugger.
      Do you have a new date arranged?
      It’s not just the rearranging dates, it’s the psychological blow as well.

      2. They already had the new date arranged when I had the phone call this morning, 18th of June which is even more suspicious.

    2. Sorry to hear that, RE. You do seem to be suffering at the hands of the NHS.

      1. Cheers Obs.
        I’ve just finished the washing up after dinner.
        The first appointment early March had to be cancelled because I had an upper respiratory and an eye infection.
        The hospital is private, but the appointment was from NHS.
        It’s messing up our lives. I can’t drive because my eye sight is impaired. And one of the most favourite questions from the NHS is how much alcohol do you drink.
        Probably more than I have to.

        1. What a pain in the, er… bum, Eddy. Third time lucky? Never say eye…

  110. Not too busy a day.

    Other than sawing & chopping the barrowload of logs referred to earlier, I prepared a load of veg for lunch, leaving the actual cooking to the DT.

    Then I’ve just been up the “garden” chopping another barrowload and a half.

    Was sat having a mug of tea this morning when this came on Radio 3.

    Exquisite!

  112. Without a bloody revolution (there is no other kind) there will be no change.
    WE didn’t allow this to happen.
    It has been imposed on us by British politicians who have more in common with each other than the people they purport to represent.

    1. They lied and we believed them. In my case, i really never believed it possible for a human being to lie so about things that matter until the advent of the Evil Emperor Blair, who still rules and awaits his reward in the hell that is to come upon us all..

  114. 104 today. God Bless you sir.

    Flight Lieutenant John Alexander Cruickshank, VC, AE (born 20th May 1920), No. 210 Squadron, Coastal Command, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.

    On the 17th July 1944, Cruickshank began preparations for his 25th operational sortie. His aircraft was Catalina JV928, DA-Y, and for this trip he was taking a ten-man crew, including himself as captain. His second pilot was Flight Sergeant Jack Garnett, while a third pilot, Sergeant S I Fidler, was fresh to operations and included to gain experience.

    At 9.45pm, their radar screen showed contact with a surface vessel five miles ahead. As they approached they realised it was a German U-Boat, and Cruickshank’s response was to do a complete circuit around it, and begin a bombing run. When passing over, the Catalina’s depth charges failed to release, so he turned to port, climbing to 800 feet and continuing his turn to begin a second run. As they attacked, they were strafed by flak shells, and one of them exploded inside the Catalina. The explosion killed the Catalina’s navigator and injuring four including the second pilot Flight Sergeant Jack Garnett and Cruickshank himself. Cruickshank had been hit in seventy-two places, with two serious wounds to his lungs and ten penetrating wounds to his lower limbs. Despite this he refused medical attention until he was sure that the appropriate radio signals had been sent and the aircraft was on course for its home base. Even then he refused morphine aware that it would cloud his judgement. Flying through the night it took the damaged Catalina five and a half hours to return to Sullom Voe with the injured Garnett at the controls and Cruickshank lapsing in and out of consciousness in the back.

    Once there Cruickshank returned to the cockpit and took command of the aircraft again. Deciding that the light and the sea conditions for a water landing were too risky for the inexperienced Garnett to safely put the aircraft down, he kept the flying boat in the air circling for an extra hour until he considered it safer and they landed the Catalina on the water and taxied it to an area where it could be safely beached. When the RAF medical officer boarded the aircraft he had to give Cruickshank a blood transfusion before he was considered stable enough to be transferred to hospital.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/502b7e840f1c78216f172edab710e34f6d0e18d0250fe258c945f62d075011b4.jpg
    .

    1. ck387465+ up ticks,

      Evening GBQ,
      ALL the best for John Alexander Cruickshank,
      the best of the very best

  115. I hope no mention of his medal being awarded means it was not posthumous.
    Tough man.
    Respect.

    2. Wiki: For his actions in sinking the U-boat and saving his crew he received the Victoria Cross while Flight Sergeant Jack Garnett received the Distinguished Flying Medal.

    2. How did that repulsive pile of
      animal excretion get into that assumed position.

      1. Money and incriminating photographs is normally a good start for advancement.

    3. He is the epitome of an autocratic figure head , he looks terrifying .

      No1 The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.

      No2 Europe has grown to 27 member states, encompassing an amazing diversity and richness. Some argue this is part of the problem: Europe is simply too big and culturally disparate to be managed properly. But look to India for an example of how social unity can be forged within a culturally, linguistically, and ethnically complex nation.

      Klaus Schwab

      No1 seems plausible , No2 not so.. simply untrue , he has forgotten Partition!

    6. The evil that men do lives after them.

      [Mark Antony in Julius Caesar]

      1. And when he does die there won’t be much good to be interred with his bones.

  117. That’s a long time to carry bits of German cannon shell around.

  118. I would imagine Unkle Klaus will be getting an eye-watering golden handshake.
    Whereas the rest of us can look forward to owning nothing and being happy.

  119. Former Royal Marine charged with spying for China found dead
    Matthew Trickett, 37, who was awaiting trial, was discovered in Maidenhead park on Sunday

    Albert Tait
    21 May 2024 β€’ 8:14pm

    A former Royal Marine who was charged with spying on Hong Kong activists in the UK has been found dead.

    Matthew Trickett, 37, who was awaiting trial, was found dead in Grenfell Park, Maidenhead, on Sunday at 5.15pm.

    Thames Valley police said an investigation was ongoing into his death, which is currently being treated as unexplained.

    It comes after Mr Trickett appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court last Monday alongside co-defendants Chi Leung Wai, 38, and Chung Biu Yuen, 63.

    The trio were accused of carrying out surveillance on Hong Kong pro-democracy activists living in the UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/21/former-royal-marine-suspected-spying-for-china-found-dead/?WT.mc_id=e_DM328655&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Brk_New&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_Brk_New20240521&utm_campaign=DM328655

      1. I have just scanned the Daily Mail web site and it is very hard to disagree with your sentiment.
        Lots of supposed celeb articles so we can fawn over the favoured ones pamperd liveslive and just as many articles on riff raff misdemeanors.
        If only it was the DM but it is everywhere.

    2. “…didn’t invent…”

      *sigh*

      “..hadn’t invented…”

      On par with “If they would have…”

  121. The ICC has disgraced itself

    There is no moral equivalence between Benjamin Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwar, and to imply otherwise is absurd

    TELEGRAPH VIEW β€’ 21 May 2024 β€’ 6:00am

    The International Criminal Court’s decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant makes a mockery of both the institution and the laws it claims to uphold.

    By applying for the arrest of the Israeli leadership alongside that of Hamas, the court has bolstered a supposed moral equivalence where none exists. Israel is engaged in an existential struggle against a foe which hides among the civilian population. IDF soldiers have gone to extraordinary lengths to minimise non-combatant casualties, often at greater risk to their own lives.

    Hamas, in contrast, initiated this conflict by slaughtering innocent civilians on Israeli soil. Its leader, Yahya Sinwar, has made clear his intention to “wipe out” the world’s only Jewish state. Yet Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, has brought charges including “causing extermination” and “deliberately targeting civilians” against both Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant.

    Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, was right to describe the ICC’s decision as “a historical disgrace”. The court has, in a single moment, wilfully sabotaged any right to be considered a fair and impartial arbitrator of justice, undoing decades of work.

    This ideologically motivated ruling will not hasten the end of the conflict or expedite a ceasefire. As the UK Government has noted, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel or Hamas. Only when the terrorist group has been destroyed, and surviving hostages freed, can there be peace. Yesterday’s development will serve only to discredit the ICC and further alienate Israel as it fights for its survival.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/05/21/icc-israel-hamas-war-arrest-warrant-benjamin-netanyahu/

    _________________________________________________________________________________

    Labour must sack David Lammy for backing this absurd ICC warrant

    Keir Starmer’s sensible stance on Israel risks being undone if he does not think about what is right and in Britain’s interests

    TOM HARRIS β€’ 21 May 2024 β€’ 2:59pm

    Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy

    Law enforcement has frequently been used by activists to support their causes. How often do we see vexatious complaints made to the police about this or that politician’s behaviour, when it’s pretty clear that Plod has no role in whatever argument is being fought?

    As the world’s only Jewish state continues to frustrate its critics by refusing to be wiped off the map, anti-Israel activists have increasingly resorted to the same tactic. Until now, the attempted arrests of Israeli officials when they arrive in foreign countries has been little more than performative activism, aimed at generating publicity for the cause rather than serving the demands of international justice.

    But the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek arrest warrants for both the Israeli prime minister and Hamas leaders has stepped up this tiresome little game to dangerous levels.

    As President Joe Biden has said, to draw any sort of moral equivalence between the Islamist terrorists, rapists and murderers of Hamas with the leader of a democratically-elected government in the midst of a war that was initiated by those self-same terrorists is outrageous. It is virtue-signalling on a global scale and it is utterly unjustified.

    So naturally, David Lammy has backed it.

    The shadow foreign secretary has not only supported the move by the ICC to seek arrest warrants, but he used his contribution in the House of Commons yesterday to score party political points over the government. This is itself a worrying departure; the international fight against terrorism has, until now, been a cross-party affair. Each side had its own priorities and emphasis, but there was a unified strategy, and the international community knew where Britain stood: against Islamist terrorists and in support of democracy.

    Lammy chose to make his points slowly – perhaps to allow for applause? – and with portentous solemnity, perhaps hoping that he was coming across as a serious-minded statesman. He hoped in vain.

    What came across instead was the culmination of the rather transparent political predicament into which the Labour Party appear to have fallen. Keir Starmer took the initial lead on behalf of his party when, in the wake of the October 7 massacre by Hamas terrorists, he struck an uncompromising stance in Israel’s favour. Naturally this infuriated much of his party, whose analysis of the Middle East has not moved on much since its senior common room days and its distillation of the historical and political complexities of the region into handy, bite-sized slogans to be repeated, loudly and with unwarranted confidence, at the weekly anti-Israel demonstrations we have been forced to witness since Israel dared to defend itself.

    The local elections earlier this month confirmed Labour’s fears that at least a section of the Muslim vote, on which the party could previously rely, had deserted it as a direct result of its support for Israel. Lammy’s absurd response to the ICC’s actions must be interpreted in light of his party’s response to this plight.

    It is, regrettably, a consequence of long-term opposition that political parties, on certain issues, forget that it is not necessary to pursue policies that are popular, only policies that are right. Indulging the anti-Israel sentiments of the kind of people who enjoy singing the genocidal ditty, “From the river to the sea”, may serve to blunt those people’s criticism of you for a time, but they will return – they always return – with more, and even less reasonable, demands which, if you reject them, will only intensify their hatred of you.

    It would have been possible for Lammy to concede the ICC’s right to pursue its stated course of action while decrying its conclusions. He certainly should have taken issue with the court’s implication that Hamas and the Israeli government are somehow equivalent in terms of moral culpability for the current conflict. For they are not. Criticise Israel’s military strategy by all means, but do not assume for even an instant that they are anything other than miles above the moral cesspit in which Hamas and its supporters dwell.

    Why didn’t Lammy say any of this? We are left with the unappetising conclusion that he was playing to the gallery, appealing to his own party and to its supporters – and, of course, its recently lost supporters. The man who aspires to be this country’s next foreign secretary was turning his back, not only on two of our closest international allies (for in failing to challenge the ICC’s broken moral compass, he shunned President Biden too) but on a political consensus that has been integral to this nation’s fight against the evil of international Islamism.

    As prime minister, Keir Starmer will have to think seriously about who he puts in charge of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. There are many better – and better qualified – candidates than David Lammy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/21/labour-must-sack-david-lammy-for-backing-absurd-icc-warrant/

    “Why didn’t Lammy say any of this?”

    Because he is Lammy. He would be a gift to a real Conservative Party. The Fakir and his frauds are afraid of him.

  123. An old man in Miami calls up his son in New York and says, “Listen, your mother and I are getting divorced. Forty-five years of misery is enough.”
    “Dad, what are you talking about?” the son screams.
    β€œWe can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,” he says. “I’m sick of her face, and
    I’m sick of talking about this, so call your sister in Chicago and tell her,” and he hangs up.
    Now, the son is worried. So he calls up his sister. She says, “Like hell they’re getting
    divorced!” and calls her father immediately. “You’re not getting divorced! Don’t do
    another thing, the two of us are flying home tomorrow to talk about this. Until then,
    don’t call a lawyer, don’t file a paper, DO YOU HEAR ME?” and she hangs up.
    The old man turns to his wife and says “Okay, they’re coming for Christmas and paying their own airfares.”

  125. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    How did the EU get Raisi’s death so wrong?
    Comments Share 21 May 2024, 10:31am
    Most of the world will not mourn the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash near Varzaqan in Iran, this week. Dubbed the β€˜Butcher of Tehran’, Raisi was responsible for the deaths of thousands in a purge of political dissent in the 1980s. Since becoming president he has overseen the brutal crackdown on Iranians protesting against the regime’s punitive morality police. And he has led a country which is a key supplier of drones and weapons to Vladimir Putin, causing countless civilian deaths.

    Why was it obvious to democratic countries that commemorating Raisi would be morally contemptuous, but not to the bureaucrats in Brussels?
    Accordingly, most world leaders did not offer condolences for Raisi’s death, with President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Meloni and other leaders of the democratic world choosing not to comment.

    In the institutions of the European Union, however, senior figures immediately sent their commiserations. Charles Michel, President of the European Council rushed into action, expressing his β€˜sincere condolences’ on behalf of the European Union. High Representative Josep Borrell likewise offered his condolences, again as a representative of the EU.

    Janez Lenarcic, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, went a step further, saying he would make available the EU’s Copernicus satellite system to help Iranian rescuers seeking to find Raisi and save his life, in the name of β€˜EU Solidarity’.

    Why was it obvious to the United States, Great Britain, and almost all democratic countries, that commemorating Raisi would be morally contemptuous, but not to the bureaucrats in Brussels?

    It is worth stressing the kind of man Raisi was. No one quite knows how many lives the Butcher took in the 1988 purge of political prisoners. Whilst some estimates stop at β€˜only’ a few thousand, others reach as high as 30,000. We do know that, by the end, there were so many victims that the bodies had to be loaded onto forklifts and hung from cranes. The Butcher would maintain, until the end of his life, that his role in these executions of political prisoners was a source of great pride for him, for which he should be esteemed and respected.

    Most popular
    Andrew Tettenborn
    Stay-at-home parents don’t need free nursery places

    As president he was a fanatical supporter of sex segregation, with his rule marked by extreme policies such as the amputation of hands, open hatred of gay people, and the imposition of even stricter restrictions on what women can wear.

    In late 2022, a young woman called Mahsa Amini was set upon by the Iranian morality police for violating these restrictions. Beaten savagely for wearing her hijab incorrectly, her subsequent death triggered huge protests against Raisi’s government.

    It is no surprise then that Raisi’s death has triggered jubilant street celebrations in the Iranian diaspora, while videos from inside Iran show people baking celebratory sweets and giving them to strangers.

    The people of Iran know exactly what kind of man Raisi was. It’s a shame that European Union officials are so clueless by comparison. Already the EU’s tone deaf response has led to widespread criticism from those who believe European institutions no longer speak for them.

    β€˜Not in my name!’ responded Geert Wilders, of the Dutch Party for Freedom, to Charles Michel. Theo Francken, a Belgian MP of the conservative New Flemish Alliance, echoed his criticism.

    On the other side of the political divide, Guy Verhofstadt, a long-time European liberal, responded by simply highlighting Raisi’s credentials as a mass murderer. Whereas Hannah Neumann, a German Green MEP, criticised Michel’s message and claimed that it was only made in a private capacity.

    Remarkably, two of the European Union’s most senior foreign policy figures have managed to unite the entire political spectrum in anger.

    Make no mistake: this is a crisis for the EU. Whether through incompetence, misjudgement, or miscalculation, EU officials failed to understand that actively supporting efforts to rescue the Butcher and mourning his loss would be received with anger in Europe.

    The EU institutions have been getting it wrong a lot, recently. The malaise runs deep. From migration to climate, they are increasingly out of touch with what European citizens think. In the recent Dutch elections, far-right leader Geert Wilders smashed former Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans, and looks set to repeat this feat in the European elections. All across the continent, from France to Finland, populist parties are surging, driven by the same poor judgement that drove President Michel to mourn the Butcher.

    The EU has once again slipped into a crisis of its own making. Its latest blunder is exactly why figures such as Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen are now speaking for European citizens, and EU institutions increasingly are not.

  126. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    The far right isn’t the only threat ahead of the European elections
    Comments Share 21 May 2024, 11:30am
    In France, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Hungary and Austria parties described by their foes as β€˜far-right’ are on course for significant gains at next month’s European elections. To the chagrin of progressive politicians, Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are popular with many voters. But centrist groups in the European Parliament are determined to do everything to stop them.

    Europe does indeed feel like it might be returning to β€˜the darkest pages of our history’
    β€˜We are facing a crucial moment in the history of our European project, where once more the far right is attempting to bring back the darkest pages of our history,’ said a communique issued by a coalition of left-wing, green and centrist outfits in the European parliament on 8 May. The timing was no coincidence: that day marked the 79th anniversary of Victory in Europe day. It warned that β€˜far-right’ parties represented a threat to democracy, due to the β€˜constantly growing cases of harassment, vandalism, spread of disinformation, defamation and hate speech’.

    The statement ended with a declaration that they β€˜will never cooperate nor form a coalition’ with a β€˜far right’ party. It called on Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, to endorse their message.

    The communique was an insult to the intelligence of the European electorate. Voters have eyes and ears, they are aware of what has unfolded in Europe in recent months. It is not far-right students calling for the destruction of Israel; it was not MPs from Marine Le Pen’s party who were questioned by police on charges of β€˜apology for [Hamas] terrorism’; it was not a right-wing Spanish MP who tweeted soon after the October 7 attack: β€˜Today and always with Palestine’; it was not a right -wing mayor in Brussels trying to prevent democratically elected politicians speaking at a conference because he objected to their views; it was not a Swedish right-wing MP who recently attended a conference linked with Hamas.

    Europe does indeed feel like it might be returning to β€˜the darkest pages of our history’; but it’s not the right which is responsible for many of the most troubling recent events: it is a toxic alliance of elements of the progressive left and their Islamist allies.

    The man who was shot dead in France last Friday as he set fire to a synagogue was an Algerian; and the man jailed for life last week for killing a pensioner in Hartlepool, β€˜for the people of Gaza’, was a Moroccan.

    It is Islamofascism that frightens many Europeans today: teachers murdered because they showed images of the Prophet; girls beaten unconscious because they don’t wear a headscarf; men stabbed to death because of their sexuality or because they drank alcohol.

    What also alarms voters is that so many progressive politicians live in a state of permanent denial; they can’t bring themselves to confront the truth. They wring their hands about β€˜Islamophobia’ even as Jews are routinely persecuted in Europe.

    Other than the deceit and delusion of their opponents, there are other factors that explain the popularity of politicians like Meloni, Wilder and Le Pen. They recognise the folly of Net Zero, and of open borders, and they know that only the male species has a penis.

    The European left has lost its way this century, which accounts for the fact that most of the 27 countries in the EU are run by governments that lean in varying degrees to the right. The left will only reverse this trend if they begin to speak and act with courage and honesty.

    A start would be to issue another communique, alerting voters to the real danger in next month’s European elections, a coalition that poses a genuine threat.

    The β€˜Free Palestine’ coalition is composed of parties from countries including France, Belgium. Sweden and Germany. One of its spokesmen Belgian MP Fouad Ahidar has declared: β€˜There are two major issues we want to discuss: Islamophobia in Europe, which is on the rise, and the Palestinian question.’ Ahidar has described Hamas’s slaughter of 1,200 Israelis as β€˜a small response’ to 75 years of β€˜massacres’.

    The Free Palestine manifesto demands a β€˜radical’ change in the direction of European diplomacy. This could include legitimatising Hamas and Islamic Jihad as political organisations, and imposing sanctions on Israel. It could also become illegal for European citizens to enlist in the Israeli army.

    The French component of the coalition is the Democratic Union of French Muslims (UDMF), which states that its raison d’etre is anti-zionism and anti-imperialism. Also operating in France is the Muslim Brotherhood. The academic Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, whose book about the organisation last year led to her being given police protection, told Le Figaro: β€˜The Brotherhood networks in France operate in two ways: either they lay their eggs in cuckoo parties on the far left, hoping to infiltrate these organisations, or they openly display their own colours’.

    It is time that the European left grew up. Prattling on about Mussolini and Marshal PΓ©tain is passΓ©. There is a new threat spreading across Europe, and once again its primary targets are Jews.

    2. Sadly, as Nana Mouskouri observed when she was an MEP, the European Parliament is just a talking shop.

      1. No obligation to read anything. I put the full article because it’s behind a paywall.

      1. Then why do we say Dutch instead of Hollanders or Netherlanders? Lol.

      2. Why is one right and the other wrong? Half my family are in some way Dutch and they say Holland.

        1. Because only 2 of the 12 provinces are Holland, North Holland and South Holland. I lived in Maastricht and was definitely not in Holland but Limburg. Many Dutch get exasperated with trying to explain the difference. It’s as wrong as calling the UK England, which many Germans do, much to my frustration.

          1. From Wikipedia:
            β€˜The name Holland has frequently been used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. This casual usage is commonly accepted in other countries, and is even employed by many Dutch themselves. However, some in the Netherlands (particularly those from regions outside Holland or the west) find it undesirable or misrepresentative to use the term for the whole country. In January 2020, the Netherlands officially dropped its support of the word Holland for the whole country, which included a logo redesign that changed “Holland” to “NL”.’
            I think my family are from Amsterdam and Rotterdam and that’s probably why they prefer to say Holland.
            As it is the word was officially dropped as recently as 2020. So I don’t see it as a big deal.

          2. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are in North and South Holland. However, It really does matter to some people.

          3. Oh, I’m sure it does. People are always using the wrong words and offending someone. My brother’s ex wife was from some area of the Netherlands where they spoke a different language. I asked my brother remembering so many places where a minority language was spoken, if they pretended not to understand people speaking in Dutch and only answering questions in their peculiar dialect. Yes, it was the same old story.
            Life is too short to get upset about silliness.

          4. In Maastricht they have the Limburg dialect. I was never sure if my attempts at basic Dutch were down to my lack of ability or them being as you describe above.

          5. Both of my brothers married Dutch women. My younger brother is a fluent Dutch speaker but it was still difficult to communicate in his wife’s village.
            My other brother speaks some basic Dutch. But he tells me that when he speaks in Dutch in Amsterdam people enthusiastically reply in that language and only speak English when it’s clear he hasn’t understood.
            So very possibly your communication problems were because they wanted to speak in their language.

  127. BBC’s Gaza coverage has sunk to new lows

    Impartiality breaches have occurred so often at its Arabic channel that they almost look deliberate

    DANNY COHEN β€’ 21 May 2024 β€’ 7:00am

    The BBC’s royal charter sets out five “public purposes”, the very first of which is a commitment to impartiality. Yet the Israel-Hamas war has seen the BBC fail to deliver on this crucial test on more occasions than can be explained away as “errors” or bad luck.

    A source of repeated issues over impartiality is BBC Arabic. Since the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, BBC Arabic has been forced to make 80 corrections to its reporting. Something is going badly wrong. Mistakes don’t happen 80 times.

    The failures of impartiality have included BBC reporters describing Hamas terrorists as “the resistance”, as well as labelling attacks which targeted and killed civilians as “resistance operations”. It’s the language you would hear from a Hamas spokesman.

    The corporation was forced to remove an episode of the BBC Arabic programme Trending, which questioned whether the Kfar Aza kibbutz massacre on October 7 actually happened. This plays into an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that seeks to undermine the terrible truth of what happened that day. How was a video of that nature produced and distributed by the BBC in the first place? How is it possible that editorial standards at BBC Arabic had fallen so low that this was seen as legitimate reporting?

    There is plenty more. Last month a BBC Arabic presenter asked an Egyptian guest to apologise for expressing sympathy for Israel. One BBC Arabic journalist interviewed a Palestinian woman about her life amid the conflict but decided it was not relevant to ask her directly about the time she stabbed an Israeli neighbour in front of her children.

    There is no sign that this blatant lack of impartiality at BBC Arabic will be dealt with any time soon by senior management. Yet this is not even the worst of it. The BBC continues to employ people who actually celebrated the October 7 terrorist attacks.

    Sally Nabil, a BBC Arabic correspondent, “liked” a number of tweets which appeared to legitimise the targeting of Jewish civilians, including tweets which called the October 7 atrocities “a morning of hope”. She also “liked” a comment on a video which showed footage of jeeps loaded with Jewish bodies and kidnapped civilians. Ms Nabil is still employed by the BBC.

    Another BBC Arabic journalist, Sanaa Khouri, reposted and liked tweets appearing to support the massacres, including one about celebratory sweets being distributed in Lebanon in its aftermath. The Beirut-based correspondent also tweeted in the wake of the attacks: “Israel’s prestige is crying in the corner”. Some BBC employees have even gone as far as mocking civilians who were kidnapped by Hamas. BBC executive producer Mahmoud Sheleib took part in a Twitter conversation shortly after October 7 in which he appeared to joke about a woman whose grandmother was abducted by the terrorist group.

    The BBC is employing people who celebrated the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. This means that our licence fees are paying the wages of people who celebrated the rape and slaughter of men, women and children. How can this be possible? Why should we accept it? If any other publicly funded organisation supported terrorist sympathisers, the outcry would be enormous. Yet the BBC seems to be impervious to its problems, unwilling to recognise and address the management failures that are poisoning one of Britain’s great institutions.

    When breaches of impartiality are so egregious that they extend to the exaltation of a massacre, something has gone very wrong with the public broadcaster. But these scandals are made so much worse when the organisation fails to deal effectively with the problem.

    Indeed, far from publicly recognising the scale of this issue, the BBC has gone out of its way to support and endorse its Arabic service. Director-general Tim Davie has recently stated his admiration for BBC Arabic, saying that the service was something “we should be very proud of”.

    On taking the role of director-general, Davie chose to put impartiality at the heart of his tenure, describing it as his “number one priority”. Given the actions of BBC Arabic over the past seven months, it now seems clear that, unfortunately, he has failed in his mission in the most shameful way possible.

    Danny Cohen was the director of BBC Television from 2013 until 2015

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/21/bbc-arabic-gaza-israel-hamas-war-media-impartiality/

    Actually, Mr C, I can see how employing Arabs to work on the Arabic service might lead to problems with impartiality. Can you?

    Mind you, it’s not just the Arabs. This evening on PM, Evan Davis was almost squeaking with indignation that anyone should question the ICC’s charges against Israel.

    2. “There is no sign that this blatant lack of impartiality at BBC Arabic will be dealt with any time soon by senior management.”

      His concerns are genuine, but it’s strange that Mr Cohen was unconcerned about BBC “impartiality” when he worked for the corporation.

      1. Perhaps he was but was cold-shouldered…or worse. Anti-Jewish sentiment at the BBC didn’t begin last October.

  129. Thank goodness line 4 was correct, I really wasn’t looking forward to the next guess…

    Wordle 1,067 4/6

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

    1. Brain was out of gear today

      Wordle 1,067 5/6

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

  130. Has anyone seen the Squire today, I’ve not seen him around which is unusual, maybe he’s busy upsetting speed cameras and cyclists in Snowdonia. If he pops up very late then say hello to him from me. I’ll say good night to the owls, I myself am a lark 😁

  132. 14c and peeing down in my corner of West London. 22c indoors, which is comfortable so not reaching for the electric heater yet.

    Why do so many of the people who do voiceovers for GBN ads have such poor diction? Mine tins for mountains and worse, paw’of GdaΕ„sk in Poland. Port, darling, port. Speaking of which a glass of a nice sweet fortified wine would be very welcome but I ain’t got none. Shame.

    1. I often wonder if, or are the people who do the voice overs selected because of what they actually look like ?

    1. The met office computer models force include ‘climate change’ parameters. That’s why they’re wrong so much.

      That said, a breeze and a bit of cool air would be very welcome.

      1. We have that at the coast. very pleasant, we tend to be warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

  135. https://order-order.com/2024/05/21/remote-hmrc-staff-squander-1-million-in-lost-equipment/

    HMRC is a massive organisation. Some loss is inevitable. However, I’d bet those who’ve ‘lost’ these devices have never lost their own telephones. It’s also notable that there is never a cost to this ‘lost’ equipment. If I damage or lose ‘my’ laptop (Β£100 Thinkpad T570 from ebay) I have to replace it. I don’t imagine officialdom is ever sent the bill for their losses.

    1. I had a laptop stolen when I was on a work trip. The biggest problem was getting my expense claim approved without the corresponding receipts.

      I can only hope that whoever stole it wiped the drive, destroying the software and documents that were on it.

  137. Without wishing to be ghoulish…

    Today: Olive Wilkinson death: Arrest as 1983 Cleethorpes murder probe reopens
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-69045856

    Last June: Sutton-in-Ashfield: Remains confirmed as miner who went missing in 1967
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-65842590

    No progress on the latter case. It’s almost a year since Alfred Swinscoe’s remains were identified, so I expect there’ll be another appeal

  139. E’enin’ all.
    When I got home from ork this evening there was a parcel by the door. I thought it must have been for a neighbour as I couldn’t remember ordering anything, but it was addressed t me.
    Opened it and found a letter of congratulations from the DT and an embossed notebook and fountain pen.
    I’d won the prize crossword!
    Proudest moment of my life πŸ™‚

    7. Well done Stormy. You clever girl. I can’t get to grips with cryptic clues.

      1. Thanks Alf.
        Well I’ve been doing them since I was about fifteen, I think I’ve finally nailed ’em.

        1. I’m OK with general knowledge crosswords but, as I said, cryptic one befuddle me. It might as well be in Chinese. That should be OK as I’m the youngest of 5 children and my mum was worried when I was on the way as she’d heard that every 5th child born in this world was Chinese! πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

    8. Woo hoo, way to go Stormy. We await your novel with great anticipation! πŸ₯‚

      1. Belle, could you please contact Hertslass for me and tell her that another Nottler did give me her email as requested to do. I know she’s not online much here atm as busy with moving plans and I’m away for awhile oand without my laptop . Please say that after we’ve caught up here at NoTTl and I have my laptop going that I’ll be I touch by email. Please tell her not to worry I do have her email now . Thank you .

  142. Motor bike today. Weather grim. Will post something funny/not funny later.

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